Free The Adventures Of Indiana Jones by Campbell & Kahn Black Page B

expecting to be attacked, stepped suspiciously away. Indy held his arms out, hands upturned, a gesture of harmlessness. But the man didn’t come any closer. He watched Indy warily. A man of mixed heritage, the shape of the eyes suggesting the Orient, the broad cheekbones perhaps indicating some Slavic mix. Try a language, Indy thought. Try English for a start.
    “I’m looking for Ravenwood,” he said. This is absurd, he said to himself: the dead of night in some deserted place and you’re looking for somebody in a language that probably makes no sense. “A man called Ravenwood.”
    The man stared, not understanding. He opened his mouth.
    “Do. You. Know. Somebody. Called. Ravenwood?” Slowly. Like speaking with an idiot.
    “Raven-wood?” the man said.
    “You got it, chum,” Indy said.
    “Raven-wood.” The man appeared to suck the word as though it were a lozenge of an exotic flavor.
    “Yeah. Right. Now we stand here all night and mumble, I guess,” Indy said, cold again, tiredness coursing through him.
    “Ravenwood.” The man smiled in recognition and turned, pointing along the street. Indy looked and noticed a light in the distance. The man cupped one hand and raised it to his mouth, the gesture of a drinker. “Ravenwood,” he said over and over, still pointing. He began to nod his head vigorously. Indy understood he was to go in the direction of the light.
    “Much obliged,” he said.
    “Ravenwood,” the man said again.
    “Yeah, right, right,” and Indy moved back to the car.
    He got in and drove along the street, stopped at the light the man had indicated, and only then realized it emerged from a tavern, outside of which, incongruously, hung a sign in English: THE RAVEN . The Raven, Indy thought. The guy had made a mistake. Confused and drunk, that was all. Still, if it was the only joint open in this hick burg, he could stop and see if anybody knew anything. He got out of the car, aware of the noise coming from inside the tavern now, the rabbling kind of noise created by any congregation of drinkers who’ve spent their last several hours devoted to the task of wasting themselves. It was a noise he enjoyed, one he was accustomed to, and he would have liked nothing better than to join the revelers inside. Uh-uh, he said to himself. You haven’t come all this way to get loaded like a lost tourist checking the local lowlife. You’ve come with a purpose. A well-defined purpose.
    He moved toward the door. You’ve been in some weird places in your time, he told himself. But this takes the blue ribbon for sure. What he saw in front of him as he stepped inside was an odd collection of boozers, a wild assortment of nationalities. It was as if somebody had picked up a scoop, dipped it into a jar filled with mixed ethnic types and spilled it here in the mad, lonely darkness of the wilderness. This one really takes the cake, Indy laughed to himself. Sherpa mountain guides, Nepalese natives, Mongols, Chinese, Indians, bearded mountain climbers who looked like they’d fall off a stepladder in their present condition, various furtive kinds of no obvious national origin. This is Nepal, all right, he thought, and these are the drifters of the international narcotics trade, smugglers, bandits. Indy shut the door behind him, then noticed a huge stuffed raven, wings spread viciously, mounted behind the long bar. A sinister memento, he thought. And something troubled him, the odd similarity between the name of Abner and the name of this bar. Coincidence? He moved further into the room, which smelled of sweat and alcohol and tobacco smoke. He detected the sweet, aromatic scent of hashish in the air.
    Something was going on at the bar, where most of the clientele was gathered. Some kind of drinking contest. Lined up on the bar was a collection of shot glasses. A large man, shouting in an Australian accent, was stumbling against the bar even as he raised his hand and blindly fumbled for his next drink.
    Indy moved