Marcia found another bit of driftwood, and joined him in scooping away the sand. It was hot, perspiring work. Suddenly Terry’s stick struck something hard.
“Don’t tell us it’s doubloons?” Mayo commented caustically. But as the top of a bundle wrapped in tarpaulin and corded tightly began to appear from the sand, he caught the digging-stick from his wife’s hands and began to labor frantically. The perspiration began to run down his florid face in streams as he helped Dale pry out a good-sized bundle.
It was too new for buried treasure. When the lashings were cut, a number of glass bottles and small cans rolled out upon the sand. Mayo snorted his disgust vehemently.
“Never had any use for drugs. I am damn far from being an angel, but I never fell for this sort of stuff. And yet here’s probably a good many thousands invested in this little pile.” He flung one of the bottles angrily into the undergrowth.
“Hold on, Mayo. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Where in hell do you get that ‘I wouldn’t do that’ stuff? Any good reason why I shouldn’t smash this junk, if I feel like it?”
Terry nodded quietly. “When the fellows who have planted this stuff come back—and find it tampered with—well, we haven’t a weapon in the crowd—and two women—it’s my idea we’d better put it back and keep a good lookout to see who comes after it. Good idea to keep an ace in the hole.”
“Cautious Caroline!” Mayo snapped. He stalked sulkily into the shade, while Terry and the two girls corded up the bundle again and covered it up with sand.
* * * *
It was on the third night that Terry woke with the feeling that visitors had come. Voices were carrying across the beach, an occasional oath, a rasp or two of a ribald song. He crawled to the edge of the thicket and peered down. Over where he had found the cache a lantern bobbed. On the sand a small boat was beached.
Three figures were silhouetted against skyline. They were measuring, pacing back and forth, bending over the sand.
Terry was aware that two figures had joined him. Eileen and Dan Mayo, both staring at the newcomers.
One of the three men had left his companions, and strolled across the sand, he stood not fifty feet from the castaways. He drew a cigarette, struck a match and cupped the blaze. The light threw a swarthy, cruel face into relief. He whose deep-set eyes peered out furtively from under shaggy eyebrows.
“C’mon, Joe!” came a hail from the boat. “What yuh doin’ up there? Tryin’ a little private double-cross on the rest of us?”
A blast of profanity was couched in so vivid terms that Terry could feel the girl by his side shiver. “I ain’t plannin’ no double-cross—nor expectin’ none! Yuh birds know what to expect if yuh try any o’ them tricks!”
He strolled toward the boat. Offshore a launch tossed idly beyond the surf.
Mayo stretched his cramped limbs with an audible sigh. “Don’t like the looks of that fellow,” he admitted grudgingly. He disappeared into the darkness.
Terry watched the drifting launch till his eyes ached. Eileen had already crept back to the shelter. Then Terry’s muscles tautened.
Down on the sand a dark form was moving about. It crept toward the cache. Then, with thoughtless foolhardiness, Dan Mayo took out the last of his cigarettes, lit a match that he had held out from the scanty store he had passed over, and began poking about the cache.
A signal rocket would have been only slightly more conspicuous. The launch suddenly checked its momentum, swung in a wide circle and lay tossing upon the long swells. Men tumbled into the row-boat.
Mayo suddenly realized his rashness. He dropped his cigarette and ran for the scrub.
As Terry glided through the darkness, he became aware of a blur of white. Eileen caught his arm in a frightened grip. The boat had landed now, and its three occupants were running about grimly. One of them picked up Mayo’s still glowing cigarette. Another pointed to tracks in the sand.
Terry and Eileen crashed through the bushes, and came upon the little lean-to.
There was no sleeping form under the curtain of palm-fronds. Marcia Mayo was gone!
* * * *
The two fugitives crouched in the shadow of the scrub. The searchers had spread out, were calling to one another. Occasionally a grim oath, the words “patrol,” “double-cross,” “shoot it out with them,” drifted to Terry’s ears.
In less than an hour the sky would be lit, and the faint possibilities of cover on the island would be ruthlessly bared. Once a man swung by, not ten feet away. The searcher stopped short, and turned a sharp glance on the covert where Eileen and Terry crouched. Had he seen her white dress?
Then the dope-runner, a powerfully built six-footer, strode on.
Out of the scrub came a woman’s scream.
“Hell! It’s a woman!”
Figures crashed through the scrub. Terry leaped to his feet. But even as he tore through the darkness, he heard Dan Mayo’s roar.
“Damn you! Let my wife alone!”
Weaponless, with nothing but his fists and blind rage, he dashed headlong at the captors, in a heroic, but futile attempt at rescue.
It was as hopeless as it was magnificent. Two streaks of orange flame spat in the dark, and Dan Mayo dropped.
The sky was growing lighter. Daylight would relentlessly reveal their hiding-place. Terry clenched his hands in impotent anger.
Voices carried to him. “Bill, and you, Tony, beat around here and see if you can’t round up the others. We may have to get Rafael off the launch—but I don’t want to leave it without anybody aboard—not in the dark, anyhow! And—well, I reckon you know how to use your guns, if you have to!”
Eileen was whispering into Terry’s ear. “You heard that? There’s only one man on the launch! Why don’t we get him?”
Dale’s eyes opened wide.
“That’s an idea. Perhaps I could do it. If I caught him by surprise. Let’s go!”
They picked their way silently through the scrub. For the moment the beach was deserted. Terry crept to the boat. If he took that—left the outlaws marooned on the island—no, that wouldn’t do. They would be discovered at once. And besides, Mayo and Marcia would be left in the merciless hands of the smugglers.
Terry flung off his shirt and shoes.
“For God’s sake, Eileen,” he whispered fiercely, “what are you doing? Crawl down among those ledges and wait till I get the job done—if I can. And if I don’t get back all right—why—er—goodbye.”
“Going with you,” Eileen persisted calmly. She had slipped off her dress. She was peeling down her stockings, and was wrenching at the hooks of her girdle. She tucked the little bundle of clothes under a bush, and stood by his side, in nothing but her brassiere and her scant step-ins. “I can swim that distance all right.”
“Don’t be crazy, Eileen! It’s no place for a girl. Don’t stand there arguing! Hide—quick!”
“Do you think you’re going to leave me on shore—with those—those—I’d rather take chances with you, Terry. And—” She leaned close to him, and her lips were very near his. “I’ve been—rather horrid and unjust to you—and—if we didn’t come out of it all right—oh, won’t you kiss me, Terry?”
Her white arms were round his neck, she lay for a moment pliant in his embrace. The blood throbbed wildly in Terry Dale’s veins as he crushed her slender form to him, and all but choked her with his kiss. Soft, warm flesh—soft breasts crushed to his—utterly lovely in the lacy wisps of silk, no softer than her own velvety skin—then she pushed him away with a firm little hand. “Work ahead, Terry. Come on and make it snappy.” They slid noiselessly into the surf. Ahead of them the launch began to loom up in the graying dawn. He motioned to her to swim near the stern and hang on.
* * * *
There was one man on board. He strode uneasily about the tiny deck, and peered anxiously toward shore. T
erry swam in closer. At that moment Eileen, trying to reach the shadow of the stern, splashed, not loudly, but enough to rouse the lookout. He darted across the deck. The girl sank in the shadow, only her nose out of water.
But the diversion was enough to enable Terry to crawl up on the opposite side. He slipped over the rail, and sought for a weapon. He found it in the shape of a short hickory boathook.
The lookout was leaning over the rail, revolver in hand. Even as Terry crept up on him, he fired at the dark blur beneath the launch.
Terry’s cudgel flailed down fair over the watcher’s head and shoulders, and he passed swiftly out of the picture. His revolver dropped, went off again as it fell. Terry caught it up, and hung over the rail. “Did—did he hit you, Eileen?” he gasped in tortured suspense.
Two white arms caught the gunwale. “Nowhere near me,” she panted. “Give me a hand up.” Terry caught her in his arms, and crushed her dripping form to him with a salty kiss.
Eileen stood over the unconscious lookout, while Terry encircled him with hasty knots, and shoved him down into the cabin.
The sky had lightened enough so that they could see the shore with a fair degree of clearness. Terry wished now that he had let the rowboat go adrift. The sound of the two shots had alarmed the outlaws on shore, and they were running wildly out on the beach. Attack would be but a question of moments.
Hasty search of the cabin produced another revolver and a rifle. He gathered up what cartridges he could find, and rushed back on deck. The three on shore had discovered Eileen’s dress and stockings. Another held up Terry’s shirt.
“The only sensible thing,” he groaned, “would be to start up this launch and leave them on the island. We could make our getaway—”
“Would you?” Her eyes bored straight into his. “Leave the Mayos?”
“Lord, no! I don’t know that I owe Mayo anything. But to leave his wife—with that gang—”
She snuggled close to him. “I—I do love you, Terry.”
He caught the alluring figure tightly in his arms, holding her so close that the breath was all but crushed from her slender body. Every soft curve was tightly pressed against him, and his heart thudded a triphammer against hers.
“I—I didn’t expect to fight outlaws in my step-ins,” she grinned cheerfully. “Do—do you mind my costume, Terry?”
“Love it,” he chuckled. “If I had time I’d—demonstrate how much.” His hand slipped down caressingly along her throat, the soft curve of her bosom, the taut valleys beneath.
“I-I’d like you to, Terry,” she faltered. “Maybe—if we come out of this—” With a sudden mad impulse she slid her arms around his neck, strained herself to him. Her water-soaked brassiere, strained beyond endurance, parted, her firm, vibrant breasts lying exposed, unconfined to his avid clasp. For a mad, delirious moment she lay passive in his arms, her half-naked body crushed against his wet singlet.
“There!” she gasped. “I told you—I’d—be nice to you!”
His eager lips crushed hers in one last mad moment of happiness. Nothing could take that away from him.
The tip of the sun’s disk, a red fire-ball, was just beginning to rise over the skyline. They crouched low in the shelter of the gunwale. The rowboat, three desperate smugglers aboard, was forging madly toward them.
Terry lifted the muzzle of his rifle over the side and fired. The roll of the launch, the bobbing of the rowboat, made accurate shooting impossible. The bullet hit the water a dozen feet away.
Joe, sitting in the stern, lifted his own weapon. The launch was a much better target, and his bullet crashed through a cabin window.
The rowboat swung nearer. They were working to get toward the stern of the launch, to drive the besieged from the scanty protection of the gunwale. Bullets were flying wildly now. The lone giant at the oars protested ineffectually.
“My Gawd, you fellers are rippin’ up that launch as if she didn’t cost good money! Wotsa idea o’ wreckin’ her that-away?”
Terry’s rifle roared again. Bill spun round, clutched at his shoulder, and dropped cursing into the bottom of the boat.
The hammer of Terry’s rifle clicked uselessly. He dropped it and caught up one of the two revolvers. Tony dropped his oars, groaned, and slumped across the thwart.
Terry sighted over the rail. One more shot at close range—
Something crashed over his head. A searing, blinding flash of light—all went black, and he pitched forward senseless.
Rafael, who lay bound and cursing in a corner of the cabin, had managed to get one hand free, wormed out of the inexpertly knotted ropes. Joe would give him hell for letting himself be tricked in this fashion. He found the same boathook that had left an aching welt on his own skull.
Joe yelled his approval from the row-boat. “Get the other one, Rafael!”
Rafael closed in on the girl, and swung the boathook. Eileen swung around sharply. Her fingers pressed the trigger convulsively. Rafael swayed crazily, and fell at the girl’s feet, a widening red stain darkening his flannel shirt.
Joe had secured possession of an oar, and swung the drifting rowboat round. There was but one shot left in Eileen’s revolver. She crouched by the rail. “Keep away! Keep off!” she screamed.
The outlaw leader grinned. The row-boat’s bow bumped the white side of the launch. He leaped for the deck. His leering face was a blur of bestial menace, as he caught at the half-naked girl, whose white breasts rose and fell convulsively from the sagging brassiere. He licked his lips in anticipation.
Eileen’s revolver roared. The leer changed to foolish astonishment. He clutched at his hairy chest, and fell backward against the rail.
The empty revolver dropped from Eileen’s hand. She swayed, the excitement faded—things about her were gigantic, foggy—she dropped, a limp, pathetic, white little form upon Terry Dale’s senseless figure.
It was precisely at that moment that a long gray motorcraft glided into the little harbor, and alongside the scene of battle. Ensign Prentiss, in command, shoved his revolver back into his belt. In the tossing rowboat writhed and cursed two badly wounded men, while on the deck of the launch four figures lay sprawled and motionless.
“I reckon,” he commented to the two sailors who followed him aboard, “we got here just about the right time.”
* * * *
Northern lights, an infinite variety of stars, were clearing from Terry Dale’s befogged vision. He was lying on the pitching deck of the launch, his head pillowed in a lap that was silky, lacy—Eileen was bending over him, her soft cheek near his stubbly one, her arms around him. Over them stood a trim young officer, grinning enviously.
“We’ve been trying to land this gang for months,” he observed. “You rounded ’em all up for us.”
“Are—are they all dead?” Eileen queried with a shudder. Her bare foot touched the revolver on the deck, and she cringed away from it. “Did I—kill that man?”
“Not so you’d notice it. Oh, you let a little daylight into all of the gang—they’re all likely to be in the hospital for varying terms—and in Atlanta for a while after they get well enough to stand trial. Quite a cargo of ‘snow’ they had hidden.”
“And the—the Mayos?”
“Oh, they’re all right. Mayo got plugged—but not very badly. He’ll be around in a day or two.”
He turned to a quartermaster. “Lay the Petrel alongside. Quite a successful trip, I’d call it—rescuing some of the Palmetto State’s lost passengers, and breaking up that dope gang.”
He turned away with a twinkle in his eye, and a sigh from which he could not altogether keep out the regret. A coast patrol officer doesn’t rescue two handsome young woman castaways every day, only to find both of them very much spoken for.
Terry sat up. He fumbled in his trousers pocket. “Eileen,” he pleaded, as he brought out something which glit
tered in the sunlight. “Eileen—”
She caught at the diamond, and slipped it back on her finger.
“Did you ever have any real doubt that I was going to wear it?” she murmured.
Her white arms went round Terry’s neck, and her warm lips met his.
Ensign Prentiss shook his head with sorrowful resignation. Some fellows had all the luck. That girl—that corker in the brassiere and lacy what-d’ye-call-‘ems—didn’t even have eyes for his smart uniform.
He turned his back and lit a cigarette. Anyway, there was a nice girl in Miami—and just now he seemed to be a very unnecessary factor in the scheme of things.
TALISMAN OF DOOM, by James W. Marvin
Originally published in Spicy Adventures, April 1935.
CHAPTER I
Down out of the grey dawn, like roaring evangels of death, the nine Fokkers plunged in three tight triangles, straight at the three American Spads on sunrise patrol. Hidden a moment before in the scudding clouds, the Germans now appeared with the suddenness of black ghosts.
A flame-red stream of tracers belched abruptly from the twin guns of the Boche flight-leader’s ship. Brad Langdon, American airman, tensed as hot lead whipped past the fuselage of his Spad. Automatically he kicked his rudder and jerked back his stick, sending the roaring Spad upward in a tight spiral stall. A stream of slugs smashed into his instrument-panel. He crouched and reached for the trips of his own guns. Eyes narrowed behind his goggles, hair bristling under his leather flying-helmet, he slammed the Spad into a swift, banking turn. The sleek black bulk of a Fokker loomed ahead of him, square across his cross-sights. He squeezed his trips viciously.
Flaming death rattled from Brad Langdon’s guns as a leaden hail crashed against the side of the Fokker. The German pilot half-rose in his cockpit, clutching at his throat in abrupt agony. He stared glassily across the intervening nothingness at Brad Langdon. Then a burst of flame leaped from his fuel-tanks and he was engulfed in a roaring inferno. The Fokker nosed downward and went screaming to earth in a billowing black cloud of smoke.
The Spicy-Adventure Page 13
