He pounded me on the back of the head with the barrel of the gun, but I didn’t know that until the doc looked me over. I was too busy getting my hands on his throat to feel anything.
When I did it was just about all over. He tried to get the gun into my side, but I knelt on his arm and pinioned it to the floor. And all the time I was trying my best to wring his head off his shoulders.
He made a lot of funny noises and he squirmed and twisted like a madman, but he really didn’t have a chance. Finally the noises stopped and a little later the squirming stopped. Then it was all over.
I climbed to my feet and went out the door. I didn’t know which way to go, but I decided on the back way.
There was a flight of steps at the end of the corridor that connected with the flight that led from Yang’s office. And they went to the same place, tire door that opened out on Vang’s back yard.
I went down the steps as fast as I could.
And at the bottom I found the girl. She was lying in a crumpled heap and there was a twisted, frantic expression frozen on her face, as if she’d been stricken clown by a shaft of white-hot pain. She was quite dead.
MAYBE YOU’VE wondered why I took ten minutes at the start of this story to tell you about Pistol Packin’ Papa.
Well here’s why.
Papa was standing over the girl, with his big blunderbuss in his hand, and frightened tears were streaming down his fat cheeks.
“Missy fall down,” he cried, choking and gulping over the words. “Papa make old joke with gun. Say ‘stick-em-up, give me money’, and then. Missy fall down.” He dropped the gun and started wringing his hands and wailing some gibberish I couldn’t understand.
But I was beginning to understand what had happened.
The girl had never been to Yang’s. She didn’t know about Papa and his joke with the gun. And when she came running down the stairs and he suddenly popped out and stuck a gun in her side her heart just quit. The near-thing she’d had with the phony strangulation act probably hadn’t done her weak heart any good, and then Papa’s sudden appearance with the gun had finished the job.
She had been scared to death. Literally.
THAT’S ALL. I got Yang’s paper to the right party without any difficulty. Bartlett’s death was hushed up. The Shanghai division of the F.B.I. had known about him, and they didn’t want a lot of questions asked.
Pistol Packin’ Papa isn’t a character any more. He threw his gun away and he was so badly frightened by the whole affair that he went to work for a living.
I saw him the other day pulling a rickshaw and he looked thoroughly unhappy.
He’s lost a lot of weight.
GODDESS OF THE GOLDEN FLAME
First published in the July 1947 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Rick Mason was sent on a mission deep within the Himalayas—where he was to find a hidden secret—and a Goddess . . .
PROLOGUE
AP August 19th. The four-engined passenger ship Twilight crashed early yesterday in an inaccessible region Of the Himalayas. The plane, flagship of the Air France fleet, was carrying fourteen passengers from Paris to Shanghai . . .
* * *
AP August 30th. Wreckage of a Swedish Cargo plane, four days overdue, was discovered today in the southeastern section of the Vulka range of the Himalayas. Aerial photographs of the wreckage indicate the crew, perished in the crash . . .
* * *
UP September 14th. The War Department announced today that an ATC four-engined cargo ship had reported trouble On the Hump run last night. The plane was flying supplies from Delhi to Calcutta with a crew of four. The radio operator flashed an emergency signal at 9.33 EST, but gave no information as to the nature of the trouble . . .
* * *
(ADD NU Sept. 14th.) A late bulletin from the War Department this morning: Cargo ship Y-2S, reported last night in distress, is believed to have crashed . . .
* * *
CHAPTER I
MAJOR RICK MASON received orders On Sept. 17th to report immediately to General Armstrong of G2. He thanked the orderly who brought him the message, then lit a cigarette and sat down on the edge of his bed. He was tall, with graying black hair and deceptively mild gray eyes. His face was lined and hard, deeply tanned and generally devoid of expression.
After reading the orders a second time he got to his feet and slipped on his Ike jacket, picked up his cap and left the room . . .
General Armstrong’s office was on the ninth floor of the Pentagon. The General’s orderly, a regular army master sergeant, told Rick to go right in.
Rick opened the door and walked into a broad, surgically clean office, furnished with the lean spare efficiency of the professional soldier. Sun from three wide windows made a dappled design on a plain gray carpet; there were eight straight backed chairs arranged uniformly on the right of the room facing a large aerial map of Southeast Asia.
Behind a desk on the opposite side of the room sat General Armstrong, a man of medium height, with thinning hair and icy blue eyes. He wore the two silver stars of Major General rank on each shoulder. On his left breast was one lone ribbon, the Distinguished Service Cross.
RICK saluted. “Major Rick Mason reporting as directed, sir.”
General Armstrong returned the Salute. “At ease, Major.” His voice was dry and precise. “Two more officers will arrive shortly. I will tell you then why I instructed you to report here.”
“Very well, sir.”
General Armstrong looked at a file of papers on his desk, then glanced at Rick. “I’ve made a study of your, service record, Major. You enlisted in the Canadian Air Force in nineteen thirty-eight. Any reason for that preference?”
“I thought they might get in before we did, sir.”
“Prior to that you were with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. You were wounded twice.”
“Nothing very serious, sir.”
“You transferred from the CRAF to the Army Air Corps in forty-one in England. Spent the next four years flying escort for various Heavy Bomb Groups. Received the DFC with two clusters, the Air Medal with fifteen Clusters, the Purple Heart. Good record, Mason.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Are you married, Major?”
“No, sir.”
“Any particular reason why not?”
“One fight at a time has always been my motto, sir.”
General Armstrong nodded. He looked as if he might smile but he didn’t. “That’s all for that, Major. Sit down until the other officers arrive.”
“Yes, sir.”
He took a seat in. a straight backed chair and held his cap in his lap. General Armstrong returned to the papers on his desk.
A few minutes later the door opened and a first Lieutenant entered. He was young, about twenty four, Rick guessed, with a clear complexion, blond hair and earnest blue eyes.
He saluted General Armstrong and said: “Lieutenant Peter Rundell reporting as directed, sir.”
“At ease, Lieutenant. This is Major Rick Mason.”
Rick stood up, shook hands with the young lieutenant.
General Armstrong said, “The third officer will be along presently.” He studied again the papers on his desk.
Rick raised an eyebrow and shrugged. The lieutenant grinned faintly and they both sat down. The General glanced at them after a while. “You may talk and smoke if you like.”
Rick took out a pack of cigarettes, offered one to the lieutenant who refused; he lit his own and inhaled deeply.
“Hot’, isn’t it?”
“Very hot,” the lieutenant said. “It’ll probably get worse.”
“Probably.”
That, Rick decided, took care of the talking. He wondered idly what General Armstrong had on his mind; but he wasn’t too curious. Years of experience with army authority had made a fatalist of him. He did what he was told. He expected the same implicit obedience from any man under him.
THE door opened again and a stocky captain
came through, reported to the General. His name was Christopher Deveer. He was short but wide and he looked as if he’d be heavily muscled. His skin was dark, his hair black and coarse and his eyes were green and sharp. There was an air of belligerence about him, a feeling of inner pressures. He looked hard, capable and tenacious.
General Armstrong introduced him to Rick and the lieutenant. He said, “I’d like your attention now. Will you please sit there where you can face the map on the wall.”
The three officers took seats as directed.
The General came from behind his desk and stood facing them, his back to the map. His icy blue eyes ticked them off, one at a time; he looked grimly serious.
“First; everything I say to you will be confidential. You will not discuss it with anyone. Furthermore you will not discuss it among yourselves. This is a direct order. Do you all understand?”
The three officers nodded and Rick felt a stir of interest. He had heard orders of that sort during the war; and they were usually a tip-off that something hot and nasty was brewing.
General Armstrong relaxed slightly and smiled. “I’m not going to make this very formal. What I have to tell you is first a story of an American failure, secondly a reminder about some curious business that is now going on, and thirdly a theory to explain it. The three things link together in logical sequence so I’ll begin with the story of a mistake, or better, a miscalculation, we made during the worst days of the war.
“When we began working on the development of an atomic bomb we, as you know, recruited scientists from every part of the world. Some came from England; others from Ireland, India, China and South America. For security reasons we routed this very important human cargo in ways to eliminate any idea of what was actually happening. We didn’t want the Germans or the Japs to know the men we were bringing together. Had they known they could have made a simple guess as to the nature of the work they were going to do. So we brought some by plane, others by boat and rail. We detoured them as often as possible, just as a convoy on the high seas will zigzag to throw off submarines.”
He turned and picked up a pointer from his desk and walked to the map. “Now this is the story of Dr. James Norton, a British nuclear scientist whom we were instructed to bring to Oak Ridge. Dr. Norton was in London in forty-one. He was one of the best men Britain had in this field. He was internationally known and our job was to get him here safely, first of all, and secondly without arousing suspicion.”
HE PLACED the pointer against the wall, about a foot from the edge of the map. “Assume this position is London. We picked up Dr. Norton there and flew him by special plane to Calcutta. From there another plane was to take him East to Australia. This necessitated a trip across the hump, but we took that chance. That was a bad mistake. Dr. Norton’s plane was shot down by Jap fighters near the Vulka range of the Himalayas. Aerial reconnaissance showed that the plane made a crash landing and stayed in one piece.”
He moved the pointer east across the map to the Himilayas.
“About here they crashed. Now we wanted Dr. Norton badly. We would have sent an Airborne Army in after him, but we couldn’t afford to let the Japs know there was such big game loose in their own backyard. They had garrisons scattered through this area and one of their patrols might have picked up the survivors of the crash. Dr. Norton was travelling in the uniform of a British officer, with credentials and papers made out accordingly. We figured the Japs wouldn’t know his identity. If we sent an invasion force in to get him they’d know he was important.
“So we sent two special combat teams into that area. They made contact with the plane. The pilots had been killed and left at the scene of the crash, but there was no sign of Dr. Norton.” He stopped and put the pointer back on his desk. “That is the story of an American miscalculation. We have never found Dr. Norton. He is presumed dead by most of those who know anything about the matter. Now to the second point. Have you read of the three recent plane crashes in the Vulka range of the Himalayas?”
The three men nodded and he went on: “One was a transport of Air France; the second was a Swedish ship; the third was one of our ATC flights. Now we got a flash from the radio operator before the plane went down. He said, ‘Emergency. Plane in flames. No warning . . .’ That was all he apparently had time to say. We know the plane crashed soon after that, although we haven’t released that news as yet. Also, we haven’t given the press the text of the radio operator’s message.
“The War Department has instructed G2 to look into this matter very carefully. Frankly our theory is this: those crashes were not accidental. They were caused deliberately by a force or weapon we do not understand. We think that weapon is being used by a garrison located in the Vulka area of the Himalayas. If you’ll remember we never did round up all the Jap soldiers in that area. We simply couldn’t. There were too many of them, they were too scattered and the area was too large. We thought they constituted no menace. The terrain is wild and we figured they would die off or drift into small harmless groups and work their way slowly out of the interior. That has happened, of course, in many instances. But there are a lot unaccounted for.
“We aren’t sure yet what is going on. But this is a possibility. That a garrison of Japanese troops is still operating in that area. That they may have been the group which picked up Dr. Norton. That they have developed a new and dangerous weapon.”
He picked up the pointer again. “We aren’t sure of that,” he said slowly. “But when you men get back from your mission we hope to know more. Do you understand?”
The young lieutenant, Peter Rundell, swallowed audibly.
“We’re going there?”
“Yes,” General Armstrong said. “What do you men think of the mission?”
Captain Deveer shrugged. “Can I speak frankly, sir?”
“As frankly as you like.”
“It looks like a wild goose chase, sir.” The general looked to Rick. “And you? Do you have any opinion about what I’ve told you?”
“It’s a job, sir,” Rick said casually. “Precisely. Gentlemen, don’t underestimate the importance of this job. The War Department is sending you because they are gravely worried.”
“Sir, what exactly will we be expected to do?” Rick asked.
“You’re going to land at a specific point in the Vulka chain. From there you’ll scout until you find evidence supporting our theory. Or until you find it is groundless.”
“When do we leave?”
“Next week. Your plane, a stepped-up C-46, is being readied. You will receive detailed instructions as to where you’ll land, how you’ll communicate and so on. You, Major Mason, will be in command. We want you back in a month. Anything else?”
There were no questions.
“That will be all at this time,” General Armstrong said. “And remember this: You three men are, as of now, committed to a mission that demands complete security. What I said before about not discussing this I want to emphasize. Don’t talk! I hope that is clear. That’s all.”
THE next morning Rick received orders that kept him busy for the rest of the week. He, Deveer and Peter Rundell were taken in tow by a Colonel who briefed them on the trip. They worked day and night, poring over maps, studying codes, memorizing methods of procedure to follow in all possible emergencies. During this time Rick had an opportunity to study Peter and Deveer.
Peter was an idealist with no windmills to joust with. He wanted to improve the world, but he was too young to realize that things like that are accomplished over centuries, not years. His brother had been killed in the war. Peter had gotten in at the tail end of it, and he felt guilty and dissatisfied. But he was cheerful, pleasant company. He was hard working, generous and, loyal.
Deveer was a more interesting type to Rick. He was thirty years old, unmarried and from what he could gather, had few close friends. There was some tension in the man that defied explanation. He smoked cigarettes with deep nervous pulls as if he couldn’t quite get enough of them.
He ate the same way, rapidly, greedily, never talking. Everything he did was done with cold furious energy. He seemed to be racing the clock always fearful that his time would come and he wouldn’t be ready.
Rick learned that he had flown with the Flying Tigers and then had switched to the Army Air Force. When he asked him about it Deveer shrugged.
“There was a thousand dollar bonus for every Nip we got in the Tigers. That’s why I was in it. The dough, Major.”
He was a man with ambition. He needed a handhold, a grip somewhere on something, and then he could pull the earth in his direction. But without it he charged, pent-up, and the energy crackled and slipped away from him in the way he ate, drank, smoke and probably loved. He was intelligent, alert, and he worked with an energy that was violent. But he kept to himself and there was seldom a smile on his dark broad face.
The fifth day of their preparations Rick received orders to report to General Armstrong. He found the General in his office talking to a young, red-haired girl. The general introduced her to him as Clare Holloway.
Rick nodded to her and said hello. She was a tall girl with fine square shoulders, a trim waist and long slim legs. She wore a white linen suit, white gloves and shoes. She was tanned which looked interesting with her bright red hair. There was a coolness, an, amused detachment about her that probably went for poise, Rick decided. He imagined it could get annoying.
General Armstrong looked down at the shining top of his desk and said in a sharp voice: “Major Mason, Miss Holloway will accompany you on your trip. You will see that she’s well taken care of.”
Clare Holloway smiled. “Don’t let that scare you, Major. I can take care of myself.”
He looked at her without expression, but his lean angular face darkened and he couldn’t dull the edge of his voice. “I’m sure you can.”
He waited for the general to amplify his statement but there wasn’t anything more. He said, “Very well, sir. Will you excuse me now?”
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 228