Bombay Mail, page 19
Hoyt opened the bottom drawer of his desk, pushed aside a loaded revolver, and lifted out a leather frame. Marvin noticed that the frame was moldy, as was all leather that had been neglected during the monsoon, but that the revolver was freshly oiled. He reached for the photograph and with his thumb wiped off the greenish tropical fungus clouding the glass until he could make out the features of a rather pretty girl. Her hair was of some vague light color that the photographer had made decidedly blond in spots by tricks in lighting and focus. There were also luscious high-lights on the lips, not at all compatible with the outline of the mouth, which was young and trusting, nor with the big, wondering eyes. The girl was not a babe in arms, however. Marvin drew this conclusion from the poise of her head, which was sure, proud, almost imperious. He was glad of that.
“You’d better get going, Lee.” Hoyt reached for the photograph. “Good luck with Evelyn.”
“Thanks,” said Marvin with a wry grin. “What shall I tell her?”
“Anything you want.”
“Shall I be very blunt and tell her that you’re getting married tomorrow?”
“May as well. She’ll have to find out.”
Marvin still hesitated. “And what shall I do with her, after I’ve broken the news?”
“Oh, yes.” Hoyt peeled off a fifty-rupee note from a fat bank roll. “Better take her to the Grand Hotel and put her up. But keep her away from me—at least until after the wedding.”
“I’ll try,” said Marvin. “But if—”
“No ifs,” interrupted Hoyt, smiling with all his teeth, while his eyes grew even darker with hopeless horror. “Hurry, or you’ll miss the boat. Don’t forget my bachelor dinner’s at nine.”
Without listening to Marvin’s answer, Hoyt pushed him toward the door. Marvin went out. As he crossed the outer office, he acknowledged with a preoccupied nod the beaming salutation of Babu Gundranesh Dutt. He also nodded, on general principles, to Henry Kobayashi and to Chitterji Rao, who sat uneasily in a rattan armchair and fidgeted with the line of jet buttons that bisected the front of his long, high-collared black coat. The household officer of His Highness did not change the impersonal expression of his bulging eyes, the whites of which were as blue as skimmed-milk.
The Hindu’s stare gave Marvin a queer sensation of cold at the pit of his stomach as he hurried downstairs. Whether it was the eyes of Chitterji Rao, the sly smirk of Henry Kobayashi, the crimson rage of Kurt Julius, or the ill-concealed terror of Hoyt himself, Marvin left the office with the definite impression that Harrison Hoyt was at last being sucked down into the quicksands he had so cleverly skirted for so long.
At the curb Marvin hailed a dilapidated taxi.
“Kidderpore Docks,” he told the driver, a Sikh with a square black beard.
Chapter Two
DIRTY WORK, SANITARY STYLE
A soft, hot rain was falling as Marvin’s taxi honked its way along Chowringhee to Sir James Outram’s statue, then cut across the Maidan to Red Road. It was the last of the Monsoon rains and would be followed, after a few steamy autumn weeks characterized chiefly by the annual invasion of green flies, by the period known technically as the “cold weather” because the temperature sometimes fell below seventy at night. Elsewhere in Calcutta people were hailing the end of the Monsoon with considerable enthusiasm, because practically the entire social calendar of the city is crowded into the three months between the advent of the green flies and the arrival of the first burning days of February.
Lee Marvin, however, was occupied with less pleasant thoughts. As the rain pattered on his khaki topee, he was meditating upon the disagreeable nature of the mission before him. He was also cursing his predicament of being under obligations to a man whom he thoroughly disliked and yet pitied as well. Cursing, of course, was futile. The fact remained that Marvin had gone swimming in the surf at Puri, nearly a year ago, and he had been drinking champagne, and he had got a cramp, and Hoyt had pulled him out to safety. There was nothing particularly heroic in Hoyt’s action, since the surf was rather quiet that night. But there was no denying that if Hoyt hadn’t done what he did, Lee Marvin would probably have drowned. And after all, a man can’t refuse to do a favor for a person who has saved his life, even a fairly obnoxious person. At least, a man like Lee Marvin couldn’t refuse. And Harrison Hoyt knew it and took advantage of it.
Harrison Hoyt was a shrewd, curly-haired New Yorker with no humor in his dark eyes, but a great propensity for getting his long, sharp nose into other people’s affairs. He had been a press agent; even after the birth of that glorified creature, the Public Relations Counsel, Hoyt had still remained a press agent—which shows how little dignity he possessed. But what he lacked in dignity he made up in enterprise. He had come to India as a ghost writer for Kurt Julius, the buyer of wild animals. Julius, finding himself practically the only important middleman in elephants and tigers who had neither a book nor a movie to his credit, had hired Hoyt to put him into literature. That was two years ago. Hoyt had come out with Kurt Julius on his annual cold-weather visit, and had not gone back since.
Calcutta, Hoyt found, was a fertile field for a bright young advertising man. Publicity in India was in its infancy. The British in the East had too great an Emersonian confidence in the quality of their mousetraps. They needed someone like Hoyt to pave that path through the woods and set up neon signs along the way. So Hoyt opened a publicity office of his own. He built up a strange and wonderful clientele. Julius, of course, was still his client when he came each winter. Then there were a few wealthy Indians, anxious to improve their relations with the British raj by favorable press notices, a Parsi promoter, a few rich Bengali race-horse owners, and, strangely enough, Englishmen and even Englishwomen, who retained him professionally while despising him socially. He might just as well have been in trade, for all he was ever invited to a Government House garden party. It was even rumored, over the tea cups at Firpo’s and Peliti’s and the Tollygunj Gymkhana, that Hoyt must be indulging in petty blackmail to secure some of his clients. Lee Marvin could not verify these rumors, but he was ready to believe them, in view of the financial advantage to which Hoyt was turning Marvin’s own sense of gratitude. Only last week Hoyt had asked to borrow another thousand rupees.
“Look here,” Marvin had protested. “You’re already into me for seven thousand dibs, and you keep on spending money as if you hadn’t a debt in the world. You’re living in a grand manner that I couldn’t afford myself.”
“That’s just swank for business reasons,” said Hoyt. “Anyhow, saving your life is worth more than seven thousand rupees, isn’t it?”
“Of course, if you put it on that basis. I thought you were asking for a loan. Apparently I’m paying salvage fees on my own carcass.”
“Not at all. You’re making a down payment on the Bosa pearl.”
“The Bosa pearl?”
“I see you know it.”
“Naturally. The Maharajah of Jharnpur’s—?”
“What’s it worth?”
“Let’s see—” Marvin made mental calculations. The Bosa pearl was at least a hundred-grainer. “Roughly, about ten thousand sterling,” he said.
“If you’re discreet—and play ball with me—I can get it for you for five.”
Marvin had smiled. The Bosa pearl for five thousand sterling, and he could practically write his own ticket with Orfèvre, Ltd. The well-upholstered executive chair he had been vaguely promised in the Paris branch, at least; possibly even a better boost to New York. But he was not counting on it, despite Hoyt’s relations with the Maharajah of Jharnpur. Very likely Hoyt was merely talking an extra thousand rupees out of the good-natured Marvin. The Bosa pearl was probably a figment of his active imagination, Marvin mused, while this girl he was on his way to meet was a real problem.
Marvin’s taxi arrived at the Kidderpore docks just as the Bangalore was churning fresh mud from the bottom of the brown Hooghly, preparatory to warping alongside her pier. Marvin hurried through the customs sheds and reached the bulkhead in time to see Evelyn Branch standing at the rail of the incoming ship. He recognized her from the photograph—the same, proud carriage of her blond head; a little more so, even. From a distance the outlines of her full lips seemed less young and trusting, too. The girl had evidently grown up some since Hoyt’s picture was taken. She seemed capable of sharp answers. Marvin was glad of that. He would rather have curses than tears.
Evelyn Branch was scanning the faces of the small crowd on the pier, obviously looking for Harrison Hoyt. She leaned her elbows on the rail, her white dress molded against her by the wind that swept the river.
The gangplank was hoisted aboard. In a few minutes Evelyn Branch came down.
Marvin touched her arm.
“Welcome to India, Miss Branch,” he said.
The girl turned, her lips parted with joyous expectancy. She was ready to fall into his arms. When she saw him, her eyes clouded with puzzled disappointment. They were the same big wondering eyes of the photograph. Marvin gallantly risked sunstroke and took off his topee.
“Did you just speak to me?” asked Evelyn Branch.
“I did, Miss Branch.”
“But—do I know you?”
“You do not, Miss Branch. But if you’ll come over this way, so that I may help you clear the customs, I’ll explain.”
“I’m sorry. I was expecting—”
“I know, Miss Branch.” Marvin put on his topee and took the girl’s arm. “You see, I’m a friend of Harrison Hoyt.”
“Where—?” The girl stopped dead in her tracks. There was anguish in her voice. She was afraid to finish her question.
“He was unable to come, Miss Branch,” said Marvin. He didn’t look at her. He started her walking again. They had reached the hot gloom of the customs shed before she said sharply, “Why?”
“Temporarily incapacitated,” said Marvin. “Nothing serious, of course. One of the many minor but annoying visitations which we in the tropics—”
“Please tell me the truth,” interrupted the girl, a little breathless.
“Do you mean to tell me to my face that I’m not a convincing liar?” It was positively wicked, being facetious on the threshold of a tragic moment, but Marvin couldn’t help it. It was the only way he could keep himself from suddenly running out on the whole disagreeable business.
“Well?” Evelyn was growing impatient. “Is this one of Harrison’s little jokes?”
“It’s no joke, I assure you.” Be brutal, Marvin was telling himself; that’s the kindest way. “You see, Hoyt is getting married tomorrow.”
Evelyn Branch started to smile, as though to say, Then he did get my radiogram after all, and he’s rushing marriage preparations. The smile did not materialize. A peculiar blank expression came over her face. Quick, Marvin, the coup de grace.
“He’s marrying a rather unpleasant person named Antoinette Vrai,” he said.
Evelyn Branch did not gasp, sway, or burst into tears. With her unfinished smile still on the ends of her lips, she looked right through Marvin into another world, a far-away world peopled by friends and hopes and ambitions, cut off from her by the seven seas. She was completely oblivious of the bustle of stewards, Eurasian customs inspectors marking luggage with chalk hieroglyphics, unsanitary Ooria coolies struggling with bags and boxes, hotel runners, helpless passengers. Evelyn seemed suddenly very much alone, yet she was not forlorn. She seemed to Marvin very brave and charmingly determined. Then she began to laugh—not hysterically or sardonically, but softly, just as though her tragic, futile trip halfway around the earth to marry a man who belonged to another woman was a tremendous joke on her.
“I guess I’m just a damned fool,” she said at last.
From that moment Marvin ceased to act for Harrison Hoyt. He was no longer making the best of an unpleasant duty. He was sympathetically and sincerely interested in the personal problem of an engaging, if too trusting, young woman, when he said:
“I wouldn’t say that. You’re not a mind reader. You didn’t know he was marrying someone else, did you?”
“Of course not. Why do you suppose I came out?”
“Did you have any inkling that— I mean, did Harrison Hoyt tell you not to come to India?” Marvin asked.
The girl hesitated an instant. She gave Marvin a quick, sharp glance, as though she were seeing him as a person for the first time, making a split-second appraisal, weighing his motives.
“No,” she said, almost immediately.
“Then you’d better go right back home—brutal as it may sound.”
“Home?” Evelyn Branch laughed nervously. “I can’t— unless steamer tickets grow on trees in this lush climate. It took all my hard-earned cash to get out here. I was so confident that—” Her voice failed. For the first time the hopeless pathos of her predicament seemed to touch her.
“I’ll stake you to a ticket,” said Marvin impetuously.
“No, thanks.” Pathetic? Cold as ice, now. Haughty. A little indignant, even. “Don’t think for a moment that I’d accept money from Harrison Hoyt. Tell him he doesn’t have to buy me off; I won’t start trouble. And I don’t want pity money.”
“I wasn’t speaking for Hoyt. I was speaking for myself.”
“Oh.” Again that quick, sharp glance. “Then you’re a little premature. I don’t rebound quite that quickly.”
“Thank you,” said Marvin, “for overestimating my seductive enterprise. But I really never imagined my manly appeal to be quite so instantaneously infallible.”
“I’ll apologize,” said the girl, “if you’ll explain why a perfect stranger would make such a generous proposal— without strings.”
“In the first place, I’m not perfect,” Marvin began. Then he stopped. Why indeed? It was difficult to analyze the reasons behind his impulsive offer. He would have to explain what the clean, subtle charm of a girl fresh from the temperate zone could do to a man who for years had seen youth only in brown women, or in pale, washed-out white women who had been made listless by the tropics and vain by the exaggerated adulation of a five-to-one preponderance of males. He would have to explain how the mere sight of her had stirred in him the hungry interplay of starved emotions, the urge of forgotten chivalry. Before he could do any explaining at all, Evelyn Branch said:
“If you’ll excuse me—I think my baggage is all ashore.”
“Yes, of course.” Marvin made an abrupt descent into reality. Unbidden, he helped the girl through the customs formalities.
She was locking her trunks when a fellow passenger approached her—a bronzed, square-jawed, stockily built man who wore crisp khaki and carried a swagger stick. While he was shaking hands with Evelyn Branch his insolent gray eyes were calmly cataloguing the details of Lee Marvin’s appearance.
“Mr. Hoyt show up?” he asked, still looking at Marvin.
“No,” said Evelyn without wincing.
“Are you looking for Mr. Hoyt?” Marvin asked.
“Not particularly,” said the man with the square jaw. “I guess I know where to find him. Are you going to the Grand, Miss Branch?”
“She is,” said Marvin, scowling. He had taken an instant and instinctive dislike to the girl’s shipboard friend.
“Oh, Colonel Linnet,” the girl interposed, “may I present Mr.—Mr.—”
“Marvin. Lee Marvin.”
“Howdy,” said Colonel Linnet without shaking hands. He turned immediately to the girl. “Well, I’ve got to rush off. See you later, sister.”
As he walked away, Marvin noticed that he wore a gray glove on his left hand, which hung motionless at his side as though it were artificial.
“I don’t think you’d better go to the Grand after all,” said Marvin, watching Linnet disappear. “The Great Eastern will be preferable.”
“They’re the best hotels in town, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m not going to either. Too expensive. I’m going to a boarding-house.”
“You can’t do that,” Marvin protested. “The Europeans in India have a caste system that beats anything the Hindus ever invented. You’ve got to keep up—”
“Nonsense,” said Evelyn Branch. “What’s a decent boarding-house?”
“Well—” Marvin capitulated. “There’s Mrs. Pereira’s. At least that’s clean.”
“That’s where I’m going. Taxi?”
“I’ll see that you’re settled,” said Marvin.
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not. Thanks, just the same, but I—I think I want to be alone.”
“I understand. Perhaps you’ll let me come to see you when you get established. I might be able to help you with your plans.”
“My plans are all made,” Evelyn declared. “I expect to be very busy.”
“I hope I’m not inquisitive,” said Marvin. “But you’re not counting on getting a job, are you?”
“Why not? I’m a pretty good secretary….”
“Secretary?” Marvin shook his head. “Secretaries are eight annas a dozen in Calcutta. They’re a glut on the market,” he said. “You’ll starve to death.”
“I won’t starve,” said Evelyn. “I have—other plans. Thank you for the nice, sanitary way you’ve done Harry Hoyt’s dirty work. Good-by.”
Marvin gave the Sikh taxi-driver the address of Mrs. Pereira’s pension. He stood a moment watching the taxi jerk into gear and rattle off in a cloud of hot dust. He could see the girl’s little Bangkok hat above the back of the seat. Her head was still tilted at a proud, self-confident angle. It would be, he surmised, for another minute or so. She would wait until she was quite out of sight before giving way to her tears.
Chapter Three
NO LOVE LOST
Lee Marvin, free, redheaded, and thirty-one, had come to India originally as a hunter of buried treasure. He had not come bearing a secret map, a story of long-dead pirates, and a pick-and-shovel. His equipment consisted of an education in mineralogy and a letter-of-credit from the hard-headed, long-armed firm of Orfèvre, Ltd., international jewelers of London, Paris, Amsterdam, and New York. His treasure quest was some of the three billion dollars’ worth of gold which India has swallowed up in past generations.
