“And then?”
“She asked that I escort her to the hotel with her purchases and my employer permitted me to go, but we were followed there.”
“By whom?”
“It is said you have met Siatin. It was he.”
Suddenly the car slowed, driving down a long avenue lined with trees. This was not exactly a street, and not exactly a country lane, but it resembled both. Turning the car, suddenly he stopped under some trees and got out. Set well back in a huge garden was a vast, rambling old mansion.
“It is the house of Banjak?”
“Yes, and what you will do now, I do not know.”
“Watch me,” I said.
Stepping into the street I started for the gate. My idea was to go right up to the house, demand to see the girl, and if she wanted to come, take her away. There was a chance in a hundred it might work or that I might at least find out if she was still in Bangkok. If that failed, then I could take other steps. They had started the rough stuff, but I would avoid it, if possible.
There was an iron gate between stone columns and it was standing open just a little. There was a small hut for a gate tender but he was, fortunately, nowhere in sight. I entered and walked swiftly up the gravel drive.
At the huge double door, I pulled a bell cord and waited. The doors opened finally, and a tall man in a long coat stood there. He wore a small round cap on his head.
“I want to see Banjak,” I said.
“I am sorry. He is not here.” The servant started to close the door but I put my shoulder against it and stepped in. He backed away from me, his eyes wary but not frightened. “I have said he is not here. If you persist, you shall have trouble.”
“I was born to trouble,” I replied shortly. “You will tell him I am here. If not him, tell Siatin. But it’s Banjak I want to see.”
Siatin stepped into sight from a doorway concealed by curtains. His fat jowls were set and hard now, and there was a light in his eyes that was anything but promising for my future. When I started to step by him the servant put up a hand as if to stop me and I swung him aside. Face to face with Siatin, I said, “Where’s that girl? I want her and I want her now!”
Before he could speak, there was a slight movement and on the steps at the end of the hall was a huge man clad in a white silk suit with a green sash. He was built like a Turkish wrestler, and he came slowly down the steps. He paused a dozen feet away, his black eyes utterly cold.
“You wished to see me? I am Banjak.”
“I have come for Gwen Moran.”
“I have never heard of her.” He spoke calmly, his eyes level.
“You’re a liar.” I said it flatly. I was in this as deep as I could get now, and my only chance was to push on through. Anyway, I hate to take a pushing around. This man had tried to have me killed, and he had kidnapped an American girl. In my own way, I, too, could be ruthless. “Gwen Moran is here or in some place of which you know. I want her now. And if I don’t get her at once, I’ll take steps.”
He smiled, a faintly supercilious smile, yet impatient, too. “What steps?” he sneered. “Your government will do nothing. It would be bad for propaganda. There is nothing you can do. Nothing at all.”
It was coming up in me and I could feel it. I wanted to take a swing at this big lug. Stifling the impulse for the moment in favor of sometime more opportune, I said, “I’ve no intention of calling in my government. They have too many problems to bother with something I can handle myself.”
“You think well of yourself,” he said shortly. “Now leave, or I’ll have you beaten and thrown out.”
“Why don’t you try it?” I suggested. “What’s the matter? Are you a yellow rat aside from being a stealer of women?”
He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it even a little, and he liked it less that Siatin and the servant stood there listening. His face darkened with angry blood and he took a catlike step forward, then stopped. “Siatin,” he said, “have him beaten and thrown out.” Deliberately, he turned and started for the stairs.
If I was thrown out now—but I wasn’t going to be. Not without a fight.
With a lunge, I started for him. Siatin and the servant both sprang for me, but they were too slow. Head down, I rammed Banjak in the behind and at the same time grabbed his ankles and jerked up, hard. Grabbed in that way, a man can only fall on his face, but he strikes headfirst. Banjak came down hard, only the soft carpeting on the stairs saving him from a cracked skull. I went over him, and up the stairs.
The servant was fast but not eager, and Siatin much too fat and slow. I made the top of the stairs with time to spare and glanced swiftly both ways. Somewhere far off in the huge old building I heard a bell ringing.
Now that I was in the house I meant to stay. That bell was calling help, I knew. But with luck they would not find me. The left side of the house opened onto the garden, so I turned left, but then circled around by a passage that led across the building and ducked into the first door on the right side.
It was a cozy room lined with books. On the stand was a cigarette, still smoking. There was also an open book. Evidently it was from here that Banjak had come. I crossed the room to another door, and opening it, stepped into a bedchamber. Crossing that, I passed through an ultramodern bathroom into a larger chamber that was empty. Behind me somewhere, I heard a door open.
COMMENTS: The mention in this story of the nightclub Chez Eve and the fact that Gwen was seen dancing with a “French Colonel” suggests that it might have been written prior to the mid-1950s, when the French were forced to leave Indochina. Chez Eve opened sometime in the 1940s and was famous as one of the few air-conditioned public places in Bangkok. Louis’s comment about “American flyers” is probably based on the fact that two of the partners who owned the Oriental Hotel were pilots from the USA; a number of others in the expatriate community were men who had been with the wartime OSS. Although I do not believe that Louis was ever in Thailand, he did make several stops just to the south, along the Malay Peninsula, prior to World War II, a somewhat similar environment.
Obviously, Dad was still finding his way with this one; but it was shaping up to be a fun story and I wish he’d continued it. I’m especially intrigued by Louis’s mention of his protagonist’s father. Heroes with important, and still living, fathers are somewhat uncommon in L’Amour fiction. I really wonder what he was planning to do with that relationship, or if it was just a way to get Martin Cross involved.
The next story is also set in Bangkok. For a while, I wondered if returning to write about this city was due to the influence of a pair of Thai brothers my mom and dad met in the late 1950s. They originally came to Southern California to go to college, and have since become virtual cousins of ours. We have now known four generations of this prestigious Thai family. Yet both “Citizen of the Darker Streets” and the next title, “Where Flows the Bangkok,” feel more like they come from an earlier period, after World War II, but before 1958 or so.
* * *
WHERE FLOWS THE BANGKOK
* * *
A Treatment for an Adventure Story
Kip Morgan leaves a tramp steamer in Bangkok looking more like a beachcomber than the man he is looking for, the drifting ne’er-do-well nephew of rich old Miles Vaughn, who had died leaving several millions and no relatives but Jim Vaughn. After several months of drifting from port to port, Morgan has finally arrived in Bangkok, aware that this was the last place Jim Vaughn had headed for—twenty years before.
After making inquiries around town, Morgan, unshaven and in battered whites, drifts into a waterfront nightclub, where he finds a cool, self-possessed-looking girl he has been told about. He tells her he is a detective from the States looking for a man named Vaughn. She leaves him abruptly.
Following her, an attempt is made to kill him, and after a street battle, Morgan takes shelter from his hunters in the loft of a warehouse, where a hundred or so opium-drugged coolies lay sprawled, sleeping. Stripping off his coat an
d shirt he lies among them, and is so tanned that he is passed over in the rather cursory inspection.
Getting back to his hotel, he falls into bed, and in the morning, freshly bathed and shaved, wearing fresh clothes, he starts to follow his one clue—the girl’s peculiar reaction to his comment.
The girl is one Etta Bryan, an entertainer in a nightclub, and she has lived in Bangkok most of her life, coming there as a child from Gorontalo, in the Celebes. Listening to her sing, he sees another watcher is one of his pursuers from the evening before. Now, Morgan is a tough man himself, and doesn’t relish being shoved around. He starts for the man, and the fellow ducks out the door. Following, Morgan finds the man laying for him and they slug it out. The police come and the man escapes. Etta Bryan will still not talk to him.
He waits to follow her but several tough men with guns close in. Morgan is taken to a waterfront shack, where a bruised and battered man awaits him. This, the man with whom he fought, is Shanghai Charley. He slaps Morgan across the mouth. “So, Detective, you are lookin’ for me, are you?”
Morgan tells him he has made a mistake, that the man he is looking for is much older, a man named Vaughn. Jim Vaughn.
“Jim Vaughn? What you want with him?”
Morgan explains about the estate, and Shanghai Charley smokes thoughtfully. Then he apologizes for the slap and the trouble, explaining that he himself is wanted in the States, and has no intention of going back or being taken back. He also tells Morgan that Vaughn is dead. Then he asks, “This Vaughn now? If he had a kid, wouldn’t the kid inherit?”
Morgan learns that Vaughn had fathered a child. That he had settled down at last in Bangkok, had married the daughter of a planter, and they had lived for years. Charley claims he can produce the child. For a price. Five thousand dollars.
The following day, Morgan does a little investigating of his own, then comes to meet Shanghai Charley, who tells him Etta Bryan is the child. That Vaughn was her father.
At Etta’s home, she shows him several pictures of Jim Vaughn, including one taken with the dead uncle. She shows him a marriage license—Jim Vaughn and his wife—she shows him a watch, a ring, and a few other possessions to prove her claim.
Still unsatisfied, Morgan goes to a Sister, who tells him some facts and hands him several papers. Then going to an old man, he learns from him that Etta Bryan had come to Bangkok from Gorontalo, all right, but that Jim Vaughn had gone after her, and had brought her back with him.
Shanghai Charley insists she is the child, but Morgan nevertheless believes Charley is attempting a fraud…that he knows something about the child but is attempting to substitute a stooge of his own. Despite that, Morgan is attracted to Etta.
Charley is obviously worried. He will not leave the house, tries to hurry the decision through, tries to get money from Morgan, even gets into Morgan’s room and attempts to rob him while he is asleep. When caught, he laughs it off, then insists again that Etta is the right child. That it is no trouble for Morgan—why not take her back to claim the estate? He can, he says, furnish depositions to attest to her birth.
As Charley has underworld connections everywhere, Morgan has no doubt of this, but he believes that for personal reasons Shanghai Charley would like to see Etta get the money.
Returning to the house, he accuses them both of fraud, and tells them what he has learned from the Sister at the convent—that the child was not a girl, but a boy!
Then Charley, obviously in a sweat of fear, asks him again for money, offers to forward evidence later as to who the child is, evidence to prove there has been a mistake.
Disgusted, Morgan goes to the door to leave. Two men lunge in, firing. Shanghai Charley goes down, killing one man as he falls, and Morgan gets the other. These are the men Charley has defrauded and the ones he has been trying to escape.
Dying, Charley begs Morgan to take Etta anyway, explains that he had planned to blackmail her into paying him large sums after she got the estate, but to take her—that she’s a good kid, and was the daughter of an old friend of Jim Vaughn’s. Much as he would like to, Morgan refuses.
Charley then asks to see Etta. Morgan sends her in, and leaves them together with a mission priest who is a doctor.
Called back, Charley tells Morgan that he has made his point. That he has married Etta, making her his heir. When Morgan wants to know what that means, Charley explains that he was Jim Vaughn’s son!
He hands Morgan the papers, birth certificate and a passport, to prove it.
COMMENTS: Kip Morgan was a character Louis first introduced in the somewhat comedic short story “The Dream Fighter.” Kip then evolved over the course of several stories from a boxer into a private detective.
Occasionally, Louis would write treatments, like this one, when he was trying to sell ideas or even finished stories to motion-picture or television companies. But because this draft is so roughly sketched out I think it’s more likely an example of Louis writing a treatment for his own use, as a trial run for a full-fledged story. He did this very rarely because it was nearly the same amount of work as writing the story itself.
Perhaps this theory explains the origin of some of the other treatments in this volume…that they were written more as creative experiments than sales tools. I have always hesitated to make that assumption, knowing that Dad disliked having a tale too completely worked out before he really started writing. But he would have had to learn that lesson at some point, so maybe what we are looking at is part of the learning process.
It is also interesting to see both the city of Bangkok and the scene where the hero hides in the opium den show up again. I suspect that this fragment was written before “Citizen of the Darker Streets,” but that is only my intuition; I have no evidence.
Certainly “Where Flows the Bangkok” has a lot of aspects that need to be improved, but that is one of the reasons to create a treatment: to allow the writer to confront the story and see where it leads.
* * *
VANDERDYKE
* * *
The First Three Chapters of a Historical Novel
CHAPTER 1
Icy wind fluttered the small flame and the firelight danced the shadows on their faces. The night was bitter cold, and the tiny fire struggled bravely to put out a warmth that died almost at the edge of its flame. But these were men strange to comfort, men grown harsh in the harshness of the winter wilderness.
Jeblish Mun, lean and hawk-featured, poked a small stick into the fire.
“He wants you dead, Van. He was makin’ war-talk, general-like, but when he spoke of you he was most pa’-tic’lar, and he spoke clear, with no nonsense to him.
“He said, ‘I do not want him taken—I want him killed. I want to see not his scalp but his head. I want to look into his dead eyes. Then I can be sure.’ ”
“Give any reason why he was favoring me?”
“None that would hold water. He made it out you were the King’s enemy in these here woods, but it surely seemed like there was more to it, the way he spoke.”
“Jeb?” Vanderdyke looked up from under his brows from where he lay beside the fire. “You’d best not go back. I think you’ve played out your string around Detroit.”
“Kin o’ got that idee m’self.”
“Did he have a name? Who was he?”
“Never heard no name, an’ I didn’t waste around tryin’ to find out. Names don’t cut much ice, no way. He was a tall man, on the thinnish side, but thin like a whip or a steel blade. Wore one o’ them powdered wigs like they wear down to the settlements. Described you to a T. Gave me the shivers, like somebody steppin’ on your grave. He really wants you dead, Van.”
Vanderdyke sat up, hunching his shoulders against the wind. It was cold…cold, cold, cold. Even to him it was cold, and he had not slept under a roof a dozen nights in the year.
“Who was there?”
“Couple of dozen Senecas, some Onondagas, and a Mohawk or two. I seen some Cayuga around the fort, so if it’s Iro
quois you want, they’re all there. I could fairly feel those eyes right in the middle of my back. I taken out. Cold as it was, I never waited for daybreak. I just up an’ skedaddled while I had my hair.”
In the black forest the low wind moaned, and the river-ice cracked and strained. The first warm days would break up the ice and start it downriver. But it would be a late spring.
Vanderdyke was uneasy. For three days he had waited within a mile or two of this place, waiting for Jeblish Mun, Henry Slack, or one of the others to rendezvous here. The longer they stayed in the area the greater the risk, and now that Jeblish had come he wished to move.
“Be war before snow flies again,” Jeblish commented. “The Injuns know it, an’ I feel it in my bones.”
“I will be crossing the mountains, Jeblish. I am going to the settlements.”
“What can you tell them they don’t already know?”
“I want to see what’s happening, and I want to talk to George Mason. He’s a canny man, and busy as he is with his plantation he knows all that’s happening.”
“Comes to fightin’, they ain’t got a chance back there. Out here on the frontier it’s mostly us an’ what Injuns they can get to fight for them, but over yonder it’ll take an army, which they ain’t got.
“Anyway, the Colonies are always wranglin’ with each other. Can’t agree on anything, so how could they get together to fight?
“Far’s that goes, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia are just about as English as the old country. Why, to hear them talk in Detroit there’s dances ever’ night, and they’re dancin’ with our girls!”
Volume 1: Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists Page 27