“No,” answered Neale.
“Hell, I don’t want them,” said Lady Di. “I’m not ashamed of my figure.”
Neale looked at her, standing there, and realized that she was purposely torturing him.
He supposed he’d have to let her have her clothes and just forget her. But everything was badly jumbled in the Tumbleweed’s head. He’d been so happy with Allaha, until she staged this fantastic fight, and he’d been fooled about Lady Di, as he was always being fooled. He had been mad about her, and now he only wanted to heap insult and ignominy upon her.
Allaha was screaming somewhere in the bush. The Amatonga were not through yet.
No, for there came another rush, another shower of spears. Phil Roscoe gasped and doubled up as an assegai stood quivering in his chest. A gush of blood burst from his lips. He quivered and lay still. Phil Roscoe had got his. He was dead.
Shrieking with fury, the Amatonga rushed again, and again the two automatics and Neale’s rifle mowed down the leading files. But the ranks behind were coming on, and, at their head, Allaha, screaming like a demented woman.
Rifles and pistols were empty. It was rifle-butt and pistol-butts against spears. A huge savage leaped at Neale, and Neale split his head open as if it had been an egg. Then it was Allaha, with a little spear in her hand, drawn back to thrust.
Neale caught the girl’s arm and twisted it, tore the spear from it and left her disarmed.
“Hamba gachle,” he said. “Go slowly.”
He saw her torture-twisted face. He saw Lady Di aiming her automatic at Allaha’s head, and he struck up her hand. The slug passed harmlessly above the girl.
“One of your dreams? Your ideal woman?” sneered Lady Di.
God, how magnificent she was, standing there, half naked, utterly fearless!
Freddy Blake pointed his automatic at Allaha and fired. Allaha dropped. But now the Amatonga were all about them. A savage, holding a flaming brand, flung it at the roof of the shack. It struck, dropped, lay at the foot, a pithy brand of fire. Another flew, another brand. It lit upon the roof and rested there. A little curl of smoke began to spread into the night sky.
The savages had withdrawn again. Neale, Freddy, and Lady Di recharged their weapons. But the whole roof had now caught fire, and the shack was blazing steadily down to its foundations.
“Well, we’ve got to make a break for it,” said Neale.
“Where?” asked Freddy.
Neale hadn’t any answer for that. For the Amatonga were all around them, and the throwing spears were still striking into the smoking frame wall of the house. One grazed Neale’s shoulder and passed by, quivering in a clapboard.
Suddenly Freddy Blake’s face turn’d gray. He turned to Neale. “They’ve got me, the damn devils,” he said. Neale saw an assegai with a head almost as big as a shovel, standing out six inches behind him. It had pierced him through the body.
Freddy Blake supported himself against the smoking wall and grinned. “So—that’s the end,” he mumbled.
And went down, dying. Twenty-two. The type of young manhood that every civilized country in the world produces. Dying now and didn’t care a damn, because life and death were the same grand adventure.
But Lady Di was down upon her knees, heedless of the flying spears, and her lips were upon Freddy Blake’s. Her lover—one of her lovers. Had he meant anything at all to her, or was that just a gesture, a salute to a life that was passing.
The Tumbleweed couldn’t know. He just stood there, with the throwing-spears flying about him, while Lady Di received the last breath of life from Freddy Blake with her lips.
He went back into the house and got her clothes. “Here, put these on,” said the Tumbleweed roughly.
There wasn’t much time, for the whole house was becoming a fiery furnace, but Lady Di calmly put on her shoes, then the trousers, then buttoned her plump breasts into the shirt, then adjusted the leather jacket.
“And now?” she asked of Neale. The savage yells from the bush indicated that the Amatonga realized that the defenders had reached their end. But of a sudden there sounded the crackle of rifles from another quarter, the yells redoubled, and suddenly the shower of spears ceased to fly.
Through the bush came a troop of hard-bitted Rhodesian police troopers, firing with carbines from their saddles, and driving the natives into the depths of the scrub, tramping them down, imposing on them the terror that the white man exercises on the native, everywhere in the world.
The fight was ended, and two dozen troopers swung up to the blazing hut, just as Neale and Lady Di emerged. Neale wasn’t quite sane at that moment. He was bending over Allaha, crumpled on the ground. Allaha had been shot through the lungs, and was gasping out her life-blood, but she was still what she had always been, a woman. She smiled up at Neale as he kneeled beside her. “I die,” she said.
The Tumbleweed said nothing. Just held the dying girl in his arms. A white girl, whom destiny had cast among savages. Neale had been wise not to have taken her back to America. Their lives hadn’t been meant to run that way.
“I was angry,” whispered Allaha, in the Amatonga tongue. “I was jealous because of her. Do you love her, my man?”
“No,” answered Neale. “I think I hate her more than any human being in the world. I love you, Allaha.”
Allaha put her arms around Neale’s neck, and died very happily, very peacefully with her cheek against his.
* * * *
The troopers were congregating about Neale. “Glad we came in time, sir,” said the sergeant in command.
Neale looked at the dead girl, at the two dead men whose corpses had been dragged from the blazing shack. “Yes, in time,” he answered bitterly.
“We were sent out to look for Lady Diana Sutwell. Too bad those niggers got Freddy Blake and Phil. But we saved her anyway.”
“Yes,” said Neale.
“Orders are to bring Lady Diana back to Buluwayo. I’d suggest you come with us, Mr. Neale, and the Commissioner will no doubt send a troop to clear up this district later.”
“I don’t think this district will need clearing up,” said Neale. “That plane scared the natives, And Allaha here”—he pointed to the body of the girl—“well, she was a white woman, and she resented Lady Diana butting in and occupying her house. I don’t think there will be any more trouble with the natives.”
“I see, sir,” said the sergeant.
“Detail some men to dig a grave,” said Neale. And then he looked at Allaha. It was incredible that all the beauty and the passion of her had mouldered into this insensate clay. That he would never again feel her arms twine themselves about his neck, and her lips warm and moist upon his own. He’d taught her to kiss, Neale was thinking, and Allaha had proved an apt pupil.
“I’ll do that, sir. We’ll fix a shelter for Lady Diana, and tomorrow we’ll start for Buluwayo.”
“Okay,” said Neale. But he followed what had been Allaha until she was cast into the common grave. And then the heart of the Tumbleweed was broken. No, Allaha hadn’t been much to him. Just a white girl whom he had fondled when he went to the kraal. He hadn’t really loved Allaha. But a queer idea was entering into the brain of the Tumbleweed. It was that all women were one and the same person. With the death of Allaha, something had happened to the Tumbleweed that had changed his entire destiny.
He would never have those Victorian, romantic ideas of women again, and his whole outlook on life was altered. Suddenly he felt that he was a man, whose function it was to dominate women, instead of worshiping them.
So that was how he went to the shelter that the troopers had improvised for Lady Diana that night, when the troopers—except for the sentries—were snoring some little distance away.
* * * *
She was awake. In the hot African night, she had tossed off her blankets. She was wearing the soiled shi
rt that came almost to her knees. And it had been rumpled up, so that the sleek columns of her thighs gleamed smooth and white.
“Hello!” Lady Di greeted the Tumbleweed. Neale squatted down beside her, on his haunches, in the way of Europeans in South Africa.
“How do you feel about me?” he asked.
“I hate you like nothing human,” answered Lady Di, pulling the shirt down about her hips. “Those two poor boys who died!”
“Not my fault,” said the Tumbleweed.
“Perhaps not. Oh, Neale, you fought so gallantly, and I had thought you were just a weakling. I couldn’t love you when you came to me with your life history instead of just dominating me.”
“No, I guess not,” said Neale.
Lady Di began crying. “I never want to see your face again,” she said.
“You’ll never need to, after we get to Buluwayo. But you’ll have to, now—because I still feel the same way about you.”
“You dare to—to—?”
“Yes. Because hate and love are the same thing.”
* * * *
Later, Neale was holding Lady Di, and thinking about Allaha, whom he would never see any more, and wondering whether all women really were the same.
He was still wondering when the dawn bugle blew, and he detached himself from Lady Di’s arms, and made his way back to the house.
He was riding into Buluwayo with Lady Di, and after that he never wanted to see her again. He was thinking of Allaha, lost to him forever. He was a much wiser Tumbleweed, when he placed his lips in a farewell gesture upon hers.
LEAF OF THE LOTUS, by Guy Russell
Originally published in Spicy Adventures, May 1937.
Lieutenant Pat Gardner drove his battered roadster along Honolulu’s palm-lined Ala Moana Road toward Waikiki. At a curve, he left the road and swung into a shell-paved driveway. Vivid hibiscus shrubs grew along the drive, flaunting bright blooms as high as a tall man’s head. Gardner parked the roadster beneath a huge Poinciana tree in full flower, its scarlet sprays of wicked, passionate loveliness dripping down over him. He left the car and climbed a long flight of pink coral steps to keep his date for dinner in the huge house above.
The drive, like the terraced garden through which he climbed, was pure Hawaiian. But the flagged courtyard in which his host met him, was China. Ah Lee Cheng-kai, fat, ageless, and the richest and most influential man, white or tinted, in the Islands, put out a pudgy hand.
“You honor my poor house, Lieutenant,” he greeted Gardner. “I am glad you could come.”
“Did I ever miss a dinner here, Ah Lee?” Gardner asked, grinning. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday. I wanted to be sure and be ready for one of these feasts of yours.”
Cheng bowed, gravely pleased. “My table does its best to deserve the compliment of your presence,” he said. “If you will enter, we will first drink to our continued friendship.”
Gardner speculated idly about the dignified old Chinaman as he followed him across dark, polished floors into the cool interior. No one knew, or dared to care very much, how many white wives the old man had had in the last forty years. There were tales or rumors, some pretty ugly ones, about that. But, for all the world could really prove, Cheng lived in solitary majesty in his great, sprawling house. White women disappeared completely from sight the moment they became Cheng’s property.
Cheng bowed his guest to a seat in a dim, spacious room, and asked, “Whiskey, Gardner? I do not believe you like our proper drink of ceremony, rice brandy, so I shall not insist.”
“Whiskey, please,” Gardner assented, smiling. “But I’m not that particular, Ah Lee. When a man’s used to okolehao, he can drink anything.”
Wun Kow, Cheng’s huge, idol-faced number one boy, appeared in a doorway and Cheng gave a rapid order. Wun Kow clapped enormous hands together and, almost with the sound, a slim girl glided past him, bearing a tray.
At sight of her, Gardner forgot his curiosity about Cheng’s establishment. Staring, he forgot, for a moment, all about Cheng, his drink, and everything else. Soft, black hair framed an oval, lovely face the color of warm ivory. She wore conventional Chinese costume but its clinging material only accentuated what it was meant to hide. The dark blouse was drawn intimately high at the throat, then draped itself closely over breasts that were soft, yet dainty as little Chinese teacups; and soft trousers clung lovingly to full, swaying curves, of hip and thigh as she walked.
She placed decanter, iced glass and siphon on the low table at Gardner’s knees. As she bent to mix the drink, her breasts, thrusting out in two swinging, cone-shaped mounds, made enticing little ripples in the satin of her jacket. Gardner’s fingers clenched, in spite of himself.
She carried the tray back through the doorway and Gardner dragged his eyes away, to see Cheng watching him with a tiny smile.
“You approve of my servant, Gardner?” he asked, quietly amused. “If we were in China, I should have to give Puen T’ang to you, should your eyes so plainly express your thoughts.”
“Then I’m sorry I wasn’t born Chinese, Ah Lee,” Gardner breathed, fervently. “I had no idea…”
“You did not know that Chinese women could be like that,” Cheng helped him. “The Chinese, Gardner, are an old race. One of the things we have learned is the necessity of keeping our women to, and for, ourselves.”
“That’s something we evidently need to learn,” Gardner said, bitterly. “And we’re beginning to learn it, but we’re paying for the lesson.”
Cheng inclined his head in grave agreement. “Another American girl disappeared last night,” he stated as a fact.
“You knew it!” Gardner exclaimed. “We’ve tried to keep it quiet.”
“I have lived in the Islands for a long time, Gardner. People tell me many things.”
“I suppose so. Well, you’re right. A Navy officer’s daughter, in Pearl Harbor, turned up missing.”
“White flesh has an irresistible attraction for the mongrel spawn of these brown people,” Cheng said. He made a spitting sound through his teeth. “The misbegotten, liliha dogs!”
“But, damn it, Cheng! I could understand a few attacks. That’s happened before, when natives catch a girl alone. But they don’t just disappear. These girls simply drop from sight! Nothing’s ever heard of them again!”
“It might be very dangerous for the abductors if the victims were returned to their homes,” Cheng pointed out. “The girl might have some clue to their identity, or the place to which she was taken.”
“Cheng, they can’t simply dissolve into thin air! Something has to be done with them! And…they don’t leave the Islands, alive or dead. We’re almost certain of that.”
“Things happen here which no man understands, Gardner. Things which it is, perhaps, not safe to understand.”
“We will understand them,” Gardner growled. “And, when we do, these gugus will wish they had picked some other way of amusing themselves.”
“I believe that day will come,” Cheng agreed. To Wun Kow, he made an imperceptible gesture toward Gardner’s emptied glass. Wun Kow boomed his palms together again.
Gardner kept his glass in his hand as Puen T’ang placed ice and liquor in it. He wanted to bring those soft, swelling mounds beneath her blouse under the best possible observation. As she held the siphon bottle up to fill the glass, one of them brushed against his shoulder. She gave a little, muffled gasp and the siphon twisted in her hands, the fizzing stream soaking Gardner’s wrist and his starched coat sleeve.
Wun Kow snarled. Cheng, his eyes stiffening the girl with a cold stare, said sharply, “Take her to the quarters below, Wun Kow. We shall see her punished, later.”
“Wait a minute, Ah Lee,” Gardner pleaded. “It was an accident. She couldn’t help it.”
“Servants in my house are not excused for awkwardness or carelessness, Gardner,” Cheng t
old him, harshly. “Puen T’ang knows that.”
“Well, of course, I don’t even know what you’re going to do to her,” Gardner admitted. “But, whatever it is, don’t do it for my sake. She’d have to more than squirt fizz-water up my sleeve to make me mad.”
Cheng chuckled. “She knows that, too, Gardner. And I believe she fears her punishment very little—because she knows that you will witness it. Now, shall we see what my humble kitchen has prepared for us?”
* * * *
Gardner sat through one of Cheng’s two-hour long dinners with impatience which he concealed as best he could. He ate baked duck, the meat so tender it could be scooped up with a spoon, and long fish broiled with bamboo shoots; ate without any of his usual enthusiasm. Something in Cheng’s last remark, concerning the punishment he was to watch, made him think that he was about to see a thing which might not rest so well on a Westerner’s conscience. Still, he couldn’t help his curiosity.
Finally, Cheng turned to Wun Kow, standing expressionless, arms folded across his yard-wide chest, and asked, “Puen T’ang?”
“She is ready, Master,” the huge man rumbled.
“Shall we follow Wun Kow and watch him teach a thoughtless girl the sin of carelessness?” Cheng said.
Wun Kow led them down a broad, unlighted stairway into the depths below the house. At the end of a long corridor, he threw open a door and stepped aside. Gardner followed Cheng through the opening and Wun Kow pulled the door shut behind them.
Gardner gasped at the sight which struck his amazed eyes. The girl, Puen T’ang, stood facing him, a strong light above her head spotlighting her shrinking body in an inverted cone of brilliance, against the bare, shadowy room. A shapeless, sack-like garment hung about her, from a drawstring pulled tight just above the thrusting mounds of her creamy, heaving breasts. Her wrists were cuffed together in front of her, fastened to a cord running up and over a pulley in the ceiling, directly overhead.
Wun Kow stepped noiselessly into the ring of light and hauling down on the free end of the cord, pulled her shackled arms high above her head. Looping the cord over a hook in the floor, he yanked at the drawstring about her breasts, and the sack-like affair down about her feet. Gardner’s breath sucked in sharply.
The Spicy-Adventure Page 35