John MacDonald - The Good Old Stuff

“You know, Garry, that’s pretty shrewd. Never thought of it.” He dabbed at his upper lip with a clean handkerchief. “Could arrange somehow to get a peephole in the ceiling. Keep a record of the play and break the code. Hard to do that without tipping off the servants, who will tip off the people playing.”

“Why don’t you pull in one of the servants on some excuse and work him over?”

“That’s been done, but it isn’t good. My superior, Colonel Rith-Lee, doesn’t like it. He says that it shows our hand. Besides, they never talk. They’re too terrified. All we can threaten them with is imprisonment. These other people can promise to strip off their hide, a quarter inch at a time. More impressive.”

We talked in the lounge for nearly a half hour. He couldn’t think of any constructive plan. I had a few, but he showed me just how they were impractical. He stated that I hadn’t given him sufficient basis on which Van Hosen, Wend, and O’Dell could be picked up.

Finally I said, “Let me try one thing. It hadn’t ought to hurt you.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve got some extra money, money that ought to look big to a servant. I’ll give the boy at the front desk a note to come and see me in the Galle Face on a matter that will mean money to him. If he comes, maybe I can offer him enough so that he’ll make a statement and then quit his job and leave town. Of course, he may know nothing worth buying, but it’s worth taking a chance.” He agreed. I went to a desk in the lounge and wrote my note. As we left, I shoved it into the brown palm of the boy on the door.

We stood out in the street. I’d written the boy to come after he was off duty, no matter how late. “Want me to come along and help you question him?” Peter asked.

“No, thanks. You’ve got a lot of official scruples. I may have to rough him up a little to encourage him. It might get you in trouble. You just sit tight, and I’ll come to you tomorrow morning to tell you what I’ve learned.”

We parted, and I went back to the Galle Face to begin the long wait. I began to expect him at one o’clock. He hadn’t arrived by three. I pinned a note to the outside of the door which read Knock loudly . I went to bed.

When I awoke the sun was bright on the ocean. The note on my door was undisturbed. I figured that he had been too scared to come see me. We’d have to dream up another approach, try another employee. Only we’d have to be more careful, because he might possibly have tipped off the proper people concerning what we were attempting to do.

I rang for the room boy, Fernando. I wanted to order breakfast in the room before taking my shower. He came in and his round face was grave, his eyes wide and bright. He made a little bow and said, “Much trouble in hotel, Garry master.”

“Trouble?”

He licked his lips and glowed with the pleasure of having information to impart. “Boy killed with knife in front of hotel last night, master. Maybe one o’clock, maybe two o’clock.” He slashed his chubby forefinger across his throat and made a gurgling noise.

I tried to act bored. “Police take him away already?”

“No, master. Police very modern. Have camera. Waiting for sun to come and then taking pictures. Man still out on grass near side of hotel.”

I didn’t order breakfast and I skipped the shower. I pulled my clothes on and hurried down to the lobby. Once in the lobby I walked slowly across to the front door. Off to one side were a hundred curious people standing in a wide circle, looking at something on the ground. They looked as though they had been standing a long time. Knowing the oriental indifference to death, I suspected that they were staring at something fairly juicy.

I pressed through the crowd and found that J was right on both counts. It was the boy to whom I had given the note. His throat had been slashed with such vicious strength that the cords and muscles had been parted all the way back to the spinal column. Without the support of the neck muscles, the shock of falling after the blow must have broken the neck. His head was strained back at right angles to the body, exposing the severed jugular. The grass was stained black red in a circle around his head, a circle of about the same circumference as a bushel basket. His lips were drawn back from his teeth.

I shoved my way back out of the circle. They had been too quick, too clever. I knew that there would be no point in trying to bribe another one. They had licked me again. Every time I thought of an opening, of a chance to get information, they stepped in first with a block that stopped me in my tracks.

I had poor coffee in the hotel and then went back up to my room and phoned Peter Kaymark at the number he had given me. A clerk told me that he wasn’t in and they didn’t know when to expect him. I tried three more times before noon, with the same result. At noon I had a small lunch sent up, and, after finishing it, I took a rickshaw to the January Club.

There was a new boy on the door. I looked at him carefully but could detect no change of expression when he admitted me, and I asked to see Lieutenant Kaymark or Mr. O’Dell, if either of them were in the club.

He showed me back to a small curtained room off the main lounge, a different room than I had waited in before. He told me that he would attempt to locate either of the two gentlemen and plug them in on the phone which stood on a small table in the room if they didn’t happen to be in the club. I thanked him and he left. The small room was hot and airless. It smelled of mold and dust.

I sat on the edge of a worn chair which faced the curtains. For some reason, I felt uneasy. I didn’t have long to wait. The room was poorly lighted. Suddenly figures burst through the curtains at me, moving so quickly that I received only a confused impression of several burly Singhalese. They fell on me and the chair went over backwards. I tried to kick at their heads, but one of them dropped heavily across my knees. I swung my right fist in a short arc and heard one of them grunt as it landed. I tried to buck and spin out of it, but they were too quick and too heavy. They rolled me over roughly and yanked my hands around behind me. Something rough and hard tightened over my wrists and drew them together. I started to shout as I felt the same substance around my ankles. They rolled me over, and as I opened my mouth to shout again, one of them crammed a thick cloth between my teeth. They tied another length of rope around my head to keep me from shoving the gag out with my tongue.

Two of them picked me up and the third peered cautiously through the curtains. Then he motioned to the others and they yanked me up off the floor and hurried out with me. One held me by the shoulder, the other by the knees.

Out in the brighter light of the lounge, I could see that they were all large men. They wore bright plaid sarongs, which had been tucked up to leave their legs free. They were naked from the waist up.

They hurried down the length of the lounge with me, and up a flight of narrow stairs. They bumped my head painfully when they rounded a corner of the stairs. They hurried down a dingy hall and opened the door of a small room. They dropped me heavily onto my face and cut the ropes on my neck, wrists, and ankles. The last one was backing out of the door as I jumped to my feet. The door slammed, and there was the sharp efficient click of a lock. I was alone in a bare room, about ten by ten, with one small barred window and not a scrap of furniture. I looked out the window, down into an enclosed court. I listened. I was so far from the road that I couldn’t hear the sound of traffic. There was no sound from the club. I sat by the door with my back against the wall.

I should have felt alarmed, at least disturbed. I didn’t. It was direct action, the first concrete thing that had happened. All the rest was supposition. Whatever happened, I would learn something. The gloves were off; the knife was out.