E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates

by E. Hoffmann Price

  But that wouldn’t go down straight. To hell with Irma and her narrow-mindedness! Sultan Iskander had picked him from the beach.

  And then desperation whispered an answer.

  “Go back and tell Tsang Wu he wins!” he said.

  For a long moment those black, inscrutable eyes regarded him from a cream-colored mask. Then Chan Li’s fingers closed on his wrist and a slow, sorrowful little smile took the sting from her words: “It is hard to be a traitor, isn’t it?”

  “Go and tell Tsang Wu!” he rasped.

  She had scarcely slipped into the shadows between the tent and the guard fires when brisk footsteps and a tinkle of steel startled Farrell. He turned and saw that Sultan Iskander had come from the capital to watch the finish. He wore a white turban that accented the leathery color of his stern face; and his eyes were grim as sword points for just an instant before he greeted his protégé.

  During that moment of deadly uncertainty Farrell wondered if his chief had overheard the bargain; and then old Datu Hamid broke in, salaamed to the sultan, and dashed on ahead to the halted artillery.

  Farrell’s strategy was blown up by his patron’s arrival. He had planned to delay the bombardment, slip single-handed to the fortress, and liberate Irma before blasting the pirate off the map. One man could make it where a detachment could not. But to misdirect the artillery fire, right under the shrewd old sultan’s nose, was impossible. The troops would miss the trick; but he would not.

  Shells, unpacked and fused, were waiting. Men were filling sandbags to make a protective wing a dozen feet from each gun. Shrapnel is safe enough, but if a high explosive shell in spite of its safety fuse-lock prematurely burst in the gun barrel, an unsheltered crew would be blotted out.

  Sultan Iskander watched the askaris awkwardly going about their unfamiliar business. A fused shell was slipped home. The breech swung shut. Farrell laid the gun. Make every shot count—keep Tsang Wu busy—if possible! The lanyard was attached. The crew took cover; but Sultan Iskander stood his ground.

  “Better take cover, your highness!” Farrell warned. His face was drawn.

  “At my age?” snorted the grim old fellow.

  You couldn’t argue with him. The gunner was watching Farrell’s upraised hand, waiting for it to drop. He shivered, and not from thinking of Irma Stanley. He felt the presence of something dark and deadly. A blind hunch warned him of peril.

  His right hand shot out. As he jerked the sultan sprawling behind the breastworks, the gunner yanked the lanyard.

  A vast blot of flame enveloped the gloom. A terrific blast smote the gun crew like a hammer. The impact tore the sandbags to shreds. Metal screeched far into the night. And as blinded eyes finally recovered from the deadly glare, they saw what remained of a three inch gun; a warped, grotesque tangle of steel.

  When they finally regained their feet, Sultan Iskander and Datu Hamid and Farrell exchanged long glances unbroken by words. Somehow, Farrell felt those iron eye-thrusts. Odd…though he had not expected that gruff old sultan to thank him for a saving hunch.

  “Try number two!” commanded Sultan Iskander.

  This time he did not have to be jerked behind the sand bags.

  Farrell signaled.

  The lanyard yank destroyed a second gun. Two muzzle bursts in succession! Though obsolete, the guns were in good condition. Farrell’s head was ringing; and then he realized that Irma was saved. There would be no bombardment. Tsang Wu could escape to his boat.

  He felt limp but happy—for an instant. Then the world smashed to fragments across his head.

  “So this is the way you ransom Tsang Wu’s prisoners, is it?” The sultan’s voice was iron. “I heard just enough. But I could not believe. So I refused to take cover. You knew, so you acted to save me.

  “And since you would not let me blow up with the plugged gun, I will spare you your life. But not if I ever see you again!”

  “The gun was not plugged!” declared Farrell. “You saw me inspect it when the tompion was removed!”

  Sultan Iskander did not argue. He plucked Farrell’s pistol from its holster, flung it to the ground, drew Farrell’s curved sword, dashed it against the smoking stump of a gun barrel. Then his outflung arm pointed to the farther darkness.

  “And on your life, do not return!”

  Farrell stalked like a walking corpse toward the mainland. But as he stumbled across a wagon trail leading eastward, his numbed brain began to ache.

  He was hoodooed. First Irma and his own people had disowned him…now the sultan whose life he had saved. Suddenly he straightened, and his laugh was a sword caressing a whetstone.

  Go empty-handed to Tsang Wu’s fortress and go out in a big blaze. Let Irma see what kind of man she’d rejected. Following his original plan, and moved by the courage of a man who amounts to something, he might have saved her. But now—!

  He turned to head for the narrow beach and toward the jutting headland, unseen either by the pirates or his former troops; but a stirring at the edge of a clump of causarina trees checked him.

  In the dimness of the half risen moon he saw a slender spindle of silken luster, and the blurred whiteness of a woman’s face; but it was the voice he recognized.

  I heard,” said Chen Li. “So I waited. Naturally I’d not return to Tsang Wu, and lingering around your former camp would have been as bad.”

  They eyed each other in the half light. She sensed the purpose that made his face a gray, grim mask; and his direction had told her the rest.

  “Don’t be a fool. You’re unarmed. That’s not valor. It’s insanity. You can’t save her.”

  “Well, what the hell am I to do?” he demanded. In weariness he yielded the initiative.

  Chan Li’s smile became a crimson blossom.

  “You are a man among men. Even though some traitor has ruined you. Come with me to Penang. Though Tsang Wu does not know it, my father is a wealthy trader, with ships and plantations, and—”

  “Nuts for your father!” he growled, rebelling at Chan Li’s honeyed bribe.

  “He will be grateful.” She drew closer and murmured in his ear: “And so will I—if you help me back to Penang. Alone, I have no chance.”

  She was soft and lovely and silken. Prowling outlaws would grab her. That was none of Farrell’s affair; but it restored some of his courage to know that this woman could still regard him as one to be sought in the face of peril.

  Her plea whipped to life his wavering self-esteem and beaten pride. She was very close now, fragrant and clinging. The cream-colored flesh that smiled through the torn tunic and pajamas became golden in the rising moon, and Farrell’s pulse responded to the strange lure of that exotic creature. Those piquant glimpses of sleek, slender loveliness were just enough to remind him that so much more was concealed. This was no sing-song girl whose supple curves clung insistently to him, whose caressing hands seconded the supplication of her voice.

  Irma had condemned him with the rest. She’d forgotten to discard that snapshot. Down in his heart he knew now that she hadn’t, but Chan Li’s silken sweetness made anything plausible.

  Someone had told him that the Chinese know nothing about kissing, but Chan Li’s torrid lips disproved that slander. Her eyes had become black opals mysteriously veiled by long drooping lashes. Her breath quickened, and the ripples of desire that pulsed through that slim, cream-colored body were pointed by roundnesses Farrell had thus far unsuspected.

  “Even if we should fall into the hands of bandits before we get to Penang,” whispered Chan Li, “I’ll have at least this to remember. I’d rather you were first…”

  That struck his weak spot: regardless of what was ahead of him, he would have at least a short memory of one person who believed in him.

  “This little hour will cheat death.” But as her arms closed about him, her voice became inarticulate and her lips an insis
tent, consuming fire…

  * * * *

  Finally the moonglow invaded the clearing and silvered Chan Li’s languid loveliness. She stirred drowsily, snuggled closer, but Farrell withdrew from her possessive arm.

  Her seeking him had dispelled the blank uselessness that had oppressed him; and with its departure came the renewal of responsibility.

  “I can’t leave her there. Tsang Wu is still waiting. Both guns were destroyed. Sultan Iskander can’t carry on the bombardment.”

  Chan Li knew that her caresses had put iron into his soul; but she smiled at his defiant anticipation of her outburst.

  “I lose,” she said. “You’ll surely be killed. But I might have expected this of a man among men. If you’d been less than what you are, my hour would have been a mockery.”

  “I’ll be damned,” he muttered as he noted the misty softness of her eyes.

  “I’ll show you a way,” Chan Li continued, “to slip past a sentry. If that succeeds, you’ll have a chance.”

  Did she mean it, or was this subtle Chinese vengeance in the bud? Steel blue glance clashed with black. And then, as he always did when things were at the worst, Farrell decided to shoot the works.

  “Let’s go.” He did not add that if they succeeded, he’d put Irma on a train to Singapore and accompany Chan Li to Penang.

  They crept along the beach. When they reached the shadow of the ruin, they scaled the crags of Tanjong Merah. Just before they cleared the crest, he listened to Chan Li’s description of the fortress, and watched her lengthening the rents in her rumpled tunic and pajamas. The display was as dazzling as it was frank.

  Farrell, flattened to the ground, now watched Chan Li advance. From a narrow gateway came a challenge in Chinese.

  “Tell Tsang Wu I have returned,” she answered. “The white captain has agreed.”

  The sentry hailed the guard. The commander emerged from the ruin. Chan Li went to meet him. The sentry craned his neck to refresh his eyes with another glimpse of her moon-kissed flesh as she glided toward the commander of the guard.

  Chan Li’s rear elevation was worth anyone’s eye; but the sentry’s vision was blotted out by a blaze of shooting lights. He never knew that Farrell, silently slipping up from the rear, had cracked him across the head with a rock the size of a coconut.

  Farrell dressed himself in the sentry’s salt-caked jacket and trousers. He rolled him into outer shadows, and took his rifle and dagger.

  He strode boldly into the court and toward a blot of light that marked a barred window in an angle of the wall. Peeping over the sill, he saw a short, square-shouldered Chinese with long, trailing moustaches and a grim, handsome face: Tsang Wu, the terror of the south China Sea.

  Chan Li stood facing him; and at her side was a burly Manchu nearly as tall as Farrell. Judging from his richly brocaded jacket and embroidered felt boots, this must be the pirate’s lieutenant.

  “Wang Ho,” said Tsang Wu at the completion of the girl’s report, “how soon will you be able to pull the ship off the sandbar?”

  “The sea will calm down enough in three or four hours, honorable captain,” answered the Manchu. “But as soon as we return the yellow-haired girl, the troops will bombard us. And if we don’t return her, they’ll do the same. Our bargain is useless.”

  “You are stupid, Wang Ho!” snapped the chief. “Leave her on the sand bar. He’ll know enough then not to shell our boat. We’ll be able to pick her off with a rifle until we’re out of range of his guns, way back there on the mainland.”

  “The sun of wisdom sets behind your head,” admitted Wang Ho. “Now, about this Chan Li? She is going to waste, and that would be a shame.”

  “Don’t touch her!” warned Tsang Wu. “I’m saving her for a customer in Java. He’ll pay enough to buy us girls all around.”

  Then, to one of his crew: “Lock her up!”

  Farrell followed Chan Li and her captor down a gloomy tunnel leading toward the northern wall of the fort. As they approached the entrance of a casemate illuminated by moonlight filtering in through a gun port, he drove home with the salvaged rifle. The butt splintered, crushing the Chinaman’s skull.

  Just ahead of Farrell, ankle shackled to a ring-bolt sunk in the masonry, was Irma Stanley. One glimpse of her lovely face and the shapely whiteness of breasts that half evaded the remnants of her tattered bodice justified his recklessness; but he had not counted on iron fetters.

  “Get out!” he said, catching Chan Li’s arm. “I’ll tend to this. It’s going to take time.”

  “I’ll take my chances with you,” she persisted, following him into the cell.

  Irma recognized him, despite his disguise.

  “Glenn—my God—are they gone—?”

  “Pipe down!” he warned, breaking clear of her arms. “Get out of my way so I can dig into this mortar.”

  As he set to work, Chan Li joined him. She was armed with a knife taken from her late guard. Together they gouged and chipped, but the task seemed hopeless.

  “Shear off the shackle!” As that thought cropped up, Farrell picked up a loose block of stone and struck the back of the knife against the soft iron pin.

  Sping! The blade snapped half way between point and guard. Still gripping the useless weapon, he reached for Chan Li’s knife.

  “Now get out! You can’t help!”

  He did not hear her answer, or get the knife. A thunderous rumbling had drowned the angry roar of the lashing waves far below. An unseen hand flung him backward; and as he recovered, he saw a sullen glow, far out on the water. It rose, a column of flame reaching skyward.

  Tsang Wu’s armored yacht had been destroyed. Somehow, Sultan Iskander had managed to strike. And Tsang Wu, thinking that Farrell had mocked him, would pause for Chinese vengeance that would endure after the pirate’s head was grinning from a lance head.

  To liberate Irma was now impossible. Regardless of how the yacht had been destroyed, the troops could not take the place by assault—not until long after Tsang Wu’s vengeance.

  One slim chance, however, remained. Slip up in the confusion, knife Tsang Wu and his lieutenant. Break for the sultan’s camp, risk his wrath, lead his troops up the slope while the pirates were demoralized. Insane, but it might work.

  The court was already crowded with raging pirates. Darkness and excitement protected Farrell as he followed the wave to Tsang Wu’s quarters. There he saw the chief, grim but cool, curbing the panic.

  “We can hold out,” he roared. “His guns blew up, I told you! Those two explosions. He can’t attack. Wang Ho, take the launch and go to Pulau Gajah for a boat big enough—”

  A shout drowned his instructions. The jabbering crowd parted. Someone was leading a prisoner: Datu Hamid!

  But a moment later, Farrell knew that his rival was a traitor.

  “I have the answer for you, Tsang Wu,” said the datu. “I will go back and dispose of the sultan. Then you attack in force and scatter his men before they recover from their panic. That done, we all march back to the capital. I will be the sultan—I have powerful friends—you will be rewarded—”

  “How did he blow up our boat if he had no guns?” interrupted Tsang Wu.

  “He sent out two prahus. One was loaded with shells. The crew of the other touched off a time fuse. Simple. Now will you follow my plan?”

  “Very well,” agreed Tsang Wu. “And to be sure it is not a trap—”

  “Make sure any way you want!” snapped Hamid. “Do you think I’d have come here if I couldn’t stand any test?”

  “We’ll see,” said Tsang Wu. A crafty light gleamed in his eyes, and he beckoned to Wang Ho. A whispered exchange, then he again addressed the traitor: “Go, and hurry. We will wait.”

  Farrell now had time to release Irma; but the life of Sultan Iskander was at stake. That stern old man who had spared Farrell even though conv
inced of his treason was still the American’s benefactor.

  Whatever might happen to Irma, it wouldn’t kill her!

  The crowd parted to make way as Datu Hamid strode swiftly to the gate.

  Farrell wormed his way among the pirates. He had to hug the wall, move with the crowd, avoid detection at all cost.

  When he finally reached the exit, Datu Hamid was far below in the darkness. No chance of overtaking him, short of the camp.

  Farrell now knew why the two guns had exploded. Datu Hamid’s treachery explained it. The trick was easy. A high explosive shell fuse has a safety lock that is flung off by the rotation of the flying projectile. Its purpose is to prevent accidental discharge during the handling of the shell. Its removal would permit the fuse plunger to strike home the instant the gun was fired, causing the shell to burst before it left the muzzle.

  Farrell lost precious minutes worming his way past the sentries. With infinite caution he worked his way toward a cluster of shrubbery that commanded a view of the sultan’s pavilion. He heard Hamid’s voice. They were conferring. A sound from the rear distracted Farrell. Another section of artillery was on the way. The sultan was receiving reinforcements.

  That would goad Hamid to faster action. The traitor had to strike before the bombardment robbed him of his Chinese ally; yet Farrell, discredited, dared not reveal himself.

  The sultan and Hamid emerged from the pavilion.

  “Your Highness, those guns should be placed at the north—”

  “No, by Allah!” snapped Sultan Iskander. “I said—”

  “But be pleased to look over the ground,” persisted the traitor. He gestured toward the spot where he proposed placing the artillery.

  Farrell flanked them as they paralleled the camp. Bit by bit Hamid drew the sultan out of earshot of his troops.

  And then it happened, swift as a striking serpent. As the conspirator gestured, his hand flashed to his belt. Steel now gleamed.

  Farrell’s warning yell startled the sultan. He whirled, still unsuspecting. The blade raked him. For an instant he was dazed by the unexpected attack by his trusted follower. Then as he leaped aside, jerking his pistol, Hamid lunged. He snatched the weapon before it rose into line. A premature alarm would be fatal.