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

by E. Hoffmann Price

  A stocky, bald-headed man with shrewd blue eyes and a wolf-trap mouth rose from behind a rosewood desk as red as his face and extended a hard hand.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he said, ringing for brandy and soda. “You’ve been doing things out here.”

  “I figured we ought to get together,” was the response; but he knew that using Wallace Crosby as a stepping stone would be foot-blistering work. “A couple of up and at-’em Americans can turn the East Indies inside out. Look at this—”

  He handed Crosby a sheaf of bills of lading and warehouse receipts.

  “Ummm…” Crosby’s eyes narrowed, then his head cocked quizzically. He demanded, “Does this stuff have to go to Sandakan? I could use it up north.”

  That was as good as a confession. Munitions and guns to be used—well, in Batu Gaja. But that was penny ante stuff. He wanted the man behind Crosby, the Claw of Iblis. His gray steel glance shifted about the room. He was noting details; filing cabinets, book cases, windows, doorways. A tree outside…

  “It’s tied up,” temporized Farrell. “I’d get in a jam canceling that consignment. If I had more drag here—suppose I see you tomorrow?”

  “Hmmm…” Crosby stroked his jaw and nodded. “Do that.”

  Farrell headed back toward his bungalow. The papers that had built him up as a rising young smuggler were phony. Scrutiny would spill the beans.

  The trader’s reaction had confirmed the hunch: there was someone behind the scenes. Looting the files in the bungalow might reveal the master mind. The strictly legal records, in the company’s offices in the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank building, would be uninteresting.

  In the meanwhile—just to keep from becoming jittery while awaiting the hour of the raid, he told himself—why not see more of Madeleine? As much more as he could; she had plenty worth seeing!

  He drove to the nearest telephone station. There had been delay in installing one in the bungalow. He presently learned that Madeleine was not at the Wellington.

  Damn it! She had lost little time in finding someone to show her the town.

  Farrell returned to the bungalow. From the compound gate he saw lights in the living room. That was odd.

  And why was the Number One boy beaming so expansively?

  * * * *

  The reason was a lovely surprise.

  Madeleine was smiling from the chaise longue. The soft lights coaxed warm reflections from her silken legs, and her dark eyes were a promise. Her voice was a heart-stirring murmur that was like a whisper of love. Somehow, that suggestion flashed through his mind as his glance shifted from the sleek curve of her hip to the ivory line of her throat as it swept down to meet the fascinations that rounded out the upper reaches of her bodice.

  “It was so lonesome at the Wellington,” she explained. “So I had the ghari driver go back to the station and find where your checked baggage was going to be delivered.”

  As if Farrell gave a happy hoot how she’d found her way!

  “Take an evening off, Hop Wing!”—which was what the Number One boy had been expecting.

  The Chinese servant lost little time, and Farrell lost less. The display of dimpled knees was driving him mad.

  She tried to keep him at a distance, but he had profited by experience. The repulsing hand, instead of blocking his chin, failed to connect. Madeleine got the soundest kissing of her score plus four or five years. Since she couldn’t effectively slap him, she decided to like it.

  Madeleine, however, went beyond her intentions. She returned the caress with interest, and her arms drew him closer. When the clinch finally broke, she was gasping for breath. She had some difficulty in regaining it. She tried to say something, but her remark was inarticulate…

  She couldn’t be strictly coherent, with someone kissing the hollow of her throat. Farrell felt the sudden rise of her breast and knew he was making a job of it. The luxurious little sigh, and the way she hitched herself back among the cushions confirmed his suspicions.

  This wasn’t tracking down the trouble-maker of Malaya—but after all, the raid would be safer if delayed until quite late that night.

  “I didn’t bring my overnight case or anything,” she deplored, although Farrell hadn’t had a chance to complain on that score.

  “What you did bring is plenty,” he said, dismissing that irrelevancy as he tried a one arm squeeze that would leave his other hand free for—well, what would anyone do with an unoccupied lunch hook?

  “Darling,” she finally whispered, “I’d be ever so much more comfortable if I had a lounge robe or something to—You’re terribly rough!…”

  She proved that by wriggling out of his arms. The gleam in her misty eyes hinted that she might like being kissed some more.

  “There’s a mandarin robe in that trunk in the other room—I picked it up for my sister, but I’m sure she’d not mind—”

  “Oh, delightful!” Then, with a malicious little smile, “Bet the frills on it make a liar of you—about the sister, I mean.”

  Whoever it was intended for, the dragon-embroidered garment saved the ensemble from a thorough mauling…and the whirring of uncounted tropical insects without drowned whatever protests Madeleine had…she wasn’t raising her voice…presently she agreed with Farrell’s program for the evening…it really was too late to go anywhere…

  But somehow, Madeleine did cast a few furtive glances at her wrist watch.

  Just a trifling distraction, but thinking of time did seem blasphemous.

  Glancing over the flame of the match he struck to a cigarette, he saw her fumbling for the compact and lipstick in her handbag.

  “What the hell,” was his unspoken thought, noticing the second hand cosmetic on the tip of his smoke, “do I have to take off a fresh layer, that she’s just becoming good and kissable?”

  Madeleine’s fingers were deft, but Farrell, watching time on his own account, was a shade more vigilant than he would ordinarily have been. Thus he saw her palming a small glass vial.

  That was an odd note.

  “This light is terrible,” she complained.

  He unsuccessfully tinkered with the shade. The result was glaring.

  “There’s a goose neck lamp on the living room table,” she suggested.

  He was gone only for a moment, and it took no longer to plug it in.

  The tiny bottle did not feature in the complexion repairs. It had disappeared. A swift, appreciative glance told him that her hose tops were not concealing it. Presently he was certain that the flimsy brassiere had not entered the play—no, he didn’t look…

  He made a dive for an ashtray, knocked the handbag to the floor, cursed his own clumsiness. As he stooped to retrieve it, back turned toward Madeleine, he unsnapped the clasps.

  The glance was revealing. A small automatic pistol and an emptied vial were nestled among a tangle of feminine odds and ends. His finger tips brushed the smeared stopper.

  The smell identified it: tincture of opium. But why lull him to sleep? She had a pistol, if she wanted to make it permanent.

  Farrell, certain that his mission in Singapore was already kicking back at him, had to compliment the unknown master of intrigue for fast work. Hell’s fire, he’d been wise to Farrell ever since that day in Penang!

  Madeleine’s glass was full. He reached for the decanter and filled his own. The heavy-bodied, tawny port masked all but the scantiest trace of the opiate. He sipped a bit, appreciatively smacked his lips.

  “Say—” He set the glass down. “I must be getting absent-minded. I’m nuts about this port myself, but maybe you’d like a drop of oloroso sherry. “It’s topside number one.”

  “Well…just a drop,” she agreed. “My head’s fairly spinning.”

  In a moment he was uncorking the oloroso. The stopper yielded with a jerk. He tipped the filled glass from the table, and knoc
ked the empty one to the floor.

  “Awfully sorry,” he apologized, noting the moist glisten of her skin through the wine-soaked hosiery. “Maybe—”

  “Think nothing of it,” she laughed.

  “I’ll rinse them.”

  Madeleine headed for the bath. Farrell emptied the decanter and goblet out the window. He refilled the former with oloroso. It was about the color of the tawny port. The dark glass of the sherry bottle concealed the shortage.

  When she returned to hang the stocking in front of the fan, Farrell was setting down a glass and smacking his lips.

  “Try the oloroso,” he invited. He refilled his own goblet from the decanter, which Madeleine of course assumed contained drugged port.

  “To a nicer evening than we could possibly spend anywhere else!” she proposed, smiling over the edge of her glass.

  As she watched his drink go down the hatch, Madeleine fairly smothered him with breath-taking kisses…

  He responded nobly, until he became drowsy and languid. She stroked his hair, and whispered sleepy nothings…

  Finally, she gently drew away, letting him slump back among the cushions. She listened to his slow breathing, then stealthily retrieved the dried hosiery.

  Farrell’s lids parted, but he did not watch the tempting display. He was looking at the brilliance just below the lamp shade. He continued staring at the eye-straining glare. His lids did not drop until Madeleine, giving her ensemble a final hitch and a pat, stepped over to listen and look.

  Very gently she lifted an eyelid. The pupil was contracted—not from opium, as she thought, but from staring at the glaring light. Satisfied, she slipped softly from the room.

  Before Farrell dared follow Madeleine. He heard a low, trilling whistle, then the creaking wheels of a ghari outside the compound.

  He had not counted on such complete preparation. No chance of following; not after that slap across the pony’s rump! Yet he was undrugged, and he had business at Crosby’s house.

  Farrell donned a dark suit and set out on foot. He had covered less than half a mile when he hailed an unoccupied rickshaw which he directed out Balestier Road.

  A hundred yards from his destination, he dismissed his vehicle. He stealthily approached the palisade that enclosed the compound. With a thin, strong cord to lasso a paling, scaling the barrier was but a moment’s work.

  Farrell crept through the luxuriant vegetation and toward the tree that commanded the window of Crosby’s study. But as he worked his way along the limb, a light flashed on within.

  Under his breath he cursed the unexpected occupancy of the room. Then admiration checked his wrath.

  A strikingly lovely Malay girl in European dress was following Crosby into the study. She had a pert little nose, great smouldering dark eyes, and lips like a pomegranate blossom; but her voice was low and wrathful.

  “Tûan,” she said, reaching into her bosom and producing a packet of bank notes which she slapped on the desk, “what manner of thing is this? Why this marked money? By Allah, you are trying to betray us!”

  “Who sent you?” snapped Crosby.

  “Look at the markings!” she challenged. Her voice and gesture were an accusation.

  Was she one of the crew of spies and intriguers who represented the Claw of Iblis?

  Crosby hunched forward to examine the money. A silvery flicker darted from the girl’s side. Her knife was buried hilt deep between Crosby’s shoulders.

  Like a tigress, she was behind him, looping a scarf about his face, throttling his outcry and gurgling gasp. For a moment there was a hoarse, muffled choking and the girl’s panting breath as she tensed to her grim task. Then Crosby slumped forward, shuddered, and was still.

  That one deftly driven stroke had done its work.

  “Damn it,” muttered Farrell, “nothing more to learn from Crosby!”

  If he paused to loot the dead man’s files, he could not follow the girl. She was worth trailing as a lead to Crosby’s background. She might even serve the Claw of Iblis; but if he followed her, he would not be able to return and search the office. Once the police learned of the crime, Farrell’s task was blocked.

  Before he could approach the problem, it became worse. A door silently opened into the room. A woman entered: Madeleine, pistol in hand.

  “Back away from that desk, but don’t raise your hands, or I’ll shoot.” Her nice was low and venomous.

  She spoke fluent Malay! Farrell’s teeth gritted. She had made a sap out of him from the start, with that honeyed, “Oh, it’s so sweet of you to show me the sights.”

  She was reaching for the telephone on the desk. Farrell’s hot wrath turned to cold chills. Madeleine had drugged him, and now she was holding the Malay girl a prisoner. Could she be a police spy?

  Farrell needed action. He opened his penknife, leaned toward the plantain cluster at his side and snipped one from the bunch.

  A plantain is something like a banana, only three times as large, and so wooden a horse couldn’t eat one raw.

  As Madeleine’s lips shaped a number, the plantain zipped through the window, knocking the pistol from her grasp.

  Farrell followed through; but the Malay girl had the situation in hand before his feet were fairly on the carpet.

  “Hang on, sitti,” encouraged Farrell, bounding into action. “By Allah, I am your friend.”

  His timely intervention was all the proof the little brown sister needed at the moment. Between them, they took a drape cord and lashed Madeleine to a chair, then gagged her with the scarf that had choked Crosby’s outcry.

  “Next time you put opium into my wine, darling,” whispered Farrell, “be damn’ sure I’m not looking. That was oloroso I was drinking, the same as you.”

  Madeleine could not answer, but her eyes were blistering.

  “Where are the servants?” Farrell demanded, turning to his lovely ally. “And who the devil are you?”

  “Mûnah,” she answered, “and don’t worry about the servants.”

  He plucked the keys from Crosby’s pocket, opened the filing cases, rapidly sifted the contents. In a few moments he had assembled a thick sheaf.

  “That is odd plunder, tûan,” observed Mûnah.

  Despite his haste, Farrell was fascinated by that delicate oval face and the lithe, sweetly rounded figure which he could not help trying to visualize in a silken sarong, and frail jacket whose transparency a many colored shawl would only make more alluring.

  She reminded him of a young tigress when she said, “It is not good to leave this woman alive—she will talk—”

  Another knife blossomed in her hand.

  “Forget it!” snapped Farrell. “We’ll be out of town before she’s loose.”

  He followed her to the rear. A light car was parked behind the estate. She had entered by a wicket used by the servants.

  “I am going to Johore Bahru,” she said, “where there is less law. A sampan will take me across the straits.”

  * * * *

  She drove cross town and out the Serangoon Road. Farrell’s mission bad blown up before it started. His intervention in favor of Mûnah had made him an accessory after the fact of murder, and the records he had taken were merely clues to Crosby’s evil background, not blueprints leading to the Claw of Iblis. With luck he might get to Siam, and finally to the states with the data that some other investigator could follow up.

  Mûnah pulled up at the Moslem cemetery at the outskirts of Serangoon Village. She slipped out of her trim ensemble. For a moment she was a slender length of amber-tinted loveliness in the moonglow, a fascinating anomaly: Malay flesh adorned by ultra-western step-ins!

  Then she deftly wrapped a sheer silken sarong about her hips. It was something like a skirt, only better. At one side the edges would part at every step, revealing a shapely leg from ankle to hip.

 
In a moment, all her European finery was in a compact bundle at her feet.

  “Tûan,” she said, coming so close that her warmth and fragrance made him forget both peril and business for a moment, “The white woman you so foolishly let live thinks we are accomplices. It would be dangerous for us to be seen together.”

  “Where’s your sampan?” he demanded.

  “Waiting under cover,” Mûnah answered. “I will paddle it myself.”

  He seated himself in the shadow of a headstone shaped like a hitching post capped by a turban, then drew her to his side.

  “Listen, Mûnah,” he said, “suppose I don’t let you go?” She fearlessly regarded him, then replied, “You are not one to put me back in peril.”

  “Why did you hate Crosby?”

  “What have you against him?” she countered. “Why did you take those papers?”

  Farrell’s job was to learn things, not reveal them. And Mûnah’s caution might yield to persuasion. He was certain she was holding out plenty—referring to information, not what she kept packed in silk.

  “Let us speak of something else,” he evaded. “What difference does anything make except that presently you go your way and I go mine, and only Allah knows what our end may be.”

  He gathered an armful of Mûnah. She was firm-fleshed and supple. The tremor of his voice seemed to strike a responsive chord. But for him, she would still be looking into a pistol muzzle.

  She returned his kiss, clung to him with a fervor that sent thrills chasing each other all the way to his toenails. Farrell’s thoughts rapidly shifted to mysteries only indirectly pertaining to the Claw of Iblis.

  Mûnah was rapidly responding to treatment. Though slender to the eye, he learned through other senses that she was plump as a young partridge, and, like Madeleine, slender where a woman should be slim…he began to wish he had four arms, like the great god Siva…no wonder the Hindus called him a god…who wouldn’t be, with four hands to cover practically everything of interest, and all at once!

  But Mûnah kept her head. She had slipped clear of his embrace and drew together the edges of her sarong, effectively blocking his ardor.