Dave Dawson at Singapore

by Robert Sidney Bowen

"I'd feel happier if we were armed," Freddy Farmer said. "I suppose Bostworth was right when he said that carrying arms might get us into trouble if we were searched. Just the same, though, I'd feel a lot happier if we were armed."

"You and me each, brother!" Dave breathed softly as they neared the front door of the smelly place. "You and me each! However, maybe we'll live to bless him for that word of caution."

"Just so's we live will please me enough!" Freddy muttered. Then as they came almost abreast of the door, he added softly, "I think it would be best to speak bad French in this place. Much better than English or German, don't you think?"

"Check, it'll be French," Dave said and gave Freddy's arm a quick squeeze. "Well, luck to us both. And do I hope I can keep that coffee down! Okay, follow me, my little man."

Dave hesitated a moment, took a deep breath, and then pushed in through the front door of the Devil's Den. He was instantly smacked in the face by a babble of sound, and a stench that almost made his nose drop off. For a second he could see only blurred yellow shadows, the place was so heavy with cheap cigarette, and water-pipe smoke. Then as he spotted an empty table to his left he gave a jerk of his head to Freddy, and shuffled across the filthy floor and sat down. Leaning back he lazily surveyed the place with his eyes. He had seen an awful lot of terrible places since the first day of war, but the Devil's Den topped them all, and then some. It was half store and half coffee shop. Along one wall of the room, that was some forty feet deep and three quarters as wide, was a series of shelves filled with bins that contained everything from spices, tea, and native coffee to pith helmets and old army uniforms. On the opposite side was a row of battered tables so badly stained it was impossible to tell the original color of the wood. The sirupy coffee of the hot countries was spilled all over the table, and it was quite probable that no efforts had been made to mop up the sticky drippings in the last six months. And where there wasn't coffee there was dirt or cigarette ash.

Seated at the tables was a mixture of all races from Suez to Saigon, and from Hongkong to Borneo. There were Malays and Chinese, Sumatrans and Tamils from India, Filipinos and Punjabis, Arabs and Siamese, Persians, and a smattering that had once claimed kinship with the white races but had sunk so low they were no longer any part of a white man.

Dave's heart looped over and his stomach churned as he let his sleepy, seemingly uninterested gaze travel slowly about the room. Many of those there looked at him in return, but only for the smallest part of a second. It seemed to be sort of an unwritten law that you didn't stare too hard or too long at your fellow coffee drinkers in the Devil's Den. Some of them didn't so much as lift their heads when Dave and Freddy entered. Either they weren't interested in newcomers or else they were too full of the poison of the Far East to get up the strength.

There was one, however, who took real interest in the arrival of the two slouching ones in dirty sea water stained clothes. He was standing near the steaming coffee urns at the far end of the room near a door. As Dave's eyes passed over the scarred face with the cast in the right eye it was all the young American could do to check himself from starting violently. Serrangi's face would certainly scare even Satan, himself. The man was not very tall, and he seemed not to have much flesh on his bones. Yet somehow he gave you the impression of coiled steel springs ready to lash out in any and all directions. A scarecrow, perhaps, but with the strength of a killer in his thin arms, legs, and body. But it was the eyes. Particularly the one with the cast. That one was a dirty grey white; a dirty grey white beam of light that seemed to go right through you and read your innermost thoughts on the way. For perhaps a split second Dave had a look at the mysterious Serrangi, but in that brief period of time he saw all he ever wanted to see of the man.

He let his lazy gaze travel on and then brought it to rest on an evil faced native waiter sliding toward them. The man came to a halt at Dave's elbow and hissed something in a tongue Dave couldn't catch.

"Bring coffee," Dave growled in heavily accented French. Then as an afterthought, "And cigarettes, too!"