West from Singapore (Ss) (1987) (14 page)

And where did Albran fit in? The Dutch resident was a recent appointee, although he had been in the islands for some time, despite frequent trips back to the Netherlands.

Yet, somehow, Jim couldn't believe that he didn't know more than he had any right to know. How had he happened on the scene so soon? And where had Doc Fife come from?

Who was the man with him? And who was the man who had passed Jim in the darkness?

He was glad when he got back to the shore and could use his flashlight to signal the nightwatch on the Semiramis.

Yet when he turned in he was no closer to a solution....

Ponga Jim awakened to a banging on his door. Then he heard Slug Brophy, his chief mate, roar:

"Skipper! Wake up, will you? A couple of Dutch coppers out here want to put the pinch on you. Shall I drop the anchor on em?"

Jim sat up on his bunk. "Let them come aboard," he said finally. "I'll see them in the salon. And tell Li I want some breakfast. "

Karl Albran, his lean face dark and ugly, was waiting in the salon when Ponga Jim came out. With him was Doc Fife and another man whom Jim recognized instantly without giving any indication of it. A fourth man came in a moment later, and Jim's eyes narrowed slightly before he smiled. Essen, he thought.

He sat down. "Don't mind if I eat, do you? Nothing like a few ham and eggs to set a man up."

"I suppose you know," Albran said icily, "what you can get for resisting an officer?"

Jim chuckled. "Sure, but I also know what I could get walking down a trail ahead of a man who wanted me dead, too. And I don't want any."

"Are you insinuating that I-"

Jim nodded. "You're darned right I am." He took a mouthful of ham and eggs. "I'm not playing poker this time, Albran," he said. "That walk down the mountain last night in the wet didn't suit me a little bit. I don't know what this racket is all about, but your part of it smells."

"Why, you-" Albran's face turned crimson with anger. "I'll-" "No, you won't," Jim said quietly. "If you tried it I'd slap your jaws off. And even if you wanted to use the law, you can't use it on my ship. I've got a crew here, mister, a tough crew.

So don't get any fancy ideas."

"I think," Fife said, interrupting, "that Mr. Bonner and I"-(so Colonel Sutherland of the British Intelligence was now Mr. Bonner, Jim thought)-"have convinced Mr.

Albran that it is highly improbable that you would kill a man who had been your friend, and without reason. However, there must be an investigation, and Mr. Bonner here, who has had some business connections with Benton Frazer, is anxious the case be cleared up. We thought you might help us."

Jim shrugged and then told them of receiving a message from Frazer and of what followed. He told it casually, carelessly, eating all the while.

"How about the message?" Bonner asked. "Did that give you any information?"

Jim reached into his coat pocket and tossed it on the table. It read:

COME AT ONCE. SOMETHING RIGHT DOWN YOUR ALLEY. TELL NO ONE. IMPORTANT YOU ARRIVE

BEFORE THE FIFTH.

FRAZER.

"You have no idea what he wanted?" Fife asked. "Had he said anything previously that would be a clue?"

"Listen," Jim said. "I hadn't seen Frazer or heard from him in ten years. We worked some together but we were never what you'd call friends."

"I'm sorry about last night," Albran said suddenly. "If I'd thought, I'd have realized the truth. A few days ago Frazer discharged a Papuan, a former headhunter. Obviously, he killed him for revenge and then fled to New Guinea with the head." Ponga Jim chuckled.

"No soap, pal."

"What do you mean?" Essen said. "Is it not obvious if the head is gone that a headhunter must take it? Who else had use for heads?"

Jim chuckled. "Whoever killed Kim didn't know I was going to come along so conveniently and be accused. He wanted Frazer out of the way, because Frazer knew something. But he didn't want any investigation or questions asked. So he took the head, thinking it would be passed off as a headhunter's job. "

"Why couldn't it be?" Bonner asked.

"Simply because," Jim said drily, "headhunters do everything according to habit and custom. The removal of a victim's head follows a set pattern. Papuans always do it in the same manner, and rather neatly. Our friend who knocked off Kim just hacked off the head, not knowing his Papuan customs. As I

R E said," Jim looked up, grinning at Essen, "the guy who figured that one out was a dumb cluck with a head like a cabbage." "Then you believe Frazer, or rather, Rinehart, was killed by a white man?" Fife asked thoughtfully.

Ponga Jim nodded. "I sure do. Furthermore," he added, "Frazer is still around somewhere, still ready to tell what he knows. Find him and you'll blow the lid off more than Kim Rinehart's murder. And when you begin to get suspects, ask them one question."

"What?" Albran demanded.

"Ask them: `What do you know about the Well of the Unholy Light?'!"

Silence gripped the salon, and Jim saw Fife watching Essen. The man's face was set and stiff. He was staring at Ponga Jim, his glance fairly ablaze with hatred.

"What do you mean?" Bonner asked. "What is the Well of the Unholy Light?"

"Back up on the slope of Gam Konora is a well that shows a peculiar, misty glow at night," Jim explained. "It is phosphorescent or something. You can't trace the origin of the light, either. There's a batu paduran there. In other words, a stone city. It isn't so very far from here. A day's travel if you know the trails."

"What does it have to do with this murder?" Fife asked. Ponga Jim Mayo got up slowly, reaching for his cap.

"That's your problem," he said seriously. "But whoever killed Rinehart will answer to me. He wasn't my friend, but we fought a couple of wars together, and men who do that don't fail each other. Above all, he was killed for something he wanted to tell me. So," Jim looked first at Essen and then at Albran, "I'm declaring myself in for the duration!"

After they had gone, Jim stood staring out the porthole thoughtfully. The rain had begun again, a cold, slanting rain. He looked toward the green shores of Halmahera, looming gray now. He had a sense of impending danger that left him restless and ill at ease. Unconsciously, his hand strayed to the butt of his heavy Colt.

Frazer had stumbled on something big, he knew. But what? The only clue he had that wasn't available to them all from the beginning was the slip of paper from the desk in Frazer's cabin. It had been torn, and just enough remained to tell him the words had been "Well of the Unholy Light." And Jim knew about the well, somewhere up on the slopes of Gam Konora, over five thousand feet of active volcano and a taboo region, rarely visited by anyone, native or white.

That Colonel Sutherland, masquerading as Bonner, was around, offered ample evidence that this was something international in scope. It also meant that somewhere in the vicinity Major William Arnold would be working on the problem.

Ponga Jim grinned. He and William were to brush elbows again. But where, he wondered then, did Kim Rinehart fit into the picture? How did he happen to be on the spot when the killer arrived for Frazer?

Yet whatever was in the wind was too big for Essen. The man was dangerous, but not the type to lead any action as big as this must be. Albran was Dutch but, like a scattering of his countrymen, was obviously pro-Nazi. Fife and Sutherland, he had learned, had been hunting near Mount Sabu and so had an alibi for being on hand.

But what was the answer?

There seemed only one chance of finding out-to go to the Well of the Unholy Light.

The rain had ceased and the clouds were breaking up when Ponga Jim Mayo rounded the shoulder of Gam Konora and looked down on the steep canyon that separated him from the plateau where the well was supposed to be. He hesitated, staring down.

The canyon was a fearful gash in the earth and washed by a charging, plunging mountain stream. Across from him the wall of the mountain broke, and he could look past it to the plateau beyond. A huge stone column reared from the jungle, at least a hundred feet high, and beyond it was a square tower, half fallen to ruins. But between them, between the plateau and Mayo, was the gash in the earth.

It was then he saw the bridge, not more than a hundred feet away, but blending its color so easily with the rock as to be almost invisible, a swaying bridge of hemp rope, native-made, suspended across the three hundred feet of the canyon. Below it was the stream. Jim looked down and then started for the swaying bridge.

It trembled giddily at his first step, but he did not hesitate. Yet he had taken no more than three steps before he had a feeling that he was being watched. Carefully, yet with seeming carelessness, his eyes searched the jumble of rocks he was approaching.

There was nothing, no movement or indication of life.

He walked on quietly, but managing to weave just a little on the swaying bridge, enough to make the chances of hitting him with the first shot a little more difficult.

But he had reached the end of the bridge and had his feet on the rock before anything happened. Then a cool, deep voice spoke suddenly from the rocks:

"You stand still now and answer me some questions." Ponga Jim stopped. "Okay, pal.

Let's have them." "What's your handle, mister? What name you go by?"

"The name is Mayo," Jim said pleasantly. "They call me Ponga Jim."

"Where you get that Tonga' part?"

"From the village of Ponga-Ponga in French Equatorial Africa. Anything else?"

"If you was looking for a man you knew in Manchuria, and he was in Fez, where would you look? And if he was in Algiers?"

Jim's eyes narrowed. "In Fez, I'd look in the long room behind a leatherworker's stall in the street near the Green Mosque. In Algiers, I would go to the place of Mahr-el-din in the Kasbah."

A powerfully built black man came from behind a cluster of boulders and stepped down with his big hand outthrust. He wore a dark red shirt and a pair of blue dungarees. Two big guns were strapped to his hips, and a high-powered rifle was in the hollow of his arm. Two bandoliers of cartridges crossed his chest.

"How you, Captain Mayo?" he said cheerfully. "I'm Big London. A friend to Bent Frazer.

He told me if anything happened to him I was to get down here and watch out for you, that you'd be along, and that you'd answer those questions. That way, I'd know you.

But I'd have known you, anyway."

Jim shook hands, sizing up the mighty black man with appreciation.

"What's up?" he asked. "Where's Frazer?"

"They got him down there by the well. They got a couple of hundred men down there."

"How many?" Jim was incredulous. "Did you say two hundred?"

Big London nodded. "That's right. They've been bringing them in planes. Dropped twenty here last night from parachutes. But Frazer, he said to start nothing until you got here." Then he added, "Those men are Japanese, all but two or three."

Led swiftly by the big black man, Ponga Jim slipped through the rocks until they could get a good view of the city. It was scarcely that, just a temple. Now it was all in ruins, and a small circle of stone houses was surrounded by a fallen wall.

The stone plaza had been cleared of debris, but was not large enough for a plane to land. But even as they watched they saw several men carrying rifles from one of the buildings. A cool voice behind them spoke:

"How do you do, Captain?"

Jim wheeled. Five men in a neat rank stood behind them. Four were Japanese soldiers, their rifles ready. The fifth was Heittn, a Nazi agent.

"See how easily a man is captured when he grows confident?" Heittn said, speaking over his shoulder to the soldiers. Then, to Jim, "We knew Frazer had communicated with you, so we were ready this time." Heittn's narrow, heavy-lidded eyes shifted to the black man. "We won't need you," he said and lifted his automatic. Without a second's hesitation, he fired.

Big London had started to leap, but his body turned slowly and plunged down the steep slope of shale. For sixty feet his body slid and then brought up against a boulder.

Ponga Jim's eyes went hard. "That was a dirty stunt!" he said.

"Of course." Heittn shrugged. "Why not? We want you to use for bait. He would have been excess baggage."

It was an hour before they finished questioning him. Heittn had begun it when they got him safely below and in a stone room. Four bulky Germans, an Italian, and three Japanese had entered with him. The door was closed. His hands had been bound. Then Heittn had walked up and struck him in the mouth. Then he stepped back and kicked Jim across the shins.

Ponga Jim moved like lightning, kicking out himself. The kick caught Heittn in the pit of the stomach and rolled him across the room. Instantly, the five men hit Jim at once. He was knocked to his knees, jerked to his feet, and driven into the wall and battered. Then Heittn pushed his way through the crowd, his face a mask of fury.

"So?" he snarled. "You will, will you?"

He had a short length of rubber hose, and he slammed Jim wickedly across the shoulders with it. Then came a powerful blow over the head that drove Jim to his knees. Heittn hit him twice more before he could get up.