Passage of Arms by Eric Ambler Read Free Book Online

disreputable member of the family. Such, at least, was the view of his brothers in Kuala Pangkalan and Manila.
    He was one of the founders of the Singapore Democratic Action Party and organiser of a waterfront trade union which, though small in membership, had sufficient nuisance value to levy tribute on two of the bigger stevedoring companies. As the fruits of these negotiations were always handed over to him personally, privately, and in cash, he did not consider it necessary to report their receipt either to the union auditors or the income tax authorities. He had no time to waste on the pettifogging rituals of accountancy and other hindrances to social progress. He saw himself as a man of power, a manipulator of puppets, choosing to work behind the scenes until the strategic moment came for him to step forward and lead his party on to victory.
    If that had been all there were to say of him his brothers would have been content. His political pretensions they could ignore and, devious men themselves, they did not seriously object to his methods of augmenting his income. What they did object to, strongly, was what he did with it.
    Most Chinese like to gamble, and with some this liking becomes an addiction as compulsive as those of drugs or alcohol. Yam Heng was a gambler of this kind. Moreover, he was a stupid gambler. Games of chance are at least subject to the law of averages, race horses do sometimes run true to form, and skill can often qualify bad luck at poker; but Yam Heng' s conceit and fantasies of omnipotence had in the end demanded more esoteric gratifications. He had taken to gambling on the 'pickle' market.
    This unofficial market in raw rubber is conducted by freebooters operating outside the respectable Singapore brokerage houses, and they are speculating on small price fluctuations over short periods. On the pickle market a consignment of rubber in transit may theoretically change hands several times in the course of a day. Large sums of money are made and lost on feverish, bull-and-bear transactions. The successful speculators are Chinese with great experience, cool heads and reliable intelligence organisations. Much use is made of the time differences between the London and Singapore markets, and a few minutes' lead on a piece of cabled information can make thousands of dollars for its possessor. It is the efficient who generally win; the gamblers who generally lose.
    The pickle market was no place for Yam Heng. The acquaintance who had introduced him to it was one of a syndicate of small men, and they had been perfectly willing to let an outsider buy in; the stronger the syndicate the better; but his arrogant impatience with their wariness and caution had soon antagonised them. Soon, he had taken his money out of the syndicate and started to plunge on his own.
    If he had immediately and heavily lost, the blow to his self-esteem might have caused him to think twice about continuing. Unfortunately, he had won. After that, it had been too late.
    His early appeals for loans had been received by his brothers with fraternal tolerance, and responded to in the belief that the money lent would be repaid. They had known, of course, that he was over-fond of gambling, but had believed his profligacy in that respect to be confined to horse-racing or fan-tan. The discovery of the true nature of the 'investments' they were so innocently subsidising had been a disagreeable shock; so had the realisation that Yam Heng had been deceitfully making his applications for loans simultaneously, and in identical terms, to both of them.
    There had been worse to come. In the face of their joint refusals to lend him another cent, Yam Heng had blandly informed them that the various union funds in his charge were some thousands of dollars short, and that unless the shortages were made good before the annual audit, the consequences for the Tan name might be serious. There had been hasty consultation between Kuala Pangkalan and Manila. The