Passage of Arms Read Online Free PDF Page A

cartridge-case. As he bent down to pick it up he saw another one. A minute later he had found three more. He stared at them, puzzled. They were of .303 calibre. He went over the ground again and found what he was looking for; the clip which had held the five rounds.
    There was no doubt about it. A .303 rifle had been fired there. But no rifle of any kind had been found at the scene of the ambush. And none of the weapons had been of .303 calibre. Where, then, was the rifle?
    He searched the camp site thoroughly first. He found a small fixed frequency radio in a teak box; but no rifle. He began to search the hillside above the camp, taking any route that looked as if it might conceivably have been used before. After about an hour he came upon a clump of bamboo from which a number of thick stalks had been cut. Then, about twelve yards away, he saw it.
    Braced between the steep hillside and the trunk of a tree was a triangular roof of bamboo. Cane screens had been plaited to enclose the sides of the structure and form a shelter.
    Girija scrambled towards it, slipping and sliding on the spongy carpet of dead leaves and slashing wildly with the parang at the undergrowth in his path. When he reached the shelter, he stood for an instant, breathless and trying to prepare himself for the crushing disappointment of finding it empty. Then, he pulled one of the screens aside.
    There was a sudden, swift rustle and his heart leapt as some small brown animal rushed out past him. He pulled the screen back farther and looked inside.
    The hillside beneath the roof had been dug out to make the space roughly rectangular. It was about six feet high and ten feet long, and filled from floor to roof with wood and metal packing cases.
    He sat down on the ground to get his breath back, and stared at the cases. A number of them, he could see, were long and narrow and had rope handles. One of these was near the screen, and looked as if it had been opened. He crawled over to it and prised the lid off with the parang.
    Inside, carefully packed on slotted wood bearers were six .303 rifles. Five of them were heavily greased and wrapped in thick, oiled paper with the name of a Belgian manufacturer printed on it. One had been unwrapped. Girija took it out and opened the breach. It had been fired, presumably down at the camp site, and put back without being cleaned. The barrel was corroded.
    Girija clucked disapprovingly. That was no way to treat valuable property. He returned the rifle to its case and began to examine the rest of his find. He soon discovered that there was more there than he had at first supposed. There were ten cases of rifles and at least thirty other boxes and cases of various sizes, in addition to ammunition containers.
    He began to move some of these so as to get a look at the stencilled markings on the bigger cases, and then stopped. He would have to start back soon and there was no hope of taking an inventory that day. Besides, he had no need of an inventory.
    He knew that all he had really found was hope. Of course, it would have been agreeable to dream of what was there in terms of wealth; but wealth that could only be realised, if at all, in some unmeasurable fullness of time was meaningless. It would be the hope that mattered in the days to come; and if he could draw from it the strength to go on quietly reading his transport trade journals, and turning the pages of his catalogues, and revising notional time-tables, and faithfully continuing to serve Mr. Wright; if, in short, he could be patient and discreet, he might perhaps one day fulfil himself.
    He waited, patiently and discreetly, for three years.
    In the beginning it had been comparatively easy. There had been practical matters to attend to.
    First, he thoroughly cleaned and greased the rifle that had been fired; then he gave some thought to the long-term problems of storage and preservation. The monsoon rains would arrive shortly, and the bamboo roof was not waterproof.
    He