Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 57/Number 5/Hatching a Volcano/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
AN UNSUSPECTED PERIL.
SECURELY bound, Captain Korry lay huddled beside the bridge. No word of protest had come from him during the hurried preparations for sailing; nor did he lift his voice once the Flamingo was under way. To all outward appearances he accepted his defeat with a Spartan philosophy and was resigned to the inevitable penalty that awaited the signaling of the Federal cutter.
Whimpering or railing against the vagaries of a career devoted to constant lawlessness found no place in Korry's lexicon of life. He ever flirted with danger and did not shrink from the consequences it often entailed. Stoically he faced disaster.
Dawn came across the sky with all its splendor of rose and gold and pearl. The near-by shore became a fairyland of rainbow color that hovered mysteriously between sky and water. Myriad birds appeared on every side—screaming gulls, whistling snipe, and silent, grotesque pelicans. Snowy herons, majestic in their flight and resembling figures on a Japanese screen, winged their way above the treetops.
The glory of a new and radiant day touched the shimmering Gulf and caressed the trim white yacht that sped across its depths.
The two conspirators watched the ever-shifting scenes in appreciative silence, forgetful of what had passed and perhaps indifferent to an unsuspected peril that menaced their conquest. They were far too absorbed in the magic of the glittering east, with its retinue of birds and trailing robes of color, to keep a vigilant eye upon the mist-hung deck behind them.
Korry, however, who had no eyes for the beauties of that particular dawn, saw that which was of far greater significance and comfort. A relieved smile hovered about his lips. Good luck had ever attended him in the past. It did not seem ready to desert him in the present hour of trial.
The Flamingo sailed on as the day brightened, and the fiery ball of the sun mounted into a cloudless sky from behind the tall, feathery crowned palms. The early mists vanished, and the water became crystal clear, splotched with turquoise and jade and all the alluring shades between.
Brant bestirred himself. “Perhaps I had better take a look at our friends below,” he suggested at length. “Don't suppose they are any too comfortable. Ought to remove the gags.”
“You might prevail upon the cook to brew some coffee,” the girl suggested, turning to smile upon her companion.
“Yes; I might,” he returned. “A bit of breakfast wouldn't be unwelcome.”
On his way aft, Brant stopped in front of Korry, whose placid countenance and resigned air seemed to indicate an untroubled spirit, It was so marked that Brant was forced to admire his prisoner who could face a dismal future uncomplainingly.
“You don't look at all downcast this morning, captain,” he observed jocularly.
The chink runner favored his captor with a bland, inscrutable smile, but did not seem moved to make reply.
Brant passed on with a shrug. Any number of questions were on his lips—questions that he felt certain Korry could answer, particularly those concerning Dixon; but, after reflection, he decided to postpone the interview until Meech had been visited.
The Flamingo engineer, who seemed to be in the smuggler's confidence, might be tempted to reveal valuable evidence,. provided it brought him hope of clemency.
Brant turned to descend the narrow companionway that led to the stateroom corridor below. Halfway down, blissfully unaware of the disaster that awaited him, his legs were encircled and wrenched from under him. The thing happened with such amazing swiftness that he was unable to cry out a warning to the girl at the wheel.
Instantly, so it seemed, he was sprawled upon the corridor floor. His head crashed into something that might have been the toe of a heavy boot. In the uncertain light, dim forms pounced upon him; a none-too-gentle hand was thrust against his mouth to prevent an outcry; fingers clawed at his throat. Fists, leaping out of the darkness, pommeled him brutally; and while he kicked and squirmed and fought desperately against overwhelming odds, his wind shut off and his brain reeling, the curtain of oblivion descended with a crash.
Yet an instant before his mind ceased to function, it flashed to Brant that, in some inexplicable manner, the Chinese had broken from their quarters and intended to take possession of the ship. In no other way could he account for the disaster that had overtaken him.
He came back to the world again with a throbbing head and an aching body. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but the other opened wonderingly in the bright sunlight of the Flamingo's deck. His first thought was for Miss Newberry. He tried to rise, but his hands were lashed behind him and his ankles bound. With an impatient exclamation at his helpless predicament, he rolled back and closed his good eye from the hot glare of the sun.
When he next peered forth through half-closed lids, it was to stare uncomprehendingly into the grinning, wolflike countenance of Meech. The engineer broke into a malevolent chuckle.
“Huh, awake, are you? Took a long time about it.”
“Where's Miss Newberry?” Brant demanded at once.
“Oh, she's restin' comfortable in her stateroom,” Meech answered. “The captain's took her trick at the wheel for a spell. Tried to put something over on us, didn't you?” he added.
“Tried? Guess I succeeded, didn't I?” Brant retorted.
His mind cleared rapidly, and he twisted his swollen lips into an unflattering smile. Rage and protestation would avail him little, he reflected, bitter at the thought of his undoing. Yet he was relieved to learn that the girl had escaped his fate.
“How did you get loose?” he queried, seeking to account for Meech's presence. Evidently the Chinese had not broken from confinement as he first suspected.
The engineer grinned and nodded toward a man standing near the bridge. Turning with difficulty, and surveying the figure, Brant recognized the man he had pitched overboard.
“You thought you'd left Rambo behind when you sailed off,” Meech condescended to explain for the benefit of his prisoner. “But you didn't. He got hold of a rope trailin' astern and managed to pull himself aboard. Rambo knew what was stirrin', all right.”
“I see,” Brant admitted dismally, when the situation was accounted for. “He released you and the cook; then the three of you laid for me in the corridor. I remember something about that. I thought for a minute the whole pack of Chinese were out and mistook me for a bowl of chop suey.”
“You worked fast while you were about it,” said Meech; “but you got careless too soon.”
“So it would seem,” the prisoner agreed. “I thought the show was over; but there happened to be an epilogue I didn't expect.”
“There's a lot of things comin' off you ain't expectin',” the engineer hinted ominously, his hand caressing a throat that still bore traces of Brant's fingers. “I got a bill to collect myself.”
The prediction did not alarm Brant. He managed to worm himself into a more comfortable position, with his back propped against a coil of rope. It gave him a full view of the deck. He saw Korry at the wheel and saw, too, that the Flamingo had not materially altered its course. They were still bearing south at a lively clip.
Meech, squatting on the hatch and rolling himself a cigarette, continued to watch his prisoner with amusement.
“Say, you're a sweet-lookin' bird,” he taunted presently. “Don't look so pretty as when you come aboard.”
Brant, remembering his bruised face, his swollen lips, and eye that was puffed shut, ventured to remark that he felt as sweet as he probably looked.
“What brought you on this trip anyway?” Meech demanded. “Was you plannin' to double-cross the girl? You don't bear the earmarks of a hijacker. Maybe you're a Federal agent. Which is it?”
“I don't know what a hijacker is,” Brant admitted.
“I'll bet you don't!” Meech broke into a jeering laugh. “And maybe you don't recall trailin' a man one night in Havana a couple o' weeks ago and gettin' bumped for your trouble, eh?”
Brant eyed the engineer speculatively. “Oh, so you're responsible for that?” he observed, surprised.
“Maybe,” the other answered evasively.
Brant pondered over the unexpected disclosure. During the intervening silence Korry strolled up, Rambo having relieved him at the wheel. He stood looking down at the prisoner, his black eyes smoldering with undisguised rancor and malice.
“I been tryin' to get some dope out of this bird,” Meech remarked.
“No use troubling yourself,” Korry returned. “I got him hooked up with too much. now. He can talk or not. Bluffing won't get him anything.”
There was a significant note in Korry's voice that set Brant's thoughts traveling along a new course.
“Hooked up?” Brant repeated, pondering over the expression the smuggler had used.
Korry shrugged. “Birds of a feather!” he sneered. “Guess you understand, don't you?”
“I'm beginning to,” admitted Brant.
“I'd about decided I was a little off in my reckoning when we sailed according to schedule and the cutter passed us by; but I changed my mind soon enough when I got a look at the newspaper one of you brought aboard.”
It was not difficult for Brant to imagine what particular item in the Havana Post the skipper referred to.
“You and Miss Newberry's played a smart game,” Korry went on, when it was evident his prisoner had no comment to make; “but it's got you nothing.”
“Hasn't it?” Brant countered.
“No; nothing but trouble. I'm landing my cargo just the same,” the smuggler boasted. “It's a five-thousand-dollar job. I know enough to keep my eyes open. Do you suppose I'd let a show actor and a girl put the blinkers on me? Not much!”
Brant did not take the trouble to argue the matter.
“After I'm done, the girl can do as she likes with the Flamingo,” Korry went on. “I don't figure to take the boat into Tampa; not this trip. It. Would be a Waste of time.”
Just what disposition was to be made o£ his prisoner, the skipper failed to reveal; but at the time Brant was far too absorbed in a new problem to permit the omission to disturb him.
Among other things, the realization came to him that during the period of his unconsciousness, his clothes had been searched. And he remembered that the message written by Miss Newberry and addressed to Dixon was in his coat pocket—thrust there just before his companion and himself had fled from the house in Calle Huerfanos. Moreover, he recalled that the inclosure was no longer blank.
Just what it contained, he had not presumed to read; but that it would interest Korry in no small way was a certainty.
The smuggler's reference to birds of a feather was no longer puzzling. It was evident that Korry considered his passenger a Federal agent—one of Dixon's subordinates.
The skipper, watching his prisoner narrowly, seemed to read what passed through Brant's nimble mind; and as if to confront him with the evidence and bring matters to an issue, Korry produced the pink-tinted envelope.
“Recognize this, do you?” he queried.
“I would—naturally,” Brant replied, “since you removed it from my pocket.”
“The envelope is addressed,” Korry went on; “but I don't get the meaning of the blank sheet of paper inside.”
Brant stared incredulously at the folded letter that Korry removed from the envelope and held up for inspection. The sheet was blank—on both sides; as blank as it had been once before. Yet the last time he had looked upon it, the paper contained a message—a closely written page in Miss Newberry's hand.
Korry doubtless attributed Brant's silence to a cause far removed from the truth, although he might have pondered over the amazed look that stamped itself upon the prisoner's countenance.
“I guess this hooks you up all right,” the smuggler declared. “I don't need any more evidence. Miss Newberry gave you the letter to deliver to Dixon. You didn't do it, did you?”
“What makes you think that?” Brant inquired.
The mystery of the letter, whose written message appeared and disappeared at most convenient times, baffled him; but in the present crisis a more salient problem intruded itself.
“We found this in your pocket, didn't we?”
Brant smiled at the deduction the other had made. “There would seem to be more than one riddle to solve,” he ventured. “For instance, Dixon was murdered at the door of the patio; but the servant found him on a couch in the living room. How are we to account for that?”
Korry's eyes narrowed. “Why should we?” he countered quickly.
“The servant done it!” Meech put in.
“No. It wasn't the servant,” said Brant, his measured glance traveling from Korry to the engineer.
“How do you know it wasn't?” Meech demanded.
“Dixon was murdered at least two hours before the servant appeared,” Brant replied. “The police can prove that.”
“It don't matter when he was killed or how the body was moved,” Korry remarked with professed indifference.
“Doesn't it?”
“Say, what're you gettin' at?” the engineer snarled, glaring at the prisoner. “How come you to know so much?”
“I happened to be on the scene the night before last,” Brant answered quietly. “I delivered Miss Newberry's message; but I took it away with me later. I was in the house before and after Dixon was murdered, and I carried him from the patio where he was struck down.”
A sneer twisted Korry's lips, but he gave no evidence of the shock he must have experienced. In sharp contrast, however, a look of apprehension swept Meech's countenance.
“Why didn't you notify the police?” Korry asked.
“Because that would have interfered with the sailing of the Flamingo,” Brant returned pointedly.
The chink runner seemed to flinch. “How so?”
“You know well enough. Death prevented Dixon from fulfilling an important engagement; but I volunteered as an understudy. The Flamingo was scheduled to sail, I did not want to hinder it.”
“What do you think you saw?” It was Meech who spoke. He leaned forward, breathing hard.
“Dixon opened the door in answer to the bell,” Brant replied in a tone that conveyed the impression of being on the scene. “As he did so, a man stepped inside. The thing happened in a flash. Dixon swayed and dropped. The visitor whirled and vanished. The patio was but dimly lighted, yet”
Korry broke into an insolent laugh, cutting short Brant's graphic recital. “What's the answer? You've learned nothing.”
“You're wrong!” Brant returned. “I know who murdered Dixon. That's the answer!”
Before either of the men could frame a reply or act in the crisis that Brant had precipitated, the man at the wheel uttered a warning cry.
Korry whirled swiftly. Rambo was pointing ahead to where, far in the distance, a vessel loomed in the bright sunlight. Instantly alert at the new danger, the skipper bounded across the deck.
A moment later, having studied the approaching craft through leveled binoculars, Korry cried the alarm: “It's the cutter! Look alive now!”
The smuggler himself took the helm, while Rambo and the Cuban crowded to the rail.
Meech, apparently indifferent to the unpleasant news, slipped from the hatch and bent a glowering face upon Brant. “Say, you're a wise guy, ain't you?” he snarled. “Like to crow about it! what you think you seen ain't goin' to travel far. You won't get a chance to squeal. I'll see to that!”
Undaunted, Brant's eyes searched the distorted and forbidding countenance that was thrust close to his own. His mind was no longer in doubt. He was comforted by the thought that what he had set out to do had been achieved.
“You're a ready man with a knife, aren't you, Meech?” he charged. “Far too talented to remain at large. I've a suspicion that the finger prints on the patio door”
Meech interrupted with a snarling imprecation. He drew back his arm and crashed a savage fist into Brant's face. It was a vicious blow that hurled him flat upon the deck. He heard the man swear again and again, then move off to where Korry was bawling orders.