Tiger, Tiger

by Philip Caveney

“Three days before you leave,” she warned. “You’ve got to honour it!”

  “Fifty dollars!” Melissa’s gaze did not flinch and she made no attempt to disguise the look of out-and-out contempt on her face.

  “Alright!” The girls shook hands briefly. Melissa made an elaborate show of wiping her palm on the fabric of the sun-bed. Then she lay back down again in a quiet display of indifference.

  Victoria bit her lip, then snickered unpleasantly.

  “Oh, you think you’re so damned attractive, don’t you?” she observed.

  Melissa sighed.

  “Well now, Vicky dear, you know what they say. Some of us have it … and some of us don’t.”

  Victoria nodded slowly and the smile never left her face, for she was contemplating some nasty little secret of her own.

  “I could tell you something now that would make you feel really sick,” she announced. “But I won’t. I’ll let you find it out for yourself.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Victoria? Your fifth-rate, cooked-up, tittle-tattle gossip doesn’t interest me in the least.”

  “We’ll see,” concluded Victoria cryptically. She got to her feet and began to move towards the gate. “I’ll leave you to your sunbathing now.”

  “How very kind of you. Close the gate on the way out.”

  Victoria turned vengefully around.

  “Listen, Melissa, why don’t you just f— Oh, hello there, Mrs. Tremayne!”

  Victoria’s face lit up with a sickly beam as Kate emerged onto the verandah, carrying a tray of drinks.

  “You’re not going already, Victoria?” enquired Kate innocently. “I’ve just made some lemonade…”

  “Oh, I uh…”

  “She has to go now, mother,” announced Melissa unexpectedly. “She has an appointment at the beauty salon, isn’t that right, dear?”

  Victoria’s smile faltered for a moment, then reaffirmed itself, a toothy frozen grimace that was a joy to behold.

  “That’s right, Mrs. Tremayne,” she said through her clenched teeth. “I’m going to have my hair done.…”

  “And her claws sharpened,” added Melissa with great relish.

  Kate glanced down at her daughter in surprise.

  “Claws?” she echoed weakly.

  “Uh, yes, well I must be off…” stammered Victoria in obvious confusion. She moved clumsily towards the gate and made her exit. “Good-bye, Mrs. Tremayne! Good-bye, Melissa.”

  “Good-bye, Victoria darling!” shrieked Melissa and concluded the sentence with an ear-shattering raspberry. Victoria scuttled along the road without so much as a glance back.

  Kate set down the tray on the grass and stared at her daughter admonishingly.

  “That was rather rude,” she observed.

  “Wasn’t she though! She’s always like that.”

  “You know very well I mean you. Why do you treat poor Victoria like that?”

  Melissa shrugged.

  “I don’t like her,” she replied bluntly.

  “Well, that’s hardly a reason, dear. Besides, she obviously wants to be friends with you, look how often she calls here.”

  “Friends.” Melissa glanced at her mother and chuckled. “Oh sure, friends…”

  Kate stared at her daughter in exasperation.

  “What is going on, between you two?” she demanded. “Did I see you shaking hands before when I was in the kitchen?”

  “No, Mummy. We were arm-wrestling.”

  Kate sighed. It was too hot a day to belabour the point and she knew from long experience that Melissa revealed only what she chose to. She turned away.

  “You just watch what you’re doing,” she called back over her shoulder. “You could get very badly burned.”

  Melissa closed her eyes for a moment and she lay still, thinking about her mother’s words. It was some considerable time before she realized that Kate was referring not to her daughter’s designs on Bob Beresford, but to the straightforward harmful effect of the sun’s rays on Melissa’s delicate skin.

  Melissa reached back and moved her fingers exploratively across the line of her shoulders. A vague tingling sensation warned her that on both counts, it might already be far too late.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE MOOD in the kampong had changed considerably. Bob was aware of it as he strolled past the first few houses, the heavy, all-pervading atmosphere of silent terror. The groups of people standing around in the village were for the most part, sullen and silent. This was the third killing in Kampong Panjang in as many months; and the neighbouring villages had suffered too. People were frightened and they saw the gun-wielding Australian as their only hope of salvation.

  “It is very bad, Tuan,” murmured the penghulu, as he led Bob toward the scene of the killing. “Everyone is afraid to leave the kampong. I will be glad when you bring Si-Pudong down.”

  Bob grunted noncommitally.

  “That might not be so easy,” he replied. “This one’s a cunning devil. I’ve tried everything.…”

  The penghulu nodded.

  “This is because he is no ordinary beast, Tuan. He is a werecat. The old bomoh who lives by Kampong Machis…”

  “What, you too?” Bob had heard the same accusation several times over the last few weeks. “I thought you had better sense than that,” he said accusingly.

  “But Tuan, it is the truth,” protested the penghulu. “Why, only last week two villagers came across him in the jungle; he was on all fours and he was growling and foaming at the mouth, having just changed back from his animal state. They ran away screaming.

  Bob grinned.

  “I’ll bet they did!” he chuckled. The two of them moved around the side of a building and came across a large crowd of people clustered around the entrance ladder of a house. The penghulu called for them to disperse and reluctantly, they began to drift away to their own homes, muttering darkly amongst themselves. The penghulu gazed after them anxiously.

  “They begin to lose trust in me,” he complained bitterly. “If we don’t get Si-Pudong soon, I’ll be out of favour.”

  “We?” echoed Bob, raising his eyebrows. “Excuse me, but I seem to be the one who’s doing all the work around here. If you like, I’ll bring a spare gun and you can—” He broke off in surprise as he caught sight of the grisly object wedged in the angle of the wooden ladder. It was now surrounded by a halo of flies, but the penghulu had forbidden anyone to touch it until the Tuan had examined it. “Jesus Christ,” breathed Bob, with extreme revulsion. The sight of it made him feel nauseous and yet, perversely, he was unable to take his eyes from the thing. “It must have caught at an angle,” he murmured. “The tiger pulled…” He shuddered, forced himself to turn away. “Anybody see anything?” he asked the penghulu.

  “The woman’s daughter just saw a flutter of cloth around the side of this building. She is too ill to talk further now; but she said that she heard her mother call and a moment later, when she went to the door, her mother was gone. So quick, Tuan! Surely only a werecat could…”

  “It’s not a monster we’re looking for!” snapped Bob angrily. “Just a plain, four-legged, common or garden tiger.”

  The penghulu looked puzzled.

  “Please, Tuan … what is … common … or garden?”

  “Never mind. Have you found which way it went?”

  The penghulu spread his hands in a gesture of defeat.

  “Alas, Tuan, the ground here is very hard … hardly a mark shows! There is another thing! What ordinary cat would come into a kampong this way?”

  “I didn’t say he was ordinary. Oh, he’s smart alright, never doubt it. But you can forget all this nonsense about weretigers and bomohs. When I finally get the chance to have a crack at him, he’ll fall just like all the rest.” He turned away abruptly. “Wasted enough time already,” he announced. “I’d better try and find some pugs. Maybe if you look over there…”

  “Oh, I am sorry, Tuan, I must go now. My wife, she is afraid to be alone. Sh
e gets very cross if I leave her.…” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “If only the mighty Si-Pudong, in his wisdom, would see fit to … ah, but it is impossible! She never goes out of the house, these days. Farewell, Tuan, and good luck.” He wandered away, his arms behind his back, plotting ingenious mayhem for his nagging wife. Bob gazed after him contemptuously. Considering the man’s authority in the village was at stake, he was surprisingly reluctant to involve himself in the hunt. The strain of going it alone was beginning to tell on Bob. Though ridding the locals of an increasingly nasty problem was only a secondary aim in his schemes, Bob felt that he deserved a little appreciation on that score; but as the kill rose steadily, so did the Malays’ desire not to get involved in something that might conceivably take them nearer to the tiger’s jaws. Just getting people to help him put up the machan was hard enough, and the going rate for the job had risen dramatically.

  Fear of the tiger had more widespread repercussions. Some of the victims had been rubber-tappers, and plantation owners were finding it difficult to persuade their workers to go out in anything but large groups and even then, only when the sun was fully up, allowing perfect visibility. Some villagers had been sufficiently worried to set up illegal gun traps along remote jungle paths. These were dangerous affairs, consisting of ancient rifles loaded up and fixed in the fork of a tree, with a long length of trip wire connected to the trigger. More often than not, it was some hapless human who set the device off and a couple of people had already been committed to hospital with bullet wounds. Trishaw drivers were extremely reluctant to make journeys along jungle roads, amahs were refusing to travel to work unless collected in a motor car, and even the postal service was being disrupted in more remote areas where letters were delivered by bicycle.

  It was years since the district had been subjected to the depredations of a man-eating tiger and there were very many people who looked forward to the creature’s demise. But, reflected Bob soberly, there was still only himself and Mike Kirby engaged on the actual job of hunting the cat down and meanwhile, the tiger seemed to be staying one step ahead of them at every turn.

  Bob paused to gaze around at the area into which the cat had ventured. In front of the luckless victim’s house, there was a large open area of flat, dry ground, off to the left, more buildings led off into the heart of the kampong. Directly ahead of him, across the intervening space, was the side of another long dwelling, around which, Bob surmised, the tiger must have crept up on the victim. Beyond that, there was a thick stretch of secondary jungle, flanking the main road and this screen of vegetation was bisected only by a narrow lane down which the old woman must have walked. For the tiger to have crossed an open area of land where there was not the slightest bit of cover suggested that he was becoming either reckless or hungry to the point of near-madness. It seemed logical to suppose that the cat must have taken the corpse across the main road at some point and into deeper jungle; but how to find that point of entry without the evidence of pugs, would prove a difficult task. Bob stooped to examine the ground but could find no clues there. Any disturbance of its surface had long been disguised by the baking hot sun and after checking over the whole patch of earth, he found nothing but a tiny patch of dried blood, which gave no indication of direction.

  Shouldering his rifle, he moved forward to stand at the corner of the building that flanked the jungle. Gazing around it, he was surprised to see a young Malay boy crouching on the ground in front of him, examining something that he had found there.

  “Hello, what have you got there?” asked Bob.

  The boy glanced up in surprise. He was a lively looking boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age, with large dark eyes, and a thick mop of straight black hair. He was wearing nothing but a pair of khaki shorts and some worn flip-flops. When he saw who was standing before him, he got to his feet, pointed solemnly at the ground and said, “Tiger pass this way.”

  Bob smiled at the certainty with which the boy said this and he moved nearer, stooped to follow with his eyes the direction indicated by the boy’s finger. All he could see was a stretch of seemingly unmarked ground.

  “I don’t see anything,” he murmured.

  “The stone, Tuan! See…” The boy picked up a tiny pebble and held it out for inspection. “You see, it has been moved. This side clean and smooth where rain and wind polish it. But it was lying the other way up.” He displayed the other surface, which was ever so slightly rough with a coating of dry earth.

  Bob frowned, rubbed his chin.

  “You think so, do you?” he muttered. “Well, maybe…” He moved away, dismissing the boy from his mind and he began to cast left and right in the direction that the boy had suggested, but again the ground seemed devoid of any clues. Bob was unaware that the boy was following close on his heels, until the child gave a small cry of triumph and rushing forward, snatched up a tiny fragment of a brown substance caught on a sharp rock. Similar in colour to its background, it would have evaded Bob’s eyes completely.

  The boy handed his prize to Bob proudly.

  “From woman’s slipper,” he announced, then turned away and continued ahead, bent low, his gaze fixed steadfastly to the ground.

  Bob scratched his head and examined the substance. Sure enough, it did look like a sliver of soft leather. He gazed after the boy with a little more respect this time.

  “Blood here, Tuan, and see, a scratch mark in the dirt. This is where tiger stopped to change his hold.”

  “Really?” Bob hurried over and examined the place. Sure enough, there was blood and a faint, almost imperceptible mark. He glanced up at the boy. “What’s your name?” he asked drily. “And where have you been all my life?”

  The boy grinned with obvious pleasure, displaying a set of even, dazzlingly white teeth.

  “My name is Ché. I live here in Kampong Panjang!”

  “You do, huh? And how come you know so much about this stuff?”

  Ché kept tracking.

  “I practise very much. One day, hope to be best tracker in Malaya!”

  “You’re not doing too badly so far,” observed Bob drily. “How come I didn’t come across you when I first started asking for trackers?”

  “Because then I had not decided to become one.”

  “Ah … that would explain it.” Bob was mystified and delighted, all at the same time. Such a stroke of luck seemed almost too good to be true. He mopped at his clammy forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “You’re uh … not a hallucination are you?”

  “Please, Tuan? What is … ha— hall—”

  “Never mind, never mind!” Bob waved the boy to silence. “Well look, uh … Ché, is it? How about showing me what else you can do?”

  The boy’s grin widened joyfully.

  “You want me to find body, yes?” he cried.

  “You bet, kid!”

  “Okay, boss.” The boy bounded ahead and began to run forward in a semi-crouch, stopping every now and then to inspect some new evidence. Bob followed behind, bemused and highly grateful for such timely assistance. It quickly became apparent that the boy knew exactly what he was doing. He kept pausing for Bob to approach and then, he would explain some little detail before bounding away again. Here, Tuan, was where a little sarong fabric had snagged on a bush! Here was where the tiger’s injured paw had dragged crossways in the dirt! Here was where the woman’s heel had carved a shallow furrow in the earth! Bob was vividly reminded of the time Harry Sullivan had tracked the pugs that the tiger had left beneath a machan, that time; there was the same wealth of information, the same quick, confident assessment of what had happened. But if anything, the boy, aided by his youth and agility, seemed even more accomplished than the old man.

  The trail continued for several hundred yards parallel to the secondary jungle, then plunged abruptly into it. The boy bounded in without hesitation, with Bob struggling along behind him. Here, the drag marks were easy to follow, but it got more difficult again, when the trail veered to the left and foll
owed the narrow, dry dirt lane for some distance before moving left again and back into the undergrowth. At last, Bob and Ché emerged into the main road and Ché pointed out where a few bits of twig and grass had scattered onto the surface of it.

  “Tiger cross here,” announced Ché. He made as if to bound across the road like an excited terrier, but Bob grabbed his arm for a moment.

  “Let me get my breath back,” he gasped. “Anyway, where did you learn to track like that?”

  Ché shrugged.

  “From books mostly. My friend Majid and I, we decided we would become great trackers! He soon got fed up with it, but I…” The boy tapped his chest proudly. “I practised every day. I went out into the jungle and followed every track I found. And I read every page of the Tuan’s books, until I remembered it all.…”

  “The Tuan?” echoed Bob, suspiciously.

  “Yes. I mean, of course, Tuan Sullivan. He gave me the books a long time ago, but before, I only looked at the pictures. This time I read every word and I had nobody to help me.”

  Bob snapped his fingers. So the old bastard was involved!

  “Well, well … so you know Harry Sullivan do you?”

  “Oh yes, Tuan, everybody knows him; just as everybody knows you and how you shot one great tiger and how you are hunting the weretiger, the demon that hunts the people of the kampongs.”

  “Hmm. Another one who goes for the spook theory, eh? Aren’t you afraid of the tiger, Ché? You say you go into the jungle to track all the time, and most people round here won’t even say the word.”

  Ché sighed.

  “Alas, it is too late for me now, Tuan. When I thought that you had shot the man-eater, I began to take his name in vain, many times. For that reason, his curse is already on me; but I do not fear, for I know that soon you will kill him and then I shall be safe from his jaws. Besides…” He pulled something from his pocket, a small thing wrapped in leather. He untied the bundle and held the object out on his palm. It was a tiger’s claw. “My grandmother was so frightened for me that she brought me this for a talisman. It came from a man in Kampong Machis and was very expensive; but it keeps me safe when I go into the jungle.”