Sword in Sheath (7 page)

Faced by the bustling activity of the harbor where the small native vessels were loading and discharging cargo, Sam hesitated, and Kane asked innocently, “Where do we begin now? If the fellow wants to hide — it'd take a
regular shore patrol to route him out here. And if everyone clams up about seeing him — where does that leave us?”

Sam scowled and plowed through the shore refuse toward a group of natives who were holding a conference above tide level. One of them turned to spit out a mouthful of scarlet betel juice and caught sight of the Nisei. He did not even hurry; it was as if he valued Sam too low to pay the American the respect of a hasty retreat. Instead he was almost lazy about rising to his feet and languid in his drift down shore, a drift in which his companions joined.

“See that?” Marusaki demanded. “This demon trader business must be hot — plenty hot — ”

“So one would begin to suspect,” Lorens agreed. “Or else it may just be that Hakroun has ceased to smile upon us and said so — publicly. Fortnight, can you ask questions without receiving the response accorded a leper?”

“I can try, sir, if you wish.”

Sam pulled at his lower lip and scowled sullenly but Kane nodded. So Fortnight left them and struck back towards the town. As he went his shoulders sagged, and he kept his eyes on the deep dust of the roadway. He was the picture of a man who had been refused a job. Kane watched the Samoan out of sight. Enemy or friend, Fortnight was good — but definitely good! Now he would probably go around telling about how he'd been turned down and tongues might loosen. Yeah, Fortnight knew all the tricks. But who
was
Fortnight?

“Good, isn't he?” he asked Sam.

“Too blamed good! You can't tell me he isn't an old hand at the game — ”

“To that fact I agree.” Lorens reached out for the cigarette Kane proffered, but his hand was not quite steady. When the Netherlander became aware of that tremor the hollows below his cheek bones flushed, and
he gripped the tube so that the tobacco sifted from torn paper.

“Old terrors die hard,” he commented with a little embarrassed laugh. “After the last few years I find I do not care for events or persons I cannot satisfactorily explain. Even the sound of shoe leather on stone — when he who wears it is a heavy walker — is apt to be upsetting — especially at night. You must excuse such folly — ”

“We have a few pet memories ourselves,” Kane interrupted. “Now I find sharpened bamboo canes very unattractive, and Sam has no great affection for large mottled branches in jungle trees — they might become live members of the reptile clan. But Fortnight — ”

“Cigaretten, Tuan?”

“Hello! You back?” The small beggar was there again, this time both dirty hands outstretched and a confident smile creasing his sticky face.

“Cigaretten?” He voiced his plea for the second time. And when Kane did not display the open-handedness of their first encounter, he added in a low voice, “Hij is — “ He stopped tantalizingly, watching the cigarettes.

“He is — Who is?” Kane dropped one cigarette into the dirty hand and drew another from the package.

“The trader — he is gone — ”

A second cigarette joined the first.

“Back to his demon place, Mijnheer Amerikaan. He was from the Forbidden Land — ”

“The Forbidden Land — but what — ?”

But the boy was quick. He grabbed the pack of cigarettes from Kane's fingers and was away, dodging with expert ease Sam's grab.

“The Forbidden Place.” Both Americans turned to Lorens for enlightenment.

“Might be anything — or nothing. The natives have given this trader a supernatural origin, that may be all. We can ask van Bleeker.”

“Something accomplished, something done.” Sam flipped the silver dollar. “Can we, I wonder, make that satisfying statement about this day's work?”

“We can try.” Kane jammed his hands into cigarette-empty pockets.

7

“ONE WITH LEMURIA AND ATLANTIS”

“The Forbidden Place, is it?” Van Bleeker smiled a bit loftily. “Man, that is one of the oldest of island legends. I am surprised that you, van Norreys, were taken in by it — you know something of the Indies.”

“Does any man know the Indies?” countered Lorens. “As for the Forbidden Place — that story I do not know.”

“It is one with Lemuria and Atlantis, a fabled island where a sultan or raja ruled in great peace and plenty, his people knowing neither harm nor want. In fact the men of the Forbidden Place were so satisfied with their lot that they were rumored to have the nasty habit of killing all outsiders who dared to invade their territory, since they had no wish for the sins of the world to enter their paradise.”

“Beneath some folk tales there is a core of hard fact,” remarked Sam. “What about the base of this one?”

“It is true that there were island kingdoms in the Indies before the coming of European explorers — look at the histories of the Princes of Bali and Java. Waves of
immigration from India flowed into these seas. And it might well be true that some half-savage northern raja set himself up in a pocket kingdom hereabouts — although we have found no remains of his glory. The jungle is a great swallower of the romantic past. This raja may even have protected his sovereignty for a generation by murder of all travelers. But at the best he must have flourished some five hundred years ago. So I don't believe your trader had dealings with him — ”

“Then you think that there's nothing in the story?”

“No,” van Bleeker answered Kane frankly. “But someone may have revived the tale to serve his own ends. I will admit that if Hakroun is busy in this matter there will be trouble.”

“We could discover nothing except that several praus have put to sea — the trader could have sailed on one of them.”

“It is my opinion, van Norreys, that your trader has vanished from the sight of men permanently. If, for any reason, he had the ill will of Hakroun, he undoubtedly disappeared. I don't like this affair — not one little bit do I like it!”

“Hakroun means trouble, eh?” Kane bit at a ragged quicknail on his thumb. Sam lounged at ease, smoothing the jacket he had just discarded. But Lorens hunched forward, turning the silver band around and around on his bony wrist.

“Hakroun always means trouble!” snapped the captain. “But if he goes against us he will not have a friendless Jap trader to deal with! If Hakroun has reestablished the kingdom of the Forbidden Place for his own use he may have invaders.”

“What do you suspect he's trying to hide?” Sam wanted to know.

“Something big, and yet something which can be
handled quickly, because he knows that now the war is over the trading companies and government control will be back. He can only play this game for a limited time — therefore his find is something from which he can skim the cream in a hurry. It is not a mine or oil — ”

“Which leaves what — ”

“Pearls.” Lorens dropped the single word into the discussion.

Van Bleeker's breath made a hissing sound through his half-bared teeth. There was a visible hunger in his weathered face. “Pearls!” he repeated, and his fingers crooked upon the table top as if reaching for the gleaming globes of frozen sea light. “Yes, that would certainly be it — pearls! A new fishery — untouched before maybe!”

“But could he work it secretly?” protested Kane. “He'd have to have divers and equipment and — ”

“He has the divers. Before the war he had shares in several pearling ships on the Australian Banks. And native divers need no more equipment than goggles, a good knife and a stone for weight. Yes, he could work it easily for a while. Of course, once the government patrol boats begin making their rounds again, his monopoly would be gone. But before that he could take out enough to make a fortune — another one — to hide away in his treasure chests. If the bed has never been fished before and is especially rich, he may make ten fortunes. Pearls are high now — the market has been starved through the war.”

“Yes, what is it?” the captain added impatiently a moment later as the steward looked in upon them.

“There is one who comes from the shore. He says that he has a message for the young American lords and that it is an important one.”

“Fortnight, I’ll bet! He's the Samoan we told you of, sir,” Kane explained. “All right to have him in here?”

“Certainly. Bring him here.”

It
was
Fortnight who came in. He now wore a shirt and carried a coat over his arm. In his hand was the peaked cap of a ship's officer, although it was marked with no insignia or braid. He greeted van Bleeker with a gesture which was close to a salute before he turned to the Americans.

“Well, what were you able to find out?”

“Much, sir,” he answered Kane. “This trader you seek was in Manado several days, but no man knows from whence he came — save that a ship of the Orang-laut, the sea gypsies, put in just at nightfall one day and sailed with the dawn on the next. While he was here no one traded with him, but he had one visitor who came late at night to his hut. There was a quarrel between the two. And after the visitor departed the trader was seen to crawl from his hut and bathe his face in water from the storage place of his neighbor.”

“And this visitor?”

“Was undoubtedly identified by the witness who told me this, sir. But his fear was greater than his greed — no offer of mine would bring the truth out of him. However in his struggle not to speak, he forgot to guard against telling other matters. He believed that something was taken from the trader by force, and that the man lingered on here after that in hopes of recovering it”

“The Nararatna!”

“You mean that necklace Hakroun showed you?” Kane asked Lorens.

The Netherlander nodded vigorously. “And I refused to buy,” he returned with a glance at the listening Samoan. “It might well be that. In certain quarters it would be worth thousands. It might also be used in blackmail. But if it was the Nararatna which was taken from him — where did he get it in the first place?”

“Let us not stray from the main course now,” van
Bleeker cut in. “So this trader lingered on, hoping to regain his property?”

“That is what the witness believed, sir. But after the Americans visited him this afternoon he disappeared. And of that disappearance I could learn nothing at all. It was as if all mention of his going was forbidden.”

“Could be at that,” Sam observed. “They have a way of clamming up on occasion over things which they believe are none of an outsider's affair. Any other bits of news?”

“ Only that in the past hour three men have been summoned to the house of Abdul Hakroun, and one of the three was the captain of the
Drinker of the Wind.
”

“Looks as if we've stirred up the anthill. We talk to a trader, and he promptly disappears. We go to visit an old gentleman, and as soon as we leave he sends for his ship's captain. If I were a suspicious man now — “ Kane laughed.

But van Bleeker's attention was all for Fortnight. “They tell me that you have a mate's papers — ”

From the breast pocket of the coat he was carrying the Samoan pulled a stout envelope from which he shook several folded papers. At the reading of the third one van Bleeker's eyebrows arose, and he laid it down, to study the tall man carefully.

“So you were one of Redfern's men?”

“I was, sir. He taught me all I know.”

“What became of Capt. Redfern?”

The Samoan's face did not change expression, but Kane saw his hands twist the edge of his coat.

“We were cruising north in the
Leopard.
Capt. Redfern had not used the radio for several days — he had had a touch of fever. There was a Japanese submarine in those waters, and she blew the bottom out of us before we even knew that war had been declared. That was on December 10,1941. We took to the boats — or rather to
the boat — there was only time to launch one before the
Leopard
went under. The Japanese machine-gunned us, and the captain — the captain was killed, sir. It was two weeks before we survivors were picked up by an American destroyer.

“Since then I have been on cargo ships wherever I could find a berth. Only I am a Samoan, and not all captains were like Michael Redfern — they do not trust a native as an officer — ”

“I have my full complement of officers,” van Bleeker pointed out.

“I know that, sir. Only I have been here in Manado for some time, and I want to ship out. I was an able seaman before I was Capt. Redfern's mate.”

“Very well. Tell Felder to sign you on. I can use a man with your knowledge of the islands.”

“Thank you, sir.” There was gratitude coloring his voice, but he lost none of his dignity. And he gave van Bleeker an officer's salute as he left the cabin.

“That may be one good thing we found in this port,” observed the captain of the
Sumba.

“How — ?” asked Kane.

“I have heard of Redfern and his methods. If this man is one of Redfern's boys — and his papers state that he is — he is worth two of most modern crews. Michael Redfern was one of the old hands in the island trade. They say that his father sailed out here in the days of the tea trade and never went home again. All the Redferns had the Indies in their blood; they weren't happy away from the coral seas. And Michael Redfern had a strong belief in the natives. In the days when most of the white men treated them like animals, and none too intelligent animals at that, Redfern had the habit of picking up island boys he liked the looks of and giving them educations — training them usually as seamen. He had very few failures, and some of the graduates of his school went on to
conquer new worlds. I know of at least two who did very well for themselves. One was in Hawaii before the war, running a sort of tourist bureau, booking cruises through islands off the main line of steamship travel. The other captained his own ship and owned two others in the copra trade. So the Japs got Redfern, did they? Well, there's always a berth on the
Sumba
for one of his boys.”

Overhead an orange-lemon moon held steady, and below streaks of cold fire stripped back from the
Sumba
’s
bow where the phosphorescence made fantastic patterns on the waves. Kane leaned both elbows on the rail and watched the curl of light lace out. All this talk of Hakroun — Granted that the man was a menace and a tricky one. But there was no doubt that van Bleeker had a few tricks up his jacket sleeve also. Then there was that dollar — R.S., 1944. And in 1944 Rodney Safield had disappeared over this same sea through which they were now cutting their way south.

Van Bleeker's Dutch temper had flared. There had been no trade in Manado — at least none for the master of the
Sumba.
So now they sailed for Besi in the Soelas to try their luck again. And from Besi only a prophet coud foresee where van Bleeker's stubbornness might take them.

“Hiding places” to the south — that Jap trader might have boiled over with a few more facts if they could have cornered him. Maybe Hakroun had something beside a new pearl fishery on his mind. Though Lorens still argued that that was enough to arouse the old shark into trying to keep intruders out of the southern waters. Who could be hiding out? Nazi sub crews? Hold out Japs? Native agitators waiting to descend on Java? There were a lot of fascinating possibilites —

“As Grant took Richmond!”

Kane's hands were suddenly vice-tight about the edge of the rail. There was a sweet taste behind his teeth,
along his neck the fine hairs prickled. But he did not turn to face the shadows from which that whisper had come. Instead he answered, steadily enough, “Lincoln freed the slaves.”

A good bit more than a year had passed since he had repeated those same words to identify himself to a jungle fighter who had been a collection of badly articulated bones sketchily covered with rags.

“Who are you?” he demanded of the night.

“A friend, Lt. Kane. I had my orders from Capt. Boone to contact you at the first opportunity. We decided that that old password would be my best introduction — ”

“Fortnight!” He was able to place that soft murmur now.

“Yes, sir. I have been in the United States’ service for some years — after all, I, too, was born on American soil. This is the first time I have been able to approach you when you were alone, lieutenant — ”

“You can drop the lieutenant stuff — I’m strictly unoffical now, Fortnight. So you're the contact Boone promised. We might have guessed. Do you have any messages for me?”

“I was about to ask you the same question, sir. There have been many rumors but no real news. Sailing on the
Sumba
was a very lucky thing for all of us — there have been no other ships southward bound for weeks. I have been trying to find one for two months and could not get space even in an outrigger — ”

Kane's eyes narrowed as he stared into the night. “That sounds as if someone doesn't want any visitors. Is it Hakroun?”

“I think so — yes. But why I cannot discover. He had no love for the Japanese, even though they did not trouble him while they held the Celebes. It is my thought that they were a little afraid of him. He has more power in these seas than your race understands, sir. Not only is
he the true descendant of the last great Moro sultan, but his wealth is unreckoned. What he wishes is law to many men. Yet I believe that Hakroun himself is uneasy now. During the past six weeks he has called in a hundred fighting men and is keeping them at his headquarters. The
Drinker of the Wind
has been armed and cases which could only contain ammunition were transferred to her one night last week.”

“ Sounds as if he were planning a private war. And you think that's our concern?”

“So much so, that when I reported the facts to Capt. Boone he ordered me to make contact with you, joining forces on the
Sumba.
Capt. van Bleeker must be persuaded to hunt out Hakroun's secret — it is of utmost importance. Capt. Boone believes that it may be the focus point of all the undefinable trouble in the Banda Sea.”