More hubbub from his listeners. It may not astonish you to learn that I had guessed the identity of the male participant in the drama. Poor Dhang, I thought. I hoped at least that he had attained the object of his desires before they killed him. At least he would have died happy.

But such was not the case.

“Fortunately,” the fat man continued, “the chastity of the little one was preserved. Fortunately her own father arrived in the nick of time, reaching his beloved daughter’s side before the culprit could complete his evil mission. With tears of frustration in his beady eyes the criminal was led away screaming.”

I could well believe it.

“And the criminal?” someone demanded.

“He shall receive the punishment that is his due.”

“Death?”

“What else?”

What else indeed? Dhang, I thought wearily, led a profoundly uncharmed life. First he had attempted to ravish a girl during the Week of Tears and Sighs, and the tears and sighs were all his own. And now, when he had settled on a succulent young Laotian girl, he had had the ill luck to select the daughter of the most powerful man in Tao Dan, the commander of the military garrison. It did not surprise me that he had been sentenced to death. But had the sentence been carried out yet?

Someone else asked the same question. “He shall die this evening,” the storyteller replied. “By nightfall” – he pointed off to his left – “his head shall decorate a post at the command headquarters.”

Not, I thought, if I could help it. Poor Dhang! I thought of the times during the night when I had accused him of treachery while he had trembled under the sentence of death. No doubt he had had the opportunity to betray me then. He could have attempted to tell them my whereabouts in exchange for his freedom. But he had kept his silence, and now, somehow, I had to find a way to free him.

I slipped unquestioned from the cafe. I stood for a moment on the sidewalk, getting my bearings. Then I retrieved my bullock and led him off in the direction the storyteller had indicated. The streets of Tao Dan were a maze, and I had to stop to ask directions to the command headquarters. I managed to select a myopic old gentleman who didn’t seem to pay much attention to my non-Laotian face.

He pointed the way and mumbled directions. I walked on, hauling the bullock along behind me. I turned a corner as indicated and stopped in front of a large whitewashed concrete building from which an unfamiliar flag was flying.

There was no question about it – this was the place. The armed guards at attention on either side of the front doors indicated this, but something else confirmed it beyond question. There was a row of high metal posts off to the side of the doorway, one of which the storyteller had said Dhang’s head would decorate.

Four posts were already decorated. I stood, holding the bullock’s rope with one hand and my own jaw with the other, and gazed horrified at the four disembodied black heads of the Kendall Bayard Quartet.

Chapter 10

Bad as it is to discover a worm in an apple, it is considerably more unpleasant to find half a worm in an apple. By the same token, there is something infinitely more grisly in the discovery of a portion of a corpse than in stumbling upon the deceased as a unit. I stared at the heads of the four musicians, and they stared back at me. I blinked, but they did not go away. They went on staring.

“American devil dogs,” said a voice at my elbow. “Thieves and conspirators captured by our noble soldiers. See how their sightless eyes shine with evil.”

I swayed on my feet. A hand gripped my arm. I turned shakily and looked down into a gnarled and wrinkled face. “You are so pale, young one,” the old woman said. “Have you an illness?”

“I do not feel well.”

She looked over my shoulder at the four black heads. “The spectacle bothers you?”

“I have never before seen such a sight.”

“Nor have I. For all time I had thought that the American devils were white, like the accursed French. But now it seems that they are black devils. You have the pallor of a white devil yourself, young one. You are not of Tao Dan.”

“I have come from the north.”

“Ah, there is a northern touch to your speech! I thought I had recognized it. What is your village?”

My mind whirled. “I am from the countryside,” I said helplessly.

“Which village lies nearest to your home?”

“Kao Pectate,” I said. The diseased spirit offers up its own unbidden puns. I said Kao Pectate because, at the moment, I damned well needed it, but when I realized what I’d said, I wanted to crawl under a flat rock. The old crone was still clinging to my arm like a barnacle to a ship – a foundering ship, in this instance.

“I have never heard of this town,” she said.

“It is many days travel from Tao Dan.”

“So it may be.”

I felt it might be time to change the subject. “They have told me that another devil is to be beheaded,” I said.

“A madman. He attacked a young girl last evening.”

“I was told that there was a woman. A black woman.”

The hag peered shrewdly at me. “Some say that this is so. Others say that it is not. There is little talk in Tao Dan of the black woman, and few have heard of her. Who told you she was within the command headquarters?”

“There was talk in another village.”

“Oh?”

I felt increasingly horrible. I didn’t want to look at the old woman, who was behaving more and more like an agent for the Pathet Lao’s secret police, and my only alternative was to watch the four heads baking in the morning sun.

“The sex criminal,” I said desperately. “When is he to be killed?”

“Today.”

“At what hour?”

“It is of no importance, young one. All executions are carried out within the building. Then the head is brought outside for display.” She clucked her tongue in disappointment. “In old times criminals and devils were put to death in the public square, where all could see. And it was not done with a single stroke of the sword, either. All executions began at noon, with the sun high in the sky, and often the condemned man would not draw his last gulp of air until the sun had set.” She sighed, remembering. “And the entire populace would come to view the spectacle, and the peasants from miles around would make their way into Tao Dan. Much business was done on such days. The cafes carried on a great trade. It is with sadness that I witness the disappearance of the ancient customs.”

“But this criminal – when will he die?”

She eyed me suspiciously. “Why does it concern you? Are you of the same blood as this crazed one?”

“A wager. A man at a cafe, we wagered on the time of death.”

She nodded, at ease now. This made perfect sense to her; the Laos, like the Thais, will gamble on almost anything. Like the Siamese, they raise specimens of Betta splendens, hazarding great sums on the outcome when two male fish attempt to assert their respective territorial rights in a small bowl. That two strangers should bet on the time of a third stranger’s death was wholly reasonable.

“Then, you must wait for the officials to determine the outcome of your wager,” she said. “The criminal will die by evening prayers, but the exact time I do not know.”

I managed to get away from her. I took my bullock’s lead rope in hand and headed him around the corner. A few blocks from the command headquarters I picked out another hitching post and tethered the bullock. I was sweating freely now and had to sit down somewhere before I collapsed. I climbed on top of the mound of straw in the cart, stretched out, and put my hat over my face. I had seen natives resting in this fashion and hoped I would look ordinary enough.

My mind simply wasn’t functioning. The stark horror of those four heads atop those poles had evidently had dire effects upon a brain already numbed by a progressively heightening fever. I tried to put myself into the Yogic relaxation state, tensing and relaxing muscle groups in turn, letting myself go utterly limp, blanking my mind. To do this properly takes twenty minutes, which I couldn’t afford, and a healthy mind and body, which I couldn’t supply. I gave myself a few minutes to loosen up and unwind a bit, and then I tried putting together what I knew.