John D. MacDonald

The Flying Elephants

Bill Drucker turned off the Galle Road into the asphalt drive of the Colombo Club and wrenched the company sedan to a vicious squealing stop. He slammed the door behind him and walked out of the fierce Ceylon sunlight into the relative coolness of the club lounge. He sank into one of the big leather chairs and ordered a gin and ginger beer from the soft-footed waiter. Then he sat, staring into space, puzzled and hurt, his teeth clamped so tight that knots of muscle showed at the corners of his square jaw.

While he was waiting for his drink, he fished in the pocket of his white mesh shirt and pulled out the folded carbon copy of die letter that old T. F. Carson had mailed to the home office of the Purtron Oil Company. Even though Carson had handed him the copy at noontime, already the edges were beginning to fray from many readings.

He unfolded it and his eyes flickered across the remembered phrases; he almost knew it by heart, “...have to admit that Mr. William Drucker is unsuited for employment with the Ceylon office of this company... during his three months he has demonstrated that he cannot effectively sell our products... vague and indifferent in his approach to his work... inferior technical knowledge and ability... unstable and hot headed... a liability to my present operations... that he be returned to the States as soon as a replacement arrives.”

It was completely damning and completely unfair. It was such a shock, when he knew that he had done well, knew that his work was good. He appreciated the company policy which made it mandatory to give a copy of any unfavorable report to the employee involved, but he didn’t see what he could do about it.

He sat in the shadowy lounge and remembered the conversation he had had with Carson immediately after he had first read the report.

“But, sir! How have I done so poorly? There are only the two of us here. You know how I got the De Soysa account and the Fernandez account, how I fixed up those specifications that Van Booten is so satisfied with. I’ve worked like a dog, Mr. Car-son, and I like it here. I don’t understand.”

And old Carson, gray, tall and distinguished, had looked calmly at him and had said, “Everything I have to say is in that report, Drucker. I’ll expect you to do as well as you can until the replacement arrives, and then you’ll be sent home. I’m sorry, but it’s the only thing I can do.”

Bill’s square face had flamed red, and his cropped blonde hair had felt as though it were bristling on the back of his neck as he had said, “Well, suppose I don’t think you are doing such a hot job here? Suppose I get some letters from the people I’ve worked with here, people I’ve sold on Purtron products, and tell the home office what I think of this whole set-up.”

“Look, my boy,” Carson had said, “You lack the ability to see yourself as others see you. How would you look, a young man with the company only six months going back to the home office and trying to convince them that I, who have been with them twenty-four years, am wrong about you? Do you think a batch of letters from a group of little Ceylonese business men would help your case? No, Drucker, you’re through, and you might as well resign yourself to it.” He had then picked up a trade paper and started to read it. There had been nothing for Bill to do but leave.

He folded the bitter letter back into a damp square and put it in his pocket. In spite of Carson’s obvious effort to shake his self-confidence, he knew that he wasn’t as bad as the letter indicated. But he felt baffled and defeated, with no way to turn. He was blocked in, and he didn’t like it. He tried to relax as he sipped the cool drink, tried to think of how he had possibly offended old Carson. He hadn’t liked his new boss from the first moment he had seen him, hadn’t liked his affected, supercilious airs, but he thought he had concealed the dislike. The biggest blow was that he liked Ceylon, enjoyed the weird contrasts of civilization and savagery on the lush little island, liked his new friends and reveled in the wide, white sweep of sandy beach outside his hotel window. He hated the thought of leaving.

After a half hour of impotent thinking, he glanced at his watch and decided to drive out to Ratmalana to meet the Sata Airlines plane. He had become friendly with the regular pilot on the Bombay-Colombo run, Casey Lal, with the idea of eventually getting him to support a specification for Purtron lubricants for the airline. He realized that he would probably have sixty days before his replacement arrived, and he might as well generate some false interest in his job to replace the genuine interest he had lost when he received the carbon of Carson’s letter. It would make the time pass more quickly. Besides that screwball Casey would help him to get his mind off his troubles.

He signed the chit and walked back out to the car. During the twenty-minute drive out the Galle Road through Bambalipitya to the Ratmalana Airport, he handle the sedan automatically, weaving around the rickshaws and ox-carts, and little fragile British cars. At one point he passed an elephant swaying ponderously along the shoulder of the road. An oncoming lorry made him swerve close to the elephant, and he unconsciously flinched as the tail of the big beast swung toward his windshield. He grinned at himself, and felt better for the rest of the ride. He turned left at a huge cocoanut plantation and rolled to a stop near the administration buildings at the airport.

He was just in time. The flimsy silhouette of the Sata plane was just entering final approach. Casey scorned the runways, landing his ancient biplane directly into the wind. That necessitated crossing the main strip diagonally and landing on the hard-baked ground. As usual, the landing was expert. He taxied the plane up close to the front of the main building, and five cramped passengers clawed their way out of the tiny cabin. Then Casey jumped out, tall and handsome in his slate-blue uniform. He saw Bill and waved at him as he went in to sign his reports. In a few minutes he was back out again and walked over to Bill.

“Salaam, Bill!” he said. “Wizard landing, what? How do you like the way I can set that bret-up kite down?” His dark eyes blazed in his sallow face, the long white scar down his cheek giving the corner of his mouth a pixie curve upwards. Casey was an intriguing mixture of Irish and Indian, an Anglo-Indian who had a lot of the best qualities of the two races. His long, curling eyelashes didn’t make him look any less masculine.

“Casey, why do you always sound like you had been bitten by the R.A.F.? You’re not flying a peashooter or a Lane, you know.”

“But, Bill, I’m trying to talk American. Do I duff it up?”

“You’re hopeless, chum. But I’ve got plans. Tonight is a night of rejoicing and of drowning sorrow. You do the rejoicing. Throw your bag in my car and we’ll start as of now. You didn’t have anything else on, did you?” Bill asked, suddenly apprehensive at losing the company of one of the few really entertaining friends he had met who could still hold his liquor.

“Not a popsie on the schedule, Bill. All the decent women are in Bombay. I’m your boy. Let’s get cracking! But wait a mo’, I’ve got to be at the Grand Hotel at ten to meet a bloke.”

“That’s easy. Let’s start at the Grand, they always have liquor and tonight they have music. We’ll just settle down there for the evening, then, even if you forget your man, you’ll be there to meet him. Okay?”

“Good gen, my boy. It’s a night.”

On the way back down to the city, Casey kept up a running description of his passengers and of how some of them requested him to fly low and slow. He described them well, and had Bill laughing so hard at times that it was hard to watch the road through his tears. Casey told about one sedate Indian lady that complained to the airline management because Casey kept smiling at her. “It was this bloody gash on my face where I got pranged, you know. It pulls up the corner of my mouth.”

Bill had wondered about the scar, and Casey’s talking about it gave him courage to ask how he had gotten it.

Casey answered, “Oh, it was a thick binder of a co-pilot I had with me taking a load of freight out of Karachi four years ago. On the take-off, something went bust with the fuel pump. I got this Indian bloke to work on the wobble pump and we started to lift okay. I was going to circle and put her in again, when bash, we dropped. We both walked away from it, even though the biggest piece of the aircraft that was left was about the size of an oil drum. Know what the silly blighter had done? Stopped pumping when his arm got tired! He didn’t even get scratched.”

That lead to more stories of the strange accidents of flying in India, and all Bill had to do was listen. The only time Casey paused in the conversation was when they had sat down at a table in the Grand Hotel. Then he stopped for a few seconds to order a pitcher of arrak punch. Bill winced a little at the thought of consuming so much of the smooth deadly native liquor, but he didn’t object. His aim was to completely forget Carson and the job and the letter.

At eight they had a chicken curry dinner, and then started on straight arrak. By ten o’clock things were pretty dim. Casey was having trouble forming his mouth around any word longer than one syllable, and Bill had trouble making sense out of what he said. A band was blaring American music into the smoky room, and most of the tables were filled with noisy, gay customers of the middle-class Colombo night life. Bill thought once that it certainly was a place that you wouldn’t find Mr. Carson, and then cursed himself for not being able to forget the man. He poured himself an extra large shot of arrak.

He looked down at his glass and then looked up to see a third person sitting at the table with them. He shook his head, half expecting the vision to fade, but it didn’t. The stranger sat calmly staring at Casey and waiting for a chance to break into the monologue. He was a middle-aged Singhalese, with a long mournful face that made Bill think of a chocolate bloodhound. He giggled, and the man looked at him with such sad, abused eyes that Bill went off into a fit of half-drunken laughter. The stranger was dressed in a white shirt, a flowered sarong and a British tweed coat, as thick as a carpet.

Casey realized that he was being interrupted by Bill’s laughter, so he stopped his rambling story of being forced down into a jungle, and looked up. He saw the stranger, and then he knotted his brows as though trying to remember something. Then his face lighted up with sudden intelligence.

“Thas right. Suppose to meet you here. Is it ten o’clock aready? Hey, Bill, meet my very good friend, Doctor Purayana. Doctor this is Bill Brucker or Drucker or something. Great bloke! You two people have to know each other.”

The doctor didn’t speak. He nodded gravely at Bill, and then lifted a brown package roughly the size of a football out of his lap and placed it on the table in front of Casey.

Casey looked at it and asked, “Is the... ah—”

“I assure you,” the doctor interrupted, “that what you desire is within the package.” Then he rose, as silently as he had arrived, nodded again at Bill and slipped away.

Casey seemed to have no interest in continuing any more of his stories. He slouched back in the chair, and watched the perspiring figures of the dancers circling around in the smoke. He fished out some damp Woodbines and managed to light one with a wavering hand. Bill could see, even in his own fog, that Casey was much further gone than he. Bill looked at the package, thought of the mysterious conversation, and asked, “What you got in the package, Case?”

Casey looked at him stupidly, and said, “What? What you say?”

“I said, what’s in that bundle there, in front of you?”

“Oh, this thing? Elephant. Big elephant.”

“You’re nuts. Let’s see!”

With fumbling fingers, Casey clawed the paper off the package. It was indeed an elephant. A large, cheap ebony elephant, not very well carved, the same sort of elephant that you see in a thousand shops in Colombo.

It stood on the crumpled paper, gleaming blackly in the lights, with bits of bone carved and stuck on it for tusks and toenails. Casey-fingered the crumpled paper until he found a hundred-rupee note. With great care, he folded the note and tucked it away in a pocket of his uniform, while Bill watched with great curiosity.

“Hey, what’s the money for?”

“Always get a hundred rupees. That’s pay for taking the elephant to Bombay and for keeping my bloody mouth shut. It’s a piece of cake. Can’t tell anybody about it.”

Bill could see that Casey was in that alcoholic trance where he was thinking aloud, a semi-hypnotic situation. He couldn’t resist trying to find out more, so he asked, “How often do you get an elephant?”

“Every time I bring the kite down here. Three times a week. Three hundred rupees a week. Lovely rupees.”

“What do you do with the elephants in Bombay?”

“Go to the Taj Hotel at ten o’clock. An American comes and gets them. Don’t know his name.” Bill had to strain to hear him. “Can’t open my bloody mouth about all this.”

“What makes those cheap elephants so valuable?”

“Don’t know and don’t care. All I want is the rupees. They look like plain elephants to me.”

“What does the man in Bombay look like?” Bill asked, feeling himself getting more and more sober, even as Casey got drunker.

“White-haired bloke. Got speckled hands.”

“Speckled hands?”

“Yeah. White blotches on ’em. Nice bloke.”

Bill had the vague idea that he had seen or heard of someone with spotted hands, with some type of pigmentation disease in the East, but he couldn’t remember. His brain was fuzzed by the liquor. He shook his head and tried to remember, but it didn’t work. He reached for the elephant, and said, “Here, let me get a look at this thing.”

At that, Casey seemed to awaken out of his spell. He snatched at the elephant and clumsily wrapped it up. Then he placed it in his lap, and peered over at Bill, his eyes full of dull suspicion. “No you don’t,” he growled. “Nobody looks at the elephant! That’s what Doctor Purayana said. Only the customs blokes, sometimes, and they only look at it for a minute.” He lapsed into sullen silence, and Bill realized that as far as good cheer was concerned, the evening was over.

After paying the check, he transferred Casey, his bag and the elephant to a rickety taxi with instructions to take the sodden pilot out to Ratmalana. Bill decided to walk back to the Galle Face Hotel and give the sea breeze a chance to clear his head, leaving his car in the Grand Hotel parking space.

It was late as he walked past the clock tower in the center of the city. The cool breeze from the sea dried the perspiration on his temples. He opened his linen coat to give it a better chance at his damp body. He heard the muted chiming of the bells on the rickshaws, the pad of bare feet on the road, the snatches of whining song from some of the natives he passed. It was a beautiful tropical night, and his heart ached with the thought of having to leave it so soon.

As he rounded the corner and saw the lights of his hotel in the distance, he could hear the whispering surge of the sea on the sandy beach. A few clouds scudded across the ceiling of sparkling stars.

As he crawled into bed, he expected to stay awake for hours, thinking of Carson and the lost job, but he fell asleep almost immediately.

In the morning, he was awake and standing by his window looking out at the sea before he remembered the letter, remembered the blow that had knocked him loose from his job and his future. He felt his face sag as he remembered. He sat on the edge of the bed and read it again, deep gloom in his heart. He didn’t look up as Ramasinghe, his hotel boy came in to draw his bath. When he finally noticed the servant, he had to grin as he saw that the boy’s naturally cheery face had dropped into lines of sympathetic sorrow. “Cheer up, Ramasinghe!”

The boy came and stood in front of him. “But Drucker Master has sorrow. I cannot be cheerful.” He actually reflected Bill’s gloom; his round, brown face sagged and even his fat shoulders were bowed under the weight of despair.

“Oh, go fix the bath! I’m going to cry if I have to keep looking at you.” The ghost of a smile flickered at the corners of Ramasinghe’s mouth, and he darted into the bathroom.

Later as Bill was shaving, he remembered the peculiar conversation about the elephant. He was puzzling over it when suddenly he remembered the bit about the spotted hands. With the clear mind of morning he suddenly remembered where he had seen hands like that. And in Bombay, too. He stopped, his razor poised for a stroke, and stared into the reflection of his incredulous eyes in the mirror. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly to himself, and then finished the stroke.

At nine o’clock he strolled into Carson’s office and said, “Could I bother you for a moment, sir?”

Carson looked up, his pale eyes filled with annoyance at the thought of a continuation of yesterday’s discussion. “Look, Drucker,” he said, “I’ve got nothing more to say about that letter. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Mr. Carson. It isn’t about the letter. I wanted to ask you the name of the Purtron man in Bombay.”

Carson looked at him in a peculiar manner and said, “Snider. Why?”

“Has he got white patches on the backs of his hands. Some sort of pigmentation trouble?”

“Yes. Get to the point.”

“Well, do you think that Snider would get mixed up in anything that wasn’t — well... legal? Anything phony?”

To Bill’s utter surprise, Carson’s pale face turned even paler, and then gradually flushed to a dark red. He half rose out of his chair, and bellowed at Bill, “Now get this straight, Drucker. You’re through with Purtron. Don’t try to cover up your own inability with any aspersions on other men in the company. I don’t think it’s in the best interests of the company to keep you on here until your replacement arrives. I can carry on here alone. Get yourself ready to leave within the week. I’ll make all the necessary arrangements and leave word at your hotel about your sailing date. You’re through working as of now! Now get out of here!”

Bill’s anger felt like a roaring flame inside of him. “Listen to me, you old fool.”

“I said shut up and get out! Do I have to have you thrown out?”

Bill lifted his arms in a hopeless gesture, and then let them drop at his sides. The room seemed blurred. He couldn’t see Carson distinctly. He turned on his heel and walked out to his desk. He cleaned out his personal belongings, and handed the key to his desk to the young Burgher girl who acted as stenographer for both of them. She looked up at him with quick sympathy, having heard Carson through the flimsy partition, but he didn’t trust himself to say anything except a mumbled good-by.

After he returned to the hotel, he used the rest of the morning in making out a complete written report of everything that had happened between Carson and himself, including a few pages on the work he had accomplished in Ceylon. At noon he crumpled the report up and threw it into his waste basket. He sat on the bed, buried his tanned young face in his hands, and wished for the ability to cry. Maybe crying would dissolve the stubborn lump that had been clogging his throat ever since he had received the copy of Carson’s letter to the home office.

He had a light lunch sent up to his room, and sat for a long time over the bitter coffee, trying to find some loophole in the walls that surrounded him. The longer he thought, the more often his thoughts reverted to the ebony elephants, and the strange activities of Snider. Since he could think of no way to approach Carson again, no way to defend his job, he decided that he might as well try to track down the elephant mystery. He realized that any kind of action would be better than sitting around feeling sorry for himself. He finished off the coffee and went down to the desk. He saw a familiar looking native standing at the desk, and realized that it was the driver that Carson used. The suave clerk spoke to him as he walked up, “Ah, Mr. Drucker. This person has come to take your vehicle. Does he have your permission?”

Bill glared and fished the keys out of his pocket and slammed them down on the dark wood of the desk. He realized that the desk clerk would guess that something had gone wrong and that Carson’s driver would fill in the blanks. He had at one time been flattered by the personal interest and curiosity of the hotel employees. Now he knew that even little Ramasinghe would know the nature of his trouble in another hour. He knew that little extra courtesies would no longer be given him, that he would hear whispers in the dining room. The hotel was a hotbed of gossip and intrigue. The heat makes any more active indoor sport too exhausting. He mentally adjusted himself for the barrage of sympathetic glances from his new acquaintances, said, “Send Ramasinghe up to my room,” and turned abruptly and went back upstairs. Old Carson worked fast.

Ramasinghe came noiselessly into the room and stood in front of Bill, his round dark face composed into an expression of subservient inquiry. Bill stared at him in silence, wondering how much loyalty lay behind those dark eyes. Finally he said, “Look, boy! Are you wondering how many rupees you can gouge out of me?”

To his surprise and immediate regret he saw tears well up in those dark eyes. “Drucker Master is a good master. Ramasinghe always do what you wish, not think of rupees.” The boy’s voice sounded a little husky, as though he were on the verge of tears.

“Okay, okay! I just wanted to make sure before I asked you to do something very special for me. Very important.”

Ramasinghe smiled brilliantly as he answered, “It is done!”

For a long time Bill explained and re-explained what he wished the boy to do. He made Ramasinghe repeat his instructions back until he was letter perfect. The boy loved mystery. His round eyes grew wide as he began to realize the implications of the instructions Bill was giving him. Bill was most explicit about telling the boy not to utter a word or a hint of his instructions to any of the other servants.

For the rest of the day Bill threw himself into a fever of physical activity. He walked many miles along the beach until all of his clothes were drenched with sweat. When he went to bed he dropped off immediately. The next morning he hired one of the markers at the Garden Club to play a long series of fast sets of tennis in the hot sun. Bill didn’t play his usual game. He was trying to play hard enough to forget Carson. But it was no use. Every time he had a chance to smash a drive he found himself imagining Carson’s face in front of his racket, and he would blast the ball either into the net or out of the court. The ragged little ball boy got an overdose of exercise chasing the vicious whistling drives that Bill smacked over. At one point the marker, who played the quiet, excellent game that all markers in the East play, misjudged one of Bill’s drives and the ball hit the rim of his racket, bounding high into Bill’s court. The marker had been playing net and he saw his difficulty. He tried to move into the back court, but he wasn’t fast enough. Bill ran up on the ball and smashed an overhand drive directly at the marker. The poor man had no chance to get his racket in front of it. It hit him in the pit of the stomach. He gave a startled “Oof” and dropped his racket. He looked at Bill in a peculiar manner as he picked it up. From that point on Bill had all he could do to handle the hot drives from the marker.

After a bath and lunch, Bill sat and stared out the window of his room at the long expanse of beach, trying to quiet his conscience about how his plans might affect Casey Lal. At one point he was ready to give up his plan, but the very tightness of the spot he was in, and the necessity of getting into some kind of action that would take his mind off his own troubles were enough to quiet his conscience. Besides, he rationalized, if Casey is messing with something too hot to handle, I may be saving him from some worse trouble in the future. In addition, he had felt a slight dimming of his liking for the Anglo-Indian pilot after the evening at the Grand.

At three he went down and chartered a taxi for the rest of the day and headed out for Ratmalana again. The man driving the taxi was so cautious and conservative, that the plane had already discharged its few passengers by the time they arrived at the strip. Bill rushed into the administration building, and was relieved to find Casey still in the process of clearing his flight. The customs men were fumbling and gabbling over the luggage of the passengers.

Casey looked up as Bill walked over to him, and for a second, Bill thought he saw a look of faint dismay in Casey’s eyes. “Hi, Case! Think you can take another night of debauchery and sudden death?”

“You again, Bill! If I had any griff at all I’d never get weaving with you again. It’s dicing with death to fly out of here the way I felt the other morning.”

“You made it, didn’t you? What you kicking about?” Bill said, trying to sound as gay, casual and inviting as he could.

“Right, then. We’ll do it again, but this time I’m not going to take another square bashing. I didn’t know my right hand from an erk in the cold light of dawn. I’ll be through here in a minute.”

Bill waited outside and finally Casey walked out. He lifted his eyebrows at the sight of the taxi. “Where’s your bus?” he asked.

Bill thought for a second of telling him about the disappearing job, but decided that it might sidetrack the conversation too much. “Laid up. The motor or something dropped out of it.”

What was left of the afternoon went much the same way as the previous day. They talked and drank and talked again. Casey shied away from the arrak, but Bill had no trouble in convincing him that the Indian scotch, Solon Number One, was as weak as water. With a little careful attention to the problem, he drank half as much as Casey did, while appearing to drink as much, of even more. While doing it, he felt qualms of conscience, but he disregarded them. He entered into the spirit of the problem to such an extent, that it was with a thrill of accomplishment that he noticed Casey’s speech beginning to blur and his eyes to roll vacantly in his head. Solon Number One is a dangerous whisky. It tastes weak and reacts like a sledge hammer. Bill was faintly surprised that Casey wasn’t acquainted with its properties.

At ten o’clock Casey was slumped in his chair and Bill was looking anxiously toward the door for Doctor Purayana. The hotel was quieter than it had been the previous night. There was a smaller band playing and only about half the tables were occupied. Casey was carrying on a vague mumbling commentary on the charms of the Burgher girls and Singhalese girls at the other tables.

“Look at the popsie over there. Scruffy neck, ropey ankles. Don’t know why her boy friend dares show her in public. Bloody brave bloke, I’d say.”

Bill was peering over his shoulder trying to see the one Casey was talking about when he heard a faint scraping noise at his elbow. He turned back and saw that the sad doctor had arrived and had pulled up a chair. He had on the same clothes as at the previous meeting, and he looked and acted exactly the same. He didn’t speak. He merely nodded at Bill and then inspected Casey. He looked troubled. Casey goggled back at him in a foolish imitation of the doctor’s mournful look. Finally the doctor placed the usual parcel on the table and left. Bill noticed that as he glided out he looked back at Casey a few times with an undecided expression, as though he was debating whether or not the befuddled pilot should be trusted with the package. Bill was relieved to see him finally disappear.

For the next hour Bill alternated between glancing at his wrist-watch and sticking more liquor into the semi-conscious pilot. Casey was soon beyond all repair. Bill realized that it was a mute question as to whether or not the tall, sallow man could stand upright.

At eleven o’clock, as Casey was staring down into his glass telling a long joke of which Bill could understand very little, he decided that it was time. So he stood up quickly, snatched the package and walked quickly out of the ballroom. He heard a hoarse shout from Casey, but he paid no attention. He walked through the lobby and out onto the dim street. He walked in the darkest shadows near the wall of the hotel to the corner. He glanced back and saw a figure slip out of the front door of the hotel and into the shadows after him. As he got to the corner, a small figure slipped up to him and handed him a package. He gave the package he had grabbed off the table to the faithful Ramasinghe, and hissed, “Run!” The little figure melted away toward the black mouth of a nearby alley. Bill tucked the duplicate of the package he had stolen under his arm, and walked noisily back to the door of the hotel, whistling loudly, not looking over into the darkness by the edge of the building where he knew his pursuer was standing. As he turned his back to the suspicious spot all his shoulder muscles were tensed. He felt danger, but he couldn’t imagine what kind. Images of all types of cruel oriental knives sped through his mind. His mouth felt dry and he could hear in his ears the loud thudding of his heart. But he made it back into the lobby without incident. He wondered if the quiet form he had glimpsed had sped after Ramasinghe, and felt a sudden surge of responsibility for the boy.

As he entered the lobby, Casey came staggering across to him, reaching out unsteady hands for the package. “Whas a idea? Hey?” he asked, glaring at Bill.

Bill tried to be breezy as he said, “Oh, I needed some air and I didn’t know if you’d fall asleep at the table and somebody would take the package.”

Casey snatched it away from him, turned and weaved back into the ballroom, mumbling and patting the brown paper package. Bill followed him into the table, and breathed a huge sigh of immediate relief. But he was still fretting inwardly about the safety of Ramasinghe.

Casey had lapsed into sullen silence, but he seemed more sober, as though he had been shocked out of some of the foggy trance of Solon Number One. Bill happened to be glancing toward the door when he saw Doctor Purayana come in and head quickly toward their table. As the doctor got close to them, Bill smiled up at him and said, “Hello again!” The doctor ignored him, and reached for the package. He peeled the paper back from the head of the elephant and stared at it for a few silent seconds. Then he glanced at Bill with his dark eyes so full of silent vicious venom that the look was like the striking of a snake. Bill flinched involuntarily. The doctor turned and walked out. Casey undid the rest of the package and found his hundred rupees. He tucked it away. Bill sat thinking. So the doctor had been suspicious and stayed around. He must have been the figure in the shadows. Evidently he didn’t follow Ramasinghe. Probably didn’t even see the boy, but now he knows that a switch has been made. He certainly can look rough. He’ll probably follow me. Have to do what I can to give him the slip. Better get Case into another cab and send him back to the airport.

After he had stuck the half-conscious figure of Casey into a waiting taxi, Bill hopped quickly into his own vehicle and told the driver to head for the Victoria Bridge. It was a high square taxi with a large back window. The streets were nearly deserted. None of the other vehicles seemed to be following them as they rattled through the dark avenues. As they rounded a traffic circle, Bill told the driver to head back to the Galle Face Hotel. The driver threw one puzzled look over his shoulder, and continued completely around the circle and headed back. Bill looked frequently out of the big window, and relaxed as he could see nothing suspicious. As they approached the hotel, Bill ordered the driver to continue past it and stop by the big public green about a block away. The taxi stopped and Bill asked what the charges were. As the man was figuring out his mileage, Bill continued to stare through the back window. There was no other vehicle or pedestrian in sight. He paid off the driver and stepped out, walking briskly back toward the hotel. As he passed the rear of his cab he heard a soft scraping sound. The driver had killed his motor while figuring out the charges. Bill stopped in his tracks and looked quickly at the back end of the cab. He caught a vague glimpse of something disappearing around the side of the car. He realized how he had been tricked. Either Doctor Purayana or some other member of the unknown group had been clinging to the back of the taxi. He thought for an instant of getting back into the cab and ordering the driver to roar off, but realized at the same time that in the end he would have the same problem. To run away now would only delay it. He cursed his own stupidity at not directing Ramasinghe to meet him inside the hotel to turn over the stolen elephant.

At a sudden impulse, he ran across the road as fast as he could go, and headed across the wide green toward the sea. He angled away from the hotel which was on his left as he ran. The hard-baked turf made a good surface. He put on a burst of speed that left him completely winded, and was within fifty feet of the wide, concrete walk that paralleled the sea wall when he realized that he must be out of sight in the darkness. Far out to sea was a long line of clouds that obscured the stars just above the horizon. Frequent dim flashes of lightning flickered below the clouds. Bill realized that he might be silhouetted against the lightning, so he dropped onto his stomach on the dry grass and peered back toward the road a hundred yards away. Anyone coming toward him would show up against the dim street lights. He rested his chin on the back of his crossed hands and panted while he peered into the night. The pursuer had disappeared as though he had dropped into the earth. The taxi had gone. An occasional car sped past, and one a lonesome rickshaw coolie padded with his empty vehicle up the road toward the hotel. Bill realized that he would feel better if he could see his pursuer. He felt nervous, and looked around himself, with the creepy feeling that the man was near. Long minutes passed, and he grew annoyed at the constant roar of the surf which ruled out his being able to hear anyone coming toward him over the crisp burned grass. When he had completely recovered from his dash he got to his feet and looked on all sides. There was no one in sight, so he walked to the sidewalk and dropped over the sea wall onto the hard-packed sand. The wall was about six feet high, and he kept dose to it, with an occasional wave breaking and running almost up to his feet, glowing eerily with luminescence. The sand was white enough so that he would be able to see another figure at some distance. As he walked he looked frequently at the top of the wall to see if he could see anyone outlined against the dim rosy glow of the city against the evening mist which partially obscured the stars.

When he judged that he was opposite the hotel, he clambered up the rough sea wall, and sat for a minute at the top, his palms moist with nervousness. Directly in front of him loomed the bulk of the hotel, a few rooms lighted. He walked soundlessly across the grass, past the silent empty tables on the lawn, past the huge garish umbrellas toward the shadowed mysteries of the outdoor swimming pool. He stood near the pool and heard a discreet cough from a patch of deeper shadow. “Okay, Ramasinghe,” he whispered, and the little figure scuttled up to him. He reached out in the dark and took the package. Without a word the boy melted back into the shadows and was gone.

Once again Bill looked around and then headed back across the lawn toward the brightly lighted entrance to the hotel a hundred yards away. As he passed a clump of carefully trimmed bushes that threw long regular shadows on the clipped lawn, some sudden sense of danger caused him to glance quickly in back of him. He hadn’t heard a sound; it was just some primitive instinct for self preservation that had warned him — almost too late. A bulky figure was leaping at him. As Bill dodged he saw the gleam of the hotel lights on a shining blade held high. He couldn’t dodge quickly enough or far enough. The hurtling figure crashed into him, and as he fell onto the grass he smelled the sharp tang of oriental food on the breath of his attacker. With a frenzy of fear, Bill realized that he had no urge to try to grapple with a man with a knife on the dark lawn. So as soon as he hit the ground he rolled away with a convulsive twist of his body that sent him spinning into the shadows beneath the bushes. He looked back and saw, a mere six feet away from him, a tall figure kneeling, knife held in readiness. The parcel was a dim blob of light color on the grass in front of him. The faint light was just enough for him to recognize the sagging face of Doctor Purayana. With knowledge of the identity of his attacker came a slackening of his fear. Cold rage began to grow in him during the seconds of inactivity. Who was this old vulture who thought he could kill an American with a knife in front of his own hotel? Also, the elephant must be of extraordinary value to merit such a risk.

He gathered his legs under him, and in a lightning flash of thought, planned his attack. The doctor would undoubtedly raise the knife high with his right hand. Thus a raised left arm should break the thrust while—

Without thinking further he rushed in, feeling way in the back of his mind a small astonished qualm at his own recklessness. As planned, the knife again flashed high as the doctor scrambled to his feet. Bill blocked the thrust with his left arm, and felt a searing pain across this forearm just as his right fist crashed with all the force of his charge into the shadowy face of the doctor. That was all. He stood there, amazed at the simplicity of it. He stepped across the doctor’s still body and picked up the knife from the grass. He tucked it in his coat pocket and for an instant felt a foolish urge to plant his right foot on the doctor and give an imitation of the Tarzan yell. Bill, he said to himself, you’re one rattle-headed kid. This damn knife might be in your gut instead of your pocket.

A few minutes later the sleepy eyes of the doorman opened wide, and then bulged as the young American resident of the hotel staggered up to the door under the weight of a tall, unconscious native who was draped over one square shoulder. Under the American’s other arm was a brown package. Bill grinned at the look on the man’s face and decided that as long as he would be leaving the hotel soon, it might be just as well to give them something to remember him by. He strode heavily into the lobby and crossed over to the desk. The same suave clerk was on duty, but he forgot his sophistication long enough to give a good imitation of the doorman’s reactions. Bill stood in front of the desk, sat the unconscious doctor on the edge of it and then roughly arranged the sleeping figure so that it was stretched out on its back along the length of the desk. Throughout all this the clerk never said a word. When the doctor was arranged to his satisfaction Bill stepped back and looked at the clerk. He noticed that the man’s horrified glance was directed at his left arm. He looked down and saw a long slit across the sleeve of his white jacket. A patch three inches in diameter was stained with bright blood. He rolled up his sleeve gingerly and inspected a shallow cut that ran diagonally across his brown forearm. It was slight enough to wait for patching with adhesive when he got to his room.

He looked again at the upset clerk and said, “This creature attacked me on the hotel grounds. Have the police come and get him. I will speak to the police at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Is that understood?”

The clerk gulped and said timidly, “Yes, sir! I hope that—” But he stopped as Bill was already halfway across the ornate lobby heading for the stairs.

Bill locked the door of his room behind him, placed the elephant on the bed and tended to his cut. When it was bandaged to his satisfaction, he sat down and unwrapped the package. The elephant was just as he had expected. It stood on his bed, its dark wood gleaming. He picked it up and shook it. Nothing rattled. He looked it over inch by inch and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He began to feel baffled and foolish. He got the knife out of his coat pocket and picked at the wood. From the looks of it and the heft of it, it felt like any other five-rupee elephant picked up in the bazaar by an eager tourist. He took it over to his desk and examined it more carefully. Then he noticed the clue. There was a fine line around the neck of the creature, a line so thin that it was almost invisible. He propped it between his knees and twisted the head. It moved slightly, but it was very tight. He turned it slowly and the crack widened. After three full turns it came off. Inside the body of the elephant was a white mass. At first he thought of dope. But as he touched it and felt of it he realized that it was ordinary wax.

His breath was coming faster as he grabbed the knife again and picked gently at the wax. He licked his dry lips, bursting with curiosity at what might be hidden in the wax. As the knife blade slipped in he felt it strike something hard. He gouged at it and pried out a two-inch cube of wax. He broke it apart in his fingers and gasped as he uncovered a large round blue stone. He rubbed the bits of wax off of it and it lay in his palm, a pale transparent blue with a bright six-pointed star glistening on it. He guessed that it must be at least thirty carats. He had priced star sapphires and at a guess the one he held in his hand must be worth at least three thousand rupees. A thousand dollars! He dug eagerly into the body of the wooden elephant, his hands shaking, and the pile of sapphires grew on his desk, some larger and some smaller than the first one, but all a perfect shade of blue with distinct stars. At last the body of the elephant was empty. Eighteen of them. He inspected the perfect carving of the wooden threads which had enabled the head of the beast to fit on so perfectly and felt sudden respect for the craftsmanship of whoever had done the work.

Then he noticed something that had previously escaped his attention. There was a small recess in the head of the elephant, a deep cylindrical hole about a half inch in diameter. He inserted the tip of his little finger into it to rub the inside wall which looked white. A little edge of white showed, so he pulled it out. It was a piece of paper which had been rolled and tucked up into the recess. He flattened it out on the desk and saw that it was a short typewritten note.

It said, “Will cease shipments until D. leaves island. P. reports having seen him with courier. Has asked about you. Now have two new sources of gems at Ratnapura and unlimited supply of containers. Glad to hear your shipments to the States are going as planned. Please rush cash for more merchandise. Also look for new courier. Present one unreliable I fear.”

Bill’s breath came faster as he realized the implications of the note. D. could be none other than himself. Casey was the courier. And the note must be to Snider. Then Carson was the only one who could have written the note, as he was the only one who would know that Bill had asked about Snider. So that was it! So that was why Carson was so anxious to get rid of him. He grew more angry than he had yet been as he realized how easily Carson would have thrown him to the dogs just to protect a clever smuggling racket. He also felt faintly honored at the thought that Carson would consider him dangerous enough to dispose of by sending him home. Also, that Carson had correctly estimated that he would never go in on such a deal. Obviously Carson was looking for a weaker and more stupid assistant in Ceylon. An assistant he wouldn’t have to fear.

The whole nightmare of pending disgrace rolled off of Bill’s mind. He could almost feel the lines of tension erasing themselves from his face. But how to tie Carson into the whole thing? It would be his word against the old man’s. He might still wiggle out. He reread the note and suddenly noticed that every letter “a” in the note was tilted half over on its back. That looked familiar. He jumped up and ran over to the bureau. He grabbed the carbon of the fatal letter and opened it so quickly that he tore it. Yes! There were the same “a’s.” Carson had been stupid enough to type it on the office machine. He checked the two and found some more minute identical similarities in the type. That ought to do it.

After he had crammed the jewels and the fragments of wax back into the elephant and gone to bed, he lay awake looking up toward the dark ceiling, feeling once again the delicious thrill of self-confidence. He almost shuddered as he thought of the dismal trip home that he might have taken. Could easily have taken if it hadn’t been for a whole chain of fragile circumstances that clung together with so large an element of chance.

Just before he dropped off to sleep he thought what splendid pleasure it would be to fix the wagon of Mr. T. F. Carson.

But Bill was not as rough as he thought he was. When he went to the office of the American Consul the next morning, he felt a small feeling of sympathy for the old man who sat in the office a few blocks away with the world ready to fall in on his ears. Even as he sat in the locked office with the young vice-consul and unrolled the whole fantastic story and watched the excited face of the man across the desk, he couldn’t feel any real thrill of triumph. He watched the vice-consul heft the gems, compare the two notes, finger the hundred-rupee note and examine the elephant. Even when the consul came in and listened to the whole story and complimented him on his intelligence and audacity, he didn’t feel good about it. In the back of his mind hovered the faces of Carson and Casey Lal. In fact, when the parade of customs men, police, consular representatives and miscellaneous officials started toward the offices of the Purtron Oil Company, Bill walked slowly a little behind the group, feeling nothing but a strange combination of weariness and relief.

Content

John D. MacDonald
The Flying Elephants