“Oh, good Lord!” groaned Irma. “He’ll kill you when he finds out that—”
“Pipe down!” hissed Rankin. He planted his feet against the pinch bar and pushed it farther out of sight; but Gomez, descending the companionway, heard the scrape of metal, and caught the last motion of Rankin’s legs.
He barked an order in Chinese. Those who had followed him scurried astern. He regarded Rankin for a long, deadly instant. He saw the pieces of broken glass. He looked at the bonds of his prisoners and noted Rankin’s bleeding wrists. Gomez was perplexed, but he sensed that in some inexplicable way, Rankin was responsible for the trouble.
Then Gomez smiled.
“I don’t know what you did, but you’ve been up to something. So fix that engine right now, or I’ll soak the girl in gasoline and roast her before your eyes.”
Rankin knew that in desperation Gomez would sacrifice whatever value his prisoners were supposed to have.
“Untie me,” he said, “and get her out of my way so I can work.”
“Work fast,” said Gomez. “No matter how crowded we are, there will be time enough to take care of both of you.”
Rankin heard the faint purr of a distant engine. Gomez ordered Irma taken out of the compartment. Then Rankin was released, and set to work, guarded by two of the crew.
“Get it going before they catch up,” warned Gomez as the drumming astern became louder.
Rankin picked up a handful of wrenches, tinkered with the ignition, and inspected the engine, tapping and adjusting here and there. But his bluff ended when Gomez saw a jet of steam issuing from the cut in the empty intake line.
“Get away from the exhaust line! I see now what you did. Clever—but tape it up.” Gomez smiled, then added without a trace of mockery. “After my own heart, Rankin. Nerve enough to play for your slim chance of rescue, and risk my certain vengeance.”
Rankin cursed. He had not foreseen that a jet of steam would betray him. He abandoned his tinkering and rounded the end of the engine. Despite the wrenches he held, he made no move to brain Gomez and batter his way through the guards. He knew that he would be cut down before he could take Irma with him.
“You’ll behave for the sake of the girl,” chuckled Gomez, sensing his thought. “Your only weakness. Aside from your stupidity in obeying telephone calls from people who sound like Pâwang Ali.”
Rankin taped up the cut in the suction line. But he was not utterly beaten. He had seen a final play, and he had completed it before Gomez detected the jet of steam.
A Malay pressed the starter. The engine, cooled during the halt, roared to life. They were under way. Far astern a long tongue of light slowly swept back and forth, probing the darkness; but Gomez’s boat would outrace them.
Two guards stood close to Rankin and Gomez. Irma lay in the cabin, still bound hand and foot, her pale face just visible in the dim light reflected from the engine room. Gomez, having probed Rankin’s weak spot, was secure against further attempts at escape; and the way to Sumatra was clear.
He nodded, grinned, and turned to Rankin to resume the quiz on American interests in Asia. He knew that Rankin’s courage had cracked.
But that question was not spoken. A prolonged, gusty roar shook the cabin. A searing sheet of flame billowed from the engine compartment. Rankin’s last play had succeeded. He had cracked a gas line to fill the sump beneath the engine with gasoline. He had also loosened a flange in the exhaust pipe. A tongue of fire from the thundering engine had touched off the explosive mixture. The concussion knocked them sprawling to the deck; but Rankin was prepared for the shock, and the enemy was not.
Rankin snatched a kris that one of the prostrate guards dropped. A pistol cracked. A bullet tore through Rankin’s thigh. Gomez was in action. But before he could squeeze a second shot, Rankin’s kris lashed out. The haft turned in his hand. Instead of splitting Gomez’s head, the wild stroke knocked the pistol out of his grasp. Wan Chi, scrambling to his feet, seized a parang. Rankin ducked the cut, kicked Gomez full in the chest, and sank his kris into the Malay’s stomach. All in a brace of split seconds. The cabin became a howling confusion as the crew recovered from the explosion.
Choking fumes billowed from the engine compartment; and in those dense black clouds, Rankin had an advantage, despite the odds against him. Whatever he struck was fair game, while the enemy could not distinguish him from their comrades, except when a tongue of flame penetrated the swirling, stifling darkness.
The darting stroke of a blade knocked Rankin’s kris from his hand. He snatched a chair, splintered it across a head, parried a parang stroke, and with the stump that remained in his grasp, fought his way toward Irma.
A blue-white pencil of light invaded the murky gloom. The pursuing cutter had them spotted, but they could die a dozen times over before it caught up. The pitching of the boat had shifted Irma; and when by the glare of the searchlight Rankin picked her out of the confusion, he saw that his advance was blocked. Gomez, struggling to his knees, roared above the confusion, “Lower the boats!”
Some heard and obeyed. The engine had long since stalled. The drift of the boat carried it clear of the searchlight beam from the rear. Rankin ploughed into the nightmare. He was exhausted, battered and hacked, and beyond all reason; his only thought was to plunge through the pack, dive overboard with Irma to keep her from burning when that floating, wallowing hell exploded.
By the momentary light of a leaping tongue of flame Rankin saw the face of Gomez, grim but majestic. Rankin pivoted; but before he could close in, the terrific crash that shook the boat from stem to stern sent him and his enemy pitching headlong to the deck. There were yells of terror from the rear, the scurrying of feet, the crack of pistols. A blistering, blue-white glare invaded the cabin. A boarding party of tall, bearded Sikhs charged from the fantail. In the roaring madhouse that followed, Rankin, struggling to his knees, caught a flickering glimpse of a many-colored sarong and saw a dizzying blur of steel close in on Gomez. And as trampling feet crushed Rankin’s exhausted body to the deck, he knew that Pâwang Ali had arrived—
* * * *
The next perception that invaded the darkness that enveloped Rankin’s senses was a dull, prolonged rumbling. He tried to stir, but for a moment could move nothing but his eyelids. Then with a painful effort he propped himself up on his elbow, shook off a detaining hand, and stared at the tall column of flame that towered into the darkness a mile or more away. That was the connecting link between his last recollections and his present surroundings. He knew that the gas tanks of Gomez’s boat had exploded.
Then he saw that Irma Caradis was kneeling beside him. Pâwang Ali, bandaged but smiling, squatted on the deck. Inspector Kemp was tugging his bleached mustache and saying, “Extrawn’ry, coming out of it this soon.”
“What the hell?” demanded Rankin, “How come?”
“Simple enough,” explained Inspector Kemp. “My assistant, following us as we pursued your captors from Singapore, pulled us out of the swamp we piled into. The rest was even simpler. You see, Pâwang Ali, in the course of his earlier and unofficial investigations, had gotten wind of Gomez’s cruiser and when we saw it had slipped its moorings, we shoved off in a launch from Kranji and overtook one of the cutters which headquarters had already radioed to be on the lookout for Gomez.
“Once we saw the blaze, we turned off our searchlight in order to conceal our approach. We thought he might, at the last minute, kill you and throw your bodies overboard to rob us of evidence of the only crime we could directly charge to his personal account. Though we would never have overtaken him if you hadn’t set his boat on fire. Miss Caradis told us how you outwitted Gomez, and—”
“Pardon me, Mr. Inspector,” Pâwang Ali frigidly interposed. “Before you again refer to that person as Gomez, kindly look at my souvenir of the encounter.”
As he spoke, Pâwang Ali reached into a lifeboat and drew out a bundle the size of
a medicine ball. It was wrapped in the silken jacket of a mandarin, and it was dark with blood. He very deliberately unwound the covering. A man’s head rolled to the deck; and then a severed hand. Irma gasped and turned pale at the sight of the grisly trophy; Rankin swallowed, and forced a grin. There was a moment of silence as Pâwang Ali indicated the upturned palm and the ivory-white traceries that limned the figure of an imperial dragon. They were cicatrices left by fine lancet cuts.
“This, Mr. Inspector,” said Pâwang Ali with a touch of pride, “avenges the death of my servant, Hussayn. Here you have the hand and the head of the slayer, even as I promised.”
Then, grinning amiably, he demanded, “Mr. Inspector, be pleased to name me the man whose head this is.”
“Er—ah—the Father of Dragons—but damn it!—beg your pardon, Miss Caradis—don’t you see one simply can’t put such nonsense into an official report?”
“Quite so, Mr. Kemp,” conceded Pâwang Ali as he scooped up his gory trophies. “Which is fair enough, for neither can one officially record my initial venture into head hunting. And now, Miss Caradis, why not cable your late employer’s associates and tell them that the Dragon’s shadow no longer hangs over Malaya?”
“While you’re at it,” interposed Rankin, catching Irma’s eye, “tell ’em you’ve just acquired an interest in a plantation in Johore. Malaya’s a great country, and you’ll like it.”
“Mr. Rankin,” said the Pâwang as he noted the glance that passed between the two, “you’re not leaving the rest of us very much to brag about.” Then catching Kemp by the arm; “Inspector, in spite of my Moslem principles, I’m wondering if we oughtn’t to see if the skipper can find us a drink.”
SCOURGE OF THE SILVER DRAGON
Originally published in Gold Seal Detective, Dec. 1935.
“That’s funny,” muttered Gilbert Flint to the silence of his dingy furnished room, but there was no mirth in his frosty gray eyes as he watched a touring sedan emerge from the swirling mists of Chinatown and pull to the curbing of Jackson Street.
His craggy, suntanned face tightened into angles that were accentuated by the sudden grimness of his mouth. Crouched beside the sill of the flyspecked window that gave him a view from Stockton Street down to the Embarcadero, Gilbert Flint of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a moment seemed to be a lurking tiger. It was time to strike. Twice during his endless prowlings as a shabby drifter in Chinatown, he had seen that six-wheel job pull up at the mouth of the alley that led to the rear of Yut Lee’s “Abode of Felicitous Fraternal Association.” And the third time confirmed his hunch that the Silver Dragon came to San Francisco by motor.
The same car, and the same driver: a hawk-nosed, swarthy man whose thin face, for a moment illuminated by the yellowish glow of the nearby electrolier, was deeply lined and haggard from hard driving. He stretched his lean, rangy body, then stepped to the side door of Yut Lee’s place. He rang and was at once admitted.
Flint reached for a wreck of a hat, slipped into a shapeless, tattered topcoat, and resumed the role he had for a moment cast off. He bit off a chew of Rattle Axe and shambled down the two flights of creaking stairs. If a Chinaman emerged from the alley to remove the spare wheels from the fender wells, Flint wanted to be within arm’s reach. Those tires—unless his hunch was wrong—would be filled with more than air.
He wondered how many five-tael tins of opium each inner tube could conceal. He wondered also what master smuggler was flooding San Francisco with Silver Dragon, the new brand that was forcing the old ones out of the market.
Flint slouched upgrade, crossed Jackson, and ducked into an intersecting alley not far from the parked sedan. He entered a gloomy doorway and ascended a flight of stairs. On the second floor hall he lifted a window, cleared the sill, and emerged on a balcony that overhung the court in the rear of Yut Lee’s place.
While the Abode of Felicitous Fraternal Association was the center of the local opium traffic, Flint had larger game in view—the smuggling ring that supplied Yut Lee. The Chinatown squad, complying with a request from federal headquarters, arrested just enough peddlers and hop-heads to avoid a suspicion-arousing lull.
Across the court was a window, a blot of yellow glow in the gloom. Flint was looking into the inside of Chinatown. Lean, grizzled Yut Lee was earnestly conversing with a girl whose loveliness caught Flint’s breath. She was not Chinese, and he doubted that she was Eurasian. Her blue-black hair was drawn sleekly back and caught in a lustrous cluster at the nape of her neck. Cream-colored skin and dark eyes perilously smouldering behind curled lashes; just a glimpse, but an unforgettable one.
This was the home of the Silver Dragon that had invaded San Francisco despite the airtight cordon of FBI men guarding the Embarcadero and searching every ship that came from the Orient.
A door silently swung into the murky gloom below. A Chinaman emerged. His felt slippers swish-swished as he shuffled across the flagstones. Same old routine. Haul the spares in, one at a time; then later, come out with other tires.
The Chinaman fumbled with keys. A latch click—but as the door to the street opened, the Chinaman froze for an instant. Then his hand darted forward, sending a silvery streak zipping on ahead of him. Screeching wrathfully, he drew another knife and bounded toward the street. That opened the show.
Flint, clearing the balcony railing, heard the tinkle of steel and the answering yell. He dropped to the shadows of the court, rocked for an instant on the balls of his feet to regain his balance. But instead of rising, he rolled back and to the shelter of a pilaster. The Abode of Felicitous Fraternal Association was waking up.
The hawk-nosed driver of the parked car came plunging into the court. As he reached the street, a pistol crackled. Lead thudded into the door. Wild shots spattered to whining fragments against the brick wall at the rear. A yell came, and the sodden thud of a man dropping to the paving.
Hawk-nose, ducking to the shelter of the jamb, cursed wrathfully and snapped an automatic into line. The blast of his heavy pistol drowned the spiteful rattle that came from beyond his parked car, but flame still streaked over the hood.
Flint caught it at a glance. Rival opium dealers were rising in revolt against the monopoly of Silver Dragon. One spare wheel lay on the sidewalk where the hijacker had dropped it to take cover as the Chinaman emerged from the court.
“Cabron!” roared Hawk-nose above the thunder of his .45, then he shifted to get a better line of fire.
His maneuver was good. Another shot, and the enemy’s fusillade ceased. Hawk-nose bounded from cover. Sirens were screaming in the distance, and in another few moments the Chinatown squad would appear to mop up the disturbance. The iron gratings of windows opening into the court of Yut Lee’s place were slamming shut; and when the police appeared, bland faced Orientals would be insisting: “No savvee…”
Wisely enough, Yut Lee’s highbinders were not taking a hand. There was no use. The car parked at the curb was Hawk-nose’s funeral, not theirs.
Hawk-nose was losing no time. Even as the wounded hijacker dropped gurgling and groaning to the street, the opium runner leaped to the wheel.
Flint emerged from cover. Getting the license plate number was not enough. That would be changed; but by riding the rear bumper he could flag some traffic cop to tail the machine. But both Flint and the opium runner miscalculated.
Before Hawk-nose could jab the starter, a dark form jerked up from behind the front seat to meet him. A hand snaked up, striking aside his automatic, and a curved blade lashed upward. There had been two hijackers, one working on each fender well. And the one at the left had played a cunning game.
The interior of the car became a tangle of writhing bodies and grappling hands, and a relentlessly flickering blade that darted in and out of the confusion. Hawk-nose sagged to the floorboards.
Flint bounded to the running board. The hijacker, a short, stocky Chinaman, kicked clear of
his wounded adversary and lunged to meet him. Flint ploughed in, his left hand catching the highbinder’s wrist and deflecting his dripping blade, his fist popping home. The Chinaman, dazed but still kicking, sagged across the steering column.
Before Flint could regain his balance, the parked car began rolling downgrade. The emergency brake had been disengaged in the tussle. He jerked back, but the highbinder blocked his attempt to leap clear. The knife descended. Flint wriggled clear. Its red length stabbed the upholstery.
Flint drew his knee up to his stomach to boot the highbinder through the windshield—but gravity and the steep grade had been at work. The now swiftly, erratically descending car backed over the low curbing and crashed into a house on Grant Avenue, shattering the door. The impact pitched the highbinder and Flint to the paving. They came up fighting. A blade raked Flint from shoulder to hip. He jerked aside, struggled to his feet. Another vicious jab. Flint feinted, then ducked inside the highbinder’s guard, planting him squarely on the jaw.
Hawk-nose, aroused by the shock that flung him from the floorboards, lashed out blindly with both arms.
The riot ended with a savage yell, a gurgle, and a gasp. Flint saw that the highbinder had impaled himself on his own blade.
Hawk-nose was still alive, though the ever widening pool of blood through which he was trying to crawl left his chances in the balance.
“Take it easy, Jack,” cautioned Flint, kneeling beside the wounded man. “You got them both. I’ll give you a lift—which way?”
Hawk-nose muttered, gestured vaguely as Flint lifted him from the paving. The car, despite its rear end crash, was worth a trial.
And then the Chinatown squad came pounding into action. Flint swallowed an oath, and obeyed the brusque command to surrender.
“Jeez, chief,” he whined, resuming his pose as a drifter, “I don’t know nuthin’ about this. I was just helpin’ this guy to his feet—”
“You look like it,” growled the sergeant, eyeing Flint’s knife-tattered coat and battered face. “Now shut up, or do I have to sock you?”
E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives Page 29