Thunder Jim Wade by Henry Kuttner

Author:Henry Kuttner [Kuttner, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action and Adventure
Publisher: Altus Press
Published: 2011-08-30T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter II

Via the Dead

LIMA is the oldest Spanish capital in South America. James Gregg, a plump and wide-eyed tourist, spent several days there, drinking mainly Peruvian brandy. Then he rejoined his ship at Callao. On the first night out, southward bound, he invited a friend into his cabin to see a curio he had picked up. The friend was a young botanist, traveling for a museum. Though he preferred Gregg’s liquor to his company, he nevertheless showed a semblance of interest in the box Gregg took from the bottom of his steamer trunk.

“Forty dollars it cost me, Doc,” said Gregg proudly. “A genuine shrunken head. It’ll be something to show the boys back in Terre Haute, eh?”

“So it will,” Dr. Barden agreed. Putting down his highball glass, he scrutinized the tiny head, no larger than his fist. “It’s a native, all right.”

“Nobody knows how it’s done, they say.”

Barden eyed the tattooing on the dark cheeks.

“That so? I’ve heard they take out the skull and use hot stones in a sort of ironing process, inside and out—first a large stone, then a smaller, and so on down. The process can be completed in a day.”

Gregg looked deflated.

“Anyway, I had to smuggle it out,” he said. “It’s—What’s the matter?”

Barden was staring closely at the tiny head.

“I’m not sure. Got a magnifying glass, Gregg? Thanks.” He bent over to study the gruesome little sphere. “This tattooing looks funny, as though some of it was done only lately. I wonder—” He snapped his fingers sharply. “Does this remind you of anything?”

Gregg examined the delicate lines of tattoo-work.

“Can’t say that it does,” he admitted.

“Dots and dashes. You wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking closely. Let’s go see Sparks, Gregg. He won’t tell the Customs at Valparaiso.”

In the wireless room Sparks, without much difficulty, translated the message.

“It’s Morse code, all right,” he agreed. “Just a few words, though. Three dots, three dashes, three dots—S.O.S., of course. ‘Thunder Jim Wade—find Patek—Lima—Carnevan.’ That’s all. No room for a longer message, I suppose.”

“But what does it mean?” Gregg asked, noticing that Barden and Sparks were staring curiously at one another.

“It’s a call for help,” the botanist replied. “Presumably whoever sent it guessed that this head would be shown to a lot of people and figured that some of them might know Morse.”

“But who’s this Thunder Jim Wade?”

“Sort of adventurer,” Sparks said slowly. “Soldier of fortune, more or less. Nobody knows much about him, except that he’s always turning up to help someone out of a jam. He straightened out a mess, over in Arabia not long ago, didn’t he?”

Dr. Barden nodded. “He has representatives all over the world. They take messages for him, sort them out and forward the important ones to Wade in his headquarters.”

“Where’s that?” Gregg wanted to know.

“Only Wade knows that, he and his two sidekicks, Red Argyle and Dirk Marat. Sparks, isn’t there one of Wade’s representatives in Panama?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Send a message and charge it to me. Address it to Thunder Jim Wade, Panama, and his man will get it.

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