The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [113]
“Were you able to discover anything about all that?” Lucius asked.
“I received pieces of an answer,” the Doctor said. “To which it is necessary to add a conjecture—a rather bizarre conjecture—in order to obtain a likely answer. We are presented with two weapons. The first, as you said, Detective Sergeant, is the well-known trademark of the pirates, mercenaries, and simple thieves who haunt the Manila waterfront. The second is more obscure—an aboriginal weapon, as we surmised, one which, if judged by its small size alone, we could do no more than identify as originating with one of the pygmy tribes of either the southwestern Pacific, Africa, or South America. It is the strychnine that permits us to be more specific—it is known to be used in this way only by the natives of Java.”
“Java?” Lucius said. “But Java’s in the Dutch East Indies—far to the southwest of the Philippines. It wouldn’t seem to match with the kris.”
“True, Detective Sergeant,” the Doctor answered. “But you must bear in mind what the waterfront of Manila is—a stewpot of everything violent and criminal from as far away as Europe, San Francisco, and China. An habitué of the place is likely to become familiar with weaponry from much farther away than Java—and if he is ethnically predisposed toward a particular weapon, the chances are all the greater that he will adopt it.”
“What do you mean?” Miss Howard asked.
The Doctor finally turned and walked away from the diagram. “In certain isolated parts of the Philippines—the northern part of the island of Luzon, for instance, and the Bataan Peninsula—there exist small groups of aboriginal pygmies. The Spanish and Filipinos call them ‘Negritos’; their own tribal name is ‘Aëtas.’ They are the oldest residents of the islands, thought to have crossed over from the Asian mainland when there was still an ice bridge over that part of the Pacific. They are quite negroid in their features”—the Doctor looked to me and Cyrus—“and their average height is about four and a half feet. Which might make them appear, at a distance—”
Cyrus nodded. “To look like a ten-year-old boy, in this country.”
“Precisely.”
Miss Howard suddenly gave out with a gasp. “My God,” she whispered.
The Doctor turned to her. “Sara? You have, I suspect, recalled something from one of your conversations with Señora Linares?”
“Yes,” she answered blankly, not bothering to ask how the Doctor’d guessed. “Her husband—he comes from an old diplomatic family. When he was a young man, his father was posted to the governor-general’s office—in Manila…”
The Doctor only nodded. “On the island of Luzon. There had to be a connection. The Aëtas are outcasts in Filipino society. If one of them should, for whatever reason, have found himself in Manila, virtually the only place where his presence would have been tolerated would have been on the waterfront. He would have brought with him the aboriginal hunting and warring skills of his people—and, in all likelihood, picked up other methods of combat necessary for his survival. At the same time, like many aborigines, the Aëtas place a high premium on loyalty. Should such a man ever have been employed or befriended by someone in a position of power …” He turned to Miss Howard. “It will be for you, Sara, to contact Señora Linares somehow, and determine whether