“Do it!” Denham snapped at Jack.
But he hesitated. Ann stared up at Jack.
“Let go of me.”
Denham could see Jack was torn. But then Ann glanced toward Kong, and the danger was just too much to ignore. Jack pulled her by the hand toward the other side of the village, toward the tunnel that would lead down to the cove.
She shouted at Jack, struggling to break his grip.
Kong exploded with anger, frenzied in his efforts to get to Ann. Abruptly he rose, tearing at the net, ripping it to pieces. Sailors swung haplessly from the ends of the ropes, tossed through the air.
Denham was rooted to the spot. This whole damned trip had been cursed, fate against him at every turn, but he had been sure he could salvage something from it, both for himself, and for the greater good, to let people touch the mystery that still existed in tiny pockets of a shrinking world.
Now it was all falling apart.
“We can’t contain him!” one of the sailors shouted, running toward Englehorn.
“Kill it!” the captain ordered.
Denham flinched. “No!”
Englehorn rounded on him. “It’s over, you goddamn lunatic!”
“I need him alive!”
“Shoot it!” Englehorn commanded, ignoring him.
Kong rampaged through the village now. Sailors who still held the ends of grappling ropes and bits of net were tossed aside. Kong crashed into ruins, knocking ancient stone buildings down and trampling the huts of the villagers.
Astonished, Denham saw a lone figure stand his ground in front of the monster. It was the boy, Jimmy, a Tommy gun gripped in his hands. Denham could not escape the familiarity of the image, for it reminded him of Hayes’s last stand against Kong at the log chasm. A chill ran down his back.
Not the kid. After all this, not the kid.
He started to run toward Jimmy, maybe to knock some sense into him, but Englehorn beat him to it. The captain grabbed Jimmy by the collar and pulled him away, shoving him down the path toward the tunnel that led to the cover. All the sailors were running that way now. Denham saw Bruce practically shoving Preston toward the tunnel and onto the ancient steps.
“Jimmy, get out of here!” Englehorn shouted. “Get to the boat! All of you! Run!”
In all her life, Ann had never felt such anguish. Her fear was gone, now, and only sorrow remained. She and Jack hurried down the treacherous steps inside that burial chamber as fast as they could. Twice she stumbled and had to catch herself.
Then they emerged onto the rocky shore of the cover. Side by side, they ran for a whaler that was waiting for them. Several sailors scurried about, shoving the prows of the boats away from shore. Others shouted at their shipmates, who were coming behind Jack and Ann, running for the boats.
But at the water, Ann stopped short.
She wouldn’t leave, simply could not allow Denham and Englehorn to destroy Kong. The creature terrified her, and yet on another level, she felt a connection to him that would never be severed. He had protected her, and she had seen a gentleness in him that the others would never be able to understand. He was not a monster, but an animal. A thinking, feeling animal, following his instincts and emotions.
So many men had already died. Why couldn’t they just leave the island, leave Kong to his home, and go?
Jack grabbed her waist and went to lift her up into the whaler. Ann fought him, pushing his hands away.
“Get in the boat!”
She could not. Her heart was breaking. The idea that she was the cause of Kong’s suffering tore at her.
“No! It’s me he wants. I can stop this!”
An explosive bellow rolled out over the ocean. Kong rampaged through the village until he was on top of the cliff through which the tunnel had been dug. Then Kong started down, over the edge, toward the cove.
A few yards up the shore, Jimmy stood his ground once again, Tommy gun in hands, watching Kong descend.
Jack saw him too. He swore under his breath and turned to Bruce, who was already in the whaler.
“Take her!”
Right then, Ann despised them both. Jack passed her to Bruce as though she was an errant child, forcing her into the boat. She struggled against them, but to no avail.
“Let me go to him!”
Englehorn leaped into the whaler. “Row! Get the hell out of here!”
Bruce held her tight, so that Ann could only watch as the sailors began to row toward open water, and the Venture. Jack grabbed hold of Jimmy, and he half-dragged the kid down to the water and forced him into the second boat, climbing in after him.
Jimmy raised his Tommy gun.
“Jimmy, no!” Jack shouted.
The sailors pushed their boat away from shore. Denham and Preston were in that second whaler as well. As Ann watched, Carl tore the lid off a crate and raised up a bottle of chloroform. Like Jimmy, he was not ready to leave yet.
Denham cocked his arm back to throw the bottle.
Jimmy pulled his arm away from Jack, steadied himself in the boat, and fired a burst from the Tommy gun. Bullets punctured the air, some of them striking Kong. He flinched, but nothing more. Then he bellowed and charged in fury, rushing at the water.
Ann didn’t have time to scream. She stared in horror as Kong brought his fist down on the bow of the whaler. Denham was flung into the water, bottle of chloroform still clutched in his hand.
A huge form towering above them like the Colossus of Rhodes, Kong reached down and lifted the whaler out of the water. Men shouted in terror as they spilled into the ocean. Jack and Jimmy were thrown out with the rest, flailing as they hit the surf.
Kong flung the boat against the stone face of the cliff that loomed above the cover and it smashed into kindling.
Jack surfaced, holding onto Jimmy, who choked and coughed up sea water.
Then Kong turned toward Ann’s boat, and looked directly at her.
“Go back!” she said, pushing herself up, waving him away.
Kong paused at the sound of her voice, as if sensing her fear for him.
“Hold her!” Englehorn snapped.
Bruce grabbed her and held her tightly as Englehorn raised a harpoon and fired it at Kong. It struck the giant gorilla in the knee. Kong staggered back, roaring in pain, and sank down in the water.
Ann could only sob, trying to pull herself away, shaking her head in denial. Englehorn stood, loading a second harpoon.
Nearby Denham scrambled onto a rock, holding the chloroform bottle.
“Wait!” he shouted at Englehorn.
The captain ignored him, intent on killing Kong with his next harpoon. Ann was not sure which of them she wished would succeed, whose intended fate for Kong would be more merciful. Kong started crawling painfully toward the boat, still pursuing Ann. Englehorn had almost finished loading.
“Leave him alone!” she shouted.
Jack was floating in the water, holding an unconscious Jimmy up to keep the boy from drowning. Denham steadied himself on his rock as Kong lumbered past him in the water on all fours. With a grunt of effort, he hurled the chloroform bottle. It smashed against Kong’s face and the animal began choking on the gas.
As the creature succumbed, he reached plaintively for Ann.
She felt nothing but cold inside, a dreadful knowledge that his awful fate was only beginning here on the coast of Skull Island. Ann had failed to help him, to stop this from happening.
Horrified, she could only turn away as Kong slumped into unconsciousness. She saw Jack in the water, watching her, and she began to shudder with tears.
Denham waded toward the unconscious Kong, a look of gleeful triumph on his face, and he looked around at the others who had survived the journey.
“The whole world will pay to see this. We’re millionaires, boys! I’ll share it with all of you. In a few months his name will be up in lights on Broadway. ‘Kong! The Eighth Wonder of the World!’ ”
24
TIMES SQUARE. THE BEATING heart
of New York City, rightly called the crossroads of the world. On that winter’s night, it was alive, teeming with the bustle of humanity. Groups of serious men moved together along sidewalks, the smoke from their cigars and pipes redolent in the chilly evening air. In other parts of the city, the Depression still gnawed at thousands, but in this place there gathered so many of those who had no such concerns. Couples young and old strode arm in arm, clad in formal attire, across an urban landscape made somehow innocent by a blanket of newly fallen snow.
All of them, it seemed, were making for the same destination.
Preston stood across from the Alhambra Theatre, its colorful lights reflected in the soft snow. The excited, curious crowd converged on the venue. Cabs pulled up to the curb. A long line had formed and scalpers sold tickets outside the door.
He gazed at the glittering marquee, the words there forcing a parade of difficult images through his mind. Preston shuddered once, and he was not sure if it was in relief to be standing there in Times Square at all, or dread at the prospect of entering that theater. For to enter would be, in a way, a return to those days and nights he would rather forget.
Upon the marquee, giant letters announced KING KONG THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD! Billboards outside the theater commanded passersby to Relive the adventure of the century! See Miss Ann Darrow offered to the beast!
Preston had no interest in doing either.
Yet he could not turn away. Coming here tonight felt very much like the conclusion of something, and he believed that when the curtain fell on this evening’s exhibition, he might at last be able to put the past behind him.
Perhaps tonight he would even be able to sleep without nightmares.
He reached up and idly traced a finger along the scar on his cheek. And then he started toward the entrance.
In her dressing room, Ann sat alone, numb and disconnected. As she put on her stage makeup, she felt strangely hollow, her mind drifting to thoughts of things far away, of disappointments and things that might have been.
The lobby teemed with people chatting and laughing, as though all the troubles of the world outside the theater had never existed. Preston thought Denham would be pleased. This was precisely what he wanted to provide for an audience—an escape from mundane reality into mystery and excitement—and the show had yet to begin.
The area around the cloakroom was crowded with people handing hats and coats to the check-in girls. From the balcony above, Preston watched it all. He searched the crowd for Denham, and after a few moments spotted the director, his employer, greeting Zelman and the other investors, all of whom had young girls like starlets hanging upon their arms. All of the men acted quite pleased to see one another, considering that before the Venture returned with Kong, the investors would gladly have seen Denham thrown in jail.
As if feeling the attention upon him, Carl glanced up. He looked at Preston, expressionless, then turned his back, mustering a brilliant smile for a waiting photographer.
The audience exploded in uproarious laughter.
On stage, the actors moved through a set built to look like a hotel lobby. Paul Thatcher, the actor playing Drew, pulled Harry Gorman to one side. Gorman was in the role of lovelorn Edgar…and in this scene, he was dressed in drag.
“Look at yourself. Look what you’ve become!” Drew said. “No woman is worth this.”
“This woman is worth it! I’ve got to win her back,” Edgar replied. “I don’t care what it takes.”
“Who do you think you are, Dolores del Rio?” Drew demanded. “She’s not gonna buy it for a second.”
Edgar pointed to a large bowl of fruit that sat on a decorative sideboard. “Shut up, and hand me the grapefruit.”
Drew sighed and did as he was asked. Edgar shoved a large grapefruit into his brassiere. The audience erupted in a fresh wave of laughter. The theater was small and arty, French in design, but their guffaws and giggles rose to the rafters.
Jack ought to have been thrilled. He sat a few rows from the front, right behind a woman who was paying more attention to the program for Cry Havoc than she was to the play itself, as if she were looking ahead to see how much longer she had to sit there.
Not that it bothered him. In many ways he felt the same. But despite his own and the heavyset woman’s restlessness, the majority of the audience were having a grand time.
On cue, two attractive young women entered the hotel lobby set up on the stage. The actress playing Jayne had golden blond hair and startling eyes, and Jack was the first to admit she looked a little like Ann. Perhaps more than a little. He had convinced himself it was coincidence.
Jayne was hustled along by Thelma, her confidante.
“From the top. Tell me everything, every little detail!” Thelma demanded.
The two women sat on a sofa to stage left even as Edgar sat in an armchair nearby, pretending not to know them.
“So he took me to a fancy French restaurant,” Jayne said.
Thelma studied her. “French, huh?”
Edgar, his feminine attire outrageous on him, leaned over and interrupted in his best falsetto.
“What a wonderfully generous, romantic gesture! Sounds like a fabulous young man.”
Thelma frowned at him/her. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help but overhear.”
Ignoring the intrusion, Jayne continued. “Anyway, about halfway through the whore derves, he clutches my hand—”
“He clutches your hand?” Thelma asked, voice rising in disbelief.
“It felt like the right thing to do at the time!” falsetto Edgar chimed in, bringing a ripple of laughter from the audience before he corrected himself. “For him, I mean…It must have!”
Again, Jayne ignored him. “He’s looking into my eyes—”
“And that’s when he told you how he felt?” Thelma asked.
“No. He never said it.”
Thelma looked horrified. “He never said it!”
Falsetto Edgar was frantic. “He probably thought he didn’t need to say it.”
The audience laughed, but suddenly, Jack didn’t think it was very funny. Not funny at all.
Thelma spun and glared at Edgar, in his ridiculous wig and dress and grapefruit breasts. “Then how does she know that it’s real?”
“He said it was not about the words,” Jayne went on.
Thelma threw up her hands. “Please, if you feel it, you say it. It’s really very simple.”
Jayne shrugged. “He said we’d talk about it later. Only there was no later. It never happened. I just had this stupid idea that maybe, this one time, things would actually work out. Which was really very foolish.”
Jack shifted uncomfortably in his seat and then abruptly stood. Part of him was flinching at the incredible breach of theater etiquette. It was his show, after all. But he didn’t allow himself to consider his course of action any further. He stepped into the aisle, turned his back on the stage, and headed for the exit, making his way past surprised audience members.
“Men!” Thelma said, up on the stage. “They’ll give you the world. But they let the one thing that truly matters slip through their fingers. All for the sake of three little words!”
“The three hardest words in the English language,” Edgar snapped, barely able to maintain the falsetto.
As Jack left the theater, the audience broke into fresh laughter. He strode outside into the cold winter night and turned up his collar against the icy wind. He glanced once at the billboard above that advertised CRY HAVOC, a new play by Jack Driscoll.
Then he turned and started walking toward Times Square.
Denham waited quietly in the wings of the Alhambra Theatre. The auditorium was filled to capacity, nearly two thousand people. The excitement in the air was palpable. Yet here, backstage, he had a moment of calm, and he allowed himself at last to feel pride in what he had accomplished. Out of disaster, he had brought something extraordinary.
From the darkened area behind the c
urtain he heard a weak, rasping growl, the sound of Kong breathing.
Her hair perfect at last, Ann pulled on her costume, moving slowly, unable to summon an ounce of enthusiasm for the performance she was about to deliver. Her memories of the vibrant life and color and music of vaudeville seemed so distant to her now.
Jostled by people on the busy sidewalk, Jack hurried into Times Square and stepped off the curb. Horns beeped but he ignored them, darting between cars, straight toward the theater and the enormous marquee promising the Eighth Wonder of the World.
A spotlight swung back and forth across the closed curtain as if searching for something. Denham took his cue and walked across to center stage. The crowd erupted into applause as the spotlight locked onto him. His smile was so wide it hurt and he waved to the audience, basking in their acclaim.
It felt to him like arriving at last at a destination toward which he had strived all his life.
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you a very strange story. A story so strange, it is beyond all belief. But, ladies and gentlemen, seeing is believing! And what you are about to see is living proof of our adventure. An adventure in which seventeen of our own party suffered horrible deaths! Their lives lost in pursuit of a savage beast, a monstrous aberration of nature!
“But even the maddest brute can be tamed. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, as you will see, the beast was no match for the charms of a girl…a girl from New York, who melted his heart, bringing to mind that old Arabian proverb. ‘And, lo, the Beast looked upon the face of Beauty and Beauty stayed his hand…and from that day forward he was as one dead…’ ”
Ann felt brittle and cold in her white velvet gown. She sat in her dressing room, staring into her mirror, at the sadness reflecting back from her eyes.
A soft knock came on the door. “You’re on, Miss Darrow. Five minutes.”
Ann stood.
Denham felt flushed with the heat of the spotlight and the moment. He faced the audience, raising a hand as though he was about to perform some act of magic.
King Kong Page 25
