Flight to Singapore by Donald Barr Chidsey

Book Details

Two stories of the exotic life of Prince Mike of Kammorirri as narrated by George Marlin, his bodyguard and Chief of Police and Army.

Flight to Singapore (1940) – Wisdom is better than rubies, but it’s very nice to have both—particularly when you can back them up with guns and a good right arm. Thus sayeth Prince Mike of Kammorirri in this exciting tale of Indo-China
Chapter I – The Tract And The Gun
Chapter II – Ruby Come, Ruby Go
Chapter III – Sogo Street Blues
Chapter IV – Temple Of Scarlet
Chapter V – The Vanishing Prince
Chapter VI – Old Fashioned Wisdom

Run, Tiger! (1941) – Extraordinary Asiatic engagement! Joseph, the wistful tiger; Racketty-Rax, the temperamental knife-thrower; and other stellar attractions will entertain a group of selected cutthroats. But His Highness Prince Mike of Kammorirri will stop the show with a command appearance of Hiccup, the fire-eating monkey
Chapter I – The Ghastly Clown
Chapter II – Hearts And Flowers
Chapter III – Command Experience
Chapter IV – The Lion And The Plane
Chapter V – Blaze Of Glory
Chapter VI – The World Cracks Up
Chapter VII – Yankee Doodle

Donald Barr Chidsey (1902–1981) was an American writer, biographer, historian, novelist and writer of adventure fiction.

Flight to Singapore has 3 illustrations.

Files:

1. FlightToSingapore.epub

Excerpt: Flight to Singapore

Chapter I

The Tract And The Gun

ARMSTRONG was an Englishman and as hard as steel. He was fiftyish, shy, efficient, a man who had been so baked by tropical suns that everything about him seemed dry, yet who for all this remained wiry and supple.

When we came to the place where we were to part, which was more or less, in the middle of nowhere, he simply stopped, touched his topee, stuck out his hand, said: “Well, toodle-oo. See you in Singapore.”

I shook his hand, and repeated, “See you in Singapore.”

I’d have been worried about leaving anybody else like that, for he had only two carriers, Burmese boys, personal servants, nice enough but soft; but you couldn’t look at Armstrong and worry about him. He was a man who knew how to take care of himself.

So he turned west and I turned east.

It was funny, I thought, plugging along at the head of my boys, how quickly I had learned to take such places for granted.

A few years ago I’d been a cop, a man who almost got seasick on the Oakland ferry, who had never been more than a few miles from San Francisco, and who had never even heard of Kammorirri.

Yet nowadays I wore a sun helmet as if born in it; I commanded an army (such as it was); I played bridge with a crown prince, an engineer, a physician, representing three different complexions; and I thought nothing of walking through hundreds of miles of jungle and mountain land with a fortune strapped around my middle.

It was all because of Mike Lang—His Royal Highness Mikuud-Phni Luangba to you, if you should ever happen to meet him, which is unlikely.

I had got a job working for an insurance company; and they assigned me to bodyguard Mike on his way from Frisco to Honolulu: part of his return trip from Princeton, where he had just finished four years of study, to his ancestral seat in Laos.

“Mike was carrying all sorts of jeweled trinkets which my company had insured for a quarter of a million—travel insurance, that is—and I was to see that both prince and gems got to Indo-China safely.

Well, I did; but various things happening on the way, Mike and I had got to be close friends. When we reached Saigon he even wanted me to go back to Kammorirri with him, but I drew the line at that, not seeing how I could possibly be of any use.

He fooled me. He didn’t argue; but soon after I got back my firm told me I was to make for Kammorirri. It seems that Mike, whose father is one of the richest men in the world, had been in touch with them by-cable from Saigon and had “hired” my services.

Mike was much too good a potential client to be refused anything. I either went —or I was out of a job. Not that I needed much urging.

This is how it happened that a man who had never risen higher than third grade detective in his home town was now in charge of all police and military forces— there weren’t any naval forces, this being an Asiatic Switzerland—of the Sultanate of Kammorirri.

It sounds silly; but oddly enough, it worked, out. I reorganized the army-police force, such as it was, and taught them to keep step and not to close their eyes when they shot.

There is not much policing to be done in Kammorirri, where the natives generally mind their own business, and their neighbors, being both smart and scattered, leave them alone. There are no cities, only a few villages, besides the capital, which is really nothing but a sprawling palace plopped down in the middle of the jungle.

So what it really amounted to was that I was a sort of captain of the guard. And the real reason why I was there at ail— though Mike had sold his father the idea that I was an expert in police organization—was that the prince happened to like me and wanted a fourth hand at bridge. The fact that I couldn’t play bridge didn’t make any difference to Mike. He taught me.

Every now and then, I would be sent off on a confidential mission like this one.

SO I was thinking along these lines as I walked head down, watching my feet—for this was treacherous country—when I heard an apologetic cough. I looked up —to see a white man.

I wouldn’t have got half as big a shock if it had been a three headed giraffe. I guess it kind of took the breath out of him, too. He was a stocky fellow, young-ish, with gold-rimmed glasses and a pink face. He smiled nervously.

“I suppose I ought to say, ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume’?”

Excerpt From: Donald Barr Chidsey. “Flight to Singapore.”