Bill for the Use of a Body

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘Where yer goin’, sir?’

  When Julian told him, the Corporal said, ‘Fer Gawd’s sake don’t, sir. The Japs is there. Them little yellow bastards’ll jab a bayonet in yer guts fer certain. ‘Alf an ’our back I got art of a scullery winder. But I seen enough ter know the form. Ole Doc’ Black, what’s the big shot there, tried to prevent ’em comin’ in; but they just laughed an’ gave ’im the works on the doorstep. Then them swine set abart the wounded. Bayoneted the poor sods in their beds. That’s what they did. Then them swine set abart raping the nurses, may they rot in ’ell.’

  Julian closed his eyes and a shudder of horror ran through him. Opening them again, he said thickly, ‘Thanks for stopping me, Corporal. It’s too ghastly to think about. I’m afraid we’ve had it. What a Christmas morning! It’s every man for himself now and I doubt if many of us will see in the New Year.’

  ‘That’s it, sir,’ the Corporal agreed. ‘Sell our lives dearly. That’s the drill. Like my Brigadier. I were on ’is ’Eadquarters Staff these lars’ few days while ’e were commanding the western sector. It were my luck to be sent art to try to mend a telephone wire so when I gets back I saw what ’appened while lying in the bushes. The ’Eadquarters was surrounded. ’Ole area just swarmin’ with them little yellow ’orrors. Then art comes Brigadier Lawson wiv a pistol in each ’and. ’E gives it to ’em right an’ left an’ took six of the misbegotten bastards wiv ’im. When the rest of the Staff come art wiv their ’ands up they was tied up in bundles of three, then stuck again and again, just as though they was ’ay sacks in a bayonet practice. Gawd, it were awful! Me stomach turned over at their yellin’. I was sick as a dog, an’ pissin’ meself that the Japs ’d spot me. But they didn’t, an’ when it fell dark I crawled away. The Brigadier ’ad the right idea though.’

  Julian nodded. ‘He certainly did. And when we have won the war we ought to castrate every Japanese who has set foot on this island.’ After a moment he added, ‘I think I’ll make for the Jockey Club, as the best chance of getting my wound dressed. It’s been turned into a temporary hospital. What about coming with me and having your head attended to?’

  ‘No, thanks, sir,’ the Corporal replied. ‘My Chinese girl friend lives in a room upstairs. Those sons of bitches won’t make do with them few nurses fer long. I give ’em no more ’n an ’our and they’ll be darn ’ere ’unting fer wimmen in the tarn. I mean ter stick around. And Gawd ’elp the first few bloody little sods who get the idea that they’d like ter play their filthy games on ’er.’

  They wished one another luck, then Julian turned his steps towards Happy Valley. When he reached the Jockey Club he found every bed in it occupied and the landings and passages crowded with other wounded men. Some were dying as they lay or crouched in corridors. After an hour he managed to get a nurse to look at his arm. Having given it a cursory glance she said, ‘That’s not serious, and I’ve far more urgent cases to attend to.’

  ‘I’m sure you have,’ he agreed, ‘but if it’s not sterilised I may lose my arm.’

  She gave a quick nod. ‘All right, go into that ward on the left and wait there. As soon as I can I’ll come and attend to you.’

  Just inside the ward he found a group of other lightly wounded men waiting to be patched up. To get free of the crowd he walked down between the beds to the window at the far end of the ward and perched himself on the sill. He had been sitting there for about twenty minutes when he caught the sound of shouts and curses coming from the corridor. A moment later the door burst open and a score of Japanese streamed into the ward.

  They were obviously drunk on looted liquor. Yelling like scalded hell cats, they proceeded to lay about them with demoniac fury. In a matter of seconds the group of lightly wounded near the door had been reduced to a bloody shambles. Every one of them had gone down. Half disembowelled or with frightful neck wounds, they lay writhing and screaming on the floor.

  Julian had turned, flung up the window and scrambled out on to the fire escape. While hesitating whether to run up or down it he gave a quick glance in through the window. The Japanese were swarming down the centre of the ward, pausing only at each bed to bayonet the wounded man in it. Riveted with horror, he stared in at this ghastly spectacle for another thirty seconds. During them the nurse to whom he had spoken, in a heroic endeavour to protect one of her patients, threw herself face down on top of him. With a fiendish grin the nearest Japanese raised his rifle sideways, then plunged his bayonet into the middle of her bottom.

  The girl’s piercing scream did something to Julian’s stomach. Overcome by nausea, he choked and vomited. As he leaned forward to spew he caught sight of several Japanese outside the building, below him. Seeing that his only hope lay in endeavouring to hide in one of the rooms in an upper storey, he shinned up the fire escape and entered a window on the top floor.

  The room was a fairly large one. It was furnished as a lounge, with two settees, several armchairs, a bookcase and a writing desk. As he stumbled into it he saw that criss-crossing the ceiling there hung several paper chains, and that on a square table in the centre stood a group of jugs, glasses, dishes and open boxes of such items as preserved fruit and chocolates. The decorations brought home to him again with a sudden pang that this, of all days, was Christmas Day. It seemed probable that he was in the nurses’ off-duty room and that the goodies, left only partly arranged on the table, had been hastily abandoned by someone preparing a Christmas spread for them.

  He had not eaten for many hours, so he grabbed up some biscuits. As he munched them he decided that to remain there could only postpone his capture and death, for it seemed certain that the drunken Japanese would break into every room in the building in search of other women to violate. Above him, along the middle of the ceiling, ran a wide, two-sided skylight, evidently to give the room more air during the great heat in summer. It had curtains to keep out the sun, but it was now shut and these were only partly drawn. From the skylight his mind flashed to the roof. There was at least a chance that the Japs would not search it, so he would be safer up there.

  Seizing a jug of lemonade, he gulped down half its contents, then crammed his pockets full of biscuits and sugared almonds. Within three minutes he was back at the window. He had climbed out and was already a few steps up the fire escape when he caught the sound behind him of the door of the room being flung open and running feet. With his heart pounding he quickly tiptoed the rest of the way up to the roof, praying that his legs had not been seen by the Japs who had burst into the room.

  Once on the roof he remained standing there for a few moments, from fear that if he advanced the tread of his heavy boots on the lead walkway would attract the attention of the men below. As he had noticed some bottles of port and sherry on a side table, he thought it probable that they would not leave the room until they had drunk them. To make certain that they were still there, he got down on his knees and crawled forward a few feet so that he could look down into the room through one of the panes of the skylight over which the curtain had not been drawn. He saw then that it was not the Japs who had burst in but a V.A.D., and she was dragging the writing desk across the door with the evident intention of barricading herself in.

  Kneeling there by the skylight he found that it was not, as he had supposed, completely shut, so he lifted one of the sections and called down to her: ‘Hi, there!’

  With a start she turned and looked up at him. Her uniform was bloodstained, her cap awry and her features distorted by frantic terror. Yet at the first glance he realised that she was a lovely young creature. The wisps of hair that had escaped from beneath her cap were pale gold, her eyes a bright blue, her features regular and her flushed face was the colour of milk and roses. Giving a gasp, she shouted up to him:

  ‘Oh, save me; save me! Those fiends downstairs are raping all the women. I won’t be raped! I won’t! Come down and help me make a barricade.’

  Julian gave a quick shake of his head, but before he could speak she hurried on hystericall
y. ‘You must. Oh, for God’s sake. I’m not strong enough to do this alone. I won’t be raped. I’m a virgin. I’d sooner die first.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ Julian shouted back. ‘No barricade we could make will keep those devils out. You’ll stand a better chance if you come up here.’

  At that moment the door handle rattled, then there came loud shouts from outside and the sound of heavy blows on the door. The girl’s terrified eyes turned towards it, then up to Julian. ‘They’re here!’ she gasped. ‘But I won’t let them get me. Shoot me! Shoot me while there’s still time. I’d rather die.’

  She was standing just below Julian; so had he had any ammunition for his pistol and been able to nerve himself for such a terrible act, he could easily have put a bullet through her head. Instead of wasting words to tell her that he couldn’t, he cried, ‘Do as I say! Come up to me. Not by the window. Get up on the table and I’ll pull you up. That will be quicker.’

  With sudden resolution the girl put one foot on a chair and the other on the table. But in her haste she slipped, lost her balance and measured her length on the floor. As she did so Julian subconsciously registered the fact that she was much taller than he had thought when looking down on her, and a strong, well-built young woman with long shapely legs. Next moment she had regained her feet and scrambled up on to the table.

  She had locked the door before dragging the writing desk across it, but the howling Japanese outside had just fired a burst that had shot the lock away. As the desk was not a very heavy one there was not a moment to be lost. The girl held her arms high and went up on her toes. Reaching down, Julian found that he could get a comfortable grasp on her wrists. Next moment, as he took the strain, he realised that when he had told her to let him pull her up he had both forgotten the wound in his forearm and greatly underestimated the dead weight of such a big girl’s body. Tensing his shoulders, he heaved to draw her upwards. A sharp pain shot through his arm and blood from the reopened wound began to flow down to his wrist. Only by gritting his teeth and exerting his utmost strength was he able to lift her clear of the table.

  Staring up into his face, the girl sensed his sudden doubt of his ability to drag her through the skylight. Her bright blue eyes wide with terror, she yelled at him, ‘Pull me up! Don’t let them get me! Pull me up. For Christ’s sake pull me up!’

  For an agonising two minutes that seemed an eternity Julian strove to raise her further. His muscles hurt intolerably and big beads of perspiration had broken out on his forehead, but he could not raise her even another few inches.

  The sound of cracking wood now mingled with that of the blows from rifle butts on the door. The girl cast a swift glance over her shoulder. She saw that the writing desk had been forced back and that the Japs now had the door a little open. Frantically, she screamed at Julian, ‘You bloody fool! If you hadn’t the strength to pull me up you should have let me go out through the window. Oh, make an effort! Save me from them! Save me!’

  Sweat was running into Julian’s eyes, his heart felt as though it was about to burst, but she seemed to weigh a ton and it was all he could do to hold her dangling there.

  With a yell of triumph the leading Jap forced his small body through the partly open door. In two springs he had reached the table and seised the girl by the legs. As she tried to kick herself free she gave a last despairing wail. ‘Drop me! Drop me and shoot me!’

  Julian did not wilfully let go her wrists. The extra strain of the Jap pulling at her legs and her kicking out tore them from his grasp. She fell with a crash among the crockery on the table but slid off it on to her feet. Too utterly distressed and horrified at the failure of his attempt to get her out, Julian temporarily forgot that he was exposed to a bullet and continued to stare down through the open skylight.

  Three more Japs had charged into the room, their faces sweaty from their exertions and the alcohol they had drunk. One of them struck the girl in the eye with his fist. With a moan she went over backwards on to the sofa. Almost as she fell the whole pack was on her. One of them ripped her blouse down from the neck, exposing one of her fine breasts; another put his foot on her stomach and, grasping her skirt with both hands, tore a large strip of it away, revealing her long slender legs.

  Still impervious to his own danger, Julian shouted, ‘Stop that, you swine! Stop that!’

  For a moment they let go the girl to turn and stare up at him. The last to enter the room was still holding his machine pistol. He raised it to fire a burst but, just in time, Julian threw himself backwards.

  Picking himself up he turned and ran, fearful now that one of them would come up after him and shoot him in the back. But he need not have worried and by the time he had concealed himself behind a chimney stack at the far end of the roof he realised that they had taken far too fine a prise in the girl to leave for the pleasure of shooting him.

  Never before had he experienced such utter depths of misery as weighed upon him that afternoon. Still apprehensive that a Jap might come up on the roof and spot him, he spent the time crouched behind the chimney stack; but he could not keep his mind off what the girl must be going through and bitterly reproached himself with the thought that had he not overestimated his own strength she might have got away through the window and be up there with him. He could only pray that she had become unconscious or gone out of her mind early in her ordeal; but he thought that unlikely because her strong young body was just the type that could stand up to almost any amount of physical endurance before final exhaustion set in. And there was another factor that would make things even worse for her. The Japanese had a chip on their shoulder about being small men, and he knew from what he had heard in the past week that they took a special delight in inflicting pain and humiliation on the taller of their prisoners; what they might do to a tall, blonde English girl simply did not bear thinking about.

  The long hours of the afternoon dragged by. Soon after darkness fell he cautiously made his way down a fire escape at the far end of the building. As the electric power on Hong Kong had failed during the battle, the city was in darkness, except for the glimmer of oil lamps and candles behind windows here and there. The sound of drunken singing told him that the Japanese were still in the hospital, but there were no sentries outside it, and as he slipped from one patch of shadow to another he did not encounter any of the enemy.

  From mid afternoon, apart from the occasional crack of a rifle all firing had ceased, so he guessed that Hong Kong must have surrendered. Later he learned that the Japanese having penetrated the capital in several places and the situation having become beyond all hope, the capitulation had been made at 3.15 p.m.

  Sir Mark Young and General Maltby had defended the Colony for seventeen days with an inadequate garrison, mainly obsolete weapons and a crippling shortage of munitions of war. No leaders, or the men under them, could have done more. It stands to their eternal glory that over five thousand men of the Imperial Forces were killed or severely wounded before they laid down their arms, and that as the price of victory they made the Japanese pay with thirteen thousand well-trained troops.

  Two hours after Julian left the hospital his furtive progress through the darkened streets brought him to the waterfront of West Victoria. He had set off in that direction with the vague hope of being able to get hold of a sampan. But evidently all the boats had already been used by their owners to escape, or had been collected by the Japanese. As there were none to be seen, he was forced to face up to a major decision. Should he wait about until he was caught by the Japanese or risk his life in an attempt to reach the mainland? If he let himself be captured the best he could hope for was internment in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. He had always believed that in the end Britain would win the war; and now that, owing to the treacherous attack on Pearl Harbour, the United States had come in, he had no doubt at all that Britain, the Soviet Union and America would defeat Germany and Japan. But it might be years before they could liberate prisoners taken in the Far East. And it was qui
te on the cards that instead of taking him prisoner the first Japanese patrols he met would slaughter him out of hand. Summoning up his resolution to risk death sooner by drowning, he decided to swim for it; then, having taken off his boots and tied them round his neck, he entered the water.

  It was a long hard swim and towards the end he began to fear that he would not survive it, but at length his feet touched bottom. Gasping for breath and half frozen he staggered ashore on Stonecutter’s Island and for some time lay there exhausted. But he knew that if he were to escape capture he must get much further afield before morning. Pulling himself together, he made his way inland towards the north-east bay, which he knew to be a junk harbour. When he reached it he saw that a line of unlit junks was tied up against the quay. But as he stood in the deep shadow cast by a godown he caught the tramp of heavy boots. Then, by the faint light of the new moon, he saw a Japanese sentry patrolling the wharf, evidently for the purpose of preventing anyone escaping in one of the junks.

  Unarmed as Julian was, it would have been suicidal to attack the sentry openly; so he resorted to a stratagem. Crouching down beside the warehouse, next time the sentry was about to pass it he emitted loud groans. The sentry halted in his tracks, then came over to him.