Dead Man Calling

by Gavin Black

  DEAD MAN CALLING

  Gavin Black was the pseudonym used by Scottish author Oswald Wynd to publish his highly successful thrillers. Born in 1913 to missionary parents in Japan, he was educated at The American School in Tokyo until his family moved to the United States where he undertook a year of high school in Atlantic City. Upon graduation, he attended The University of Edinburgh until the outbreak of WWII. He then joined the Scots Guards and was sent to Malaya with British Intelligence, attached to the Indian Army. After the Japanese invasion, he was captured in the jungle and spent more than three years in a Japanese prison camp in Hokkaido where his fluency in the language aided both himself and other prisoners of war. It was when he returned to Scotland via the Philippines that he thought to try his hand at a ‘first novel’ contest run by Doubleday in America. His entry Black Fountains (about a young American-educated Japanese woman embroiled in the war) won him both first prize and the staggering sum of $20,000. He went on to make his fame and fortune writing critically acclaimed thrillers as Gavin Black, most of which were set in Asia and featured Paul Harris. He died in 1998.

  DEAD MAN CALLING

  GAVIN BLACK

  THE LANGTAIL PRESS

  LONDON

  This edition published 2010 by

  The Langtail Press

  www.langtailpress.com

  Dead Man Calling © 1962 Gavin Black

  ISBN 978-1-78002-022-8

  DEAD MAN

  CALLING

  CHAPTER I

  THE GIRL behind the desk was a honey-blonde from California, with eyes that were violet-blue like a Chinese lapis-lazuli plate, and now just about as chilly looking. A more decorative piece for the outer office could scarcely be imagined and I wondered once again where Mikos had found her. It could be, of course, that she belonged to him, something a super commercial traveller took about the world with his portable files.

  Certainly the girl looked very much at home in Mikos’s Tokyo office, as though she ran a good part of it and knew that. I was getting polite enough treatment, but in a manner which suggested my rating around here wasn’t too high.

  I didn’t like that very much. Down in Singapore I have a nice teakpanelled office of my own, with a British secretary who in her own way is an excellent chucker-out, too. It was a long time since I had been in any sense a supplicant and the role did things to my temper. My private opinion of this girl’s boss was that he was a greasy little Greek crook. I wanted very much to say that right then.

  “If Mr. Mikos isn’t likely to be in this afternoon, Miss Haines, when will he be?”

  I knew her name because a little portable slab on her desk had it printed neatly in gold letters. That slab probably went into the special case for the mink which all good secretaries of international racketeers need to carry round in case of a sudden change of climate.

  “I couldn’t say, Mr. Harris.”

  “What kind of a secretary are you, anyway?”

  That made her sit up. Two ice cubes had just dropped into those lapislazuli peepers.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Harris?”

  “Look, Miss Haines, your boss is out here in Tokyo to do a selling job. And I’m a potential buyer. He ought to be able to fit me in.”

  She went on sitting bolt upright.

  “He has seen you. Twice.”

  “Yes. And since then I have flown back to Singapore in order to work up a new offer. I cabled Mr. Mikos that I had a new offer and I was bringing it to him. I also told him the time my plane would get in, and that I’d like an appointment today.”

  “I don’t think he’s interested,” Miss Haines said.

  “You mean that the diesel has been sold to Shompei Shoten?”

  “I can’t make any statements for Mr. Mikos.”

  “That’s modest of you,” I said sweetly.

  She rose. She was a tallish girl, with a splendid figure.

  “The door’s behind you, Mr. Harris.”

  “Come to me for a job when Mikos sacks you. I can always use initiative and ability.”

  “Get out!” Miss Marla Haines said distinctly.

  I walked down the passage towards the lifts very angry indeed and hoping that Miss Haines was in the same state. It isn’t easy for the small operator to accept the fact that he is that, but in a way I knew what was behind Miss Haines’s assessment, which had come to her from the inner office. Compared to the other boys after the licence to manufacture this diesel I was small time, even with three Chinese tin millionaires on the board of our newly formed company. Shompei Shoten could have swallowed up three Chinese millionaires without even a hiccup, for they were Zaibatsu, one of the old Japanese money syndicates thinly disguised for the new age.

  If Shompei Shoten really meant to have the thing they’d get it. On the other hand there is a ceiling price, even for Zaibatsu, and because we wanted that licence so very much indeed I was pretty certain that the money I was now able to plank down exceeded any offer from Shompei. I was pretty sure that if I could get to him, the cheque I could sign would bring a new gleam into Mikos’s moist eyes.

  Mikos was an international middleman, one of the best, if those hyenas have a best. He was a kind of free-lance commission agent whose cut was a sizeable percentage of the deal. I hadn’t met him before Tokyo, but I’d seen plenty of his type in the East in recent years, the roving packmen of our time, thick on the ground just now out where the bamboo curtain is always wobbling in the winds of change. Their expense accounts are prodigious, and they take their time. Mikos had taken all of two months in Tokyo, hiding in an inner office, with a blonde dragon out in front.

  In the lift going down I thought about what I had learned of Mikos’s habits. I’d had six weeks to study him and knew a good deal. He lived in the Myoko Hotel and had lunch early in order to go back to his room and slump on his bed for the Mediterranean siesta, which wasn’t inappropriate in this city where summer had come too soon and the heat was already stifling. I could see him getting back to his room after another session of over-eating, dropping on his bed for the snooze which was a kind of daily prophylactic against the cardiac seizure that would most likely get him in the end. I remembered his porcine, glinting eyes and decided that if anyone had ever loved him they must have given it up long ago. I couldn’t see Miss Haines loving him. Almost certainly her feelings were kept in deep freeze.

  I walked away from the Benten Building, along blistering pavements towards Hibiya, with the pine trees of the Imperial Palace hanging over the walls precisely as the picture postcards show them. There weren’t quite so many as I remembered from my boyhood, however, for a lot were destroyed by American incendiaries and it takes time for a pine replacement to come on.

  Being in Tokyo again didn’t give me any joy, for all that I had spent quite a bit of my youth in the country. My parents had thought Japan the perfect climatic change from Malaya and had brought me on many holidays, even owning a summer-house for a time near the base of Fuji. I had pleasant enough memories of all that, but these had been rather eclipsed by the Greater East Asia War in which my father was killed and I went into a prison camp at the age of eighteen. About all those three and a half years had done was improve my Japanese vocabulary but not my good will towards the people who used the language.

  My Chinese co-directors in this deal had liked the thought of Japan even less than I did, and besides I spoke the language up to a point, so I was elected to deal with Mikos.

  I was pretty sure that hot morning that I could deal with him too. Our price for the licence to manufacture was three hundred and fifty thousand American dollars. It was quite likely that Shompei Shoten could top that figure without thinking about it, but I wasn’t so sure they could do it in that nice negotiable currency the American d
ollar, which everyone wants. Even the Zaibatsu don’t have a great control of American dollars. We had offered sterling first before switching to the dollar, which had been the thing I pressed for though it made the Chinese millionaires sad.

  The great, green-scummed moat about the Palace sent up a faint coolness, and with it inspiration. It was five to one and almost certainly Mikos would either be in his suite now or about to return to it. I knew perfectly well that he had rented an office because he didn’t want to do business in his hotel, but I had declared war on the blonde and now certainly wouldn’t get near the man through her.

  I used the side entrance to the Myoko, where the doorman had gone for his lunch, and revolving doors admitted me into a stuffy stillness with the smell of dusty Pekin carpeting mixed with distant cooking. The lights glowed in the shopping arcade but no one seemed to be down there buying anything. I didn’t meet anyone on the stairs up, either, not a soul until I rounded a corner in a passage leading to Mikos’s suite and there was a hotel maid. She was wearing a moss-green uniform, with a lot of towels over her arm, and as soon as she saw me she switched on the kind of smile which is included in your bill. She did a little duck of politeness, apologising in the nice way Japanese domestics do for being there and allowing some of the mechanics of the establishment to show. When I stopped by Mikos’s door and hesitated for a moment I looked for her but she had gone.

  There was no answer to my first knock, or my second. I turned the handle, found the door unlocked, and went in.

  The Myoko Hotel is expensive but I didn’t like it much. That sitting-room faced on to a side street blocked by tall buildings and the narrow windows admitted a minimum of light. The furniture was low, cushioned in a peacock brocade that in any other setting would have glittered, but here was just sombre.

  Another door led to what must be the bedroom and from beyond this I could just hear the sound of someone moving about. So Mikos was back from eating.

  Then I heard a loud slam from in there which could have been a drawer falling out, after which was total silence which seemed to go on for a long time. It might mean that he was now on his bed, about to snore.

  I was a bit reluctant just to walk into the next room, and stood there thinking about that. Mikos must have been smoking a cigar in here, for the aroma of it hung on. It was the aroma of a hundred deals and countless lunches leading to dyspepsia. He had the look of a dyspeptic, and might have been hunting for his pills during that drawer-slamming session.

  I decided to go in. And then a phone on the table gave a faint tinkle, a little message from the extension in the bedroom. That presented me with a sharp little problem in ethics, business ethics. You don’t listen on people’s extensions without justifying your motives. It took me about two seconds to justify mine and my hand went out for the receiver.

  It was his voice all right, but sounding a bit as though he was already taken by a post-food torpor, slow and the words almost slurred.

  “Listen. I said … listen! Get them. You know. Take them to … Mishimando … at Shompei. Now! Do you hear me? To Mishimando.”

  “Mr. Mikos, you sound funny.” It was the blonde. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m.… Don’t … wait. Hurry! Mishimando. Now. Don’t … wait …”

  It sounded awfully like it could be that cardiac seizure. And then Mikos made a noise like a child’s whoop when you know it’s time to send for the doctor and I saw my humane duty clearly before me. I went into the bedroom.

  This was also expensive and gloomy, with a huge, purple brocade double divan taking up a lot of space. Mikos was lying there, and though I couldn’t see him too well he gave the impression of almost having fallen back on it, sprawled out. I went over to the bed.

  He was wearing white trousers and a white silk Yokohama shirt which was unbuttoned down to his belt, showing a mat of black hair. Out of this mat stuck a Japanese knife, of the kind I’d often seen used by bean curd sellers to chop up their wares in the street. It had a wooden handle and a wicked blade.

  I’m pretty sure Mikos was dead then, but he stared at me. The way he looked I could have been the killer. And that look made me swing my head around, to the room that was shambles, with drawers pulled out and cupboard doors open. There was one door that wasn’t open though, and that was the direct one from the bedroom to the passage. I went over and tried it and it wasn’t locked. The corridor was empty.

  I had a strong urge right then to follow the killer down that corridor. Then a crackling from the telephone receiver made me shut the door again and swing around.

  “Mr. Mikos? What’s the matter? Why don’t you say anything? I’ve been waiting for you to …”

  I didn’t like what I had to do then. I had to tug the cord out from under Mikos’s body. He had been phoning when he died. You might almost say that he was as good as dead before he reached out to claw that phone to him, to send out his last message. He must have lain still, watching the killer search, hugging on to a little bit of life, minutes of it only. He’d used the minutes when the killer went. But no name, I hadn’t heard any name.

  “Mr. Mikos! If you’re there please answer me!”

  I picked up the receiver with fingers wrapped in a handkerchief. The blonde was positively wailing now.

  “What is going on? Mr. Mikos, I’m going to hang up and call the desk. I’m sure you’re ill …”

  “He’s not ill, Miss Haines.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Paul Harris.”

  “What …? How did you get in to Mr. Mikos? He never sees anyone at his hotel. Did he let you in?”

  “No, I just walked in.”

  “But … I was talking to him a minute ago. Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

  “At the moment absolutely nothing. Mr. Mikos can’t talk to you.”

  “But why not? It’s only a minute since …”

  “I know, I know. He just can’t talk to you, that’s all. And I can’t talk about it on the phone. I’m coming right down to your office now.”

  “You’re what? Look, I want to speak to Mr. Mikos. I don’t know what you’re doing there, but I don’t like the sound of it at all. I’m going to hang up and phone the hotel desk. Maybe they can give me some information.”

  I was sweating.

  “Miss Haines,” I said gently. “I don’t think Mr. Mikos likes publicity much, does he?”

  She drew in her breath at that.

  “For very good reasons I’m asking you to say nothing until you see me. It won’t be long. I’ll explain everything then.”

  “You mean I’m just to sit here waiting?”

  “I think Mr. Mikos would want that.”

  “Has he gone out or something?”

  “You could call it that. Anyway, he can’t use the phone. Now please, Miss Haines. Just wait for me. I won’t be long, I promise. And there’s one thing else. It’s important. Lock your office door. Don’t let anyone in but me.”

  “What …?” That was drawn out, incredulous.

  “I know it sounds crazy. But it’s also important. Very.”

  “You’re about the last person I’d take an order like that from.”

  “This isn’t an order, it’s a request. You won’t have long to wait. I’m going to hang up now. I’ll be right with you.”

  I did hang up. The sweat was coming out of my hair. I could feel it on my cheeks. It was a fool thing to do, let the girl know I was in this room. On the other hand she could so easily have rung the desk to find out what was wrong with Mikos, and raised an alarm very quickly. I didn’t want that, and I’d had another thought, too. I was sure the murderer hadn’t found what he wanted here. He might be making for the office, where the girl was. Whoever had used that knife wouldn’t worry about using another one.

  I shivered then. The killer was clean away, I wasn’t. If he had come to murder he would have taken great care about not being seen. But I’d been seen in this passage by a hotel maid. Time of death would tie in wit
h my presence in the suite. There was no evidence of the real killer, and I was pretty sure that maid would identify me as the man she had seen walking towards Mikos’s door just at one o’clock. The Japanese can give remarkably accurate descriptions of Europeans. They think us hopelessly ugly, but find the variations in that ugliness interesting, which makes them almost ideal police witnesses.

  I knew that as a sensible citizen I should now ring down to the desk and ask for the police, and wait here until they arrived. I could then explain that I had called to see a man and found him dead on his bed. That would be fine, if they’d start looking for the real murderer right away, but I had a feeling they might just look at me. It wouldn’t be awfully difficult, either, to work up a motive, the man trying to do a deal, getting desperate as his chances thinned out. If they looked into my past down in Malaya and the adjacent territories they’d find a history not unconnected with violence.

  I felt a sitting duck. But it wasn’t only that fear, there was another one, something personal, something that was like a terror trying to fight it’s way up and take control. I’d been in the hands of these people before, completely at their mercy. They hadn’t shown much. There had been a little episode when I was suspected of being in contact with Eurasians outside our prison camp. They hung me up by the hands and flayed me with split bamboos. It’s not an experience you forget in a hurry and a pounding in my blood urged me to get out, to get clean away from any connection with a murder they could pin on me.

  For the moment that just meant getting out of the hotel and to the girl. I didn’t panic, because I could plan, but the edges of that planning were a shade muzzy with a terror I couldn’t fool myself wasn’t there.

  Mikos was very dead now. His tongue had come out. The feeling I had looking at him held no pity, just an uneasy sense of murder as something outside the corruption we all carry about and which gets us in the end. Murder is a lot more abrupt than heart failure.