Bengal Fire, page 2
“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.
The Indian peasant shuns banks and puts his savings into gold bracelets, anklets, nose ornaments, toe rings, and ear studs. When his anatomy provides no more room for his portable wealth, he buys gold and buries it. When half the world began to slide off the gold standard and the price of the yellow metal started climbing, gold began to come out of the ground in India. And Orfèvre, Ltd., sent Lee Marvin out to buy it.
Marvin also had his eye out for fine examples of native craftsmanship—the artistic product of the skilled jewelers of Bhutan and the filigree gold of Cuttack. He made occasional trips to the bazaars of Delhi and Jaipur to buy champlevé enamel, and once a year he went south to cross Adam’s Bridge into Ceylon for moonstones, cat’s eyes, and star sapphires. His headquarters, however, were in Calcutta, where he was known not so much for his shrewd knowledge of gems and precious metals, but for an unusual capacity for minding his own business. It was therefore something of an event when Marvin abandoned his life-long policy of laisser-faire to take an active and voluntary hand in the case of Harrison J. Hoyt and Evelyn Branch.
Hardly had Evelyn disappeared from view of the Kidderpore docks than Marvin jumped into a taxi and had himself taken to the Grand Hotel. Antoinette Vrai was stopping there with her father until after the wedding.
It is doubtful whether Antoinette was more surprised to see Marvin standing outside the door of her suite than Marvin was to be there. There had never been any love lost between the two, and there was a tacit mutual acknowledgment of the antipathy.
“Tiens!” said Antoinette. “It is the carrot-top. Come in.”
Antoinette Vrai was wearing a flame-colored negligée that needed cleaning. She was a small, bulbous person with curly black hair that radiated from her head like the coiffure of a Zulu queen. She was attractive in a forthright, physical way. Coarse, eager lips; high, pale cheekbones; narrow, half-moon eyes that alternately flashed with quick passion or dulled to an apathetic gray under eyebrows plucked and resketched into diabolic upward curves. There was something violently female about Antoinette, something at once repellent and fascinating, something elemental and obvious that would appeal to a man like Harrison J. Hoyt, but not, Marvin believed even at this late date, to the point of marriage. It wasn’t necessary to marry Antoinette.
“Sit down, Carrot-top,” said Antoinette, as she closed the door.
Marvin complied. As he did so, he could see into an adjoining room, where Jacques Vrai, Antoinette’s father, lay asleep under a fan, clad only in a pair of drill trousers that were cut high enough to serve as cummerbund. He was lying with his head toward Marvin, who noted that the close-cropped hair was black except for a touch of steel at the temples. The man must have married young to be Antoinette’s father, for he could not be more than forty-two or three, despite his thin, hardbitten features which added ten years to his appearance.
“Well?” said Antoinette. She sat down opposite Marvin, inserted a long Russian cigarette in a longer holder, and lit it. She crossed her hands behind her head and leaned back. The loose sleeves of her negligée fell away from her plump white arms, disclosing luxuriant axillary darkness. “Why are you here? Maybe you would like to stop the wedding. Yes?”
“I would,” said Marvin, speaking for the first time.
Antoinette threw back her head and laughed out tenuous clouds of smoke. There was nothing reserved or dainty about her laugh. In the next room, Jacques Vrai stirred in his sleep.
“I believe you are jealous, Carrot-top,” said Antoinette with a sidelong, teasing glance. “After all, you knew me before Harry. Tiens, you introduced us; no?”
“Yes, unfortunately,” said Marvin. He had met Antoinette three years ago at Chandernagore, that anachronistic enclave, the last vestige of ancient French power in Bengal, twenty miles up the river from Calcutta. Jacques Vrai ran the Hôtel Dupleix et de l’Univers at Chandernagore. At least, he was the nominal manager. He did keep a suspicious eye on the accounts, but his tight-lipped, monosyllabic personality was a detriment to the hotel, rather than an asset. It was the loud and effusive gaiety of Antoinette which had always dominated the Hôtel Dupleix et de l’Univers. It was Antoinette who attracted week-end guests from Calcutta, Antoinette who kept the bar, and Antoinette who taught the Bengali cook how to make poulet marengo and haricot de mouton bretonne. And it was the poulet marengo, rather than Antoinette, which had started Lee Marvin staying at Chandernagore when he was on a tour of gold-buying in up-river villages.
“Does Harry Hoyt know you came to see me now?” asked Antoinette.
“He does not. He wouldn’t understand my motive. But I think you will—because you are, after all, a woman. Did you know that Harrison Hoyt had a fiancée in the States?”
Antoinette filled her lungs with smoke before she replied. “I think I remember some silly story like that,” she said carelessly. “Puppy-love. Long ago and far away.”
“The story is not silly,” said Marvin soberly. “The girl is in Calcutta—now!”
Antoinette quickly unclasped her hands. She snatched the cigarette holder from between her teeth. She stood up.
“When she arrived?” she demanded.
“This afternoon. Her name is Evelyn Branch, and—”
“And you think I should stand aside, give up Harry, make way for this silly girl from America?”
“It would be the decent thing to do. This girl has a prior claim on Hoyt. She came here only because he let her believe he still loved her and was going to marry her. She—”
Antoinette exploded into loud laughter. Clutching the yawning front edges of her flame-colored negligée, she laughed until she had to sit down. It was not stage laughter, either. It was good, hearty, sadistic laughter that came from a deep-seated enjoyment of the plight of this girl who had come all the way to India to find her marriage broken. It was laughter that caused tears to roll down her cheeks. She gasped for breath, showing plainly the wide space between her upper front teeth. She laughed until Jacques Vrai came in from the next room, complaining under his breath.
“Listen, Papa,” gasped Antoinette. “He is too funny, this man. He tells me—he tells me—”
And she started to laugh again.
Jacques Vrai stared suspiciously at Marvin for a moment, scratching his bare and perspiring stomach. He had been sleeping on one forearm, and the pressure of his wrist had left a vivid red mark across his scaly, grub-white face. His lips, too, were bloodless. The end of his nose was beet-colored.
Vrai grunted something that sounded like “Bonjour,” and turned his back on Marvin. From a table he picked up a package of woolly French tobacco and started rolling a cigarette.
Marvin waited until Antoinette’s laughter had subsided. Then he said, “I see I am wasting my time.”
“Not at all,” said Antoinette. “I enjoy you immensely. But you cannot expect me to give up Harry. What does Harry say?”
“You know very well what Hoyt would say. What sort of hold have you got on him, anyhow’?”
“Hold? Only that he loves me.”
“Nonsense. Hoyt doesn’t love anyone but himself.”
“That is not nice to say. Of course Harry loves me. He thinks I can kiss better than anyone in the world. What do you think, Carrot-top?”
Marvin picked up his topee.
“Then you don’t want to see Miss Branch?” he asked.
“Miss Branch? Who is Miss Branch? Oh, yes, of course. Harry’s ex-fiancée. How stupid. Why, of course I would like to see her. Why don’t you bring her to the wedding tomorrow?”
“Good-by,” said Marvin.
He slammed the door as he went out.
Chapter Four
MYSTERIOUS PACKAGE
Harrison Hoyt’s bachelor dinner was held in one of Peliti’s upstairs rooms, with planks set on horses in the anteroom as a private bar. There was such a crowd in front of the bar by the time Lee Marvin arrived that he could barely see the red turbans of the four dusky, be-whiskered barmen who were busily setting up the chota wallas. Marvin stood looking at the motley collection of dinner clothes—white trousers with black jackets, white mess jackets with black trousers, a few white serge tuxedos. As he elbowed his way through them, he caught sight of Hoyt at the opposite end of the bar. He started toward him, but stopped when he noticed that Hoyt was drinking with a man whose bronzed, square-jawed, sweat-spangled face was vaguely familiar. Where had he—? Of course. Colonel Linnet, who had spoken to Evelyn Branch in the customs shed that afternoon.
Hoyt and Linnet were drinking gin and bitters. They downed two rounds before Hoyt saw Marvin and came over.
“Howdy,” said Hoyt. “Is Ahmed Ali Gannymede taking care of you?”
“Plenty,” Marvin replied. “Who’s the chap you were just drinking with?”
“That’s George Linnet,” said Hoyt.
“I know his name. But what’s he doing here?”
“Oh, he sort of invited himself.”
“Invited himself? Don’t you know him, then?”
“I’ve corresponded with him,” said Hoyt. “He’s a client of mine, in a way. I—I had to let him come. Do you know him?”
Marvin looked up to see Linnet staring at him with the same cocksure insolence he had noted that afternoon, so Marvin did a little staring on his own account. With frank curiosity he studied the determined outlines of Linnet’s face, the straight nose, the firm, ruthless mouth. It was an outdoor face, yet queer little lines at the corners of his eyes baffled Marvin. They gave Linnet a cruel, relentless expression. Marvin found it difficult to keep his eyes from focusing on Linnet’s gray glove and the wooden immobility of the left hand. At last he turned back to Hoyt.
“I’ve met Linnet,” said Marvin at last. “He came in on the same boat with Evelyn Branch this afternoon.”
Hoyt gave a short laugh.
“I’d forgotten to ask you about Evelyn,” he said. “How is she?”
“She’s charming,” said Marvin.
“Was she—did she make a fuss?”
“No,” said Marvin. “She’s a lady.”
“That’s good. I’m glad she didn’t make a fuss,” said Hoyt. “Where is she? The Grand?”
“No,” said Marvin. “Mrs. Pereira’s boarding-house on Guru’s Lane.”
Hoyt seemed suddenly to lose all interest in the subject of Evelyn Branch. He leaned toward Marvin and began earnestly: “Listen, Lee. I want you to do some-tiring for me. Will you—?” He stopped. He was staring across the room. Without moving his head, and almost without moving his lips, he murmured, “Not now, Lee. Later.”
Marvin’s eyes followed Hoyt’s. Halfway across the room, resplendent in a turban of Benares gold cloth, stood Chitterji Rao, his upper lip curled slightly, his bulging eyes watching Harrison Hoyt with sinister insistence.
“That’s another guy that shouldn’t be here,” murmured Hoyt in Marvin’s car. Then he moved away.
Marvin ordered another gin and bitters. The guests were downing drinks at such a rate that one sensed a fear that the liquor might run out. One sensed another sort of fear, too. A strange, intangible, vague sort of fear that everybody would have denied, but which everybody seemed to feel. The guests were getting noisier as they emptied the stock of gin and vermouth and whisky, but they were not getting jovial. Voices were raised, but they were strained voices. Something was strangling the usual conviviality of a bachelor’s farewell to single blessedness. What was it?
