Sword in Sheath Page 3

  “Fair enough,” Kane agreed. “Then you will take us?”

  “Before the war the Sumba carried a few passengers at times. I have two extra cabins. One of them is yours, if you wish, since Capt Boone sent you to me. I have the pleasure of his acquaintance.”

  “Do you have any other passengers?” asked Sam.

  “One. A countryman of mine, who, before 1941, had extensive business interests in the Indies. And now, if you wish to embark on the Sumba, I would suggest that you get your gear aboard tonight We sail early in the morning.”

  “What is the passage charge?” Kane wanted to know.

  Van Bleeker shook his head. “Since you do not know as yet how far you will travel, I cannot say. Let us settle that when you leave the Sumba. Will that be satisfactory?”

  “Certainly. You sail very early?”

  “Yes. I would advise being aboard by midnight I trust you will find the Sumba a pleasant ship. Until we meet again, gentlemen.” He raised his glass in a half-toast as Kane and Marusaki got to their feet.

  But Sam was frowning as they walked out to the street. “Our worthy captain is not quite the simple soul he would have us believe him. And what about this other passenger — who or what is he?”

  “Boone steered us to the Sumba, and Dead-Eye knows his stuff. You think that there's something wrong with the set-up?”

  “A little too smooth. Van Bleeker is so obliging that one could almost believe our passage had been all arranged before we ever showed up.”

  “That may be Dead-Eye's little present to us.”

  “I certainly hope so. We'll be stuck on this tub a good long time, and lots of queer things could happen to us without any awkward questions being asked later.”

  “You don't trust van Bleeker?”

  “I don't know. He's sea-shipped cream. But I’d hate to be on the other side of any bargains he's making. Oh, blast! Maybe I'm just off my feed. Too much paper work in that oven this afternoon. Let's get our stuff and pull out of this swelter. There may be a breeze hanging around down on the bay.”

  When Kane opened the door of their room and felt about for the light cord he allowed himself a slightly annoyed comment.

  “You are off the beam. Forgetting to lock the door— ”

  “What d'you mean — forgetting to lock the door! I tried it, and it was tight enough when — ”

  “I think then” — the light snapped on, Kane's mouth became a thin line, his eyes burned green — “we've had a visitor. Pity he didn't stay to meet us. Untidy creature, wasn't he?”

  Sheets and pillows had been pulled from the bed and lay in a muddle on the floor. From the sides of both pillows feathers gushed through rents in the ticking. Their kit bags had been emptied by the simple method of turning them upsdie down upon the mattress of the denuded bed. After that the linings had been ripped from their interiors. There was not a lid left on any box, and Sam gave a soft, furious exclamation as he stooped to pick up a tube of shaving cream, the contents of which had been squeezed out across the front of a clean shirt.

  “Somebody wanted something and wanted it bad.” Kane started sorting through his maltreated wardrobe. “I wonder what they thought we were transporting — crown jewels?” He found a neat coil of tooth paste on one pajama leg and swore — hurling the flat tube across the room.

  “No hotel theif did all this,” began Sam.

  “Don't you suppose I've guessed that?” snapped Kane. “This guy — or guys — was hunting for something special. Only it would be kind of interesting to know what it was we are supposed to be carrying.”

  “They weren't after these anyway.” Sam picked two papers out of the general mess. “These are Boone's — ”

  “No. They must have thought we carried something from the States. See, that package over there — the one of tropical slacks we bought today? It isn't even open. This smacks of the good old days before the war was over — ”

  “What d'you mean — the good old days? Look at this room!”

  “Atom bomb number four. Well, let's shovel this mess into transportable shape and shove off. They've done their worst — ”

  “Have they? What if they are now convinced that we must be carrying this mytserious treasure on us — ?”

  “You always have the most charming ideas. Shall we ask Boone for an escort down to the Sumba?. After all it is to his advantage that we arrive on board in one piece and reasonably undamaged.”

  “Maybe we'd better not noise our shame aloud. But I do suggest that we look behind us now and then and avoid dark alleys. I’d like to get my hands on the fun merchant who did this!” Sam held up a pair of shorts patterned with a combination of ink and sun lotion. “Td feed him to Ironjaw for breakfast!”

  “Cloak and dagger boys — yeah!” Kane licked his fingers absentmindedly, then spat shaving cream in wry-mouthed disgust. “Brother, this was one time when we were caught off base!”

  3

  THE GENTLEMAN FROM ROTTERDAM

  “The Mijnheer will drink?”

  Kane opened his eyes upon a curiously unstable world. A brown-skinned, white-coated man stood by the bunk as steady as a mile post, balancing within easy reaching distance a tray on which stood a glass, its sides beaded with moisture. Through the open cabin door came a suggestion of breeze.

  Rubbing sleep-sanded eyes Kane hitched out of the lower bunk and leaned forward into the none too roomy center section where piles of luggage made an obstacle course of the small quarters. He accepted the glass and found that he was sipping iced water. After a long gulp he got to his feet and raised a hand to prod Sam into wakefulness.

  The hand remained poised in mid-air because Sam wasn't alone in the upper bunk to which the flip of a coin the night before had exiled him.

  Snug on the pillow beside the black head was a brown one, smaller and much neater. Thin slits of aquamarine eyes regarded Kane without much interest and a red tongue pointed contemptuously in his general direction as narrow jaws gaped wide in a yawn.

  “What the — !”

  Sam accepted that exclamation as his cue to roll over, roll over and face his bunkmate — apparently for the first time. His head jerked up and thumped against the ceiling. But his companion was already withdrawing gracefully. Brown legs and cream body and, last of all, a seal brown tail flowed away as the stowaway gained the top of a neighboring box, then the floor. Without so much as a glance the visitor slid out of the door and out of their sight Kane took the second glass from the tray and handed it to Sam.

  “Who's your friend?”

  “I wouldn't know.” Sam swung down from his perch, accepted the ice water and sat rubbing his forehead. “I’ll swear it wasn't there when I crawled in last night”

  “Do the mijnheeren wish anything?”

  The Malay steward still hovered by the door.

  “Where did that cat come from?”

  “It is the cat of the ship, mijnheeren. She does not make friends easily — ”

  Kane laughed. “So we would guess. What is your irresistible power over women, Sam?”

  “I have none that I know of. And that flea hotel better keep out of my bed in the future if it knows what is good for it!”

  “Breakfast in the officers’ mess in one hour, mijnheeren. Do you wish now your morning coffee?”

  “Sure. Only don't bring the lady back with you.”

  Kane set out his shaving kit “I think I'm going to enjoy this trip,” he observed.

  “Of course. Only next time the cat can sleep with you. Where did I put my toothbrush? Since our visitor back in Manila had his way with the baggage I can't find anything. Let's make it snappy. That suggestion about breakfast hit the spot — I wonder if we dare dream of ham and eggs — ”

  But even prodded by appetite they weren't the first to visit the wardroom that morning. Just at the door they almost collided with a stout little man well swathed in oily dungarees at least one size too large for him. A battered officer's cap covered only the back of a large head
where pinkish-sandy hair was as thick as a furry pelt He was picking his teeth and regarding both the Sumba and the morning with a benevolent and proprietary air.

  “ ‘Lo,” he greeted the Americans happily with an accent which was improbaby enough that of River Bend, Iowa. “Grand day, ain't it?”

  “Sure is,” Kane agreed.

  “You two from th’ States?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kinda nice t’ hear that Not that th’ Dutchies ain't good fellas — “ He was fully in earnest now. “Don't ever let any guy say they ain't I'd sign on with th’ old man if I knew it t’ be a fact he was bound straight fer Davy Jones’ boneyard! He's th’ goods, all right, all right But I ain't bin home in ten years now. An’ Statesides talk is good t’ listen t’. What's it like over there now?”

  “Well, different than before the war,” began Kane.

  “Maybe, maybe. Well, you can't have a clean boiler ‘less you chip it An’ we've jus’ had us a mighty big war, a mighty big one. Say, son, I didn't catch your names now — ”

  “I'm Lawrence Kane, and this is Sam Marusaki.”

  “Kane an’ Marusaki As I said before, I’m mighty glad to meet you boys.” He shook hands with a vigorous pump. “I’m Washington Bridger — my old man give me a mighty big name t’ live up t’. I’m chief o’ th’ Sumba. Bin in her ever since Capt van Bleeker had me fished out o’ th’ water after th’ battle fer th’ Straits. Was in th’ Carrie O., an’ she got one right in her middle — went down ’fore we knew what really hit us. But, land alive, she waren't a patch on th’ Sumba — so I got th’ best o’ that bargin. Bit o’ good luck longside th’ bad that time.

  “An’ now th’ old man is goin’ back t’ th’ island trade. Money in that jus’ waitin’ fer some guy t’ pick it up. But — here I am — keepin’ you boys from chow. Git in, git in, an’ tell Chung Wei if he don't treat you right, he'll hear from me — he certainly will!”

  Either the slap of that square hand or the breeze of that frog-voice blew them forward to face a row of chairs bolted to the floor before a long table. Seated at the head of the board was van Bleeker, with a stranger in open-collared shirt and slacks beside him.

  “Good morning, gentlemen, I trust you rested well. We are not a regular passenger ship so you must excuse any discomfort — ”

  Kane laughed. “I’ll be willing to bet that your brand of coffee isn't served aboard many passenger ships!”

  Van Bleeker relaxed a measure of his formality. “You recognize it?”

  “By name, no. But it’s been a long time since I’ve tasted its equal.”

  “Yes, it cannot be found many places. It is a very old blend, best known in the Indies. But I am forgetting manners. Please excuse my rudeness in not at once introducing fellow travelers. This is my good friend the Jonkheer Lorens van Norreys from Rotterdam. And here, van Norreys, you see Mr. Lawrence Kane and Mr. Sam Marusaki from the United States — ”

  But Kane was gaping in a sort of wild-eyed amazement at the tall and almost painfully thin young man who had risen politely to greet them. The American was vainly trying to trace in that face, where lines and hollow now made a sober mask, some resemblance to a photograph he had treasured for years. Only the eyes, blue-gray and very alive, and the waves of crisp, yellow hair were the same.

  “You're dead!” Kane blurted out

  The man from Rotterdam chuckled, and the cruel lines about his mouth were partly smoothed away by a smile of real amusement

  “And so, my dear friend, are you!”

  “But they said — After your letters stopped I tried to reach you through the Red Cross — “ persisted the American “I wrote for two years, and every letter came back.”

  “As did the two I sent you in the spring of ’45 when I was permitted to come to life again.”

  “The spring of ’45. But that was when we were on Operation Lincoln — a hush-hush job. Lord, Lorens, what has happened to you?”

  “I do not understand.” Van Bleeker looked from one to the other. “Can it be that you are already friends of long standing?”

  “Friends that never saw each other in the flesh before,” Lorens van Norreys explained. “Our friendship was a paper one, but nonetheless real for that We wrote regularly for several years before the war and were most ardent correspondents before I joined the Underground. After that it was much better for all to believe that Lorens van Norreys was truly dead — and so he was — very effectively, it now appears. It is indeed a strange trick of fortune which brings us two aboard the Sumba thus. Old Klaas would have said that it had been written so at our birth — ”

  “Klaas — that half-Malay follower of your grandfather — “ Kane remembered. “Is he with you now?”

  Van Norreys made a curious little gesture. “Klaas, like so many other worthy ones, is gone.”

  All the other questions which had been on Kane's tongue got no further. But Lorens smiled again.

  “Sit down,” he suggested, “and let me help you to some of this very excellent fruit We have days of voyaging before us in which to catch up on ancient history. But first — tell me what brings you to the Sumba — to my great good luck!”

  “A man hunt” Kane outlined the Safield story. “And now — what are you doing here?”

  “Nothing so romantic — merely trying to open again the House of Norreys. For three hundred years we have bought jewels in these islands to resell in the world. Now I am attempting to pick up the scattered pieces of what was once a flourishing business. Being the last of the Norreys line I must be buyer, designer, and perhaps goldsmith all in one. But that is how my ancestors started the House, and we can do it again!”

  “The last of the Norreys — but what of your cousin Piet — ”

  “Piet was a flyer — remember. And as a flyer he went to Arnhem. He did not return. Now it is left to me to prove that my grandfather's blood is not altogether lost in my veins. So I came here to the Indies to buy enough jewels to start work again. Maybe within a year or two you shall be able to see our mark on a ring or a necklace — if I am lucky.”

  “Jewel buying!” Sam repeated, regarding the young Netherlander with the same round-eyed wonder he would have shown had the other declared he was hunting for dragons.

  “Yes. Pearls, black coral, minor stones. Whatever has been overlooked by the looters during the past few years. I have designs here, ready and waiting” — he touched his forehead with the tip of an artist's finger — “but I need the raw materials with which to bring them to life. Some of my grandfather's agents are still in trade, and with a few of them the House of Norreys still possesses a favorable balance — which I am now attempting to collect. Not in the least an adventurous or exciting occupation, believe me.”

  “Mijnheer Captain!”

  The Eurasian second officer of the Sumba burst through the door and crowded past the tray-laden Chinese steward.

  “The hatch, Captain — ”

  “And what is the matter with the hatch?” But van Bleeker was already on his feet and moving.

  “It is bewitched, Captain!”

  “What? What foolishness are you bleating now, Felder?”

  “The truth only, sir. Come and see!”

  Not only the captain but his passengers too crossed decks and climbed down ladders to the large amidships hatch. Ringing it was a crowd of native seamen who were standing there silently, just staring at what Kane first thought to be a crooked billet of wood fastened in some way to the canvas cover of the hatch.

  Van Bleeker stopped short a foot or so away from the thing and squatted down to examine it closely. But he made no move to touch it. The seamen retreated as the others came up so that Kane was able to see that the object was really a crudely carved staff or cane which had been hacked from a misshapen sapling or a giant root. It was fastened to the hatch cover by a kind of net of fine black strands, the ends of which appeared to be glued to the coarse canvas.

  Kane reached out an exploring finger, but Lorens jerked at
his wrist

  “If you touch that,” the Netherlander warned, “no man aboard the Sumba will come near you again.”

  “But what in the world is it?” demanded the bewildered American “Looks like a cane to me.”

  “That is what it is — a cane, or rather a staff. Only it is a wizard's staff, the kind carried by a black magician. And who knows how many men's souls are imprisoned in it?” Lorens’ voice was as serious as his frowning face. “That net holding it is knotted of human hair, which means it is under a powerful spell. No one but a priest can release it — and he only after the proper ceremonies. I wonder who would dare to put it — ”

  Van Bleeker was on his feet again, turning slowly to study each face in the awed ring about the hatch. “That is just what I am asking now,” he interrupted. “Baka!” He singled out the man wearing the green turban of a Hadji. “From whence came this strange and devilish thing?”

  “Who knows, Tuan Captain? Ali did sight it when going on watch. It is evil, very evil — ”

  “Baka, answer me now by your faith — do we carry on board a Guru?”

  The man shivered at van Bleeker’s open reference to one of those mediums who have dealings — and mostly unclean dealings — with spirits.

  “Tuan Bezar!” His voice became a wail of open misery and fright “Tuan Bezar, we are your men, long have we followed where you led, you knowing all of us — our good deeds and our bad. There is no Guru amongst us. Some ghost or devil has done this thing.”

  Van Bleeker combed his hair with nervous fingers. “Very well. Now shall we who are not of your blood or prey to your ghosts cover this abomination without touching it And when we come into Jolo, you shall bring a priest to cleanse the Sumba. Hassan, you go to the cabin and get the cloth which lies upon the table there. We shall need also a hammer and nails.”

  Baka's relief was plain. “Tuan Bezar, those are the words of a wise man. It shall be done even as you have ordered.”

  With the help of Kane, Marasuki, and Lorens, van Bleeker stretched the large cotton square over the netted staff, all of them avoiding the contamination of direct contact with it Then the cloth was nailed down, and when the last nailhead was pounded flat Lorens pulled a pencil from his pocket and began to draw about the outer edge of the square a series of crosses.