The Warlord of the Air Read Free Page A

like an automaton and followed the houseboy into the bathroom, but then he re-emerged almost at once. “My bag,” he said.
    I picked up the bag from the floor and handed it to him. He went back into the bathroom and closed the door.
    The houseboy looked curiously at me. “Is he some—some relative, sahib?”
    I laughed. “No, Ram Dass. He is just a man I found on the quay.”
    Ram Dass smiled. “Aha! It is the Christian charity.” He seemed satisfied. As a recent convert (the pride of one of the local missions) he was constantly translating all the mysterious actions of the English into good, simple Christian terms. “He is a beggar, then? You are the Samaritan?”
    “I’m not sure I’m as selfless as that,” I told him. “Will you fetch one of my suits for the gentleman to put on after he has had his bath?”
    Ram Dass nodded enthusiastically. “And a shirt, and a tie, and socks, and shoes—everything?”
    I was amused. “Very well. Everything.”
    My guest took a long time about his ablutions, but came out of the bathroom at last looking much more spruce than when he had gone in. Ram Dass had dressed him in my clothes and they fitted extraordinarily well, though a little loose, for I was considerably better fed than he. Ram Dass behind him brandished a razor as bright as his grin. “I have shaved the gentleman, sahib!”
    The man before me was a good-looking chap in his late twenties, although there was something about the set of his features which occasionally made him look much older. He had golden wavy hair, a good jaw and a firm mouth. He had none of the usual signs of weakness which I had learned to recognize in the others of his kind I had seen. Some of the pain had gone out of his eyes, but had been replaced by an even more remote—even dreamy— expression. It was Ram Dass, sniffing significantly and holding up a long, carved pipe behind the man, who gave me the clue.
    So that was it! My guest was an opium eater! He was addicted to a drug which some had called the Curse of the Orient, which contributed much to that familiar attitude of fatalism we equate with the East, which robbed men of their will to eat, to work, to indulge in any of the usual pleasures with which others beguile their hours—a drug which eventually kills them.
    With an effort I managed to control any expression of horror or pity which I might feel and said instead:
    “Well, old chap, what do you say to a late lunch?”
    “If you wish it,” he said distantly.
    “I should have thought you were hungry.”
    “Hungry? No.”
    “Well, at any rate, we’ll get something brought up. Ram Dass? Could you arrange for some food? Perhaps a cold collation? And tell Mnr. Olmeijer that I shall have a guest staying the night. We’ll need sheets for the other bed and so on.”
    Ram Dass went away and, uninvited, my guest crossed to the sideboard and helped himself to a large whisky. He hesitated for a moment before pouring in some soda. It was almost as if he were trying to remember how to prepare a drink.
    “Where were you making for when you stowed away?” I asked. “Surely not Rowe Island?”
    He turned, sipping his drink and staring through the window at the sea beyond the harbour. “This is Rowe Island?”
    “Yes. The end of the world in many respects.”
    “The what?” He looked at me suspiciously and I saw a hint of that torment in his eyes again.
    “I was speaking figuratively. Not much to do on Rowe Island. Nowhere to go, really, except back where you came from. Where did you come from, by the way?”
    He gestured vaguely. “I see. Yes. Oh, Japan, I suppose.”
    “Japan? You were in the foreign service there, perhaps?”
    He looked at me intently as if he thought my words had some hidden meaning. Then he said: “Before that, India. Yes, India before that. I was in the Army.”
    “How—?” I was embarrassed. “How did you come to be aboard the Maria Carlson —the ship which brought you here?”
    He shrugged.