The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four

by Louis L'Amour

  Big London caught the rope deftly. Then Ponga Jim went up, hand over hand. When he reached Big London’s hands, he grabbed the big man’s wrist. London let go of the rope and caught him. In a few seconds he was standing in the open air.

  “Thanks, pal!” Ponga Jim said fervently. “I’ve been in some spots, but that one—”

  “Captain,” Big London said, “we better be going. This is clean across the Gulf of Suez and way down the coast. They spent the best part of the night and morning coming down here.”

  Ponga Jim looked around. It was bright moonlight.

  “Is there a high cliff right over there?” He pointed toward the southeast. “One that drops off into the water? And is there a black hill right over there?”

  “Sure is, Captain,” Big London said. “I took me that black hill for a landmark. I smuggled myself away on their boat, hoping they’d leave one man alone so I could take over, but they never. Then I waited, hid out till they took you ashore. I wanted to follow, but they got clean away with three men with guns still on the boat. I had to slip over into the water when they started again, swim ashore, and then trail you up here.”

  “You did a good job.” Ponga Jim chuckled. “The joke is on them. This place is the Ras Muhammed, the tip of Sinai Peninsula, and right over there, not three miles from here, in one of the neatest little bays in this area, is the Semiramis!”

  An hour and a little more passed before they reached the shore of the little inlet surrounded by high cliffs. At a cleft in the rock they made their way down to a beach of black sand and decomposed coral. The freighter was anchored, a dark blotch, not a hundred yards offshore. At Ponga Jim’s shout, a boat was hastily lowered.

  No sooner had Ponga Jim reached the freighter than he called Brophy.

  “Slug,” he said, “get number five open and break out that amphibian. I want her tuned and ready to take off by daybreak. This is going to be quick work.”

  He walked into the cabin, tossed off his clothes, and fell into his bunk. In seconds he was sound asleep.

  CHAPTER VI

  Four men and a woman sat in the spacious living room of Zara Hammedan’s Ramleh residence. Zara’s face was composed, and only her eyes showed a hint of the strain she was undergoing.

  One of the men stood up. He was well over six feet and broad shouldered, and he moved with the ease of a big cat. There was a great deal of the cat about him—in his eyes, in the movements of his hands. His hair was black, but white at the temples, and his eyes were large and intensely black. His face was swarthy and his arched eyebrows heavy. There was about him something that spoke of a sense of power, of command, and in every word, every gesture, was an utter ruthlessness.

  “You see, gentlemen?” he said lightly. “Our plans move swiftly. There was a momentary danger, but Captain Mayo has been taken care of. He was dropped into the Tomb of the Snakes this morning. By this time he has been dead for hours. By tomorrow noon the convoy will be well into the Red Sea. It carries fifty thousand soldiers, many planes, much petrol, and much ammunition. By tomorrow at dark that convoy will be completely destroyed. As always, there will be no survivors.

  “And tomorrow night? General Kernan and Major Arnold will be shot down. Within an hour a reign of terror will begin in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Suez, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Aleppo. By tomorrow night at midnight, the British will be leaderless in the Near East. Rebellion will break out.” The man paused. “Then we will take over.”

  “I do not like it.” The man who spoke was slender and bald, and his small eyes were shrewd. “It is not practical. And that Ponga Jim was disposed of in too theatrical a manner. He should have been shot. I would never leave such a man alive.”

  “The man is just a man.” The imperious words of the tall man were smooth, cold. “One would think, Herr Heittn, that you thought him supernatural.”

  Heittn smiled thinly. “I know this man,” he said shortly. “Did I not use every means to dispose of him? Did he not kill my brother? Did he not handle Count Kull like he was a child?”

  “Strength is not enough,” the tall man said. “It takes brains!”

  “You got something there, Chief,” one of the other men said. His jaw was heavy, his nose flat. He looked like a good heavyweight boxer. “But I been hearing about this guy Mayo. He’s a tough cookie.”

  “But I know how to handle ‘tough cookies,’ Mullens,” the tall man assured. “You have only to handle your end. You have your men ready?”

  “You bet,” Mullens said. “I got four of the best rodmen that ever slung a heater. All of ’em with tommy guns. We’ll mow your pals Kernan and Arnold down like they were dummies.”

  “Then we’re all ready. You’re sure about the time, Demarest?”

  “Yes,” said Demarest. “The time is right. Everything will move perfectly. The destruction of this convoy, the fourth consecutive convoy to be totally destroyed, will wreck the troops’ morale. A whispering campaign has begun. Kernan cannot be replaced. He knows the East too well.”

  Heittn was watching the tall man steadily, his eyes curious.

  “I don’t understand your stake in this, Theron,” he said abruptly. “What is it you want? You are not German. You are not just an adventurer. I do not understand.”

  “No reason why you should, Herr Heittn,” the man called Theron snapped. “You have a task to do. You will do it. What you think or do not think is of no interest to me if your task is well done.”

  Zara arose and excused herself. Theron’s eyes followed her as she left the room. They were cold, curious.

  “What of her?” Demarest asked. “You are sure of her?”

  “I will be responsible for her, Demarest. She has too much power among the Arabs not to be of value to us. But she must be kept with us always.”

  The group broke up. Heittn was first to leave. He took his hat and started for the door, then glanced swiftly around, and with surprising speed darted up the stairs toward Zara’s room. There he tapped lightly on the door.

  It opened at once, and before Zara could speak, Heittn slipped into the room. He looked at the girl narrowly.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  The German looked down at the small automatic in her hand.

  “You will not need that, Fräulein,” he said gently. “What I want is of interest to us both. I want to know about him.” He pointed downward. “Can we trust him? What does he want? Who is he?”

  Zara’s face paled. She glanced toward the door. It was locked. She crossed to the window, started to close it, and then caught her breath. The steel bars were gone!

  But when she turned, her face was composed.

  “I know no more than you, Herr Heittn,” she said calmly, “except he seems to have unlimited funds. Also, he is ambitious.”

  Heittn nodded. “Ah!” he said seriously. “That is what I have seen, Fräulein. Too ambitious. And he has power, too much power. Sometimes”—he shook his head worriedly—“I think he is beyond us all, that man. He is not a National Socialist, yet he is too strong with the party for me.”

  “But what could he do?” Zara protested.

  “Do? A strong man with money, ambition, and courage—what can he not do in such times as these? Nations are rising and falling; men are discouraged, afraid. They will look anywhere for shelter. The weak admire the strong, and that one, he is strong. He is cruel. I admit it, Fräulein. I am afraid of him!”

  Casually Zara Hammedan lighted a cigarette. Her eyes strayed toward the closet door, now closed. She frowned a little. The bars from the window had been slid up out of sight again, and that could mean but one thing. Ponga Jim Mayo was somewhere in the house.

  She looked at the German shrewdly. “Herr Heittn, your government does not appeal to me, you know that. But I would even prefer the dictatorship of Nazi Germany to what would follow the success of these schemes in the Near East! I do not know more about that man than you do, but I do know that Captain Mayo knew, or knows, something that
he does not wish anyone to know.”

  “And Mayo is dead,” Heittn said slowly.

  “Perhaps.” Zara flicked the ash from her cigarette. “You had better go, Herr Heittn. It grows late.”

  The Nazi turned to the door and then glanced around.

  “I go, but I have a plan to make our friend below be a bit more reasonable.” He smiled. “Guten Abend, Fräulein!”

  AS HEITTN WALKED swiftly down the hall he glanced over the stairs, but no one was in sight. With a quick smile, Heittn went down the carpeted stairs. He had reached the door when a voice froze him in his tracks. Something in the low, even tone sent a chill up his spine. He turned slowly.

  Theron stood in the shadow near the door from the wide living room. The light fell across his face. There was something regal in his appearance. In his right hand, he held a Luger.

  “I thought you left us, Herr Heittn?” he said coldly. “I do not like spies!”

  “Spies?” Heittn shrugged. “Come, come, Theron! That is hardly the term. I went up to see Miss Hammedan about—”

  “But searched my room in the meantime, is that it? Give me that blueprint, Herr Heittn. Give it to me, at once!”

  “Blueprint?” the Nazi was puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  Above in the darkness, Zara slipped from her room and looked down. In her hand was an automatic. She hesitated and then lifted it slowly.

  “Don’t!”

  A hand closed over her wrist, and the voice that spoke to her was low. Demarest stepped up beside her.

  “Not now,” he said. “Without him, nothing would work. He holds all the strings. The whole plot would be useless and we would be exposed.”

  In the silence they could hear the words that were being spoken at the front door.

  “All right, Herr Heittn,” Theron was saying. “It does not matter. But if the blueprint were to leave this house, it would matter.”

  The sound of the automatic was flat and ugly in the dim hallway. Heittn’s face went sick, and the man stepped back, two short steps. Then he sat down, abruptly, with a thin trickle of blood coming from the hole over his heart.

  Her face deathly pale, Zara Hammedan turned abruptly and went to her room. Nathan Demarest glanced after her and then returned to his own room.

  Zara closed the door and then turned. In the dim light the man sitting on the bed was plainly visible. His peaked cap lay beside him, and he still wore the faded khaki suit and woven leather sandals. She could see the butt of his automatic under the edge of his coat.

  “You—you must go quickly!” she protested. “He killed Herr Heittn. He will stop at nothing now!”

  Ponga Jim lifted an eyebrow. “What I want to know is—who is he?”

  “Theron,” she whispered. “He will be coming up, too, wanting to know what Heittn said to me. Go—quickly!”

  Ponga Jim’s eyes were bright.

  “Theron. That answers a lot of things!” He stepped to the window, put a foot over the sill, and reached for the thick branch. “So long, beautiful. Be seeing you!”

  CHAPTER VII

  Ponga Jim had reached the ground and was starting to slip back into the trees when he saw them. Four men closing in on him.

  He knew what that meant, and he didn’t hesitate. He jumped the nearest one, hooking a left short and hard to the man’s head. It hit with a plop, and the man’s head flew back. He dropped like a sack of meal.

  A shot clipped by his head, and Ponga Jim dropped into a crouch as his own gun came out. The big automatic roared. Once—twice—three times.

  Two men dropped, a third screamed shrilly and staggered back into the building. Holding his left shoulder, Ponga Jim ran. He dodged through the trees with bullets clipping the leaves about him, ducked into an alley, and then crossed into another street. A car was waiting with the motor running. He jumped in.

  “Move!” he said, and Sakim let the car into gear and stepped on the gas.

  Ponga Jim glanced at his watch. It was three A.M. At noon the convoy would be attacked, and he had until then, and until then only. It was going to be nip and tuck if he made it.

  He felt sick. Fifty thousand soldiers coming up the Red Sea toward Suez, fifty thousand Anzacs to strengthen the Army of the Nile. He knew the plot now. What he had overheard and what he had found in his ransacking of Theron’s room had told him the whole story.

  Native mobs running riot in the streets, men dying by the thousand—Kernan, Arnold, all of them.

  The car slowed up as it neared the American Export Line’s office on the Rue Fouad. A man stepped from the shadows, and the car whined to a halt. Major Arnold hit the running board with a jump.

  “Jim! What’s happened?” Arnold’s face was tense. “When Selim found me he said all calamity was to break loose today. What do you know?”

  As the car raced across town, Ponga Jim told his story quickly and concisely.

  “Ptolemais Theron is the man behind it all,” he said. “He’s a bad one, William! I’ve known of him for years. He and I played poker once with two other men in the place of Mahr-el-din in the Kasbah. Ring Wallace was there and Ski Jorgenson. Theron had just sidestepped a term on the breakwater for illicit diamond buying and was working on a deal to sell a lot of world war rifles to the Riffs. We were talking of the Red Sea, and Ski—”

  Ponga Jim stopped short, and his face went blank.

  “By heaven, William, I’ve got it!”

  “Got what?” Arnold’s face was tight, stiff.

  “William”—Ponga Jim’s voice was low with emotion—“Ski Jorgenson had been working a salvage job in the Gulf of Aqaba, near Tirn Island. He told us of finding some huge caverns under the cliffs of the islands—one room five hundred yards long, with a dozen chambers opening off from it, and water in that main chamber. He told us about what a swell smuggler’s hangout it would be. And the entrance is deep. A ship could come and go—if it had no masts!”

  “You mean that’s the base of that mystery battlewagon?” Arnold’s face lit up. “By the Lord Harry, if it is we’ll blast the place in on them!”

  “That’s the base. Theron wanted me killed because I knew too much. When Ski told about the caverns he also told some stuff about the ancient tombs at Adulis, and the chances are Theron’s been robbing them for the gold to put this deal over. That would be where Rudolf Burne got the emerald ring he had. Probably he was in on the deal, got cold feet, and came to me because he knew I wouldn’t turn him over to the police. But he was shot before he could talk.”

  The car slid to a halt, and Arnold dropped out.

  “Don’t worry about us,” he said drily. “We’ll be all set.”

  “Wait!” Ponga Jim put a hand on Arnold’s arm. “Don’t say a thing about yourselves—I mean you and General Kernan. I’ve already arranged for that. I’m going to have Selim, Sakim, Big London, and Longboy standing by. They’ll get the men who’ll be sent to kill you.

  “Don’t trust anyone. Somebody high up is in this, somebody close to you.” He paused. “Oh, yes! Remember Carter? He built the Khamsin. Built the plant for it for the Nazis.”

  “Okay.” Arnold smiled suddenly and held out his hand. “I don’t know what you’ve got up your sleeve, but good luck. And in case something slips up—it’s been a grand fight!”

  Ponga Jim grinned. “Listen, pal. Just to keep the record straight. Keep Zara Hammedan undercover. She means well, and—”

  “Who?” William grabbed Ponga Jim’s arm. “Why, you didn’t mention her! Where did you—”

  “Shh!” Mayo said, grinning. “It’s late, William, and you’ll wake up the neighbors. Zara? Oh, we’re just like that!” He held up two fingers. “A honey, isn’t she?”

  Selim stepped on the gas.

  “I hope you get shot!” Arnold yelled after him.

  TIRĀN ISLAND, at the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, is six and a half miles long and in the south part is about five miles wide. Chisholm Point is steep and cliffy, but Johnson Point, the northwest
tip of the island, is low and flat, of sand and dead coral. South of the point, two flat, sandy beaches afford good landing, but the coast elsewhere consists of undercut coral cliffs.

  It lacked but a little of daylight when Ponga Jim Mayo stepped ashore on one of those sandy beaches. Slug Brophy scowled at him in the vague light.

  “I don’t like it, Skipper. I don’t like shooting at no ship when you’re aboard it. And if they catch you they’ll fill you so full of lead you’ll sink clean through to China.”

  “Forget it,” said Mayo. “I’ve got my job to do—you’ve got yours. Have the boats and life rafts ready, alright? We’ve got one chance in a million that the Semiramis will come out of this, but a chance. All I’m figuring on is crippling the Khamsin—that’s the name of the mystery battleship—so she can’t move fast. Then maybe she can be kept busy until the convoy escapes. Have the sub over right away. Jeff and Hifty from the engine room can handle it.”

  The boat shoved off into the darkness, and Ponga Jim climbed the gradually shelving beach. He paused there, looking over the island: sand, decomposed coral, and rock, with here and there some grass. He was going on a memory of what Ski Jorgenson had said several years before, that there was an opening of the cave to the island itself, aside from the huge mouth that opened into the gulf.

  He found it by sheer good luck, after he had looked for an hour. It was already daylight when he saw the small hole Ski had mentioned. Surprisingly, there was no one near it. He slid through and found himself in a passage where he could stand erect. He hurried, hesitated at a branching passage, and then chose the larger. It opened into the huge cavern so suddenly that he almost walked right out into the open.

  Even so, he stopped in his tracks, staring. He stood in the darkness at one side of a huge cavern, its domed roof lost in the shadows overhead. But what held his gaze was the warship.

  It was at least five hundred feet long, painted black, but glistening with metallic luster. The hull seemed to be built like that of any battleship, but above deck the ship was covered with a turtleshell covering. There were two turrets forward and one aft, each looking much like slightly less than half a ball where the rounded surface lifted above the shell. The turrets, obviously, could turn to cover any point from dead ahead to a complete right angle on either side.