Assignment- Tiger Devil

by Will B Aarons

  His hand rested on the pistol beside him, and the rotating ceiling fan became hideous cane-cutting knives that whirled gore, and he was looking against his wish to see if Leon was amid the slivered flesh.

  The chopping knives sounded against his ears: chunk, chunk!

  His eyes opened, and the sound turned to a knocking at the door.

  Chapter Twenty

  Durell dropped his feet silently to the floor, was aware of runnels of sweat on his face, a coolness on his back, where the air struck the damp plaster of his shirt. Bushes and vines buzzed and whined with rancorous insect voices out there under the blistering sun. Dusty spears of sun-[light stabbed at the eroded old floor from the west now, land he did not know how long he had slept. The room was stifling, his mouth dry, his mind fevered.

  He let out a slow breath, and his snub-nosed gun pointed toward the door.

  "It's me—Browde. Are you there?" The whisper was urgent. The doorknob turned slowly.

  "Hold it," Durell said He unlatched the door. "Come in."

  Browde closed the door behind him, flopped in a creaky rattan chair. He wore white shoes and a white linen suit with an open-necked blue shirt that matched the color of his probing eyes. His face was almost scarlet from the sun, and sweat ran down his thick neck. "Some dump you got here," he said, and a sigh pufled out his cheeks. "I had to look all over for you."

  "You didn't bring anyone with you?"

  "Not here, pal."

  "Where, then?"

  "They're waiting. You got the diamonds?"

  "What do you get out of this?"

  "What's it to you, chum?"

  Durell's cheeks hardened, and his eyes turned hostile. iHe wondered if Browde had a gun under his coat. The room stank as the heat of day cooked odors of old sweat land filth out of musty closet and grimy mattress. He ismelled sewage that had been dumped into the purling river.

  Browde surrendered to his dark gaze, lifted his palms. 'All right, I bring interested parties together. You might :all me a producer. For that I get five percent—off their 3nd, not yours. Fair enough?"

  "Who are the buyers?"

  "You make me nervous, chum." Browde wiped his 'orehead, a limp handkerchief passing across his eyes.

  "Answer my question."

  "Some Brazilian Portuguese," he said vaguely. "Middle level. Ties to the diamond pirates. Who the boss is, I don't know."

  Durell regarded him with thoughtful scrutiny. He switched the gun to his other hand, wiped a wet palm against his trousers, switched the gun back. "Names," he said.

  "No names, chum." Browde's eyes went gritty.

  Durell decided not to push it. "Tell me about the diamond pirates," he said.

  "They operate all over the interior. There's no effective police presence out there. They trade for stones, buying them cheap and selling their goods dear. They smuggle the diamonds out of the country, avoiding taxes and export duties here and taxes and import duties at the destination. That way they can undercut the international price set every year by the De Beers syndicate's Central Selling Organization in London—and there's a hot market for their stones all over the world. The porkknockers couldn't care less: they trade for guns, ammo, provisions, whatever they need, without the bother of trekking out of the wilderness. They know the diamond pirates cheat them, but it's better than taking a month to go to the outside and back—many of them don't see civilization for three or four years at a stretch, and don't care to."

  "Don't the pirates ever jump claims?" Durell was thinking of Qaudius.

  "Of course, when they can. But that is not often."

  "Why?"

  "The porkknockers take care to conduct their business in neutral territory, at least a day from their digs— they know better than to trust the pirates at their claims."

  "But I'm supposed to trust them?"

  "You've got the same choice the porkknockers have, my friend. Sell your diamonds to legitimate dealers—if you can explain where you got them."

  Durell thought about it for a moment. He had no diamonds to sell, but he could not worry about that now. Browde's pals might have valuable knowledge about what was going on in the diamond district.

  "Where do I find your friends?" he said.

  "They will be waiting, down by the river. Go west on the street out .front. Takes you right there. An abandoned sawmill, the last one at the end of the path."

  "I'll be there in fifteen minutes," Durell said.

  "It's a deal" Browde bounced from his chair, held out a hand.

  Durell waved his gun toward the door.

  Browde dropped his hand, a frown clouding his face.

  Diu'ell made a sharp motion with the gun.

  "All right, I'm going," Browde said.

  Durell locked the door, turned, saw Peta just as the youth dived for him.

  Durell took the half-breed's weight across his hip and flipped him head over heels. Peta's hard fingers scrabbled at the floor, and he found his footing and leaped again. The back of Durell's fist buried him against a wall, and he slid down, pantmg. Durell's training and experience were one with the muscle and sinew that moved against the boy in easy, effortless precision, the mind and body a single entity. He had not drawn a heavy breath.

  Peta was on his knees, head swaying loosely back and forth, dazed eyes on the floor. "I heard you talk to that man," he said above ragged breathing.

  "I know. I expected you would."

  "You lied; you said the police have my diamond."

  "They do. Why didn't you go to them while I slept here?"

  Peta rocked on his knees, knuckles ivory against the rough floorboards, face still down.

  Durell continued: "You could have gone to the police, as any offended person might on finding that his property was being stolen."

  Peta raised himself up, moved warily around Durell, tall, thin frame rippled with muscle.

  Durell said: "I don't believe your father ever registered his claim. Something—or someone—kept him from domg that, otherwise the title would be clear and you could enforce it through the proper authorities. Who was it, Peta? Who did that to your father?"

  Peta held a stubborn silence. The sunlight struck his irises from the side, and its radiance swarmed in their hateful green. A bottlefly buzzed and looped and sparkled through the white shafts of hot light. Durell saw confusion and bewilderment, and, in the knit brow beneath the shaggy cap of iridescent black hair, enough mistrust for a dozen men.

  When Peta spoke, his voice was low and taut. "It was Mr. Eisler," he said.

  *Calvin Eisler?" Durell was skeptical. "Why?"

  *My father was not paroled from Devil's Island. He escaped and came here. He lived in the forest with my mother's people for many years and looked for gold and diamonds. What little he found, he traded away. Then I grew up. Mr. Eisler gave me a good job. He met my father and grubstaked him. When my father came back out of the jungle, he said he had found many diamonds. Mr. Eisler told him if he filed a claim, he would see that the police took him back to prison. My father had to sell his diamonds cheap to Mr. Eisler." Peta's chest heaved with anger.

  Durell remembered that Devil's Island had been closed down years before. Escapees and litres who had broken their parole and fled French Guiana were living unmolested all over South America. No one really cared anymore. The French were glad to be rid of them— they could never return to their homeland. And authorities here were willing enough to accept them passively, considering the cruel hell-hole in which they had suffered. In most cases their fugitive status became a distant technicality—unless they fell into the web of someone such as Eisler.

  He said, "If we find your father, I'll help him get the best legal advice. If he has a clean record, it's possible the French won't press the case, or that Guyana won't allow him to be extradited. . . ." He saw a blank look on Peta's face, drew a breath and simplified: "Good lawyers might make it so that your father never has to worry about the police again, Peta."

  "Words." Peta grun
ted. "Just words to fool me."

  "I want to help you."

  "Mr. Eisler stole from my father. Now you want to do the same, that's all."

  The boy's mind was numbed by suspicion, Durell judged. It listened only to its own thoughts. "I'm the only friend you have," Durell said.

  "Such a friend I won't let out of my sight." Peta's eyes were murderous.

  "I'll settle for that."

  Durell scooped cartridges out of his pocket and replaced shells spent the night before with fresh ammunition.

  "Come on," he said.

  They went into the fiery green sunlight and turned north, toward the abandoned sawmill. The pace of the town had slowed as people napped through the steamy afternoon. As the congestion of buildings thinned, a scabby cur trotted after them, tongue lolling. Then it turned aside, and Durell saw no living creature behind. Far across the flaring Mazaruni the jungle was blue smoke that lay above its reflection. The street dwindled to a grassy path banked with heart-shaped caladiums and arums, and Durell walked without any show of hurry, Peta glistening and silent at his side. Below stretched a tongue of saffron beach, frilled with water-worn fruit, branches, leaves; drifts of red, purple and yellow blossoms; beans the size of a woman's handbag. The cayman seemed to have been exterminated here, hunted for hides and teeth.

  "How will you sell my diamond if the police have it?" Peta asked.

  "I'm not selling anything," Durell said.

  "Then why go?"

  "Maybe they will tell me how to find the Warakabra Tiger," Durell said.

  He wondered what answers waited in the swaybacked old sawmill that loomed out of the jungle fringe ahead. There had been an elusive thread in Jan Browde's role, something unconvincing, a factor that warned the instincts without informing the processes of logic. . . .

  They stopped before the rusting shed of the mill, and Durell's dark gaze surveyed the liane-bound trees that leaned toward him, the high mounds of sawdust that moldered under coveriets of creepers. His eyes turned toward the glare of the river, found it empty in the heat of the day, except for a huge raft of timber rounding a bend upstream.

  The scream and rattle of insects frayed against Durell's nerves. A horde of blackburds with hooked beaks jeered. The metal building emitted a solid layer of heat as Durell reached for the door. He steeled himself and stepped inside. A shaft of white light came through the door behind him and carried his shadow deep into the building. He stepped aside, and his shadow mingled with the gloom. Peta came in beside him, while he waited for his eyes to adjust from the blaze of the sun.

  Then Peta said: "Nobody's here."

  "Be still."

  Durell listened. He heard no one, but had an indefinable awareness of another's presence. He unloosened his S&W and picked his way down the sloping dirt floor. The rear of the building was open and framed a molten shine that was the river. The water's reflection wove ribbons of light against the ceiling, wavered over rust-caked machinery that had been the headrig. The deepest roots of his mind, the seat of primitive emotions and mechanics of heartbeat, said something was terribly wrong, and he saw the same recognition in Peta's green eyes. But nothing looked wrong.

  They paused beside a water-filled log pit at the river's edge. Rainbow-hued guppies and orange and silver characins mingled beneath the still surface. Durell lifted his gaze toward the river, where wavelets splintered the sun's rays. The log raft was closer now, and he saw a woodcutter, wife and children, dark, somnolent figures under a thatch awning. The river plashed and purled against the gate of the log pit.

  The place was empty.

  Durell was baffled and shook sweat from his face.

  He heard the heat in his ears, the dim jangle of alarms in the recesses of his intelligence as he moved warily around the broken-down hulk of the log carriage.

  Then the alarms screamed, and he heard the short suck of Peta's breath.

  Otelo would never write again.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Otelo Antunes' corpse was almost unrecognizable there in the sawdust with ants running over its flat, black eyes.

  Peta's breathing quickened a bit, the wavelets' glare pulsing across his bare back, and he bent next to the body. Durell looked all around, then down. The man's neck had been broken, and the doughy mass of his crushed head lay at a bizarre angle to the line of his ' spine. His smart gray suit was ripped and tattered, his shirt front torn away completely. Lines of deep scratches, were gouged across his face and chest. A savage combination of rips ended below the breastbone, as if made in a ferocious digging at the man's viscera, which had been disembowled and lay in bloated gray lumps and coils in the bloody dirt.

  The youth's lips twisted distastefully, and he turned his face up to Durell. "It looks almost as if—"

  "As if an animal had killed him," Durell supplied, and his jaw muscles stood out in ridges. "A big cat."

  "The Warakabra Tiger!" Peta's eyes went glassy.

  "Don't believe it," Durell said. He knew Peta worried about his father and put a hand on his arm. "I've a hunch this is a trap, set especially for me. Too bad you stepped into it."

  "I don't understand . . . "

  "Nor I; not clearly." Durell's eyes swung around to the front of the building, and he added: "The trap isn't sprung, yet. Let's get out of here."

  Then a bullhorn sounded: "This is the police. You in the building, come out peaceably!"

  Swiftly, Durell bolstered his pistol, stuffed his shoes into his trousers pockets, threw his jacket into the log pit to sink. "The river's the only way to go," he said and splashed through the log pit as shoals of tiny fish scattered like tossed gems.

  Peta seemed held to the spot for an uncertain moment, then lunged after Durell.

  "Head for the timber raft," Durell said, and clambered over the end wall of the log pit, dived and swam with urgent power.

  The bullhorn demanded his obedience once more. He ignored it and hoped the building would shield him from view until he was out of pistol range. The water was tepid, as Peta matched him stroke for stroke. The raft of timber was still upstream, and Durell allowed the current to speed him on a tangent to intercept it. They were three or four hundred yards out before the police realized what had happened, and Durell heard the first flat crack of a gun. A bullet slapped the water yards away. Durell did not pause or dive, kept up a steady crawl, and the raft loomed larger.

  More bullets spanked the water as the midstream current hastened Durell's pace. He glanced back, saw half a dozen police running and gesturing, and thought about the voice that had sounded through the bullhorn—it had been Inspector Sydney James'.

  Bartica was out of James' bailiwick, so it was logical for Durell to assume that he had come here to entrap him—which implied that the inspector had been tipped off about his meeting with the diamond pirates and might even be guilty of complicity in Otelo's murder.

  Durell was ready to believe anything.

  The raft loomed beside him; he reached out, clutched the rough bark of a huge log, and his shoulders cracked with strain as he pulled himself onto it. He straddled the log, gave Peta a hand up, and Peta flopped down beside him, water streaming from his hair.

  The lumberman came running.

  He made the machete in his hand obvious, as he said: "What are you doing on my raft, man?'*

  "Just hoppmg a ride. We'll be off in five minutes," Durell said.

  The dark lumberman was a bowl egged runt, but muscle squirmed under his skin, and he looked willing to use the blade. "I saw them shoot at you. Get the hell off."

  Durell scanned the riverbank, saw that the cops had vanished, probably running for a launch. The man's wife stood in the shade of the thatch shelter, cotton print dress sagging about her hips, two naked children peering from behind her skirts. Durell did not want to harm the man. He was relieved when Peta spoke.

  "Where did your timber come from?" Peta asked.

  "Up Issano way. Why?"

  Peta's smile was pleasant. "You know Edmund B
annon? Stanley de Courcy?"

  "Hey! You know Stanley?"

  "Good friends," Peta replied.

  "His concession's next to mine!" The woodcutter buried the edge of the machete in a log and held out his hand and grinned.

  Durell felt the sun dig through his drying shirt. A gleaming dragonfly landed on the log, as the great strength of the river whispered about them. He saw the hill above Bartica clearly now.

  He spoke to Peta. "Swim for that custard apple down there. The current will do most of your work."

  "That's the place I showed you this morning."

  "Yes. Dick's house is just up the slope."

  They splashed ashore in the hot shade of the tree, and an iguana scurried into the river. Peta and the woodcutter exchanged a wave as the raft glided past. Durell strode rapidly up a grassy slope, scattering water from hair and clothing, and stood before the box of weathered wood and rusted roofing that was Dick's outpost shack. Red brick pilings held it above flood level, and it had shuttered windows and a deep porch. The house was no different from a hundred others, except that the porch was empty of clutter, and rough boards had been nailed across the door. A notice tacked there said the house had been sealed by the police, and KEEP OUT.

  "You did not kill that man. Why did you run?" Peta asked as he yanked at the boards.

  "Why did you?" Durell said.

  Peta eyed him narrowly, then gripped a board and heaved until his muscles lumped like stones.

  "It's no use, Peta. We won't get them loose with our bare hands."

  "We need a crowbar," Peta agreed.

  Durell wondered where the police were. Sooner or later they would look for him here. "We've got to hurry," he said. "Maybe something is under the house."

  They ran around to the side of the building. It had been sited on a slope, so that this side was some six feet off the ground. Durell thrashed through a fringe of weeds, hoping against the presence of bushmasters and coral snakes, the heat of the open sun an intolerable weight that burdened mind and body. Then the dank space beneath the house was cooler, floored in soft, red earth, all vegetation shaded out. Casual jimk. A darting rat. Discolored bottles and remains of corroded tin cans. A pick head. Durell bent for it, abruptly realized the footprints beside it, raised puzzled eyes toward the floor.