E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Pâwang Ali murmured something in Arabic. It was just as well that the inspector could not understand it. Then he said, “That is routine work, Mr. Kemp. Those killers have not the least idea why Osborne was assassinated. I am resigning from your service at once—to hunt down the Father of Dragons—the one man who is behind all of these slayings.

  “When all of Asia bursts out in open war to expel Europeans, the United States will remain neutral, provided that the rights of its citizens are not endangered. To insure neutrality, American capital must be kept out of Asia. Therefore, Osborne was killed.

  “Wait and see. If another American financier comes to Malaya—anywhere at all—to Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Penang—on a similar mission, that man will die, or the sultan dealing with him will die.

  “Now digest that while your men are hunting a handful of petty assassins. I am too busy.”

  He turned, beckoned to Rankin. Rankin followed him. Inspector Kemp did not object; but Rankin was certain that someone would detain him at the docks if he tried to sail, or nab him at the Johore-Bahru ferry. The inspector could be careless on an island as small as Singapore.

  A long, sleek car awaited Pâwang Ali in front of police headquarters. He invited Rankin to accompany him. He pulled up at Hotel de l’Europe and followed Rankin to his room. Rankin reached for his flask of brandy which Pâwang Ali declined.

  “Listen, brother,” began Rankin, as he set the bottle down, “I’m in a tough spot. I see now that my plantation, going to hell the way it has probably isn’t Clayton Industries up to bat, but this Dragon fellow. Every nickel I have in the world is in that patch of rubber trees. Let me team up with you—I have a stake in this private hunt of yours.”

  Pâwang Ali’s eyes for a moment seemed to film like those of an eagle. His face became blank, and his breathing imperceptible. He had drawn into himself to muster up the powerful psychic force that had earned him the title of “Pâwang.” With the invisible eyes of his mind he scrutinized Rankin’s personality, sensing the man’s emotions, feeling his thoughts, weighing him on an unseen balance.

  Suddenly he spoke. Rankin started at the voice and the uncanny brightening of those dark, steel-hard eyes, “You will do, Rankin,” said Pâwang Ali. “I rather fancied the way you handled things on Moulmain Road and at Li Fat’s house.”

  “That’s great. But what the hell do I call you—I’ve not been in this country long enough to get it straight, whether your name goes hind end foremost, like a Chinaman’s, or—in other words, are you Mr. Pâwang or Mr. Ali?”

  “Neither,” was the grave reply, “I am Shaykh el Saiyed Nureddin Ali bin Ayyub al Sasudi el Idrisi.”

  “Holy smoke!” gasped Rankin.

  “‘Pâwang’ is Malay and means—well, wizard, necromancer, magician—something of that sort—I’m not familiar enough with English to get the fine shades. The superstitious natives for some reason call me that, though there’s nothing to it, at all.”

  “Probably someone lived long enough to tell about the way you handle a kris,” was Rankin’s opinion. “All right, Pâwang, when do we start dragon hunting?”

  “You might,” countered Pâwang Ali, pausing at the door, “wonder when the Dragon starts hunting you. Be careful. Stay in your room until daylight, and barricade your door against prowlers.”

  CHAPTER VI

  Pâwang Ali had scarcely seated himself at the desk in his bizarrely-furnished office when a buzzer whirred a succession of long and short notes. He pressed a button; and before he had fairly retracted his finger, a panel slid aside to admit the four assistants who had returned from the missions to which he had assigned them. They carried on their shoulders, very much after the fashion of a sedan chair, a bamboo pole from which hung a long, cylindrical bundle wrapped in rattan matting. Without command or comment they dropped their burden to the floor, snipped the lashings, and unrolled the covering.

  The bale contained a prisoner, gagged, and bound with cords. They freed his ankles, booted him to his feet, and removed the gag; then one explained, “Prior Born, this fellow is the coolie whose rickshaw carried the red-haired foreigner to Moulmain Road. The tires of his rickshaw are as you described, and in the back is a bullet hole, and in the floor signs of unusual washings; but not all the blood was removed.”

  Pâwang Ali’s four assistants then stepped back. One of them marked two Chinese characters on the wall which faced the master’s desk; and thus the prisoner was amazed when Pâwang Ali, reading the notation at a glance, addressed him by name.

  “Mong Duck, who ordered you to take the red-haired man to his death?”

  The coolie did not answer. His momentary flash of amazement at being addressed by name faded, and his face set in a sullen yellow mask. And when one of his race develops stubbornness, nothing less than wild horses can extort information. Mong Duck feared the smoldering light in Pâwang Ali’s eyes, but there was a master whom he feared even more. He had already weighed his chances and decided that the kris which Pâwang Ali was thoughtfully fingering would be a less painful way out than the vengeance of his master. He knew that once having entered the house of Pâwang Ali, he was doomed. Even though he escaped, or was marched to the door and booted to the street without questioning, it would be assumed that he had talked; and that ineradicable suspicion would not only be death, but unpleasant death. Pâwang Ali’s reputation for extracting information was fatal; so Mong Duck stared and said nothing. He was beyond gain or loss.

  Pâwang Ali sensed the fellow’s attitude. It was no novelty. But there was a way to crack silence.

  “Take him downstairs, and tie him up.”

  The silent quartet hustled Mong Duck toward a panel that slid aside to afford an exit. The house was intricately wired. Pâwang Ali remained for a moment at his desk, smiled thinly, picked up a telephone, and murmured instructions into the transmitter. Then he followed his retainers.

  By the time that he had reached the lower floor, Mong Duck’s bare feet were securely lashed to a bamboo rack fashioned like a sawhorse. Cords passing from his waist and throat to hooks in the floor kept him flat on his back. The four assistants were clustered about a small brazier. Rhythmically wheezing bellows were driving the glow of a single ember through the entire bed of charcoal; and ominously blackened tongs and rods lay close at hand.

  Pâwang Ali, standing with his back to the prisoner, watched the glow wax and wane, saw clear blue tongues of incandescence hover over the glowing charcoal, lap about the iron implements and slowly turn their sinister blackness to an ardent red. He finally murmured a few words in Chinese. One of his retainers replied.

  Pâwang Ali half turned, and saw that the sweat which now cropped out on Mong Duck’s forehead sparkled like rubies in that infernal glare. Then for a moment he regarded the glowing tongs held up for his inspection, smiled, shook his head, and shifted his scrutiny to Mong Duck. He said not a word, but as his eyes traveled the length of Mong Duck’s body, the coolie shuddered, and his toes twitched, as though that probing stare had been a shard of white-hot steel.

  The iron was now to Pâwang Ali’s taste. The tongs, showering sparks, seemed monstrously magnified by their shimmering, blinding radiance. But before the iron was applied to Mong Duck’s feet, Pâwang Ali said, “I’d forgotten all about the fellow in the other room—work on him first.”

  Mong Duck relaxed, and by straining his neck, he was able to see a door opening at the farther side of the room. He caught a glimpse of feet elevated like his own; then the door closed. But while Mong Duck could not see, he could hear and the sounds from beyond the door gave him a foretaste of his own sentence.

  The room echoed with the hideous outcry that filtered through the door. First it drowned the wheezing of the bellows, then it subsided to a quavering moan. The grim-faced torturer emerged with tongs now barely red. And as the door swung shut behind him, a back draft laden with the nauseating stench of burning flesh and
cloth billowed into the room. The muffled moaning rose again to a shrill, inhuman wail.

  Pâwang Ali murmured a few words in a soft, almost melancholy voice. He smiled, as he watched freshly-heated tongs carried to the room beyond—then his glance shifted and caught Mong Duck’s staring eyes, held them fascinated. Scarcely a line of Pâwang Ali’s face changed; yet something infinitely sinister and mocking crept into that gentle, almost pensive smile. The murderous glow of the charcoal seemed to bring to life internal fires that made Pâwang Ali’s eyes like windows opening on a silent, blazing hell. The wailing beyond the door subsided to a quaver Mong Duck began to talk. His outburst masked the hideous sounds that now came with renewed, nerve-tearing frenzy from someone tormented beyond all endurance. Pâwang Ali listened, pondered a moment, then nodded and gestured. Mong Duck’s bonds were cut. He was jerked to his feet.

  “That is all, Mong Duck,” said Pâwang Ali, indicating a doorway. “Go, and fear my wrath more than your master’s.”

  Mong Duck said not a word. He strode woodenly toward the exit. A yard from the door he halted. His muscles tensed. He was gathering himself for a leap. He flashed forward, crashing headlong against the masonry of the door jamb. The crushing impact threw him back half a pace. He fell heavily to the floor, twitched, and lay still.

  Mong Duck dared not leave the house of Pâwang Ali after he had betrayed his master. He dared not risk the few minutes it would take him to find a weapon or dash to the water front. He had taken the only certain way to cheat vengeance.

  “And that,” said Pâwang Ali as he eyed the huddled body, “seems to prove that Mong Duck told me the truth. Number One! Turn off that accursed howling—it’ll be grating on my nerves in another minute!”

  The agonized cries from the torture chamber were cut short, and Number One joined his comrade. In one hand he held tongs, in the other, a smoking piece of leather and a bundle of burning rags. Pâwang Ali, knowing that suggestion cracks a suspect sooner than a physical roasting, had gone to considerable trouble, several years ago, to have an electrical transcription made of an execution in one of the Shan states.

  Pâwang Ali paused to issue instructions to his assistants. One of them he sent to trail Rankin. Pâwang Ali reasoned that the American, if left to his own devices, would be of greater assistance than he could be as a companion; he would thus learn what Rankin did, who he received, and why. Another was to await orders with a ghari; and the remaining two Pâwang Ali sent out in search of the seemingly insignificant bits of information which, when pieced together, gave him that apparent omniscience which puzzled Inspector Kemp. Then he ascended the stairs to his study, where he prepared to disguise himself for a raid on the Dragon’s den.

  In a surprisingly short time the debonair Pâwang Ali had become an ancient, hard-bitten Malay. Despite the prominent beak of his Arab ancestors, Pâwang Ali’s face had changed, not by any crude grease paints but by deftly-applied liquids to stain his skin, accentuating the lines of his face, increasing the prominence of his cheek bones, and lending an irregularity to his nose. But the greatest change of all was in his posture and gait.

  It was a grizzled, squint-eyed ex-pirate who emerged in the narrow alley two blocks from Pâwang Ali’s house. His teeth were blackened from chewing areca nut, and though he walked briskly, one leg had a perceptible limp. He reeked of arrack, and hoarsely bawled orders to the driver of the ghari that was waiting. The driver eyed him askance; and it was only when Pâwang Ali muttered a few words that his own man recognized him.

  They set out to seek one Esteban Gomez, a Eurasian whose only Spanish feature was his father’s name; Gomez, who if not the Father of Dragons, was at least one of his claws, and the background of the menace that hung over Singapore and all the Far East.

  CHAPTER VII

  Rankin was inclined to follow Pâwang Ali’s advice. The survivors of the skirmish at Li Fat’s house had had ample chance to observe him from concealment while awaiting the signal to cut him down. That they had held their hands as long as they did was only to give Yut Lee a chance to draw him out and determine the extent of his knowledge of Milton Osborne’s affairs; and it was by no means unlikely that they believed him to be an associate of Osborne. That meant that his own number was up.

  He reloaded his pistol. Then he scattered newspapers about the floor. His next move would have been to get some string, stretch it between the several chairs, and ankle-high, so that nocturnal prowlers would awaken him when they tripped. But Rankin lacked the necessary string, and such precautions, moreover, went against the grain.

  “Hell with this shrinking-violet stuff!” he muttered, recollecting the engagement at Moulmain Road. “I sleep light enough, and those goofs won’t have guts to sneak in. Not after what they got tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be back in Johore.”

  And that disposed of the Dragon. In the morning he would call at the sultan’s Singapore residence, confer with one of his secretaries, and return to his plantation. The jangling of the telephone presently interrupted his plans for quelling the disturbances among his coolies.

  “Pâwang Ali speaking,” said the voice over the wire. “Here is the latest development: Osborne’s secretary accompanied him to Singapore. I want Osborne’s papers, and the inspector won’t give them to me. You get in touch with his secretary. She can claim them, and identify them; and Kemp will give them to her, as they’re no use to him as evidence. But I need them for further study. And perhaps you yourself could do with another look. Right?”

  “Correct,” agreed Rankin. “But how—”

  “She’s registered at your hotel. Irma Caradis. Get busy. While I’m giving the Dragon something to think about, you’ll be all in the clear.”

  “Hell,” grumbled Rankin. “He’s hogging the show. And that girl probably is a mess. One of those efficient janes. Or else she thinks the Orient is romantic. Nuts!”

  But fifteen minutes later Rankin had made himself passably presentable and was ushered to the room of Osborne’s secretary. Rankin then and there forgot his objections to his mission. Irma Caradis was considerably more than nice-looking, and her smile was as friendly as her dark eyes. And she was a girl from God’s country. The kind you think of when you pause at the door of a dive in the Asiatic quarter and suddenly decide not to go in. Rankin explained his business. Thus far she had heard nothing about her employer’s death. Things had happened fast, and the police hadn’t gotten around to her yet. She was shocked rather than grieved; that, and her manner convinced Rankin that Irma Caradis was a bona-fide secretary and not a vice-president’s playmate. Several briefcases and a well-seasoned portable typewriter confirmed his opinion.

  “Oh, good Lord, but this does leave me in a perfectly terrible situation!” she exclaimed as she absorbed Rankin’s sketchy account, “I don’t know a thing about the customs here, and I certainly can’t close Mr. Osborne’s affairs for him. Perhaps I’d better cable New York and wait for instructions. But let’s get those papers first, then I’ll wire.”

  Rankin hailed a ghari, and squeezed into the narrow vehicle beside his companion. Irma Caradis was sufficiently thrilled with Singapore not to be too much oppressed by the tragic turn of affairs. Rankin eyed her approvingly, and decided that as soon as business was disposed of, they would do the town and let Pâwang Ali chase dragons. That competent fellow needed no assistance.

  They cut from the padang to High Street, crossed the river, and looped back toward the central police station. And Rankin, engrossed with his charming companion, did not notice an empty rickshaw that followed his ghari, nor was he aware that the coolie ignored the hails of would-be passengers.

  Despite the hour, Inspector Kemp was still at his desk. He received his callers at once, tugged his drooping mustache, and sharply eyed Irma Caradis. The request for Milton Osborne’s papers rang sourly.

  Rankin, while not under suspicion, was far from having the inspector’s confidence. The scrutiny began at
Irma’s toes and deliberately traveled up the sunflower yellow sports costume that did full justice to her slender figure, then compared her features, one by one, with the photo on her passport. At last Kemp grudgingly admitted that he had little doubt as to her identity. He surrendered the blood-stained documents.

  “Inspector,” said Rankin as he saw that Irma had gained her point, “up in Terengganu I heard a few rumors about the Father of Dragons. What’s it all about? Or is it a secret?”

  Kemp snorted. “It’s a hashish dream. Pâwang Ali is a competent investigator. I’m sorry he went off his chump that way this evening; but the good fellow is a bit touched on the subject of dragons. If I were you, I’d forget all that sort of wash and tend to my rubber estate. It is perfectly plain that Mr. Osborne was robbed of a considerable sum of money and that the thieves fancied they could avoid detection by trying to conceal his identity. How much money did he have with him, Miss Caradis?”

  “Several thousand, more or less,” she replied. “He cashed a draft when he went to the bank to see if funds had been cabled from the States for his dealings with Li Fat.”

  “And that settles it. Good evening, Miss Caradis.”

  He turned to the papers that covered his desk.

  Rankin accompanied Irma to the street. As he helped her into the ghari, the girl from home laughed and said, “Maybe he’s right. This Pâwang person does sound a bit eccentric, judging from your description. Does he always wear a red cap and one of those funny purple skirts?”

  “Sarong,” corrected Rankin, giving her a touch of local dialect. “But that boy is qualified to wear pants in any quarter of the world.”

  He leaned back, glanced at the full moon, and wondered whether Irma’s shoulders needed support. Her eyes said yes, but her chin and lips left him in doubt. And then all his observations were upset as she leaned back, sighed, and murmured, “They say it’s gorgeous out at Tanjong Rhu by moonlight.”