by Eric Ambler
When you have signed that paper, he will hand you a cheque for one thousand and fifty dollars U.S.”
“Not going to have any trouble with the customs people, am I?”
“No. The goods are being held in bond. It is merely a formality.” Mr. Tan stood up. “It has been a pleasure to meet and do business with you, Mr. Nilsen.”
Dorothy was ashore with Arlene, doing some last-minute shopping and arranging for flowers to be sent with their note of thanks to Mrs. Tan. She did not get back until half an hour before the ship sailed. By that time, Mr. Tan had left.
“What a pity,” she said when Greg told her. “I think he’s nice. I hope you decided to let him have his castings after all.”
Greg hesitated and then side-stepped the question. “As a matter of fact he wanted to see me about something else, something he wants me to do for him in Singapore.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“I think so.”
Dorothy nodded approvingly. “After all, they did put themselves out for us, didn’t they?”
II
That afternoon, a cable went from Manila to Kuala Pang-kalan.
“Documents signed airmailed you today. Tack Chee.”
That evening, Girija was in the estate office when the telephone rang. As he lifted it off the cradle he heard the operator telling Kuala Pangkalan to go ahead.
“Mr. Krishnan?” said a voice a moment later.
“Yes.”
“I am speaking for Mr. Lee.”
“Yes?” He did not recognise the voice, which was that of Mr. Tan Siow Mong’s eldest son.
“Mr. Lee wishes for delivery three days from now of the goods previously discussed.”
“Very well.”
“Mr. Lee will be at the rest house on Thursday evening at eight o’clock, if you will meet him there.”
“Very well.”
The caller hung up.
Girija sat down again at his desk. His heart was pounding; but whether from excitement at the prospect of having a long-cherished dream realised, or from fear of the things he would now have to do, he did not know. He sat there for a while until he felt himself calmer. Then, he looked at his watch.
It was half-past six. He had three nights in which to move the arms and ammunition to the pick-up point near the road. If everything went according to plan, that was only just sufficient time. His instinct was to lock the office and set out at once for Awang; but he restrained himself. The first thing to remember was that his behaviour must not appear in any way unusual.
At seven o’clock he left the office and went to his house. There were the remains of some food which he had prepared at midday, and he forced himself to eat it. At eight o’clock, he took his bicycle and left the compound.
His first care was to see that he was not followed. The possibility of Mr. Lee’s attempting to discover where the arms were hidden, so that he could remove them without payment, had to be considered. All appeared to be well, however, and he reached the tin workings without encountering anyone he knew on the way.
He had been up to the camp site at night only once before. That had been months ago, when he had been planning the operation; but he still remembered the panic that had seized him when he left the open ground by the tin workings and entered the terrifying blackness of the jungle. The track to the lower end of the dried stream bed was the worst part. It was too near the village for him to risk using a flashlight, except intermittently, and, well as he knew it in daylight, at night there was always the danger of his getting lost. Above all, there was his fear of leopards. It was at night that they raided villages on the edge of the jungle, carried off chickens and goats, and killed men. He knew the fear to be largely irrational; there had been no reports of leopards in the area for some time; but still it haunted every step he took. He plunged on desperately along the track, living for the moment when he would reach the stream bed and be able to keep the flashlight on all the time.
His plan for moving the boxes of arms and ammunition fell into three parts.
On the first night, he would move them from the shelter to the cane thicket at the edge of the stream bed. On the second night, he would move them to the foot of the stream bed where it met the track. On the third night, he would move them to a pick-up dump that he had contrived in one of the derelict mining company buildings.
It had taken a long time to prepare the dump. The building he had selected for it was a windowless Nissen hut that had formerly been used as a store for drums of diesel oil. The corrugated-iron sections were so badly rusted that it was possible to put a fist through them in most places; and there were several big holes near the ground where the rusting process was more advanced and the metal had simply disintegrated. From Girija’s point of view it had three things to recommend it. There was still enough metal there to prevent a casual passer-by seeing inside; it contained some empty oil drums which had been punctured for some reason, and so had not been stolen for use as water-butts by the villagers; and it had a door with a hasp on it to take a padlock.
Once the arms and ammunition were out of the shelter, the risk of their being discovered increased as they were moved nearer the road. While they were in the cane thicket, the risk was small. The second stage at the foot of the stream bed was a greater risk; but, for twenty-four hours, an acceptable one. For the third stage, however, there had to be an effective hiding place. Girija had never read The Purloined Letter, but the technique he employed was similar in principle to that used in Poe’s story: concealment by familiarity.
The first thing he had done was to buy a padlock, grease the interior mechanism carefully and leave it in the underbrush for the exterior to rust. Then, one day he had gone to the oil store and padlocked the door. A gleaming new padlock would have excited too much interest in a passerby. The rusty one, if noticed at all, would only rouse mild curiosity. When he had returned a week later, the padlock had still been there; but there had been signs that someone had crawled through one of the holes near the ground to find out what was behind the locked door. As there had still been nothing inside but the useless oil drums, nothing had been touched. Girija’s next move had been to move the oil drums about inside, so as to cover the bigger holes in the corrugated iron, and draw a series of squares and circles on the dirt floor with a stick, to make it seem as if children had been playing there. The following week he had found that one of the drums had been pushed aside. He had replaced it. He had considered defecating on the floor as an additional discouragement to the curious, but had finally decided that it would require too many visits to make that form of deterrent completely effective. In the event, additional measures had not been needed. That had been the last time the drums had been touched. The former oil store with the padlocked door had become accepted as a place where children sometimes played, containing nothing worth stealing and nothing of interest. It would look no different during the twenty-four hours it held the arms and ammunition.
By the time he reached the camp site, it was after nine-thirty; but he rested a few minutes before starting work. He had calculated that it would take him less than two hours to move all the boxes to the cane thicket, and was determined to reserve his strength as much as possible. The hardest part of the job would come on the third night, and he must be prepared for that.
The problem of handling the boxes, he had solved almost by accident. At intervals, Mr. Wright received catalogues from a mail order house in Singapore, and in one of them Girija had seen a device that had interested him. It was a gadget for those with heavy suitcases who did not wish to hire porters, and consisted of a strap attached to a bracket with two small trolley wheels mounted on it. The strap was fastened lengthwise round the suitcase, with the wheels at one corner. There was a handle on the strap. The owner of the suitcases simply grasped this handle and walked along, trailing the case behind him, with half the weight of it carried on the trolley wheels. The price was six dollars.
Girija had sent for one and expe
rimented. The thing worked on firm ground; but up at the camp site, and with a heavy box of rifles, the small wheels sank into the spongy surface of the hillside and were useless. Larger wheels with broader tyres were needed. He had found them eventually on the estate. Before the Wright children had been sent away to school in England, one of them had had a scooter. It had been left in Mr. Wright’s garage, and Girija had had no difficulty in removing the wheels. Mounted on an axle made out of a spare jack handle, they worked quite well.
The transfer to the cane thicket was completed by midnight, and Girija began the journey back. In spite of his resolve to conserve his energies, he was very tired, and realised that he could no longer rely upon his wits to see him through. Now, it would be a question of stamina.
There was a compensation. As his weariness increased, his fears seemed to diminish. By the time he had completed the next night’s work, he had forgotten about leopards, and feared the dark track from the stream bed to the tin workings only because it threatened his powers of endurance.
The nine boxes containing the rifles were the most awkward to handle, and only one could be moved at a time. It required twenty stumbling journeys each way to shift all the boxes and ammunition containers, and the final move from the stream bed to the oil store took five and a half hours. When he had secured the padlock he sank down on to the ground in a state of collapse. It was another hour before he could summon the strength to get on his bicycle and ride back to the estate; and only the fear of being seen returning to the estate compound at daybreak before he had time to wash and put on clean clothes, drove him to make that final effort.
He was in the office that morning on time as usual; but he knew that unless he could get some rest during the day, he would be unable or unfit to keep his appointment with Mr. Lee in the evening. If he pleaded sickness, Mrs. Wright, a keen amateur physician, would dose him with pills and order him to bed; and she would see that he stayed there, too. In the end, on the pretext of looking into some minor pay dispute among the tappers, he left the compound, walked to a part of the estate which he knew was not being worked, and went to sleep under the trees. He awoke at sun-down and hurried back to the office. His body ached almost intolerably; but he was no longer stupid with fatigue. When Mr. Wright looked in at the office on his way to the bungalow, he was able to report, with his usual air of efficiency, that the pay dispute had been satisfactorily settled. Girija’s business arrangements with Mr. Lee were somewhat complex.
When they met at the rest house, Mr. Lee would give him a draft on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank for twenty-five thousand Straits dollars, post-dated thirty days and guaranteed by Mr. Tan. He would also give him a receipt for the arms and ammunition. Girija would, in return, give Mr. Lee a promissory note for twenty-five thousand dollars, acknowledging the sum as a loan repayable within thirty days. Then, Girija would return alone to the estate compound, put the cheque in an envelope, marked “To be opened in the event of my death”, and leave it in a safe place of his own choosing.
An hour later, he would meet Mr. Lee at a rendezvous on the Awang road. Mr. Lee would have a truck. Guided by Girija, they would then drive to the dump, where Mr. Lee would be allowed to inspect what he was buying.
This would be a critical moment for both of them ; but both would feel reasonably secure. If there were no arms, and Girija had brought Mr. Lee there merely in order to kill him and keep the cheque, Mr. Tan would know and be in a position to inform on Girija. If, on the other hand, Mr. Lee contemplated killing Girija and making off with the arms, there would be the tell-tale cheque to accuse Mr. Lee. The promissory note and the receipt were safeguards of a more genteel nature. The promissory note was Mr. Lee’s insurance against Girija’s making off with the cheque and failing to deliver the goods. The receipt for the arms was Girija’s insurance against Mr. Lee’s declining to return the promissory note when the arms had been delivered. These two documents would be formally exchanged at the conclusion of the transaction.
Girija reviewed the procedure once more as he cycled out to the rest house. He knew that Mr. Lee could trust him; he was quite certain that he could not trust Mr. Lee.
His tired mind began to imagine new ways in which he could be betrayed. Supposing Mr. Lee had henchmen hiding in the truck? What was there to prevent them pouncing on him, retrieving the receipt for the arms, and then seizing the whole consignment ? Mr. Lee could still use the promissory note, and Girija would be in no position to complain of what had happened to the police. Or supposing Mr. Lee had a confederate in the estate compound who would watch where he put the cheque, and then steal it while he was away delivering the arms. There were countless opportunities for treachery remaining in the situation. Only one possibility did he refuse to consider; that the cheque guaranteed by Mr. Tan might not in the end be honoured.
Mr. Lee was already at the rest house when he arrived. His attitude was wary but businesslike. He merely grunted a greeting, and then handed Girija the promissory note to sign. He then produced the cheque and the receipt. When the documents had changed hands, he nodded.
“That is satisfactory. Now, where do we meet?” “At the twenty-one mile post near Awang.” “Where is that?”
Girija told him how to get there, and then stood up to go. His whole body was aching, and a spasm of pain shot up his spine as he moved.
Mr. Lee was eyeing him thoughtfully. “Are you sick?” he asked.
“No, I am tired.” “Will your friend be there?” “No, but I will help you load the boxes.” “Then I will meet you in one hour’s time.” The whole transaction had taken no more than five minutes. Girija cycled back to the estate compound and went to his house. When he had written the inscription on the envelope, he put the cheque inside and locked them in his tin trunk. If he did not return, Mr. Wright would probably take charge of the trunk and ultimately hand it over to the authorities. It was not an ideal arrangement, but it was the best Girija could think of. As long as Mr. Lee did not know how he had disposed of the cheque, that was all that mattered.
He had ten minutes to wait before setting out for the rendezvous. He considered opening up the tin trunk again and passing the time with his bus catalogues, but made no move to do so. Through his weariness, he knew that the time for dreams was over. The next time he looked at the catalogues, if there were to be a next time, he would be seeing them through different eyes. There was half a tin of butterscotch on the table by his charpoy. He sat and ate that until it was time to go.
The truck was already at the rendezvous when he arrived. About a hundred yards short of it, he dismounted, switched off his bicycle lamp, and walked along the edge of the road. As he approached, he saw that the canvases above the tailboard of the truck were drawn and tied. He did not like this, and made up his mind to see that the truck was empty before they moved off.
Mr. Lee looked out of the driver’s cab window as Girija came up.
“You are late,” he said.
“I am two minutes early,” Girija replied evenly. “Would you open the back of the truck please?”
“Why?”
“I wish to put my bicycle inside.”
“Why can’t you leave it among the trees there? No one will steal it. We have to come back this way.”
“I prefer to have it with me.”
Mr. Lee got down impatiently and went to the rear of the truck. Girija joined him. In silence they unfastened the tailboard. Girija knew the truck. It belonged to a copra dealer in Kuala Pangkalan. The Anglo-Malay Transport Company hired it sometimes when their own trucks were busy. Mr. Lee must have learned of it from Mr. Tan.
The back of the truck was empty. Girija put his bicycle inside and they set off. Mr. Lee was a fast and bad driver. Luckily, they met little traffic on the way. After ten minutes they reached the road leading to the tin workings.
“You turn off here,” said Girija; “and I must ask you to put your lights out.”
“On this cart track? We shall run into a tree.”
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sp; “If you drive slowly, you will be all right. If you keep your lights on, we may be seen from the kampong and someone will come to see what is happening.”
Mr. Lee grumbled but submitted. The truck ground along the road as far as the derelict pump shed.
“We stop here,” said Girija.
They got down from the cab and Mr. Lee looked round.
“What is this place?”
Girija told him. “We go this way,” he added.
“One moment. Are the cases open?”
“Of course not.”
Mr. Lee took a case-opener and a hammer from the cab of the truck. In his hands they looked like weapons. Girija’s scalp crawled as he led the way to the oil store. However, Mr. Lee’s main concern at that moment seemed to be to avoid tripping on the uneven ground beneath the scrub. He muttered a complaint about the darkness.
Girija took no notice. Not until they were inside the oil store with the door firmly shut did he switch on his flashlight.
Mr. Lee looked at the stacked boxes. “Is this all of it?”
“Everything on the list is there.”
Mr. Lee produced the list from his pocket. “Which are the rifles?”
“Those long boxes there.”
Mr. Lee began opening them. He opened every one.
When Girija suggested that this was a waste of time, Mr. Lee straightened up.
“Cases full of stones have been sold before now,” he said. “I am buying only what I see. If you want to save time, you can refasten the cases after I have examined them.”
When he had finished with the rifles, he went on in the same methodical way with the rest—the machine pistols, the bazookas, the grenades, the landmines. Only when he approached the ammunition did Girija protest again.
“If you open those, Mr. Lee, you will not be able to re-seal them. You will reduce their market value.”
Mr. Lee looked at the ammunition boxes. They were air-tight metal containers with soft inner lids which had to be cut or torn open with a tool. He nodded reluctantly.
