King Rat

  He stopped his men and saluted the guards, noticing that one of them was Torusumi.

  Torusumi recognized Peter Marlowe, and smiled. “Tabe!”

  “Tabe,” replied Peter Marlowe, embarrassed by Torusumi’s obvious friendliness.

  “I will take thee and thy men,” said Torusumi and nodded to the implements.

  “I thank thee,” said Peter Marlowe and nodded at the sergeant. “We’re to go with him.”

  “That bleeder works the east end,” said the sergeant irritably. “Just our bloody luck.”

  “I know that,” said Peter Marlowe just as irritably, and as the men moved forward to get the tools he said to Torusumi, “I hope today thou wilt be taking us to the west end. It is cooler there.”

  “We are to go to the east. I know it is cooler on the west side, and I always get the east.”

  Peter Marlowe decided to gamble. “Perhaps thou shouldst ask for better treatment.” It was dangerous to make a suggestion to a Korean or a Japanese. Torusumi observed him coldly, then turned abruptly and went over to Azumi, a Japanese corporal, who stood grimly to one side. Azumi was known for his bad temper.

  Apprehensively, Peter Marlowe watched Torusumi bow and start to speak rapidly and harshly in Japanese. And he felt Azumi’s stare on him.

  Beside Peter Marlowe the sergeant was also watching the exchange anxiously. “What’d you say, sir?”

  “I said it’d be a good idea if we went to the west end for a change.”

  The sergeant winced. If the officer got a slap the sergeant got one automatically. “You’re taking a chance—” He stopped abruptly as Azumi began walking towards them, followed by Torusumi, deferentially two paces behind.

  Azumi, a small bowlegged man, halted five paces from Peter Marlowe, then stared up into his face for perhaps ten seconds. Peter Marlowe readied himself for the slap that was to come. But it didn’t. Instead Azumi suddenly smiled and showed his gold teeth and sucked in air and took out a pack of cigarettes. He offered Peter Marlowe one and said something in Japanese which Peter Marlowe didn’t understand, but he caught “Shoko-san” and was even more astonished, since he hadn’t been called Shoko-san before.” Shoko” is “officer” and “san” means “mister,” and to be called Mr. Officer by a fiendish little bastard like Azumi was praise indeed.

  “Arigato,” Peter Marlowe said, accepting the light. “Thank you” was the only Japanese he knew, apart from “Stand easy” and “Attention” and “Quick march” and “Salute” and “Come here, you white bastard.” He ordered the sergeant, who was obviously nonplussed, to get the men lined up.

  “Yes, sir,” said the sergeant, glad of an excuse to get out of range.

  Then Azumi snapped in Japanese at Torusumi and Torusumi moved up too and said, “Hotchatore,” which means “quick march.” When they were halfway across the airfield and well out of Azumi’s hearing distance, Torusumi smiled at Peter Marlowe. “We’re going to the west end today. And we’re going to cut down the trees.”

  “We are? I don’t understand.”

  “It is simple. I told Azumi-san that thou art the King’s interpreter, and that I felt he should know this, since he takes ten percent of our profits. So,” Torusumi shrugged, “of course we must look after each other. And maybe we can discuss some business during the day.”

  Peter Marlowe weakly ordered the men to halt.

  “What’s the matter, sir?” asked the sergeant.

  “Nothing, Sergeant. Listen, all of you! Now no noise. We’ve got the trees.”

  “Oh bloody hell, how great.”

  There was the beginning of a cheer, quickly stifled.

  When they got to the three trees, Spence and his working party were already there with their guard. Torusumi went up to the guard and they had a slanging match in Korean. But Spence and his angry men were lined up and marched away by the furious guard. “Why the hell have you got the trees, you bastard? We were here first!” Spence called out.

  “Yes,” said Peter Marlowe sympathetically. He knew how Spence felt.

  Torusumi beckoned to Peter Marlowe and sat down in the shade and propped his rifle against a tree. “Post a guard,” he yawned. “I hold thee responsible if I am caught asleep by any pestilential Japanese or Korean.”

  “Thou mayest sleep soft in my trust,” Peter Marlowe replied.

  “Wake me at the hour of food.”

  “It will be done.”

  Peter Marlowe posted guards in vantage points, then led the furious assault on the trees. He wanted the trees down and carved up before anyone changed their orders.

  By noon the three trees were down and the millionaire’s cabbage out of the trees. The men were all exhausted and ant-bitten, but that didn’t matter, for today’s booty was huge. There were two coconuts per man to take home and another fifteen left over. Peter Marlowe said that they would save five for Torusumi and share the other ten for lunch. He divided two millionaire’s cabbage and said that the other should be kept for Torusumi and Azumi, just in case they wanted it. If they didn’t, then it too would be divided.

  Peter Marlowe was propped against a tree, panting from the exertion, when a sudden danger whistle rocked him to his feet and he was quickly beside Torusumi, shaking him awake.

  “A guard, Torusumi-san, hurry.”

  Torusumi scrambled to his feet and brushed down his uniform. “Good. Go back to the trees and look busy,” he said softly.

  Then Torusumi wandered nonchalantly into the clearing. When he recognized the guard, he relaxed and motioned the man into the shade and they both propped their rifles and lay back and began to smoke. “Shoko-san,” Torusumi called out. “Rest easy, it is only my friend.”

  Peter Marlowe smiled, then called out, “Hey, Sergeant. Cut open a couple of the best young coconuts and take them to the guards.” He couldn’t take them himself, for he would have lost much face.

  The sergeant chose the two carefully and sliced the tops off. The outside husks were green-brown and two inches thick and pithy on the deep imbedded nut. The white meat that lined the interior of the nut was just soft enough and easy to eat with a spoon if you’d a mind, and the juice cool and sweet-tasting.

  “Smith,” he called out.

  “Yes, Sarn’t.”

  “Take these over to the bloody Nips.”

  “Why me? I’m bloody well always having to do more than the—”

  “Get your arse over here.”

  Smith, a spare little Cockney, grumbled to his feet and did as he was ordered.

  Torusumi and the other guard drank deeply. Then Torusumi called out to Peter Marlowe, “We thank thee.”

  “Peace be with thee,” replied Peter Marlowe.

  Torusumi jerked out a crumpled pack of Kooas and handed them to Peter Marlowe.

  “I thank thee,” said Peter Marlowe.

  “Peace be with thee,” Torusumi replied politely.

  There were seven cigarettes. The men insisted that Peter Marlowe take two. The other five were split up, one to four men, and by general consent the cigarettes were to be smoked after lunch.

  Lunch was rice and fish water and weak tea. Peter Marlowe took only rice and mixed in a touch of blachang. For dessert he enjoyed his share of coconut. Then he settled tiredly against the stump of one of the trees and looked over the airfield, waiting for the lunch hour to end.

  To the south there was a hill, and surrounding the hill were thousands of Chinese coolies. They all carried two bamboo baskets on a bamboo pole over their shoulders, and they walked up the hill and collected two baskets of earth and walked down the hill and emptied the two baskets. Their movement was perpetual and you could almost see the hill disappear. Under the burning sun.

  Peter Marlowe had been coming to the airfield four, five times a week for almost two years now. When he and Larkin had first seen the site, with its hills and swamps and sand, they had laughed and thought that it would never be turned into an airfield. After all, the Chinese had no tractors or bulldozers. But now, two years
later, there was already one operative strip, and the big one, the bomber strip, was nearly finished.

  Peter Marlowe marveled at the patience of all those worker-ants and wondered what their hands could not do if they were set in motion with modern equipment.

  His eyes closed and he was asleep.

  “Ewart! Where’s Marlowe?” Grey asked curtly.

  “On a work party at the airfield. Why?”

  “Just tell him to report to me immediately he gets back.”

  “Where’ll you be?”

  “How the hell do I know! Just tell him to find me.” As Grey left the hut he felt a spasm building, and he began to hurry to the latrines. Before he got halfway the spasm climaxed and a little of the bloody mucus oozed out of him, soaking even more the grass pad he wore in his pants. Tormented and very weak, he leaned against a hut to gather strength.

  Grey knew that it was time to change the pad once more, the fourth time today, but he didn’t mind. At least the pad was hygienic and it saved his pants, the only pair he possessed. And without the pad he could not walk around. Disgusting, he told himself, just like a sanitary napkin. What a bloody mess! But at least it was efficient.

  He should have reported sick today, but he couldn’t, not when he had Marlowe nailed. Oh no, this was too good to miss, and he wanted to see Marlowe’s face when he told him. It was worth the pain to know he had him. The cheap, no-good bastard. And through Marlowe the King’d sweat a little. In a couple of days he would have them both. For he knew about the diamond and knew that contact was to be made within the next week. He didn’t know yet exactly when, but he would be told. You’re clever, he told himself, clever to have such an efficient system.

  He went up to his jail hut and told the MP to wait outside. He changed the pad and scrubbed his hands, hoping to wash the stain away, the invisible stain.

  Feeling better, Grey forced himself off the veranda steps and headed for the supply hut. Today he was to make his weekly inspection of the supplies of rice and food. The supplies always checked, for Lieutenant Colonel Jones was efficient and dedicated and always weighed the day’s rice himself, personally, in public. So there was never any chance of skulduggery.

  Grey admired Lieutenant Colonel Jones and liked the way he did everything himself—then there were no slips. He envied him too, for he was very young to be a lieutenant colonel. Just thirty-three. Makes you sick, he told himself, he’s a lieutenant colonel and you’re a lieutenant—and the only difference is being in the right job at the right time. Still, you’re doing all right, and making friends who will stand up for you when the war’s over. Of course, Jones was a civilian soldier, so he wouldn’t stay in the service afterwards. But Jones was a pal of Samson and also of Smedly-Taylor, Grey’s boss, and he played bridge with the Camp Commandant. Lucky bastard. I can play bridge as good as you can, but I don’t get invited, and I work harder than anyone.

  When Grey got to the supply hut, the day’s issue of rice was still in progress.

  “Morning, Grey,” Jones said. “I’ll be right with you.” He was a tall man, handsome, well-educated, quiet. He had a boyish face and was nicknamed the Boy Colonel.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Grey stood and watched as the cookhouse representatives—a sergeant and an enlisted man—came up to the scales. Each cookhouse supplied two men to pick up the allotment—one to keep an eye on the other. The tally of men submitted by the representatives was checked and the rice weighed out. Then the tally sheet was initialed.

  When the last cookhouse had been served, the remains of the sack of rice was lifted by Quartermaster Sergeant Blakely and carried into the hut. Grey followed Lieutenant Colonel Jones inside and listened absently as Jones wearily gave him the figures: “Nine thousand four hundred and eighty-three officers and men. Two thousand three hundred and seventy and three-quarters pounds of rice issued today, four ounces per man. Twelve bags approx.” He nodded to the empty jute bags. Grey watched him count them, knowing that there would be twelve. Then Jones continued, “One bag was short ten pounds”—this was not unusual—“and the residue is twenty and a quarter pounds.”

  The lieutenant colonel went over and picked up the almost empty sack and put it on the scales that Quartermaster Sergeant Blakely had pulled inside the hut. He carefully placed the weights on the platform and built them up to twenty and one quarter pounds. The sack lifted and balanced. “It checks,” he smiled, satisfied, looking at Grey.

  Everything else—a side of beef, sixteen tubs of dried fish, forty pounds of gula malacca, five dozen eggs, fifty pounds of salt and bags of peppercorns and dried red chilis—checked out perfectly also.

  Grey signed the store chart, and winced as another spasm racked him.

  “Dysentery?” asked Jones, concerned.

  “Just a touch, sir.” Grey looked around the semidarkness, then saluted. “Thank you, sir. See you next week.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  On the way out, Grey was hit by another spasm and stumbled against the scale, knocking it over and scattering the weights across the dirt floor.

  “Sorry,” Grey cursed, “bloody careless of me.” He lifted the machine and groped on the floor for the weights, but Jones and Blakely were already on their knees picking them up.

  “Don’t bother, Grey,” Jones said, then he barked at Blakely, “I’ve told you before to put the scale in the corner.”

  But Grey had already picked up a two-pound weight. He couldn’t believe what he saw, and he carried the weight to the door and inspected it in the light to make certain his eyes weren’t deceiving him. They weren’t. In the bottom of the iron weight was a small hole packed hard with clay. He picked out the clay with a fingernail, his face chalky.

  “What is it, Grey?” said Jones.

  “This weight’s been tampered with.” The words were an accusation.

  “What? Impossible!” Jones went up to Grey. “Let me see that.” For an eternity he studied it, then smiled.

  “It’s not been tampered with. This is merely a corrective hole. The particular weight was probably a fraction heavier than it was supposed to be.” He laughed weakly. “My God, you had me worried for a moment.”

  Grey walked rapidly over to the rest of the weights and picked up another one. It too had a hole in it.

  “Christ! They’ve all been tampered with!”

  “That’s absurd,” Jones said. “They’re just corrective—”

  “I know enough about weights and measures,” Grey said, “to know holes aren’t allowed. Not corrective holes. If the weight’s wrong, it’s never issued.”

  He whirled on Blakely, who cringed against the door. “What do you know about it?”

  “Nothing, sir,” Blakely said, terrified.

  “You’d better tell me!”

  “I don’t know anything, sir, honest—”

  “All right, Blakely. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go out of the hut and I’m going to tell everyone I meet about you, everyone—and I’m going to show them this weight, and before I can report it to Colonel Smedly-Taylor you’ll be torn apart.”

  Grey started for the door.

  “Wait, sir,” Blakely choked out. “I’ll tell you. It wasn’t me, sir, it was the colonel. He made me do it. He caught me pinching a little rice and he swore he’d turn me in if I didn’t help him—”

  “Shut up, you fool,” Jones said. Then, in a calmer voice, he said to Grey, “The fool’s trying to implicate me. I never knew anything—”

  “Don’t you listen to him, sir,” Blakely interrupted, babbling. “He always weighs the rice himself. Always. And he has the key to the safe that he keeps the weights in. You know yourself how he does it all. And anyone who handles weights has to look at the bottom sometimes. However well the holes’re camouflaged, you’ve got to notice them. And it’s been going on for a year or more.”

  “Shut up, Blakely!” Jones screamed. “Shut up.”

  Silence.

  Then Grey said,
“Colonel, how long have these weights been used?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A year? Two years?”

  “How the hell do I know? If the weights are fixed it’s nothing to do with me.”

  “But you have the key and you keep them locked up?”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “Have you ever looked at the bottom of the weights?”

  “No, but—”

  “That’s somewhat strange, isn’t it?” said Grey relentlessly.

  “No, it isn’t, and I won’t be cross-questioned by—”

  “You’d better be telling the truth, for your own sake.”

  “Are you threatening me, Lieutenant? I’ll have you court-martialed—”

  “I don’t know about that, Colonel. I’m here legally and the weights have been tampered with, haven’t they?”

  “Now, look here, Grey—”

  “Haven’t they?” Grey held the weight up to Jones’s drained face, which was no longer boyish.

  “I—suppose—so,” said Jones, “but that doesn’t mean—”

  “It means that either Blakely or you is responsible. Perhaps both of you. You’re the only two allowed here. The weights are short, and one or both of you has been taking the extra ration.”

  “It wasn’t me, sir,” Blakely whined. “I only got a pound in every ten—”

  “Liar!” shouted Jones.

  “Oh no I’m not. I’ve told you a thousand times we’d be for it.” He turned to Grey, wringing his hands. “Please sir, please, don’t say anything. The men’d tear us to pieces.”

  “You bastard, I hope they do.” Grey was glad that he had found the false weights. Oh yes, he was glad.

  Jones took out his cigarette box and began to roll a cigarette. “Would you like one?” he said, the boy face jowled and strangely sick and tentatively smiling.

  “No thank you.” Grey hadn’t had a smoke for four days and he needed one.

  “We can sort this out,” Jones said, his boyishness and good breeding returning. “Perhaps someone has tampered with the weights. But the amount is insignificant. I can easily get other weights, correct ones—”

  “So you admit that they’re crooked?”