The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 3

  “Parbleu!” de Grandin whispered fiercely. “Play dead, my friend. Fall out from the bush and lie as though his spear had killed you.” He gave me a sudden push which sent me reeling into the open.

  I fell flat to the ground, acting the part of a dead man as realistically as possible and hoping desperately that the savages would not decide to throw a second spear to make sure of their kill.

  Though my eyes were closed, I could feel them standing over me, and a queer, cold feeling tingled between my shoulder blades, where I momentarily expected a knife thrust.

  Half opening one eye, I saw the brown, naked shins of one of the Papuans beside my head, and was wondering whether I could seize him by the ankles and drag him down before he could stab me, when the legs beside my face suddenly swayed drunkenly, like tree trunks in a storm, and a heavy weight fell crashing on my back.

  STARTLED OUT OF MY sham death by the blow, I raised myself in time to see de Grandin in a death grapple with one of the savages. The other one lay across me, the spear he had flung at us a few minutes before protruding from his back directly beneath his left shoulder blade.

  “A moi, Friend Trowbridge!” the little Frenchmen called. “Quick, or we are lost.”

  I tumbled the dead Papuan unceremoniously to the ground and grappled with de Grandin’s antagonist just as he was about to strike his dirk into my companion’s side.

  “Bien, très bien!” the Frenchman panted as he thrust his knife forward, sinking the blade hilt-deep into the savage’s left armpit. “Very good, indeed, Friend Trowbridge. I have not hurled the javelin since I was a boy at school, and I strongly misdoubted my ability to kill the one with a single throw from my ambush, but, happily, my hand has not lost its cunning. Voilà, we have a perfect score to our credit! Come, let us bury them.”

  “But was it necessary to kill the poor fellows?” I asked as I helped him scrape a grave with one of his victim’s knives. “Mightn’t we have made them understand we meant them no harm?”

  “Friend Trowbridge,” he answered between puffs of exertion as he dragged one of the naked bodies into the shallow trench we had dug, “never, I fear me, will you learn the sense of the goose. With fellows such as these, even as with the shark last night, we take necessary steps for our own protection first.

  “This interment which we make now, think you it is for tenderness of these canaille? Ah, non. We bury them that their friends find them not if they come searching, and that the buzzards come not flapping this way to warn the others of what we have done. Good, they are buried. Take up that one’s spear and come with me. I would investigate that fire which they have made.”

  We approached the heights overlooking the fire cautiously, taking care to remain unseen by any possible scout sent out by the main party of natives. It was more than an hour before we maneuvered to a safe observation post. As we crawled over the last ridge of rock obstructing our view I went deathly sick at my stomach and would have fallen down the steep hill, had not de Grandin thrown his arm about me.

  Squatting around a blazing bonfire in a circle, like wolves about the stag they have run to earth, were perhaps two dozen naked savages, and, bound upright to a stake fixed in the sand, was a white man, lolling forward against the restraining cords with a horrible limpness. Before him stood two burly Papuans, the war clubs in their hands, red as blood at the tips, telling the devil’s work they had just completed. It was blood on the clubs. The brown fiends had beaten their helpless captive’s head in, and even now one of them was cutting the cords that held his body to the stake.

  But beyond the dead man was a second stake, and, as I looked at this, every drop of blood in my body seemed turned to liquid fire, for, lashed to it, mercifully unconscious, but still alive, was a white woman whom I recognized as the wife of a Dutch planter going out from Holland to join her husband in Sumatra.

  “Good God, man!” I cried. “That’s a woman; a white woman. We can’t let those devils kill her!”

  “Softly, my friend,” de Grandin cautioned, pressing me back, for I would have risen and charged pell-mell down the hill. “We are two, they are more than a score; what would it avail us, or that poor woman, were we to rush down and be killed?”

  I TURNED ON HIM IN amazed fury. “You call yourself a Frenchman,” I taunted, “yet you haven’t chivalry enough to attempt a rescue? A fine Frenchman you are!”

  “Chivalry is well—in its place,” he admitted, “but no Frenchman is so foolish as to spend his life where there is nothing to be bought with it. Would it help her if we, too, were destroyed, or, which is worse, captured and eaten also? Do we, as physicians, seek to throw away our lives when we find a patient hopelessly sick with phthisis? But no, we live that we may fight the disease in others—that we may destroy the germs of the malady. So let it be in this case. Save that poor one we can not; but take vengeance on her slayers we can and will. I, Jules de Grandin, swear it. Ha, she has it!”

  Even as he spoke one of the cannibal butchers struck the unconscious woman over the head with his club. A stain of red appeared against the pale yellow of her hair, and the poor creature shuddered convulsively, then hung passive and flaccid against her bonds once more.

  “Par le sang du diable,” de Grandin gritted between his teeth, “if it so be that the good God lets me live, I swear to make those sales bouchers die one hundred deaths apiece for every hair in that so pitiful woman’s head!”

  He turned away from the horrid sight below us and began to ascend the hill. “Come away, Friend Trowbridge,” he urged. “It is not good that we should look upon a woman’s body served as meat. Pardieu, almost I wish I had followed your so crazy advice and attempted a rescue; we should have killed some of them so! No matter, as it is, we shall kill all of them, or may those Messieurs Lloyd pay me not one penny.”

  3

  FEELING SECURE AGAINST DISCOVERY by the savages, as they were too engrossed in their orgy to look for other victims, we made our way to the peak which towered like a truncated cone at the center of the island.

  From our station at the summit we could see the ocean in all directions and get an accurate idea of our surroundings. Apparently, the islet was the merest point of land on the face of the sea—probably only the apex of a submarine volcano. It was roughly oval in shape, extending for a possible five miles in length by two-and-a-quarter miles at its greatest width, and rising out of the ocean with a mountainous steepness, the widest part of the beach at the water-line being not more than three or four hundred feet. On every side, and often in series of three or four, extended reefs and points of rock (no doubt the lesser peaks of the mountain whose un-submerged top constituted the island) so that no craft larger than a whaleboat could hope to come within half a mile of the land without having its bottom torn out by the hidden semi-submerged crags.

  “Nom d’un petit bonhomme!” de Grandin commented. “This is an ideal place for its purpose, c’est certain. Ah, see!”—he drew me to a ridge of rock which ran like a rampart across the well-defined path by which we had ascended. Fastened to the stone by bolts were three sheet-iron troughs, each pointing skyward at an angle of some fifty degrees, and each much blackened by smoke stains. “Do you see?” he asked. “These are for firing rockets—observe the powder burns on them. And here”—his voice rose to an excited pitch and he fairly danced in eagerness—“see what is before us!”

  UP THE PATH, ALMOST at the summit of the peak, and about twenty-five feet apart, stood two poles, each some twelve feet in height and fitted with a pulley and lanyard. As we neared them we saw that a lantern with a green globe rested at the base of the right-hand stake, while a red-globed lamp was secured to the rope of the left post “Ah, clever, clever,” de Grandin muttered, staring from one pole to the other. “Observe, my friend. At night the lamps can be lit and hoisted to the tops of these masts then gently raised and lowered. Viewed at a distance against the black background of this mountain they will simulate a ship’s lights to the life. The unfortunate mariner making for
them will find his ship fast on these rocks while the lights are still a mile or more away, and—too well we know what happens then. Let us see what more there is, eh?”

  Rounding the peak we found ourselves looking down upon the thatched beehive-roofs of a native village, before which a dozen long Papuan canoes were beached on the narrow strip of sand. “Ah,” de Grandin inspected the cluster of huts, “it is there the butchers dwell, eh? That will be a good spot for us to avoid, my friend. Now to find the residence of what you Americans call the master mind. Do you see aught resembling a European dwelling, Friend Trowbridge?”

  I searched the greenery below us, but nowhere could I descry a roof. “No,” I answered after a second inspection, “there’s nothing like a white man’s house down there; but how do you know there’s a white man here, anyway?”

  “Ho, ho,” he laughed, “how does the rat know the house contains a cat when he hears it mew? Think you those sacré eaters of men would know enough to set up such devil’s machinery as this, or that they would take care to dynamite the wreck of a ship after looting it? No, no, my friend, this is white man’s work, and very bad work it is, too. Let us explore.”

  Treading warily, we descended the smooth path leading to the rocket-troughs, looking sharply from left to right in search of anything resembling a white man’s house. Several hundred feet down the mountain the path forked abruptly, one branch leading toward the Papuan village, the other running to a narrow strip of beach bordering an inlet between two precipitous rock walls. I stared and stared again, hardly able to believe my eyes, for, drawn up on the sand and made fast by a rope to a ringbolt in the rock was a trim little motor-boat, flat-bottomed for navigating the rock-strewn waters in safety, broad-beamed for mastering the heavy ocean swells, and fitted with a comfortable, roofed-over cabin. Forward, on the little deck above her sharp clipper bow, was an efficient looking Lewis gun mounted on a swivel, and a similar piece of ordnance poked its aggressive nose out of the engine cockpit at the stern.

  “Par la barbe d’un bouc vert,” de Grandin swore delightedly, “but this is marvelous, this is magnificent, this is superb! Come, Friend Trowbridge, let us take advantage of this miracle; let us leave this hell-hole of an island right away, immediately, at once. Par—” The exclamation died, half uttered, and he stared past me with the expression of a superstitious man suddenly face-to-face with a sheeted specter.

  4

  “SURELY, GENTLEMEN,” SAID A suave voice behind me, “you are not going to leave without permitting me to offer you some slight hospitality? That would be ungenerous.”

  I turned as though stung by a wasp and looked into the smiling eyes of a dark-skinned young man, perhaps thirty years of age. From the top of his spotless topi to the tips of his highly polished tan riding boots he was a perfect model of the well-dressed European in the tropics. Not a stain of dust or travel showed on his spruce white drill jacket or modishly cut riding breeches, and as he waved his silver-mounted riding crop in greeting, I saw his slender hands were carefully manicured, the nails cut rather long and stained a vivid pink before being polished to the brightness of mother-of-pearl.

  De Grandin laid his hand upon the knife at his belt, before he could draw it, a couple of beetle-browed Malays in khaki jackets and sarongs stepped from the bushes bordering the path and leveled a pair of business-like Mauser rifles at us. “I wouldn’t,” the young man warned in a blasé drawl, “I really wouldn’t, if I were you. These fellows are both dead shots and could put enough lead in you to sink you forty fathoms down before you could get the knife out of its sheath, much less into me. Do you mind, really?” He held out his hand for the weapon. “Thank you, that is much better”—he tossed the blade into the water of the inlet with a careless gesture—“really, you know, the most frightfully messy accidents are apt to happen with those things.”

  De Grandin and I eyed him in speechless amazement, but he continued as though our meeting were the most conventional thing imaginable.

  “Mr. Trowbridge—pardon my assumption, but I heard your name called a moment ago—will you be good enough to favor me with an introduction to your friend?”

  “I am Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, of Harrisonville, New Jersey,” I replied, wondering, meanwhile, if I were in the midst of some crazy dream, “and this is Dr. Jules de Grandin, of Paris.”

  “So good of you,” the other acknowledged with a smile. “I fear I must be less frank than you for the nonce and remain veiled in anonymity. However, one really must have some sort of designation, mustn’t one? So suppose you know me for the present as Goonong Besar. Savage, unchristian-sounding sort of name, I’ll admit, but more convenient than calling, ‘hey, you!’ or simply whistling when you wish to attract my attention. Eh, what? And now”—he made a slight bow—“if you will be so kind as to step into my humble burrow in the earth … Yes, that is it, the doorway right before you.”

  Still under the menacing aim of the Malays’ rifles, de Grandin and I walked through the cleft in the rock, traversed a low, narrow passage, darker than a windowless cellar, made a sharp turn to the left, and halted abruptly, blinking our eyes in astonishment.

  Before us, seeming to run into infinity, was a wide, long apartment paved with alternate squares of black and white marble, colonnaded down each side with double rows of white-marble pillars and topped with a vaulted ceiling of burnished copper plates. Down the center of the corridor, at intervals of about twenty feet, five silver oil lamps with globes of finely cut crystal hung from the polished ceiling, making the entire room almost as bright as equatorial noon.

  “Not half bad, eh?” our host remarked as he viewed our astonishment with amusement. “This is only the vestibule, gentlemen; you really have no idea of the wonders of this house under the water. For instance, would either of you care to retrace your steps? See if you can find the door you came in.”

  We swung about, like soldiers at the command of execution, staring straight at the point where the entranceway should have been. A slab of marble, firm and solid as any composing the walls of the room, to all appearances, met our gaze; there was neither sign nor remote evidence of any door or doorway before us.

  Goonong Besar chuckled delightedly and gave an order to one of his attendants in the harsh, guttural language of Malaya. “If you will look behind you, gentlemen,” he resumed, again addressing us, “you will find another surprise.”

  We wheeled about and almost bumped into a pair of grinning Malay lads who stood at our elbows.

  “These boys will show you to your rooms.” Goonong Besar announced. “Kindly follow them. It will be useless to attempt conversation, for they understand no language but their native speech, and as for replying, unfortunately, they lack the benefits of a liberal education and can not write, while …” he shot a quick order to the youths, who immediately opened their mouths as though yawning. Both de Grandin and I gave vent to exclamations of horror. The boys mouths gaped emptily. Both had had their tongues cut off at the roots.

  “You see,” Goonong went on in the same musical, slightly bored voice, “these chaps can’t be a bit of use to you as gossips, they really can’t.

  “I think I can furnish you with dinner clothes, Dr. de Grandin, but”—he smiled apologetically—“I’m afraid you, Dr. Trowbridge, are a little too—er—corpulent to be able to wear any garments made for me. So sorry! However, no doubt we can trick you out in a suit of whites Captain Van Thun—er, that is, I’m sure you can be accommodated from our stores. Yes.

  “Now, if you will follow the guides, please”—he broke off on a slightly interrogative note and bowed with gentle courtesy toward each of us in turn—“you will excuse me for a short time, I’m sure.”

  Before we could answer, he signaled his two attendants, and the three of them stepped behind one of the marble columns. We heard a subdued click, as of two pieces of stone coming lightly together.

  “But, Monsieur, this is incredible, this is monstrous!” de Grandin began, striding forward. “You shall ex
plain, I demand—Cordieu, he is gone!”

  He was. As though the wall had faded before his approach, or his own body had dissolved into ether, Goonong Besar had vanished. We were alone in the brilliantly lighted corridor with our tongueless attendants.

  Nodding and grinning, the lads signaled us to follow them down the room. One of them ran a few paces ahead and parted a pair of silken curtains, disclosing a narrow doorway through which only one could go at a time. Obeying the lad’s gestures, I stepped through the opening, followed by de Grandin and our dumb guides.

  The lad who had held aside the curtains for us ran ahead a few paces and gave a strange, eerie cry. We looked sharply at him, wondering what the utterance portended, and from behind us sounded the thud of stone on stone. Turning, we saw the second Malay grinning broadly at us from the place where the doorway had been. I say “had been” advisedly, for, where the narrow arched door had pierced the thick wall a moment before, was now a solid row of upright marble slabs, no joint or crack showing which portion of the wall was solid stone and which cunningly disguised door.

  “Sang du diable!” de Grandin muttered. “But I do not like this place. It reminds me of that grim fortress of the Inquisition at Toledo where the good fathers, dressed as demons, could appear and disappear at will through seeming solid walls and frighten the wits out of and the true faith into superstitious heretics.”

  I suppressed a shudder with difficulty. This underground house of secret doors was too reminiscent of other practises of the Spanish Inquisition besides the harmless mummery of the monks for my peace of mind.

  “Eh bien,” de Grandin shrugged, “now we are here we may as well make the best of it. Lead on, Diablotins”—he turned to our dark-skinned guides—“we follow.”