The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  CHAPTER X

  Marching Orders

  The rumor grew hourly. Captain Kuntz, seizing upon it, talked it up among his crew, and by afternoon he had himself convinced.

  “It’s a very sad thing, Miss Gregory,” he said. “It would seem that we were all just a bit too late. I haven’t the slightest doubt that this man was your one-time acquaintance—”

  “He was more than an acquaintance,” said Marcia, and her tone was somewhat belligerent, also very skeptical. “I’m not convinced that it was Walter.”

  “I see no reason to doubt it,” said the Captain, pacing arrogantly around back and forth along the beach. “You say he’s been traced to this corner of the ocean. All the evidence on the island says that one man has lived here and his name was Sutter.”

  “The description didn’t fit Walter. He wasn’t short and fat and dark, like your men said,” Marcia protested.

  “I wouldn’t take those details too seriously,” said Kuntz. “By such poor light, you know, blonde hair might appear dark. What’s more, now that they’ve thought it over they agree that the man might have been rather tall. Sights are always deceiving when you first look down a volcano crater, Marcia. You can understand that.”

  “No, I cannot,” said Marcia. “And there’s something else I can’t understand. How could a man shoot himself so many times? There were several shots?”

  “I see no reason to doubt that,” said the Captain stubbornly. “He kept shooting until he lost his footing and splashed down into the lava. I suppose you think his body should be found floating around on top.”

  “Marcia has a right to be skeptical,” her father put in. “There’s the matter of that length of old rope we found hanging down from the rock. The lower end of it was burned off. Bullets didn’t do it. And there was no volcano blaze along that wall.”

  “How do you explain it?” asked Kuntz. “You were the third one to look over after the bullets started flying.”

  At this point Dan Wanzer broke in with more confusion. “Frankly, gentlemen, I didn’t see any gun or any bullets, and not a sign of any man, other than those of our own party.” Blagg, too, tried to get a word in.

  For his part the volcanoes and the suicides could take care of themselves, but he was here to tell the world they’d better look out for monster serpents. The mountainside was full of them.

  In the end the volcano story filled out to goodly proportions. The Germans, once educated by Hitler to swallow the world’s biggest lies, generally accepted the version that I had hanged myself, burned myself to death, shot myself a dozen times, and finally plunged into the volcano to make a thorough job of it.

  All of which had a rather sobering effect upon me—until I thought of the lesson the Germans must have learned in the war. They’d found the Amencans hard to kill.

  Captain Kuntz wanted to hold services for me. It was a dirty trick, calculated to convince Marcia that everyone accepted the fact of my death.

  Marcia rebelled and lost her temper, and the way she behaved was worth seeing. She took a slap at Adolf Kuntz, she called his gaunt-faced, owl-eyed confident a liar, she kicked part of the radio equipment into the sea. Danny Boy and her father led her back a few paces to make her calm down.

  She calmed, and then she repented and softened. She had to admit that Captain Kuntz might be right after all. Then, poor girl, she wept bitter tears.

  Ernest, catching his cue from his captain, immediately took advantage of this situation. He called the hard-boiled, murderous-faced German crew, around him and opened up with an impromptu memorial service to me, the dear departed friend of Marcia Gregory.

  Marcia’s whole party of American tourists got into the spirit. It seemed such a fine gesture on the part of this German “merchant crew” to share these

  American sorrows.

  It was interesting to see how everyone fell under the spell of Ernest’s oratory, At times there was hardly a dry eye on the island. In fact, when Ernest got around to eulogizing me and telling that he was sure, although he hadn’t known me personally, that I undoubtedly had lived an honorable and courageous life right up to that fatal moment when some malady of mind seized me, well, even I shed a few octopus tears kersplash into the peaceful waters of Sutter’s Lake.

  The sentimental mood took an unexpected jump.

  If the tropical ocean had suddenly turned to ice cream or the volcano had given forth lava streams of chocolate pudding, the American party couldn’t have been much more surprised.

  Ernest finished with his benediction and lifted his owlish eyes slowly. He turned his very serious face toward Captain Kuntz—and winked.

  Captain Kuntz nodded, threw a quick, nervous, squinting expression at Blagg.

  Blagg and six other Germans came out of what had appeared to be a careless huddle. Every man of them was holding an automatic rifle.

  “We’ve got the crowd covered,” said Blagg. “Tell us when to fire.”

  You could hear the gasps, the exclamations, the sudden wails of protest.

  “Shut up, you damned Americans, or we’ll blow your heads off,” Blagg yelled.

  “Steady, Blagg,” said Captain Kuntz, “We’ve got ’em. No one will be fool enough to resist.”

  “Adolf Kuntz, how can you?” Marcia cried out.

  The Captain extended a friendly hand to her.

  “Don’t worry, dear. You know that you won’t be harmed. I promised you that when we planned this little party. You’ve kept your end of the bargain by bringing your fifty people. You’ll be rewarded—”

  “Bargain!” Marcia gasped hotly. “There wasn’t any bargain! There wasn’t any plan!”

  “Oh, yes, there was,” said Kuntz with a wry smile. “Think back to our radio conversation. We don’t need to keep it a secret from your friends. They can’t hurt you. You’ll never be seeing any of them again.”

  In utter exasperation Marcia turned to her father. “Dad, you don’t believe this! You can’t! And you, Dan. And you—”

  She looked at the circle of frightened and bewildered faces. Everyone was seemingly paralyzed.

  “Save your breath, Marcia,” the captain snapped. “Listen closely, everyone, if you don’t want to get hurt. I’m giving orders. You Americans are taking them. Is there anyone that doesn’t understand that?”

  “I don’t, by God!” Old man Gregory was right up on his toes.

  So was young Dan Wanzer. He blurted something that Captain Kuntz and his men didn’t like.

  Three or four other men in the American crowd likewise barked out rebelliously.

  It all happened in a second or two. Blagg fired. His bullet caught Dan. The tall young man fell forward, clutching his chest.

  “Don’t touch him, Gregory,” the captain said, “or you’ll get the same. Now you’re ready to listen to me . . . I thought so.”

  Orders or no orders, Marcia sprang to Danny Boy’s side, crying to him. His eyes turned to her, and it was plain they were both puzzled and terribly frightened over this awful turn of events. Before she could give attention to his wound, another order came from the captain. Three men responded and bore Dan back away from the crowd to give him first aid.

  Then the way was clear for Adolph Kuntz to speak his little piece, and no one made any move to defy him. What he had to say cut through the deathly silence like a voice from Judgment Day.

  CHAPTER XI

  Terror In Transit

  These facts were made perfectly clear to every man, fish, fowl or octopus that might be listening.

  Adolph Kuntz and his men were still Nazis. They had never been conquered. They never would be. They owned their merchant ship, Die Welt; they owned the high seas. They were a law unto themselves. In brief, no other body of seventy-five men could so rightfully claim to own the world as they.

  “While we are on this island it is ours,” said Kuntz. “While you Americans stand on this island, you are our subjects.”

  The stormy old Mr. Gregory couldn’t refrain from breaking i
n, for he thought he saw a streak of light through this trouble storm.

  “We’ll get off your island this very hour,” the old man shouted. “We’ll cause you no trouble.”

  “Not so fast, Gregory. Do you think we’ll turn our wealthy subjects loose so easy?”

  “I suppose you want our money,” Gregory growled.

  “Money—yes. We’ll take that. But your wealth isn’t all in money. Several of you able-bodied men have strong backs and good muscles. We can use those. When we make a haul there’s lots of heavy work to do.”

  Gregory blazed. “Are you inferring that we’re to become your slaves?”

  “Exactly,” said Kuntz, pausing to light a cigarette. “I’m glad you’re beginning to understand.”

  His assistant spokesman Ernest added, “It’s just a nice little Nazi custom we learned from Hitler.”

  The murmurs grew loud. Blagg and his men gestured with their guns. The grumblings and mumblings gave way to silence.

  “What of the women of our party?” Mr. Gregory asked.

  The captain smirked as he again passed his approving eye over the circle of frightened faces. He commented that a variety of answers might be made to that question, since there was quite a variety of women. He mentioned sarcastically that some of his sea-roving band might decide to marry and settle down—a suggestion which brought a roar of laughter from Blagg and his compatriots.

  “My men will decide whether any women are to be taken,” Kuntz concluded. “Your daughter Marcia, I repeat, will have safe passage back to America—and you too, Gregory, if you cooperate as well as your daughter . . . But most of you women can’t be returned because you couldn’t keep your mouths shut. Soon there’d be a search squadron after us. The best plan will be to leave you here on the island to starve to death.”

  The general demonstrations of fear and pleading which this statement evoked did nothing whatever to shake Kuntz from his decision.

  He simply said, “So you are shocked? Is there anything unusual about starving women to death? You forget we are Nazis.”

  Well, the Americans could do nothing but listen to orders and make their plans accordingly. It was niade plain that Kuntz and his men would take over the Silver Belle for their own; that they would collect all jewelry; that they would hold a few important personages who happened to be among the party on the chance that they might collect ransoms for them.

  This was one of the days that the little snails eyed me wistfully and wondered why I didn’t make a pass at them. The truth was, I felt as if I’d never have an appetite again, everything looked so gloomy and hopeless.

  At the same time there was something healthy for me in all this conflict. Awful as it was, at least I had something to fight for. Where I had once been on the verge of tying my tentacles up in knots and hanging myself up on a crag for the sea gulls, now all at once I wanted to live—and fight!

  Even if Marcia could never see me again—could never know that I was still right in there punching at the enemy to make life safe for her—I wanted to live and fight like hell. Even if it looked like no chance against all these odds . . .

  The Germans were wasting no time; already Blagg was climbing into his motorboat with eight armed men.

  “We’re off for the Silver Belle!” he shouted. “Dose six Americans left on board vill ride right ofer to Die Welt and put behind bars till dey get happy. If any resist, ve shoot.”

  Off they went, over the waves.

  Off I went, under. Darned handy to have a friend like the alligator gar at a time like this. For submarine taxi service I never saw his equal.

  Good natured fish, that overgrown gar. He didn’t mind if one or two of my tentacles brought along some wire and a time-bomb.

  Four minutes after the nine men chugged away from the beach, bound for a surprise capture of the Silver Belle, their floating pop-boat blew up.

  Very mysteriously it exploded, and the splash was wonderful to see.

  Blagg and one other man came swimming back. Two others floundered and cried for help. The other five weren’t in any shape to be counted.

  CHAPTER XII

  Gregory Goes for a Ride

  Blagg tried to swear that he’d been fired upon from some hidden gun on the Silver Belle.

  “That’s not so, Blagg,” Captain Kuntz snapped. “I was watching every minute. You exploded.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “It looked to me,” said Kuntz, “like another case of your volcano suicide. There’s more here than meets the eye.” There was much more activity going on during the rest of the day than I could keep my eyes on. I did my best to keep watch over the space of water between the beach and the two ships. What I had done before I could do again.

  The Americans, naturally, were going into huddles. The German guards, naturally were suspicious whenever three or four Americans got their heads together. Little assemblies for secret talk would gather and-grow in one part of the island or another. The guards would follow in and break them up.

  Every half hour or so you could hear some angry shouting, cursing, and threatening to shoot. Now and then a shot would be fired. Then a big crowd would gather in to see whether anyone had been hit. And so the storm of words and nerves and bullets gathered fury.

  All the while Captain Kuntz and a large number of his men were kept busy from this little sea disaster that I had created.

  Without their motorboat or their radio, they were in a bad way for communicating with their ship. However, they had wigwagged a message across right after the explosion. Three of the men on board rowed in toward shore in a patched-up gray and white rowboat.

  As long as they were at work recovering what they could of the five bodies, I didn’t bother them. The sharks were giving them enough trouble.

  Later they plied back from the ship with a couple of diving helmets and I saw that they meant to salvage some of the guns that had gone down. It was an impossible job. The waves were coming in and there was a strong undertow. They had to give up.

  Next they went for the radio equipment that Marcia had so efficiently kicked into the sea. They found parts of it wedged in the rocks about twenty feet under the surface.

  The alligator gar and I watched the two divers floundering around in their helmets. What a clumsy lout a man is when he tries to walk under water! These two fellows weren’t having much luck, so I dropped over and paid them a visit.

  They weren’t glad to see me.

  I didn’t like them either. So I reached out and removed their glass helmets and jerked off their oxygen tanks—an action which inspired them to take their leave of me and climb doubletime to the surface.

  I crept back to my cave and hit my helmets. They might prove useful in this uncertain course of events.

  Near sunset Captain Kuntz loaded Old Man Gregory into the leaky rowboat. with four gunmen.

  Marcia, who had been watching over her wounded boy friend, came running down to the shore.

  “Where are you taking my father?” she cried.

  “It’s all right, Marcia,” Mr. Gregory called to her. “Don’t antagonize them.”

  Those words gave me a shiver.

  They sounded so much like the voices that used to come from peace-loving nations before the war, when Nazi Germany was already terrorizing and brutalizing her neighbors.

  “Don’t antagonize us, Marcia,” Captain Kuntz echoed with a cynical smile. “I’m sending your father along with this boat-load to make sure there are no mishaps. I know I can trust him to deliver—just like I trusted you to play my game.”

  “Your game!” Marcia blazed. “I didn’t know. These people know I’m innocent.”

  Her turn to the onlookers was not too reassuring. They were weighing her in the balance. After all, was it not her old friendship for this Nazi that had led them all into this trap?

  Her expression seemed to say, “You’ve got to believe me.”

  But Captain Kuntz was doing the talking.

  “Let’s ha
ve no misunderstanding, Gregory. You’re to deliver your yacht and the six men aboard it to my ship. You’re to come back here in the lifeboat off your yacht. We need that boat. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly,” said the old man.

  “I trust we won’t have any more of these mysterious explosions. What our motorboat struck could have been a small floating mine. I hope you’ll return safely, Gregory.”

  The implication was pointed enough, stressed by the captain’s sarcastic manner, that none of the listeners missed.

  If some American trickery had been involved in that motorboat disaster, the tricksters would think twice. With Gregory aboard they wouldn’t dare repeat the act.

  I had a biscuit all ready for the alligator gar, and he had a bareback ride ready for me. Off we went.

  The rowboat rocked along through the waves. They made the old man help row, and in spite of his age he was doing a vigorous job of it.

  My green-finned friend and I skimmed along right under the surface. I bobbed up about every tenth wave until we were within forty yards. The Silver Belle was still an eighth of a mile farther out. The six men on board were watching the progress of the rowboat from the gleaming white rail.

  I waited until the rowboat was somewhat nearer the Silver Belle. Then the gar and I came up directly under it. I found a strip of steel running the length of the keel. I jammed the sharp point of the wire through and fastened my time-bomb.

  I glanced up at the oars working through the yellow water on either side of the hull. Gregory’s stroke was unmistakable. I set the bomb for thirty seconds.

  The gar came through like a veteran. He darted through an arc that tossed me to the surface alongside Gregory’s left oar.

  I heard a couple of guttural oaths and a gasp of surprise like the intake of a rusty pump. I expected shots, too, and I wasn’t disappointed.

  In a flash I grabbed Old Man Gregory with three arms. He came, as light as a feather, and down we went, off on a sharp angle to the count of ten, then up again.