Mr. Duton sweated a little more and said, “But, Mr. Constance, he was such a personable young man. And he had a letter on your firm’s stationery. How was I to know that he was an imposter?”
“There seems to be nothing more to discuss. You say you have one more of those Norseman aircraft? Very well then. Get rush delivery on the special equipment from the United States. Install it and phone me in Colombo when it is ready. And this time, I will come up and ride back with the pilot. Good day, sir.”
Mr. Duton sighed with relief when the door slammed behind Mr. Constance. Then he had to smile ruefully when he remembered how easily the young man with the yellow hair had walked in and flown off with the aircraft belonging to Harver-Crescent.
Haidari Rama was a slim brown man of indefinite age. He could have been thirty or fifty-five. He sat in the small stone visitor’s room on Island Seven, his arms folded, staring into the angry eyes of the perspiring J. Haggard Brown. On Haidari’s face was a condescending and amused expression — the expression of a man talking to a child.
“I am truly sorry, Mr. Brown,” he said quietly, “but I cannot give you the information you ask. You will understand that it is my only bargaining point. So long as I know where I can lay my hands on a million and a half pounds worth of diacetylmorphine, opium and hasheesh, I am valuable to you and you will endeavor to get me my freedom. Should I tell you where to find it, and I assure you that it is safe, then I am of no further use to you and I can rot in prison.”
“What are the charges? Will they stick? How can I get you off?”
The brown man shrugged. “One makes enemies,” he said. “I dealt with the Japanese. What else was there to do? If they had won, I would have revealed to them the hiding place of the drugs. But they lost, and now those drugs must get me out of this confinement. You must find those who will be witnesses against me and bribe them to change their testimony. Or bribe others to testify that I was pretending to aid the Japanese but in actuality was working for the underground. It should be easy.”
“When will you come up for trial?”
“Within the year.”
“A year! You expect me to hang around this sticky stinking East for that long? I’ve got work to do in New York.”
“In that case, if it is too much trouble for you, you had best forego any thought of regaining the drugs. I was happy to be an employee of you and your associates, but now I must strike out for myself and consider the stores as my own property until I gain permanent freedom. And, if you should leave, it might become necessary for me to mention your name in connection with my former occupation during my trial.”
Brown clenched his big fists and ached to smash the sly smile on the brown face. He felt an inner chill as he realized how completely he was in the power of this suave educated native. It was no longer a case of merely regaining the stores of narcotics. It had become a question of survival.
After the launch had taken Brown back from the island, he sat for two hours on the shaded porch of the hotel at Galle, listening to the raucous babble of the thousands of crows in the big trees. He turned the problem over and over in his mind. If he could grab Haidari Rama off the island by force, he might be made to tell the location of the dope. Then he would have to be killed. But that would take many men and weeks of patient organization. He thought of the island, nearly a half mile square, with the watch towers at intervals. The entire place was like a small plateau jutting up out of the sea two miles off shore. A high wire fence had been built around the island, on the edge of the fifteen-foot rock drop into the crashing sea. The prisoners were allowed their freedom within the big enclosure. They lived in huts, cooked their own meals, and wandered around at will. The big enclosure was rough and rocky, with patches of thick brush and a few deep gulleys. Even if he could get reliable men, it would be no small task to storm the island and run off with Haidari. Besides, it would upset the entire British Empire. He thought some more. At last he came to a conclusion that was difficult, for J. Haggard Brown was a greedy man. He decided that it would be easier to have Haidari Rama killed, so that his lips would never babble the name of Brown in connection with a narcotics ring. It would mean giving up the stocks hidden in Rangoon, but there were other ventures that were beginning to shape up. He pursed his thick lips and began to devise a plan of execution, a plan that could never be traced to the pompous personage of Brown.
Clive Grant stretched his stocky body, and the muscles of his shoulders and chest bunched under his thin shirt. Then he scratched at his black beard and looked across the dinner table at Ken Harder.
“I’ll grant you, Ken, that you’ve had more luck than most, but it can’t hold up. It won’t hold up. Why if I ever thought when I met you at Oxford that I’d end up as a tea planter in Ceylon helping a crazy Americano like you in a mad scheme to break up a gang of international dope merchants, I’d have run away from you the first day we met. I’m afraid the authorities are going to get onto all this and ruin me, chase me off the island.”
Harder looked lean and worried, as he answered, “Clive, I’d never have asked you to help if it weren’t for the fact that these men are dealing with such a dirty business. I know that when the Japs entered Rangoon, their local manager hid or destroyed their entire stock of dope. If I know that outfit, I know they hid it. This man they have down on Island Seven, this Haidari Rama, is probably the only man that knows where it is. If I can get to him before the organization does, and find out where the stuff is, I can spoil a lot of business for them. Also, I will be able to prove to the British that Rangoon was one of the biggest focal points of the drug rings before the war. Then they will watch more closely and prevent their starting up again. They’ll have to find another spot where conditions aren’t so ideal. It’ll be a big slap for the stateside organization. Even if they did chase you off Ceylon, Clive, my conscience wouldn’t bother me too much, if at the same time we kept that enormous quantity of dope from reaching the world markets.”
“But, Ken, stealing that aircraft! It was crazy!”
“It was my only chance of grabbing Haidari Rama, and I had to take it. Our only danger right now is that someone who doesn’t work for you will spot it. I expect to be in Galle for about two days getting in contact with Haidari Rama. Then I’ll come back here and tell you the future plans.”
Grant sighed and said, “Well, Ken, you are that odd combination of idealist and man of action that goes around making the world exciting for old stooges like myself. Don’t pay the least attention to my complaints. I think I’m actually enjoying it.”
Ken Harder had not been in his line of work long enough to have complete control over all of his muscular reflexes. Consequently, when he had breakfast served on the porch of the hotel at Galle, it was unfortunate that he was sipping his coffee when J. Haggard Brown walked out of the lobby. You don’t look at pictures of a man for hours on end, wishing you could trip him up, without acquiring a pretty strong feeling about the man in question.
J. Haggard Brown stopped dead, and turned quickly to the left and stared at the young man who was coughing and gasping for breath, spraying coffee on the white table cloth. The faint memory of a description stirred in his mind — thin, young, blonde, pale blue eyes, an underling of Lee’s — it might be the same one. Couldn’t afford any risks. Better determine if the coughing was coincidence or shock of recognition. Brown walked over to the table and smiled down at the flushed face of Ken Harder.