by Don Wilcox
Barbara wasn’t at all satisfied with the new living quarters. The little old landlady told so many stories about the disappearance of some of her tenants that it gave Barbara the creeps. There was a whole room full of suitcases and trunks that had been left, mostly by aged people, the little old lady said, and she was worried to death about them. But if the owners didn’t come back and finish paying their rent one of these days she was going to sell them.
“She’s crazy,” was Larry’s comment. “She’s probably got suitcase-omania or something. We’d better watch our baggage.”
Barbara was glad to get out of the house and back to the midway. With a dawn excursion on schedule, they wouldn’t return to their rooms until sometime the next forenoon, thank goodness.
Now Barbara finished putting on her Joan of Arc masquerade costume and hurried out of the public dressing room to the nearby pavilion where she was to meet her grandfather and Larry.
She had to fight her way through the crisscrossing throngs. Already the glittering streamer confetti was spiralling down from silver confetti clouds all over the street. Floats were parading past, people were yodeling, blowing horns, pounding tambourines.
Some masked person in a cricket costume seemed to be waving at Barbara from across the pavilion, but she was wary. She slid through the racing, chasing crowd and the cricket lost himself in the other direction.
Then a masterful king of beasts was making his way toward her, shaking his lion’s mane comically.
That would be Larry. She had bought the costumes herself only a few minutes before—a lion for Larry, an elephant for her grandfather.
“Take me out of this mob,” Barbara gasped as the masked figure caught her by the hand. “Ten thousand people must have made this pavilion their meeting place. Let’s get out into the street where they’re dancing.”
The king of beasts looked about questioningly.
“Grandfather will wait right here,” Barbara said. “We’ve got to start the evening off dancing. Come on. Give a lion’s roar before this mob crushes my ribs to powder . . . Why don’t you say something, Larry?”
The king of beasts had been drawing her through the crowds too swiftly for words, but now that they were lost in the sea of dancers he answered. “Gr-r-r. I’m not Larry.”
“Wayne Early!”
“I can see you’re surprised but not at all indignant.”
“I am indignant. This is preposterous! It’s—”
She might have saved her words, for the king of beasts roared down her protests. She threatened to tear his mask off his head, but when she got it half off and saw him laughing fit to kill, she lost all her anger, and with it her battle. What had he done that was so funny, she demanded to know.
He led her out of the din into the comparative quiet of a little Danish coffee shop where they could talk.
“Did someone in a cricket outfit try to intercept you?” he asked. “Well, that was Larry. We traded. That cricket get-up is what the dance band at the Blue Canopy is wearing, and he saw his chance to crash the band. I warned him when we traded that you’d fall to me, but I agreed to give him a three minute head-start.”
Barbara shook her head with a comically deprecating expression. She pursed her Joan-of-Arc lips to hold back her laughter. “Grandfather’ll be stranded again. He’ll have apoplexy.”
“He wasn’t alone when I saw him last.”
“What do you mean? . . . Oh, another scheme?”
“Well, you might call it that. I tagged a little sign on the back of his elephant coat that read: I dare you to marry me for my money. The last glimpse I had of the old gentleman there were five assorted females giving him some lively chatter, such as making unsubtle cracks about his elephant’s trunk.”
“Wayne! Shame on you! Grandfather hasn’t the slightest interest in women.”
Wayne shrugged. He wouldn’t know. All he contended was that the old gentleman wouldn’t get lonesome. By that time Barbara’s laughter was overflowing all the dams. She was Joan of Arc, the youthful fun-loving girl, and the weight of the war had temporarily slipped off her shoulders.
They danced the evening away.
At midnight there were bells and whistles and gongs in accompaniment to the unmasking. The ritual called for a kiss between couples. Barbara and Wayne had known each other not quite a week and they couldn’t think of violating a Congo Gardens ritual.
So they kissed at midnight, and the merry night grew merrier.
At one o’clock they caught sight of Judge Londotte sitting on a crowded bench under the colored midway lights. They came up behind him close enough to hear his talk above the din. He was streaming with perspiration, but he was obviously enjoying himself. The multicolored parkway lights softened the fatigue lines of his face and gave his gray complexion a ruddiness. Of the assorted middle-aged females who made up his audience, one was politely fanning him with an expensive celluloid fan.
“When I bought the ticket,” the old man was puffing, “I was told that the Rainbow Excursion is a very exclusive trip. L only wish I had known you ladies. I’d have made reservations for all of you. Huh-huh-huh.”
Barbara touched Wayne’s arm and whispered, “Let’s leave him alone. He hasn’t come that near to laughing in years.”
At one-thirty she and Wayne dropped into the Yellow Dragon’s Mouth and secluded themselves in a booth so tiny that they crossed straws while sipping their drinks. The night’s gayety was already quieting. A curious bit of conversation reached them from the next booth. A Brazilian with a keen intelligent face was chatting with his North American girl friend, talking about some friends who had done service in a war.
“The closer to death they came, the swifter they lived,” said the Brazilian.
“Never did you see such mad, gay fellows as they. They would gamble or fight or marry at the drop of a hat. So mad, so gay!”
“Why, should you be thinking of them?” the girl asked.
“Oh, but this mad, gay carnival. Wherever people come together to live so swiftly—Paris, Rio, Congo Gardens—I always think it must be because they feel death swooping close . . . But of course it is close, always. That’s why I’m a mad, gay fellow myself.” Barbara’s eyes lifted to Wayne’s. He had been drinking in every word. She whispered to him.
“Are you a mad, gay fellow?”
“What do you think?”
“You’ve been wonderfully gay—” Barbara was smiling, but a touch of fierceness came into her Joan of Arc eves. “I think you’re mad, too.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t forgot that you carry a Book of Death.”
“Oh, that.” Wayne laughed lightly. “I checked matters with one of my superior officers. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. I’ll transfer my names to another book if it would be any comfort to you—”
“It isn’t necessary.”
“Would you rather not see the Rainbow?”
“I’ll go,” said Barbara. “Grandfather might need me. I hope be won’t get seasick or anything. Does the lake ever get rough?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Wayne. “I’ve never been on it.” He glanced at his watch. “We’d better take a taxi.”
CHAPTER V
At two-thirty, the long, lithe excursion boat slid away from the pier.
Barbara kept looking back at the colored lights.
“Let him go,” Judge Londotte growled. “If he can’t keep an appointment he deserves to get left.”
“I hope he’s hearing some good music.” Barbara tried to suppress her disappointment. She felt guilty over being away from Larry all evening. She had intended to make up for it on this Rainbow Excursion. But Larry hadn’t come.
Was he angry over Wayne Early’s trading costumes? Did he think she had intentionally slipped away from him when he had waved his cricket arms at her? The pangs of conscience burned sharply.
Now the winding course of the inlet pushed black jungle-covered hills across the ship’s wake, screeni
ng the last of the distant lights of Congo Gardens.
“Forget about him,” Judge Londotte repeated hoarsely. “I tell you he deserves to get left.”
A curious fear struck at Barbara’s heart—a chaotic fear that was partly loneliness, partly guilt, partly dread of the unknown. The boat was gliding out toward a velvety blue expanse of lake. This was no longer Congo Gardens. Far from being a well-known attraction, Rainbow Lake was a fresh, raw, unexplored stretch of jungle whose miles of mystic waters boasted only this one new excursion line.
“We’d better get a place up front, John,” said an old lady passenger to her white-haired husband, “so we can get a good view of the Rainbow.”
“Think it’ll be as perty as the one we spooned by, sixty-five years ago, Dolly?”
“I hope so. This is such a lovely trip. Did you notice the nice young man that took our tickets?”
“He’s the same lad I bought ’em from, Dolly,” said the white-haired old man.
The couple passed out of hearing. Barbara glanced around wondering whether Wayne would come back to her after he finished checking his passengers. She half hoped he wouldn’t, now that her deepest loyalties to Larry LeBrac were torturing her.
Those kisses that had passed between her and Wayne couldn’t mean anything. In a few days all this carnival would be over for her, and everything would be just as it was before—her old boy friend hungering for her praise to bolster his musical genius—her grandfather ordering her about—“Barbara, why don’t you answer me? Do I have to speak six times to get an answer?”
“I’m sorry, Granddaddy. I must have been lost in the scenery or something.”
“What about my bowl of bread and milk?”
“Why, I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Why hadn’t you? Who’s supposed to think about those things, me or you? I’ll bet there won’t be a thing fit to eat here on shipboard.”
Yes, thought Barbara with a little sigh, soon everything would be just as it was before—
“Double damn it, can’t you see I need help buttoning my shirt?”
“One thing at a time, Granddaddy,” she said patiently. “Which will it be, your shirt or your bowl of bread and milk?”
“My shirt, damn it. How’d I get in this mess?”
“Changing out of your elephant costume, probably.”
In the near darkness that pervaded on the boat’s decks Barbara hadn’t noticed the sad disarray of the judge’s clothing. She had rather been struck by the unusually pallid glow of his flabby face, half-luminous through the steamy night air.
“You’ll never get me in another elephant suit,” the old man growled bitterly.
“Troubles, friends?” came the hearty voice of Wayne Early, striding toward them. “Wouldn’t your grandfather like to come into one of the staterooms, Barbara, where there’s more light?”
“I would not!” Judge Londotte snapped, his arms shuddering with anger.
“Also a cot if you care to rest.”
“Who wants to rest? I’m not tired.”
“It’ll be more than an hour before the first light of dawn,” said Wayne. “I’m reserving the staterooms for the elderly passengers—”
“I’m not old!” Judge Londotte beat his silver-headed cane against the ship’s rail. “You don’t dare call me old.” Cursing and muttering, he stormed away alone.
Barbara knew he expected her to follow. Incidents like these put her resources to a test, since nothing less than her comforting and babying would restore the old gentleman’s outraged feelings. She turned her back on Wayne Early and followed her grandfather around the ship’s promenade . . .
With the light of dawn a rainbow came into view over the western waters.
The impatient sightseers muttered with disappointment. The rainbow was too vague, too colorless to match their expectations.
But as soon as the morning’s sunrays glinted across-the length of the ship, the spectrum-filled mists ignited with dazzling light. Within the first rainbow a second one appeared, close down upon the waters, as bright and luminous as a crown of jewels.
A thrill of magic excitement surged through the crowd. Even those aged and decrepit ones who considered themselves past thrilling to nature’s wonders—and there was, curiously, a preponderance of such aboard—added their full share to the gasps and murmurs of amazement.
“By heavens. I thought I’d seen everything,” said one tottering old world-traveler, whose hard-lined face was a map of misspent years. “But this hits a new high.”
“I hope we move closer,” said a sadeyed little old woman.
Much to everyone’s high delight, the ship was drifting straight toward the rainbow. A slow but compelling current was carrying it along. The engines were no longer humming.
In fact, the pilot and crew had departed by rowboats soon after navigating the ship into mid-lake.
Wayne Early had watched them go. Indeed, they had urged him to go with them. “The work’s all done,” they had said. “From this point on, the boat drifts through and returns to the pier by the action of currents. Jump in with us.”
“I’m seeing my passengers through,” Wayne had replied. “See you later.”
“There’s a small rowboat on the rear of the ship when you change your mind.”
Not if, but when. Their talk had left Wayne on nerve’s edge.
Drinks, labelled and unlabelled, were free on the ship. The drinking spree that had been in progress from the start had reached the saturation point with several of the passengers. But the hard-faced old world-traveler took it upon himself to pass drinks again and demanded that nothing less than a drinking ritual would do justice to the glory of this, the eighth wonder of the world—yes, and the ninth, tenth, eleventh—he squandered numbers and liquors in his drunken rhapsody.
The sad-eyed little old woman passed up the drinks, but when someone else insisted that everybody dance to the rainbow, she joined in. Giddily, crazily, the sightseers turned themselves into grotesque merry-makers.
Wayne couldn’t understand the suddenness with which this party went mad and gay. He couldn’t realize that these relics of better years were, by some caprice of nature, being relieved of the aches and pains of old age for a last dance of life.
It was by far the most monstrous dance Wayne ever saw. He wondered if Barbara was dancing. He hoped not. But she had walked off so haughtily that he didn’t intend to follow.
“Wayne, take me out of this!” Barbara came running down the deck to him. “It’s too horrid. I don’t want to dance with these old men. They won’t let me alone—and they’re all crazy from drinking.”
“Come on,” said Wayne, “we’ll get back in a corner.”
There was a regular ring around the rosy, now. The dancers were going round and round the decks, tottering, staggering, whooping.
Old Judge Londotte came shuffling along, yelling, “Barbara, Barbara, don’t you dare run off from me! Where are you?”
“He’ll find me here,” Barbara whispered. “I’d better go to him. He mustn’t think—
“Wait, Come this way. I know just the thing.”
They chased to the rear of the ship. They got into the rowboat, they let it down to the surface, unhitched it from its ropes, and pushed away.
“We’ll have our own rainbow excursion until they get over acting like maniacs.”
“Rocks ahead!” Barbara gasped. Wayne glanced around but saw nothing.
“Under the water,” said Barbara. “Right under the rainbow—and the ship’s drifting straight toward them. They’re—they’re beautiful!”
“Not dangerous, then?”
“I-I don’t know.”
Barbara’s breathlessness was baffling to Wayne. She kept gasping incoherently about the beauty of the rainbow, the strangeness of the mists coming up from the ridge of rock.
He heaved at the oars, pulled far out of the wake of the ship, which was drifting so slowly it was almost motionless. As the rowboat turned so that
Wayne faced the rainbow scene, he dropped his oars and gazed.
The vast arch of color hovered in the air only a few yards beyond the prow of the ship. Strange to say, it was even more intense at this close range than it had been from a distance.
“It’s too bright. It hurts my eyes,” said Barbara, turning her head away.
“I see it now. A screen of mist sprays up out of that rock ridge,” said Wayne. “A sort of gaseous mist.”
Obviously, the jagged backbone of brown rock, which rose almost to the surface of the clear golden waters, was the source of the rainbow. It cast its misty breath skyward like some vast sea monster eternally exhaling its poisonous rainbow-colored breath.
Now the prow of the excursion boat was creeping over the submerged rock, nosing into the rainbow mists.
Wayne’s eyes suddenly grew wide. He caught his oars and gave a violent stroke. The rowboat shot off sidewise from the ship’s course.
“What’s the matter?” Alarm was in Barbara’s voice. She turned to look back at the ship.
“Look at me!” Wayne said it sharply. He lurched forward and caught her face in his hands. His strange behavior terrified her. He half-apologized for his roughness, but at the same time held her tightly. “Don’t look back at the rainbow. It’s too—too ghastly bright.”
“But you’re looking!”
Wayne didn’t answer. He held the girl’s head close against his chest so that she couldn’t see his face. He patted her arms with a gentleness that terrified rather than comforted. His grip was as strong as a machine. She might as well be blind and paralyzed.
But she could hear. Above the gentle lapping of waters against the rowboat there were still the voices of the excursion crowd—old voices—croaking laughter—drunken sobs—
The clamor was fading. One by one the voices were dropping out!
A shrill hilarious laugh turned into a hideous cackle and died away. A rollicking bit of cowboy song tapered off with a gruesome moan and went silent.
“Barbara! Barbara! Where are you?”
It was Judge Londotte’s outraged cry, the last of the ship’s voices.
