The Mystery of Dolphin Inlet

by James Holding

  I said, “After you’ve gone, how are Susan and I going to get loose?”

  Through the crack, I saw him tossing his club up in the air and catching it again, one-handed, as it came down.

  “Bascom Harter and I are normal, law-abiding citizens as I told you, Pete. But that don’t mean we’re stupid. Knowing what you do about us and Chapin and the treasure, I don’t imagine you and Susan came out here this morning without telling somebody else where you were going, did you?”

  I gave him an honest answer as far as it went. “I told my sister Gloria I was coming out here.”

  “Your sister, heh? Well, well. And how about the police, Pete? Didn’t you tell them, too, maybe? And isn’t there a bare possibility that Susan’s mother may know where she is? And who was in that airplane just now? Could it possibly have been somebody checking on our treasure site—somebody else you’ve told about it?” His voice was turning nasty. I didn’t answer him.

  He didn’t seem to notice. He went on, “Oh, I’ve no doubt there’ll be plenty of people to let you out of this shed when we’ve gone, Pete.” He chuckled, then added maliciously, “In fact, we’re counting on it.”

  What did that mean? I couldn’t make sense of it. I said, “When I don’t show up at the fish market after lunch, Gloria may send somebody to look for me, but…”

  Osgood cut me off. “Never mind.” Faint with distance, Bascom Harter’s voice floated up to us.

  “I’m going to the cache, now, Perry! Get her down here!”

  “Three minutes!” Osgood yelled back. Then he said in his normal voice, “Well, we’re off, Pete. Hope the police—or your sister—don’t take too long getting here. Because we want you to tell them something for us.”

  “What?” I said.

  “That we took Susan Frost with us, Pete. A prisoner. A hostage. A guarantee that we’ll get away with our treasure scot free.” He chuckled again. “You understand now?”

  I felt cold. “You’re taking Susan with you?”

  “Yep. Only for a little ways, Pete. We’re going to tie her up somewhere in the woods along this Key. Somewhere. I won’t say whether north, south, east or west. That’s your problem. But somewhere on this Key. Where she’ll suffer a lot from hunger and thirst unless you find her pretty soon. And I want you to tell that to your sister”—he snorted—“or the police when they come for you. By the time they’ve organized a search of this ten-mile island and found Susan, we’ll be in Mexico.”

  “You can’t do that!” I began. “That’s kidnapping! You’ll be caught! And if you hurt Susan…!”

  “We won’t hurt her unless we have to.” His words were stiff with menace. He checked the outside latch of the shed door. I could see him fingering it. Then he walked up the path and disappeared around the corner of the house.

  I lost a precious second wondering what to do before I backed up to the rear wall, charged across the shed and slammed into the door with my shoulder. I put everything I had into that rush and maybe a little bit more than I had. It was like crashing into a two-ton boulder with my shoulder. On T.V. and in the movies, it looks easy. The door always falls off its hinges with a splintering of wood. It wasn’t that way with me. My shed door shook and groaned and gave off a mighty puff of dust, but it didn’t budge. Not a board in it so much as cracked or loosened.

  I tried again. With no better luck. And more pain. For a second, I thought I’d probably broken a bone or crumpled a cartilage or something. No use. The door was too much for me.

  Suddenly Susan screamed. “Pete! Pete!” she cried shrilly. “He’s tying me up!”

  Through the house wall between us, I could hear faint sounds of a ruckus going on in there. I knew Susan wouldn’t give in meekly. But what could I do to help her? I was helpless as a cow in a fenced field. I was also frantic.

  Driven more by instinct than anything else, I expect, my eyes went desperately around the shed’s interior, looking for a weapon, a lever, a stick, a heavy stone, anything that might give me a chance of battering my way out of there. While my eyes were looking, my hands were feeling over the rough surfaces of the plank walls of my prison. I was short of breath; I could hear my blood beat in my temples. From their contact with the walls, my hands and fingers collected several big splinters which I never knew I had until later.

  As it turned out, it was the touching and not the looking that resulted in my finding the gaff. My right hand brushed down the corner where the house wall and the side wall of my shed came together. It was dark in that corner, because the daylight that seeped through the door cracks didn’t reach quite that far. And I’d never have seen the rusty steel shaft of the gaff resting upright in the corner. So it was lucky I did use my hands.

  When I felt the thin rod of corroded metal under my fingers, I thought it was a rod and nothing more. Maybe a metal curtain rod like they used to make. I snatched at it with both hands and that’s when I discovered it was a gaff. My left hand slid down to its lower end and the dull point of the gaff hook scratched the heel of my hand. I knew what it was, then. A surge of excitement went through me. I blessed old Jude Skanzy, who had kept his fishing gear in this shed, for forgetting the gaff when he sold the place to the Osgoods. For I knew now that I could get out of the shed.

  The shaft of the gaff was less than half an inch in diameter, the sharpened hook even less. It was slim enough to slip through the widest crack in the door.

  As I turned that way with the gaff in my hand, I heard another piercing yell from Susan. She screamed, “Pete! He’s going to carry me…!” and then her voice was cut off as though a wad of cotton had been stuffed into her mouth. And maybe it had, I thought, working with terrible haste to slide the gaff through the door crack and toward the latch on the outside of the shed door. I couldn’t see what I was doing. I had to operate purely by guess. Starting with the hook end of the gaff below where I judged the latch to be, I lifted it slowly upward along the crack in my door, keeping the hook turned left toward where the protruding latch was, and as tight as possible against the outside surface of the door.

  On my first try, I thought I’d missed the latch handle. Wildly I was about to lower the gaff hook and try again when I felt resistance under the hook out there. Slowly, so as not to pull the hook loose, I raised the gaff shaft higher.

  The latch clicked open. It made an amazingly loud noise.

  I let out a big breath that I seemed to have been holding for an hour. I put a little pressure on the shed door and saw a crack of sunshine appear along the jamb. It was open. I was free.

  As I was trying to decide the best way to use my freedom, the whole shed trembled to the slamming of the front door of the house. Heavy labored footsteps started down the path that led past my shed, and I could see in my head as clear as a blueprint what was going to happen. In a few seconds, Perry Osgood would turn the corner of the house and be in full view of the shed door. And unless I’d heard Susan wrong, he would be carrying her in his arms, or over one shoulder, carting her down to the anchorage, to the outboard motorboat in which they intended to escape, taking her with them.

  There was only one thing for me to do. I did it. I pulled the gaff back inside the shed and took a good grip on it with one hand. With the other, I held the shed door almost closed so Osgood wouldn’t notice the latch was sprung. I plastered my eye to a crack, watching for Osgood to come in sight down the path past my door. Then I waited, not daring to breathe or move.

  CHAPTER 17

  ANOTHER SWIM IN DOLPHIN INLET

  I wasn’t more than a few seconds off in my timing. Before I could see Osgood I could hear him. His heavy footsteps came slowly down the slanting path from the house; thud, thud, thud. He walked on his heels. And I could hear his heavy breathing. I had time to wonder why he was out of breath. Had Susan put up more of a battle than he had expected? Or did she weigh so much that he was out of breath from carrying her? Not that I doub
ted which it was. It goes to show what screwy ideas run through your mind at a time like that.

  Osgood walked into my line of vision at last. He was maybe four yards away. He was carrying Susan in his arms. Her wrists and ankles were tied. And there was a piece of cloth that looked as if it might be part of an old gingham curtain or apron tied around her head over her mouth.

  At the sight of Susan being lugged down the path to the anchorage like a box of groceries or a side of beef, I lost my temper. I was so burned that I got a mild case of the shakes, just waiting for the right moment to bust out of the shed and clobber Osgood. Because that was what I wanted to do more than anything else, suddenly—clobber Osgood for giving Susan such a hard time. I was looking forward to it. I knew it would be a pleasure, youth against middle age or not. And I knew deep down inside that I could handle Osgood as easy as he’d been able to handle Susan.

  Well, it seemed like a long time but it was hardly two quick breaths until Osgood, with no more than a sidelong glance at the latch on the shed door, went by. Susan was kicking pretty lively at the time, and that may have helped to keep Osgood from noticing that the shed door latch was sprung. She was an armful for him, all right. She jerked and squirmed in his arms like a wildcat. He had all he could do to hang onto her.

  When he was right opposite my door crack, I started to count his footsteps. I wanted to give him time enough to get his back toward me before I came out of the shed. One, I counted. Two. Three. And when he lifted his foot for the fourth step, I slipped out of the shed door as quietly as a mosquito landing on a powder puff. I took a couple of running steps and launched myself at his retreating back. First, though, I dropped the gaff beside the path. For some reason, I wanted to take him myself, without any rusty iron helping me.

  At the last second, something must have warned him that I was behind him. He heard either a faint creaking of the shed door hinges when I shot out of my prison or the scrape of my moccasins on the path. Or maybe Susan’s eyes gave it away, because she saw me coming over Osgood’s shoulder. He started to turn. Susan began to squirm and struggle even harder than before.

  The next thing that happened was that I landed spread-eagled on Osgood’s back like a starfish on a clam shell. I gave a loud roar, and Osgood dropped Susan as if she was red hot to the touch. She rolled to one side, out of the way, and I began my joyful work on Osgood.

  Without Susan to hinder him, Osgood wasn’t any pushover. He had about six inches reach on me, and I’d say maybe twenty-five pounds. But he wasn’t as mad as I was. Or as young, either, let’s face it.

  He reached around and peeled me off his back without too much trouble—because I wanted to be facing him, now that Susan wouldn’t be between us. As soon as he got me around where he could belt me, he doubled up one of his big fists that looked like an oak knot, and hammered it home below my ribs on the right side. A pile-driver would have felt gentle compared to it. I grunted and sucked in my breath with a hoarse gasp, and lashed out with everything I had. And that was the end of it as far as Osgood was concerned.

  I guess I was lucky. I know I was. For my right-hand punch landed flush on the button of that long narrow chin of his, and he went down as though he’d run into a rifle bullet instead of a fist. The whites of his eyes showed under his half closed eyelids and he collapsed on the sandy path. He was out as cold as any mackerel in our display case at the fish market.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. I knew I could take him, but I never expected I could take him with one shot like that. I was so surprised that for a split second there I toyed with the idea of taking up boxing as a career instead of shrimping. Next second, I’d found a jackknife in Osgood’s pants pocket and cut the ropes off Susan’s wrists and ankles, the cloth gag off her head. She sat up and worked her mouth around for a spell to loosen it up, then she moaned, “Oh, Pete!” and ran her hands back through her tangled hair. Then she looked at Osgood and said, “Did you kill him?” She was as surprised as I was.

  “Not a chance,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “Great!” she said bitterly. “Never better!”

  That was good enough for me. I grabbed Osgood by one foot and dragged him back to the shed and inside. Then I shut the door on him and made sure the latch was tightly closed. I thought that ought to hold him until Mike or Susan’s father arrived.

  While I was locking Osgood in the shed, I said to Susan, “How’d they get you?”

  “Mr. Osgood came through the woods with some sacks when Daddy’s airplane first flew over,” Susan said. “He didn’t know I was there, just sort of stumbled on me. I was watching the inlet and didn’t hear him.” Susan stood up and brushed the seat of her shorts and tucked her shirt into her belt. “He asked me what I was doing, and I said I was going to paint the inlet. You know, the way we planned.” She sighed deeply. “There was only one thing wrong with my story.”

  “What was that?”

  “I had my easel and canvas set up, very convincing,” said Susan, “but I kind of forgot to bring my paint box with me. I left it in the trunk of Daddy’s car!”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “So when he invited me to come closer to the house for a better angle to paint from, I felt I better do what he said. And then he and Mr. X locked me in the house.”

  “The guy’s not Mr. X anymore,” I said, my eyes traveling over the anchorage below us and as much of the inlet beach as I could see through the stand of slash pines behind the house. “Mr. X is a man named Bascom Harter. Or so he says.”

  Before she could say anything to that, we heard a tremendous bellow from the direction of the beach. It was a bellow in Mr. Harter’s rich voice, but a bellow all the same. I said, “Stay here, Susan,” and ran through the slash pines to where I could see the whole beach below me.

  Bascom Harter was setting a hot pace along the edge of the woods where the footing was firmer than on the beach itself. And he was covering distance with surprising speed for a man of his age and build.

  Then I saw Mike Sebastien charge out of the woods onto the beach a couple of hundred yards behind Harter. Mike’s long legs were eating up the ground, too. Harter was heading for the blind channel in which the boats were moored. And he obviously hoped Perry Osgood would meet him there with Susan and they could make good their escape in the outboard before Mike could reach them. From my elevated position, it seemed to me that Harter might make it. Mike was gaining on him by leaps and bounds but not fast enough to catch him before Harter got to the outboard.

  Mike took his eyes off Harter for a minute and saw me. “Hey, Pete!” he shouted, flourishing one hand. I saw it held his service revolver. “Head him off!”

  I gauged the distances and figured I just might be able to do it. I was about fifty yards from the anchorage where the outboard was tied up, and so was Harter. Maybe he was five yards closer. Mike trailed Harter by a hundred and fifty yards; he was out of contention unless he used his gun. And I felt pretty sure Mike wouldn’t start shooting. Not until he knew where Susan was, where Osgood was, and that he wouldn’t hit either of them—or me—with stray bullets. Anyway, he couldn’t risk taking pot shots at Harter. Not until he knew the score here in the inlet first.

  So it was up to me to head off Harter.

  I was still doing a slow burn over the way Harter and Osgood had meant to use Susan as a hostage. And I was pretty set up by my one-punch knockout over Osgood. So I thought, what the heck, I might as well give it a try. If I could make a clean sweep of Osgood and Harter both, I might make up, a little bit at least, for getting Susan mixed up in the mess in the first place.

  While all this was going through my mind, I was already on the move. Ducking back through the pines to where Susan was sitting beside the path, I took off past her down the path for the anchorage, yelling over my shoulder to her, “Everything’s okay now! The police are here!”

  I had a little advantage over Bascom Harter in
our race for the outboard. I was running slightly downhill. He was sprinting through sand. I wasn’t sure that was going to be enough of an advantage, though, because by the time I passed Susan and headed full tilt down the path for the boats, Harter was a good fifteen yards closer than I was. Mike was still gaining on him but not fast enough.

  I stretched all the muscles I have in a good try to beat Harter to the boat. I think I could have headed him off in time, too. Except that halfway down to the dock, I lost a moccasin.

  Those loose sloppy moccasins aren’t the greatest for running in, and when you’re pounding along a rough path, downhill, they’re murder. I was reaching out with every stride to get distance and speed, and suddenly my right moccasin flew off my foot and sailed through the air ahead of me like a bird.

  Running with one moccasin on and one off, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to beat Harter to the dock and the outboard. I remembered that the outboard was stocked with food and gas and ready to go, and that there was no way we could follow Harter, once he got out into the inlet. Unless we could catch him in the specimen boat. I was willing to bet a bundle, though, that the engine of the specimen boat had been gimmicked by Osgood and Harter when they decided to use the outboard to escape in. They’d have taken no chances of pursuit.

  I looked for Mike and saw him steaming along to my right, just rounding the inner curve of Dolphin Point and still a hundred yards away on the beach. He wasn’t close enough to catch Harter. Not by a country mile. And neither was I.

  I was still twenty-five yards away when Harter turned into the blind canal he and Osgood used as an anchorage. His feet made a hollow racket on the wooden planks of the dock. The outboard was riding high in the water, not two feet below the edge of the dock, and Harter headed for it like a homing pigeon. He hesitated less than a heartbeat at the shock of seeing me bearing down on him at a dead run. But right then, he must have realized how completely his whole escape plan had come apart at the seams. No Osgood in the outboard. No sacks of treasure. No Susan for a hostage. A policeman pelting along a few steps behind him. And the fish-market kid who was supposed to be safely locked in the shed chasing him across the dock like a beagle after a rabbit.