Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 1. Whole No. 344, July 1972

The Mandalasian Garotte by James Powell{© 1972 by James Powell.}

It befell Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to parachute into the jungle of Mandalasia to rescue the great missionary doctor, humanitarian, and accordion player, Dr. Angus Macpherson But there were complications: General Lo Ding Dok’s government forces were creeping up from the South; Yem Seng’s Communist rebels were slinking down from the North, deposed Prince Cham Pang’s Neutralists were sidling in from the West. And there were spies — a Red Chinese agent, a C.I.A. man...

Bullock is one of the very few comic detectives extant. Relish this sly tale of a mysterious hammock lacer, of attempted homicide, and of international politics, with as shrewd a plot as has ever been satire-coated and sugar-coated with humor...

The Minister of Justice admired his own handwriting, the way his plump jade fountain pen tied its clever knots, loops, and hitches. “Legal” was among his favorite words. He liked the way the “l’s” went up and the “g” went down. He was writing it when his secretary ushered in Commissioner Baines of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

“Kind of you to come, Commissioner,” he said, without raising his eyes. “Please sit down. Be with you in a minute.” Yes, he liked “legal” and secretly attributed his having been given the portfolio of Justice to the fact that he wrote it with such a flourish.

Commissioner Baines tried unsuccessfully to clear his throat. “May I ask how the Prime Minister is, sir?” he said hoarsely.

“As well as might be expected,” replied the Minister of Justice, crossing some “t’s” and dotting some “i’s.” “By the by, what was his name again? Your man who slammed the limousine door on the Prime Minister’s hand.”

“Bullock, sir,” said Baines. “Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock.”

“Well, no matter. That wasn’t what I wanted to see you about.” The Minister of Justice put the cap on his pen and looked up. “Tell me what you know about Dr. Angus Macpherson.”

Baines exhaled and settled back a bit in his chair. “The Johnny Appleseed of Canadian missionary medicine? Let’s see. Twenty years of building little hospitals all over Southeast Asia. Finances his work by giving accordion concert tours to standing-room-only audiences. After the last tour he rode a bicycle into the jungle of Mandalasia and hasn’t been heard of since.”

“Correct,” said the Minister of Justice. “Now as you know, the civil war in Mandalasia has stalemated. In spite of considerable American and Communist bloc backing, neither the government forces nor the Communist rebels are getting anywhere. We have reason to believe that each side would like to tip the balance and sway international sentiment in its favor by producing Macpherson’s dead body and accusing the other side of having done the dirty deed.” He paused. “Speaking of dirty deed, your man—”

“Bullock, sir,” said Baines.

“Bullock really did a job on the Prime Minister. I heard the bones go crunch twenty yards away.” The Minister of Justice shuddered. “But back to Macpherson. It seems the Americans have an additional reason for wanting Macpherson dead. They’ve discovered he doesn’t charge his patients for his services.” Seeing Baines’s puzzlement the Minister of Justice explained. “To the Americans that’s socialized medicine. And you and I know what Americans think of socialized medicine. The situation is further complicated by Macpherson’s steadfast refusal to play at Peking’s International Festival of Young Communist Accordion Artists. Chairman Mao, deciding to take this as a personal affront, has recently placed the whole matter in the hands of his crack assassin group, the What-do-you-call-thems.”

“Not the Sly Dragons, sir?” asked a horrified Baines.

The Minister of Justice nodded. “But the worst is yet to come,” he said. “It seems our friends in the Opposition have gotten wind of the situation. Any day now the Prime Minister can expect a question in the House: What is the government doing to guarantee Macpherson’s safety? The thing has the potential of a red-hot election issue.

“Well, late last night the Prime Minister — the pain from his hand kept him up until the wee hours — hit upon another of those wonderful, no-nonsense plans of his: we drop one of your men into the jungle. He finds Macpherson and leads him across the border to safety in Bengalia.”

“But, sir,” protested Baines, “there’s hundreds of square miles of jungle. There’s no way my man could find Macpherson.”

“Commissioner,” explained the Minister of Justice, slowly and patiently, “in a situation like this it isn’t necessary that we succeed, only that we try. So the Prime Minister can assure the House that steps are being taken on Macpherson’s behalf.”

Glancing to the right and to the left, Baines leaned forward and whispered, “Sir, we’d be sending my man to certain death.”

“Then I’d advise you to send someone you can spare. I assume you have a man in mind, Commissioner.”

“Yes, sir,” said Baines weakly.

“Good,” beamed the Minister of Justice. “Good. Then tell your man that Canada is counting on him, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In fact,” he smiled, “as a measure of the importance of this mission the Prime Minister’s only regret is that a severe disability in one hand prevents him from packing your man’s parachute personally.”

Halfway through “A Carnival of Venice” Dr. Angus Macpherson’s fingers stalled on the keyboard of his mother-of-pearl accordion. Resting the instrument on the veranda railing he scowled from beneath bushy eyebrows at the ragged mark the jungle made against the sky. For several days now the clearing and the buildings of the modest hospital complex, once a source of quiet satisfaction, had been closing in about him like a noose.

First had come the rumors of armies converging on the spot, and overnight what few old men were left had vanished into the jungle. Then Tang, the little Chinese, had arrived, standing in the bow of the small sampan, wearing an inscrutable smile which had not faltered until the shifting current carried him past the boat landing and around the bend toward the white-water rapids. Macpherson’s sigh of relief had proved premature. The next day some down-river villagers had trundled the battered and unconscious Tang back to the hospital.

That same evening a bearded, hawk-nosed man in a tom safari jacket and pith helmet with a leopard-skin sweatband had crashed out of the jungle raving theatrically (until he fell, with a cry of genuine surprise, into the excavation for the new root cellar). He was Michael Patrick Finn, a field engineer for Shamrock Diamond Mines, an Irish company. Or so his papers said.

Macpherson nodded decisively. Yes, it was time to move on. Somewhere out there in the darkness he would start another hospital, another footstep in his flight from civilization.

There was a commotion of voices at the edge of the clearing. Four old women came into the moonlight. They were carrying someone on a litter. When they reached him Macpherson saw the broad-brimmed hat, the trim mustache, and the scarlet tunic beneath the tom jump suit. As he felt the man’s pulse, eyelids fluttered. Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock struggled up on one elbow. His mouth moved.

“Dr. Macpherson, I presume,” he said in a weak but triumphant voice, then fell back unconscious.

Oh, lordy, lordy, thought Macpherson, wishing for the thousandth time that week that he had become a lighthouse keeper like his father before him.

Bullock awoke with a roaring ache in his jaw and a monumental stiff neck. During the first tree-top hour hanging upside down in a tangle of parachute his small change and car keys had trickled away into the darkness, followed in short order by his wallet and pistol and the lanyard from around his neck.

But fear-real fear — had not seized him until the survival kit started its inching creep down his body. Without its carefully chosen contents — the sum of his 20 years on the Force — Bullock was just another man against the wilderness. Snapping desperately, he had caught the last strap between his teeth. How long had he remained like that until the old women found him? One day? Two? No matter. Here he was. And there, hanging at the foot of the bed was the survival kit. His luck had seen him through again.

Someone giggled. Bullock’s eyes became cautious slits. A small Chinese was sitting up in the bed next to his. His right arm was in a shoulder cast that curved out in front as though he was dancing with an invisible partner. He was reading from a little red book. As Bullock watched he giggled again and underlined a passage with a pencil stub.

“My name is Tang, in case you’re wondering, Mountie,” he said. Bullock stiffened and squeezed his eyes shut. “Relax,” coaxed Tang. “I’m Nationalist Chinese, a loyal lackey of the bourgeois imperialists just like you.”

Sensing the jig was up, Bullock opened his eyes. “A bit far from home, aren’t you, Mr. Tang?” he asked suspiciously.

“I have the honor of being a troubleshooter for the Taiwan Tract and Gospel Society, a group not unlike your Gideons,” Tang explained, holding up his little red book. “Our aim is to place our tracts in every hotel room in Southeast Asia. I mistook the good doctor’s hospital for a resort hotel.”

Their voices woke the big-nosed man in the bed on Bullock’s other side. He wore a shoulder cast identical to Tang’s except that it was on the left arm (his invisible partner seemed to have the lead). “Faith and begorra, Michael Patrick Finn’s the name,” he insisted, shaking Bullock’s hand. “Sure, ’tis out like a light you’ve been for two whole days, me boyo.”

Bullock narrowed his eyes. “I’ll bet you’re Irish, Mr. Finn,” he said.

Finn agreed. “Wasn’t it lost in the jungle I was and looking for diamonds and didn’t I wander into this clearing by accident now?”

An extraordinarily beautiful woman in a crisp white smock strode briskly into the room. Her jet-black hair framed delicate ivory features. Her eyes suggested the Orient. “Begorra!” shouted Finn. “I’ll take me shillelagh to any blatherskite that won’t admit that Dr. Lotus Lane is the prettiest colleen in the whole wide world. Look, I’ve made the beauty blush.” But Lotus Lane wasn’t blushing. She thrust a thermometer into Finn’s mouth.

Tang giggled. “Ah, Lotus, is it not written somewhere that when a plum blossom falls into a pond it is the ugly frog that croaks first, not the one that loves the most? I have composed a poem on that theme which—” A second thermometer cut him short.

Lotus Lane took Bullock’s wrist and felt his pulse. “Your leg giving you any trouble?” she asked.

Bullock looked down and discovered that one of his legs was in a fat cast below the knee. Immediately it began to itch. “Nothing I can’t handle,” he said through clenched teeth. “Just tell Dr. Macpherson that Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would like to speak to him as one Canadian to another on a matter of national—” Lotus Lane popped the last of her thermometers into his mouth with an exasperated little sigh.

“The doctor’s a very busy man,” she said flatly. “So would you be with the government forces under General Lo Ding Dok creeping up from the South, with Yem Seng and his Communist rebels slinking down from the North, with Neutralists under deposed Prince Cham Pang sidling in from the West. By tomorrow we should hear the guns. I really doubt if the doctor can spare you any time.”

She collected the thermometers and left without reading them. Tang scurried after her, reciting a poem entitled, “Plum Blossoms in the Sunset Far Out on the Frog Pond.”

Finn flipped a cigarette in the air and caught it between his teeth. “Don’t let that heathen Chinee fool you, me bucko,” he warned, striking a match with his thumbnail. “Taiwan Tract and Gospel Society, my Aunt Fanny. Yesterday, scouting around for the Coke machine, I overheard him bragging to Dr. Lane that he was some kind of a Red Chinese agent. He was begging her to run off with him when his job here was done. As if a classy doll like her would spend her life making pig iron in the back yard with a runt like him.” Bullock noticed that Finn had lost his brogue. So did Finn. “Begorra,” he added half-heartedly.

Dr. Macpherson came into the room, shooing Tang ahead of him. “Yesterday I explained why you must remain in your room, Mr. Tang,” the doctor was saying. “I could lock you in, you know.”

“Love laughs at locksmiths,” insisted Tang, crawling back into bed.

Macpherson scowled at Bullock. “Well, Acting Whatever-it-is Whoever-you-are, what did you want to see me about?”

“I’d prefer to speak to you alone, Doctor,” said Bullock.

Macpherson shrugged, filled a hypodermic needle, then deftly put first Tang and then Finn to sleep. He came at Bullock with a thermometer.

“Dr. Lane just took my temperature,” protested Bullock.

“Her thermometer’s centigrade. Mine’s Fahrenheit,” muttered Macpherson, slipping home the glass tube. “Hope you’re fit to travel,” he said after a moment. “When somebody tries to do me in by lacing my string hammock with wet rawhide, it’s time for me to move on.”

Bullock’s noise sounded like “Good Godfrey.”

“Yes,” insisted Macpherson, obviously pleased by the reaction. “Yesterday I was taking my afternoon nap on the veranda as is my wont. I awoke to find myself immobile, my arms pinned to my sides, gasping for breath, and on the threshold of acute pain. Someone had laced my hammock with wet rawhide. As it dried, the rawhide contracted. I was caught in an ever-tightening cocoon of death.

“Does that shock you? Well, frankly, after twenty years devoted to the service of my fellow man I have no illusions about him at all. The more I see of him with his converging armies and wet rawhide the less I like him.” Macpherson’s eyes took on a far-away glaze. “Some day I hope to build a hospital so deep in the jungle that no one will ever find it. And shouldn’t that be every humanitarian doctor’s dream — not to have any patients?”

Bullock tore out the thermometer. “The ever-tightening cocoon of death!” he shouted.

“Ah, yes,” said Macpherson. “Well, the rawhide grew tighter and tighter. Without losing my sang froid I started the hammock swinging, timing the swings to intersect with the blades of the small oscillating fan I kept on a nearby table. At first the hammock strings withstood the blades. Then they frayed. Finally they broke and I dropped out the bottom to safety.”

“Fantastic,” said Bullock. Wait till the barracks started talking about close calls and he hit them with that one!

“Strangely enough,” mused Macpherson, “lacing a man’s string hammock with wet rawhide is a traditional way of disposing of tyrants in these parts. The Mandalasian Garotte, they call it.”

“Well, from here on in your worries are over, Doctor,” said Bullock. “I’ve orders to get you across the border safe and sound.”

“All right,” said Macpherson. “I’ve clearly worn out my welcome in Mandalasia. And I can unload you and those two other pieces of excess baggage, Mr. Tang and Mr. Finn, at the border. Now get some rest. I want you fit to travel in the morning.”

“Yours truly has the constitution of an ox,” laughed Bullock. “Ask Kingston Billy Wain wright and his gang of counterfeiters about that time they tricked me into handcuffing myself to their backwoods printing press, little thinking I’d drag it sixteen miles to my motel and my spare set of keys.” Bullock put his wrists together proudly. “See, the right one is an inch longer than—” Macpherson gave a bored yawn and the briefest of apologetic smiles. Bullock didn’t even see the hypodermic coming.

Centuries before, kings and potentates and pilgrims from all over Southeast Asia had taken the Holy Road to the sacred temple city of Batong Wat. Today the jungle has reclaimed the city. And all that remains of the Holy Road is an overgrown path and stretches of heaving cobblestones marked at intervals of roughly a day’s march by small temples intended in ages past for the traveler’s spiritual refreshment.

Macpherson headed the column, machete in one hand, accordion strapped to his back. Bullock hobbled along behind him on crutches and in full Mountie uniform. He had even browned his cast with polish from his survival kit to match his boot. Next came Tang and then Finn. In a brief cast-butting tussle Tang had won Lotus Lane’s make-up kit to carry; Finn, her medical bag. She brought up the rear, looking cool, beautiful, and unattainable.

As Bullock saw his job, he had to protect Macpherson not only from any hostile soldiers they might encounter but also from the mysterious hammock lacer as well. Unless apprehended, would-be murderers invariably tried again. Was Tang the culprit? Was the little Chinese really a Red agent? And what about Finn? Something about the Irishman didn’t quite jell. And last but not least there was Lotus Lane.

“Dr. Lane?” said Macpherson. “She’s been with me for three years. A most satisfactory assistant. A graduate of the school of hard knocks, her contempt for her fellow man is second only to my own.”

Bullock began his investigation by slowing his pace until he was abreast of Tang. “Mr. Tang,” he said, using his official voice, “where were you at the time of the murder attempt?”

“This is not Canada, Bullock,” said the little man. “Your monkey suit and funny hat mean nothing here. But as a token of good faith I will tell you.” He smiled inscrutably. “I was with the beautiful Lotus.”

“I can check that, you know,” said Bullock, deciding to let the crack about his uniform pass.

“Then why would I lie?” smiled Tang. “That leaves only one unaccounted for, doesn’t it? Our Mr. Finn, the phony Irishman. One overhears things. That his name is really Birch Bier and that he’s with the C.I.A. He urged Lotus Lane to run away with him after a certain ‘hit’ had been made. He wants them to grill hamburgers together on some New Jersey patio.” Tang quickened his pace and moved ahead.

Bullock remained deep in thought until a voice at his elbow said, “Faith and begorra, me bucko.”

“Drop the Irish bit, Mr. Birch Bier of the C.I.A.,” said Bullock severely. “Just where were you at the time of the murder attempt?”

Bier was poking at an itch under his cast with a thin stick. He gave Bullock a wink and a nudge. “Kiss and Tell isn’t my style, but if it’s any of your business I was with Lotus Lane. Ask her if you don’t believe me. All right, so I’m here to kill Macpherson. But sneaky stuff like that hammock bit isn’t my way. In fact, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Maynard,” he said, offering his hand; “you keep out of my hair and I’ll make them think his death was an accident so you won’t look bad. But just remember the C.I.A. motto: ‘We always get our man.’ ”

Bullock turned purple. “Now you listen here,” he said through clenched teeth, “ ‘We always get our man’ is the Mountie motto. Good Godfrey, you people have” — he ticked the items off on his fingers — “expense accounts, fancy electronic gear, fat movie parts. At least let us have our—” Bullock stopped dead and looked skyward. “Listen to the birds,” he whispered.

Bier listened. “I don’t hear any birds,” he said.

“Precisely,” said Bullock triumphantly.

Up ahead, Macpherson was signaling them into the bushes. Bullock squatted down behind a particularly unCanadian-looking fern and hoped they hadn’t run into the Neutralists. Macpherson had filled him in on them. “The Neutralists are down on anything foreign,” he had said. “They rove the countryside smashing transistor radios, making Time-Life correspondents eat their ballpoint pens, and burning Marx and Engels in tandem effigy. They’ve sworn to kill me because I won’t make house calls.” For a humanitarian, Macpherson sure knew how to make enemies. If it was the Neutralists their goose was cooked.

There were voices and the sounds of leather and metal on the trail. Seeing Tang and Bier straining to identify the politics of the approaching column, it came to Bullock in a sudden desperate moment that he and Macpherson were just as dead if it was the government forces or the Communist rebels.

Just then from around the bend came heads wearing American-type helmets. Government troops. Bier started to spring but Tang’s looping right, cast and all, thudded squarely against his temple. Bier’s cry of joy died on his lips and he fell softly to the ground. The patrol reached them and a moment later passed by.

They rested. Bier sat up, holding his head in his hands. Tang was trying to scratch by rubbing his cast against a tree.

“Mr. Tang,” scolded Bullock, “in the West we don’t strike a man when he isn’t looking. We warn him. We say, ‘Put up your dukes.’ ”

“Shush!” hissed Macpherson. More voices on the trail. Everyone took cover again. This time the heads that came into sight wore conical wicker hats. The Communist rebels. Bier threw a blind roundhouse swing. The cast caught Tang behind the ear. The rebel column passed by.

“Mr. Bier,” said Bullock reproachfully, “doesn’t anyone say, ‘Put up your dukes’ any more?”

Their progress for the rest of the day was slow and bloody. Three more near-encounters with government patrols cost Bier a tooth, a split lip, and a lump on the back of the head. Rebel patrols left their mark on Tang: a puffy eye, a fat ear, and a nose that bled like a faucet. As dusk gathered between the trees they camped for the night at a small temple beside the trail.

Dinner was a hearty meal concocted by Lotus Lane from water and a can of dehydrated food. Only Bullock refused to partake. “Brought my own,” he said proudly, producing a gray-brown lump. “Pemmican,” he explained. “Equal parts of rendered fat and dried buffalo meat, plus certain herbs and spices I’m not at liberty to reveal, and a healthy handful of Saskatoon berries.” Bullock hacked off a leathery strip and chewed at it. But his enthusiasm was forced. It must have been a bad year for Saskatoon berries.

Tang and Bier cleaned their plates quickly and dragged themselves like birds with broken wings to opposite comers where they fell into the sleep of sheer exhaustion. “We should all get some rest,” said Macpherson. “Tomorrow we’ll reach the Kinkong River valley, a swampy disease-infested no-man’s-land that Mandalasia claims is Bengalia’s and Bengalia insists belongs to Mandalasia.”

Lotus Lane decided to get some fresh air before she turned in. Bullock hobbled out after her. He found her leaning against a tree, deep in thought, her face beautiful in the moonlight. At that moment, as if to add to the scene, from inside the temple Dr. Macpherson’s accordion struck up “Nola.”

Bullock knew he had a way with women. True, the uniform always worked its magic. But he could turn on the old charm, too, whenever he needed it. Bullock flashed a big smile and wagged his finger. “I should be very, very angry with you, Dr. Lane,” he said. “It wasn’t very nice not telling me that Tang was a Red Chinese agent and Bier was C.I.A. and that they’re both here to kill Dr. Macpherson.”

“Men tell beautiful women many things,” said Lotus Lane.

“Just the same,” said Bullock playfully, “you’d just better come clean and tell me where your own political loyalties lie.”

Her eyes flashed in the moonlight. “My father was an American sailor. He abandoned my Mandalasian mother six months before I was born. When her father, a local Communist leader, learned her lover’s nationality he drove us from the house at the height of the monsoon season. Dying of pneumonia, my mother left me on the doorstep of an orphanage run by the Neutralists where I was brought up to respect the Mandalasian life of yore when wives could be bought and sold for two goats and a chicken.

“For supper they fed us a thin rice gruel from a large copper kettle. One night I took my little bowl and walked right up and said, ‘Please, may I have more?’ Punished, I fled to the city where I fell in with a gang of Chinese thieves and pickpockets. I lived as one of them, sleeping with a loaded pistol under my pillow to protect my honor and my share of the booty until I had money enough to sail away to medical school in Switzerland. And here I am. As for my political loyalties, you tell me.”

Bullock was taken aback by her outburst. He cleared his throat. “Let’s just put you down as uncommitted. Next question: where were you at the time of the murder attempt?”

“I was alone in my room all afternoon,” she said.

Bullock scratched his jaw. “Sure you won’t like to reconsider that?” he asked. “You see, if you were with, say, Bier that afternoon, then Tang would be the suspect. And vice versa. On the other hand, if you were alone, then we’ve got three suspects: Tang, Bier, and you. Take it from me, these cases go a lot smoother if you only have one suspect.”

“Sorry,” said Lotus Lane. “Neither of those gentlemen has ever set foot in my room.”

Bullock chewed on his lip and watched her walk back toward the temple. Obviously Tang and Bier were trying to point the finger of guilt at each other. But what made them think Dr. Lane would go along with their stories? Macpherson struck up “Canadian Sunset.” Homesickness was a lump in Bullock’s throat and an ache in his stomach. He wished he was sitting at his own kitchen table across from good old Mavis, his wife. He’d fill up his big teacup and talk things out with her. Yes, a cup of tea and a sandwich or two would go down pretty good right now. Bullock hobbled back to the temple. Before turning in, he’d try the pemmican again.

The morning trail was damp and knee-deep in mist. A weary-eyed Macpherson led the way. “I get these nightmares, Bullock,” he admitted. “The population explosion. People cheek to jowl everywhere you turn.”

“This may sound strange coming from a Mountie,” said Bullock. “But I like people.”

They were making good progress. To insure that it continue, Bullock selected a stout stick. When they met their first patrol he squatted down in the bushes between Tang and Bier and tapped the big stick in his palm. They got the message.

But Bullock’s main preoccupation was the murder attempt. As he hobbled along he tried to re-enact the crime in his mind, imagining himself first as the little Chinese slinking out of the narrow shadows and up onto the veranda, eyes darting like evil almonds, rawhide dripping between his teeth — Bullock shook his head.

He tried again, imagining himself to be the big-nosed American. But it still didn’t work. He tossed his imaginary tangle of string hammock and rawhide aside in disgust. There was just no way a man could lace a string hammock with wet rawhide using only one hand.

Then was it Lotus Lane? Bullock shook his head again. Pretty Mary Lacks Vitamins. That summer Bullock had wangled permission to attend a Mountie seminar: “Murder: Did You Ever Ask Yourself Why?” given by Dr. Montague Dabkin. The celebrated criminologist had insisted that murder motives have remained unchanged since time immemorial: Politics, Money, Love, Vengeance. To help them remember, Dabkin had given a mnemonic sentence: Pretty Mary Lacks Vitamins. Well, Politics was out. And you don’t go into the medical missionary line if you’re interested in Money. Love? Macpherson was hardly God’s gift to women. And Dr. Lane had more motive for Vengeance against others than against a harmless Canadian doctor.

Macpherson broke into Bullock’s thoughts. He signaled everyone to take cover. They squatted down in the bushes and scanned the trail. Who would it be this time? Bullock had taken his place between Tang and Bier. He wagged his stick meanacingly. Then he frowned. The first hat that appeared on the trail was broad-brimmed like his own. Other hats followed. A patrol of Mounties? Bullock grinned. A patrol of Mounties to the rescue!

“Put up your dukes,” said Tang and Bier simultaneously. Both sides of Bullock’s head burst into pain, then darkness rushed in on him.

Bullock’s eyes ached when he cracked them open to the late afternoon sun. He was following Macpherson and the others in a makeshift litter carried by four boys in broad-brimmed hats, plaid neckerchiefs, shorts, and woolen knee socks. A middle-aged Mandalasian, similarly dressed but wearing a whistle, was fanning him with a frond. Boy Scouts. “Good Godfrey,” said Bullock dejectedly. The litter hit the ground with bone-shattering force.

The man with the whistle leaned over Bullock. “Ah, sir, you must excuse the boys,” he said. “You see, ‘good Godfrey’ bears a striking phonetical similarity to the Mandalasian for ‘Put me down this instant or I shall be displeased with you.’ This strange coincidence I have puzzled over more than once.”

He offered Bullock his hand. “Bay Den Pol, at your service,” he said. “The boys and I are on our way to the Boy Scout Jamboree in Rangoon.” In a half whisper he added, “Would you mind returning the boys’ salute? They think you are the Scoutmaster General.”

Bullock snapped off a quick salute. The boys proudly hoisted the litter and started down the trail again. At the next high point of land Bay Den Pol said, “Look, the Kinkong valley. On the other side is the border.”

“Listen,” said Bullock, “no offense meant, but I’ve got some top-level police work to finish up. I’d like to put my thinking cap on, okay?” Bullock folded his arms, furrowed his brow, and settled back in the litter. There would be Embassy people at the border. They’d demand the culprit’s name and expect more from a Mountie than a feeble, “Search me.” He reviewed his thinking from re-enactment of crime to Pretty Mary Lacks Vitamins and found his logic flawless. If that wasn’t bad enough, his leg developed a fierce itch.

“I understand you were set upon by the American and the Chinese gentleman simultaneously,” said Bay Den Pol when it was obvious that Bullock had doffed his thinking cap. “That reminds me of the old Mandalasian folktale of how Krog the Crow and Lopti the Stork, though Natural Enemies, Joined Forces to Steal the Tail of Chee-Chee the Peacock. Have you heard that one?”

Bullock scowled as though he had more important things on his mind. But he listened. He could never resist a good story.

“Well, it came about this way,” said Bay Den Pol. “Each afternoon Chee-Chee the Peacock, resplendent in his magnificent tail and yellow kid gloves, would strut through the forest catching the hearts of the ladies. His amorous successes set the green worm of envy gnawing deep in the vitals of Krog the Crow and Lopti the Stork. From the cornfield Krog would mutter, ‘Fancy Dan.’ From the frog pond Lopti would sneer, ‘Dude.’ And each resolved to steal the magnificent tail for himself.

“Now one stormy night as Lopti peered in through the transom of Chee-Chee’s fashionable pied-a-terre, who should arrive to peek in at the letter slot but Krog. Now Krog and Lopti were natural enemies. After all, the one was black, the other white. The one squat, the other tall. The one had a short beak, the other a long. Yet together they watched as Chee-Chee banked the fire and bolted the door. Then he locked his tail inside a stout clothes press, placed the key between the mattress and the box springs of his bed, blew out the candle, and retired.

“The stork, thinking how he could not gain entrance through the sooty chimney without pointing the finger of guilt at himself, sighed. The crow, thinking the key was tucked far out of reach, sighed. As one man they looked at each other and sealed the bargain with a wink. In a twinkling the crow flew down the chimney and unbolted the door. Then, thanks to his long beak, the stork plucked the key from its hiding place. The two divided up the elegant plumage and went their separate ways.”

They were down on the mud flats now, the litter boys wading knee-deep in soft ooze. Macpherson and the others had crossed a shrunken river channel and reached a ruined temple on a rise of land.

“Noo Noo, my wise old peasant nurse, always delighted in the moral of this story,” said Bay Den Pol, struggling along beside the litter. “ ‘Bay Bay,’ she would say, ‘politics makes strange bedfellows.’ ”

“Good Godfrey!” exclaimed Bullock.

It was almost dark. Bullock stood on one leg in a backwater pool and washed the mud from his uniform as best he could. Bay Den Pol and his Boy Scouts had marched on ahead, promising to call the Canadian Embassy from the first telephone booth across the border. Bullock wanted to look presentable for the press photographers when they arrived.

Well, another case was as good as closed. He imagined the Prime Minister’s surprise at finding him at his old post, guarding the flowerbeds in front of the Parliament Buildings. (“Back so soon, Bullock?” “Mission accomplished, Mr. Prime Minister.” “You’re a wonder, Bullock. We’ve got our eye on you.” “Thank you, sir. Here, let me get that car door—”) With a smile on his face Bullock hobbled back to the temple, stopping only to cut and strip a pole from a nearby stand of bamboo.

His four companions were having after-dinner coffee around a masked fire — tire-tread sandal prints had suggested that Neutralists were in the vicinity. Bullock noted at once that someone had been into his survival kit. If they’d wanted some pemmican, he thought peevishly, all they had to do was ask.

Well, no matter. He took out a small Canadian flag and tied it to the pole. Then, as the others watched with mild interest, he stuck the pole in the ground, saluted the flag, and announced, “I claim this no-man’s-land for the Dominion of Canada.” Accepting a cup of coffee from Lotus Lane with a polite nod, Bullock continued, “And now that this is officially Canadian soil, I arrest you, Tang, and you, Birch Bier, alias Michael Patrick Finn, for attempted murder.”

Tang and Bier groaned. “Yes,” insisted Bullock, “it took two good hands to lace up Dr. Macpherson’s hammock. Your right hand, Bier, and your left, Tang. Like Krog the Crow and Lopti the Stork, though natural enemies, you joined forces to steal the tail of Chee-Chee the Peacock.”

Bullock really had their attention now. “But why you two? Why not Dr. Lane?

I’ll tell you why,” continued Bullock. “If I’ve learned one thing from my years on the Force it’s that your woman murderer never laces her victims up in cocoons of death.”

At that moment, Bier, who had been fighting to keep his eyes open, gave up the battle and slumped over, breathing deeply. Tang also lost interest.

“No,” yawned Bullock, “when my lady turns to murder you can bet she’ll choose a gentler way, something that goes with her natural role as a homemaker. Like poison.” Bullock’s cup clattered to the floor.

“Eh?” said Macpherson groggily. “What was that? Must have dozed off.”

Bullock swayed and tried to work his tongue.

Lotus Lane’s laughter was silver. She stood up, her arms crossed over her beautiful bosom. “You men,” she laughed, “what pompous Romeos, arrogant fools, and posturing ninnies you are! ‘Her natural role as a homemaker,’ indeed. For your information, Bullock, I was the one who tried the Mandalasian garotte. I had intended the armies to kill Macpherson. But I was afraid that with your help he might escape them.”

Lotus smiled and shook her head. “Tang and Bier weren’t trying to give themselves alibis for that afternoon. Each wanted to give me one. Why? Each thought I had tried to murder Macpherson out of love — because I was so impatient to run off with him.” She was laughing helplessly.

“But you don’t understand,” explained Bullock thickly. “You haven’t got a motive.”

“Motive?” said Lotus Lane. “Sic semper tyrannis. I hate all men everywhere because of their suppression of women from the beginning of time.”

Suddenly it was all clear. “I really believe you Women’s Lib people have got a point,” said Bullock. “And I speak for good old Mavis, my wife, when I say that. But why take it out on Dr. Macpherson?”

Lotus Lane uncrossed her arms and revealed the flare gun from Bullock’s survival kit. She pointed it skyward, through a gaping hole in the roof. “This will bring the Neutralists on the double. They’ll find you here sleeping like babies and kill you all, blaming Macpherson’s death on ‘foreign interventionists,’ their idiotic — but conveniently vague — male catch-phrase of the moment. Tomorrow Denmark, India, Rumania, and the other countries that venerate Macpherson as a great humanitarian will condemn the Americans, the Russians, or the Red Chinese — or all three — for the ghastly act. The day after tomorrow Japan, Chile, Albania, and the other countries that venerate Macpherson for his accordion wizardry will blame his death on ideology, on Capitalism or Communism — or both. A week from now the world will be one immense battlefield. Then, when the smoke of battle clears and there are no more soldiers left to die, it will be an immense no-man’s-land.”

“Hear, hear,” said Macpherson approvingly and pitched forward into a deep sleep.

“Then after a bit the world will fill up with womanly gardenlike things again,” continued Lotus Lane. “Grass to overgrow the iron things of war; flowers instead of shot and shell; song birds instead of bugles—”

“But without men you’d all die out,” Bullock insisted.

Lotus Lane gave him a pitying smile. “Thanks to science we don’t even need you for that any more.”

Bullock shuddered like a tree that feels the woodman’s ax. He swayed on his crutches.

“Pleasant dreams, Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” said Lotus Lane, knowing he would instinctively come to attention and throw his shoulders back. The crutches slipped out of his armpits and clattered to the temple floor. Bullock fell over backward, noting before sleep took him that the moonlit hole through which she was pointing the flare gun was shaped like Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.

Lake Huron and Georgian Bay were dawn-gray. Bullock pulled his crutches to him and struggled erect. A few feet away Macpherson was leaning over Lotus Lane’s body while Tang and Bier looked on.

“She’s unconscious,” said Macpherson. “A bruise the size of a four-bit piece over her right eye.”

“What happened?” asked Tang.

Bullock was examining the flare gun. “These babies happen to be a hobby of mine,” he said. “This one’s interesting. Watch.” When he pulled the trigger nothing happened. “Now what does any normal person do?” he asked.

“He looks down the barrel to see what’s stuck,” said Bier. Tang nodded agreement.

“Right,” said Bullock and did just that. A second later the firing pin clicked. “Heads will roll, believe you me,” said Bullock grimly. “This was a personal gift to yours truly from the Prime Minister. He even had the ordinance boys give it a special tune-up. Wait till he hears they botched the job.” Bullock looked at Tang and Bier. “All this means that I can’t arrest you guys.” He nodded at the flag. “But I can still deport you as undesirable aliens.”

“If we go, Macpherson goes,” said Tang. “The Hippocratic Oath says he can’t abandon a patient.”

Macpherson was bathing Lotus Lane’s temples. “You’re all fit as fiddles,” he said. “The casts were just to slow you down a bit. Three against one are stiff odds.” Tang and Bier cried out and scrabbled at the plaster with their fingers. Bullock stood stunned. Macpherson shrugged. “Anyone can rent a Mountie suit, Bullock,” he said.

Tang and Bier were bashing at their casts with rocks. Though Bullock’s leg quivered for attention he took time to advise them. “That’s too short range. Mr. Bier, you work on Mr. Tang’s cast and vice versa. May this be a lesson in international cooperation for you both.” He freed his own leg with a hammer from his survival kit.

A sandy-haired man wearing glasses and a tweed topcoat appeared in the temple doorway. Bay Den Pol and his Boy Scouts were peeking in from behind him. Bullock stopped scratching. “It’s Wickett. Hey, Wickett!” he shouted. They had met several years before while Wickett had been cultural and military attaché at the Canadian Embassy in San Marino. Wickett smiled weakly. His lips were blue.

“I see you ran into the Neutralists,” said Bullock.

Wickett made a face. “I was gagging on my ballpoint pen when the Boy Scouts sent them scurrying off with some crazy story about a secret Coca-Cola bottling plant in the jungle. I—” Wickett saw the flag. He turned dead-white.

Bullock lowered his eyes modestly. “Welcome to Canada East,” he said.

“Bullock,” whispered Wickett, “you didn’t claim this God-forsaken flood land for Canada?”

Bullock, grinning from ear to ear, nodded.

“But this makes us imperialists,” said Wickett, struggling to control his voice. “And we’ll have to build a post office and rent a gunboat to protect Canadian interests.” He whistled through his teeth. “Boy, wait till Ottawa hears this one!”

Crestfallen, Bullock mumbled, “Couldn’t we just unclaim it?” He made the motion of pulling a flagpole out of the ground.

Wickett shook his head. “We’re stuck with it. Geography books would be in a heck of a mess if countries could claim land one minute and unclaim it the next. Well,” he added, unslinging a camera, “I still need some pictures so the folks back home can see that no harm’s come to their beloved doctor.”

Macpherson was fussing around Lotus Lane. She was sitting up, her back against a worn statue of the serpent Naga. “This is Dr. Lane, an attempted murderer,” said Bullock, by way of an introduction.

“I am?” said Lotus Lane vaguely, touching the bandage above her eye.

“Amnesia,” explained Macpherson. “Tragic, isn’t it? I had never really appreciated the true depths of her contempt for mankind. And then to have it blotted out in a single blow! But the Scouts have volunteered to carry her to my new hospital. There I will restore her precious memory. After that, who knows? True, she sees man as her natural enemy. But the world of missionary medicine is a lonely place. Together we might steal some happiness from it.”

“Like Krog the Crow and Lopti the Stork,” smiled Bullock.

Cocking an uneasy eyebrow at the Mountie, Wickett waved his camera. “Some pictures, Doctor. Okay? Let’s start with one of you and your accordion.” The shutter was soon clicking away.

Those were the next day’s front-page pictures around the world. But there is another one sitting in a frame among the mementoes on top of the Bullock television set. Standing there in the over-exposed interior of a Mandalasian temple are, left to right: Tang and his little red book; Bay Den Pol and three saluting Boy Scouts (the fourth was holding the camera); Dr. Macpherson and his accordion; a seated and blank-faced Lotus Lane; Bullock with one foot bare; an uncomfortable Wickett; and Bier with an unlit cigarette between his teeth.

As for all the smiles, Bullock had just called on everyone to say “Cheese” — just as a moment or two before he had shouted, “Listen, everybody! Before we go our separate ways let’s have a shot with all of us in it. For old time’s sake.”

“The Little Dark Room