“‘She ever say so?’ he inquired, earnest.
“‘No. How ’bout you?’
“‘No more to me, neither; but if a look means anythin’ —’ says he.
“‘I’ve had a look myself,’ says I, ‘that’s what you’re navigatin’ on. Mebbe one an’ a half. Now see here,’ says I, ‘I make you an offer. One or t’other of us has got to up-stick an’ away from this here course.
“‘When we make Portland,’ says I,’ there’s a quiet bit o’ beach over on Cushing’s where two seafarin’ men could meet an’ argy out a proposition, fair an’ proper like, with their bare fists. Winner takes all,’ says I. ‘How ’bout it?’
“Split my tops’l if he don’t laugh an’ gimme the grip on it!
“‘Done!’ says he, free an’ hearty. ‘That’s the way I like to hear a lad talk! I misjudged you, old man,’ says he. ‘Always thought you was — well — different — though you was layin’ fer to take some underhand advantage an’ the like o’ that.
“‘But now,’ says he, ‘I know you better. Back on deck with you now,’ he orders, ‘an’ let’s have no more words about it this trip. But when we’re docked there’ll be one whale of a time on that beach over to Cushing’s,’ says he. ‘Come — stir a stump!’
“I gives him a look and goes. An’ that’s the last him an’ me ever — ever speaks the name o’ Sallie Hannaford.
“A week later, 38 deg. 26 min. west, 45 deg. 17 min. north, he was — he was hit —”
V.
SHIFTY LAYS BACK on his pillows an’ gasps. I thinks it’s the end, but it ain’t. In a minute he begins again.
“Ame!”
“Well, what? There ain’t no murder in that, far’s I can see. If two deep-water men ain’t got the right to plan up a little shindy, to see who’s got a fair an’ free course fer a skirt, who has?
“If that’s all you got on your chest, Shifty, you can go easy. I ain’t no sky-pilot nor nothin’, but to the best o’ my jedgment, you’re cleared O. K, papers an’ all A1.”
“That ain’t all!” he chokes, holdin’ it off by main strength, while the life flickers an’ fades an’ comes agin in his eyes, same as you’ve seed a candle die.
“That ain’t all — that’s only the beginnin’! So far, all fair an’ open. The — the murder —”
“Murder, your grandmother! You didn’t bite Tref! You ain’t gave him no hydrophoby! Come, come, Shifty, lay down an’ come round on another tack. Here, I’ll git you a fresh noggin!”
He holds me back with a grip onta him like an anchor ten foot in the mud.
“No, no! I had enough, Ame! I’m goin’ under now, any time. Water’s nigh up to my scuppers, I ain’t goin’ to drift inta the bay an’ go ashore to ray Harbor-master in no stewed condition! You lemme be, now — lemme go middlin’ sober! I — I —”
“Yes?”
“Say, Ame, she —”
“What?”
“After it was all over, an’ I braced her, know what she done?”
“No. What?”
“Blast my hull, if she don’t let out jest one word — ‘You? — an’ laugh plumb in my face — an’ then bust inta tears! Tears, so help me — an’ whip out o’ her parlor, where we was settin’ an’ slam the door!
“She — she was thinkin’ o’ Gash all the time! I never had no look-in at all, not from the start, no way you look at it! Oh —”
“Come, come, Shifty, this ain’t no time to think of marryin’ or givin’ in marriage. No time to recollect —”
“It is! Time to recollect the rest o’ that v’yage, when I lost my ’tarnal soul tryin’ to git a wench that wouldn’t ha’ had me, nohow! Time —”
“How you mean, Shifty? Anythin’ more to it?” I asks, uneasy, fer I’m a parson if I don’t begin to see some kind of a dim glimmer o’ somethin’ cold an’ terrible a-weighin’ on that tortured critter’s soul, somethin’ loomin’ up through the mist, same as a berg on the Banks.
“How you mean?”
Shifty, he sort of rares up agin. He grips the Book with one hand. With t’other he vises my flipper till he numbs it.
“I’m goin’ now, Ame,” says he “Goin’, and not yet saved. Hark!” His words come thick, between wheezes. “Hark now, an’ don’t you stop me, or my damnation be upon you!
“When Gash was bit, an’ they crowded the Benicia Boy to make port in time fer doctorin’ that’d save him, the devil come to me.
“That same night he come, an’ I seen him standin’ right there in the fo’c’sle, Ame, an’ his eyes was red as a port-light in a fog.
“He tells me what to do, so’s I can have Sallie, plain an’ easy. He tells me how to git her, an’ the wad in bank, Mariners’ House an’ all — yes, this here same place where he’s a waitin’ now to grab me, if I don’t git through in time!
“Plain an’ clear he puts it to me, ‘Shifty,’ says he, ‘Gash is a better man with his dukes than what you be, every time, an’ you know it.
“‘If he gits to Portland in time, an’ they squirt that dope to him an’ head off this here hydrophoby an’ he gits well, he’ll wallop you to a bleedin’ pulp, over there on the beach at Cushing’s.
“‘Sallie, she’ll natchally be all sympathy an’ interest in him, after his narrer escape,’ says the old boy, ‘an’ that, with the damnation lickin’ he’ll give you, will land you in the lee scuppers an’ him on the quarterdeck.
“‘Mark my words,’ says he, grinnin’. ‘They say I can’t tell the truth nohow, but I can, an’ do; an’ you knows it, this time! You’re done for, Shifty,’ says he, ‘that is, if I don’t help you.
“‘Which I will,’ says he, ‘fair an’ free, an’ no conditions. You do what I say, an’ everything’s yours, Sallie an’ all Pool!’ says he. ‘Can’t you grab a good thing when it’s put right in your fin?’
“I argyfies with him a little in the fo’c’sle, there. I was settin’ at the table, with the lantern swingin’ in its gimbals overhead, an’ him no further from me than what you be, Ame, so-fashion.
“We has some talk, an’ I makes objections. ’Cause, you see, what Gash told me, that time, about misjudgin’ me an’ all — an’ sayin’ I was square — sort of stuck in my gills. But — well — well —”
“You give in?”
Shifty groaned.
“I done that same,” he hiccups. “An’ that night —”
“That night? Yes?”
“That night, that very same night, just after two bells o’ the middle watch, I —”
He coughs somethin’ fierce, an’ I sees blood onta his lips.
“Shifty! Shifty!” I calls. “Out with it now! You’re ’most to port, old man! Let’s have it, quick, now — you’re ’most saved.”
“Cargo o’ lumber,” he just barely manages to stammer. “I knowed she couldn’t sink, nohow —”
“What — what about it?”
“Carpenter’s chest — bit an’ brace — forehold, out o’ sight — six holes —”
He kind o’ stiffens out, makes a grab at somethin’ I can’t see, an’ tips over the long-necker. My hair just rises up, as it falls on the floor an’ rolls bump-bump-bump — the bottle, I mean.
The wind bangs a blind. A puff o’ smoke an’ ashes shoots out o’ the stove inta the room.
Shifty lets out a bubblin’ yell.
“I — I bored — bored —”
Then he falls back, twisted half round.
VI.
Come a rap-rap-rappin’ at the door.
I hauls the patchwork quilt over him, an’ goes to open. As I looks back I sees one bony hand hanging down side o’ the bed. In that grip the Book’s a danglin’.
“Hello! What the —”
“Any drinks up here? You cider?” It’s Mrs. Hannaford, smiling’.
“Drinks? No, darn you!” I roars. “Say, you send, git a doctor, coroner, or something quick’s the Lord’ll let you! Shifty, he —”
She lets out a kind of squeal, an’ skitters
off down the hall.
As I turns back, thinks I to myself, thinks I:
“Lucky fer you, Sal Hannaford, you don’t know what I know! ’Cause if you did — if you did —!”
ROUGH TOSS
THE TELEGRAM ARRIVED just as Tim Spurling, diver, was at breakfast with his wife in the kitchen. A leisurely, skimpy breakfast. When a fellow’s out of work, been out of work for more than six months, why hurry? The wire said:
*
CAN YOU COME IMMEDIATELY CRYSTAL LAKE RECOVER BODY STOP WIRE DECISION COLLECT URGENT
DR SW OLIVIER
*
Spurling’s lip tightened as he shoved the message over to his wife.
“Well, job at last!” he grunted. “And we need it, somethin’ fierce!”
“Yes, but going down after a body ain’t —”
“Tain’t what I like, Blanche, that’s a bet. Allus gives me the crawls, handlin’ a stiff. But beggars can’t be choosers. And then, too, case like this —”
“Well?”
“So much a day. Tain’t like a contract job, or salvagin’ stuff that the position of it’s known. Carcasses drift round on the bottom. Ain’t nobody can tell how long it’ll take to locate one, and so —”
Blanche Spurling shot him a quick glance. She asked:
“You mean, even if you found a body, you could let on you hadn’t and get more pay?”
“Well, why not?”
“Wouldn’t that be cheating, or stealing, or getting money under false pretenses? Couldn’t they jail you for that, if it was found out?”
“Who’s to find out anythin’, underwater?” he retorted defiantly. “And besides, the way times is — Then, too, what we just found out about Bill —”
The diver’s wife sat brooding a moment. Not even the shaft of July sunlight slanting in through the window could make the table and kitchen other than drear and ugly. With an abstracted air the woman smoothed the hair back and away from her forehead, revealing deeper wrinkles than her thirty-six years should have graven there. Her brown eyes, studying the telegram, appeared to see through and beyond it; perhaps even away to the Arizona desert which alone, so their family doctor told them, could yet save the life of Bill, their only son.
“Yes, it’s T.B.,” the doctor had bluntly affirmed. “But it’s only beginning. Send the boy out West, and you can still save him. But if he stays here —”
“Us, send the kid West?” Spurling had queried. “Where would we get the jack to do that? Us, with our rent three months overdue, and a grocery bill with whiskers on it! Where would we get the dough?”
“Sorry. That part of it is beyond me, Spurling. All I can do is tell you what’s wrong with the boy, and recommend the treatment. He’s positively got to have a change of climate, or — well —”
And the case had stood right there. T.B. No cash to be had, no job, nothing to borrow on. And Bill, hardly sixteen, and their only child.
“Judas!” Spurling had cried. “What a hell of a rough toss!”
His fist, hard clenched, had seemed knotted against whatever gods there be.
And now, this job! Incredible, yet true. Things, after all, sometimes happened like that. Tim Spurling and his wife, silent a moment in the untidy dreariness of their little kitchen, eyed each other and felt hope reborn. This new job; did it not mean a chance for Bill?
“There, there, Blanche old kid! Don’t cry!”
Spurling went round the table and clumsily patted her shoulder.
“What’s there to cry for now, baby? Things is beginnin’ to come right for us, now, ain’t they? We’re beginnin’ to get the breaks at last, ain’t we?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But say, Timmy, how’d you happen to get this here job, anyhow, I wonder?”
The diver scratched his unshaven chin; a square chin and a hard one.
“Search me! Reckon maybe it’s ’cause I’m the nearest diver to Crystal Lake they could get hold of.”
“Yes, that’s prob’ly the reason.”
“Here, what you cryin’ for, now?”
“I’m not crying, Tim! That’s just something that got in my eye.”
Blanche dried her eyes on her apron, then reached for Tim’s hand a moment, and held it clasped in both her own hands, roughened by dishwater and the washtub. Her caress was awkward. Lack of practice, in the matter of caresses, had made it so.
Silence fell. Through that silence a muffled cough echoed from the next room — an ominous, deadly sound.
“But we’ll soon fix all that now, kid,” Spurling growled. “Job like this will bring a hell of a lot o’ dough.”
“How much, Timmy?”
“Hundred a day, at the very least. Maybe more. Depends on how much the stiff’s family’s got. Even though I got to pay my helper ten or twelve bucks per, there’ll be a swell clean-up.”
“Who you going to take along for a helper?”
“Jim McTaggart. He’s ’bout the only guy I’ll trust to handle the pump and hose for me. When you’re down on the bottom and your life depends on another guy bein’ steady and reliable, the best ain’t none too good!”
“That’s right, too,” Blanche agreed. “Oh, if anything was to happen to you — But tell me, how many days’ll you need, to find — it?”
“How do I know? Depends on a lot o’ things. Size o’ the lake, how deep, and the like o’ that. This here job — if I have any kind o’ luck — might run into thick kale.”
Silence again. Blanche broke in.
“That there telegraph boy, out at the front door. He’s waiting.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Gotta send an answer, ain’t I?”
Tim fished out a pencil from his pocket. Bending over the disordered table, he scrawled on the yellow blank: Leaving at once. T.H. Spurling.
*****
THREE HOURS LATER Tim Spurling and Jim McTaggart stepped onto the platform of the little station at Crystal Lake. He and Jim helped unload the diving gear from the baggage car, also the air pump. Two huge boxes contained this equipment, at which a duly impressed little knot of people gazed with silent wonder.
“Take you out to the lake, four miles,” said a loose-lipped man with a small truck. “Mr. Eccles — him that had his son drownded — told me to git you out there.”
“Oh, all right,” Spurling agreed. “Gimme a hand and we’ll load the stuff.”
When he and McTaggart and the truckman had loaded the equipment they got aboard, McTaggart sitting on the boxes in the truck body. Out of the village they jolted and away into the hills.
“Terrible thing to happen, ain’t it?” asked Spurling.
“Sure is,” the truckman agreed. “Havin’ millions, like old man Eccles, don’t pervent trouble. Only kid he’s got, too.”
“Yeah, I heard about it on the train. Only sixteen years old, they was tellin’ me. Yest’day p.m. They say he was a good swimmer. Quite a champ. He dove off a raft and never come up. Must of got a cramp or somethin’.”
“I reckon so,” assented the truckman. “Say, buddy.” His voice lowered. “I got a few words fer you before we git out to the lake. Can I talk to you confidential-like?”
“Why, sure. What’s on your chest?” Spurling’s blue eye showed surprise. “What’s the idea?”
“This here is just fer you, see? Not him!” The driver’s tone was below the hearing of McTaggart, on those boxes in the rear of the jolting, rattling truck. “How’d you like to clean up a nice little bundle o’ jack?”
“Jack? What you mean, jack?”
“A real bundle, that’s what I mean.”
“Sure I’d like it,” Spurling asserted. “That’s what I’m here for — big wages.”
“Ah, I don’t mean wages!” scornfully said the truckman, as they struck into a pine-arched road through forested hills. “How much they goin’ to slip you fer this here job?”
“Well, four, five hundred bucks, maybe, dependin’ on how long it takes me to bring up the stiff. They ain’t easy to locate.”
>
“Hell, that ain’t a bundle! That’s jest chicken feed. S’posin’ you seen a way to grab off ten times that — five G’s. How ’bout that?”
“Five G’s! Holy cripes, man! What’re you talkin’ about?”
“Pipe down!” the truckman warned. “If he gets wise,” and the truckman nodded backward, “it’s all off. This has got to be a man-to-man deal, ’tween me and you. Say, buddy, can I talk cold turkey and be sure you won’t blow it?”
“Sure you can — though I ain’t agreein’ to nothin’ till I know what’s what.”
“And not to blame, neither. Well, anyhow, it’s like this. If you go down and make all the motions of tryin’ to find the body, but don’t find it, don’t let it never be found at —”
“You mean,” cut in Spurling, his heart beginning to pound, “you mean you’ll slide me five grand?”
“Yeah. That is, not me, exactly. But somebody’ll hand it to me to hand you. It’ll be worth that, to ’em, and a good bit more. Git me?”
“No, damn ’f I do!” the diver asserted, careful to keep McTaggart from overhearing. “Why the hell would it be worth thick money to anybody to keep a kid’s carcass from bein’ brung up?”
“Well, I ain’t exactly sayin’, buddy. But if I was to tell a fairy story, kind of, I might say as how once upon a time there was a lady, and she had a weak heart and her health was awful poorly. And she had a whale of a lot o’ coin. Well, she made a will, leavin’ a big wad to a certain relation. But then her son got drownded and she said she was goin’ to change that will and leave the money for a memorial library to remember him by. And the fact that she couldn’t git the boy’s body was drivin’ her crazy, or mebbe killin’ her. If she got it —”
“If she got it she’d prob’ly pull through and not die or go nuts. And she’d change the will and the relative would lose the dough?”
“Say, you got a headpiece on you, mister, as is a headpiece!” The truckman nodded warm approval. “You don’t hafta be told to come in outta the rain. And if you make a good job of it, why, mebbe that five grand might be stretched a bit, too. Savvy? Well, what say, buddy?”
“Hunh! Gee, I dunno!” And Spurling scratched his unshaven chin. His hand trembled slightly. In his throat, rapid pulses were beating “Five grand or even a bit more, eh?”
THE SUPREME GETAWAY AND OTHER TALES FROM THE PULPS Page 13
