West of Guam (50 page)

Sadi Ratan kicked the gun aside. Jo Gar went close to the big man. “You are very foolish, Monsieur Lemere,” he said quietly, “to let your temper get the best of you. You have now done something for which the police can exact a penalty. And perhaps, while they have you in custody, they can obtain from you the name of the murderer of your partner.”

“I cannot tell,” Lemere said between clenched teeth, “that which I do not know.”

There was a little silence, then Sadi Ratan said in a less confident voice:

“We must find the woman.” Jo Gar shook his head.

“You must, perhaps,” he replied. “I am a peculiar man, and I feel that I have done enough. You will find it difficult even if you get a name, though I do not think she will use a mask to throw you off. But I am finished with the affair.”

Sadi Ratan said with a touch of nastiness: “Perhaps you think it would be too difficult.”

Jo Gar smiled. “Perhaps,” he agreed.

Less than ten days later, in his hot office off the Escolta, Jo Gar read of the suicide of one Marie Saronocca. She had been a half-breed and she had loved well if not too wisely. She had loved one Gerald Delancey, but he had refused to continue loving her. So she had hated him and she had killed him. The Filipino paper in which Jo read the item stated that she was very beautiful, and that her small house in the old, Walled City, contained many curios of native, Island tribes—and from China and Java. She left a written confession of her crime, and in it she did not mention Monsieur Lemere. Another item, in the next column, stated that Lieutenant Sadi Ratan, of the Manila police, had suspected a woman of Delancey’s murder, and been working hard on the case.

Jo Gar used a palm leaf fan to bring warm air on his brown face.

He laid the paper aside, and smiled. He said a little wearily:

“It is so easy to work hard. So many people work hard—and accomplish practically nothing.”

The number five typhoon signal had been hoisted and was standing straight out against a gray sky when Jo Gar paid his
caleso
driver, patted the mangy pony on the head and moved from the Escolta towards his office. A hot wind was blowing in gusts; it had been dark for an hour or so. The Island detective reached the front of the frame building, looked towards the wooden steps that led to the first floor, moved a few feet to the entrance.

He remembered that he had only a few of his brown-paper cigarettes in his office, and none in his duck suit pockets. Since he had come to the office to talk with a client he would need cigarettes. He halted with his diminutive body almost framed in the entrance, half turned away from the semi-darkness within. The tobacco shop was two squares distant, and it was almost ten. He decided that he had better ascend to see if his client had arrived.

He went into the entrance of the building and moved up the creaking steps. Several times he had thought of moving into more desirable quarters, but there was something about his tiny, hot office in the old building that he liked. His fees were not big; he accepted almost any case that was interesting, and many of his clients were not rich. If he were to move into better quarters he would perhaps not be able to accept cases that interested him, and his contacts would be different.

He had decided that he would lose more than he would gain, and had remained in the building on one little street off the Escolta, Manila’s main business street. He liked the river sounds that reached him from the dark watered Pasig, and the odors that drifted up from the small shops near the river—odors of spices and hemp and shell foods.

There was a swaying electric light bulb, on the floor above the one that held his office—the light on his floor gave no glow.

He remembered that after many months a new bulb had been placed at the end of the connection that dangled from the ceiling—only yesterday. Yet it was dark above.

He had almost reached the first floor when he heard the sound. It was very faint—and it seemed to the Island detective’s keen ears to be a combination of two sounds. There was the slow sucking in of breath and the rustle of cloth. Someone was at the far end of the dark floor.

Jo Gar climbed the last few steps; the door of his office was on his right, and when he turned to open it his back would be to almost the entire floor. He reached in his pocket for the small key, faced the door. Almost instantly he heard the sound of cloth scraping cloth—and of breath expelled with an effort. And he let his body go downward, very quickly.

The knife made a sharp humming sound—there was a short crash as the blade struck wood, just above his head. But the knife did not stick in the door, making vibration sound. The blade point had not struck cleanly. The hilt battered against wood, and the knife dropped, the blade pricking Jo Gar’s right ankle as he twisted his body around.

His right-hand fingers jerked his Colt from the hip pocket in which he carried it almost all of the time now. There was sound on the steps leading to the floor above—and his eyes caught the shape of a figure that seemed tall and thin. He
thought
he saw the outlines, above the figure, of such a head covering as the rivermen wore—the
sampan
men. A coolie hat, it looked like—round and rising to a shallow point—of dark bamboo.

He raised his gun, and the figure was gone. The stairs creaked under weight, but there was no sound of shoes or sandals. The one who had thrown the knife was bare-footed.

Jo Gar got to his feet, took a few steps towards the second flight of stairs, halted. He was breathing quietly. Very slowly he lowered his gun. The creaking sound had died—a door slammed. The electric bulb dangling from the wire, on the floor above, swayed less and less.

The Island detective bent down and lifted the knife. Without attempting to inspect it he wrapped it in a handkerchief, touching only the blade with his fingers. He listened for several seconds—there was no more sound from above. The light bulb on the next floor was not swaying now.

Jo Gar sighed and went swiftly down the steps to the narrow street. Almost directly across from the office entrance the doorway of a small spice shop was dark, and Jo hurried the few feet to the entrance. With his back to the shop, he got his small body in such a position that he could see the street—and the entrances of a half dozen or so of the lower frame buildings similar to the one in which he had his office.

Two thoughts were strong—the knife thrower had been a Chinese, and he had thrown very poorly. He had thrown like a Filipino would shoot, missing at even a short distance.

Seconds passed and only one figure emerged from one of the frame buildings across the narrow street. That was the figure of a very heavy Filipino woman, and she stood for a time in the doorway before she waddled towards the Escolta.

The roofs of the buildings were almost all of the same height. The knife thrower had gone to the roof, and from here he would find many exits, many ways of escape. And yet, Jo had reasoned that if he had thought himself followed, the one who had thrown the knife would simply cross the roof to another building and come down the stairs to the street. It was only a short distance to the Escolta, which would be crowded. With a typhoon approaching—the band would not be playing at such time on the
Luneta
—Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese—they were moving along the Escolta. He could hear the babble of their tongues.

For almost ten minutes the Island detective remained in the shadow of the doorway across from his building. Then he sighed again and moved from it, went to his office. He switched on a single small bulb hanging above his battered desk, locked the door behind him. As he turned towards the desk again, he saw the sheet of white paper on the floor. There was a scrawl on it—without lifting the sheet which had been shoved beneath the door, he knelt down and read the message, written in English:

“I have called—you were not in—in case I do not return it is my China man, Tavar, that I suspect. J.M.”

Jo Gar lifted the white sheet of paper and placed it on his desk. From a drawer he took a check he had received from John Mallison two days ago, as a retainer. He compared the writing and nodded his head slowly, with his gray-blue eyes narrowed. His wristwatch showed him that he had not reached the office late. Mallison had come early, and he had gone away. But first he had left the note.

The Island detective inspected his Colt, returned it to the right hip pocket of his white duck trousers. He took the knife from his pocket and got the handkerchief away from it carefully. The knife had a very narrow, eight-inch blade. The handle was of wood, and the whole affair was very cheap. There were thousands of such knives about Manila; it was a common type used by rivermen. The blade had been carefully sharpened.

Jo Gar went to work on the knife, and when he had finished he sighed for the third time. There were no fingerprints on the hilt—none on the blade. Whatever method the thrower had used, he had left no mark. And because it was not easy to throw such a knife
without
leaving a mark, the Island detective frowned and murmured softly:

“I think that his hands were covered—”

He placed the knife in a drawer of his desk; and locked the drawer. He smoked a brown-paper cigarette and read the note that Mallison had left, very slowly. His frown went away, and there was a blank expression in his slightly almond-shaped eyes. Mallison had come to see him before the hour appointed. He suspected Tavar, his China man, and he had wanted Jo to know that. But why had he not waited until the appointed hour? And if there had been some good reason for him not waiting, why had he written the note? Was he afraid that he might not be able to return?

The Island detective sat in his fan-backed chair, which had come from Bilibid Prison—which perhaps had been ironically made there by humans he had trapped—and pulled on the brown-paper cigarette. John Mallison was an American—an importer of jade in carved forms. His finer pieces he shipped to England and the Americas. He had five men working for him, searching in Oriental countries. Tavar, his China man, was one of them. In the last month, during which Tavar had been in Manila most of the tine, some twenty-odd carved pieces had disappeared from the Mallison shop. He valued them at about five thousand dollars.

These things he had told Jo Gar, when he had given him the retainer. But he had also told the Island detective that he had no suspicions. He had told him this only yesterday, and this evening he had sent Jo a message setting an hour for a meeting. He had come early, and he had gone—leaving a note. He suspected his China man.

Jo Gar placed the note and check in another drawer of his battered desk, locked the drawer. He finished his cigarette, thinking about the one who had thrown a knife at him—the one who had failed to murder. He decided that the man had worn a coolie hat and had gone bare-footed. He said softly:

“But I do not think he was a coolie. I think he
dressed
as one because he wished to go bare-footed without attracting attention. He wore skin colored gloves, perhaps—he did not wish to leave prints on the knife he threw. A coolie would not worry about that.”

The point was—there were many enemies. Almost always, when Jo Gar caught a man, there was a conviction. The caught one remembered, and his relatives and friends remembered. There were many enemies. Señor Gar had a reputation—criminals were afraid of him and hated him. And there was this China man that Mallison suspected, this Tavar.

Jo Gar stood up and said very tonelessly and softly:

“Perhaps Señor Mallison was right in his suspicions. Perhaps this Tavar followed him here, and guessed that Mallison suspected him and was coming to me. He worked with speed—obtained the knife—”

Jo Gar raised his head and chuckled, Then he said in an amused tone:

“A flattering thought, but I do not think it happened that way. Others have tried to murder me because they were afraid—several others. Others have tried to trick me into believing the wrong thing, even clients of mine. But now—”

He shook his head and his gray-blue eyes were almost closed. A gust of the wind ahead of the signaled typhoon rattled the screens of the office window, and something crashed to the street, in the direction of the river.

Jo Gar thought: An importer of jade carvings suspects one of his men, his China man. And a man has thrown a knife at me, and has missed. That is really
all
that I know. I must learn more. I will search first for Señor Mallison.

He took a newly cleaned Panama hat from a closet in the office, placed it over his graying hair. When he left the office he first opened the door and did not immediately go to the landing. The electric bulb he did not switch on, but he saw that it had been switched off. He did not bother about prints on the switch.

When he reached the street he thought that it had grown a little cooler. The gusts of wind seemed to be coming at shorter intervals, and they twisted at his small body as he went towards the Escolta. It was not so crowded as he had thought; the natives were hurrying, eyes on the sky. The last Number Five typhoon that had struck Manila—the center of it passing to the southward—had done serious damage. The Filipinos were anxious, worried.

Jo Gar tried two drinking places; Mallison was sucking liquid through a straw in neither. He thought of Kayil’s Malay eating place, and remembered that Mallison had spoken of liking such food. Kayil’s place was very near a twist of the Pasig; Jo lowered his head and moved against the gusts of wind on a narrow, curving street that cut away from the Escolta.

When he reached the eating place he stood for a few seconds, outside. A
carromatta
driver shrilled words at his pony, and the two-wheeled carriage rattled past. Jo went through swinging doors into the dull-lighted single room that was the café. It was a large room, with bamboo tables and chairs, and there were many angles to it. Some of the tables were in corners, and were almost in darkness. There was an odor of fish and spices, not very pleasant.

Kayil was a short, evil-faced man of middle age. He had served a term at Bilibid, not many years ago, for a knifing and when he came to Jo’s side, with a smile on his pock-marked face, the Island detective thought of the knife that had been flung at him. He smiled, knowing that Kayil would never have missed at such a short distance.