Last Laugh, Mr. Moto

by John P. Marquand

  Then there were the bearings, the cleft in the hill, a tall rock on the northwest and the roof of the old planter’s house known as Westerly Hall.… That was about the way the nautical description went.

  “Tom,” he called, “get the engine going.” It would be safer to go in under power. Tom came aft very quickly and began to pull back the engine hatch and Bob Bolles asked him if he had everything clear. Tom nodded and started to speak.

  “Don’t talk,” Bob said. “Here, take this,” and he handed Tom the thousand-dollar bill. He had never realized before how fond he was of Tom and he was very anxious to have Tom entirely out of it.

  “Lord almighty—” Tom began.

  “Shut up,” Bob said, “and remember.”

  Tom was down by the engine, turning over the flywheel, when Bob knocked on the cabin door.

  “Good morning, Mr. Kingman,” he called. “We’re about five miles off Mercator.”

  Then a few minutes later everyone was up, and the sun rays broke out of the mist and everything seemed completely fresh and new. He could almost believe that the Kingmans had forgotten everything that had happened in the night. The thing to remember, Bob kept telling himself, was that Mr. Kingman had not the remotest idea of how much he knew or guessed. Mr. Kingman was dressed in a suit of brownish Nanking silk and he was wearing a khaki-colored pith helmet. The clothes made him look cool and competent, like an experienced traveler in the tropics. He was holding an expensive pair of binoculars and he smiled at Bob and called good morning to him and Mrs. Kingman smiled at him too. In her slacks and gay shirt, her sun glasses and her beach hat, she still looked like a picture in a travel folder for a Caribbean cruise. Even Oscar appeared to have forgotten the trouble of the night before. Although one side of his face was swollen, he grinned at Bob Bolles and raised his finger to his forehead. The engine gave a cough and started.

  “We’ll go in under power,” Bob said to Mr. Kingman. “If Oscar wouldn’t mind he might help take in the sails. There’s Westerly Bay opening up,” Bob said. “That’s where we’re going.”

  All of Mr. Kingman’s attention was given to examining the shore line.

  “I see nothing in the bay,” Mr. Kingman said, “except one small fishing boat pulled up on the beach. There can’t be many people there.”

  “That’s right,” Bob said. “I’ve always heard that Mercator is a very lonely island.”

  He could almost believe all over again that there was nothing peculiar about the Kingmans.

  “Why aren’t more people living here?” Mrs. Kingman asked. “It’s so green and such a lovely island.”

  “Twenty, sar,” Bob heard Tom call from the bow. He looked carefully at the streaky water ahead and put the helm a little to starboard.

  “I’ve read a little about the history of Mercator,” Mr. Kingman said, “if you want to hear it.”

  “Why, yes,” Mrs. Kingman said, “tell us, Mac.” And Mr. Kingman told them, while Bob Bolles watched the channel.

  “This group, the Winderly Group,” Mr. Kingman said, “used to be a stopping place for the buccaneers and pirates. It was very useful for them, because it was so remote, and then in about 1730 two English planters came here from Nevis. Nevis is quite a distance away. They could only rely on themselves for protection and they were burnt out twice by the French. They had to run up into the bush on the hill, but each time they came back, and finally, in about 1770, the island was owned by a planter named Swaith. He was a very able man and the story is that some member of the Swaith family who lives at Nevis now still owns the island—not that it does him any good. The story is that the family moved out for good fifty years ago. You see, there isn’t much money in sugar now.”

  “Swaith,” Mrs. Kingman said. “That’s a funny name.”

  “And I guess Swaith was a funny man,” Mr. Kingman said, “judging from that book of mine; but he knew how to run a little sugar island. He was rich and he got richer. The story is, when Mr. Swaith was doing well, that he had over a hundred Negro slaves. He brought artisans over from Nevis who built this house called Westerly Hall and a sugar mill and outbuildings. He cleared the level land by the foot of the hill. He built a dock and warehouses. He even had a small fort on the point. It was a self-contained community—one white planter’s family and a lot of slaves.”

  “What happened to him?” Mrs. Kingman asked.

  “It’s only another story,” Mr. Kingman answered, “of a plantation running down. He died and his son ran it. In 1800 there was an insurrection of the blacks. The Swaiths got away and for a while the island was a small black kingdom. Then there was some pestilence—the smallpox or the plague. Nearly the whole population died and most of those that were left went away. Since then no one has been near it much. The Negroes have never liked it. They’ve always been afraid of ghosts and now, I suppose, the jungle has come in, but if you look on the hill there you can see a building.”

  They were near enough by then so that everything was clear. It was a wild bit of land with a rich heavy growth of trees, and brownish cliffs near the water and a white beach bordering the bay with coconut palms near the white sand. There was a silver ribbon of stream falling over rocks near one end of the beach, with rich ferns and plantains growing near its edge, and perhaps a quarter of a mile from the shore were the gray walls and the gaping windows of the ruins of a square stone house, and on a promontory near it you could see the crumbling remains of what appeared to have been a tower.

  “There’s all that’s left of it,” Bob said. “That must be the Hall.”

  It stood there in a tangle of trees, lonely and bleak and sad, and somehow the sight of it gave the white beach and the quiet water a sinister watchful sort of silence. They were through the reef and in the bay now. You could see the palm trees and the tops of the great white-limbed candlewoods waving in the breeze. You could hear the sound of the breakers on the reef above the chugging of the engine.

  “What was the tower for?” Mrs. Kingman asked. “Why did they have a tower?”

  “It will be one of the old windmills,” Bob Bolles said, “for grinding the cane.”

  He dropped the wheel and reversed the engine.

  “Tom,” he called, “let her go.” There was no answer and he raised his voice.

  “Tom, where the devil are you?”

  Mr. Kingman turned his head from the shore.

  “He is not in the bow,” Mr. Kingman said.

  Bob Bolles shut off the engine.

  “He must be below,” he said. “I’ll fetch him,” and he ran toward the bow.

  “Tom,” he called, “Tom!” But he knew that Tom was gone. He let go the anchor himself and stood watching while it dropped to the clean sandy bottom. Then he looked down the forward hatch and called Tom’s name again.

  “The boy’s gone,” he said. “He must have swum ashore.”

  Mr. Kingman’s pale eyes met his, clear, searching and expressionless.

  “That is very funny,” he said. “Does your boy do that often?”

  “Of course not,” Bob answered. “He must be crazy, but I’ll get him back all right.”

  “Yet just why should he have done that?” Mr. Kingman said.

  Mr. Kingman stood gazing at Bob with a sort of gullible, wide-eyed innocence and Bob Bolles gazed back at him. That innocence of Mr. Kingman’s made Bob wonder whether he had been wrong about everything, until he saw Mr. Kingman’s eyes. In spite of Mr. Kingman’s bewildered, inefficient expression his eyes were thoughtful and steady. They were the sort of eyes which one associates with a clever and active man and not with a comfortable and tired businessman from New York. While Mr. Kingman waited Bob Bolles tried to make his own face look half puzzled and half irritated. He was doing his best to conceal a sharp elation and he hoped that Mr. Kingman had not seen it, for he understood now that Tom was going to do his best. There was a chance, certainly a chance that Tom would get the Thistlewood away, and if Tom did, there would have to be a showdown.

 
; “Never mind about that boy,” Bob said. “I told you last night that something was the matter with him. If you want to know the truth, that boy is scared to death.”

  “Scared?” said Mr. Kingman. “Of what?”

  Bob Bolles smiled. He was doing better than he thought he could.

  “Tom heard the trouble last night,” he said. “He had some fool idea that it wasn’t safe for him here. He told me we’d get killed if we stayed aboard.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Kingman said, and he laughed. “Let’s forget it then. But—but I hope you don’t feel that way, Bob.”

  And Bob Bolles found himself laughing back.

  “I don’t,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  “That’s—that’s bully,” Mr. Kingman said. “We’re just all one family going ashore for a good time. It’s all hunky-dory. Let’s get out the little boat. We’ll take some food. We may want lunch and, Oscar, let me have my rifle. There might be some—some monkeys in those trees.”

  Oscar pulled the dinghy alongside and held it while Mr. Kingman climbed in.

  “Give Helen a hand, Bob,” he said. “Now, my dear …” Bob Bolles looked at the supplies in the cockpit.

  “You’ll have to make two trips,” he said. “Let Oscar take some of the dunnage with you. I’ll wait till he comes back.” Mr. Kingman glanced at him sideways with his rifle cradled in the crook of his arm.

  “No, no. You come with us, Bob. Oscar can make a second trip.” Then Mr. Kingman laughed as though he had thought of something bizarre and very amusing. “We don’t want you to get frightened too, Bob, and take the boat away. That would put us in a—a pickle, wouldn’t it?”

  Bob climbed into the bow of the dinghy. Mr. Kingman possessed a peculiar sort of gaiety—a joie de vivre—that was friendly and appealing; and Bob could not help laughing too.

  “I like it,” he said. “I don’t want to run away.”

  Oscar took the oars and the dinghy moved steadily toward the beach, propelled by Oscar’s short hard strokes.

  CHAPTER IX

  “It looks very lonely,” Bob heard Mr. Kingman say. “I see no one.”

  It was true. The little half-moon of the beach gave an appearance of complete desertion. The waters of the bay were so still and clear that you could look down and see the fantastic growths of coral and the sea anemones waving their long fingers tirelessly and languidly. Little yellow fishes with black stripes and ruby-red fish were darting back and forth in the shadows of the coral.

  “Oh,” he heard Mrs. Kingman say, “it’s like a glass-bottomed boat!”

  Ahead of them the white strip of sand shimmered dazzlingly and behind the beach beneath the coconut palms was a dark green shady tangle of trees and shrubs and vines and it was all so quiet that you could hear the chatter of parrots in the trees. If the land by the beach had ever been cleared the jungle had crept back over it many years ago. If there had been a factory and warehouses from the old sugar days the walls would be half buried under vegetation. Bob Bolles could see some signs of vanished industry as they neared the beach, enough so that he could trace the plan of the old plantation days. Ahead of them was a crumbling pier of coral stone, reduced by the storms and neglect into a mass of rubble, with the end disappearing into the water. He glanced back to Mr. Kingman sitting in the stern.

  “You’ll scrape the bottom off if you land there,” he said. “The beach is easier.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Kingman said, “the beach is easier. I see that little fishing boat, but I see no one. It’s lonely as—as hell.”

  Back from the pier, you could still see an open way through the trees that would have been a wagon road, winding up to the walls and gaping windows of the owner’s house on rising ground, perhaps half a mile distant. On the beach near the pier was a small open boat canted on its side and farther back were two huts made of palm leaves.

  “There must be people,” Bob Bolles heard Mrs. Kingman say. “Why don’t they come to meet us?”

  Bob turned his head again. Mr. and Mrs. Kingman were seated in the stern. Mr. Kingman held his rifle across his knees, his right hand over the trigger guard. He was looking very intently at the thatched huts and at the dark undergrowth beyond them.

  “You can’t tell how people will act—the natives here are all Negroes,” Bob said. “They’ve run into the bush, hiding.”

  “Afraid, are they?” Mr. Kingman asked.

  Bob Bolles shook his head.

  “Not afraid, just shy. They’ll be watching us.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Kingman, “it is very lonely.”

  The beach gave you exactly the feeling that comes with any abandoned place where life has once been rich and active. Bob Bolles began to wonder how much of the level upland had been under cultivation and where the warehouses would be and the stables and the mill and the overseer’s house and the old slave quarters. They seemed to be all gone, except for that half-wrecked and lonely pier and for the crumbling tower of the windmill and the gaunt and stricken walls of the manor house, but at the same time there was an indefinable sense of where they were, the same sense you might have of a presence in a room when someone has just left it. The memory was still there, not unpleasant, of vanished people and vanished voices. It was as though time had stopped.

  Oscar gave a last tug to the oars and the dinghy moved silently toward the beach. For a second before the bow grated on the soft coral sand Bob was keenly aware of the sweetish, musky smell of the tropical vegetation and of the land smells mixing with the soft breeze off the water. He could hear the notes of birds in the woods, harsh and discordant, and the slatting sound of the palms and the soft rustling of the candlewoods behind them. He could hear the sound of a small fresh-water stream pouring over the rocks. No one spoke. They must have all been listening and perhaps they had the same sense he had, that everything was watching and waiting. Then there was a faint shock and a hissing sound as the bow of the dinghy struck the sand. Bob stepped into the water and seized hold of the bow. Oscar splashed into the water too and, without speaking, both of them pulled the dinghy to the dry sand of the beach. Mr. Kingman, looking ahead of him at the shore line, stepped out quickly, still cradling his rifle in the crook of his arm, took a few quick strides across the sand and stopped, looking at the trees. He reminded Bob Bolles of a quail hunter waiting for the birds to rise, but nothing stirred. Bob offered his hand to Mrs. Kingman and she stepped ashore too.

  “Oh,” she said, “what a beach! See the little shells,” and she knelt down to look at them, dozens of shiny brown cowry shells with white spots and spidery snail shells and orange clamshells.

  “Never mind them now, my dear,” Mr. Kingman said. “It seems that no one’s here. We have it to ourselves.”

  “Oh, people are here all right,” Bob answered. “Look at the path down from the huts. There’ll be at least two families living there.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Kingman, “let us go and see,” and he began walking toward the palm-leaf huts near the pier and Mrs. Kingman followed him and Bob walked behind her and Oscar came last. The huts were in a cleared space under the palms right on the edge of the old road whose remains Bob Bolles had seen from the water, and behind them, smothered by vines, he could see the ruins of a low coral stone building. The roof had fallen in long ago and it was almost obliterated by vegetation.

  “One of the old warehouses,” Bob said, and then he pointed. “There’s a fire burning. There was someone here this morning.” Mr. Kingman had seen it too—the smoldering remains of a cooking fire in a little circle of stones in front of one of the huts.

  “Hello,” Mr. Kingman called. There was no answer. “Hello!” he called again.

  There was no answer, but suddenly Mr. Kingman took a quick step forward. He was staring at the side wall of one of the huts.

  “By—by Jove, Helen,” he said, “look at that, will you! Look!”

  Mrs. Kingman looked and Bob Bolles looked too. The front wall of the hut was thatched with the leaves of the coconut palm,
but the side wall and the rear wall were constructed from the wood still fresh of a packing case, heavy plywood, roughly sawed and roughly nailed to the framework. Bob could even see the remains of stenciling, and the word FRANCE had been painted on the wood with a black brush.

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Kingman, “why—”

  Mr. Kingman gave a low, excited laugh.

  “I think it’s here, my dear,” he said. “Yes, I think our troubles are nearly over. By Jove, look! There’s the name Aquitane on it!”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Kingman, “it’s the packing case.”

  “You see what it means,” Mr. Kingman said. “They broke it out right here on the beach. They carried it farther ashore. It’s here. You’ve led us to it, my dear!”

  Bob Bolles could see what he meant. There was no doubt about the plywood and the writing that now formed the side of that native hut, and everything that he had thought was coming closer together. That plywood had once formed the side of a packing case, such as was used for shipping an airplane. He had seen natives use those packing cases in other parts of the world. Anyone could read its story. The Aquitane, the French ship which had interested Captain Burke, had anchored off the reef of Mercator Island. A plane had been taken from her and had been placed on shore. The plane had either been uncrated on deck and a part of the crate had drifted in, or it had been uncrated on the beach.

  “Well, this fixes it,” Mr. Kingman said. “It’s stowed away somewhere,” and he laughed again, a happy laugh of complete relief.

  “Now,” he said, “this is certainly my luck. If it’s here, naturally we’ll find it. The main thing is to—to keep our shirts on, isn’t it?” He turned to Mrs. Kingman, still smiling. “We’ve beaten the Japs, my dear. It will simply be a pleasant walk and a picnic in the country. Oscar can go back and get us a few provisions.” He looked up at the palm trees and up toward the house on the hill. “Oscar, you might go back to the boat and get the food and the other rifle, although I can see no trouble.”