Bruce leaped forward, only to swivel at a repetition of the scream. Julia, white and scantily clad in the dim shadows of the farther corner, crouched with arms upthrust, as if to ward off a horrible vision.
Feet pounded down the corridor, smacked into the room with a jitter of scared tongues. Stapleton, spare body faultless in bright silk pajamas, Jerry in khaki pants and shirt, Kober in a long dressing gown beneath which Bruce, for all his tension, did not fail to notice the peeping trousers. Kober had not yet gone to bed.
“What’s the matter, Julia?” Bruce cried.
She pointed with fear-trembling arm to something that made a dark blob on the floor. Then her eyes went wide, to see the clustered men, her own bareness. With a moan she plunged for the bed, dragged the sheets up around her chin, and sat there, shuddering.
Jerry said: “Good God!” Stapleton leaned against the bedpost as if his knees were giving way. Bruce and Kober reached the sprawled body.
It lay in a splash of silver moonlight, but the widening pool around it was a dark, frightful red. A man stared sightlessly up at them, flat on his back. He was gutted open. From chin to navel the huge slash carved through breast bone and ribs, to reveal a bloody heart that pumped feebly with expiring life and geysered bubbling, gurgling spouts of blood. “Slim!”
Kober, legs astraddle, ruddy face knotted into a ferocious mask, stared down at the horrible remains of his henchman. Then he turned, with a speed surprising in a big man, and an ugly automatic muzzled at Bruce.
“You did this, fellow?” Howell shook his head.
“I heard Miss Hunt scream, and I got here an instant before you did.”
Kober swerved on Julia, half-fainting against the heaped pillows, her wide-open eyes clinging as if fascinated to the dead man.
“Speak your piece, girlie,” he snarled.
“He—he crept into my room while I was asleep,” she faltered. “He—he caught hold of me. I tried to fight him off, but he was too powerful. Then I cried out.”
Kober took in the outlines of her slender figure through the revealing sheet, and licked his lips stealthily. “Slim tried it once too often, eh?” he grimaced.
Julia shuddered. “He had dragged me half out of bed when someone—something caught him by the shoulder and pulled him away. There was a great swish and a thud; then I must have fainted. When I came to, he was lying there, like—like that, and someone was hammering at the door. There was no one else in the room.”
Kober towered over her. “Who did it?”
“I didn’t see.”
“Look here, Kober,” said Bruce, stepping forward. “I saw a face disappearing through the window when I broke in. It wasn’t anyone of us; it was a savage, horribly distorted face.”
“A swell story,” Kober sneered. His gun covered them all, his eyes were watchful. “I don’t give a damn about Slim. He had it coming to him. He tried to doublecross me. But I take care of my own jobs. Don’t think, Stapleton, I’m not wise to you.”
The small spare man shrank back. “What do you mean?” he quavered shrilly.
Kober’s laugh was hard and rasping.
“Just this. Slim dug it out of a jane last time he was up here. A jane with yellow hair and a face like nobody’s business. She fell for him, the flossie did, and she put him wise to Mr. Cuthbert Stapleton, the big Boston jeweler. How he was sneaking diamonds in through this God-forsaken hole without taking the trouble to divvy up with his Uncle Sam.
“That’s why I bought this dump and got you to come up. I checked up on you and your mysterious trips half a dozen times a year—on business south, you told your wife.”
Stapleton fell back. His face was the color of ashes.
“I did go south,” he said desperately. “I—I had another establishment in Richmond. I didn’t come here, I swear. I had nothing to do with that yellow devil. She lied if she said—”
Kober hit him with the gun barrel across the mouth. “I want the jewels. Where are they parked? Slim knew, and held out on me. He’s dead now.”
Stapleton raised a silk clad hand to shield his face.
“It’s all a lie; I never—”
Jerry said brutally: “That yellow-haired girl disappeared right after Stapleton and Slim left the village. She ain’t been seen since. She ratted with them both. I had my suspicions about the boss’s racket. He usta visit the cellar a lot.”
“Okay,” Kober grinned triumphantly. “I’ll give you a cut for that, Dunn. Come on, Stapleton, show me.”
He shoved the wretched man out of the room, turned, said in threatening tones: “None of you move till I get back.” He slammed the door. They heard the key turn in the lock.
Bruce looked at the woodsman with loathing. “You sent Stapleton to his death,” he said coldly.
Julia feverishly dressed herself underneath the sheet.
Jerry smiled queerly: “Stapleton’s safe enough. Kober won’t dare kill ’im until he finds the jewel cache. An’ that’s what I’m gunnin’ for. I’m a Federal Investigator; been after this diamond smuggling fer quite a while.”
“Oh!” Bruce gulped. “Then you’d better give the orders.”
“Right!” Jerry snapped. His gaze flicked to Julia, who, fully dressed now, except for the torn jersey, was standing beside Bruce. “You two stay here, while I trail ’em. Stapleton will tell Kober sooner or later. Then I’ll grab ’em both.”
He took a key out of his pocket, and unlocked the door. His black-browed, weather-beaten face peered back at them. The door shut, there was a faint click, and the sound of retreating footsteps.
Julia clung to Bruce. “He locked us in.”
Bruce frowned. “Wants to keep us out of harm’s way, I suppose,” he said, masking his thoughts. He went to the window, looked out. A wisteria vine clambered up from the soil beneath, flung leafy branches past the casement. It would have been easy for an active man to reach the room and drop back to the ground.
Something moved in the mist-swollen moonlight, something shadowy and sinister. In an instant Bruce was out on the vine, making his way swiftly down. That, he had no doubt, was the killer, dark-skinned, mustachioed.
Julia ran panic-stricken to the window, leaned out.
“Bruce! Bruce!” she cried softly. “Don’t leave me.”
He looked up at her pale, lovely features. “I’ll be right back,” he assured her. “You’re safe enough in the meantime.”
The mist swallowed him up. He dropped lightly to hard earth, ran in the direction he had seen the figure disappear. The trail led around to the extension right wing of the sprawling house, to an open cellar door.
A horrible strangled screeching lanced through the dark, a man’s voice bursting with agony. Then it guttered out. It came from the dank reaches of the cellar.
* * * *
Bruce dived headlong down the stairs, slammed through weltering darkness toward the last echoes of that screech. Other feet clattered in broken step with his.
A stream of radiance split the solid black, bobbed up and down over the cement floor. Bruce slithered warily to a halt.
“Who’s that?” he demanded sharply.
The flash caught him full in the face, blinded him. Then a voice, edged with impatience.
“Hell! I thought I left you upstairs.” It was Jerry Dunn.
Bruce exhaled. “I saw someone skulking outside and climbed out of the window to investigate. Then I heard that screech.”
“So did I,” Dunn said grimly. “Come on; we’d better trace it.” Together they went cautiously over the cement, the beam of the flash showing whitewashed walls, around an angle into the cellar underneath the main house.
There they found the body.
Sprawled on his back, staring sightlessly into the yellow flare, split open from chin to navel, heart and lungs exposed and ebbing away in a welter of bright, bubbly blood, lay—George Kober!
Of Cuthbert Stapleton not a sign. A wall safe, set in the cement-block wall, its door camouflaged to resemble c
oncrete, swung open. Nothing was in it Jerry swore bitterly. “Stapleton had confederates. They did Kober in, an’ then they all lammed with the diamonds. That was their cache.”
He turned suddenly, and went slamming through the cellar, out into the mist-laden night.
Bruce, with the light withdrawn, was left groping.
He hesitated. Should he follow Dunn or get back to Julia? The thought of her loveliness exposed to the hideous prowlers left him sick. He cursed himself for a fool.
Just as he bumped his shins against the upward-leading stairs, he heard the last departing shriek of this crowded night of terror. It sent him crashing recklessly up the rickety steps. Horrible anguish held him in a vise.
Julia had called his name in an ecstasy of despair! Then sudden silence.
“I’m coming!” he shouted and crashed into her room. The moonlight, irradiated by the driving globules of fog, made pearly opalescence on the bed, dissolved the terrible travesty on the floor that had once been a man.
Howell brought up short. Julia was gone. The casement window, wide-open, mocked him with its knowledge of what had happened.
He sprang to it. The fog rolled in from the sea. He shouted despairingly. No answer but the muffled echoes of his own voice. Then, far off, as if from an unfathomable distance, so faint it seemed more like the pounding of blood in his own veins, came laughter—mocking, luscious laughter.
Bruce started and swore at himself. In the blind swelter of events he had forgotten about the Black Ship, and its dead pilot and yellow gold siren. He went rapidly down the vine, padded across the rubbly beach. At the water’s edge he kicked off wet shoes, clothing that was still damp.
The moon was an obscure shadow. The thunder of the breakers came to him, but they were invisible. Nor was there any sign of the Ghost Ship.
Yet he staked everything on his intuition that the solution to this devilish night lay outside the reef. He plunged into the cold water, clad only in shorts, and swam with long powerful strokes; an unarmed man pitting himself against desperate killers, against the lure of a yellow gold unearthly woman.
* * * *
With the last embers of his strength, Bruce caught feebly at the anchor chain. For almost an hour the wild surf had buffeted and pounded at him; jagged rocks of the reef gouged long slashes in his aching sides; whirlpools plucked at him with irresistible fingers. Then, with leaden weights for arms and every stroke a nightmare, he caught sight of the sinister loom of the Black Schooner.
He rested, fighting for breath, allowing strength to flow sluggishly through sodden, weary limbs. The Ghost Ship was silent as a grave.
He swung his cramped body up the chain, hand over hand, until he stood on the gently pitching deck. His legs were weak, and he grabbed at the nearest object for support.
It was cold, clammy, yielding to the touch, nauseating. He snatched his hand away with a shudder of repulsion. There, horrible, fetid, staring crazily at him out of eyeless sockets, was the dead pilot, upright, lashed to the wheel with strong lashings.
Bruce staggered away. The deck was bare, black. Then momentarily the fog lifted, and eerie moonshine flooded the ship. The two masts rose starkly into the sky, the black doomful sails idle on the poles.
Some instinct caused him to tilt his head sharply. A low smothered gasp escaped him.
High up, dangling from the outstretched yardarm, treading nothingness with desperate fantastic steps, was the dark figure of a man. A man with a noose around his neck, and a lolling, gaping head at a broken angle to the stretched-out neck.
One quick terrible glance and then the fog rolled in soft billowing folds to shield the racked eyes from the sight. Bruce groaned. There had been something familiar about that half-seen shape. Was it Jerry Dunn?
He took a tentative step forward, and whirled. His ears had caught the stealthy slither of feet. But it was too late. He felt his neck clutched in a strangling grip. Fog gave way to exploding stars.
* * * *
Bruce Howell moaned and moved uneasily. His head ached and his tongue was a furred animal. He opened his eyes. He blinked unsteadily, wonderingly, closed them again.
Laughter floated to him in his unbelieving daze; luscious, mocking laughter.
“You’re not dreaming, man out of the sea,” said a throaty, overripe voice.
He opened his eyes again, and stared. His shorts had been removed and a dragon robe of flaming red, silken, soft to the skin, enveloped his otherwise nude body. He was fastened to a chair with shackles that held hands and feet.
He was in the cabin of the Ghost Ship, of that he was certain, yet it seemed more like a scene out of the Arabian Nights. Fantastic silken coverings hid the wooden walls, damask couches of rarest workmanship, piled high with soft voluptuous cushions, were scattered in careless profusion, and the gilt figure of a writhing snake-like god sat in a little shrine to one end. The single eye of the god was a flaming, blood red ruby of gigantic size.
Two men stood, straight and stern, on either side of the enshrined god. Swarthy of hue, sullen-browed, broad thick lips curled back from long yellow fangs, mustachioed, wearing black turbans on coarse black hair, inhuman in the cruelty smoldering in their eyes. Each held in sinewy hand a broad-bladed, razor-edged curving weapon. Bruce recognized it with a shudder; the terrible kris of the Malays, that could slash a man open from chin to navel with a single powerful stroke. The weapon that had killed in fiendish fashion Slim and his boss, George Kober.
But it was the woman who claimed his immediate and fascinated attention. She sat on a gorgeous damasked couch, supporting herself with one perfectly molded arm against the cushions.
Her hair, flowing free over half-bared shoulders, was a glittering cascade of spun yellow gold. Her face, white, devoid of any tint, was a lure and a snare. Her blood-red lips parted voluptuously to disclose tiny regular teeth, and the slumberous, smoldering eyes, heavily lashed in black, invited and mocked simultaneously.
But it was her body that made the blood rush faster through his veins. A thin transparent gossamer enshrouded yet did not conceal her voluptuous charms. Whitely glowing, every warm curve a desperate seduction to the glance, thighs rounded and creamy, breasts like ripe melons, smooth legs whose bare toes matched fingers in the dark red of their manicured tints.
She stirred sensuously under his gaze, and little ripples traveled over her tinted flesh. Her Mona Lisa-like smile lingered approvingly on his lithe sinewy figure, the chiseled handsomeness of his face.
“I am glad they did not kill you,” she purred. Her gossamer robe drooped from one bare shoulder. She did not try to replace it.
“Who are you?” he asked hoarsely.
She rose from her couch in a single sinuous movement and came close to him. Her eyes bored unfathomably into his, her breasts heaved with slow seductive movements, the perfume of her amorous body enveloped him, made him dizzy with its fragrance.
“Call me Thyra,” she said slowly, parting her luscious red lips. She swayed toward him. “I like you,” she breathed.
The blood pounded in his eyes at her nearness; for the moment he forgot where he was, everything. Her warmth enfolded him, made him feel…
“You and I—” she murmured throatily, “we’ll leave this little hole, we’ll leave that stupid fool gaping vainly on the beach, and sail to the East.
There, with jewels enough to buy a kingdom, you will be emperor, and I an empress.”
Howell’s head cleared. She had talked too much. He twisted his face away from the sight of her glowing, semi-clad body.
“What have you done with Julia—Miss Hunt?” he demanded harshly.
Thyra moved sharply back. Her dead-white features, a moment before suffused with tempting allure, snarled into venomous fury. Her dark eyes lashed fire, her ripe red lips retracted to show sharp white teeth. Her very hair writhed and glittered like whipping snakes.
“You—unutterable fool,” she screeched. “I offer you myself—wealth beyond your dreams—and you ask for th
at whey-faced chit, a mere bag of bones, a milk and water whimpering baby. Very well, she is here. Muhammed and Ahmad saw to that. And you shall see what I, Thyra, do to my rivals.”
She clapped her hands. The immobile Malays sprang to life, moved forward. The deadly kris glittered wavily in their hands. She spoke rapidly to them. The tongue was Eastern.
They bowed and left the cabin.
“Don’t you dare harm her,” Bruce cried frantically.
She smiled at him mockingly, her eyes heavy-lidded. She moved undulatingly back to her couch.
* * * *
The two Malays returned, dragging between them the stumbling, half-limp form of Julia Hunt.
Her face was drained to paper whiteness, her eyes were round with terror. They went wider at the sight of Bruce, shackled to the chair. She gave a little gasping cry. Howell strained with every muscle against his bonds, his heart hammering in his bosom.
“If you hurt her; just one little hair of her head, I’ll—I’ll kill you,” he said thickly. “Even if I have to come back from the dead!”
Thyra said contemptuously: “You love that little chit, that bit of ice, enough to pass me by, do you?” Her smoothness changed, her face distorted. She rose like a spitting, snarling cat arching on a backyard fence. “I’ll mar that precious body of hers until you’ll shudder away from it with loathing. Muhammed! Ahmad!” She clapped her hands. “Strip her to the waist!”
Bruce cried desperately: “No! No! Leave Miss Hunt alone. Let her go—safely, unharmed; and I’ll do anything!” His voice lowered. “I’ll go with you—to the East.”
Thyra laughed—and there was only the fury of a woman scorned in that devilish laughter. “Too late!” she mocked. “I do not take leavings, the scum of another woman’s party. But she shall suffer for being more desirable to you than I. Strip her, I say!”
The Malays, bestial faces smirking cruelly, reached simultaneously, ripped downward in a single flowing motion.
The torn jersey gave with a rending sound, came apart in pieces that were flung into a corner. Julia’s firmly molded body emerged, quivering and mantling red in its exposure to alien eyes.
The poor girl turned mute imploring gaze on her bound companion, clapped covering arms over her breasts, and stood, head bowed, waiting, bravely waiting for whatever was in store for her. Not a sound, not a whimper, left her clenched lips.
The Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 22
