E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Irma had joined the inspector in discounting dragons; and Rankin could do no less.

  “Let’s go,” he proposed. Irma’s grave, businesslike face was decidedly pretty when she smiled, and he wondered how she would respond to the lure of the tropics. He was passably competent with the pistol in his hip pocket and had twice that evening come out on top against odds. The high headland of Tanjong Rhu overlooked the crescent-shaped harbor and the shimmering sea beyond—be damned to dragons and—But instead of turning right to go down High Street toward the water front and thence out Beach Road, the ghari continued straight ahead.

  “Hey, you!” exclaimed Rankin, “Kanan! Pergi Tanjong Rhu!”

  He could have done it better in English, but he knew Irma would get a thrill out of hearing him gargle Malay. It was not a bad attempt, but the driver couldn’t make it. Instead of turning to the right, he kept straight ahead, grinned over his shoulder and made the exasperatingly courteous and somewhat humiliating query: “Apa tuan kata?”

  “Nuts, you saphead, you know what I said! Turn your damn wagon to the right. Now do you get it?”

  “Tuan?” was the courteously reiterated inquiry.

  Rankin gritted his teeth, restrained a sulphurous curse, and then, goaded by Irma’s frank amusement, he censored his remarks but poured out his wrath. That done he said to his companion, “I’ll hire a car, and we won’t be bothered with any of these monkeys.”

  But before he could get his new thought into action, a towering Sikh policeman fairly blocked the narrow street. There was no mistaking the beard and the uniform.

  “Now what?” grumbled Rankin, chagrined at the failure of his Malay at the one time of all times when he wanted it to click. But before the Sikh deigned to explain himself, things began to happen in the street into which they had progressed a full two blocks during the linguistic exercises. Dark figures swarmed, like cats from darker doorways. Steel gleamed. Rankin cursed and reached for his pistol. Irma screamed and clutched his arm as the pack closed in.

  Rankin’s pistol crackled as strong hands jerked him from the ghari. He saw a man double in the middle, saw another drop his kris and clutch a shattered arm. A knotted club, darting into the tangle, knocked Rankin’s pistol from his hand. But though his right was paralyzed by the blow, he bored in with his left, slipping under another hard-drive-club and popping home a jab. He was wrathful rather than dismayed as he yelled to Irma, wheeled, and plunged into the tangle to reach her side. That sluggish Sikh was taking his time.

  And then Rankin realized that he had been trapped. The Sikh was one of the attacking party. His descending baton was aimed at Rankin’s head, and the pack parted to make way.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Despite Pâwang Ali’s taking the trail in the guise of an arrack-steeped and villainous Malay who had undeservedly attained middle age, his entrance into the Dragon’s den would be no easy matter. And as his ghari rolled out Orchard toward the Tanglin section he compared the merits of stealthy prowling and an open approach. Several hundred yards from his destination he ordered the driver, one of his retainers, to halt.

  “Follow me, Wah Sing,” he directed, “but keep out of sight. There may be a riot. Take this.” He handed the fellow a pistol.

  And before Wah Sing could answer, he was alone beside his ghari. Pâwang Ali had vanished in the darkness, Wah Sing followed suit, but made no attempt to catch up with his master; he knew the futility of trying to pick up the trail of that shadowy, cat-footed avenger.

  The extensive estate of Esteban Gomez was enclosed by a palisade of bamboo stakes sharpened at the tops and bound together with rattan. Pâwang Ali silently scaled a tree that was not far from the fence and from his perch sought to probe the darkness of the tangled garden. He caught a definite sign of motion in the farther shadows. There was at least one watcher besides the one at the gate; but he did not know how many lurked in concealment. He could stalk the one at the entrance, and then bit by bit clear the grounds before trying to enter the house, yet despite his skill at bushwhacking, he could scarcely hope to overpower all of Gomez’s retainers. Pâwang Ali decided upon the more direct course.

  He approached the gatekeeper quite openly, but sharply scrutinized his face instead of speaking. To the fellow’s inquiry, Pâwang Ali answered in Arabic, fairly certain that he would not be understood. The Malay was perplexed, made a few false starts, then hailed the house. A lean, disreputable Arab appeared. From his accent Pâwang Ali judged him to be from Morocco. This one received a stiff dose of Persian; and before Pâwang Ali had half exhausted his repertoire, he noted that the house had disgorged eight assorted ruffians. The ninth he floored with a stream of Pashtu. That got results. He heard a hearty chuckle from the veranda, and a voice crackling with authority hailed him in the language of the Afghans. Pâwang Ali had the enemy mustered for counting. That had been the object of his linguistic display. Curiosity kills more than cats.

  He brazenly elbowed his way through the unsavory crowd, studiously dragged his supposedly lame leg up the steps, and greeted the master of the house in the Malay which he had professed not to understand.

  “I’m looking for Tuan Gomez, but none of these louts can understand me.”

  And in his curiosity, Esteban Gomez forgot to wonder just what the insolent ex-pirate might want. He led the way to a room at the left of the hall that ran to the rear of the house. It was a grotesque melee of luxurious Chinese and European furnishings; but it was Gomez who most interested Pâwang Ali. He was tall, solidly built, and had a square, heavy face the color of well-seasoned ivory. His eyes were perceptibly slanted and his cheek bones were high and prominent, but his dark hair was wavy. That, and a certain vivacity of gesture and the unexpected mobility of his heavy features alone betrayed his European father.

  If this was not the Father of Dragons, then at least he was a worthy lieutenant, Pâwang Ali decided, sensing the relentlessness of that thin-cheeked, craggy face. Cunning and cruelty, fanaticism and majesty were strangely blended. Pâwang Ali knew that he had met his match. The house was a garrison of assassins; but that in itself did not prove that Gomez was the Father of Dragons.

  Pâwang Ali’s move was to play for time and a chance to find confirmation of Gomez’s identity. He seated himself, dropped his cud of tobacco and areca nut with a sickening plop to the hardwood floor, and grinned amiably.

  “Tuan, it is said that you are equipping a ship for pearling.” There was no mistaking his meaning piracy; and he winked to point the emphasis, “By Allah, my father and grandfather before me found pearls without number! And with a crew like those that came to the gate—”

  “I thought,” said Gomez, “that you were an interpreter.”

  “Ay, wallah!” was the careless assurance. “Name me some language that I do not speak.” Pâwang Ali held forth at length to show that scholarship and piracy were one to him. As he spoke, he sensed that he had become an object of uncommon interest. Without interrupting his racy flow, he began mapping details, and seeking some outward expression of what he was certain that the house and its master concealed.

  The laughter and guttural mutterings of the platoon of ruffians in the compound had ceased. Pâwang Ali became aware of subdued but none-the-less intense activity. There were waves of scarcely perceptible vibration, as though heavy objects were being stealthily moved. He heard occasional commands which were trenchant despite their being muffled. Pâwang Ali sensed that this activity had been caused by his arrival. He began to suspect that his ruse had been too successful. Its progress was ominously smooth.

  Gomez fumbled in his pockets then reached into a cabinet, extracted a cigarette case of burnished silver, and offered it to Pâwang Ali. The courteous phrase and gesture suggested that menace was concentrating. Deadly poison or stupefying drugs might well taint the proffered smoke; yet there was no plausible pretext for declining, and none for leaving at once. Gomez’s eyes burned with a stra
nge, fierce light as he scrutinized his caller’s hard-bitten face, as though seeking some betraying flicker of hesitation.

  If Gomez actually suspected his identity, that cigarette would be deadly; yet to hesitate would be a damning revelation if by any chance Gomez’s suspicions had not yet been aroused.

  Pâwang Ali accepted the silver case. For an instant his fingers froze. In the palm of Gomez’s hand he caught a momentary glimpse of a dragon drawn with cameo detail in ivory-white hair lines that were part of the skin. Every scale, every fin, every five-toed claw of the writhing beast was limned in what seemed to be scar tissue. All in a flickering glance—and Pâwang Ali knew that he was facing the man who had sent him Hussayn’s head. He understood now why there had been smudge about the dragon seal. Gomez’s palm was the die that had applied the vermilion stamp above the threat and defiance that had accompanied the severed head. Gomez was the murderous, intriguing Father of Dragons who controlled his cutthroats by their superstitious reverence for one born with the symbol of imperial power marked in his skin.

  This was the man whose head and hand Pâwang Ali had sworn to take. Yet his expression did not for an instant change, nor did his eyes betray the wrath that burned in his brain. He grinned amiably and flicked the catch of the case with his thumb nail. He was wary of touching it with the fleshy part of his thumb. And he held his breath, lest a gust of venom rise to his nostrils as the cover snapped open.

  The case, however, was empty. Gomez murmured a courteous apology, reached for the case, and clapped his hands. A dark, lean Tamil servant appeared, disappeared, and presently returned with the silver container filled with Egyptian cigarettes which Gomez offered him.

  Pâwang Ali knew then that doom was closing in on him. He read it in the suddenly changed expression of Gomez’s eyes. Something had betrayed him in the moments just past. Pâwang Ali’s body became tense and vibrant, ready to flare in an attack that would catch Gomez off guard. He reached for a cigarette; and then he saw why he had first been handed an empty case made of smooth, unengraved, highly-burnished silver. In the inside surface of the cover there was now a square of paper the size of a postage stamp. It bore a thumb print that had been cut from a photographic record; and lest any doubt remain, someone had written beneath it, in grease pencil, two words in Malay script: they spelled “Pâwang Ali,” but they meant “finish.”

  Gomez laughed softly and said, “Mong Duck’s disappearance set me thinking. But to be certain, I thought it best to compare the prints you left on my cigarette case with those I have had on file ever since you took such an unwarranted interest in the affairs of the Father of Dragons. Your disguise is very neat.”

  Pâwang Ali felt the stare of many eyes, heard tense exhalations of breath, the soft, ghostly slipping of bare feet, and the faint furtive rustling of draperies. And in a mirror beyond Gomez, he caught the flicker of bare steel.

  Gomez had made no move to defend himself; but this was no occasion for fine sentiment. A wave of Malay wrath surged through Pâwang Ali. His moving hand was a brown blur that ended in a long, singing streak of steel. The whine of the kris that darted from the folds of his sarong was echoed in a deadly hiss from the rear. Pâwang Ali heard the note of menace. With a serpent lunge he whipped his body aside in time to evade the hurled blade, but swift as he was, his own kris did not transfix Gomez.

  The Father of Dragons sank through a trap in the floor, leaving only a lock of hair and a fine shred of scalp on the point of the kris. Pâwang Ali’s rush carried him clear of the opening. He recoiled, but before he could plunge after Gomez, the trap snapped into place, and the pack closed in. He knew from their reckless charge and the fixed, glassy stare of their eyes that they were a drug-crazed sacrifice offered as the price of cutting him to pieces.

  Gomez was counting on him to run amok, and meet the charge headlong to take what toll he could—which was what a desperate Malay would inevitably do. But the Dragon had not counted on the Pâwang’s Arab blood, and that incredible agility which despite his trapdoor had so nearly cost Gomez his head.

  Pâwang Ali’s whirling kris was a wall of steel as he lunged side-wise to evade the converging slayers. They closed on the spot where he had been but an instant ago, and their thirsty blades drank air. The drug that made them fearless had robbed them of split-second coordination—and Pâwang Ali measured time and space in shorter units than normal men. Even in retreat, his kris had bitten deep.

  The floor was red, and the singing whirl of his blade drenched the wall with spattering drops as he leaped to flank the pack. They wheeled about to cut him down. They stumbled over two who lay thrashing in a slippery, spreading pool. They lost an instant. The Pâwang slid a heavy table across the hardwood floor. The charge broke piled up against the obstacle, then surged about its ends. Pâwang Ali had divided the enemy. Half of them had lost two yards; and the others, bounding around the left, trailed straggling into action instead of presenting a solid front. Each move he had made had robbed them of a split second; and each bit of stolen time gained a leap and a slash.

  Though swift as a cobra stroke, each move was plotted by fighting instinct that short-circuits thought. Then came an uncertain instant that was a haze of hissing steel and sharp-drawn breath and mortal howls. Pâwang Ali hurled himself clear, parried, ducked, struck down the leader, and gained the hall. It was empty. He dodged a blade zipping from the darkness as he bounded down the steps. He landed on bent legs, and cleared the compound; but a pistol crackled before he could engage the gatekeeper.

  Wah Sing had dropped the last obstacle; and as Pâwang Ali flashed into the open and down the road, his ghari driver trailed after him, pausing at every bound to jerk wild shots at the house behind the palisade.

  “Never mind the fireworks, Wah Sing,” he finally panted, as they reached the ghari, “they’ll not follow us. But we’ll have the devil’s own time finding Gomez from now on.”

  And the roar of a high-powered car pulling away from somewhere behind the compound confirmed his opinion on the Dragon’s flight.

  CHAPTER IX

  It was most unlikely that the Dragon would dare remain within the limited confines of Singapore Island, closely policed as it was, now that Pâwang Ali had definitely learned of his presence; and despite the enemy’s head start, there was a chance of overtaking him in his flight.

  One of Pâwang Ali’s assistants had reported a power cruiser moored in a cove not many miles east of the Johore-Bahru ferry; and that was a lead worth following.

  “Wallah!” he swore as Wah Sing whipped the pony to a gallop, “this will open the inspector’s eyes!”

  At the first available telephone he halted to call his house in the Asiatic quarter, ordering his chauffeur to load his car with arms and rush it out to meet him on his way into the city. Then he phoned police headquarters to report the encounter with the Dragon and to demand an immediate search of Gomez’s house, before evidence of the plotters’ plans could be destroyed or moved.

  The call was plugged in on Kemp’s wire; and the inspector’s first remark sent thrills down Pâwang Ali’s spine.

  “What’s that?” he demanded. “Rankin told you I asked him and the girl to get Osborne’s papers from your office? He just left? Follow them—quick!”

  Simultaneously they slammed the receivers. Pâwang Ali leaped to the ghari and smote the pony on the rump with the flat of a kris. They set off at a gait to rival a Roman chariot race.

  Pâwang Ali was convinced that during his preparations to strike at Gomez, the Father of Dragons had himself been planning a coup.

  As they approached the bridge that crossed the stream at their right, Pâwang Ali saw the headlights of a car across the river, coming from the direction of police headquarters. Then he heard a yell, and a pistol shot from the cross street ahead and to his left. Another yell—hoarse, wrathful and deep-chested. A white man, beyond any doubt.

  Pâwang Ali shouted to W
ah Sing, who yanked at the reins to swing toward the disturbance. The pony was galloping with the wrong lead. Nothing less than a polo mount could have shifted on such a sharp turn. The beast pitched in a heap. Pâwang Ali leaped clear of the capsizing vehicle and bounded down the street.

  He saw a tall, broad-shouldered man surrounded by a squad of natives. A woman screamed as the man was overwhelmed by the pack. The distance was still too great for pistol fire, particularly with a woman and a white man somewhere in the milling struggle. As Pâwang Ali cut the distance in half, he saw the man emerge from the tangle, break clear—and go down under a blow from a club wielded by a sideline lurker.

  An engine roared just beyond the mob. And from the rear Pâwang Ali heard the yells of Wah Sing, and the crashing of a car through the wrecked ghari. He opened fire with his pistol, now determined to halt the escape, regardless of innocent bystanders. A man dropped. But before Pâwang Ali could close in, he was forced to fling himself aside to avoid being run down by the machine coming from the rear; and in that split second, the mob scattered and the get-away car thundered northward.

  The pursuit, however, was abruptly checked. The inspector’s car, which an instant ago had missed Pâwang Ali, came to a screaming halt as Pâwang’s car swung left out of a side alley and blocked the street. Inspector Kemp emerged as Pâwang Ali took his chauffeur’s place at the wheel and yelled, “Let’s go!”

  The inspector and one of the Sikhs accompanying him piled into the rear. Another Sikh bounded to the running board as the tail light of the fugitive car winked out around, a corner, making a right turn.

  By the glare of the headlights as he reversed and then swung to the right, Pâwang Ali’s glance covered the battlefield at which he had arrived but a few seconds too late.