The Curse of the “Star”

VI

Mal had accepted the revolver and the responsibility with a blandness that had no conscious thought behind it. He was now being carried along in the course of events with a numbed acceptance. There was an unreality about it, and he tried to concentrate on the impressions his senses received in order to recreate reality.

The rising moon flooded the beach with silver and made the waves molten. Far out in the bay a deeper shadow hinted at the spot where the Bjornsan Star had sunk after sliding off the reef. His shoes made small scuffing sounds in the dry sand. Behind them the boys padded along, talking to each other in hushed liquid tones. The sea against the outer reef was more vibration than sound. Phosphorescence glimmered through the smaller waves that licked up along the packed sand.

De Beauharnais used a long tireless stride and Mal felt the pull of muscles in his thighs.

Far ahead and to the left Mal saw the white hard spot of light from the Coleman lantern de Beauharnais had loaned to the encampment of the nine men. As he saw it, they heard, above the soft sounds of the sea, a distant shout and then the flat snapping sound of shots fired in the open air, three of them in rapid succession.

De Beauharnais yelled orders to the five boys and broke into a lithe ran. Mal had difficulty keeping up with him. His hand was sweating on the cool grip of the revolver. As he ran de Beauharnais turned and said in almost a conversational tone, “I will go along the beach. You head toward the encampment and fire into the air and try to drive him down to me. If he tries to stand against you, find cover and try to shoot his legs.”

The nightmare feeling of unreality did not diminish. As they neared the light Mal, obeying like an automaton, swerved left and ran directly toward the light. He did not realize he was shouting until he heard his own voice in his ears.

He topped the small rise and saw two figures, directly under the lantern hung by a taut wire from tree to tree, rolling and struggling. Another figure lay ominously still a few yards away. The other men were standing nearby and one of them kicked heavily at the two struggling figures on the ground. They all moved back as Mal shot twice into the air, the heavy revolver jumping his hand.

Mal shouted to de Beauharnais to come. Dolan rolled onto the top of the other figure, casting a mighty shadow in the hard blue-white light. Roger Temble was underneath and Dolan’s two big hands were locked around the smaller man’s throat. Dolan’s arms were so long that Temble could not reach Dolan’s face. Already Temble’s motions had grown loose and languid.

The automatic glinted in the hand of one of the men nearby. Mal aimed the revolver and the man hurriedly tossed the automatic into the dust at Mal’s feet. He snatched it up and yelled, “Bob! Bob, let go of him!”

Dolan gave no sign that he had heard. His eyes were squeezed shut and the corded muscles stood out on his bare arms. Temble no longer struggled.

Mal hesitantly struck Dolan over the head with the barrel of the heavy revolver. Dolan shook his big head. Mal, as de Beauharnais came up behind him, hit Dolan again, much harder. The big man sagged. It took a third blow before he dropped and even then the big fingers had to be pried off Temble’s throat.

Both men were unconscious. Mal gave the automatic to de Beauharnais who slipped it into his pocket and went over to the other man who lay face down in the dust. One hand scrabbled spasmodically at the dust, as de Beauharnais gently rolled him over. It was Tom Branch, his pale eyes wide and frightened, and dust caked on his lips. There were two bleeding holes in the center of the thick chest and a third one high, near the base of the throat. Each time Branch breathed the air whistled and bubbled in the hole at the base of his throat.

“Amazing vitality,” de Beauharnais said calmly.

Blood clogged the throat hole and gouted from the side of Branch’s mouth. His body went into sustained tremble, from head to foot, and then he lay still, the eyes no longer frightened, staring instead at a fixed point an incalculable distance away.

“What happened?” de Beauharnais asked of the nearest man, who made a gesture to show that he didn’t understand. By then Temble was forcing himself up into a sitting position. Every breath made an audible rasp in his bruised throat. He gagged, and began to paw at the ground on either side of him. “Glasses,” he said in a husky whisper. “Glasses.”

Mal found them, off to one side. Both lenses were shattered, the bows bent. He kicked them over to Temble, who felt them with his fingers. “Can’t see without them,” he whispered.

Dolan came alive with no intermediate period of helplessness. One moment he lay still, the next he was on his feet, rocking a bit, fingering the top of his head ruefully, his green eyes full of comprehension. He looked hard at Temble who sat like a chubby helpless child, the broken glasses in his thick hand.

“One for the books, lad,” Dolan said. “He came up roaring, yelling for Tom and me. Thank God, Tom was closer and got out first. By the time he tried to swing toward me I was halfway down his throat. I tumbled him over and I don’t remember much after that.” He glanced over at Branch. “Dead, eh?”

Temble still could not speak above a whisper. “And you should be dead too, Dolan. Both of you should be side by side. No power on earth is going to cheat me out of what’s mine.”

“I happen to be a power on earth at the moment,” de Beauharnais said briskly. “Kindly get on your feet, Doctor, and walk back to my bungalow.”

Temble got up. He walked with the extreme care of the grievously near-sighted deprived of glasses.

“You will come also,” de Beauharnais said to Dolan. “Appoint one of these men in charge. Tell them no one is to leave this encampment.”

The boys were not in evidence during the long walk back down the beach to the bungalow. Mr. Gopala sat alone at the table, the revolver beside his plate.

He smiled. “I sent the lady to her room. I thought she might be safer there, as I’ve never discharged a firearm in my life.”

De Beauharnais said, “Kindly remain seated, Mr. Gopala. Doctor, please sit where you were before. Mr. Dolan, pull that chair over to the end of the table and sit there. And you, Mr. Atkinson. Kindly take your place.”

The Frenchman sat down at the head of the table and delicately dusted his hands. “Now then, we must talk sense. A great deal of sense. I am, by hobby a mathematician. This equation contains an unknown factor and until I know what it is, I cannot solve it. The unknown is a random factor leading to unpredictable variations in the behavior of this small group.”

“It’s time to talk business,” Dolan said. “I agree.”

The Frenchman looked down the table toward Dolan. “Proceed, please.”

“It’s pretty clear, isn’t it, that the doctor here is a murderer, M’sieur. I mean there's no way for him to get out of paying a penalty.”

“Just a moment,” Roger Temble said, peering at Dolan. “Don’t go too fast. De Beauharnais is a man who will understand my rights to...”

“Be still!” the Frenchman said. “I am listening to Mr. Dolan. And kindly do not tell me what I will and what I won’t understand. I shall make a complete report of this affair, including the statements of all witnesses, and I shall turn the report, the statements and Dr. Temble over to the authorities so that he may be taken from here and given a proper trial.”

Dolan pursed his lips. “Now I wonder if we couldn’t persuade you to take care of the justice angle yourself, the way you did that first morning we were here.”

“That was a case affecting my people. This doctor killed one of you. I cannot regard the two affairs in the same light, obviously.”

Dolan rested his big freckled fists on the edge of the table and leaned forward.

“I want to make a deal, M’sieur. You know the doctor is a murderer. If you can kill him, or have one of your boys kill him while trying to escape, I can make a dream of Paris come true for you. I can put a million dollars right in your hands, no questions asked. How does that sound?”

“Wait, wait!” Roger Temble said shrilly.

“Be still!” de Beauharnais said. No boy swung the overhead fan. The black shadow of the hanging blade was sharp and clear on the white cloth, as clear as the blade of a guillotine. The seconds passed, one by one.

“And what,” said de Beauharnais, “if I should prove to be exceptionally greedy?”

Dolan did not answer. Mr. Gopala’s eyes were like black buttons. Mal stirred restlessly. De Beauharnais had neglected to relieve him of the heavy revolver. It was in the waistband of his trousers, digging into him uncomfortably.

“Once Temble is dead,” Dolan said soothingly, “we can discuss terms more carefully.”

“Once Temble is dead, you would have a lever to use against me, Mr. Dolan. Is that not true? I would have exceeded my responsibilities. The price might go down rather than up.”

Gopala, like a spectator at an intriguing game, shifted his eyes back and forth from one speaker to the next.

“If you wanted to be very greedy,” said Dolan, “it wouldn’t be much of a trick for you to... eliminate Temble, me, Gopala, Atkinson and the woman. I suspect that you might not be willing to stomach such a wholesale procedure.”

Mal heard Sara’s light step approaching. As the others looked toward the door he eased the revolver out of his belt and laid it between his thighs, moving his chair a bit closer to the table so as to conceal it from Gopala on his right.

Sara was pale. She halted in the doorway and he could see the gladness in her eyes as she saw him. “I... heard your voices,” she said hesitantly.

“Sit down, my dear,” Dr. Temble said in a husky whisper. “Sit down and listen to these gentlemen bargain over me. Dolan has offered de Beauharnais a million dollars as a fee for killing me.”

“He shot and killed Branch,” Dolan said, his tone indicating that it was ample explanation for everything.

Sara slid into her chair. “I... I don’t understand.”

De Beauharnais smiled at her. “Madame, these men are most amusing. I gather that there is a treasure of some sort on that ship. The ship rests in my bay, at my island of Dakeet. They are stupid to think they have any bargaining power at all. If it is there, I shall find it and I will handle it as an honest official should. There is no question of killing your husband, no matter what Mr. Dolan may have thought.”

“As an honest official, you will see that it is given to me,” Temble said.

“It is yours?” the Frenchman asked politely.

Mal caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see that Dolan had moved his big feet under him for balance. The hands were tight on the arms of the heavy chair. Dolan leaned forward, a slow inch at a time. The intent was clear. If he could spring the length of the table those massive hands could snap the Frenchman’s neck like a twig. And it would be, in a sense, an answer to all Dolan’s problems.

Mal felt the awakening inside him, the sudden urge to stop being a spectator. Across from him was the woman who would give point to any direct action he took.

He slipped his finger through the guard and said, “Dolan!”

The big man stopped his slow movement. In the silence Mal thumbed back the trigger of the double action revolver. The click was surprisingly loud.

“Sit where you are, Dolan. Don’t move. You too, de Beauharnais. And don’t call your boys. All of you sit still. And don’t look so pleased, Mr. Gopala. I want some answers from you. Where were you when Welling fell or was thrown down the ladderway?”

De Beauharnais looked puzzled. Gopala reached out and butted his cigarette in a saucer. “I believe I was attending Dr. Temble in his illness.”

“And where were you when Gina Farrow’s throat was cut, Mr. Gopala?”

The slim brown hands placed another cigarette in the filter holder. “If I remember correctly I must have already reached the bridge. I was ahead of her. I am glad to know precisely how it was done.”

“Throat cut!” Dr. Temble whispered. His eyes were wide. Sara shut her eyes and leaned her head back against the back of the high chair. Her full underlip trembled.

“Dolan!” Mal said, “Did you and Branch have an outrigger canoe hidden away?”

Dolan looked dully at Mal. “Hidden? Hell, no! Drawn right up on the beach near the encampment. We used it to get out to the Star.”

Mal smiled at Mr. Gopala. “Now maybe you’ll explain a bit to us. I think it had better be a pretty good explanation. I think that it had better be good enough to clear yourself of Gina Farrow’s death.”

Mr. Gopala sucked smoke into his lungs and suddenly ceased to look, in his boo-gay clothes, like any sort of a comic figure. The button eyes looked like flint rock.

“My name, of course, is not Gopala.” He looked directly at Dr. Temble. “My brother spoke to me of his plan to get our monies out of Pakistan. He spoke of this honorable Dr. Temble, who, out of the goodness of his heart, and for a small fee, would aid him, I cautioned my brother. He would not listen. He should have listened. If he had, he would not have been struck over the head and tumbled into the stream at night.”

“He was a stubborn man, and a gullible man, but I was fond of him. I knew of his death two days after it happened. I examined the body. It was no great feat to book passage on the same boat as you, Dr. Temble. Money speaks loudly in any tongue. After I studied you and your wife and your two... helpers, and that other woman, the greedy one, I was prepared to act.”

He smiled at the cigarette in his hand. “Though I am not, in many ways, a devout Hindu, I do ascribe to our rules against the taking of life. So, much as I might have enjoyed it, I could not work directly. Mr. Branch proved to be an easy problem. I had merely to ask him if he had been playing the American game of poker. He said that he had not. I then told him that I must have made a mistake, because I was certain that I had heard his friend, Mr. Welling, promising to Dr. Temble that Mr. Branch would cash in his chips before they reached Los Angeles. Mr. Branch was quite unexpectedly clever about the mode of death, I thought.”

“It is easy to play the part of the slightly stupid person who overhears interesting fragments of conversation. Dr. Temble, you will remember my speaking to you of seeing the Farrow woman and Mr. Branch in amorous closeness in the night on the boat deck and hearing her say something to Mr. Branch about 'poisoning the old fool’. Then I waited to see which one you would remove. It was an interesting wait. I rather thought you overdid the part where you demanded to know what had become of her. She was behind you on the life line. An excellent opportunity in all the confusion. I assume you were motivated by jealousy as well as fear.”

“You devil!” Temble whispered.

“And it was not difficult in your nervous condition to make you attack Mr. Branch and Mr. Dolan. I rather hoped that Branch would die and Dolan would escape. So you see I got my wish. Now Mr. Atkinson has brought all this to a head sooner than I had hoped. I rather thought he was beginning to consider me as a factor. Now, of the original five only Dr. Temble and you, Mrs. Temble, remain. I could not have him kill you or you him as I have learned to consider you as an innocent party to this adventure of his, motivated by a rather questionable loyalty. And, Mr. Dolan, you are merely a greedy fool. Your god is luck. But all your life it hasn’t been bad luck which has brought on catastrophe, merely bad judgment. It has been a most interesting game.”

“You talk as though it were over, Gopala,” Dolan said slowly.

Gopala shrugged. “Isn’t it?”

“There is the treasure,” Dolan said.

“I shouldn’t worry about that, Mr. Dolan. My brother wished the treasure transported to Calcutta and put in the vault of Lloyd’s Bank there. I saw to it that his wishes were fulfilled. Our family wealth never left Calcutta. It was removed while the Bjornsan Star was still at the river dock. An intermediary explained the situation to Captain Paulus and gave him a small gift in return for his cooperation. If, Mr. Dolan, for the sake of a treasure which was never on the ship I could have encouraged you to kill Dr. Temble, I would have... how do you say it... racked up a perfect score...”

Dr. Temble sprang to his feet, knocking his chair over backward. He screamed at Gopala, “You lie! You lie!”

Gopala looked up at him with unconcealed amusement. “Poor little man,” he murmured. “Poor little professor.”

Temble wheeled before anyone could guess his intent and ran from the room. De Beauharnais stood up. “Why don’t you let him go?” Gopala said. “He can do no harm, except to himself.”

Dolan put his face in his hands. After a long moment he looked up. “I’ve done nothing I should lose my ticket for, have I?” he said defiantly.

“You might even be commended for beaching the ship here,” Gopala said.

Dolan walked heavily to the doorway and out into the night.

Gopala said, with striking tenderness, “Mrs. Temble, this has all been most difficult for you. I am sorry that I had to be the one to allow you to find out that your husband was capable of killing a woman.”

Sara managed a smile. “I really don’t think it matters. I really don’t think it has mattered for a long time. I think I will go to bed now. Good night, gentlemen.”

The squat, sturdy trading vessel churned through the placid sea. Malcolm stood on the afterdeck beside Sara, looking back toward Dakeet, low on the horizon.

“You’ll be able to forget, Sara,” he said.

She glanced at him. “There would be more to forget, Mal, if you hadn’t turned me away when you did, so that I couldn’t see it happen. What do you suppose he was after?”

Mal shrugged. “I don’t know. Some crazy idea of diving down into the hold himself to prove that Gopala was lying, that Gopala was trying some trick. But he was clumsy with that outrigger canoe and his eyesight was so bad that when he tumbled out, he probably didn’t even notice the band of shovelnose sharks that had come in through the gap in the reef. It didn’t last long. The way to think of him, darling, is to remember how, in the beginning, he was good to you. But there was madness in him ever since he got his hands on that treasure.”

There was a polite cough behind them. They both turned. Mr. Gopala, wearing a wine red shirt from A. Hayaka’s stock, and a pair of white duck trousers too large for him, beamed at them. “This one,” he said to Sara, “is a good man, but with a tiredness in his soul. You will bring him back to life, you know. He will grow from your strength, but it will take a long time.”

Mal frowned. “You’re a pleasant little guy in some ways, but you’ve got a knack of keeping your nose in other people’s affairs.”

Mr. Gopala’s smile was not dented. “Quite true.” He pulled a small chamois bag up out of his shirt. It was tied around his neck by a leather thong. He reached into it with two thin brown fingers and pulled out a green stone the size of a hazelnut.

He held it out to Sara and put it in her hand. His smile grew broader. “You see, there is always some treasure. Not much, maybe. But a little. It may be only my conscience speaking. Or it may be that I yearn to be young again. It is for you. For both of you. There is a curse on it, however. If you should ever separate, it will turn to glass. And the longer you stay together, the deeper will grow the green fire in its depths.”

He bowed ceremoniously and turned away.

“How deep can we make that fire, dearest?” she said.

“Deeper than deep,” he answered as she stood tall and proud and unafraid beside him.