Read Online Assignmnt - Ceylon by Edward S. Aarons - Free Book Online

while the men in white breechcloths splashed and scrubbed them with soap. The sun was lower now. The flanks of the mountains were bathed in dark shadow. Near Kadugannawa, with its vast view of the distant table mountain called the Bible Rock, Aspara had to stop for gasoline.
    The valley far below was terraced in rice; the hillsides were sharp with the green of cropped tea plants. The air felt clearer than it had been down on the tropical coast.
    The gas pump attendant was a small man in a violent red shirt, with a toothy white smile. He recognized Aspara and bowed exaggeratedly.
    “Madame Aspara! May I offer condolences in regard to your former husband, Mr. Sanderson? Ah, it is young George—”
    “Thank you,” Aspara said calmly. Then she added abruptly, “George, please stay in the car.”
    George grinned. “I have to use the facilities.”
    The boy got but of the Rolls with a quick, vaulting motion, landed on the dusty ground, clapped his hands together. The station was only a thatched hut standing on stilts above the slopes, which dropped down toward the tea fields below. Farther down, more elephants plodded homeward along a dirt track. The high shouts of their attendants came dimly through the echoing mountain stillness.
    Durell got out of the car quietly. Aspara’s face was pale. “Yes, you must stop him,” she said quickly. “It is true he acts strangely, so hostile—”
    George was already gone, scrambling up the rough ladder to the thatched stilt house. Durell followed quickly, paused in the interior gloom. A quick suck of breath from George warned him. Something whirred through the air, smashed against a bamboo pole. The boy’s face was a pale blob in the shadows of the hut. The floor creaked as he rushed at Durell, a heavy wrench in his hand. The tool whistled past Durell’s ear as he ducked the wide, swinging blow.
    “George, I meant it. I don’t want to hurt you.”
    “You bastard, shacking up with my mother—”
    “You don’t know anything about it. Who sent for you 1 ; Why did you come back here?”
    The wild-haired boy came at him again. The heavy spanner grazed Durell’s- shoulder as he jumped back. He did not reach for his gun. The floor shook and dust rose about their feet as he caught George’s arm, twisted, bent il backward. George yelped, but he was surprisingly strong Durell forced him backward until they struck a crude workbench. The boy’s hands scrabbled for another tool to use as a weapon. Durell pinned him against the sharp edge of the bench.
    “Now talk,” he said thinly. “Tell me what you’re doin^ here.”
    “I—I’m a patriot,” George gasped. “Let go—”
    “For which side?”
    “The People’s Freedom Movement—I’ve been working in it, raising money back in the states—”
    “And your father? The PFM took him, right?”
    “No, no—”
    “Who did, then? Who’s asking for the ransom?”
    “They’re using the leader—the Cobra’s Bow—but it’s all a front, I can’t tell you—”
    Durell bent him farther back. The boy groaned, reached out, found a hammer, swung it at Durell’s head. Durell drove the edge of his hand against the other’s neck. It could have been a lethal blow, but he held back at the last moment, aware of his anger and frustration at his own situation. The shock of the blow snapped George’s head to one side. The pale blob of his face, under his wildly swinging hair, slid way. All resistance went out of his thin, muscular body. Durell caught him before he hit the floor and eased him gently down.
    George was still breathing. Durell considered his open mouth, his long arms, and straightened, sighed.
    Someone was coming up the ladder of the stilt house. “Mister? Madame Aspara asks—”
    “We’re coming right out.”
    The attendant said, “The telephone doesn’t work, anyway.”
    “Yes.” Durell picked up George and carried him to the door of the hut. The air felt cool outside. The attendant’s brown face peered up at