The Nipa Hut
Colonel Felix Rojas paced the floor of Tony Briotti's room in the Manila Hotel. He was in uniform now, but his visit, as he made quite clear, was not official. At least not yet.
Rick had just finished relating the story of how the golden skull had fallen into the hands of Lazada. "Can't you just go to him and demand the skull?" he asked.
Rojas smiled sadly. "If only it were that simple. Suppose two Malays arrived at your Department of Defense and claimed that your Assistant Secretary of the Interior had stolen a valuable Indian necklace from an archaeological expedition. What would happen?"
Rick knew perfectly well what would happen. "They would get thrown out—if they could get anyone to listen to them in the first place."
"Exactly. The situation is not particularly different, except that I'm sure we pay more attention to Americans here than you would to Malays in your country. After all, you owned us for nearly half a century."
"You warned us," Scotty said. "Why?"
Rojas shrugged. "I may as well be frank. I knew of Nangolat's visits to Lazada. In fact, I was present at one meeting. And I knew that our esteemed Assistant Secretary was hungry for that buried gold. If I could prove some of the things I know about that man, he would no longer hold public office. He would be in jail. My hands were tied, officially, but unofficially I tried to warn you. I couldn't come right out and denounce Lazada."
"Of course not," Tony agreed. "We're grateful that you were able to say as much as you did."
Rojas nodded. "Let us continue. After you flew back to Bontoc, what happened?"
Rick picked up his tale. "Pilipil was on the mountain, waiting. We dropped down and signaled for him to go to Banaue in the jeep, then we landed at Bontoc and picked up the other jeep. Chahda became an Igorot again. He took the jeep and started for Baguio right away, while I stayed behind in Bontoc."
"I don't get the point of that," Rojas interrupted.
"Chahda intended to follow Lazada or Nast, whoever had the skull. They were coming over the mountain in a fast station wagon, and there were only two routes they could take—north to the Kalinga country, or south to Baguio. We didn't think they would go north. So Chahda started for Baguio, knowing that they would probably catch up to him before the jeep reached the Baguio gate. They were in so much of a hurry that they would not suspect an Igorot who pulled to the side of the one-lane road to let them pass him, which would make trailing them easier."
"Smart," Rojas said. "Then your friends arrived at Bontoc late that afternoon, and you flew them back to Baguio, leaving Angel Manotok to bring the truck."
"Yes. Of course we paid off Pilipil, Balaban, and the Igorots who had guarded the plane. Dog Meat rode back with Angel."
"And you haven't heard from your Hindu friend since?"
"No."
Rojas picked up his cap. "I would like very much to find Lazada with that golden skull in his possession. It would be a major service to the Philippines, because it would give the Secretary and the President positive grounds for his dismissal. I ask a favor. If you hear from your friend, will you let me know?"
"First thing," Tony Briotti promised.
When the constabulary colonel had gone, the three washed up and went downstairs. Tony was restless and Rick knew that he wanted to get to work on the artifacts they had flown down to Manila. The Ifugao treasure, minus the skull, was under guard at the university museum.
"Go on out to the museum," Rick said. "You're so restless I'm beginning to itch just watching you."
"Same here," Scotty agreed. "Go on, Tony. We'll wait here for word from Chahda."
"I really would like to," Tony said. "Perhaps I will, if you'll let me know the moment Chahda comes."
The boys promised to do so and Tony departed. They found comfortable chairs in the lounge and ordered fresh limeades.
"Angel should be arriving with the truck tomorrow," Scotty observed.
"Yes, with Dog Meat. Wonder if Chahda will be back by then?"
"I wish he'd let us know where he is," Scotty grumbled. "For all we know, Lazada may have captured him and tossed him into Manila Bay."
A waiter approached. "Ask him where our limeades are," Scotty said. "I'm thirsty. And I'm getting hungry."
"Again? We finished dinner less than an hour ago."
"It didn't seem like dinner," Scotty explained. "I can't get used to eating when the sun is high in the sky. I don't care what time it is, it should be dark when we eat. Now it's dusk and I'm hungry."
The waiter bowed. "Phone call for you, Mr. Brant—or Mr. Scott."
"Thank you. Wonder who this can be?"
"Chahda?" Scotty asked.
"That would be too much to hope for. Besides, he sends notes whenever he can. Doesn't like to phone."
But it was Chahda. He gave them rapid instructions. Dress in dark clothing. Meet him at Parañaque, a town to the south, just below the airport. Hurry. Chahda hung up. He had obviously been excited.
Rick and Scotty ran for their room. They changed clothes, then Rick tried to phone Tony at the museum. There was no answer. Constabulary Headquarters regretted that Colonel Rojas did not answer the phone in his quarters. They would send a messenger to find him. Rick left the message that he and Scotty were meeting Chahda, then the boys hurried to the desk and left a similar message for Tony.
A taxi took them to Parañaque. Like most small towns in the Philippines it consisted of a cathedral, a market, a botica or drugstore, and a few houses.
They found Chahda in front of the cathedral. He was dressed Filipino style in slacks and sport shirt, and his hair had been recut to a modified crew cut-the only cut possible after the Igorot one.
They dismissed the taxi. Chahda had the jeep. While he drove them through a backwoods road, he told them his story. He had pulled off the one-lane road to let Lazada and Nast pass just before he reached Baguio. Following them had been no problem from then on. They went to a house on the outskirts of Baguio, and by asking a few questions of the house servants—after first loosening their tongues with a few pesos—he had found that Lazada was proceeding on to Manila by car the following morning.
"There was a chance he might give Nast the skull to take care of," Chahda admitted, "but I not think so. Lazada not the kind of man with liking for letting gold out of his hands. So I go to barbershop, get haircut, pick up clothes where I left them with a friend of Dog Meat. Then I drive to Manila and stop at Malolos."
That was a town to the north of Manila on the road to Baguio. Chahda had pulled the same trick of letting Lazada overtake him.
"He comes by, and Nast is with him," Chahda continued. "I am surprised, because Lazada goes right to his house. I wait around nearly all day. Cannot call, because no phone handy. Well, tonight he took black limousine, and he and Nast come to Parañaque. He has skull. They go to this little barrio where we going, and go into nipa shack. Lazada stays there with the skull. Nast goes off in the limousine. So what I think?"
"What do you think?" Rick asked.
"I think Nast goes to get somebody, to bring them to Lazada. So I rush off and call you. Before you came, I saw Nast go by. So now the meeting is being held, and we must figure how to get the skull."
Chahda reached forward and switched off the jeep's headlights. For an instant it was very dark, then as Rick's eyes became adjusted to the darkness he saw that the road was visible as a white pathway between the rice paddies. Ahead were the lights of houses. They had reached the barrio where the meeting was to be held.
Rick looked around and saw that the sky to the north was aglow with the lights of Manila. Then he saw a plane take off and realized that they were only a short distance from the airport.
Chahda pulled off the road into a patch of nipa palms, went through the palms, and parked behind a feathery thicket of bamboo. "We walk to shack," he said. He took a bolo from under the rear seat of the jeep and tucked it into his belt.
The Hindu boy led them a hundred yards down the road, then turned off onto a path. In a moment he pointed.
Ahead, alone in a clearing, was a typical nipa hut. It was built on stilts in the traditional Filipino way, and there was room underneath the supporting posts for a tall man to stand upright. The house itself was square, with walls of woven thatch made from the nipa palm. The roof was pyramidal, heavily thatched with layer after layer of straw. The floor was of split bamboo, a single layer of springy bamboo strips as wide as a man's thumb laid across a framing of whole bamboo supports.
Except that it allowed mosquitoes to roam in and out and gave no bar to lizards or snakes, it was ideal for the climate. The openwork floor allowed the breezes to circulate through the whole house. Also, housekeeping was simple. Dust couldn't gather. It just fell through the floor.
Filipinos had lived in houses like this for centuries, but the influence of Western civilization was visible in the form of electric lights. It was visible in another way at this particular nipa hut, too. Next to it was a shiny limousine, the property of Irineo Lazada.
Chahda whispered, "We get close. Be very quiet and follow me."
It was dark enough. Chahda led the way, and Rick and Scotty followed. There was little cover, but there was no guard outside the house. Apparently Lazada and Nast felt quite safe. They did not know how effectively Chahda had shadowed them.
Chahda made his way slowly until they were beside the big limousine. There was a murmur of voices from above, Lazada's predominating.
Rick swallowed hard as Chahda left the limousine and and walked right under the hut, but he and Scotty followed, scarcely daring to breathe. It was dark and he almost knocked over a stack of wooden boxes. Then, under the hut, there was light.
Rick had not realized that the bamboo floor was nothing more than a latticework of bamboo strips. He could look right up between them and see the occupants of the room!
There was Lazada, of course, and Nast. And with them were two Chinese.
Nast was talking, "Don't you worry about delivery. If I say I'll get the skull into Macao, I'll do it. You just worry about the price."
Rick recognized the name of Macao. It was the Portuguese colony on the Chinese coast just below Hong Kong. It had the reputation of being the gathering place for smugglers, gun-runners, Chinese river pirates, and equally unsavory folk.
One Chinese spoke in sibilant, accented English. "The price you ask is too much. The skull is worth its exact weight in gold, at fifty American dollars an ounce. What do we care if it is a very old native religious object? That has value only for an Ifugao, not a Chinese, and our customers are not Ifugaos."
Rick gasped. Lazada and Nast were intending to sell the skull just for the gold in it!
Lazada put his hand on a box that sat beside him on the floor. "The customers you have usually want bullion gold, true. But perhaps you have one very wealthy customer who could use a museum piece of great value."
"If we could have the skull legally, yes. But it is the only one of its kind. In a few days the press will have sent its description to every city in the world, because its loss is a good news story. No one in his right mind would buy such an object."
"I'm afraid he's right," Nast said. "We'll have to settle for its value in weight. But that's worth something."
Chahda pulled Rick's sleeve, then Scotty's. The boys followed him from under the house back to the edge of the clearing. He whispered, "See the box? I'm sure that is skull. Now, you feel brave?"
"What's your plan?" Scotty asked.
Chahda drew his bolo. "Bamboo cuts easy. Two swings and box falls into our hands. We run like wild men, they not catch."
Rick objected. "The skull is too heavy. We couldn't run with it easily. They'd catch whoever had it."
Scotty nodded. "And the box is too small for two people to get a good grip on it. We'd fall all over each other."
"Could be," Chahda agreed, but he was not convinced. He said that there must be some way to get the box.
Rick studied the house as though the sight of it might give him inspiration. The house didn't, but something else did. "The purloined letter!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Remember the story by Poe? No one found the letter because it was in the most obvious place—so obvious that no one looked." He whispered his daring plan.
Scotty chuckled. "I'll even forgive you for biting me in Baguio, for that one."
Chahda salaamed. "Mighty is the mind of Rick. I glad you on my side. Let's go."
They sneaked back to the house and made preparations for the audacious recovery of the box. Chahda tested the edge of his bolo, reached up with it, and measured the length of his stroke and where the blade would touch. It would work. He looked at the boys expectantly.
Rick knew that bamboo was remarkable stuff. It had great strength against nearly everything except a sharp blade applied across its grain. But it had to be cut cleanly. Also, Chahda would have to make two cuts before the box could drop through the floor. On the first cut, Lazada and Nast would be moving. They could make it down the stairs before the second cut was made.
He shook his head at Chahda. Not yet. He motioned to Scotty and together they examined the stairs, which ran down the outside of the framing. Scotty gestured toward the boxes stacked at one corner of the house. They examined them. The boxes were full of a special kind of sea shell used commercially in the Philippines. They were fairly heavy.
Working together, they piled a few boxes on the stairs. Anyone not watching his footing might fall over them.
Then Scotty motioned to a stack of bamboo poles just outside the house pilings. He whispered, "You help Chahda. I'll use one of these." He selected a long one about two inches in diameter and held it in both hands like a lance. With Scotty standing beside the stairs, the pole would reach almost through the door of the hut.
Scotty nodded. Rick stepped to a position beside Chahda and nodded.
Chahda flexed his muscles, wrapped his fingers tightly around the handle of his bolo, spread his feet and swung.
The steel blade hit the bamboo floor and sliced through, flying in a great arc.
There were yells from the men upstairs. Chahda swung again as running feet made the floor vibrate. Scotty gave a wild yell and charged like a knight attacking an enemy. The bamboo pole caught Nast in the stomach and drove him back into the hut.
The box containing the skull slid and caught.
Chahda swung again, in desperation, and the box dropped through! Rick caught it, and the weight would have driven him to the ground had not Chahda given a hand.
They rushed the box to its prearranged hiding place, then Rick gave a piercing whistle. They ran, all three of them, in three different directions.
Chahda headed for the jeep. He ran quietly. Scotty headed south, yelling as he went; Rick ran north, giving an occasional bellow. That was to draw the pursuit away from Chahda, so he could get to the jeep undisturbed.
The pursuit had organized, apparently, because both Nast and Lazada were barking orders. Rick kept yelling, but he was now in the brush. Scotty was yelling, too.
Rick pushed his way through the brush and emerged on the bank of a river or estuary of some kind. Beyond, on the opposite bank, were rows of wooden forms that marked the outline of salt pans. Water was let into the square pools in the early morning, and by nightfall it had evaporated, leaving its salt behind.
For a tense moment Rick waited. Perhaps he was not being followed. Perhaps they had followed Scotty. Then he heard the brush snapping and knew they were on his trail. He had to keep going. He stepped into the water and went right on until it was over his head. He spluttered, his eyes stinging from the salt. The water was brine, already partially evaporated and ready for the salt pans.
A few strokes took him to the opposite bank. He climbed out onto the salt pans, his clothes dripping and his shoes soggy. He ran.
He was almost across the field of salt pans when a shot whistled past. He bent low and ran faster, remembering that Nast carried a .38 in a shoulder holster.
The second shot was closer, but not close enough. He reached the field beyond the salt pans and headed for a coconut grove about three hundred feet ahead. The field was covered with a low-growing vine of some sort. He floundered and tripped, then got to his feet again, looking back over his shoulder. Apparently the pursuers were looking for a way across the water. He couldn't see them.
He reached the shadow of the coconut grove and stopped, glad of a chance to wring out his clothes. He did so, a garment at a time, watching his trail. In a few moments he saw two men emerge from a far corner of the salt pans and start across. For a moment he turned to run, then an idea struck him and he grinned.
There was pretty complete darkness. He could see and be seen in the open. But under the palms he would be invisible from a distance of twenty yards. He need not run; he could wait until the pursuit passed, then walk leisurely to the airport, get a cab, and go home. Chahda probably was already there. He thought he had heard the jeep engine start. Even if pursued, Chahda could get away all right. The jeep was faster than the limousine on rough roads.
Scotty's fate was less certain. If two men were after Rick, the other two probably were after Scotty. They had scattered just for the purpose of splitting the enemy forces, and to allow Chahda time to get the jeep underway.
As Rick watched, the two men reached the near edge of the salt pans. One produced a flashlight and they walked along the edge of the salt pans shining the light at the ground.
Rick wondered. Surely they weren't looking for foot-prints. Both the salt pans and the field were perfectly dry. He wasn't particularly afraid of the flashlight. He would wait until they were close to the palm grove, then move laterally away from them and lie flat on the ground. The light couldn't pick him out from any great distance.
The men walked slowly down the edge of the salt pans until they reached the place where Rick had left the pans and entered the field, then, as surely as blood-hounds, they followed the route he had taken.
He stared, amazed. How had they tracked him? Then, suddenly, he knew. Makahiya! The sensitive mimosa! The field was covered with it. And where he had walked, the mimosa's leaves were rolled up tightly!
Rick turned and ran through the grove, trying to be silent. He used a beacon from nearby Manila Airport as a guide, and in a moment he saw red lights on the other side of the grove. It was the field. They were boundary lights.
He saw instantly that he was in a bad spot. The only way to go was straight ahead, across the open airport. He would be seen instantly when his pursuers emerged from the grove, and from then on it would be a foot race. There was nothing else to do but go on. He climbed over the airport fence and started for the lights of the administration building a mile away.
To conserve his strength and wind he kept his pace to a dogtrot. He crossed one paved strip and cast a look behind in time to see the pursuers climb the fence. A yell told him he had been seen. He started to zigzag, anticipating a bullet. His spine tingled and there was a crawling sensation between his shoulder blades. But when the shot did come it was such a wide miss that he did not even give an instinctive duck.
Somewhere down the line a big plane was getting ready to take off, the pilot was checking his magnetos, revving up his engines. He searched for lights as he ran and saw them over a mile down the field. It was a Strato-cruiser, probably bound for America. Then he saw the runway ahead and realized that it would be a race to see whether or not he got across before the plane reached that point. The lights told him that the plane was already moving. He lengthened his stride.
He had a choice. He could stop and wait until the big plane passed, or he could run for it and hope to beat it. If he stopped, it would give his pursuers a chance to catch up.
He ran faster, still breathing easily. But there were signs that his wind was giving out. He cast anxious glances down the field. The big plane was rolling, its engines roaring. He tried to gauge the point where it would be air-borne, but it was too hard. It should be in the air by the time it reached him, but he couldn't be sure. The runway was only yards ahead now. He sprinted.
The plane roared down at him. Then he was on the runway, realizing that he would not be across in time. In sudden terror he threw himself flat, just as the big plane lifted. The wheels were only a few feet above him as it passed over.
Then he was on his feet, running again, weak from the certainty of a moment ago that he was done for. But the administration building was only a short distance away now, and he found the strength to keep going. He ran past astonished airport personnel, made his way through the crowd that had come to see the flight off, and leaped into a taxi just ahead of the Filipino gentleman who was about to enter.
"Get going!" he panted. "Hurry!" The driver responded with a burst of speed that snapped Rick back against the cushions. He turned and watched through the rear window, but he couldn't see his pursuers. He had made it!