“Nothing dishonest about it, Peter. All business is founded on the theory that you sell higher than you buy — or it costs you.”
“Yes. But doesn’t your — profit margin seem a little high?”
“Hell, no. We all knew the watch was a phony. Except Torusumi. You don’t mind screwing him, do you? Though he can off-load it on a Chinese, easy, for a profit.”
“I suppose not.”
“Right. Take Prouty. He was selling a phony. Maybe he’d stolen it, hell, I don’t know. But he got a poor price ’cause he wasn’t a good trader. If he’d had the guts to take the watch back and start down the street, then I’d have stopped him and upped the price. He could have bartered me. He doesn’t give a goddam in hell about me if the watch backfires. Part of the deal is that I always protect my customers — so Prouty’s safe and knows it — when I may be out on a limb.”
“What’ll you do when Torusumi finds out and does come back?”
“He’ll come back,” the King grinned suddenly and the warmth of it was a joy to see, “but not to scream. Hell, if he did that he’d be losing face. He’d never dare admit that I’d outsmarted him in a deal. Why, his pals’d rib him to death if I spread the word. He’ll come back, sure, but to try to outsmart me next time.”
He lit a cigarette and gave one to Peter Marlowe.
“So,” he continued blithely, “Prouty got nine hundred less my ten percent commission. Low but not unfair, and don’t forget, you and I were taking all the risk. Now as to our costs. I had to pay a hundred bucks to get the watch burnished and cleaned and get a new glass. Twenty for Max, who heard about the prospective sale, ten apiece for the four guards and another sixty for the boys for covering with the game. That totals eleven twenty. Eleven twenty from twenty-two hundred is a thousand and eighty bucks even. Ten percent of this is one hundred and eight. Simple.”
Peter Marlowe shook his head. So many figures and so much money and so much excitement. One moment they were just talking to a Korean, and the next he had a hundred and ten — a hundred and eight — dollars handed to him as simple as that. Holy mackerel, he thought exultantly. That’s twenty-odd coconuts or lots of eggs. Mac! Now we can give him some food. Eggs, eggs are the thing!
Suddenly he heard his father talking, heard him as clearly as though he were beside him. And he could see him, erect and thickset in his Royal Navy uniform “Listen, my son. There is such a thing as honor. If you deal with a man, tell him the truth and then he must of necessity tell you the truth or he has no honor. Protect another man as you expect him to protect you. And if a man has no honor, do not associate with him for he will taint you. Remember, there are honorable people and dirty people. There is honorable money and dirty money.”
“But this isn’t dirty money,” he heard himself answer, “not the way the King has just explained it. They were taking him for a sucker. He was cleverer than they.”
“True. But it is dishonest to sell the property of a man and tell him that the price was so far less than the real price.”
“Yes, but…”
“There are no buts, my son. True there are degrees of honor — but one man can have only one code. Do what you like. It’s your choice. Some things a man must decide for himself. Sometimes you have to adapt to circumstances. But for the love of God guard yourself and your conscience — no one else will — and know that a bad decision at the right time can destroy you far more surely than any bullet!”
Peter Marlowe weighed the money and pondered what he could do with it, he, Mac and Larkin. He struck a balance and the scales were heavy on one side. The money rightly belonged to Prouty and his unit. Perhaps it was the last thing they possessed in the world. Perhaps because of the stolen money, Prouty and his unit, none of whom he knew, perhaps they would die. All because of his greed. Against this was Mac. His need was now. And Larkin’s. And mine. Mine too, don’t forget me. He remembered the King saying, “No need to take a handout,” and he had been taking handouts. Many of them.
What to do, dear God, what to do? But God didn’t answer.
“Thanks. Thanks for the money,” Peter Marlowe said. He put it away. And all of him was conscious of its burn.
“Thanks nothing. You earned it. It’s yours. You worked for it. I didn’t give you anything.”
The King was jubilant and his joy smothered Peter Marlowe’s self-disgust. “C’mon,” he said. “We got to celebrate our first deal together. With my brains and your Malay, why, we’ll live a life of Riley yet!” And the King fried some eggs.
While they ate, the King told Peter Marlowe how he had sent the boys out to buy extra stocks of food when he heard that Yoshima had found the radio.
“Got to gamble in this life, Peter boy. Sure. I figured that the Japs’d make life tough for a while. But only for those who weren’t prepared to figure an angle. Look at Tex. Poor son of a bitch hadn’t any dough to buy a lousy egg. Look at you and Larkin. Wasn’t for me Mac’d still be suffering, poor bastard. Of course, I’m happy to help. Like to help my friends. A man’s got to help his friends or there’s no point in anything.”
“I suppose so,” Peter Marlowe replied. What an awful thing to say. He was hurt by the King and did not understand that the American mind is simple in some things, as simple as the English mind. An American is proud of his money-making capability, rightly so. An Englishman, such as Peter Marlowe, is proud to get killed for the flag. Rightly so.
He saw the King glance out of the window and saw the snap of the eyes. He followed the glance and saw a man coming up the path. As the man walked into the shaft of light Peter Marlowe recognized him. Colonel Samson.
When Samson saw the King, he waved amicably. “Evening, Corporal,” he said and continued his walk past the hut.
The King peeled off ninety dollars and handed it to Peter Marlowe.
“Do me a favor, Peter. Put a ten with this and give it to that guy.”
“Samson? Colonel Samson?”
“Sure. You’ll find him up near the corner of the jail.”
“Give him the money? Just like that? But what do I say to him?”
“Tell him it’s from me.”
My God, thought Peter Marlowe, appalled, is Samson on the payroll? He can’t be! I can’t do it. You’re my friend, but I can’t go up to a colonel and say here’s a hundred bucks from the King. I can’t!
The King saw through his friend. Oh Peter, he thought, you’re such a goddam child. Then he added, To hell with you! But he threw the last thought away and cursed himself. Peter was the only guy in the camp he had ever wanted for his friend, the only guy he needed. So he decided to teach him the facts of life. It’s going to be tough, Peter boy, and it may hurt you a lot, but I’m going to teach you if I have to break you. You’re going to survive and you’re going to be my partner.
“Peter,” he said, “there are times when you have to trust me. I’ll never put you behind the eight ball. As long as you’re my friend, trust me. If you don’t want to be my friend, fine. But I’d like you to be my friend.”
Peter Marlowe knew that here was another moment of truth. Take the money in trust — or leave it and be gone.
A man’s life is always at a crossroads. And not his life alone, not if he’s a man. Always others in the balance.
He knew that one path risked Mac’s and Larkin’s lives, along with his own, for without the King they were as defenseless as any in the camp; without the King there was no village, for he knew that he would never risk it alone — even for the wireless. The other path would jeopardize a heritage or destroy a past. Samson was a power in the Regular Army, a man of caste, position and wealth, and Peter Marlowe was born to be an officer — as his father before him and his son after him — and such an accusation could never be forgotten. And if Samson was a hireling, then everything he had been taught to believe would have no value.