Mason nodded stiffly. That much at least was no dream. Carnicio went on. “She had a brother, Alvarado. You saw him too. Remember she gave you a message for him?”
Again Mason nodded. It was becoming clearer now. His brow was creased.
“You couldn’t deliver the message, señor, because Alvarado died in the cebos, in the stocks, whipped to death by this devil’s negro whipmaster!”
Then it was no dream! He really had killed the negro. His brain whirled.
Carnicio went on. “Mala and Alvarado made the mistake of bringing gold here to sell. The woman, Rosita, is certain that they have found one of the lost Incas mines. She tortured them both to make them reveal the source of their gold. Alvarado died.”
“And the girl, Mala?”
“She lives, master, and only I know where she is. Rosita would like very much to find her. Get up, master and dress. We must get away from here. Rosita has learned through her Indians that you befriended Mala in the jungle. She thinks Mala has told you where the mine is. She wants you here only to find out. She is mad, a monster, relentless where gold is concerned.”
Rage made Mason tremble. If this were true—if all that Carnicio said was true—
“Where are you going, master? Your clothes! Come back!”
But Mason did not hear him. He thrust Carnicio aside, vanished through the door. Like one who knows the way well, he found Rosita bedroom. He opened the door softly, saw the lithe figure of the woman, sprawled across the bed. The white gown was rumpled about her knees, the bodice half off her shoulders, disclosing dimly the rounded contours of her bosom.
“Diane, Diane!” he groaned, and leaned forward to grasp Rosita’s throat. But before his fingers sank into soft flesh, her heels flashed up. Her legs were like steel. He reeled across the room. His head banged against the wall, he sank unconscious to the floor.
* * * *
Miraculously his own clothes, clean and ironed, were beside his own bed where he awakened the next morning. Everything was there—with two exceptions. His money belt and his gun. But when Rosita came in with his morning breakfast, smiling as if nothing had happened, she did not mention the affair of the night before…at first. Sullenly he took his food, gazed at the plate.
Presently she said: “Did I hurt you?” He shook his head, ashamed of his own weakness. “Why did you want to kill me, amigo?”
“You know why. Carnicio came to me last night, told me—”
“Carnicio?” She felt his head with her cool palm. “You must have dreamed again! Ah, the fever! Poor sick one! Carnicio left for Iquitos yesterday morning after seeing you. He asked me to tell you that he must return to his people, that they need him.”
His brow clouded. Could he have dreamed in the heat of his intermittent fever, dreamed that Carnicio had visited him with the wild tale? He looked at the demure woman who sat beside him, her eyes soft, her body alluring in a negligee calculated to set mad blood racing in his veins. She couldn’t be the fiend that Carnicio pictured her. Still—
“I, too, will be leaving before long,” he said stiffly.
To his great surprise she began to cry. Tears streamed down her face. Her breast quivered. He questioned her. Her only answer was: “You don’t remember. You don’t remember?”
Vaguely he shook his aching head.
“You promised to stay,” she sobbed. “You held me in your arms, you caressed me, you were to me what no man has been before! And you promised to stay.”
He started to mumble something, his face red. She sprang to her feet, walked excitedly about the room. “Do not think of leaving! This place is mine, this plantation and its riches. I give it to you, my lover! We will be as king and queen here among the savages. We will—”
He shook his head, still bewildered.
Her belt loosened. The negligee slipped from her shoulders, half revealing the long lines of her brown body. “You promised,” she said softly.
Fascinated, he watched her move toward him, knew in his heart that he was lost. She pulled his unwilling head to hers for a throbbing kiss. Then all other thoughts fled from him…
* * * *
The next two months were a combination of heaven and hell. Rosita was a Jekyll and Hyde, two distinct personalities within the lithe brown body. Times when she was in his arms, when her heart beat against his and he drained the sweetness from her mouth, she was woman incarnate; all the seductiveness of the ages was within her.
At other times she was a different woman. She came to be sure of him, sure that he was enmeshed by her beauty. So she grew careless. He saw the long strings of Indians come in, bearing their back-breaking loads of crude rubber, Jamaica Negroes serving as overseers, guns at their hips, whips in their hands. He saw the Indians, cowed and beaten in the stocks, and could do nothing for them. Only once did he protest to the woman whose orders caused these terrible things.
She shrugged, raised her glass and drank deeply before answering, “I know how to treat them; you do not. Leave the business end to me. Once the steamer comes and you see the price we get for the rubber you will say that I am right.
“Why pay the dogs? Put the fear of God into them, make them work for nothing. I feed them at least.”
That afternoon had been too much for him, with a swarthy negro flogging three Indians for a slight offense. Mason had never fully recovered mentally from his illness. Now he looked at the woman with clenched fists, tight lips.
“You’ll stop these inhumanities, or I’ll leave you.”
She laughed in his face. “And the minute you try to leave me I send a man to Iquitos to bring the authorities to hunt you down in the jungle like a dog. Why? For murder, for the killing of my overseer the first day you came.”
His face blanched. “But you said it was a dream.”
She laughed at him again. “Perhaps I told you many things that were not true, beloved. I am only a woman. I was very determined to keep you here. After all, you’re the only white man for miles.” Dazed, unable to know what to believe and what not to believe, he lingered on. He lost his will power, his self-respect. He did not know if he was sane or mad and did not care! Days were torture, nights were heaven.
During the day he took to wandering through the nearby forests, through the animal trails, through the man-made paths. Not far from the house was a small creek with steep banks, almost entirely dried up during this season of the year. He crossed it by running down the bank, leaping the narrow strip of water, and running up the far bank at full speed.
He crashed through the bushes on the far side and stopped in amazement. He had run right into the midst of a squatting circle of Jivaros who listened to the harangue of a familiar figure. The Indians haunched down in their skirts of native cloth, black and white streaks painted on their faces and chests, tufts of colored feathers in their ears and nostrils. At Mason’s unexpected appearance they leaped to their feet. One swung a machete and it was arrested in midair only by the sudden voice of the woman who had been haranguing them.
The woman was Mala.
At her command the Indians backed away. She spoke softly to a brooding Mason.
At last he said: “I can’t do it, Mala, I’d never get away from her. She may be all that you say, murderess, torturer, thief, but she has me.”
The Indian girl leaned closer, said: “The Indians are ripe for revenge. If they kill, the authorities come, burn their villages, their women and children. You can do it, you are a man of strength and will! She has made a mouse of you, a crawling insect. Don’t you want revenge?”
He shook his head wearily, uncertainly.
She said, “You came in search of a white woman, amigo? A white woman that did not die in Iquitos but was murdered here! Your man Carnicio she killed, also. My brother, Alvarado; her master Don Fernando. She deserves death!”
Still he shook his head, played with the ragged mus
tache on his upper lip.
She disappeared to return in a moment. Before him she laid three hide hags, each larger than his two fists.
“That is gold,” she said softly. “Do as I ask and it’s yours. You shall have a canoe and paddlers to get you out of the country.”
Still he refused to commit himself, went back to the house, wondering vaguely if he should warn Rosita.
* * * *
He slept alone that night, was awakened by someone whispering his name softly. He sat bolt upright, blinded as a brown hand lit a match, applied it to a sputtering candle. It was Mala. She said: “Mason, awake. Come with me and I will show you your duty.”
Like a man in a dream he got to his feet, got into his clothes with her help. He blubbered silently as she led him down the hallway. He was afraid of this woman, but more afraid of the woman she was taking him to.
But it was not to Rosita’s quarters she led him. It was to an immense barn-like room in the left wing, a room he had never been in before. He stared about at the trophies, the devil masks, the wizard’s charms. “This,” whispered Mala, “is hers. She kept these things to remind her of past triumphs. Look at the spears.”
Against one wall leaned four spears, each tufted with brilliant feathers decorated with gaudy paints. From each dangled a dark object hardly larger than an orange. Mala pushed him closer, turned one of the objects toward him.
Mason, the weakling, gasped. It was a shrunken head! A head such as the Jivaro’s could make from the human head for a foe. “That,” said Mala calmly, “is your man, Carnicio.”
Mason recoiled. Shrunken, yes, but perfect in every line and detail, the head of Carnicio twirled and twisted on the end of a string attached to a Jivaro spear!
“And this,” said Mala, “is—”
But there was no need to say. The long blonde hair, the once red lips, the proudly arched nose. Diane. So Diane did not die in Iquitos. She died here and this woman, this Rosita, had taken her head to gloat over. Somehow, still blubbering, Carson reached the gruesome trophy, took it in his hands and tore it from the spear. He was kissing the shriveled monstrosity with slobbering lips when the new voice broke in.
“Ah, Mala, who pries into my private things! And Mason, my beloved!”
Rosita stood in the doorway, clad in the same transparent negligee. A slender machete gleamed in her hand. Suddenly she leaped forward. The Indian girl caught her wrist, tripped her. They went down in a bevy of flailing legs, writhing brown bodies, fighting for possession of the knife that meant life or death.
Mason gibbered against the wall, shrieking, crying, laughing, while the negligee ripped to tatters, while Mala’s short skirt tore and gave, while two almost naked women tumbled and contorted on the floor at his feet.
The guttering candle cast weird shadows. The knife flicked. Mala gasped, fought the harder. But presently before Mason’s dazed eyes he saw Rosita on her feet, her eyes mad, her lips curled, her breast flattened as she raised her arms to administer the coup de grace.
Only then was he conscious of the spear he held in his right hand.
She was the spirit of destruction, the goddess of murder, the high priestess of torture. His spear thrust went straight and true, pierced her magnificent body. The machete dropped to the floor. She slipped to her knees, both hands tugging vainly at the embedded spear.
Mason giggled against the wall again while Mala fought her way to her feet gasping for breath.
The smile she turned on Mason was radiant. The woman on the floor twitched and lay still.
* * * *
It was only after Mala put Mason in the mahogany dugout that he knew what he still held in his left hand. It was the shrunken head of the woman he had loved. His Diane.
Two Indians paddled into the sluggish stream silently. The only sound in the jungle was the mad laughing of Mason.
For two long weeks they fought the streams, paddled down the Putomayo to the Amazon, up the Amazon toward Iquitos. On the fifteenth day a messenger overtook them in a faster canoe.
The three Indians whispered together for long moments with fearful glances toward the wreck that once had been Buck Mason. His beard was matted, his hair dirty and tangled, his eyes bloodshot. For days he had scarcely eaten, scarcely drunk.
The Indian from Putomayo gave him a leaf-wrapped package, explained that the woman Mala had sent it. Then he disappeared swiftly the way he had come.
Mason opened the package with fumbling fingers and his laughter ran out madder than ever, wildly, more demented.
“I knew I’d never get away from her,” he screamed, and fell on his face in the bottom of the canoe.
The frightened Indians left him on a trail that led into the city, paddled back against the current silently with many backward glances over their shoulders. The last thing they heard was his mad shrieking.
A little later a goatherd found him, ran into Iquitos and brought the authorities. He lay in the middle of the trail, motionless, staring straight up into the sun with blinded eyes.
At his feet lay three buckskin bags, each filled with gold.
In each hand death-stricken fingers gripped an object the size of an orange. The police pried those fingers loose.
“Mother of God,” cried one, crossing himself.
Each dead hand held a head, the head of a woman. One was blonde with long hair that still gleamed in the sunlight. The other was dark, with hair like a raven’s wing, and crooked lips that still quirked in a sneering smile.
ADVENTURE’S END, by Robert Leslie Bellem
Originally published in Spicy Adventures, April 1935.
Up ahead, high wheeled drivers crashed thunderously over a dark draw. Back through the night floated the shrill wail of the locomotive’s whistle—eerie, ominous foreboding. Like a hurtling comet the Linchow Limited sped through the impenetrable darkness of the Asiatic night.
Tate Shevlin, American soldier of fortune, stared out through the window of his first-class compartment, stared out grimly into nothingness. Again there came to him the wailing moan of the locomotive’s whistle, like the rising shriek of a soul in torment. Shevlin shuddered. And then, abruptly, his muscles bunched under his linen coat.
Someone had knocked on the closed door of his compartment.
Tate Shevlin’s hard right hand dropped imperceptibly toward the cold butt of the Webley automatic in his coat pocket. His grim eyes narrowed. “Come in!” he rasped.
The door opened. A man entered.
The American stared at the newcomer. He saw a tall, broad-shouldered, slant-eyed Manchurian. A Manchurian who bore in his outstretched hand a tiny object—
It was a mask of yellow silk.
That was all. Yet it was enough to send Tate Shevlin’s blood pounding hotly through his veins. He had been awaiting that fragile silk token for three days, ever since he had boarded the Linchow Limited back in Shanghai seventy-two hours before. Now it had come; and the sight of that yellow domino brought him a pulse-stirring mental image of the Golden Girl…
The Golden Girl, with her bright yellow hair and her mysterious, enigmatic blue eyes! Tate Shevlin’s heart pounded at the very thought of her. Once more, in imagination, he clasped her seductive young feminine body close to him, smelled the faint fragrance of her hair, felt the sweet firmness of her rounded breasts against his chest… He stared into the slanted almond eyes of the broad-shouldered Manchurian. “Who are you?” Shevlin demanded quietly.
“I am a messenger in the service of Chen Tsing Gat,” the Manchurian responded in flawless Mandarin dialect.
Tate Shevlin’s hand still rested upon the hard butt of his Webley. His voice was still cold with suspicion as he said, “What has that to do with me?”
The Manchurian smiled faintly. “You are Tate Shevlin,” he answered. “Months ago, you entered the service of a mysterious American woman known only as the Go
lden Girl. She, in turn, served an ancient Chinese whose name is Chen Tsing Gat.”
“Go on,” Tate Shevlin spoke brusquely.
“Chen Tsing Gat plans to overthrow the present corrupt government of Linchow Province,” the Manchurian continued his calm recital. “There were five famous jewels of fabulous value called the Claws of the Dragon. These jewels Chen Tsing Gat planned to sell in order to get money with which to equip a revolutionary army.”
Tate Shevlin said, “And then—?”
“And then Chen Tsing Gat’s enemies captured you and the Golden Girl. To rescue her, you were forced to part with the jeweled Claws. Since then, Tate Shevlin, you have succeeded in recovering four of those five lost jewels. And now you are on your way to a meeting-place, where you are to see the Golden Girl and lay plans for the recovery of the final Claw.” The Manchurian smiled. “I am Chen Tsing Gat’s messenger, assigned to the task of guiding you to the place where the Golden Girl awaits you.”
Satisfied at last, Tate Shevlin’s fist emerged empty from his coat pocket. He did not notice the glitter that leaped into the Manchurian’s hooded eyes. Instead, he said, “It is well. You have proven yourself to be what you claim. Now tell me where I am to meet the Golden Girl.”
The Manchurian shrugged. “Not yet,” he said slowly. “Not until you have satisfied me as to your identity, even as I have satisfied you as to mine.”
“What proof do you want?” Shevlin spoke with some surprise.
“Give me a glimpse of the four Claws which are in your possession. They alone can prove that you are the real Tate Shevlin.”
The American’s eyes narrowed; he felt a throbbing sense of impending danger leap into his chest. He stared at the Manchurian—and abruptly he knew that the man was an imposter, a spy. Because Tate Shevlin did not have the four Claws; they were in the possession of Chen Tsing Gat himself! And Chen Tsing Gat, having the Claws, would not have instructed his messenger to request them of Shevlin!
The soldier of fortune got slowly to his feet, braced himself against the swaying of the hurtling Limited. His steel-hard muscles tensed. “You’ve been lying to me, you dog!” he rasped. “You’re not Chen Tsing Gat’s emissary—”
The Spicy-Adventure Page 38
