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 Paranaque, 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 Paranaque. 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 Paranaque. 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!