King Rat Read online

  Larkin’s eyes were deepset under bushy eyebrows. He glanced thoughtfully at Mac before he answered. “I’ve heard the rumors too. As far as I know it isn’t one of my men. Why?”

  “Just checking, sir,” Grey said with a hard smile. “Of course, you’d know that such a ring could be dynamite. For its owner and a lot of people.” Then he added, “It would be better under lock and key.”

  “I don’t think so, old boy,” Peter Marlowe said, and the “old boy” was discreetly vicious. “That’d be the worst thing to do—if the diamond exists. Which I doubt. If it’s in a known place then a lot of chaps’d want to look at it. And anyway the Japs’d lift it once they heard about it.”

  Mac said thoughtfully, “I agree.”

  “It’s better where it is. In limbo. Probably just another rumor,” Larkin said.

  “I hope it is,” Grey said, sure now that his hunch had been right. “But the rumor seems pretty strong.”

  “It’s not one of my men.” Larkin’s mind was racing. Grey seemed to know something—who would it be? Who?

  “Well, if you hear anything, sir, you might let me know.” Grey’s eyes swooped over Peter Marlowe contemptuously. “I like to stop trouble before it begins.” Then he saluted Larkin correctly and nodded to Mac and walked away.

  There was a long thoughtful silence in the bungalow.

  Larkin glanced at Mac. “I wonder why he asked about that?”

  “Ay,” said Mac, “I wondered too. Did ye mark how his face lit up like a beacon?”

  “Too right!” Larkin said, the lines on his face etched deeper than usual. “Grey’s right about one thing. A diamond could cost a lot of men a lot of blood.”

  “It’s only a rumor, Colonel,” Peter Marlowe said. “No one could keep anything like that, this long. Impossible.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Larkin frowned. “Hope to God one of my boys hasn’t got it.”

  Mac stretched. His head ached and he could feel a bout of fever on the way. Well, not for three days yet, he thought calmly. He had had so much fever that it was as much a part of life as breathing. Once every two months now. He remembered that he had been due to retire in 1942, doctor’s orders. When malaria gets to your spleen—well, then home, old fellow, home to Scotland, home to the cold climate and buy the little farm near Killin overlooking the glory of Loch Tay. Then you may live.

  “Ay,” Mac said tiredly, feeling his fifty years. Then he said aloud what they were all thinking. “But if we ha’ the wee devil stone, then we could last out the never-never with nae fear for the future. Nae fear at all.”

  Larkin rolled a cigarette and lit it, taking a deep puff. He passed it to Mac, who smoked and passed it to Peter Marlowe. When they had almost finished it, Larkin knocked off the burning top and put the remains of tobacco back into his box. He broke the silence. “Think I’ll take a walk.”

  Peter Marlowe smiled. “Salamat,” he said, which meant “Peace be upon thee.”

  “Salamat,” Larkin said and went out into the sun.

  As Grey walked up the slope towards the MP hut, his brain churned with excitement. He promised himself that as soon as he got to the hut and released the Australians he would roll a cigarette to celebrate. His second today, even though he had only enough Java weed for three more cigarettes until payday the next week.

  He strode up the steps and nodded at Sergeant Masters. “You can let ’em out!”

  Masters took away the heavy bar from the door of the bamboo cage and the two sullen men stood to attention in front of Grey.

  “You’re both to report to Colonel Larkin after roll call.”

  The two men saluted and left.

  “Damn troublemakers,” said Grey shortly.

  He sat down and took out his box and papers. This month he had been extravagant. He had bought a whole page of Bible paper, which made the best cigarettes. Though he was not a religious man, it still seemed a little blasphemous to smoke the Bible. Grey read the scripture on the fragment he was preparing to roll: “So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes. And then his wife said …”

  Wife! Why the hell did I have to come across that word? Grey cursed and turned the paper over.

  The first sentence on the other side was: “Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?”

  Grey jerked upright as a stone hissed through the window, smashed against a wall and clattered to the floor.

  A piece of newspaper was wrapped around the stone. Grey picked it up and darted to the window. But there was no one near. Grey sat down and smoothed out the paper. On the edge of it was written:

  Make you a deal. I’ll deliver the King on a plate—if you’ll close your eyes when I trade a little in his place when you got him. If it’s a deal, stand outside the hut for a minute with this stone in your left hand. Then get rid of the other cop. Guys say you’re an honest cop so I’ll trust you.

  “What’s it say, sir?” Masters asked, staring rheumy-eyed at the paper.

  Grey crumpled the paper into a ball. “Someone thinks we work too hard for the Japs,” he said harshly.

  “Bloody bastard.” Masters went to the window. “What the hell they think’d happen if we didn’t enforce discipline? The buggers’d be at each other’s throats all day long.”

  “That’s right,” said Grey. The ball of paper felt animated in his hand. If this is a real offer, he thought, the King can be felled.

  It was no easy decision to make. He would have to keep his side of the bargain. His word was his bond; he was an honest “cop,” and not a little proud of his reputation. Grey knew that he would do anything to see the King behind the bamboo cage, stripped of his finery—even close his eyes a little to a breaking of the rules. He wondered which of the Americans could be the informer. All of them hated the King, envied him—but who would play Judas, who would risk the consequences if he were to be discovered? Whoever the man was, he could never be such a menace as the King.

  So he walked outside with the stone in his left hand and scrutinized the men who passed. But no one gave him a sign.

  He threw the stone away and dismissed Masters. Then he sat in the hut and waited. He had given up hope when another rock sailed through the window with the second message attached:

  Check a can that’s in the ditch by Hut Sixteen. Twice a day, mornings and after roll call. That’ll be our go-between. He’s trading with Turasan tonight.

  CHAPTER SIX

  That night Larkin lay on his mattress under his mosquito net gravely concerned about Corporal Townsend and Private Gurble. He had seen them after roll call.

  “What the hell were you two fighting about?” he had asked repeatedly, and each time they had both replied sullenly, “Two-up.” But Larkin had known instinctively that they were lying.

  “I want the truth,” he had said angrily. “Come on, you two are cobbers. Now why were you fighting?”

  But the two men had kept their eyes obstinately on the ground. Larkin had questioned them individually, but each in his turn scowled and said, “Two-up.”

  “All right, you bastards,” Larkin had said finally, his voice harsh. “I’ll give you one last chance. If you don’t tell me, then I’ll transfer you both out of my regiment. And as far as I’m concerned you won’t exist!”

  “But Colonel,” Gurble gasped. “You wouldn’t do that!”

  “I’ll give you thirty seconds,” Larkin said venomously, meaning it. And the men knew that he meant it. And they knew that Larkin’s word was law in his regiment, for Larkin was like their father. To get shipped out would mean that they would not exist to their cobbers, and without their cobbers, they’d die.

  Larkin waited a minute. Then he said, “All right. Tomorrow—”

  “I’ll tell you, Colonel,” Gurble blurted. “This bloody sod accused me of stealing my cobbers
’ food. The bloody sod said I was stealing—”

  “An’ you were, you rotten bastard!”

  Only Larkin’s snarled “Stand to attention” kept them from tearing each other’s throats out.

  Corporal Townsend told his side of the story first. “It’s my month on the cookhouse detail. Today we’ve a hundred and eighty-eight to cook for—”

  “Who’s missing?” Larkin asked.

  “Billy Donahy, sir. He went to hospital this a’ernoon.”

  “All right.”

  “Well, sir. A hundred and eighty-eight men at a hundred and twenty-five grams of rice a day works out at twenty-three and a half kilos. I always go up to the storehouse myself with a cobber and see the rice weighed and then I carry it back to make sure we got our bloody share. Well, today I was watching the weighing when the gut rot hit me. So I asked Gurble here to carry it back to the cookhouse. He’s my best cobber so I thought I could trust him—”

  “I didn’t touch a bloody grain, you bastard. I swear to God—”

  “We were short when I got back!” Townsend shouted. “Near half a pound short and that’s two men’s rations!”

  “I know, but I didn’t—”

  “The weights weren’t wrong. I checked ’em under your bloody nose!”

  Larkin went with the men and checked the weights and found them true. There was no doubt that the correct amount of rice had started down the hill, for the rations were weighed publicly every morning by Lieutenant Colonel Jones. There was only one answer.

  “As far as I’m concerned, Gurble,” Larkin said, “you’re out of my regiment. You’re dead.”

  Gurble stumbled away into the darkness, whimpering, and then Larkin said to Townsend, “You keep your mouth shut about this.”

  “My bloody oath, Colonel,” Townsend said. “The Diggers’d tear him to pieces if they heard. An’ rightly! Only reason I didn’t tell them was that he was my best cobber.” His eyes suddenly filled with tears. “My bloody oath, Colonel, we joined up together. We’ve been with you through Dunkirk an’ the stinking Middle East, and all through Malaya. I’ve knowed him most of my life and I’d’ve bet my life—”

  Now, thinking about it all again in the twilight of sleep, Larkin shuddered. How can a man do such a thing? he asked himself helplessly. How? Gurble, of all men, whom he had known for many years, who even used to work in his office in Sydney!

  He closed his eyes and put Gurble out of his mind. He had done his duty and it was his duty to protect the many. He let his mind drift to his wife Betty cooking steak with a fried egg on top, to his home overlooking the bay, to his little daughter, to the time he was going to have afterwards. But when? When?

  She looked around at the women, all sitting quiet, subdued in the large meeting room, and sighed, regretting that she had agreed to head the committee of the wives of officers and men of the Fifth Australian Regiment, men all lost at Singapore. Not lost, she told herself quickly, only caught by the enemy. Some may be dead, but my Grant, my dear Grant is alive and a prisoner of war.

  The women met once a month, the first Monday in the month. To swap news, such as there was. They had had little contact with the menfolk either by mail, or thru the Red Cross. But some of the wives had received a postcard. And a single postcard to one of the wives was a message of hope to all the others. Of course, for three years now they had all been writing. Some, every day. But most times their letters had been returned. Even so, when the few that did not come back were out there, somewhere, it gave a little hope that perhaps they had been received by the husband or son or brother to whom they had been sent long since.

  But three years is a long time to write and not know, if he’s alive or dead, or if you’re writing to a ghost or if you’re writing to a mutilated man or if you’re writing to the man, your husband, the same man you kissed good-by an eternity ago. Today, one of the wives had had one of the strange little postcards that somehow, for no apparent reason, mysteriously trickled from the emptiness of the Jap-held lands. The military authorities or the government could not explain why a certain card had arrived. There was no rule. And as much as the Red Cross tried to get into contact, or get lists of prisoners and the state of their health, the Japs wouldn’t cooperate at all. Then for no apparent reason the Japs would pass over a dozen postcards, some written a year before, some a day or two previously—some clean, some censored so heavily that only the signature remained. But even a signature was good. One of the wives had phenomenal luck—she had received three postcards. One a year. But Betty Larkin, “Mrs. Colonel,” had not received one. Not one.

  “Ladies”—Betty knocked on the table to get order and they settled down—“We’d better get back to the last piece of business, then we can all be on our way. I’m sure you’ll want to get back to your families, and let’s hope we can all get on the bus tonight.”

  The ladies laughed politely, for what with the petrol rationing, and the lack of transport, getting home could be quite an adventure.

  “We’ve had no news that I can pass on to you. The situation is more or less the same. But as the Germans are on the run in Europe, it looks as though that war will be over soon. Once that’s over, then the troops will be sent out here to Australia to fight our war.”

  Betty told herself that it was foolish for her to flag-wave and act like a war commentator, but it was expected of her and it seemed to give them all a little more hope. Terrible rumors had been leaking out from Malaya for years about atrocities and horrors and how many men had died from malnutrition and disease. But those were probably stories, just like the stories of the last war that old Mrs. Timsen was told when her husband was caught by the Turks and Germans at Gallipoli. But now it was her son that was caught somewhere in Malaya. And she gave the others hope, for the stories she was told were not all true, and her husband did come home at war’s end.

  Betty picked up the postcard and held it up. “Mrs. Gurble got this postcard two days ago. Like the twenty-four cards we’ve had between us, the writing’s printed. But Mrs. Gurble feels that she can recognize the handwriting.” Then, as was the custom, Betty read it out. They always shared news from anyone in the regiment. It helped the others. “It reads: ‘Darling Sarah. I am well and happy. Please take care of Jinny. Love Victor.’” Betty looked up and smiled. “Do you want to add anything, Sarah?”

  Sarah Gurble was a beautiful, happy-go-lucky, child-wife. She had been married when she was sixteen, and was a mother at eighteen and her child was as beautiful as she was. She worked in a munitions factory and wrote her husband every day, even now, three years later. At twenty-one, Sarah Gurble was a joy to see.

  “No, Mrs. Colonel.” She looked around the room. “Except that this is the only card I’ve received. But at least I know he’s alive. And that makes me feel that all our men are alive. If I’ve got a card, well, there’s no reason why all of you won’t get one soon.” The tears were running down her cheeks. “I’m just so happy to share my happiness and I don’t want you all to think I don’t know how you feel, waiting and hoping and praying. I’m—I’m just so happy—”

  Betty crossed the room and held her close and stopped the tears. Truly, Betty was a mother to her brood of women and she was trying, very hard, to do what her Grant would expect of her. “There, there, Sarah.”

  That was the final thing they had to do and soon the room began to empty. Betty sighed, tired. Sarah was lucky to get a letter. Perhaps soon, I’ll get one. She promised herself that next day, perhaps, one would arrive. Oh Grant, are you alive? Are you?

  “Er, Mrs. Colonel, ma’am?”

  The rasping voice pulled her out of her thoughts and she looked at the little woman standing in front of her. The woman smelled badly and her hair was lank and dirty, and the old clothes she wore badly needed cleaning. The woman was scarecrow-built. Flat, ugly, a thin stick, and her nose was running. It was always running, and it had always run for as long as Betty had known the woman. That was five—going on six years. And, as much as she
tried, Betty Larkin could not stop the dislike rising in her.

  “Yes, Mrs. Masters?”

  “It’s like this ’ere,” Molly Masters began, and her forehead was beaded with perspiration. “It’s about my Tom’s money.”

  “What about it, Mrs. Masters?”

  “Well, I ain’t been getting ’is pay like, for the last month.”

  Betty sighed and made a note on the pad. She always made notes and then passed them on to the correct authorities. Sometimes pay went astray; children needed medical aid; wives needed medical care; divorces sometimes had to be arranged—divorces when the men were dead or supposed to be dead, but could be alive; sometimes extra money was needed. All the little details that women worry about. “I’ll take care of it tomorrow. Perhaps there’s been a mistake somewhere. Have you moved?”

  “Aw no, ma’am. We lives like always—down near the ’arbor.” Molly Masters wiped her nose with her sleeve, then took out a crumpled piece of paper. “The doc asked me to give you this, ma’am.”

  Betty took the note and straightened it out. It said briefly that Mrs. Molly Masters had leukemia. Perhaps the army medical authorities could take care of her in one of the army hospitals.

  “My God!” gasped Betty, shocked. The note was so simple, brutally so. She tried to keep the horror out of her face.

  “Now don’t you fret, ma’am,” said Molly, sniffing. “It ain’t gont’be like that. I ain’t a going t’ die. Not till my Tom comes ’ome, I ain’t. Not till he comes ’ome and that’s not gont’be long, now is it?”

  “No—no, not long now, Mrs. Masters,” Betty said compassionately.

  “I can’t die yet, not with my Tom out there somewheres. Why if I did, what’d become of my little Tommy? Why there ain’t nobody to take care of him. Nobody.”

  “I’ll call up the doctor tomorrow—”

  “Oh no, I don’t want to be in one of them places. I want’e be at ’ome. With my Tommy. I got a business now, an’ I got to keep it going.”