E. Hoffmann Price's War and Western Action

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Agata?” echoed Slade. “But what’s her real name?”

  “Named after my stepmother: Agata Moreno Dwyer.”

  That simplified it.

  “Anyway,” resumed Dwyer, “I went out to Chow Kit’s place to check up on Agata’s hazardous game, and when I saw you two—”

  “Rupert, you idiot!” interposed Agata, “you didn’t see a thing! As if I couldn’t take care of myself!”

  “Listen, Dwyer,” intervened Slade, “honest to God, I didn’t mean a thing—and anyway, it was in the line of duty, getting evidence.”

  Dwyer snorted, and Agata’s Spanish eyes glowed in fond reminiscence. Slade changed the subject to ammunition.

  “Chow Kit was so busy with you, there in Agata’s shack,” resumed Dwyer, “that he overlooked me. And when I recovered from that crack on the bean, she was gone, and I checked up.

  “That card of admission you took from my wallet was one the sergeant had dropped. That gave me a hunch as to his connections. I’d suspected him for some time anyway. And in trailing Agata, we tangled up with him, all beaten up, and hell bent for the warehouse.

  “He explained plenty when I bluffed him about no honest enlisted man being able to hang out at the Nomura-ro. So don’t bother trying to open the other bronze Buddha. That crook had ar­ranged to have a tunnel dug to open into the warehouse, so he could load the whole works on a barge, in spite of the doubled sentries we’d posted about the place. That was the big raid—the earlier thefts were just petty larceny in comparison.”

  And then Slade remembered that Shigashi San’s saki jug had given his chance to hang on until the M.P.s arrived.

  “Sorry about that plantation,” he said, “but I’ll buy up your contract.”

  “Death has canceled it,” she answered, gesturing toward Chow Kit’s body.

  Slade dug out his wallet and handed the oiran the contents.

  “Anyway, here’s a ticket home.”

  Shigashi San had not missed the glow in Agata’s dark eyes, and the glances she and Slade had exchanged. She ac­cepted the present, then, utterly ignor­ing Slade, she turned to Agata to bow and say: “Oiran maido arigato!—Thank you, madam, for your constant favors.”

  Shigashi San, now a free woman, used Japanese courtesy as a harpoon; but only Slade caught the point.

  “What did she say?” wondered Agata, sensing her mockery.

  “She said,” Slade falsified, “that you’re a damn lucky girl to get a chance to carry on where we left off, in that nipa shack.”

  FOOL’S EPITAPH

  Originally appeared in Short Stories, February 10, 1947.

  CHAPTER I

  The coffin-shaped face, the straight mouth, and Mr. Bowley’s years on the Northwest Frontier, where ideas have to be few, simple, and strong, had prepared Slade for a wrangle. Mr. Bowley, however, outdid himself by saying, as soon as Slade had given reasons for not being in uniform, “Get Captain Kellam out of Peshawar, and his men with him, the entire detachment. We’re afraid of incidents.”

  “Hmmm—incidents. Such as?”

  “Purely by the grace of God and our own small efforts,” the gray-haired commissioner elaborated, “none of Kellam’s men has been murdered for such tricks as herding pigs into mosques, assaulting policemen, and accosting the women of Moslem dignitaries. Or did your superior tell you it was merely a matter of curbing boyish pranks?”

  “The chief told me there was a problem. I’m here to handle it, instead of agreeing with you that nothing can be done.”

  “I’ve given you a neat solution, Major Slade. Recommend to your superior that the entire detachment be transferred. We have riots enough as it is, between Hindus and Moslems, without having your military cause trouble. With the natives still quite unable to see a bit of difference between the British and you American chaps, that detachment reflects on us—right when we are having troubles of our own! Get them out.

  “Your recommendation can do it. If you didn’t have your superior’s entire confidence, he’d not’ve sent you here.”

  This last was all too close to the truth for Slade’s comfort. He protested, “I can’t recommend anything of the sort. Once I get Captain Kellam straightened out, he’ll get his men in line. Relieving the entire detachment would give ideas to all the others who are crying to go home.”

  Bowley fingered his chin. “To be sure, to be sure, that’d create a precedent, an unfortunate one,” he admitted, grudgingly. “Unfortunate for your service. What I mean is, this is for you to solve at your expense, not ours!”

  “I can’t condemn without having seen, and I don’t intend to. My duty is to get the facts, and that’s what I propose to do, with your help, or without it.”

  “I can simplify matters,” Bowley said. There was a gleam in his eyes, a gleam which revealed more humor than Slade relished. “Since you insist on your own way, you’ll have to assume full responsibility. I’ll withdraw the undercover nursemaids who’ve kept things from getting entirely out of hand. No more police protection, no paying of indemnities to soothe ruffled natives. I’ll declare open season, and let nature take its course. How’d you like that?”

  “If that’s the way you want to cooperate, I’ll play it that way, sir!”

  Having accepted the challenge, Slade got up and took his hat.

  The commissioner said, affably, “Any time you change your mind, look in and tell me. Pleasure to have met you. Come in again.”

  * * * *

  Slade left, and without slamming the door. While he would hardly blame the commissioner, he resented the idea of summarily having Captain Steve Kellam relieved and probably dismissed for gross incompetence when there was nothing wrong with the man except that, not being a career soldier, his morale had buckled the moment the shooting was over.

  Kellam had done well in Africa, only to go to the devil once he’d been shipped to Peshawar to take charge of a supply depot set up in anticipation of a need which had never materialized. Unable to accept uselessness as one of the by-products of an attempt to forestall the most remote emergencies, Kellam had sulked, with his outfit following his example. Like their captain, they wanted to go home, and expressed their craving by swilling arrack, and by brawling.

  All wrong; but give the man a chance to get himself and his men straightened out instead of condemning him out of hand. So Slade turned his back on Mr. Bowley, to do things his own way, and at his own risk.

  And Slade set to work that very evening. He wasn’t handsome to begin with, having a large nose, and a face apparently assembled of spare parts which hadn’t been precision fitted. Squinting into the tarnished mirror gave him a ferocious aspect. A hot wind, heavy with hashish reek and the garbage stench of Peshawar, made the sickly flame of two tapers waver, so that the angles of his face cast deceptive shadows; “Allah curse the wind, Allah curse its religion!” he growled in the guttural Kurdish which he’d learned in the oil fields of Iraq, before the war. He cocked his head, to get a fresh start on darkening his eyelids with collyrium; and as the job progressed; he cursed Allah, and with fine impartiality, Satan also. Being a thorough man, Slade included Peshawar town, and especially the Pathans who insisted on painted eyelids.

  In the corner of the tiny room squatted a white bearded man whose belt bristled with daggers, and whose deeply lined face contained evidence of all qualities except pity, benevolence, and candor. As he stirred the aromatic mixture in a wooden bowl and added ingredients, he watched Slade’s progress, and found it good.

  When Slade had finished his cosmetic task, he smoothed out his gold laced vest, and patted his gold fringed turban.

  “Now the roses!” he grumbled. “And Satan fly away with all men who wear roses behind the ears!”

  The old man grinned, being a Pathan himself. He got up and offered Slade the bowl, which was dirty from many campfires.

  “What’s this?”<
br />
  “Post. To make your breath smell like a Pathan gentleman’s.”

  “Post?” Slade’s nose crinkled. “Isn’t being doused with attar of roses bad enough?”

  “Very good, drink it, your Excellency.”

  Slade scooped the bowl from the other’s fingers. He drained it so quickly that the pause at his lips was no longer than an eye-wink. He choked, coughed, and demanded, “What’re you trying to do, poison me?”

  “Friend of Allah—”

  “Being anyone’s friend is a fool notion! What is post?”

  “Verily, your Excellency, post is a drink.”

  Strong white teeth gnashed audibly. “Listen, Shir Dil,” Slade said, very slowly. “I know it is a drink. Allah and my guts bear witness to that. What I want to know is this—suppose I wanted another drink, what’d I put into the bowl?”

  Shir Dil stroked his beard and said, impressively, “I, thy friend, and the least of the slaves, I would mix it for thee. With my own hands!”

  Slade, praying for patience, achieved it. “Shir Dil, thou Lion Hearted friend,” he said, making a play on the old man’s name. “Thou block-headed friend, thou dung-brained friend, if I, thy friend, were to mix thee a bowl of post, what should I put into the bowl?”

  “Verily, there are several ways.”

  “There always are!” Slade raised his voice till it was somewhat like thunder in the Khyber Pass. “But one way is enough, one way is always enough for anything, O Friend! One way of settling that fool of a Kellam is enough.”

  “A certain amount of arrack, some cardamoms, some rose water, some opium,” Shir Dil enumerated. “And a little sugar, and some milk.”

  “Sure there weren’t any crankcase draining or high-octane?” Slade demanded in English.

  “No, by God! Only palm brandy and opium and—”

  “Skip the rest, I won’t be mixing any tonight.”

  “It is good when you get used to it,” Shir Dil declared. “Captain Kellam drinks it all the time.”

  “I’d not be surprised. But how do you know? We just got here a couple of hours ago.”

  Shir Dil regarded Kim with condescension. “It started when I went to buy those magnificent clothes. But it was in the coopersmith’s bazaar where I heard of Captain Kellam, verily, the father and the grandfather of fools! He has a house in the Dabgari Quarters.”

  “In the which?”

  “The Dabgari Quarters.”

  This was an unusual spot for an American officer to live when not on duty. Slade groaned and demanded, “You mean to tell me he’s living in a house of ill fame?”

  “Oh, no, your Excellency! Not in one. Just close to maybe three-four. Where he spends his time is in the home of Yasmini—” Shir Dil bunched his fingertips, kissed them, rolled his eyes so that craft and evil and greed gleamed in them more than ever. “A Kashmiri lady, very beautiful.”

  “You saw her?”

  “No, but everyone knows her.”

  Slade frowned, and groped, “Trust—trust a Kashmiri—”

  Shir Dil quoted, “Trust a snake, and then a Kashmiri—”

  Slade got up, dusted his baggy pants, hitched his belt, and adjusted his silver hafted dagger. He pulled down his vest, scowled as he fingered the roses behind his ears. The peak of the felt cap about which his ponderous turban was wrapped grazed the smoke-stained ceiling. “Best we can do for Kellam,” he observed, sourly, “is to kill the poor devil before he gets into trouble.”

  Shir Dil, chuckling appreciatively, said in English, “Captain Kellam is a skillet-headed, dim-wit and a chump.”

  Slade regarded the old man with envy. “I wish I could talk Pushtu the way you do Americanese.”

  “Keep your shirt on, pal. You’re not bad, and these jerks in Peshawar will say you make mistakes like a Kurd, so no one knows you are an infidel.”

  “And, everyone’ll live happy ever after, if I get away with it.”

  “Like in the cinema,” Shir Dil remarked. “And there is a new American woman, a new one, I tell you, at McLean’s hotel. Very beautiful!”

  “Malish!” was what Slade said, to cut short the eye-rolling and the leer wasted on the dirty walls. “Let’s find the captain.”

  “In the name of Allah,” Shir Dil exclaimed, piously, and led the way into the courtyard of the caravanserai, which was crowded with camels and donkeys, with bales of rugs from Boukhara, with stinking bundles of sheepskins, and with bags of dried apricots from Kandahar. Bearded men squatted about fires of burning dung, over which they cooked rice. Others baked bread on heated rocks. None of them gave Slade a second look as he went with his guide to find out what made Captain Kellam tick.

  CHAPTER II

  There was music in Peshawar that night: querulous flutes, and the wail of bagpipes. Hillmen droned through their beaked noses the stanzas of border ballads whose theme was looting, ambush, and feuds; homely tales of the untired Pathan businessman’s daily life, except when spring ploughing kept him busy. Already, Slade realized that impersonating a Pathan would be even more strenuous than learning Pushtu, which those wild men spoke.

  Shir Dil nudged him into a narrow and odorous alley. From there they slipped through a doorway so low that both had to stoop.

  “This way, there be stairs, only a few treads are missing,” the old man whispered. “Then to the roof—Allah willing, it won’t cave in.”

  Allah was willing, for presently, the two crouched in the shadow of the parapet which guarded the flat roof. Lights winked behind the lattice-work of windows overhanging the street. On further roofs, charcoal laid on the tobacco of bubble-pipes glowed and subsided, giving momentary glimpses of turbans, and the gilt embroidery of vests.

  “Now the wall, and then Yasmini’s roof,” Shir Dil directed, as he dropped cat-like, landing on all fours.

  Slade, not quite as agile, had the breath knocked out of him, though he stayed on the wall. After a moment of crawling, he crouched, balanced himself, and sprang straight up after Shir Dil, to catch the parapet of Yasmini’s roof.

  The attempt had been timed so that the moon would be at precisely the height required for concealing shadows; but then, had Shir Dil not been an accomplished horse thief before wandering to Iraq to work in the oil fields, he’d not lived long enough for his beard to whiten.

  The two looked down into the small court in the center of Yasmini’s house. Moonlight gave a clear view of jeweled lady, and a man in civilian clothes. They sat in a tiny garden. Moonlight reflected from white stucco and softened the shadows. Yasmini’s guest was Captain Kellam; and Slade wondered, as he watched his old friend, whether Mr. Bowley’s shortcut might not, after all, be the sensible thing.

  But he told himself, stubbornly, “Poor guy doesn’t realize what he’s got himself into, hanging around this part of town, with a wench like that! And drunk as a hoot-owl.”

  “Somebody’s been following me,” Kellam complained, thickly, “ever since I stowed that baggage of yours in the supply depot warehouse.” He caught her arm, but nearly pulled himself off balance; bracelets jingled; “I want the truth of it, has some money lender got a claim on your things?”

  Yasmini laughed softly, whimsically, as though humoring a peevish child. “Don’t be silly, darling! Who’d be following you?”

  She lifted a bottle from a pail of ice, refilled the hollow stem glasses, and laced the champagne with brandy. “You’re homesick, impatient,” she went on, as she handed him a “Royal Peg.”

  “Always impatient! Suppose your government has forgotten all about you and that depot of supplies that nobody wants?”

  Silk rippled and shimmered as she gestured to dispose of his qualms. Kellam coughed, swayed a little, spilled some wine. “Here’s to nothing! Here’s to amnesia!”

  Yasmini’s laughter tinkled. “Oh, but then you’d forget who I am, if you forgot who you are.”r />
  She picked the sitar from the carpet spread on the tiles and plucked a few notes. Kellam got up. The music stopped. “You’re going to move that stuff,” he told Yasmini. “I’ll move it right back here. I’m sick of mystery and hedging and fooling around.”

  “But I’ll be robbed,” Yasmini protested. “Nobody’d dare break into your depot, it’s guarded by barbed-wire and machine-guns.” She got up, and caught him by the shoulders. “Every time there’s rioting, a few houses are looted. Surely you can help me protect my few valuables. Even if someone remembered you and sent an officer to inspect the depot, you could always say the things are yours—in a way, they are, aren’t they, being mine?”

  “I’ve been trailed,” he repeated. “And a couple times, someone’s tried to cut the barbed-wire.”

  “Pathans are born thieves.”

  “They didn’t pay any attention to the depot till I took your things out there,” he declared, stubbornly.

  “Oh, you’re afraid?” she taunted.

  Because of her move, Slade got a better view of Yasmini, and saw that Shir Dil had not been misled by the rumors of her loveliness. Her low forehead, and small, almost straight nose, her chin and throat were exquisite in profile as she looked up to mock the drunken captain. A velvet hood all agleam with jewels set off the shapeliness and fine carriage of her head. Her skirt, very full, and striped in light and dark, swelled and billowed and then clung to her legs when a breath of breeze made the jasmines rustle.

  But she was too clever to wait for the jibe to register. His face had scarcely twisted in wrath when she went on, “Of course you’re not, you’re just impatient.” Then, catching him by the shoulders, Yasmini pleaded, “Do be patient, Steve, you’ll be transferred before long, and then we’ll both leave this terrible town, oh, how I hate Peshawar! I’d’ve left long before now, but I can’t, I won’t go till you can leave.”