The Fourth Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  But Garrison swore in a whisper by my ear, with a note in his whispering which was not like him. He glared down at the card table and the game that went on.

  It was being played on a folding table on the bow deck, by the light of a gasoline lantern slung from a boom. The lantern had an incandescent mantle, and yielded a theatrical, dead-white, pitiless glare which showed the players in exaggerated light and color and shade. There was the General, jovial and at ease, cracking jokes as he dealt and made his bets. There was the abogado—the attorney—representing the poor devil in irons down below, who was traveling to the capital to be tried and doubtless to be condemned. There were other players. A mahogany dealer. A speculator in coconuts. A man who owned ten thousand acres in bananas.

  “I’m supposed to be a businessman,” said Garrison bitterly, “and I have to be a fool because he’s honest!”

  “What’s that?” I asked, startled.

  “Nothing,” said Garrison more bitterly still, “except that I’m crazy and complaining about it. Any objections? The General’s responsible for my having this boat and the business I’ve got. But because of his wife and that damned son of his, I’ve got to risk losing it! That’s enough to swear about!”

  He went away into the darkness aft. I’d met the General’s wife. She wasn’t young, but she had the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. And she’d looked at me so eagerly when she heard I’d soon be going back to the Estados Unidos she’d made me a little uncomfortable.

  The boat went on up the river. I hadn’t known the General had anything to do with Garrison’s business. In fact, Garrison had told me, in some satisfaction, that he didn’t pay graft to anybody. Which was remarkable for a Yanqui in the tropics.

  The card game below me went on. The General lost a bet, and grinned at the man who’d won it. He was marvelously at ease, and that was queer, in a way. Nobody else cracked a smile. The abogado looked gloomy, as if he knew his journey would be futile for his client.

  Garrison came back scowling.

  “What’s the General got to do with your boat?” I asked. “And what’s this about his son?”

  “His son was a deplorable incident,” said Garrison briefly. “He’s why I’m making a fool of myself for his mother. The General’s an honest man. When this business began to make money, various eminent politicos sent their worthless relatives to me with polite notes saying they hoped I’d be able to make use of their talents. Meaning, hire them or be run out of business by official interference. I think the General heard about it. Anyhow, he gave an interview to El Diario, up in the capital pointing out how valuable my boat and its development of interprovincial commerce was to the country, and how all patriots should honor me. I had no more trouble.”

  He glowered at the brightly lighted bow deck. Suddenly he said angrily:

  “How law abiding are you?”

  “That depends,” I said cautiously.

  “You could be heaved out of the country,” said Garrison, “and you might spend a week or so in jail while they were deciding to do it. But would you break a few laws for the good of your soul and no other reward whatever?”

  “If it were very good for my soul,” I said, “but not otherwise.”

  He growled and went into the pilothouse. He came out again and said:

  “Then watch that game like a good fellow. That’s all. If it starts to break up, fall over the rail or something.”

  He vanished astern again without further explanation. I smoked and watched the card game. I’d never heard of the General’s son at all. And all I knew of the General was the mildly humorous tale of how he got started.

  TWENTY years before, he’d been a junior lieutenant in a regiment of barefoot soldiers, and his company commander went off on extended leave. He was left in charge. And for three months his soldiers collected all their pay and all their rations for the first time in their experience. They thought they were in heaven. But the General—then a mere lieutenant—was in a very bad fix when his superior officer came back. For his breach of ancient tradition, he was sent off to fight fever and bandits in the mountains. But it happened that his men liked him. So they not only took pot shots at bandits to oblige him, they actually reported it when the bandits tried to make the usual deals for advance military information. In consequence, the young lieutenant came marching back to the capital with practically the whole bandit population of the mountains as prisoners, and there was nothing to do but promote him. It was his start up the ladder of military rank.

  Garrison came back yet again, cursing to himself. I stopped him. “What is all this, Garrison?” I asked. “What’s up’?”

  “At the moment,” he told me furiously, “nothing! I’m incompetent! I haven’t mastered the art of picking locks. Damn women!”

  There were just two women on the boat; the General’s wife and the wife of the poor devil in handcuffs down below. She was going along with him to his trial, and she was white-faced.

  “Picking locks?” I said helpfully. “I used to know an escape artist. He showed me some interesting tricks.”

  “Come on, then!” said Garrison.

  I followed. Back about thirty feet. Down a ladder. It seemed remarkably dark back here. Down three steps into a cabin. The two women were there, standing beside the prisoner, a lean young Latin without a tie. He was handcuffed, and the chain passed around a sort of iron stanchion strengthening the cabin roof. The General’s wife and the wife of the prisoner were plainly united in a bond of completest understanding. They turned quickly as I entered.

  GARRISON had he said introduced me before Now he said formally that Iclaimed the art of picking locks, and the General’s wife smiled warmly.

  “Bueno! Bueno!” she said gaily, turning to the younger woman. “This is fortune!” To me she explained pleasantly: “It is necessary to release this young man, Senor. My husband, the General, discovered that he had stolen much from the government. He arrested him. But he did not profit from his thefts. He obeyed the orders of another, who has already fled the country. Therefore this young man will take the penalty for the much greater thief, and that is not just.”

  The younger woman looked at me with frightened, hopeful eyes.

  “But Garrison—” I protested.

  “The Señora,” said Garrison coldly, “insists that this young man be released. For the good of my soul I agree. If you have a gift for felonies, don’t ask questions, but get those cuffs oft him!”

  I could not pretend confidence, because I didn’t have it.

  “I’d have to have a dollar watch and a pair of scissors,” I said uncomfortably, “just to try it. And I ought to have a pair of handcuffs to practice on.”

  The Señora, laughed. I’d spoken in English. She translated. The prisoner’s wife caught my hand suddenly and kissed it. I felt ashamed.

  “Come up in the pilothouse,” said Garrison. “There’s an old pair of cuffs there, for morale. The key won’t open this set, though. And I’ve a watch I’d been intending to get fixed.”

  We went out and up again. The stars were lurid, even with the moon—white-hot and huge—now well above the horizon. I had that daunting sensation of absurdity which comes in situations out of all reason. Garrison sent the river pilot down for coffee. Then he angrily gave me a battered watch, a pair of rusty handcuffs, and turned up a pair of disreputable scissors.

  I smashed the watch on the jamb of a cupboard door and pulled it apart. It was rather like dissecting a crab, but harder. I stuck my fingers with small gears. Presently I had the spring. I snipped out a section of it and said:

  “I’ve never actually done this before. Why the devil can’t the Señora work on her husband? A little connivance—”

  The windows of the pilothouse were open and we could hear the sounds of the card game. The General threw back his head and laughed. Alone. The others merely murmured. Garrison scowled.

  “He’s a monster of integrity,” he said bitterly. “That’s why I have to make a fool of myse
lf. For the sake of his wife. I’m sorry for her: She’s had the devil of a life, between her son and the General’s honesty!”

  I messed with the spring and the rusty handcuffs. When cuffs are snapped on, the swinging piece that locks on a man’s wrist has teeth that catch in a ratchet to keep it locked. The escape-artist trick is to slide a bit of bent watch spring under that ratchet, push the swinging piece one notch further so the ratchet climbs up, and then simply slide the handcuff off. It works nicely.

  “He’s not human!” said Garrison between his teeth. “Once there was a revolt down south. They sent him—he was a major, then—to hold the rebels in check while they gathered an army to put down the whole thing. He’d a couple of hundred men. But when the army started south they met the major on his way back, with the head of the revolt in tow. He’d given the man safe-conduct and was heading for the capital for a conference. How’s that thing coming?”

  “I almost have it,” I said, encouraged.

  “The general in command of the army, of course, pointed out that the General—then a major—had no authority to grant a safe-conduct. So he took the poor devil of a rebel leader and stood him against a wall and shot him. And the General—down yonder, I mean”—and Garrison nodded toward the card game—”blew up. He rode hell-for-leather to the capital and resigned his commission, and rode hell-for-leather back to the army, and as a civilian and a free agent very politely slapped his former superior officer’s face. It was very public and very deliberate and the other man simply could not back down. So there was a very formal duel, with all the trimmings, and he killed his man very competently, and then he rode on back to the rebels and told them what had happened.”

  THERE was a promising click in the handcuff I worked on. “I’m coming along!” I said. “I think I’ll manage it! What did the rebels say?”

  “They made him the head of the revolution,” said Garrison dryly. “The fine drama of his performance was inspiring. So then the government sent down a flag of truce, and he proved the rebels had some right on their side, and a provincial governor was fired and some of his subordinates jailed, and the rebel army went home. And the General was a hero to the populace. The army took him back to its bosom as a brigadier general, praying that his example of integrity wouldn’t be too widely imitated.”

  Quite incredibly, I got the click I was listening for. The locked handcuff came open. I locked it again and tried afresh.

  “But why—” Then I realized how completely insane all this was. “Look, Garrison,” I said. “Why the devil do we have to turn a prisoner loose? I’ve nothing against him, but if he did steal—”

  “The Señora wants it,” said Garrison bitterly. “She is the one woman in the world for whom I will not only make a fool but an ass of myself. I am risking my boat and my business for a minor thief I never saw before and devoutly hope never to see again. Simply because I know her husband and knew her son: If you tell me I’m crazy I’ll agree with you, but dammit— Are you set?”

  I nodded. The river pilot was coming back. The picture of the card game was as starkly theatrical as before. That incredible white glare like a spotlight made the scene preposterous. There were some huge, eight-inch moths fluttering about the lantern now, and when they were out of the light they looked like bats, and when in it like stuffed plush theatrical properties. When the light struck just right, too, their eyes glowed like garnets. The General pushed a stack of coins to the middle of the table. Two men dropped their hands. A third started to match it, changed his mind, and tossed in his cards. The General raked in his winnings. Then, grinning, he laid down his hand face up. He’d bluffed. He roared with laughter.

  “Damn him!” growled Garrison in my ear. “Come on after me in a minute.”

  He went out. I stood there, suddenly irresolute. The insanity of this proceeding became an overwhelming conviction. The air which flowed past me was humid and hot from the day now past. You could almost smell the sunshine that had heated it. And that was normal and proper, like the habit of minding one’s business in the tropics as elsewhere. But then the boat swam through a chill, wet tendril of jungle air and then the sweat on my skin felt icy.

  The pilot came in and I went after Garrison to explain how completely irrational it was for us two foreigners to interfere in the administration of justice in this nation. Especially since the man in question was admittedly a thief.

  But the General’s wife smiled at me in the shadowy cabin, and the prisoner’s wife greeted me with a gasp of relief.

  “I’ve told them you can open the handcuffs,” said Garrison. “Do your stuff.”

  I said indignantly, “Listen! What are you going to do after he’s free? We’re out in the middle of the stream. What’ll you do? Let them swim ashore?”

  There was consternation. The women had not thought. Garrison made profane sounds under his breath. He is a very decent man, Garrison. He must have been very deeply moved, to set about obeying a woman in this lunacy without thinking past his reluctance.

  I bent over and tried my silly scrap of spring. The prisoner breathed on my neck as I worked. He was stiff, rigid, torn between intense hopefulness and absolute despair. There was a little scratching noise. One hand was free. I worked again. He had no handcuffs on. He moved his hands as if they were numb.

  “All right,” I said in unreasonable irritation. “He’s loose. And what are you going to do about it?”

  Garrison muttered, and said without hope, “That’s right. He can’t swim ashore. Not with his wife. If they did, the jungle—”

  The General’s wife smiled confidently at me. “But this Señor will think of something. His wife is going to have a baby, Señor. He cannot be put in prison. You cannot put a man in prison when his wife is going to have a baby!”

  It was sheer lunacy. There were probably twenty people on the boat, any of whom might stop watching the card game and come back and catch us at this business. And we had absolutely no excuse for what we were doing.

  “Listen!” I said exasperatedly. “You’d need to get a small boat overboard with a moderately plausible excuse. You’d need to account for his escape. For credibility, he ought to have had friends who’d hidden themselves on board. It should have been done a long time ago, anyhow. The moon’s up now and anything on the water will show up like a sore thumb. It’s crazy!—Garrison, can you make your engine smoke and stink?”

  Garrison said, “Yes. But why?”

  I explained grandly, with the fine precision of someone acting contrary to all his upbringing and common sense. Inspired, I pointed out the necessity of shifting some cargo below decks to make a hiding place for the mythical rescuers of the prisoner. I insisted on a food supply. I urged a weapon or two. And then I said severely to the prisoner—who regarded me with desperately intent eyes —that if by any chance he was discovered, he was not to use those weapons to avoid recapture. They were for the jungle only. I was very firm about this.

  HIS white-faced wife panted as she listened. I hardened my heart against her and spoke authoritatively to Garrison, as if I knew what I was talking about. Then I made a final gesture and went back to the pilothouse and looked down once more on the card game.

  The moon swam higher in a sea of stars, and the roof of the jungle glistened with the dew upon it. There was a bellowing noise of a beast somewhere. It was hopelessly discordant and morbid. But I knew it was only a caiman on a mud flat. I heard a tiny shriek off to the right, and knew that a monkey had found death twining horribly about him in the blackness. And there were the voices about the card table, and there was the monotonous muted drumming of the Diesel engine below, and there were all the sounds and smells and dissonant sensations one encounters in a tropic night.

  Presently the pulsing rhythm of the Diesel changed subtly. I looked astern, and there was a smoke trail behind me. It grew thicker. I don’t know what Garrison did to make it, and still less do I know how he kept his engineer’s hands off whatever adjustments he did make. But that smoke w
ould nicely hide anything Garrison chose to leave behind. The boat went on. Moonlight silvered its white paint and made flamboyant streakings on the bow wave as it spread.

  Then the sound of the engine changed violently. It coughed and sputtered and made plaintive sounds, which were plainly pathetic appeals for aid. And then it cut off, and the boat drifted onward, the water whimpering alongside.

  The players about the card table looked up, and Garrison appeared and made an elaborate explanation in a tone of mild vexation. Then he bellowed, and two men came out of the crew’s quarters, yawning, and put the small boat over-side. Garrison got into it himself while one of them held the painter, and fished around the stern with a boat hook. He seemed satisfied, and presently swung back to the deck. He went below and within seconds the Diesel was at work again, drumming not quite right but satisfactorily enough, and the boat picked up way once more. But it still left a smoke trail of pearly white vapor that rolled and spread over the black water in the moonlight. It veiled everything behind us ….

  Nothing had happened. Nothing would happen. We went onward through the night, the black river furnishing a playground for star images and for splashes of the moon’s reflection. A way had been opened for the prisoner and his wife to escape. That was all.

  A LONG time later, Garrison came back to the rail where I still looked down. He regarded the General morosely.

  “He’s off,” said Garrison. “He’s miles behind, now, with his wife. I’m a fool! None of my business, either, but I couldn’t refuse that poor damned woman. She was thinking of her son.”

  The General yawned amiably, down below. He tossed in a bet with the air of a man who is about to quit.