West of Guam (6 page)

A daring and death-dealing daylight robbery (two killed) of Delgado’s jewelry shop in downtown Manila nets the gunmen the ten fabled Rainbow Diamonds, owned by Von Loffler and worth about $200,000. Arragon is killed by the gang and his body deposited in Jo’s upstairs office. There is a good scene when he finds his dead friend and swears to himself to get “them.” Some $15,000 in reward money is posted. Jo is approached by Delgado (whose son was killed) and Von Loffler. The Dutchman asks if Jo will work for them.

[He] smiled with his thin, colorless lips pressed together. He parted them and said:

“Yes—but I feel it will be difficult. This was not an ordinary crime. It may mean that I must leave the Islands.”

Delgado said firmly: “I want my son’s killers—no matter where you must go … ”

Von Loffler said:

“It will be dangerous, Señor. But that is your business.”

The Island detective looked expressionlessly at the room’s ceiling.

“It will be so,” he agreed. “It is my business” (“Diamonds of Dread,” p. 90)

From the dying Malay whom he has shot, Gar learns of “’the one who walks badly … always in white’” and follows Ferraro aboard a Japanese liner,
Cheyo Maru,
bound from Manila to Honolulu, kills him, and obtains one diamond (“The Man in White”). From The Man in White, Jo picks up the trail of “ ‘the blind—Chinese—Honolulu.’” Escaping an ambush in the Hawaiian countryside at night, he finally comes upon Tan Ying, The Blind Chinese; three deaths ensue in the finale but no diamonds (“The Blind Chinese”). A name, Mendez, was given Jo, and in “Red Dawn” the detective learns from the man that diamonds were divided among the gang members. Mendez is killed in his own trap which he had set for Jo.

Once again aboard the
Cheyo Maru
(“Blue Glass”) now bound for San Francisco, Jo picks up five diamonds from gang member Eugene Tracy who is shot and killed by the mysterious Woman in Black (Rosa Jetmars), also a gang-member. She has the remaining four Rainbows. She slips them on to Raaker, the renegade Dutchman, mastermind of the caper, and whom Jo Gar had driven out of Manila some years before. Out near the Cliff House, outside of San Francisco, the two men face each other.

“You stayed out of Manila, Raaker—you couldn’t risk coming back. You hired men. Some of them tricked you—and each other. The robbery as successful, but you lost slowly. All the way back from Manila, Raaker, you lost” (“Diamonds of Death,” p. 89).

In the shoot-out, Jo kills him. He now has the “diamonds of death,” as he has dubbed them. He is so right; at least fifteen people are dead because of them.

Jo Gar found a package in his pocket, lighted one of his brown-paper cigarettes.

He said softly to himself: “I have all—all the Rainbow diamonds. Now I can go home, after the police come. I hope my friend Juan Arragon knows.” … And he thought … of the Philippines—and of Manila—and of his tiny office of the Escolta. It was good to forget other things, and to think of his returning (“Diamonds of Death,” p. 91).

Returning to the Pasig River, where the Sampans moor, side by side; to the Bridge of Spain which spans its dark waters; to the
Luneta
where the Constabulary Band plays in the late afternoon; to the Escolta, with its
mélange
of peoples and a sprinkling of American soldiers on liberty; the
Intramuros,
its old walls dating back to the late sixteenth century; and the spectacle of the fan-shaped, blood-red sunset across the Bay, with Cavite always in sight from the
Luneta.

Returning to where he belongs.

I have a question: Whatever happened to him when the Japanese invaded Luzon? He got along with them better than any Asians. Did he remain in the city? Did the Japanese throw him into Bilibid along with the others? Or did he join the American forces on Corregidor? Was he in Manila during the bitter fighting to liberate it in 1945?

He was last heard of in mid-1937. After that, silence. Before Arragon’s death, he and Jo were talking and Jo said, contemplatively:

“A poet once wrote: ‘There is mystery in the black-watered Pasig.’ I shall go towards the river, because the poet is accurate. It is so.” (“Death in the Pasig,” p. 105).

Maybe he did …

Whatever … whatever, Jo—
Paálam! Mabuhay!

¹
For six of the stories, I used the text as reprinted in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine;
for “Death in the Pasig,” I used the text in
The Hard-Boiled Omnibus;
for the remainder of the stories, I followed the text in
Black Mask
and
Cosmopolitan. Xxiii

²
It is interesting to note that in FBC he does have an assistant, Sidi Kalaa, half Malay, half Arab!

³
Arnold Carlysle, an American, heads the Manila force, composed of Americans and Filipinos.

⁴
Ratan does not resign. In “The Mystery of the Fan-backed Chair” and “The Great Black,” he is very much around.

⁵
For all I know, this situation may pertain today. No one in this country can ever deny that the lot of Filipinos in California before 1941 was less than happy. They were considered below the Chinese and Japanese, and jokes about Filipino houseboys were standard nightclub routine. If one thinks there has been improvement, he is invited to tour the Filipino barrio along Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles.

⁶
No question about it, Decolta/Whitfield was an innovator in seriously using an Asian protagonist during this period. Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu was an arch-villain; Earl Derr Biggers’s Charlie Chan, while enormously popular, was essentially a comic figure. On 30 June 1934, Hugh Wiley introduced in Collier’s James Lee Wong, a Yale-educated Chinese-American, who is a U.S. State Department secret agent. Wiley was followed by John P. Marquand, who introduced his Japanese detective, Mr. Moto, on 30 March 1935 in the
Saturday Evening Post.

⁷
“Diamonds of Dread,” “The Man in White,” “The Blind Chinese,” “Red Dawn,” “Blue Glass,” and “Diamonds of Death.”

Coral reef and green cliff—one showing a jagged edge of white in the blue water; the other a rising splash of color—were falling astern of the Army transport
Thomas.
The heat was terrific; the breeze was a hot blast sweeping the decks of the heavily laden transport. Five days more, with favorable weather, and the boat would reach Manila.

Five hot days and nights, west of Guam.

Colonel Dunbar, infantry officer in charge of troops aboard, sat in the wicker chair of his cabin, let the electric fan bathe his sticky skin with warm air and cursed. It was his second Island job—and he didn’t look forward to the arrival with much enthusiasm. He was sore because the West Point assignment hadn’t come his way. He was sore because the transport was crowded with troops and civilians. He was sore because it had been so infernally hot since they had put out from Honolulu. A rotten trip.

There was a sudden pounding of heavy shoes along the deck. Burker, his orderly, stiffened near the open door of the cabin. His face was strangely white; the muscles of his mouth were twitching.

“It’s—Captain Lintwell sir!” he muttered. “Major Jones found him—”

The orderly broke off. He was breathing heavily. Evidently he had run up from a lower deck. The colonel was impatient.

“Captain Lintwell—what
about
him, Burker? Get on with it—”

“He’s dead, sir!”

The orderly got the words out all bunched up, but the commanding officer understood them. He jerked himself out of the wicker chair.

“The hell you say!” he snapped “Lintwell—dead? How?”

The orderly was calmer now. He stood stiffly, as though he were reciting a section of the manual.

“Major Jones said he was murdered, sir. The major found him. Up front, on C Deck. A bullet through his head—the back of it—”

The colonel swore sharply. He swore because it irritated him to think that after twenty-five days aboard a transport his orderly could be stupid enough to designate a spot on the boat as “up front.” His lips formed the word “forward,” and he forgot about the orderly, and the orderly’s stupidity. He moved out of the cabin, went forward. His lean, browned face held a frown.

There had been three deaths at sea, from natural causes. There had been one drowning. A civilian’s wife had lost all of her hair and a portion of her scalp, through carelessness near an electric fan. A sergeant had run amuck because of heat and smuggled booze—and had put two of the transport’s crew in the ship’s hospital. And now—Captain Lintwell had been murdered!

The colonel descended the forward companionway. He hadn’t particularly liked Lintwell. The captain had played too good a game of bridge, and had played too loose with other officers’ wives. But murder—that was a rotten trick. It would have to be cleared up. Before the transport reached Manila. Five days, five nights. The colonel was on B Deck now. He swore savagely. Perhaps there had been some mistake. He’d get a different orderly, anyway. “Up front!”

He was descending the companionway between B and C Decks now. There was a circle of khaki clad figures below—ten feet or so from the bottom step. A voice called—“’Tention!” in a husky tone. Men straightened up—most of them were officers.

“‘’Ease!” Dunbar snapped. “Where’s Major Jones?”

The adjutant moved up close—the others moved away. Major Jones was short and thickset. He had a bristling, gray mustache, and even the heat of the tropics failed to destroy his efficiency.

“Rotten business, Joe,” he muttered in a low voice. “They got him—back of the head. I was going below, found him.”

The colonel stared down at the handsome face of Captain Jerry Lintwell. The man had a half smile on his face; his lips were drawn back slightly over his white, even teeth. The deck boards were stained with red. The colonel swore grimly. He started to kneel beside the dead captain, changed his mind.

“Keep everyone off this section of the deck, Adjutant!” he ordered crisply. “Two M.P.s should be able to see to that. Send for Major Vane—”

“I’ve done that,” Jones stated quietly. “He sent word from the hospital that Private Bulking is having convulsions—that he’ll get up here as soon as he can. Lieutenant Robards came along right after I found him here—he found there was no pulse. Dead ten minutes or so, he said.”

“He
guessed,”
the commanding officer corrected. “Very good—come up above with me, Adjutant. See about the guard first.”

Jones moved away and gave orders. The colonel glanced at his wrist watch. It was five minutes past four. He looked down at the murdered man again. Browned skin was becoming a bit yellow. He noted that Lintwell’s uniform was immaculate, as usual. Then he moved towards the steps of the companionway, climbed. There was a mild swell now. The effort of the trip down below had soaked him in perspiration. He felt vexed and irritable.

“Have that killer—by dark!” he muttered. “Damned fool to think he could get away with—that sort of stuff!”

It was almost midnight. The
Thomas
nosed her way through a phosphorescent sea, rocking lazily in a mild swell. Guam was behind—miles behind. The night was hot, filled with stars. The transport steamed to the westward. In the colonel’s cabin five men were gathered. Four of them were officers—one was a civilian. The colonel was speaking.

“It stands like this: At precisely thirty seconds after the ship’s bells had struck four o’clock, Major Jones came up from D Deck and found the body of Captain Lintwell. Lieutenant Robards was next on the scene—that medical officer pronounced the captain dead. He stated that he did not believe Lintwell had been dead more than ten minutes. There was no one about when Jones, here, came along. Major Vane probed—the bullet is regulation. Colt .45. Major Vane feels that death was instantaneous. The bullet entered the back of the head—and almost emerged back of the left eye. Major Vane and I both feel that suicide was extremely unlikely.” The commanding officer smiled faintly. His eyes went to those of the transport captain—Hungerford. That gentleman said nothing. He merely shrugged his shoulders. Majors Jones and Vane merely nodded their heads. The civilian spoke:

“Not suicide,” he stated tonelessly but with assurance. “Lintwell was left-handed. The entrance point of the bullet was slightly to the right of the head, just above the neck. The bullet traveled towards the left eye. Impossible for a left-handed man to shoot that way—couldn’t bend the wrist that much. Death was instantaneous but we can’t find the Colt. Very little chance that Lintwell could have shot—then flung the gun overboard.”

The colonel grunted. His eyes were on the civilian. He rather disliked all civilians; Jo Gar was no exception. He didn’t like the name, in the first place. He didn’t like the lack of emotion that Gar exhibited. And he didn’t like Gar’s looks.

The civilian half closed his blue-gray eyes, relaxed in the uncomfortable chair. His body swayed slightly as the transport rolled. He was a young man, but he looked rather old. His hair was gray; he was medium in size, but because of the loose way he carried himself he appeared rather small. His face was brown—very brown. He had good teeth, a narrow lipped mouth, fine features. His eyes were slightly almond-shaped, and they were seldom normally opened. They held a peculiar squint. Jo Gar wore soiled white trousers and a white shirt. His shoes had once been white, but his quarters on D Deck had prevented them from remaining so. He had abandoned socks at the same time that the
Thomas
had abandoned Honolulu.

“Captain Hungerford tells me that you have done some fine crime detection work, in the Islands, Mr. Gar.” The colonel smiled with his lips. “He suggested, when we were making no progress, our calling you up here. We shall go right along with our investigation, of course—but we thought you might work—say, under cover.”

Jo Gar smiled with half closed eyes. He spoke tonelessly, as always. “It is the better way—under cover. Your blundering will help me.”