Assignment - Sulu Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

was a cold and calculating presence who never once, in the years Durell
had known him, made an error. His voice was crisp and final.
    “I’ll check Navy, Cajun. Can you hang on?”
    “I’m calling from Luakulani Palms apartment. It’s got a nice
view and a switchboard in the lobby. I’m scrambled only from the drop in
Honolulu.”
    “Can’t be helped. Give me ten minutes. Hang up.”
    Durell’s apartment was one huge room with a bath and a kitchenette
off it on the north side, and a vast window wall opening on the lanai. Beyond
was a brief lawn with jacaranda and hibiscus, pitching sharply down so you
could see over the top of a ten-foot wall to the beach and the surfers out
there, dark against the Makapuu headland. But the wall was ten feet high and he
had locked his door and there was only a gate in the wall that was also locked;
he could see all that from here.
    He turned to regard the girl.
    “How did you get into this place, Willi?”
    “You’re just looking at it. I climbed the wall.”
    “Just like that?”
    “I’ve lived all my live on a tramp South Seas schooner,
Samuel. I’m not exactly a Dresden doll."
    “No, you’re not, Willi. How did you know where to find
me’! Did Holcomb give you this address?"
    “No. But it Wasn’t hard.”
    “Hawaii isn't enormous, but it’s big enough to give you a
little trouble. But you don‘t seem to have had any.”
    She shrugged and put the end of her thick, braided hair
between her teeth and looked up at him through dark lashes.
    “I knew what you looked like,” she said. “Big, brutal,
handsome, and a quiet dresser. Only mistake I made was saying you had a Cajun
accent. You must have lost that at Yale."
    He remembered the agonizing language drills at K Section’s
Farm, in Maryland, to shake off his bayou identity.
    “Anyway,” the girl added, “I checked into a hotel and got
into some comfortable clothes—”
    "I’m glad you brought a dress along. I wondered if you flew
the Pacific in those shorts.”
    She smiled. “I just don’t like clothes, Samuel."
    “All right. And then?”
    “I went to the Ale Ale Kai Room where the rich, lonely gals look for cute
beach boys, and I struck up some conversation and some of them had noticed you.
Then I called the U.S. Navy and a cute lieutenant there kind of recognized Peter
Holcomb’s name, though he didn’t really mean to, and checked some papers and
said yes, he knew Pete’s friend, Mr. Durell, the address was the Luakulani
Palms, and here I am.”
    Durell swore softly. “And did you tell this cute naval
officer that Holcomb was dead?”
    “Oh, no. I figured they might put me in jail and hold
me up with a. bunch of dumb questions, and I can’t waste that much time here.
Grandpa Joseph can’t run the schooner without Simon and me, but he’s apt to try
to, anyway, so I’ve got to get back just as soon as ever.”
    “Why didn’t you go to the American consulate in Pandakan to
report all this? Why fly one-third of the way around the world to me?”
    “Because,” she said patiently, “Holcomb asked me to tell
you, and nobody else; and in the second place, Pandakan isn’t much these days,
with the plebiscite coming on and Mr. Kiehle, the U.S. consul, in Singapore,
anyway, and nobody else there except the first secretary, a nice Chinese
boy named Tommy Lee; but I don’t trust him. Anyway, Malachy -—Dr. McLeod—was
named acting consul by Mr. Kiehle so I went to Malachy and he said to fly
here as fast as ever, so here I am. But I must tell you that now I’ve done my
duty, I’m going right back.”
    “Maybe,” Durell said.
    Her eyes flashed dangerously. “Don't fool me, Samuel.
The brass would like to grill me here till kingdom come, but I won’t stand for
it. If you try it, I’ll clam up and you’ll Never find that island where we
buried Pete Holcomb, understand? Either you let me go and come down, any way
you please, or else. Do I make it plain? I left the amphibian at the
Palang-Dragh