by Jerry eBooks
“We? Us?” questioned John Henry.
“My daughter Faye and I,” replied Trim blandly. “My name is Jordan—if names mean anything.”
“Oh!” gasped Sin. “Then she—then we—”
“Haven’t you noticed the family resemblance—the Jordan nose? It’s turned up at the world—pushed into that position by generations of well-applied thumbs. Yes, it was Faye who insisted the cotages be switched so she could go through your belongings for this combination while they were being moved. Gayner didn’t suspect a thing—he was that eager to search your stuff himself. But he searched the clothes after Faye had finished and it was he who mussed them.”
Sin trembled with rage. “You killed him!”
“Relax, Honey,” said John Henry uneasily.
“Yes,” chortled their captor, “you might frighten Barselou. Though he’s probably so busy chopping into chests of pearls and emeralds that he couldn’t hear Judgment Day. I hope he’s saving me the heavy work.”
X
JOHN HENRY sensed that his wife was shivering, although it was not chilly between the protective canyon walls. He edged his horse closer to hers.
“Let’s move on,” he said, his voice tired. “Let’s get it all over with.”
“No rush,” was Trim’s amiable reply. “I prefer to board the Queen by daylight. Barselou is an excellent shot.” His proud voice said, “Faye’s taking you to the Bar C was impromptu, Conover—but it shows her flair. That way she was able to separate you from your wife and go through the only clothes of yours she hadn’t inspected.”
“And I let you rescue me from Vernon and Gayner!” cried Sin in disgust.
“Merely protecting my investment,” Trim assured her smoothly.
“Just how,” asked John Henry, “did you know Anglin had wandered into our cottage in the first place?”
“Careless Anglin,” clucked the man. “Faye was waiting for him in the cottage next to yours. When she saw you turn on all your cottage lights, she crept over and—behold!—Anglin had left his signature by your front door. A handprint in blood. She immediately phoned me. I was chatting with that Loomis woman who told me about your quiz contest. My mind leaped instantaneously to the obvious—I would gain entree to your company by being the Bry-Ter Tooth-Paste man.”
“You must be insane!” Sin whispered.
The little figure under the pirate hat stiffened.
“No,” said Mr. Trim softly. “Merely irreverent.” In a gayer voice he said, “Faye went to the Bar C Ranch tonight to discover the starting point for the route I gained from Gayner. It was no error—her releasing you two. But what I commend her for is the way she waited, guessing I would come along eventually and need her.”
“No!” said Sin. “She couldn’t have—”
“Yes. She removed Odell at the proper moment. Odell was stabbed with the arrow—not shot with it.” He peered up at the sky. It was lightening. “Forward march!” he commanded cheerfully. “You, Conover, will go first—and I will bring up the rear. I count on you to realize that your first foolish move will send a bullet through your wife’s spine.”
They clip-clopped around the last corner. A few yards away, a brush fire had been built in the lee of a great boulder. Two horses stood near the rock, hobbled. The roan whinnied softly in greeting.
Trim held his revolver poised, eyes snapping from cliff to cliff. He spurred forward as they came abreast of the mammoth boulder. His thin-lipped smile was triumphant.
A man lay beside the fire, his big body swathed in a blanket.
“There is Mr. Barselou,” Trim said. “Signed, sealed and delivered.” He gestured up the canyon. “And there is the Queen. Another Flying Dutchman”
The jigsaw line of sky seemed to brighten and the outline of a wooden hull slowly took form against the rosy glow. The Reina had not come to rest on the canyon bottom. Rather, the galleon was wedged between the rock jaws of the chasm, almost two hundred feet above their heads. The Queen was earthbound, as in some gigantic dry dock.
Awestruck, Sin murmured, “Poor lonely thing.”
The sails and masts and most of the high stern had rotted away, exposing three layers of deck. Near Barselou’s camp, was a pile of rubble that had fallen over the years. Here trailed a rustly length of chain and there jutted a crumbling plank.
The sleeping form on the ground stirred, moaned, and raised itself on its elbows.
“Good morning, Mr. Barselou!” Trim greeted.
Barselou scrambled to his feet, still half-fettered by the heavy blanket. His eyes widened, then narrowed at the three mounted figures above him in the dawn. One hairy hand twitched toward the carbine on the ground and Trim said, “No.” Barselou halted, warily motionless, and looked at the pistol muzzle.
“Rude to awaken you like this,” Trim pattered on. “Particularly to the noise of a dream castle crumbling about your ears.”
Barselou’s shoulders hunched grimly. “Odell,” he gritted.
“You won’t have to worry about Mr. Odell,” Trim said. “Mr. Anglin, Mr. Odell, Mr. Gayner—all gone. And that young bellhop is being closely questioned by the police. Calamity has come.”
BARSELOU’S rugged face turned and his eyes glinted at the Conovers.
“It was you—” he began hoarsely.
“No,” said Sin earnestly. “We’re here by accident. Don’t you understand? He’s Jones.”
“Or Trim. Or Jordan,” said the little man. “Yes, don’t give these two credit for my adventuring. The Conovers were brought because they knew of Walking Skull and for company through the night. And principally”—his voice gained metallic edges—“because I suppose a lot of their knowledge is dangerous.”
“Jones,” said Barselou dully.
“A mailing address only.” Trim chuckled. “There’s no harm in telling you that my real name is Jordan, widower, age fifty-five, one daughter, and that Anglin’s blunder was to disregard my instructions to communicate by mail when all was ready. He was in such a big hurry that he telegraphed.”
Barselou lifted his head. “So you guessed I saw the wire.”
“I couldn’t ignore the chance, considering the hold you had in Azure. I generally include a female companion in my exploits—they kick up such a blinding dust. And in this case it was a sort of celebration. My daughter Faye had just been released from—” Trim halted abruptly. “She was held illegally. Her only illness was overoriginality!
“Forget that carbine!” he snapped, twisting back toward Barselou. Then he continued pleasantly, “So we had to separate for the time being, as you were expecting a pair of Joneses. When Anglin wired instead of writing, Faye was forced to occupy the cottage alone, while I took a room. We didn’t dare to bear the least resemblance to a Mr. and Mrs. Jones of San Diego. Anglin made a stupid mistake over the cottage number, thought I reneged, and turned to you in desperation. I couldn’t catch him, but I stopped him.”
“And I blamed Odell—”
Trim glanced overhead quickly. There was a tinge of gold on the cliff edges above the imprisoned galleon.
“Light enough to work by,” he said happily. “Well, shall we join the lady?”
* * * * *
Lieutenant Lay tossed the statement on his desk and said, “Run through it again.” Leaning against the closed door, Thelma Loomis brushed ashes from her patrolman uniform.
Robottom cleared his throat. “I’m an archaeologist, Lieutenant. I first told the story of the lost Spanish galleon to Barselou more than a year ago. Naturally, I was eager to locate it. So was he and—well, we pooled our talents. I discovered that Barselou regarded the ship almost fanatically but believe me, Lieutenant, I didn’t realize how far he’d go!”
“Go on,” said Lay inflexibly. Robottom stared at the floor. “He hired a man named Anglin to do the exploration and promised to sponsor an expedition later. A week ago I hurried here from Los Angeles. Anglin had found the ship, but Barselou phoned me that a man and a woman named Jones, masquerading under th
e name of Conover, were trying to beat us to the Reina. I thought I might bluff the Conovers out. I thought I had succeeded. I was wrong. I found that out when they killed Gayner and made their getaway. But this time, I was frightened. I hadn’t bargained for murder.”
“So you went out to the Bar C to talk things over with Barselou,” Lay prompted.
Robottom’s face flushed slightly. “I was looking for him when I discovered that Odell too had been murdered—but apparently by the Jordan girl. I tried to remonstrate with her and—well—”
“You got slugged,” Miss Loomis said. “—and your policewoman rescued me.”
The Homicide chief glanced her way and passed it off with a “Sure.”
“What about this Faye Jordan, anyway?” Lay pressed. “I understand you know her pretty well, Robottom.”
“I met her once—this morning. I gave her a card to Barselou’s—ah—”
“Casino,” said Lay evenly. “I know about it. You might be in pretty hot water now. Conspiracy, possible accessory to a murder, intimidation—” Robottom raised his tired face. “What are you going to do to me, Lieutenant?”
“What’ll you do if I let you go?” Robottom’s dull voice replied automatically. “Why—I’ll go home—my wife—”
Lay made a gesture of dismissal and said, “Recognizance and this statement will do me for the time being. Just keep in touch.”
Sagmon Robottom stood up abruptly and then went out.
“What about the girl?” Thelma Loomis asked curiously.
“We agree she’s nuts. I’ll check the asylums. I don’t think she just cracked—she’s been cracked before. I can’t make answers out of her cat talk but she definitely places the Conovers at the ranch last night. So the next step is to find the Conovers.”
IT took them a half-hour to climb up to the suspended ship. Anglin had done his work well. Steps had been chipped in the soft stone of one cliff, leading up to the stern of the Queen.
John Henry, Barselou, Sin, Trim with his revolver—that was the order. Sin had never been so frightened in her life. The armed maniac was terrifying. Then suddenly, to one side, was a rotting balcony of sand-covered wood. John Henry pulled her onto the deck of the galleon.
“No wonder I couldn’t spot it from the air,” Barselou muttered.
This topmost deck was heaped with sandy dirt and small rocks. Sagebrush, mesquite, a few struggling wild flowers had taken root. From above, it would seem a piece with the surrounding Badlands.
Trim chuckled. “Down into the hold. That’s where the chests will be.”
Barselou led the way, but at every step the timbers creaked and groaned. The four picked their route gingerly down a rotting flight of steps, and into the low waist of the galleon. Part of the decking had fallen away here, and Barselou landed with a heavy crash. The Reina shuddered under the impact.
“Careful, damn you!” snapped Trim. Sin extended a trembling forefinger. “Look at them!” Sprawled around the deck in haphazard piles were bleached bones. A skull stared at them with hollow eyes.
“Some of Arvaez’ crew,” Barselou said.
A cannon lay helplessly on one side by a roughly square hole that had once been a hatch. Two of the great planks had sprung and almost directly beneath Sin she could see the five horses in the canyon, two hundred feet below.
Trim, in his red knee breeches and long blue coat, seemed a fit commander for the ghost ship. His sharp eyes raced around the shadowy deck. Then he let out a whoop of triumph.
Against a moldering bulkhead, far forward, was a row of squat chests. “There!” he ordered. “Hurry—open them up!”
The four people moved cautiously toward the ironbound boxes. Barselou and John Henry wrestled with the first chest, prying at the lid. Together they forced it open, stared into the black depths. John Henry lifted his head and looked at the man in the pirate costume.
“False alarm,” he said. “It’s empty.”
“Don’t lie!” Trim rasped.
He bounded forward and drove the other two aside with the gun. A moment later, he raised a face that was pale and contorted with rage. Barselou’s countenance had gone dead.
“Get back!” Trim commanded, panic in his words as he went down the row kicking at the dusty ironbound tops. Most of the lids flew back instantly. A red dust arose and sunbeams danced on flakes of rust.
At the last chest, Trim uttered a howl and pulled out a fistful of round black objects like withered marbles, staring uncomprehendingly. Then he pivoted and hurled the tiny wrinkled balls spitefully at Barselou.
“There’s your fabulous riches!” he shrieked. His high cracked voice screamed curses at Barselou.
The withered black globules lay on the sandy timbers. Sin gazed at them and remembered something she’d read. Pearls, exposed to the elements, deteriorate and become valueless.
“I don’t understand,” Barselou said dully. “I don’t understand.”
“Maybe you can understand this,” Trim panted. “Somebody beat you to the gold, the emeralds, all the treasure. Somebody maybe a century ago. Anglin knew! Anglin was doublecrossing us both!”
John Henry laughed. He couldn’t help it, even in the face of the maniacal fury. Barselou’s search, Trim’s involved intrigue—all had been for nothing. Three men had died for a chest of worthless pearls.
Sin laughed too. “It’s another Spoonerism,” she said, her shoulders shaking. “You know—the man who always got his words twisted. Remember? Somebody asked him if he sang and Mr. Spooner said, ‘I know only two tunes—God Save the Weasel and Pop Goes the Queen! Don’t you get, Johnny? She just popped!”
“Stop it! Stop it!” yelled Trim. He thrust the muzzle of his revolver almost in Sin’s face. “Get over against the wall—all of you!” Flecks of light were dancing oddly in his eyes. “This is high tragedy. I will not accept the role of clown.”
SIN and John Henry backed up silently, Barselou mechanically. “There!” barked Trim as three backs touched the side of the galleon. The trio stood on the gun platform. Behind them, the rectangular cannon ports revealed the rock face of the cliff, blind and gray. From a beam that ran the length of the ship’s side, several rusty iron chains dangled. Each chain terminated in a wide iron cuff. The ship’s irons.
Trim was addressing Barselou. “Snap those chains around their wrists, if you please.”
Sin licked her trembling lips and asked, “What are you going to do, Mr. Trim?”
“An old pirate custom, Mrs. Conover. No prisoners. By the time you’re found, you’ll be indistinguishable from the other skeletons here.”
“No—you can’t—” Sin choked. She almost fell to her knees but John Henry held her to him.
The threatening pistol motioned at Barselou whose mind had been numbed by the loss of the treasure.
“Johnny—don’t let him—”
Conover struggled but the expressionless gambler forced John Henry’s wrists into the iron circlets. It needed all the power in his hairy hands to press the rusty gyves together.
Sin submitted limply. The pair stood side by side on the gun platform, their wrists held at ear level by the ancient cuffs anchored to chairs from the beam above.
Barselou wheeled slowly and said, “What next?”
Trim smiled, but his mouth was stiff. “It’s your turn, Mr. Barselou. Face the wall.”
Dumbly, the big man obeyed.
“Put your hands up just like the others.” Trim stepped catlike aero?? the deck and shoved his pistol into the small of Barselou’s back. “Now just hold still.”
John Henry felt the perspiration beading his palms. He lashed out with his foot at Trim’s kneecap. The little man danced back, howling, and stumbled on the uneven timbers. Sin screamed.
Over her shriek came the blanketing roar of colossal rage. Barselou jerked a rusty chain loose from its mooring and whipped it ferociously at the cocked hat. Trim sank to one knee in the center of the gun deck, blood streaming from his bald head. He raised the revolver.
John Henry got one hand free of the loose cuff of iron. But Barselou had leaped, with another reverberating roar, for the crouched figure. The pistol exploded against his chest like a cannon blast.
Barselou’s huge body enveloped the little man, his fists battering, pummeling, mauling. Trim’s revolver blasted again.
The deafening noise joined the echoes of the first explosion. They bounded against rocky walls up and down the canyon, until the wooden ship was a trembling fury.
The Reina began to move.
“—collapsing!” Trim yelled and tried to claw his way from beneath Barselou’s flailing bulk. John Henry pulled Sin close. He braced his feet as the gun platform shivered. The deck tilted and the thrashing bodies rolled toward the stern. Old timbers creaked agonizingly and sand poured from above. Two of the great overhead planks parted.
A convulsion seized the Reina as the roar of bursting seams soughed in the narrow canyon slot. With a climatic ripping of wood, the decks of the Queen collapsed and plunged through the ancient keel for the canyon floor. Trim’s final maniacal shriek spun a thread of terror as the two struggling men dropped from sight. The thin noise was drowned by the crash of timbers into the earth below.
Dust swirled in the air.
Sin began to cry.
Below them yawned the gorge with its churning column of brown dust. Most of the hull and rotten decking had given way, but the stout curving timbers of the Reina’s sides had remained between the canyon walls. The curb on which the Conovers huddled had been part of the funnel through which the ruins of the hulk had poured. And the beam to which three of their four wrists were gyved had stayed up.
“We’re all right now, honey,” said John Henry comfortingly.
“I know, Johnny,” Sin whimpered. “That’s why I’m crying.”
Gingerly, Conover pried at their iron cuffs. Two of the rusty hinges bent open easily. His own gyve broke apart in his hands.
