The Golden Skull: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story

"Thank you. Wonder who this can be?"

"Chahda?" Scotty asked.

"That would be too much to hope for. Besides, he sends notes whenever he can. Doesn't like to phone."

But it was Chahda. He gave them rapid instructions. Dress in dark clothing. Meet him at Parañaque, a town to the south, just below the airport. Hurry. Chahda hung up. He had obviously been excited.

Rick and Scotty ran for their room. They changed clothes, then Rick tried to phone Tony at the museum. There was no answer. Constabulary Headquarters regretted that Colonel Rojas did not answer the phone in his quarters. They would send a messenger to find him. Rick left the message that he and Scotty were meeting Chahda, then the boys hurried to the desk and left a similar message for Tony.

A taxi took them to Parañaque. Like most small towns in the Philippines it consisted of a cathedral, a market, a botica or drugstore, and a few houses.

They found Chahda in front of the cathedral. He was dressed Filipino style in slacks and sport shirt, and his hair had been recut to a modified crew cut-the only cut possible after the Igorot one.

They dismissed the taxi. Chahda had the jeep. While he drove them through a backwoods road, he told them his story. He had pulled off the one-lane road to let Lazada and Nast pass just before he reached Baguio. Following them had been no problem from then on. They went to a house on the outskirts of Baguio, and by asking a few questions of the house servants – after first loosening their tongues with a few pesos – he had found that Lazada was proceeding on to Manila by car the following morning.

"There was a chance he might give Nast the skull to take care of," Chahda admitted, "but I not think so. Lazada not the kind of man with liking for letting gold out of his hands. So I go to barbershop, get haircut, pick up clothes where I left them with a friend of Dog Meat. Then I drive to Manila and stop at Malolos."

That was a town to the north of Manila on the road to Baguio. Chahda had pulled the same trick of letting Lazada overtake him.

"He comes by, and Nast is with him," Chahda continued. "I am surprised, because Lazada goes right to his house. I wait around nearly all day. Cannot call, because no phone handy. Well, tonight he took black limousine, and he and Nast come to Parañaque. He has skull. They go to this little barrio where we going, and go into nipa shack. Lazada stays there with the skull. Nast goes off in the limousine. So what I think?"

"What do you think?" Rick asked.

"I think Nast goes to get somebody, to bring them to Lazada. So I rush off and call you. Before you came, I saw Nast go by. So now the meeting is being held, and we must figure how to get the skull."

Chahda reached forward and switched off the jeep's headlights. For an instant it was very dark, then as Rick's eyes became adjusted to the darkness he saw that the road was visible as a white pathway between the rice paddies. Ahead were the lights of houses. They had reached the barrio where the meeting was to be held.

Rick looked around and saw that the sky to the north was aglow with the lights of Manila. Then he saw a plane take off and realized that they were only a short distance from the airport.

Chahda pulled off the road into a patch of nipa palms, went through the palms, and parked behind a feathery thicket of bamboo. "We walk to shack," he said. He took a bolo from under the rear seat of the jeep and tucked it into his belt.

The Hindu boy led them a hundred yards down the road, then turned off onto a path. In a moment he pointed.

Ahead, alone in a clearing, was a typical nipa hut. It was built on stilts in the traditional Filipino way, and there was room underneath the supporting posts for a tall man to stand upright. The house itself was square, with walls of woven thatch made from the nipa palm. The roof was pyramidal, heavily thatched with layer after layer of straw. The floor was of split bamboo, a single layer of springy bamboo strips as wide as a man's thumb laid across a framing of whole bamboo supports.

Except that it allowed mosquitoes to roam in and out and gave no bar to lizards or snakes, it was ideal for the climate. The openwork floor allowed the breezes to circulate through the whole house. Also, housekeeping was simple. Dust couldn't gather. It just fell through the floor.

Filipinos had lived in houses like this for centuries, but the influence of Western civilization was visible in the form of electric lights. It was visible in another way at this particular nipa hut, too. Next to it was a shiny limousine, the property of Irineo Lazada.

Chahda whispered, "We get close. Be very quiet and follow me."

It was dark enough. Chahda led the way, and Rick and Scotty followed. There was little cover, but there was no guard outside the house. Apparently Lazada and Nast felt quite safe. They did not know how effectively Chahda had shadowed them.

Chahda made his way slowly until they were beside the big limousine. There was a murmur of voices from above, Lazada's predominating.

Rick swallowed hard as Chahda left the limousine and and walked right under the hut, but he and Scotty followed, scarcely daring to breathe. It was dark and he almost knocked over a stack of wooden boxes. Then, under the hut, there was light.

Rick had not realized that the bamboo floor was nothing more than a latticework of bamboo strips. He could look right up between them and see the occupants of the room!

There was Lazada, of course, and Nast. And with them were two Chinese.

Nast was talking, "Don't you worry about delivery. If I say I'll get the skull into Macao, I'll do it. You just worry about the price."

Rick recognized the name of Macao. It was the Portuguese colony on the Chinese coast just below Hong Kong. It had the reputation of being the gathering place for smugglers, gun-runners, Chinese river pirates, and equally unsavory folk.

One Chinese spoke in sibilant, accented English. "The price you ask is too much. The skull is worth its exact weight in gold, at fifty American dollars an ounce. What do we care if it is a very old native religious object? That has value only for an Ifugao, not a Chinese, and our customers are not Ifugaos."

Rick gasped. Lazada and Nast were intending to sell the skull just for the gold in it!

Lazada put his hand on a box that sat beside him on the floor. "The customers you have usually want bullion gold, true. But perhaps you have one very wealthy customer who could use a museum piece of great value."

"If we could have the skull legally, yes. But it is the only one of its kind. In a few days the press will have sent its description to every city in the world, because its loss is a good news story. No one in his right mind would buy such an object."

"I'm afraid he's right," Nast said. "We'll have to settle for its value in weight. But that's worth something."

Chahda pulled Rick's sleeve, then Scotty's. The boys followed him from under the house back to the edge of the clearing. He whispered, "See the box? I'm sure that is skull. Now, you feel brave?"

"What's your plan?" Scotty asked.

Chahda drew his bolo. "Bamboo cuts easy. Two swings and box falls into our hands. We run like wild men, they not catch."

Rick objected. "The skull is too heavy. We couldn't run with it easily. They'd catch whoever had it."

Scotty nodded. "And the box is too small for two people to get a good grip on it. We'd fall all over each other."

"Could be," Chahda agreed, but he was not convinced. He said that there must be some way to get the box.

Rick studied the house as though the sight of it might give him inspiration. The house didn't, but something else did. "The purloined letter!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Remember the story by Poe? No one found the letter because it was in the most obvious place – so obvious that no one looked." He whispered his daring plan.

Scotty chuckled. "I'll even forgive you for biting me in Baguio, for that one."

Chahda salaamed. "Mighty is the mind of Rick. I glad you on my side. Let's go."

They sneaked back to the house and made preparations for the audacious recovery of the box. Chahda tested the edge of his bolo, reached up with it, and measured the length of his stroke and where the blade would touch. It would work. He looked at the boys expectantly.

Rick knew that bamboo was remarkable stuff. It had great strength against nearly everything except a sharp blade applied across its grain. But it had to be cut cleanly. Also, Chahda would have to make two cuts before the box could drop through the floor. On the first cut, Lazada and Nast would be moving. They could make it down the stairs before the second cut was made.

He shook his head at Chahda. Not yet. He motioned to Scotty and together they examined the stairs, which ran down the outside of the framing. Scotty gestured toward the boxes stacked at one corner of the house. They examined them. The boxes were full of a special kind of sea shell used commercially in the Philippines. They were fairly heavy.

Working together, they piled a few boxes on the stairs. Anyone not watching his footing might fall over them.

Then Scotty motioned to a stack of bamboo poles just outside the house pilings. He whispered, "You help Chahda. I'll use one of these." He selected a long one about two inches in diameter and held it in both hands like a lance. With Scotty standing beside the stairs, the pole would reach almost through the door of the hut.

Scotty nodded. Rick stepped to a position beside Chahda and nodded.

Chahda flexed his muscles, wrapped his fingers tightly around the handle of his bolo, spread his feet and swung.

The steel blade hit the bamboo floor and sliced through, flying in a great arc.