Three to Be Read

by Philip Wylie

  That surprised the man with the crew haircut. “Yeah? I thought you were just—keeping clear of the tip of the knife. Mister, you get dumped. That’s all there is to that!”

  The professor, like every man, had speculated many times on what he would think, feel, do, when his hour came. Here it was. And he found himself analytical. He was relieved that his death—although dramatic—would not be overly painful or long-drawn. One finger would hurt as he somersaulted down the thousands of feet. He wondered how long Bedelia would wait for him before going into action. He could think of nothing else to help himself. His back and arms were beginning to ache so much that his finger—given time—would have been the lesser pain. He knew now—very completely—why the six smuggled aliens had stretched and rubbed themselves and hardly seemed to notice the mosquitoes, when they had come ashore.

  Now the man mimed Johnny said, “Hey, Chuck! Get set!”

  The motors were cut down. The professor could feel the air push against the plane like a brake. Chuck went to the door. Something squeaked. He was prying it open against the streaming air, with a crowbar. Cold wind rushed in. The professor shivered in his sodden clothes. Somebody, he thought, everybody, in fact, should be made to understand the ferocity of the criminal.

  His own efforts—his lectures, his book—had been pitiably inadequate. In the presence of the fact, all theory was inane. He deserved, in a sense, the pitch into blackness which was coming. Chuck began to untie the knots that held him in the seat.

  Chapter XIII

  As the seconds trickled, Professor Burke found in himself a sudden, tremendous anger. They might have thrown many people out of their plane and down to the sea when they had a signal that landing was inadvisable. And those people might have died submissively. They had come a long way through risks and hardships; the last leg of their illicit journeys might have brought death; and they might have half-expected it. But Professor Burke knew he was not going to jump willingly through the door where the wind howled. They had guns. But he might take a lot of killing. It was murky in the plane. He would move as fast as he could.

  “Okay,” Chuck said.

  The professor stood. “Could I have—a last cigarette?”

  “Hell, no. Get up.”

  He gathered his feet under him.

  And Johnny turned from the controls. “Hey!” He took off earphones. “Hold everything.”

  “What’s the matter?” Chuck asked sharply.

  “Call coming in!”

  “Put it on the speaker.” Static crackled. Chuck kept his eyes on the professor and listened.

  “Miami Marine Operator,” a metallic, female voice said harshly. “Calling the yacht Mary Fifth.”

  There was a wait. Then a man’s voice, fainter. “Yacht Mary Fifth. Go ahead please!”

  “Here’s your party!” the Operator said.

  Professor Burke realized that the plane was equipped with a radio which enabled it to pick up ship-to-shore phone conversations. Any boat with ship-to-shore apparatus could listen to all others; whoever telephoned from land to a fishing boat at sea, for example, made a call public to all other fishing boats. And public also to this plane.

  “How’s fishing, Hank? This is Paul.”

  The professor’s skin prickled. It was French Paul.

  The faint voice answered heartily, “Pretty Good! We’re trolling off Virginia Key, now. Doing okay. Some tarpon around here.”

  “You got one?”

  There was a pause. “What say? Over!”

  “I said—you got one?”

  “Sure.”

  “Got him in the live well?”

  “Yeah. We got one in the live well. Over.”

  “See if you can bring him back, will you? To put in the pond at my place. Over.”

  “Okay. We’ll try it.”

  “Coming in after an hour or so?”

  “Yeah. Hour or so.”

  “Well—we’ll have something to eat up here for you. Stop by our dock. And bring us a tarpon if he’ll stay alive in the well.”

  “Okay. Will do.”

  “Well—good fishing!”

  “Roger! Mary Fifth. Signing off.”

  Chuck talked inaudibly with Johnny for a minute. Then he strode past the professor and removed the block with which he had jammed open the door. He came back.

  “Want those weights off, professor?”

  “I—don’t get it.”

  Chuck took a key from his pocket. A lock clicked. The professor’s arms were free.

  He was able—barely—to move them into his lap. He began chafing them.

  “Pretty cute?” Chuck asked, then.

  “I’m not quite sure I understand—”

  Chuck laughed. “You know so damn much! You should be wise to this! On the nights we fly, maybe the Mary Fifth—that’s a Miami boat—goes out fishing. Or maybe just out for a moonlight trip with some guys and gals. She keeps tuned to the Marine Operator. And we keep tuned, too. If anybody wants to send us a message—you know who—they just raise the Mary Fifth on the ship-to-shore phone. Then they do a little double-talk about fishing or late supper or a charter for the next day or something. What they talk about, means different things to us. See?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like—suppose there were Feds nosing around Little Tango Key… .”

  “I get it.”

  Chuck was pleased with the system. “Tonight they want a live tarpon brought in—just in case we have a live tarpon on board. That Ely sure caught on fast to what he was supposed to say. Anyhow, the boss wants a live tarpon in his pond. And you’re it.”

  The man in wet clothes with stiff arms smiled barrenly. “I see how it works, now.”

  Chuck laughed again. “They could listen for secret radios till doomsday. We communicate right over the regular public telephone system!”

  “Very ingenious. And very timely.”

  “What? Brother! Was it! Old Paul’s tarpon darn near fell overboard!” He slapped the professor’s shoulder.

  The plane flew. By and by Chuck took the controls and Johnny stood—or sat—watch on the professor. Johnny had light hair and he was thin. A silent silhouette. The professor did not feel like talking anyway. He continued to rub his wrists and arms.

  He was conscious of the descent. The landing was expert. This time, a rope was thrown to the plane and a rowboat toiled in the darkness until the bottom grated. Chuck opened the door. “Señores,” he called softly. “Com esta?”

  “Muy buen.”

  The professor was taken to the door, between the two pilots. He was turned around; he felt with his foot for a step. Then he was on shore.

  It was as dark in Cuba as it had been in the Keys. Cuba, he felt certain. Double-O had mentioned Cuba. The men in the boat spoke Spanish. The flying time was probably right for it—long, perhaps. There were men about, talking softly in the dark. Two of them gripped his arms.

  “See you, Professor!” Chuck called softly.

  They went for a distance on a dirt road. Then they were among houses with an occasional light. One of the men who held him said in his ear, “You are drunk, if anybody appear. You stagger. We will laugh—your amigos—taking you home.”

  They walked from the dark street into a less dark one. Down a side street, he heard laughter, and a rumba band. Over a radio, in a building that seemed dead of its age, he also heard a snatch of Christmas music.

  It was not a large town. Some little Cuban seaport. They took him around another corner and through a narrow arch. It led to the inner court of a big building. Tall trees grew there. A fountain dribbled. The place smelled of mold and human generations. A door was opened and he was hurried up a turning flight of stone steps. Another door, unlocked with an immense, old-fashioned key.

  He was pushed through this door and it closed.

  He expected to find himself in a prison—probably a windowless chamber, possibly without a light, and certainly alone.

  There were four people in the room, s
itting around a kerosene lamp on a table.

  One was a woman—brunette, young, very pretty. One was an extremely old man, with a white beard. The other two were in their thirties or forties. The windows were high and boarded up. Open luggage lay about.

  The woman said, “Bien venu, ami—et joyeux noel!”

  The professor thought, the next load.

  “You are wet.” The old man said it calmly. “Franz. We could lend him dry clothing.”

  “Ja wohl.”

  The third man stared blankly at the professor. “Who are you?” he finally said.

  The woman laughed. “The old one”—her English was heavily accented—“is called Herr Wasser. So Franz is also Wasser. This other has no name. I am Lorraine Dumond.”

  Franz was rummaging in a suitcase. “I will turn my back,” the girl continued.

  The professor demurred. “Really—my clothes will dry. It is a warm evening. My name is Burke, incidentally.”

  The man called Franz Wasser smiled a little. “Go ahead. We are to leave the baggage in any case. These are good garments. English. Use the small bath.”

  Reluctantly, embarrassedly, the professor changed. The old man watched for his return. “The finger bleeds,” he said. They all looked at his finger. “A splinter,” he said. “I had to climb—then to swim.”

  “I have some…” the girl did not know the name. But she went to her own suitcase and brought a bottle of peroxide with a French label.

  “Iodine,” said the third man, “is better.”

  He offered iodine.

  Professor Burke nodded. The bottle produced by the third man had no label. The man put cotton on a match stick. He dipped it and probed the wound with needless force.

  The professor turned grey, but his finger did not shake.

  The man said, “That will be sufficient.” He had quite dark skin, but light hair.

  The man with the beard began to read a book printed in German. His son Franz walked over to a rickety cot and lay down, closing his eyes. The man who had no name sat at the table again and became immersed in his thoughts. They had accepted the professor, taken him for granted. He chose a chair in the corner. There were several in the room.

  Presently the girl walked over to him. “Be cheerful,” she said. “Six went this very evening.”

  “Splendid! ”

  “You have been in—America?” He looked at her steadily. “I lived there for some years. It seems a long time ago.”

  “Moi—jamais. I am excited.”

  “It is an extraordinary country—”

  “It is,” said the nameless man, “a hell!”

  The old man spoke, “Shall we sleep, friends?”

  They took places—a chair-another rag-covered cot—and the nameless man on the floor. The bearded man blew out the kerosene light.

  Chapter XIV

  Professor Burke thought about them for a while. Who were they? Spies? Perhaps.

  People escaping the shambles of their world. Nazis who had got away the loot. That might fit Herr Wasser and his thin son. Who was the nameless man? The bleak, grey eyes, the overzealous application of iodine, the chilly confidence in himself. He could be anybody.

  In the dark, the professor woke and wondered where he was. He remembered slowly, and slept again. The next time he woke, he remembered instantly. There were footsteps outside the door.

  It was a man with a gun—a Cuban—and a fat woman with a heavy tray. She said, “Buenos dies, senores y senora!” She put down the tray. Fried fish and boiled rice, a long loaf of bread, butter, and coffee.

  The professor took his turn in what a better class of hostelry would have called the “adjoining bath.” It had no windows. The plumbing was a European import of the nineteenth century. The only light was a candle, which each one lit and each blew out. He washed his face. His finger was sore, but not throbbing.

  After breakfast, as if they had done it many times, the nameless man walked under the windows and lifted Franz until he could put his ear against the crack in the boards. It was a feat of considerable strength.

  Franz listened. “I hear nothing,” he said.

  The girl explained to the professor needlessly. “We fly—as you must know. But only in the still weather.”

  “Once,” said the old man, “so we were told, there were fifty people here. The wind blew many weeks without stopping. They showed us how to listen.”

  The nameless man sat silently all morning with his nameless thoughts. Herr Wasser and his son played chess, under the lamp. The girl began a low conversation.

  “When the Nazis came to my town,” she said, “I married an officer. I collaborated, they say, though I did nothing but marry the enemy. When France was liberated, I had become a Displaced Person in Germany. My husband had left some money in the Argentine. It took two years for me to get there. But coming to America openly is hopeless. So…” she shrugged. “My jewels paid this passage.”

  During the morning, the Wassers told a somewhat similar story to him, told it mechanically, in detail so that he realized it was not the truth. They claimed to have been anti-Hitler Germans.

  The nameless man said nothing.

  About noon, the door opened. Two Cubans beckoned. The professor was escorted to a room down the dark, tiled hallway. It was a smaller room, well furnished and electrically lighted. More men sat in it—men he had never seen. Americans. One of these was bald and bug-eyed. He did the talking.

  “My name is Wilser. Sit down, Professor.”

  He looked pasty, the professor thought. Like a big-eyed larva.

  “Paul,” said Wilser, “was unable to cover over this morning. I have talked with Chuck and Johnny.” He hesitated. “Your knowledge of our—organization—surprised me.

  How did you come by it?”

  Professor Burke smiled a little. If he had thought that his removal from the room of the aliens was a hopeful sign, he did not think so now. Not after looking at Wilser.

  “The way I found out all I know. Watching. You hardly need a diagram of my methods.

  Your men uncovered them.”

  “How did you know about The Foot’s dock?”

  “Haven’t you figured that out?”

  “We know you and that horse-faced landlady of yours were down there looking for ferns. Now. Tell us how you got onto it. We want to keep it from happening again.”

  The professor smiled once more, slightly. “In that case, Mr. Wilser, before you drive your cars north from the Keys you should wash the white marl off their wheels.

  And you better cut back the ferns along the road to the dock. They are a special kind of fern—a sort of sport of a Glades genus—which is peculiar only to a few, small Keys.”

  “Where’d you see a car—with marl and these ferns?”

  “You might ask French Paul.”

  Wilser thought that over. “Oh.” His eyes lighted unpleasantly—as if there were little hot places in them. “Naturally,” he then said, “we went right after that landlady of yours.”

  Professor Burke’s heart turned to stone.

  “Is there anybody else?” Wilser asked.

  “Nobody.”

  “We want to be quite sure of that, Professor. Quite sure. We intend to be—before. . . ! There’s another matter. Chuck has told me some details of your knowledge of the Maroon Gang. Paul thought that under the existent circumstances you might be willing to write it out for us. Make everything less—painful—for you, in the end.”

  “I’ll write it out.”

  “Every angle you know. There are several that Paul would find very interesting, I think. Singular: information. Who gave it to you? Double-O Sanders?”

  “I told you, I’ve spent years in—research.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You can work in the room with our waiting clients. It’s—secure.

  How long will it take?” The professor said, “A couple of days.”

  “Days!”

  “I know a lot about the Maroon Gang.”
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  Wilser thought that over. He turned to one of the men. “Okay. Give him the stuff to write with and a table of his own. Another lamp. Pick up his copy from time to time. I’ll see you again, Professor.”

  He spent the afternoon writing.

  The other people in the room did not question or interfere. They were accustomed to holding back questions and to avoiding interference. The members of the Maroon Gang would have many reasons for wanting to know all they could of their predecessors, associates and contacts. Blackmail was only one.

  As he wrote, the professor paused frequently—apparently to recall details of his subject. Actually, he was thinking. They had Bedelia. They had no intention of letting him go alive. Bedelia might already be—gone.

  Before dinner, Franz and the man without a name listened for the wind. It had not risen. This fact put three of the foreigners in a state of eagerness; the nameless man did not show any emotion. The professor went on writing into the evening. His ink-covered pages had been collected several times.

  It might have been eight o’clock.

  He needed three things. One of them could stay where it was; he could get it if he had the right opportunity.

  He quit writing and went over to the nameless man. “Tovarich!” he said sharply.

  The man looked up instantly. It was the only undeliberate move the professor had seen him make. Not proof of anything, except that the man knew Russian.

  “Could I borrow your iodine again? My finger—I am afraid it may be getting infected.”

  The man did not speak at all. He rose, went over to his suitcase, and came back with the bottle.

  “I will soak it,” the professor said, “in a little iodine and water.”

  He took the bottle to the antediluvian bathroom. He poured about half of it in one of the two dirty glasses of the washbowl and hid the glass behind the battered bathtub. He diluted the iodine in the bottle with water, and—after delaying—returned it with thanks.

  The man accepted it inexpressively.

  The professor sat down beside the French girl.