The Steel Tsar Read online

  The man leaned wearily against the doorframe. 'He'd be better off with his ancestors, believe me.'

  'A moment ago you were defending these people.'

  'Not defending them, old boy. I'm a fatalist, you see. I told Allsop to let them alone. And I tell you the same. What's the point? He'll die soon enough.'

  But he left the doorway and shuffled into the square, blinking in the sunshine. 'Who are you, anyway?'

  'I'm an airshipman. I got here a week or so ago.'

  'Ah, the shipwrecked mariner. They were talking about you up at the hotel. All right, I'll help you with him, for what it's worth.'

  The opium-drunk Englishman was no stronger than I was, but together we managed to carry the coolie down the street and along the quay until we reached the hospital.

  After a couple of nuns had been called and had taken the wounded man away, I stood panting in the lobby, staring curiously at my helper. 'Thanks.'

  He smiled slowly. 'Think nothing of it. Nothing at all. Cheerio.'

  He raised his hand in a sort of ironic salute and then went out. He had gone before Dr Hira came down the stairs into the lobby.

  'Who was that chap?' I asked Hira, describing the wretched Englishman.

  Hira recognized the description. He fiddled with his stethoscope. 'A castaway, like yourself. He arrived in the airship, which came to take off the mine people. He chose to stay on Rowe Island. I don't know why. It meant they could take one more passenger so they didn't argue. They call him The Captain sometimes, up at the hotel. Supposed to have been the commander of a merchant airship, which crashed in China before the war. A bit of a mystery.'

  'Allsop doesn't like him.'

  Hira laughed softly. 'No, Allsop wouldn't. Captain Dempsey lets the side down, eh? Allsop's for the Europeans keeping up appearances at all costs.'

  'Allsop certainly works hard.' I wiped a spot of blood off my sleeve.

  'I don't think he ever sleeps. His wife left with the mine people, you know. Hira glanced at his watch. 'Well, it's almost lunchtime. Fish and rice, as usual, but I've managed to get a couple of bottles of beer, if you'd . . .'

  'No thanks,' I said. 'I think I'll head up to the hotel again.'

  7.

  Dead Man

  The port where I was staying was the only real town on the island. It was called New Birmingham. Its buildings were clustered close together near the waterfront and were several stories high. As they wandered up the slopes they drew apart as if fastidious of each other's squalor and grew smaller until the houses near the top were little more than isolated shanties erected in shallow hollows in the hillside.

  Above the shanty district the hill leveled out for a while and became a small plateau on which the airpark had been built. Olmeijer's hotel stood on the edge of the airpark, which was now overgrown and desolate. I wondered if young Lt Allsop would have approved of the hotel, for it had certainly made an attempt to 'keep up appearances'. Its big gilt sign was brightly polished and its splendid wooden Gothic exteriors had recently been given a fresh coat of white paint. It looked out of place in its surroundings.

  The rusting airship mast erected in its center dominated the airpark. To one side of the park was a single airship hangar, its gray paint peeling, and beside it a pole at which drooped a torn and filthy windsock. Near the pole stood, like the skeletons of large, unearthly insects, the remains of two hover gyros, which had been stripped of most of their essential parts. On the other side of the hangar was the shell of a light monoplane, probably the property of some long-gone sportsman, which had been similarly dismembered. The island seemed to be populated by a variety of wrecks, I thought. It seemed to be feeding off corpses, including, as in Allsop's case, the corpses of dead ideas.

  After a glance towards the abandoned administration and control buildings to assure myself that they were uninhabited, I made for the hotel.

  Pushing open a pair of well-oiled double doors, I walked into the lobby. It was clean, scrubbed, polished and cool. A Malay houseboy was operating the cords of a big punka attached to the ceiling. It fanned air into my face as I entered. I was grateful for this after the heat outside but amused by the fresh incongruity. I nodded to the Malay who didn't seem to notice me and, seeing no one at the desk, strolled into the adjacent bar.

  In the shady gloom were two men. One sat in his shirtsleeves behind the bar reading a book while the other sat drinking a gin fizz in the far corner near French windows opening onto a verandah. Beyond the windows I could see the airpark and beyond the airpark the slopes of the mountain, covered in thick forest.

  As I seated myself on a stool by the bar the man behind it put down his book and looked at me in some surprise. He was very fat and his big, red face was beaded with sweat. His rolled up sleeves revealed a variety of tattoos of the more restrained kind. There were several gold rings on his thick fingers. He spoke in a deep, guttural accent.

  'What can I do for you?'

  I began apologetically, 'I'm afraid I brought no money, so . . .'

  The fat man's face broke into a broad smile. 'Ja! No money! That's too bad!' He shook with laughter for a moment. 'Now, what will you drink. I'll put it on the slate, eh?'

  'Very good of you. I'll have a brandy.' I introduced myself. 'Are you the hotel's proprietor?'

  'Ja. I am Olmeijer, certainly.' He seemed inordinately proud of the fact. He took a large ledger from under the counter, selected a fresh page and entered my name at the top. 'Your account,' he said.

  'When things are better, you can pay me.' He turned to take down a bottle of cognac.

  'You've a chap called Shawcross staying here, I believe?' I said.

  'Shawcross, certainly.' He put a large brandy on the bar. 'Twenty cents. On the slate.' He made an entry in the ledger and replaced it Out of sight.

  It was good brandy. Perhaps it tasted even better for being the first drink I had had since Singapore. I savored it.

  'But Shawcross,' said Olmeijer with a wink and a jerk of his thumb, 'has gone up the mountain.'

  'And you've no idea when he'll be back.'

  I heard one of the wicker chairs scrape on the polished floor, then footsteps approached me. I turned. It was the man who had been sitting near the window. He held his empty glass in his hand.

  'Shawcross will be back when the gin he borrowed from Mr. Olmeijer runs out.'

  He was a thin, heavily tanned man in his fifties, wearing a khaki bush shirt and white shorts. He had a small, graying moustache and his blue eyes seemed to have a permanent hint of ironic humor in them. 'My name's Greaves,' he said as he joined me at the bar. 'You must be the airship chap they found in the dugout. Singapore, eh? Must have been awful.'

  Greaves told me he'd been left behind to protect the interests of the Welland Rock Phosphate Company while the rest of the white employees went back to England or Australia. He was keen to hear about the attack on Singapore. Briefly, for the memory was still hard to bear, I told him what had happened.

  'I still can't believe it,' I concluded. 'There was a peace treaty.'

  He smiled bitterly and sipped his drink. 'Everyone had a peace treaty, didn't they? We'd abolished war, hadn't we? But human nature being what it is . . .' He looked up at the rows of bottles in front of him, 'Bloody Japs. I knew they'd start something sooner or later. Greedy bastards!'

  'The Japanese would not have blown up their own—' began Olmeijer. Greaves interrupted him with a sharp laugh.

  'I don't know how that city got blown up, but it was the excuse everybody needed to start scrapping.' He tilted his glass to his lips. 'I suppose we'll never know how it happened or who did it. But that's not the point. They'd have been fighting by now even if it hadn't happened.'

  'I wish you were right!'

  I recognized the new voice and turned to see Dempsey walking wearily into the bar. He nodded to Greaves and me and placed a dirty hand on the counter. 'Large scotch please, Olmeijer.'

  The Dutchman didn't seem pleased to see his latest customer, but
he poured the drink and carefully wrote the cost down in his ledger.

  There was an embarrassed pause. For all he had interrupted our conversation, Dempsey apparently wasn't prepared to amplify his remark.

  'Afternoon, Dempsey,' I said.

  He smiled faintly and rubbed at his unshaven chin. 'Hello, Bastable. Moving in?'

  'I was looking for Shawcross.'

  He took a long pull at his drink. 'There's a lot of people looking for Shawcross,' he said mysteriously.

  'What do you mean?'

  He shook his head. 'Nothing.'

  'Another drink, Bastable?' said Greaves. 'Have this one on me.' And then, as if with a slight effort. 'You, Dempsey?'

  'Thanks.' Dempsey finished his drink and put his glass back on the bar. Olmeijer poured another gin, another brandy, and another scotch.

  Greaves took a case of cheroots from his shirt pocket and offered them around. Olmeijer and Dempsey accepted, but I refused. 'What did you mean, just then?' Greaves asked Dempsey. 'You don't care about all this, surely? I thought you were the chap so full of oriental fatalism.'

  Dempsey turned away. For a moment his dead eyes had seemed to burn with a terrible misery. He took his glass to a nearby table and sat down. 'That's me,' he said.

  But Greaves wouldn't let it go. 'You weren't in Japan when the bombing started were you?'

  Dempsey shook his head. 'No, China.' I noticed that his hands were shaking as he lifted his glass to his mouth and he seemed to be muttering something under his breath. I thought I heard the words 'God forgive me'. He finished the drink quickly, got up and shambled towards the door.

  'Thanks, Greaves. See you later.'

  His wasted body disappeared through the doors and I saw him begin to climb the flight of wooden stairs, which led up, from the lobby.

  Greaves raised his eyebrows in a quizzical look. He shrugged. 'I think Dempsey has become what we used to call an "island case". We had a few of them going native, in the old days, or taking up opium, like him. The stuff's killing him, of course, and he knows it. He'll be dead within six months, I shouldn't wonder.'

  'I'd have given him longer than that,' I said feelingly. 'I've known opium smokers who live to a ripe old age.'

  Greaves drew on his cheroot. 'It's not just the opium, is it? I mean, there's such a thing as a will to die. You know that as well as I do.'

  I nodded soberly. I had encountered my own share of such desires.

  'I wonder what did it,' Greaves mused. 'A woman, perhaps. He was an airshipman, you know. Perhaps he lost his ship, or deserted her or something?'

  Olmeijer grunted and looked up from his book. 'He's just a weak man. Just weak, that's all.'

  'Could be.' I got up. 'I think I'll head back now. Mind if I come up tomorrow? I'd like to be here when Shawcross returns.'

  'See you tomorrow.' Greaves lifted his hand in a salute. 'I wish you the best of luck, Bastable.'

  That night I dined on fish and fruit with Hira. I told him about my conversation at the hotel and my second encounter with Dempsey. His earlier remark had aroused my curiosity and I asked Hira if he knew anything at all of Dempsey's reasons for coming to the island.

  Hira could add little about the opium eater. 'All I know is that he was in better condition when he arrived than he is now. I don't have much to do with the European community, as you may have noticed.' He looked sardoni­cally at me. 'Englishmen often start acting strangely when they've been out

  East a few years. Maybe they feel guilty about exploiting us, eh?'

  I refused to rise to this and we completed our meal in relative silence.

  After dinner we sat back in our chairs and smoked, discussing the health of the coolie I had found.

  Hira told me he was recovering reasonably quickly. I was just about to go up to bed when the door opened suddenly and a nun rushed into Hira's room. 'Doctor - quickly - it is Shawcross!' Her face was full of anxiety. 'He has been attacked. I think he is dying.'

  We hurried downstairs to the little entrance hall of the hospital. In the light from the oil lamp I saw Olmeijer and Greaves standing there. Their faces were pale and tense and they were staring helplessly down at something, which lay on an improvised stretcher they had placed on the floor. They must have carried it all the way from the hotel.

  Hira crouched down and inspected the man on the stretcher. 'My God!' he said.

  Greaves addressed me. 'He was dumped on the steps of the hotel about an hour ago. I think some Chinaman objected to his wife or maybe his daughter running off with Shawcross. I don't know.'

  Grimly he wiped his face with his handkerchief. 'This couldn't have happened before the bloody war . . .'

  I gagged as I got a good look at the battered mess of flesh on the stretcher. 'Poor devil!'

  Hira straightened up and looked significantly at me. There was no hope for Shawcross. He turned to Greaves and Olmeijer. 'Can you take the stretcher up to the ward, please?'

  I followed as the two men picked up the stretcher and staggered as they climbed the short flight of steps to the ward. With the nurses, I helped get him onto the bed, but it was plain that virtually every bone in his body had been broken. He was scarcely recognizable as a human being. They had taken their time in beating him up and he couldn't last long.

  Hira began to fill a hypodermic. The beaten man's eyes opened and he saw us. His lips moved.

  I bent to listen. 'Bloody Chinks ... bloody woman ... done for me. Found us in the mine . . . The sheets . . . Oh, God . . . The bloody clubs...’

  Hira gave him a hefty injection. 'Cocaine,' he said to me. 'It's about all we have now.'

  I looked at the next bed and saw the coolie I had rescued staring at Shawcross with an expression of quiet satisfaction.

  'This couldn't be some sort of retaliation, could it?' I asked Hira.

  'Who knows?' Hira looked down at the Australian as the man's eyes glazed and closed again.

  Greaves put his fist to his lips and cleared his throat. 'I wonder if somebody ought to tell Nesbit . . .' He looked at Shawcross and pursed his lips. 'There'll be hell to pay when Allsop hears about this.'

  Hira seemed almost amused. 'It could mean the end.'

  Thoughtfully, Olmeijer rubbed at his neck. 'Need Allsop be told?'

  'The man has been attacked,' I said. 'A couple of hours or so and it will be murder. He can't last the night.'

  'If Allsop goes on the rampage, old boy, we all stand a chance of being murdered,' Greaves pointed out. 'Allsop will anger the Malays and Chinese so much they're bound to turn on us. These aren't the old days. What do you think a dozen bloody Ghoorkas can do against a thousand coolies?'

  There was a glint of malice in Hira's eyes. 'So you don't want me to report this to the Official Representative, gentlemen?'

  'Better not,' said Greaves. 'We'll all keep mum, eh?'

  I watched the nurse cleaning the blood from Shawcross's body. The cocaine had knocked him out completely. I walked to the door of the ward and lit a cigarette, watching the mosquitoes and the moths fluttering around the oil lamp in the lobby. From beyond the open door came the sound of the sea striking the stones of the quay. It no longer seemed peaceful. Instead the silence had become ominous. As the other three men joined me I inclined my head.

  'Very well,' I said. 'I'll say nothing.'

  Next morning New Birmingham was deathly quiet. I walked through empty streets. I felt a thousand pairs of eyes watched me as I made my way up to the airpark.

  I did not call in at the hotel. There was no point now in hoping to see Shawcross there. He had died in the night at the hospital. I carried on past it and stood by one of the ruined hover gyros, kicking at a broken rotor, which lay on the weed-grown concrete beside the machine. From the forest behind me came the sounds of dawn. At this hour some of the nocturnal animals were still about and the diurnal inhabitants were beginning to wake. Hornbills, cockatoos, fairy bluebirds and doves fluttered among the trees, filling the air with song and with color. They seemed to be ce
lebrating something, perhaps the end of the human occupation of the island. The air was rich with the stink of the forest, of animal spoor and rotting tree trunks. I heard the chatter of gibbons and saw tiny shrews skipping along branches heavy with dew. On the wail of the hangar the beady eyes of lizards regarded me coldly as if I had no business to be there.

  I turned towards what had been the main control building where the murdered man had locked up his wireless apparatus before going off on what was to prove his final orgy.

  The whole building had been sealed before the airship personnel had left. The windows on all three stories had been covered by steel shutters and it would take special tools and a lot of hard work to get even one of them down. All the doors were locked and barred and I could see where various attempts to open them had failed.

  I walked round and round the concrete building, pushing uselessly at the shutters and rattling the handles of the doors. The chirring sounds from the forest seemed to mock my helplessness and at length I stopped by a door which had evidently been in recent use, tried the handle once more, then leaned against the frame, looking back across the deserted park, with its broken bones of flying machines and its rusting mast, at the spruce hotel beyond. The sun glinted on Olmeijer's gilded sign: ROYAL AIRPARK HOTEL, it said, THE ISLAND'S BEST.

  A little later someone came out through the French windows leading from the bar and stood on the verandah. Then they saw me and began to walk slowly through the tall grass towards me.

  I recognized the figure and I frowned. What could he want?

  8.

  The Message

  It was Dempsey, of course. He had shaved and put on a suit slightly cleaner than the one he had worn on the previous day, but he wore the same tattered native shirt underneath it. By the pupils of his eyes I saw he had not yet had his first pipe of opium.

  He shuffled towards me, coughing on the comparatively cold air of the early morning. 'I heard about Shawcross,' he said. He crossed the cracked concrete and stood looking at me.

  I offered him a cigarette, which he accepted, fumbling it from my case and trembling slightly as I lit it for him.