Last Laugh, Mr. Moto

by John P. Marquand

  “Well, well,” Mr. Kingman said, “here we all are again and everything is—is jake. Mr. Moto and I have been having a most constructive talk.” Mr. Kingman paused and looked beyond the Thistlewood to the reef where the waves were beating and farther on out to the blank horizon. “There is this problem, my dear,” he went on, “of—of possible outside intervention. Under the circumstances Mr. Moto and I have agreed to pool our resources temporarily.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Kingman said.

  “I hope you’ll rely on our judgment, my dear,” Mr. Kingman went on. “We have agreed to join in accomplishing the first part of our mission here.”

  Mr. Moto smiled, placed his hand before his mouth and drew in his breath.

  “Yes,” he said, “yes, please.”

  Mrs. Kingman pursed her lips.

  “I don’t like it, Mac,” she said.

  Mr. Kingman looked hurt.

  “My dear,” he began, “there is really no reason for this personal pique, but let us—let us skip it. Now, you, Bob, it’s a little different for you. You’re here with us only because you have to be. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Bob said slowly, “I understand,” but Mr. Kingman still seemed anxious to be plain.

  “I hate to hurt people when it’s unnecessary,” he said. “No trying to leave us. No—no monkey business, old man. You must count yourself as lucky.”

  “Yes,” Bob Bolles said slowly, “I know I’m lucky, Mac.”

  Mr. Kingman gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.

  “Then we’re all—all okey-dokey?” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mr. Moto, “yes.”

  “And there’s no reason why we can’t be agreeable. Now, what we are going to do is this, my dear. The plane cannot have been carried far from this landing. Mr. Moto has not been able to look far. We have decided to try the house on the hill first. If it is not there we shall have a bite of lunch and then Mr. Moto and I can prowl about the grounds. It should all be in—in the bag in a very few hours. Don’t you agree, my dear?”

  Mrs. Kingman looked happy again.

  “Why, yes,” she said. “Let’s not keep standing in the sun.”

  “No,” said Mr. Kingman, “we must—must speed it up. Heigh-ho, off to work we go!”

  The suitcases and the hamper and the packsack were where they had left them. Oscar shouldered the pack and Bob picked up the hamper.

  “Lead the way, Bob,” Mr. Kingman said. “Heigh-ho!”

  Mr. Moto scuttled over to the candlewood tree.

  “My own bag,” he said. “Ha-ha, I so nearly forgot.”

  He disappeared behind the tree, but in a few seconds he was back, carrying a small cheap fiber suitcase and a raincoat.

  “By Jove,” said Mr. Kingman, “I forgot that it might rain.” But there was not a cloud in the sky.

  Bob Bolles lifted the hamper to his shoulder and began walking slowly along the overgrown road that wound through the trees and vine-choked thickets. In a few steps the breeze from the sea was gone and it was stiflingly hot. In a few more his shirt was soaked with perspiration.

  “Heigh-ho,” he heard Mr. Kingman humming just behind him, “heigh-ho!”

  “Such lovely trees,” he heard Mr. Moto saying. “Have you served before in the tropics, Mrs. Kingman?” Then the tone of his voice changed. “Ah, what’s that?”

  “Where?” Mr. Kingman asked sharply.

  “No matter, please,” said Mr. Moto. “Nothing.”

  But Bob Bolles had seen and it was not Mr. Kingman’s fault that he had not, for no one could look everywhere at once. The road was still a grassy opening, stretching before them through the woods, and just as they had rounded a corner Bob Bolles had seen a copper-colored face staring at him from the thicket not twenty yards ahead. It was Tom, with his long nose and his ugly face. For just an instant Tom looked at him, frightened and inquiring, but even before Mr. Moto had spoken Bob had had time to shake his head and to jerk his thumb in the direction of the sea, and then Tom’s face was gone. Bob Bolles felt his heart beat sickeningly in his throat.

  “You look hot, Bob,” he heard Mr. Kingman say.

  “Yes,” Bob answered. “I’m out of condition, I guess.” His heart was beating very fast and the sweat was streaming down his face so that he had to blink his eyes. Tom was a good boy and he would do what he was told. The beach was clear and Tom would be down there in a little while. He would be in the dinghy, rowing to the Thistlewood. He would be out in the bow, slipping the anchor. Bob Bolles could hear his heart pounding.

  “Bob,” said Mr. Kingman.

  “Yes, Mac,” Bob said.

  “I wonder what happened to that black boy of yours.”

  Bob Bolles cleared his throat.

  “That boy was scared to death. He’s hiding somewhere, Mac, and I wish—”

  “Yes?” Mr. Kingman said.

  “And I wish to God that I were with him,” Bob Bolles said.

  Mr. Kingman laughed and his voice was friendly.

  “Now, Bob,” he said, “we all get in—in a tight box sometimes.”

  Bob would have liked it better if Mr. Kingman had only been more typical and had answered more accurately one’s preconceived ideas of what such a man should have been like. It was true what she had said. You could not guess his nationality. His thoughts, his motives, all were hidden beneath a sort of international veneer.

  The old road had turned to the left and was winding steeply up the hill. You could see that it had been carefully built once, well surfaced with coral and shell, so that the heavy growth of trees and vines on either side had not yet grown across it. The road was open, and yet you could tell that it had not been used for years. Now and then a trail crossed it, made perhaps by wild pig, but there was no sign of a footpath. Clearly the Negroes on the island did not use the road. He began to make out a border of trees along its edges and he saw that the giant candlewoods which rose above the undergrowth must have been planted to shade the avenue when it was a clean white ribbon winding up the hill.

  “By Jove, this is hot work,” Mr. Kingman said. “Let’s stop a moment for a—a breather, what?”

  There it was again. He was speaking English when he thought he was speaking American. Bob Bolles halted and set the hamper down. The little party which was walking behind him single-file looked very hot, all except Mr. Moto.

  “You mean ‘take the weight off our feet’ for a minute?” Bob Bolles said.

  Mr. Kingman mopped his face with a fresh white handkerchief and laughed.

  “Just what I meant to say, exactly!” he answered.

  “Please, ah,” Mr. Moto said, “‘take the weight off your feet,’ does that mean to sit down, please?”

  “Of course he means to sit down,” Mrs. Kingman said, “and I think it’s a very good idea.”

  “Please, ah,” Mr. Moto said, “in the hot countries out of doors, so very careful where you sit down.”

  “Why?” Mrs. Kingman asked him. “You mean there are nettles?”

  Mr. Moto drew his breath in delicately.

  “Not vegetation always, please,” he said. “In hot countries you sit and rest and many little bugs get in your, ah, garments.”

  It was hard to take Mr. Moto seriously, or Mr. Kingman either, there on the side of the hill. Mr. Kingman mopped his face again and looked thoughtfully up the glade of the old avenue.

  “Are those gateposts there?” he asked.

  Mr. Kingman’s eyes were very good. He had picked out two masonry pillars, perhaps fifty yards ahead of them, which were so thickly covered with ferns and vines that they were hard to notice. The pillars were the entrance to the main grounds.

  “You see,” Bob Bolles said, “this was one of the old English plantations. They were usually laid out in the English tradition, with gates at the entrance of the main avenue. The quarters would be somewhere near here and the stables and the toolhouses. There must have been cane fields on either side of us.”

  “Well,” M
r. Kingman said, “let us go.” And Bob Bolles picked up the hamper again.

  The fields had been choked and covered long ago, but the double row of candlewoods still marked the old avenue and made the empty grassy road silent and shady. You could see, once you passed the gate, heaps of rubble and the walls of outbuildings.

  “It may take a bit of looking,” Bob heard Mr. Kingman say. “They might have stored it anywhere here. Look at that yonder. It is like a factory.”

  Mr. Kingman pointed through the trees to the right. The bare walls of a large rectangular building were rising up above the brush; and where part of a wall was breached and falling, you could distinguish a tangle of rusty metal.

  “That would be the old mill,” Bob Bolles said.

  Mr. Kingman hesitated.

  “Yes, it will take a bit of looking. That factory might be the place for it. I should not want to bring the thing any farther than I could help, would you, Moto? Shall we try in there?”

  CHAPTER XII

  Mr. Moto stared at the ruins through the trees. There was something very lonely about the sight of those walls still rising above the choking vegetation, seemingly struggling silently against the vines and ferns and bushes that were trying to pull them down. There was an echo of old violence about them, a memory of destruction and burning and pillage. Bob Bolles heard Oscar clear his throat.

  “Them niggers,” Oscar said, “they burned it, what?”

  It was more than Oscar had said for a long while. In some way the place must have impressed him and must have somehow shocked some innate sense of thrift and order. “Them dirty niggers!” Oscar said. “By damn, yes it all was burnt!”

  It must have all happened a century before, but there was still a strong impression of old destruction, the same sense of lost endeavor which Bob Bolles had once felt when he had visited the ruins of a great French estate in Haiti. On either side of the road were the crumbling remains of large and small buildings.

  “I like it the way it is,” Mr. Kingman said. “It is sad. It looks almost like a town.”

  Mr. Moto coughed and looked up at the sky and then at his wrist-watch.

  “It was all so long ago,” he said. “May I make a suggestion, please? If we go to the house first, there will be a view of the sea. I should like so very much to be sure there is nothing coming. Someone, I think, should watch.”

  Mr. Kingman looked troubled and he nodded.

  “You’re right, Moto,” he said. “We had better take a look. We’ll go on to the house.”

  They began climbing slowly up the hill again and no one spoke for a while. Bob Bolles could feel the urgency of their thoughts and he was thinking, too. His whole life kept moving through his thoughts.

  “Come on, Bob,” he heard Mr. Kingman say behind him. “Step—step on it!”

  “All right, Mac,” he answered.

  His breath was coming fast from the climb, but his voice was perfectly steady. It was his great desire to be steady, although it could make no possible difference. His main hope was that he would behave well. They might not care, but he wanted Kingman and Moto to know that he could take it as well as they could and he wanted Mrs. Kingman to know it.

  “Ah!” he heard Mr. Kingman say behind him. “Well, there it is.”

  They had rounded a curve in the avenue and the ruins of Westerly Hall lay in front of them. Bob never forgot his first view of the house. Somehow its grim solidity conveyed the impression of what it must have been once, and somehow its past was stronger than its present. It must have been a fine house once, a square three-story mansion, overlaid with stucco. Now its roof was down and the stucco was peeling in a sickly way, revealing huge patches of the gray coral stone beneath it. The kitchen quarters were a mass of weeds. The tall arched windows and the great front door were black and gaping, but all the ground around the house was clear, perhaps because the knoll where it stood was exposed to the prevailing breeze. Thus there was an impression, even then, of lawns and terraces. It was still possible to trace the curve of the avenue, which ended at massive steps that led to a broad stone terrace on which the house stood—a terrace with battered stone railings that overlooked the sea. On a medallion above the door, you could still see the coat of arms of the family and, in spite of the watchful bleakness, there was a sense of vanished hospitality, of servants and mahogany. The house was there in an utterly forgotten world of its own. Bob would not have been surprised if he had seen the front door open, although no door was there. Instead, a flock of gray birds flew chattering from one of the lower windows and the breeze was on his face again, clear and fresh from the sea.

  “Oh,” he heard Mrs. Kingman say, “it must have been beautiful once.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Kingman said, “but never mind it now.”

  He was opening the case that contained his field glasses. To the left, as they stood facing the great front door, down below them, was a wide blue stretch of ocean. The waves near the horizon glinted in the sunlight and, nearer to the land, the breakers churned in a white ring around the coral reef.

  “Well,” Mr. Kingman said, “it all looks clear.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Moto answered. “I am so glad to think so. Let us walk up the steps. Up there is a better view.”

  Bob climbed up quickly. He wanted to see the bay which was still concealed by the top of trees, but up on the terrace the pier and the beach were all distinct beyond the tree-tops, not half a mile away. Mr. Kingman was looking through his glasses again.

  “What—” he said. “What the devil? The boat is moving!”

  You did not need glasses to see it. Bob Bolles felt a strange sense of elation, and a grim and inexplicable desire to laugh. The Thistlewood in the distance, like a child’s toy boat, was nosing her way through the reef to the open sea. He could see Tom, a small black dot, standing at the wheel. Bob Bolles set down the hamper and turned and faced them. Oscar had dropped his suitcase.

  “Why,” Mrs. Kingman said, “the anchor rope must have broken!”

  Mr. Moto’s face was impassive, but his voice was high and reedy.

  “No,” he said, “it is under power. Someone is aboard, I think.” And he glanced sideways at Bob Bolles.

  “It looks that way, doesn’t it?” Bob said.

  Mr. Kingman snapped his glasses back into their case. In almost the same instant he had unslung his rifle from his shoulder and for just a second he looked at Bob Bolles thoughtfully.

  “So that’s it, is it?” he said.

  “Yes,” Bob Bolles said evenly, “I told him to take her off if he had a chance.”

  If it was the last speech that he had made on earth, he was glad that he had been able to make it. He had taken a good deal from them that day. He smiled at Mrs. Kingman. He had thought that they would be angry, but the strange thing was, no one was angry. Mr. Moto stood rubbing the back of his head and gazing at the harbor. Mr. Kingman was adjusting the sights on his rifle.

  “Give me the telescope sight,” he said, “and some extra clips, please, Oscar. It cannot be more than six hundred yards.”

  “It will do no good,” said Mr. Moto. “You kill him and the boat goes on the rocks.”

  “We’ll get her off,” said Mr. Kingman briskly. “The telescope sight and the clips, please, Oscar. Damn it, hurry up! What’s the matter?”

  Oscar had not moved and his face was red.

  “I have left the sight,” he said, “and I only took four clips of shells. I have thought we go back aboard.”

  “Hell,” Mr. Kingman said, “hell’s fire!” He knelt down and rested his rifle on the stone railing. Smack! the rifle went. Smack! Smack! Smack! And Mr. Kingman laughed pleasantly.

  “Ah, he’s running from the wheel!”

  Smack! the rifle went. Mr. Kingman, smiling faintly, reached in his pocket for another clip.

  “Don’t you think,” Bob Bolles asked, “that you’re wasting your time?”

  “Why?” Mr. Kingman asked, looking up at him from the rifle sights.

/>   “Because he’s lashed the wheel and gone below,” Bob said. “You can shoot her full of holes, but you won’t stop her, Mac.”

  Mr. Moto still rubbed the back of his head. He was smiling, but his smile was mechanical.

  “So little use to tell Mr. Kingman that,” Mr. Moto said. “It might have been better for you later if he had used more shots.”

  Mr. Kingman thrust home the fresh clip and got up from his knees. The lines of his face were deeper and he did not speak for a moment.

  “I’ve got plenty left,” he said. “Well, that was quite a play, Bob.” He took off his sun helmet and rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. “There’s no use being angry. I don’t like to get angry, but this is a—a hell of a mess.”

  Mrs. Kingman spoke sharply.

  “It’s your own fault,” she began. “Mac, why didn’t you think?”

  “Please be quiet,” said Mr. Kingman. “I cannot think of everything.” And he drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the stock of his rifle.

  They must have all been staring at the harbor, lining the edge of the terrace, their backs to the house. Bob Bolles never dreamed, and he did not believe anyone else did either, that they were not entirely alone up there, looking at the sea—until he heard a voice behind him. There was no warning—only a full, throaty voice.

  “’Ere, ’ere,” the voice said. “What’s all this how-do-you-do? The vessel has gone, hasn’t it?”

  When Bob Bolles thought of it afterwards, he supposed that the instant which followed would have been amusing, if anyone had possessed the capacity to appreciate it. It always seemed to him so incongruous that in some ways it was magnificent. Almost in unison, they all stared over their shoulders, like children caught in some guilty act.

  “My God,” said Mr. Kingman, and there was no doubt that his nerves were very good, for he was the first to recover, “where did you drop from, my man?”

  It seemed to Bob Bolles the only possible question to ask. Standing on the terrace just behind them was Inspector Jameson of the Kingston police.