The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes Page 19

  The Brigadier took a pull of his ale and stared past or through us at the library wall. Outside the street noises penetrated faintly but in the big room, empty save for our small group, there was only silence. We all knew that he was seeing something none of us ever would or could see and that he was far away mentally, lost in some vision of the past, in some "lost world" of his own. Then he straightened again and his cold blue eyes flickered over us in casual appraisal, before he started to talk and to resume his tale.

  "I'll cut a few corners here, Gentlemen. The bundle of papers got to first, the Foreign Office and then trickled through several others in turn. They finally ended up in the place they were meant to go and there they caused both laughter and incredulity. Let's call that last depository one or another HQ of a foreign-related intelligence division, eh? That tells you all you need to know." He didn't add "or ever will," but it didn't need adding.

  "The papers were in a code, but a long-expired one. It was one of the codes given to agents in the field at a time of confusion, early in World War II. It had a use then, for it was easy to memorize, and even at that was only given to chaps who were considered of small importance and whose work was largely routine. A typical type would be some "small-timer" whose job was reporting shipping movements from obscure Portugese coastal areas of Africa, say. Once in a great while, these men and/or women in a few cases, would come up with something arresting, such as news of a Kraut surface raider or submarine, but this was not normal."

  The Brigadier lifted his eyes and stared at the ceiling. A faint but audible sigh came from his lips. Then he went on.

  "The agent who had signed this package was interesting to the bureau involved for a couple of reasons. First, he was low on the scale, having been nothing but a very modest coastal trader along the Caribbean littoral for five years before WW II. But, long before a misspent life had commenced, he'd been a, well, to be a bit obsolete, a "gentleman." He was, in fact, a latterday survival of an old Victorian custom, being a 'Remittance Man' of sorts, who had left his family, his country and all that when he got a bit embarrassing. His family, which we'll call 'Jones,' heard little from him but sent him small sums of money through a lawyer at intervals, with the unspoken agreement that he would stay away, far away, and not bother them. One found these oddities here and there, mostly in the Tropics, to a much later date than is generally realized. Their offenses ranged from drink and women to actual criminality, though that was the rarest—"

  Ffellowes paused here, and reaching down beside his leather armchair, pulled up another book, a very long and very thick book, which looked both used and used hard, being scuffed and with tiny holes in it. He held it up, facing outward, so that with a leaning from those on the edge, we could all read the words printed under the stained crown on the cover. They were simple, being Atlas of British Honduras and the date, 1939.

  "Here's the old official map book," he said. "It was all we had until quite a while after. If I refer to something, it might make it easier on you fellows for me to indicate it on this thing than something more up-to-date, which I don't have anyway, at least here."

  He eyed the book with amusement and affection for a moment "Full of rot and a few wormholes, this one. Any book carried into real tropical bush doesn't last long." He flicked it open and held it up and rotated it for us to see a map of the entire tiny country, which looked a bit like a shortened, bent version of the state of Vermont. Then, with his forefinger, he indicated a certain area, a largely blank area, two thirds of the way down or South and also in the center.

  "This patch is all hills, covered with limestone crags, domes and heavy bush. There are bits of real tropical rain forest in places but a lot of it's scrub jungle. Full of ravines and also streams, being quite well watered. There are swamps also in places in depressions in the hills or where the ravines broaden. The area's known, or was known then, as 'The Maya Mountain'. Well, the whole country inland was full of Amerindians of Mayan stock and probably still is. They have strong kinship systems, and now and again will leave their milpas, their corn patches, and go off visiting relatives on foot, some of whom are a long way off, such as due North up in Mexican Quintana Roo where famous ancient Mayans lived. You men have heard about Chichen Itza and all that. Or, they might drift due South or Southwest and end up in Guatemala with still other relatives. Made little of borders they did, and as the news tells us, they have not changed since the place became independent around 1971." He sipped his ale and went on, a reflective tone now in his voice.

  "An odd folk and keep very much to themselves, unless they've changed a lot. In B.H. very few spoke any English and their Spanish was archaic and full of loan words of Mayan. They preferred that and didn't care much for anyone who was not Mayan. A dour, silent people, hardworking and living on tiny corn patches and a little hunting and fishing. They did not live on or even near the coast, leaving that to the negro Baymen and mestizo mixed-blood and the few Caucasians who were there, either for official reasons or for private ones.

  "Now this brings us back to the mysterious message thrown on the boat by that unknown swimmer. Look at this map and see a lot of creeks hitting the sea almost due East of the Maya Mountains? See that area marked Seine Bight? All heavy swamp on that stretch and that's where the Baymen's coaster was moored when that message arrived.

  "So then, we can get back to the message itself and to Jones, the supposedly dead and certainly vanished agent of the British Government, who had sent it, or at least had signed it with his long-defunct, assigned number. His first name was really Percy, I mean really. Sticks in my mind, it does, being rather effete for a man of this sort.

  "The message was scrawled with some very crude sort of implement, perhaps a split piece of reed, it was, to put it mildly, confused as well as confusing, that is, to those who had to decipher and make what sense they could out of it—" The Brigadier stared away again, obviously trying to coax his memory.

  "Well it went something like this, and I'm giving you a digest of what I can recall: 'Send Troops to B.H. in secret! Send at least one half Batt, well-trained in Bush Fighting, artillery not needed. Send at once! Send to compass bearing XYZ, in the heart of Maya Mountains.' "

  Ffellowes chuckled grimly at this point "Good thing he thought to put in the country involved and the Maya Mountains. The compass bearing was wildly askew and the latitude-longitude readings were someplace off Cape Horn in the sea. The whole thing seemed to indicate a very sick man, probably writing in the grip of some fever or other, or perhaps wounded or maybe both.

  "There was a bit more to come and the next and last bit was the wildest and most weird of the lot. It went on in this way, all broken up, you know and not consecutive, like shorthand taken by a drunk stenographer. Here are enough pieces to give you some indication of what it was like: 'Devils! They hate us and all like us! If the scientists are correct, though, they are us! Us as we were and they know it, by God!' " A strange smile flickered briefly over the Brigadier's smooth face. "I'm not gassing you people when I use points of emphasis, that is verbal exclamation points and such. There are ways in a code of doing just that, to mean something's most important and/or vital. Well, poor Percy Jones used that mark on every line, every scratched sentence, in fact on every place he could fit it in at all." He sighed again, sadly, and we all felt his sympathy in our own minds as well for that poor lost man and his strange plight.

  "Not too much more," went on Ffellowes. "A few bits like this though: 'They can see in the dark, better than cats; they have keen noses and can hear an ant crawling; they eat meat whenever they can get it and they don't care what sort; they eat green stuff mostly, all kinds of plants; I think they raid a few lonely farms for corn and for other purposes; they must do that! How else could they get those other blank-blank?' Now here," the Brigadier went on, "one word was very hard to get straight. The best opinions seemed to be a mix. Some of the backroom boys thought it was 'female,' either singular or plural. Other opinions give it as 'rulers' or even
'female rulers.' Then there was another word that cropped up all the time and that was often blurred or run. This was something or appeared to be, olfactory. It was translated as 'stench,' 'smelling' and even 'perfume'. There were continued references to 'night,' to 'dark' and to the apparent proclivities of 'them', whoever 'they' might be for darkness or the dark hours."

  He looked down at the open map book for a second and then up again quickly. "Oh yes, there was or were, still other repeated phrases of some sort. One was to 'breeding' and also 'trying to breed'. That came in a lot rather at random. With it were words like 'peril' and 'danger'/ 'War' and 'revolution' were not absent. And finally, there were constant references to some sort of hirsuteness. 'Hair' and 'fur' appeared a lot and also 'pelt'—

  "It didn't really come to an end at all. There was some scribble about 'Danger!' and mixed in was 'Hurry!' and 'Act at once!' and more like that all with the emphasis on Now, Urgent, Instantly, and in general, 'Hurry Up' plus 'Move!' "

  He stopped talking for a moment and there was silence in the big room. The noise of traffic was audible through the curtained windows, the roar of New York that never stops. But no one felt like talking and we simply waited. The Brig, didn't like being interrupted at any time but it was more than that. We were all far away, trying to hear a strange message in our minds from a lost soul.

  "At any rate," he finally went on, "Certain powers that be, or were then, got mildly intrigued. The bloody place was still a sort of dubious possession of the Crown. Somewhere in it a long-lost man had tried to communicate. It ought to get a quick look, if no more." He chuckled quietly. "I had always been noted as an oddity, if no more and I happened to have no current job. So, to make a long story one inch longer, I was off to Belize, the then capital and only sizeable town in all B.H.

  "I found it dismal enough when I got there. Built at sea level, it had little paving and open sewers that emptied into a sluggish little river also called 'Belize'. The sewers and the river were both full of rubbish, including dead cats, pigs, dogs and possibly people. It all went out to sea but slowly and not much to sea, with each tiny tide. There were few if any decent buildings and fewer Caucasians, though that meant little to me. I had chats with the Governor, the Consul and the local police chief, saying little myself but learning a lot about the country. I had impressive but vague papers, which said I was from the Foreign Office on inspection duty. What I really wanted I kept to myself. I had to tell one chap only, and I chose the policeman. Like a lot of Colonial Cops, he was a splendid chap and had started long before as a London Bobby. I told him the whole thing, except for the meaningless bits of message, the stuff about 'hair' and such. And I had him arrange a meeting with Captain Hooper, the skipper who'd got the actual message so strangely. The police chief was the only one in the country who knew even vaguely what my job really was and he'd been cleared by my own H.Q.

  "We ended up by having a very quiet meeting one evening, Captain Hooper, his oldest son, George, and I. Over vast glasses of appalling beer, which did not help much with the tropic stench in the still air, but some, we talked. Police Chief Plover, by agreement, kept watch outside the little hut on the town's edge where we met.

  "I got the whole story from Hooper and his son, the latter a big, really big, young Black. His rippling muscles were impressive but the steady eyes over the high cheekbones and the soft, deep voice were more so. The father had both and only a little grey in his cropped curls. They were far better material than I'd hoped for. I noticed their cheap clothes were clean and that they were also.

  "I told them what I wanted and they promptly agreed with enthusiasm. They and the rest of the crew had been back from a trip down the Coast for over a week and were loading goods on their schooner, named Windsor incidentally (they pronounced it'Weensore' in their deep tones) for another. Whatever I wanted was mine and they even argued about my offer to pay a price for charter! This was 'Guvmint Wuhk' and they wanted no pay. A refreshing note of loyalty for the battered Empire in those Post-War days but I'd found it elsewhere in the world before this and later as well. They were clever men and they could reason. When I'd sketched what my plans were, they had thought of some helpful ideas of their own and I do mean helpful.

  "Captain Hooper summed it up and I'll give it to you in his words. 'You wanna go inshore to where that man swim out wit that lettah. Then, Cap'n, (I was that rank) you wanna go afta that mon all the way in to them Mayan Mountain, where you feel he come from? Okeh, gettin you theyah, thass easy. You come on wit us in the dahk and none know this. But when you go ashoah, thass vurry difficult. Bad country, fulla bugs, snake and sickness. If you goes through to them hills, mebbe it get worse. No one go up there, cep' a few hunter now and then. Clean air, plenty watah, good ground and animals too, mebbe even a few 'Panther cats' or even 'Tygrees.' (He meant Puma and Jaguar, the latter being Tigre to Spanish speakers.) But, Sah, they ain't why I'm worried, nor Jawge neither. Nobody like the inside of them hills and nobody, not the lousiest' Injun' corn digger, go there for mor'n a day or two. No one live theah! That Baaad Place and it always been so. A littul huntin, thass OK, but some folks won't even go in there foh just that even.' Captain Hooper stopped here and looked at his son. I could see them both clearly in the light of the paraffin or kerosene lamp.

  "George was ready for the pause. 'You'se watched, is what I heah,' came his own deep tones. 'Somfin's in theah that watches folks. If they stays on the edges like and don' stay long, then's all right. If should be they goes in deep or mebbe tries to live there permanent, thass a diffrunt thing, Cap'n. They just vanish, like a Duppy got'm. Whoosh!'

  "His father took a giant gulp of beer, emptied the bottle in fact, and nodded to me. 'He say right, Cap'n. Thass no place to go, not nobody. And nevah alone, Suh. Too easy foh the Duppies, one puhson all by hisself!' "

  Ffellowes leaned back and his blue eyes twinkled at us. "A 'Duppy,' my friends, is an evil spirit. It's simply Anglic dialect for what the Haitians call a 'Zombie' or one of their own spirit terrors. Cheery news, eh, in that smoky hut?" Then the humor left his eyes and he continued. "I was making mental notes over what I heard when George spoke again.

  " 'I go wit the Cap'n, Dadee. I ain't no Bushman, jus' a sayluh boy but I got good legs. An' we take Lucas Payrfit. He part Spaniol, mebbe part Injun, but he my fren' also. An' he do know the Bush. He hunt evr'thin they is an' he know to live theyah an' go quiet-like. Wit us two, mebbe they's a chanct. Lemme ask Lucas to come ovah and talk wit usn's.'

  "I strongly suspect," Ffellowes continued, "that all this had been pre-talked over before we met. I feel that George had already got his father's permission to escort me and that the mysterious Lucas had already been sounded and had agreed."

  He fell silent, gazing at the rug and we stayed immobile in our circle. Once again Ffellowes had captured our spirits and we all were far away and long ago with him in that steamy, tropical hut, planning a venture into the unknown. The street noises and the faint sounds from the other parts of the Club were mentally shut out and meaningless, not registering on our tensed-up sense patterns. We also saw and heard the two black giants as they calmly offered to risk their lives for Ffellowes and that sacred (to them) intangible, the British Government.

  The Brigadier gave a sigh and then resumed. "Well, at Dawn, two days later, we cast off from a battered, mooring post and were off to the South. All had been taken care of that could be. I'd left a complete report of my findings, which were largely speculative and also my intentions, possibly even more so. All that was with Plover the Top Cop. A good chap and he'd served a term not long before in the police of one of the Malay States, in Borneo I believe. He knew something thus of both traveling and looking for trouble in uncharted rain forests.

  "As the Windsor chugged out, sails down, on her battered auxiliary, there were two of us below decks, sweating in the still heat and stench. We'd come on board in the thick dark at 3:00 A.M. and with us a lot of equipment we needed. The other man was the mysterious 'Lucas Pairfit' His
name was really of French derivation and spelled correctly, was 'Peyrefitte.' The Hoopers had summoned him quietly at dusk on the previous day and he'd just appeared, equally silent.

  "I had given him the once over, since we were to be companions and I was rather impressed. He too was tall, perhaps 6'2" but lean and not burly. He had a hawk face and bronzy-red skin. There was some negroid strain, as evinced by the close-cut tight curls, but the rest? At a guess, French and Amerindian. He moved like a great cat and he had piercing black eyes. His voice was a purring growl, very sinister at first but his grip was firm and hard. We chatted while trying to breathe as the schooner cleared the river with me putting the questions and him the answers. George Hooper was on deck with his father and two husky cousins, but that was the normal thing and thus not worth disguising.

  "Lucas had guided more than one hunting party into the edge of the Maya Mountain country but as he put it 'I don' stay long. I keep the white folks who hire me movin' fast and when they want rest I always tell 'em this Bad Place. Sometime I say fevah, sometime bad watah, sometime no animal to hunt sometime too many buggses. But mos' imphtant we keep on the move.'

  "When I asked him about the feelings the others had told me of, those of being watched, I could see the whites of his eyes flicker, even in the fetid dark of the little cargo space.