Passage of Arms

by Eric Ambler

  Greg smiled doubtfully. “Well, it’s not exactly the biggest belly laugh of the year.” He shrugged. “In fact it’s sort of petty, isn’t it?”

  “I can assure you that Mr. Tan won’t think so.”

  “You mean he’ll lose face, or whatever they call it?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Well, I’ll think about it. There’s no chance of Tan Yam Heng being restrained by any feelings of family loyalty, I suppose?”

  The Colonel grinned. “Don’t worry. I know a little about that chap. No chance at all.”

  When he had gone, Greg remained there for a few minutes, finishing his drink and thinking about what the Colonel had said.

  He had, he reflected, been called, directly or by implication, a prig, a simpleton, a hypocrite, a pompous ass, a self-satisfied ingrate, and a man who could mistake his self-esteem for his conscience. Together with the adjectives he himself had applied it all made quite a picture. Dorothy would have been highly indignant. The odd thing was that he did not feel at all indignant himself. For the first time in several days, in fact, he felt like laughing; not at anything in particular, certainly not at the Colonel’s feeble vision of poetic justice, but because he had suddenly seen his own face.

  He signed a chit for the sandwiches and drinks, and went back up to the suite. Dorothy had not stirred. He undressed, brushed his teeth and got back into bed beside her.

  III

  The following morning he met Captain Lukey and Tan Yam Heng at the Orchard Road branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.

  The Captain was boisterously cheerful and countersigned the cheque with a flourish. The “spot of bother in Labuanga”, as he had called it over the telephone, had now, it seemed, been forgotten.

  Greg watched Tan as the money was being paid out. His face did not move, but his eyes followed every bundle of notes as it was pushed across the counter, and the fingers of his right hand twitched in sympathy with the Captain’s as he checked the bundles. It was more than likely, Greg decided, that the Colonel had been right. Once Tan Yam Heng had his hands on the money, brotherly love would not deter him from making a triple or even quadruple commission if he had a mind to.

  From the bank they went to the Customs House. There, Greg signed the necessary papers transferring the ownership of arms and ammunition to Captain Lukey, and received the bulky canvas bag containing the money.

  Captain Lukey beamed. “Signed, sealed and delivered,” he said fatuously. “What about a drink to celebrate?”

  They went into the lounge bar of a near-by hotel. When the drinks had been ordered, Captain Lukey left them to go to the toilet. Greg looked at Tan.

  “I think this is where you give me another cheque for a thousand and fifty dollars,” he said.

  “Ah no.” Tan pointed to the bag on the table in front of Greg. “That must be paid into the Merchants’ Security Bank first.”

  “Where is the bank?”

  “In Coleman Road. We will take a taxi there.”

  Greg frowned. “I’ve got a lot to do today. Look, you’re acting for your brother. Why don’t I give you the money, and you pay it in? Then we can square everything away right now.”

  He had been prepared for some visible indication that the suggestion met with Tan’s approval, but had not expected the reaction to be so manifest. It was remarkable. Not a muscle of the man’s face moved; but suddenly it was glistening with sweat.

  His lips moved slowly. “If that is what you wish, Mr. Nilsen, yes, I will go to the bank.”

  “Fine. Just a moment.” Greg got up and, going over to one of the writing tables, wrote out on hotel stationery two copies of a receipt for sixty-two thousand five hundred Straits dollars cash received from Gregory H. Nilsen as payment in full for the goods listed on bill of lading number so-and-so, and the date. Then he addressed an envelope to Tan Tack Chee in Manila, marked it ‘airmail’, and went back to the table.

  Captain Lukey had stopped to talk to someone on his way back from the toilet, and they were able to complete the transaction before he returned. Tan filled in the bill of lading number on the receipts, signed both copies and handed Greg a cheque for a thousand and fifty dollars. Greg put the cheque and one copy of the receipt into his pocket. Across the other copy he wrote ‘Compliments of Gregory H. Nilsen’, then put it in the envelope and sealed it.

  Tan was sitting tensely, watching. Greg pushed the canvas bag over to him and smiled. “I guess you don’t want to count that again.”

  “No.” Tan took the bag and rested it on his knees.

  Greg held up the envelope. “You don’t happen to have an airmail stamp for Manila, do you?”

  “I will get one from the barman.”

  “Don’t trouble. I’ll get one later.”

  “No trouble, Mr. Nilsen.”

  Tan put the bag under his arm and went to the bar. Captain Lukey came back to the table and began talking about the ‘dear old chum’ he had just run into. “White man through and through, which is more than you can say for some of the murky types who work for Afro-Asian nowadays.”

  Tan came back with a stamp and put it on the table at Greg’s elbow. He did not sit down.

  “If you will be good enough to excuse me now,” he said with strained civility, “I think I will go to the bank.”

  “Won’t you have a drink first?”

  “No, I will go to the bank.” He was still sweating, and obviously yearning to be gone.

  “Okay. I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Nilsen, Captain.”

  He hurried away. Captain Lukey chuckled. “You must have a trusting nature, old boy. If it was mine, I wouldn’t let him hold that money even while I tied a shoe lace.”

  Greg smiled. He was putting the stamp on the envelope. “I don’t think I need worry,” he said.

  As they were leaving, Greg went over to the hotel mail box. He was about to drop the envelope in it, when Captain Lukey stopped him.

  “By the way, old boy. Couldn’t help noticing, but if you want that to go airmail to Manila you’ll have to put some more stamps on. That’s the surface rate. It may take a week or more to get there.”

  Greg shrugged and put the envelope into the box. “It’s not particularly urgent,” he said.

  IV

  On his way back to the hotel, Greg called in at the Chase National, who were his own bankers’ agents, paid in Mr. Tan’s two American dollar cheques, and asked for special clearance on them.

  At the hotel, he wrote out a cheque for two thousand one hundred dollars payable to the Wilmington Chapter of the American Red Cross. Dorothy, who knew a woman on the Volunteer Service Co-ordination Committee, wrote a covering letter. They mailed it on their way to see the man at Thomas Cook’s.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TAN TACK CHEE and Tan Siow Mong were bland men with level heads and strong nerves ; but the arrival of Yam Heng’s receipt in Manila threw them into a state of flustered consternation that Greg would have found gratifying, if puzzling.

  Tack Chee took one long, appalled look at the receipt and then put through an overseas call to the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. He was told that Mr. and Mrs. Nilsen had sailed two days previously on the S.S. Gamboge for Colombo and Bombay. Next, he tried to call Yam Heng at the union office where he worked. A clerk there told him that Yam Heng had not been to his office for several days. He was presumed to be indisposed. Yam Heng had no telephone at his home, and Tack Chee knew that it would be useless to cable. Despairingly, he put through a call to the Merchants’ Security Bank. The manager was helpful and efficient. No payment of any kind had been made into his account for the past month. Tack Chee hung up, turned his air-conditioner on to ‘Full’, and told his secretary to place a person-to-person call to his brother in Kuala Pangkalan.

  Siow Mong had not been unduly concerned at the delay in collecting the twenty-five thousand dollars due to him in respect of Girija’s cheque. He had received a satisfactory progress report from Singapore, saying that
the sale was about to be completed. As there was still a clear week to go before the Indian could present the cheque for payment, he did not expect to have to draw upon his own resources in order to honour it. Only one thing was troubling him a little. So far, the clerk had shown himself to be shrewd, careful and discreet. The question was— would he go on being shrewd, careful and discreet with twenty-five thousand dollars in the bank? Money could affect people strangely; and for a young man in his position this would be a fortune. What did he propose to do with it? Something foolish, like buying an expensive sports car and driving about ostentatiously advertising his sudden wealth? And, if so, how was he proposing to explain where he had got it? Tan Siow Mong had decided to have a talk with him before the thirty days were up, to caution him if that seemed necessary, and to make sure that any explanations the young man contemplated using did not compromise either the Anglo-Malay Transport Company or its proprietor.

  The telephone call from Manila came through late on Thursday afternoon.

  As soon as he heard his brother’s voice, Siow Mong knew that something was wrong; but Tack Chee was an ingenious breaker of bad news, and it was two minutes before Siow Mong fully realised what had happened. Then he lost his temper, and for a further minute there was a loud and demeaning exchange of generalities in which words relating to the excretory organs and functions of the body were freely used. Finally, however, Siow Mong began to recover his self-possession and to think again.

  “It is the American who is responsible,” he declared. “If the money is gone, he must pay.”

  “Impossible,” Tack Chee replied. “Yam Heng signed the receipt as my authorised agent. We can only hope that he has not yet lost it all. You must go to Singapore immediately.”

  “Both of us must go.”

  “My expenses in this business have already been heavy enough. Twenty-one hundred dollars American plus entertainment, and now overseas telephone calls.”

  “Those are trifles, brother.” Siow Mong was becoming angry again. “When I stand to lose twenty-five thousand dollars Malay, plus five hundred dollars Hong Kong, plus shipping and other handling charges, I am surprised that you commit the indelicacy of speaking about them.”

  “There is nothing indelicate about two thousand dollars American. The whole transaction was your idea.”

  “You had no criticisms of it. If you had properly instructed this Nilsen …” He broke off. “There is no sense in our bickering. It is a waste of time. Obviously, we shall get nothing unless Yam Heng can be persuaded to co-operate. You know what that means. This time it may be necessary to bring in the police, and threaten charges of embezzlement. You are the legal principal in this, and the receipt will be required as evidence. You must be there.”

  “The police? He would know we were bluffing.”

  “I am not bluffing,” Siow Mong said. “This time he has gone too far. Charges of misappropriation of funds brought against him by that union would have been damaging to our names. We should have lost face. Charges brought against him by us would give rise to no such indignity, except for Yam Heng.”

  “They might cause pain to our mother.”

  “She has endured worse,” Siow Mong said unfeelingly. “If I leave immediately for Kota Bharu, I can get a plane to Singapore tonight. I will meet you at the Cathay Hotel tomorrow morning.”

  Yam Heng had had a bitterly frustrating week on the pickle market, and was querulous when the brothers eventually confronted him. He had, he explained indignantly, merely borrowed the money for a few days. Was not part of it due to him anyway, for all his work on their behalf ? Why was he hounded in this way? Yes, he had incurred certain losses; but these would at any mom-ment be more than offset by substantial gains. In three days’ time, he would be able to give them a hundred thousand dollars if they needed money so badly.

  Mention of the police, however, changed the character of the debate. There was abuse, and much harsh, contemptuous laughter and snapping of fingers. It was only when he realised that his brothers were not simply ready to press charges against him, but beginning to feel vindictive enough to relish the prospect of doing so, that Yam Heng agreed sulkily to an accounting.

  Of the sixty-two thousand five hundred dollars there remained seventeen thousand, three hundred; and threats of violence as well as police prosecution were necessary to persuade Yam Heng to part with that. His brothers left him, glutinous with self-pity, and returned to the Cathay Hotel.

  Minor expenses disregarded, they were fourteen thousand Straits dollars out of pocket on the deal. They were also tired. They had little difficulty in agreeing how they should divide the salvaged remains. Tack Chee took the equivalent of eight hundred American dollars to set off against his outlay of twenty-one hundred. Siow Mong, as the heavier loser, took the balance of fifteen thousand Straits dollars.

  He arrived back in Kuala Pangkalan late on Friday night. When he went to his office the following morning he found a message. Mr. Krishnan had telephoned and would like to see Mr. Tan. In the hope that Mr. Tan would find it convenient to do so, he would call in on Saturday afternoon at four p.m.

  II

  Mr. Tan, sitting gloomily at his desk, watched the Indian cross the yard from number one godown, and thought that he detected a certain impudent jauntiness in the fellow’s walk.

  In spite of its obvious absurdity, he could not quite rid himself of the fear that the Indian had somehow learned of the Singapore disaster, and had come there merely to gloat over and humiliate him. If that should indeed be the case, he told himself darkly, the fellow would regret his temerity.

  As matters now stood, he, Siow Mong, was prepared to be generous. The Indian would be solemnly warned of the dangers of so much sudden wealth, and of the impossibility of his being able to account satisfactorily to the police for its aquisition. It would then be relatively simple to persuade him to return the cheque. In exchange, he would be given a deed of annuity guaranteeing him a yearly income of two thousand five hundred dollars for ten years. Mr. Tan was reasonably sure that he could buy such an annuity for around fifteen thousand dollars.

  Should the fellow be in any way disagreeable, however, Mr. Tan had an alternative scheme ready. He would stop payment of the cheque and invite the young blackguard to sue him in open court. There, if his challenge were accepted, he would tell the judge that the Indian had undertaken to buy for him, through a relative, a certain valuable tract of tin-bearing land, and that the post-dated cheque had been written, at the Indian’s request, to impress the relative and to use as a deposit if the purchase went through. When he had discovered that the Indian’s land-owning relative was non-existent, he had stopped the cheque. Perfectly simple. If the Indian chose to tell the truth, he would either be disbelieved and lose his case, or believed and prosecuted for selling arms. Mr. Tan did not think that he would be fool enough to risk either of those alternatives.

  When he was announced, Mr. Tan assumed the mask of courtesy and ordered tea.

  Girija flashed a smile as they shook hands. “I am sure that if Mr. Wright had been aware that I was to have the pleasure of seeing you, Mr. Tan, he would have wished me to convey his personal regards.” He had a box file under his arm. He placed it on the floor beside him as he sat down.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Wright are well and happy, I hope.”

  “Oh yes, thank you. I trust that your own fine family are equally blessed.”

  The tea came and was consumed to further light conversation. Then Girija picked up the box file and rested it on his knees. Mr. Tan accepted this as an intimation that business might begin.

  “I was hoping to have the pleasure of seeing you again in the near future, Mr. Krishnan,” he said. “In fact, when I returned from Singapore yesterday, it was already in my mind to telephone you.”

  “Perhaps there was the same thought in both our minds, Mr. Tan.”

  Mr. Tan stiffened involuntarily.

  “I refer,” Girija continued, “to the thought, sad for me, that, under prese
nt arrangements, our very satisfactory association will shortly end.”

  Mr. Tan relaxed. He had noted the words ‘under present arrangements’ and decided to wait for the Indian to explain them.

  “I am assuming,” Girija added politely, “that the association also proved satisfactory from your point of view.”

  “Oh yes. Very satisfactory,” Mr. Tan replied manfully.

  “And Mr. Lee’s?”

  “Sufficiently so, I believe.”

  “I am glad of that,” said Girija, “because it gives me the courage to submit a further problem to you, in the hope of receiving further good advice.”

  Mr. Tan was silent.

  Girija flashed another smile. “I am so sorry to have to tell you that the friend I spoke of to you before has since died.”

  Mr. Tan permitted himself a faint twitch of the lips. “You have my sympathy.”

  “Thank you. However, as you know, my friend had money. That now passes to me. Unfortunately, he left no will. My difficulty at the moment is to find a substitute for that will.”

  Mr. Tan hid his satisfaction perfectly.

  “I can appreciate the difficulty,” he said. “In fact, if you will allow me to say so, I had anticipated it. I even had a possible solution to suggest to you if you were interested.”

  “I am indeed most interested.”

  Mr. Tan proceeded, somewhat elliptically, to explain his annuity proposal. As he began to enlarge upon its virtues, however, he was disconcerted to see, for the first time, a smile of pure amusement spread over the Indian’s face. He felt himself getting angry, and stopped in the middle of a sentence.

  The smile vanished instantly and Girija leaned forward.

  “Mr. Tan, I beg your pardon. Perhaps I should have explained first. For the project that I have in mind, twenty-five thousand dollars will be the minimum capital required if we are to operate at a profit.”