The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes Page 8

  " 'Be welcome, Tuan.' He said it listlessly, as if by rote, or performing a set task of no interest or importance. He was obviously the oldest, for he had the worst stoop, but his thinning hair was still jet black, and he had no facial hair. Up close he and the others had another thing that was new to me. Their skins looked glossy in a strange way, almost as if they were a rigid and not a flexible covering, though they moved in the same way as ours and one could see the muscles. Some disease, I thought, seemingly a fungus condition. Perhaps they were inbred.

  "I answered politely and asked if one of them could show me to the house of the other Tuan and his Mem. They looked blankly at one another, but the elder simply motioned me to follow and turned on his heel. No one of them looked at my men in the boat, but I did. They, even Ali, were not even trying to pretend they weren't frightened. They all looked seasick. I told them to go back to the ship and pick me up around five o'clock that afternoon. I didn't see how the Americans could refuse to give me lunch at least.

  "We walked slowly up through the humidity of the steams and vapors, which made me cough a bit. The sulfur stink was very strong now. The path went through the village, laid out in a simple row of big communal houses on stilts, like lots of others I had seen; and then I got my first surprise. I almost stepped on a lot of little turtles which were waddling about on the path, right at the village entrance. I had to skip a bit to avoid them, and I noticed that my guide did so automatically. The little things paid us no attention at all, and most small turtles I have seen are very shy, rush away or into water at the glimpse of a man, you know. A few women and men (I saw no children) watched apathetically as we went by in line, the rest of the lads who had come down to the landing still bringing up the rear. It was a peculiar sensation, this utter lack of any interest at all. Never seen anything like it before or since.

  "The fog grew denser on the upslope on the far side of the village, but the path was easy enough to make out as one went uphill. In places, it was actually dark, as big trees and vines leaned over it, and totally windless and dank as well. I heard no birds, no insects, nothing at all but my own and the others' footsteps and water dripping somewhere. Then, in the darkest patch we had hit yet; fog all around, came that Godawful sound I had heard the night before. The island men all stopped, and so did I, fumbling for my gun, I may say, because the sound was very close and very loud.

  " 'Muaah, muaah, muaaaaah!' it came, like a colossal and very sick cow, or perhaps a diseased foghorn. Nasty!

  "The men didn't seem afraid exactly, but I could feel them tense up, the first show of any feeling of any sort I had noticed. The noise stopped, and they promptly resumed their march, me along with them. In a few moments more, the path opened into a large clearing, and we had arrived.

  "The mists were thinner here, and the glow of the sun could be seen in a blurred way through them. In front of us was a rather large house, made of peeled logs, like a hunter's lodge rather, although the roof was thatched in the island way. It too stood on stilts, or thin logs, right against a shoulder of the hill itself, and had a wide veranda running around the front and one side, up to which broad wooden steps had been laid. It looked quite pretty, or would have save for the unearthly surroundings. There were large pits of what looked to be brown wet sand all about, some with a scum of water on the surface, and the warmth was now almost sickening, like an overdone greenhouse. The path wound to the steps between several of these pits and seemed to be on a spine of rock. And all about were turtles.

  "They were of different shapes and sorts, large and small, some black, some brown, some yellowish. One or two had red markings on their shells. Some had blunt heads, others pointed, and one great whacking chap had a leather platter instead of a real shell, one of the so-called 'soft shells,' as I later learnt.

  "To my surprise, the fellows who had brought ine faced about and without a word turned and marched back down the path again, leaving me to the turtles and the fog. I quickly headed for the house before I heard that most decidedly sick-making noise again.

  "I had gone perhaps halfway along the path, treading slowly to avoid the turtles which crawled freely over it and of which the littlest were hard to see, when suddenly I heard steps. A white man in khakis came out of the door onto the veranda and stood looking down at me. You'll never guess what his first words were.

  " 'For God's sake! What are you doing here, Ffellowes?'

  "Now, the name of Strudwick, while not as common as Smith, is not unknown in England. It simply had never occurred to me to recall this lad at all. He had been a Rhodes Scholar when I was doing my two years at Cambridge, in '21 that would be. An American and a brilliant student, he had lived down the hall from me for two terms, and we had got rather friendly. We had never written when he had left, and I had completely forgotten he had ever existed. And here he was, pumping my hand warmly, in the most isolated island in Australasia. Life is a funny thing.

  " 'Hallo, Strudwick,' I said, preserving my British phlegm as best I could. 'As a matter of fact, Old boy, I've come to see you, more or less to find out what you're doing here. Pleasant surprise, eh, or I hope so anyway.'

  "He was no fool. He looked at me shrewdly and laughed. 'Mysterious Americans attract the attention of His Majesty's Government, hm? Well, I'm glad to see you, though. I don't encourage visitors. Haven't had any, as a matter of fact. But I thought the Dutch looked after this part of the world?'

  "I lied, though only a bit, and said they had called us in, being short-handed, and that seemed to go down all right. He wasn't really much interested anyway, though he did seem excited about something. By this time we were in the house, which was really very comfortable. All the furniture was obviously handmade and to European specs. I gathered he must have had everything made locally, but it was good work, and there were flowers in bowls and kerosene lamps on the tables. He even gave me an iced drink; had his own portable generator, and that was a treat.

  "We filled each other in on the missing years for a bit, and then he started suddenly to talk.

  " 'Let me tell you why I'm here,' he said, as quickly as that 'You may have forgotten I took a 'zoo' First (I had, of course). Well, I'm a reptile specialist. This tiny island is the home of the damnedest collection of turtles that ever existed in the world. I've done more original work here in six months than I ever did in the rest of my life. You can't follow all this, I know, but it's fantastic, and I know this field as well as anyone alive. Why there are types here that don't belong in any family, genus or species any scientist has ever seen before!'

  "He went on like a brook in spate, while I relaxed with my drink and tried to follow him as well as I could. It seemed that turtles, tortoises and all the other things, like terrapins, were pretty well mapped out. No new ones had been found in years, and very few save the sea turtles, of course, went much to the east of Java, Sumatra and Borneo; that is, until one struck New Guinea. There was a lot about Wallace's Line, sort of a zoological barrier, I gathered, and what did and did not cross it, all mixed up in the lecture. Then came a flood of Latin names, mostly meaningless to anyone but another expert, like the lad who was here at the club earlier. New types of Emydura, not supposed to be here at all; a kind of Geochelone no one had seen anywhere; something that looked like a cross between Chelodina, or a type of it, and an unknown Geomyda variety, which was flatly impossible, but occurred here. And so on, until I was frankly bewildered.

  "But there was one thing which kept my attention pretty well fixed through all this. I just was not hearing the whole story. One cannot do the work I had done and not pick this sort of thing up, you know. It was, my work, I mean, in many ways, not dissimilar to police work, and I must have interrogated hundreds of clever types at one time or another. Strudwick was not lying; his enthusiasm was genuine all right; that's very hard to fake. But he was keeping something back. I could read it in his body, in his rare sidelong glance. Something was not for me to learn.

  "Now I had no idea that the chap was a spy. I co
uld have been wrong, but it was simply not in the cards, as I read the man. But he had a secret and I wondered what it was. A very casual remark put me onto something.

  "He paused for breath, and I had mentioned the hordes of turtles and how tame they had seemed. He smiled and was about to speak when I added, " 'And I hope whatever makes that disgusting sound out in the forest is equally tame. Gave me the grue, when I heard it, even out on the boat.'

  "He caught his breath and turned pale. He was a big fellow, bigger than I, cleanshaven and with a goodish tan. Now he went almost green.

  " 'You heard that?' His question was almost a whisper. It was echoed from the back of the room. I totally forgot he had a wife with him, and now she came in from the back, still muttering.

  "Ethel Strudwick was big, too. She was not pretty, a faded blonde with hair stringy from the damp and a hard eye. She was also moderately drunk, and this at about ten in the morning. She wore the same khakis, shirt and 'ratting pants,' as we used to call them, and canvas shoes that he did. Her make-up had run. Not a very attractive sight.

  "He mumbled an introduction, and I tried to be polite, but she could not stop staring at me and seemed to hear nothing of what he said, as he tried haltingly to explain who I was and what I was doing there. Not a pleasant woman, in looks or manners, but I felt very sorry for her. Because she was terrified. It was obvious, when one watched her for a minute or two. Something or someone had scared the living Hell out of her, and my former hall mate was equally jumpy, though controlling it far better. She sat down in a bamboo chair, and I tried to pick up the conversation at the point whence it had departed from the rails, so to speak.

  " 'Well, Strudwick, before your wife came in, I mentioned that strange cry in the forest. I heard it last night, and it put the wind up my crew pretty thoroughly. What on earth was it?'

  " 'A bird—We don't know—Why did we ever come to this awful place?—Just a bird!' They were both speaking together, he repeating his nonsense about a bird, she lamenting their arrival and stay, neither paying the slightest attention to the other. It was unsettling to watch and listen to.

  " 'Look here!' I said loudly. 'May I stay the night? I have to run over your papers and all that. This is an official visit, don't you know. Could I get my things from the boat? It would be a pleasant break for me.' I could think of no place I wanted to stay less, but I was intrigued, and they were obviously in some kind of trouble.

  "Mrs. Strudwick was delighted and practically kissed me. He was not nearly so pleased, in fact not pleased at all, but there was little he could say.

  "There seemed to be no servants, and Strudwick walked me down through the forest to the landing himself. We heard nothing on the way. The villagers were moving slowly and droopily about as we passed through their street, and we saw small and large turtles the whole journey, though none so many as just about the house itself. My host explained that he had heard rumors about the island for years and had only just been able to get the funds and time to come there. The locals were obliging enough to work quite hard in building the house and furniture and had accepted the money he gave them without haggling. What they did with it, he had no idea. They had no pigs or fowls, save for a few gone wild in the jungle which covered much of the place, and no traders called. They grew rice, he thought, or some crop in fields beyond the village and fished in a desultory way when the mood took them. They refused to live in or near the house, but were perfectly amiable, if not forthgoing. He had never been able to get them to talk about turtles or anything else, for that matter. They provided him fruit and coconuts, as well as rice and even fish on occasion, and did not seem to care whether they got paid or not.

  "I mentioned the odd look they all had, the rigid looking skin and the humped backs, and suggested that some obscure form of elephantiasis, added to prolonged inbreeding might be responsible.

  " 'I believe you've hit it. I'm no anthropologist, but I'll bet that's exactly what's wrong with them.'

  "His agreement sounded totally hollow to me, and I have a good ear for this. I was sure of one thing, though it made no sense, which was that he had some other theory of his own, concerning which he wished me to remain ignorant. 'Curiouser and curiouser,' I reflected to myself.

  "When we got to the landing, the prau was in plain view, the fog being mostly burned off at sea level, and the small boat came in when I hailed. I went out, got my gear and a change of clothes, and we walked back up through the miasmatic heat to the house on the hill. I told Ali to keep a strict watch on the landing place and to come in at once if he saw or heard me, or if I signaled with my pocket torch during the night. He agreed promptly, and I thought I could rely on him, so long as he hadn't got to come ashore himself.

  "Back in the building, Mrs. Strudwick had taken some pains to make up her face and no longer looked so bedraggled and miserable. She would never be lovely, but she at least looked decent, and she seemed to have sobered up as well. I learnt later that she was very wealthy and that they had not been married long. It must have been her money which allowed Strudwick to make this out-of-the-way trip.

  "He brought out all his letters to officials for me to glance over, and he came well-recommended and was, as I had surmised, more than respectable from the scientific standpoint. He had three doctorates, I recall, one being from Yale, and all sorts of 'please aid the bearer' notes, signed by everyone from the American Undersecretary of State down. I solemnly made notes of it all.

  "After lunch, which was mostly expensive tinned stuff they had brought with them, plus a little fruit and a lot of gin, I asked Strudwick why he had selected the particular site that he had for the house.

  " 'The turtles, man, the turtles. There are more of them right here than anywhere else on the island. These hot springs or seeps seem to attract them, and you soon get used to the sulfur smell.'

  " 'You do!' The venom in his wife's voice was naked. 'Why can't we get out of here? You've seen every damned turtle and its bloody grandmother that ever was! Why are we staying here any longer?' Her voice rose to a strident pitch that was almost a scream.

  " 'Look, honey, it won't be much longer. I've told you that. I need to get just a little more information.' His tone was soothing, but I caught a nasty glint in his eye. Whatever was keeping them here, it was important to him, and he did not propose to have it interfered with.

  " 'Information! On what prowls around this house on dark nights! I'm going crazy ' She got up and stumbled out of the room and disappeared in back somewhere, getting a drink, I expect. Her last sentence, unfinished, hung in the steamy air of the room.

  "I saw Strudwick looking at me in a speculative way and felt bound to make some remark.

  " 'What was that about something prowling around at night? Your wife seems to have a bad case of the jitters. Is it wise to stay here under the circumstances?'

  "He took a long swallow of gin before answering, gathering his thoughts to sound convincing, it appeared.

  " 'There is something here I haven't worked out yet, Ffellowes. If it's what I think, well, it will be one of the great zoological finds of the age. Hell, of any age! I can't give you the details. First, it's none of your business. Second, you'd think I was nuts. Christ Almighty, I think I am nuts, sometimes. Just bear with us, will you? Ethel isn't used to the tropics or my burying myself in my work either. The natives walk about at night, and this makes her nervous, though they're perfectly harmless.' It was then he told me the story of their recent marriage and mentioned that his wife had been both rich and sheltered.

  "I retired to the room they had given me for a nap, but I found it hard to sleep. I was turning restlessly, when I caught the sound of voices, not too far away. I pricked up my ears not only because they were talking Malay, but because one voice was Strudwick's deep-chested rumble. I slid off the rattan couch and out of my window. I felt no compunction about eavesdropping. I had no great affection for my host, and I had commenced to have a great curiosity about whatever he was doing. I soon found he had t
old me a thumping lie in one area at least.

  "Behind some dense undergrowth at the corner of the house he was talking to the strange-looking villager, the old one who had led me up to the house that morning. I caught only a snatch of conversation before the native turned and walked away, but it was an intriguing item.

  " 'It must be soon, or we will find another, one of our own. But the Father likes yours. But it must be soon.'

  " 'It will be soon!' Strudwick's answer was low yet intense. 'But this new Tuan has changed things. He must go, first.'

  " 'It must be soon,' was the dull-toned answer. 'The strange Tuan is your business, not ours. What do we care for Tuans? Or the Father, either? Give him to the Father. But he grows impatient. They all do. They call.'

  "With that remark, the man left, drifting away between the steaming muck holes until he had vanished from sight around a corner of the slope.