Passage of Arms Read Free Page A

company's Far Eastern representative, Mr. W. W. Beiden, would shortly be visiting Singapore and would take that opportunity of meeting Mr. Krishnan and discussing his fleet requirements with him personally. For weeks Girija had gone in fear of W. W. Belden's arrival at his uncle's office and the humiliating scenes that would ensue when the truth was known. But Mr. Beiden had never come, and eventually Girija had drawn the correct conclusion. Mr. Beiden had investigated the financial status of this new prospective customer and decided not to waste his time.
    His prudence had been understandable. The cheapest twenty-four seater now cost over three thousand pounds ; almost double the price of the cheapest bus in the nineteen-thirty-six catalogue. But one thing in the new edition had caught Girija's eye; a quotation from a trade journal devoted to the interests and activities of road transport operators. Girija had found that this journal could be obtained in Singapore, and had bought a subscription. From the articles it published he began to learn about the economics of public transportation. By the time he went to work for Mr. Wright, he had acquired a reasonably realistic view of his chances of achieving his life's ambition. Unless he could find a working capital of at least twenty thousand dollars (Straits) his chances of starting even the most modest country bus service were non-existent.
     
    III
     
    Girija had a one-room atap house in the estate compound, and an arrangement with one of the servants at the Wrights' bungalow to keep it clean. There were Indian families of his own caste living in a village six miles away, and on Saturdays he would cycle over there for tiffin. One of the families had an attractive daughter named Sumitra, whom he thought he would one day marry. However, during the week, the curfew kept him at home, and there he always cooked his own food. Sometimes, he would go back to the office after he had eaten his evening meal and do some more work before going to bed; at others, he would listen to Radio Malaya and read and dream.
    On the evening of the day of the ambush, he stayed late in the office trying to make up for the time he had lost by going with the burial party. The following morning he would have to drive in with Mr. Wright to the bank at Bukit Amphu to cash the weekly wages cheque, and he had not yet completed the time sheets.
    The work required care and concentration and he was glad of it; for it postponed the moment when he would have to entertain once more the dangerous thoughts which had come to him in the morning.
    The things he had observed at the scene of the ambush, and learned from the two tappers, had made it possible for him to reconstruct the recent history of the dead men with reasonable certainty.
    They had only recently arrived from the north and were relatively inexperienced. Of that he was sure. Their use of the easy route offered by the gully showed that. True, they had had a lot to carry, but that did not excuse carelessness. In an area where British patrols were being supplied by the R.A.F., a fact which they could scarcely help knowing, they had not even troubled to send scouts on ahead to feel the way, but had blundered straight into the ambush in a body.
    The Lieutenant's opinion was that they had been on their way to mine the main road. Girija did not agree with that. The quantity of ammunition they had been carrying was out of all proportion to the needs of such an operation. And how was the lack of cooking utensils and food supplies to be explained if they were going so far from their base ? To Girija there seemed only one possible explanation. What the Lieutenant's patrol had ambushed was a supply column on its way to deliver mines and ammunition to another gang operating farther south.
    It had been at this point in his argument with himself that Girija's heart had begun to beat faster, and that an unpleasant sensation had come to his stomach. If his reasoning were