“Police boat!” snapped Kerry. “Brandt must’ve warned New Rochelle about the escape! They’ve sent out a police boat from Hudson Park. They’ll pick her up.”
“Then dive for the speed boat!” yelled Trevor excitedly. “Dive down, captain, and let’s give her a raze of lead!”
The Sikorsky reared up like a living thing and then went over and down in a steep dive. Trevor forced the tommy-gun out of the cabin window of the ship.
Down the Sikorsky flew, the twin engines pounding out a terrific song of grinding power and zooming death!
The stuttering flame leaped upwards from the speed boat again. And again the slugs found a mark somewhere in the plane.
Tac-tac-tac-tac!
Trevor’s finger tripped his Thompson trigger and his gun leaped up and down, barking like a savage dog and vomiting a stream of lethal gray lead down through the night!
Huge fountains of water shot high into the air around the speed boat as Trevor’s bullets missed the craft and ploughed deep into the water like avenging hornets. The other cop in the cabin had a tommy-gun going now and the roar filled the plane.
The Sikorsky zipped right over the speed boat and went up into the air again to bank around steeply and come back in another dive. They were nearing Hempstead now, and Trevor could see myriad auto lights on the shore line. The Long Island police were on the job, raiding the hideout of the Murder Master’s killers.
Kerry flung the amphibian down again. The ship went lower than before, so low that the cabin pontoon nearly scraped the waters of the Sound. Trevor had a flashing vision of the speed boat directly under him. He saw three white terrified faces as the big flying boat tore at the sea craft head on. It looked like a collision. The gun on the speed boat had stopped its vicious tongue.
Grimly Trevor drew a careful bead on the upraised staring face of Walter Gruen—the Murder Master. He tripped the trigger and sent an unerring line of lead slashing down through the sky. He saw the bullets plop into Gruen’s face as the handful of lead splattered the boat. Gruen’s face seemed to melt away into a ghastly black hole. The Murder Master flung up his arms and toppled limply over the side of the speed boat into the sea.
Kerry zoomed again to come back for another try. But it was no use. Trevor’s bullets had taken their toll. The stern of the speed boat had exploded and orange flames licked the wood of the hull and sides hungrily, crackling like an enraged demon as the smoke and fire rose up from the ship.
“Sinking,” said Kerry. “You potted it, Trevor. Must’ve hit the gas tank. Look at her!”
The speed boat was a flaming pyre of twisted metal and charred wood. The furnace reached up into the night in a ghostly flare, and in a few seconds the swift craft turned turtle and sank quickly from sight.
Trevor took his tommy-gun back out of the window and sighed. The case was over. The papers he had would never convict Walter Gruen of theft, fraud, graft and the other sundry crimes against him.
When the Sikorsky gently settled in the waters of the East River again and taxied up to its mooring place at Seventeenth Street. Bart Trevor, tired but happy, found Inspector Bill Brandt waiting there for him.
Brandt pounded him on the back and congratulated him for the good work.
“But Ruth Walsh,” said Trevor. “Did they pick her up all right?”
“I’ll say they did,” Brandt exclaimed. “The New Rochelle police boat got her immediately after she jumped. She’s a good swimmer, Trevor. She managed to stay afloat, bonds and all, until they reached her. She’s some girl. She’s home with her dad now, I guess. I think they took her in while you and Kerry were over at Hempstead.”
“A clean sweep,” said Trevor. “The Long Island police had found the hide-out just before we shot down Gruen, Droone and that other man in the launch. When we landed at Hempstead, the place was under arrest and they had taken every member of the gang there.”
“Swell work, Bart,” said Inspector Brandt. “And, by the way, did you find out the secret of that whispering corpse?”
Trevor laughed. “Corpses don’t whisper, inspector. And I’ll show you why when we go down to the morgue!”
THE MONKEY GOD, by Jacland Marmur
CHAPTER I
Sudden Death
At the same instant, Kilimi, the giant Wambuba black, and the white man, Jeffrey Westman, in the lead of the safari, froze in their tracks. The ivory hunter was a veteran of the sinister Ituri forests. The Congo jungle was dangerous territory, full of lurking death. He knew it. Behind them, the porters crouched instinctively, tense and alert.
The two leaders looked at each other in silence. The same sound, harmless to the ordinary ear but unnatural to their keen senses, had startled them both—an approaching rustle of dank leaves, the crackling of tangled vines. The faithful black turned.
“Watu!” He breathed the word in Swahili and plucked his precious tarboosh from his head. Then he said again in a tense whisper: “Watu, bwana! People.”
Westman nodded. Kilimi, sensing danger, tucked his red fez for safekeeping into his monkey-skin belt. In silence he snapped the heavy gun he carried from “safety” to “ready” and exchanged it for the light Winchester the ivory hunter carried.
“Quick, Kilimi! Pesi-pesi!”
Kilimi darted from the trail, swift as a flash of vanishing light. Westman gestured with his free hand to the frightened black porters of his safari. A moment after their ears had caught the first warning of danger, the elephant trail was completely deserted.
In the dense growth, Kilimi crouched by Westman’s side. Two flaps of his cartridge belt were open now, ready in an instant to feed fresh shells to the gun Westman held in his hand. The rustling came closer, like the slithering progress of a snake. They could see nothing. Suddenly a piercing shriek shattered the stillness of the jungle.
Kilimi tensed. The white man clutched his ebony arm restrainingly. Behind them, the Wambuba porters grasped their spears more tightly, eyeballs rolling.
Again it sounded, a blood-curdling human shriek of terror that ended in a horrible gurgle. It mingled with the enraged chattering of monkeys—and then died to a dreadful silence.
Kilimi swayed. Westman peered through the mangroves. His lips were set in a hard bar.
“Chui!” the Wambuba whispered.
The ivory hunter shook his head. “The forest leopard does not hunt in daylight, Kilimi!”
He gestured with his hand. His heavy rifle in readiness, the pair crawled through the tangle of growth in silence, Kilimi’s naked feet and Westman’s mosquito boots making no sound as they circled to come upon the clear trail. Ahead, a shape lay motionless, with sightless eyes opened. Jeffrey Westman did not need to be told the man was dead. Yet he was armed—and they had heard no shot fired in his own defense. Only that shriek of horror; then silence and death.
A shudder swept Kilimi’s giant frame. “Wazungi!” he whispered. A man does not let himself be killed with a loaded rifle in his hands unless tribal superstitions and dread of dawa—the jungle magic—was strong in his soul.
“Wazungi!” he whispered again in awe.
The ivory hunter nodded. There could be no question of it. The dead heap there was a white man. Death had pounced on him swiftly, silently, suddenly—and disappeared. The jungle swallowed all things.
In grim silence, Westman stepped into the open. The blazing Congo sun had yet an hour in the heavens. But in the depth of the great Ituri forest, the feverish African dusk was already deep on the ghastly festoons of interlacing creepers; and the age-old elephant trail was splashed with weird shadows. The throb of signal drums started, faint, distant, and invisible—the mysterious heartbeat of the land.
* * * *
Westman, tall and powerful and youthfully erect with his .475 elephant gun in the crook of his arm, had pressed through the jungle from Murumwa at a speed that showed plainly that this time he was not in search of that eternal dream of the ivory hunter, the father of all the elephants, whose tusks trail the ground. T
he summons of his friend, Scotty Macrae, of the Congo Concession Company, had been as imperative as it had been enigmatic.
Macrae was not a man to scare easily, yet he had sent a runner through the jungle to his friend in Murumwa. And now death met this friend as a sinister proof. Westman’s sun-scorched face showed anxiety in his drawn jaw-muscles.
Staring down at that fellow in the middle of the trail, he saw a face lacerated horribly and twisted in the agony and the terror of death. They had heard his death shriek not more than a few moments before. His rifle was still in his hand. He had not fired so much as a single shot in his defense. Murder had leaped upon him mysteriously and swiftly.
The ivory hunter’s trained eye passed quickly over the ground, then along the wall of the jungle for some sign, animal or human, to betray the cause of death. He saw nothing. What did it mean?
Westman dropped to one knee. The flesh of the dead man’s face was torn, bleeding, the blood not yet coagulated. And as the ivory hunter bent closer, he cursed softly under his breath. He knew the fellow—George Craig, a Congo Concessions man sent out recently from Boma as Scotty Macrae’s assistant.
Westman had met him once in Murumwa before the man went into the jungle to join the Scot on the back creeks of the Ituri River. There was no mistaking his identity. There was the strong, stubborn jaw and the shock of dust-colored hair. Westman hadn’t thought himself so close to Macrae’s compound.
What was the fellow traveling the jungle alone for? That in itself was suicidal. Was it a warning? If so, by whom? And for what reason? What had caused Craig’s sudden swift death? Men don’t just drop dead that way. And as sudden and violent as it had been, there hadn’t been time for him to so much as fire a single shot in self-defense!
Westman’s brow contracted in a frown. Very carefully he turned the body over. As the back came into full view, Westman’s teeth ground together.
Between the shoulder blades were several slashes.
Native spears? He dismissed the thought instantly. There was no spear anywhere about, and native killers threw their weapons. These slashes were clean stabs. One of them had penetrated to poor Craig’s heart at the first thrust. No native weapon could have made them. Those thrusts could only have been made only by a razor-sharp blade of civilized steel.
But a white man’s knife in the heart of the Ituri jungle must have a white man to wield it! Yet other than Scotty Macrae, there were no white men within twenty miles of the Congo Concession’s gold and diamond workings on the crocodile-infested streams of the Ituri Valley.
Westman came quickly to his feet, barking an order in Swahili to his men to remain where they were without stirring. Carefully, with his eyes glued to the ground, he went over the terrain of the clearing, working slowly from one side to the other, back and forth. Meticulously he searched. He found—nothing. There was not so much as a single track of man or beast, other than a single trail made by Craig himself. Bordering the elephant trail, his trained eye spied broken vines and torn creepers. The dying man had clutched at these, no doubt, in his brief agony. But on the ground itself there was—nothing!
Baffled, Westman dropped again to one knee beside Craig’s body. The shock of sand-colored hair seemed in spots to have been literally torn by the roots from the scalp. Jeffrey frowned. He recalled for a moment the gruesome tales he had eked out from the lips of Scotty Macrae’s runner, the black who had brought to Murumwa his plea for Westman’s help. Tales of mysterious, unaccountable deaths; of the dread superstitions that swept the natives like wildfire; of jungle magic.
And now, almost under his very eyes and not a mile from Macrae’s compound, without any explanatory tracks or marks on the soft jungle floor, George Craig lay stabbed to death!
As he rose to his feet, Kilimi bent eagerly toward him. “You find marks, bwana?” he whispered softly in Swahili.
Westman shook his head. “No marks, Kilimi.”
“Dawa lutala. Watu lutala. The magic of the accursed people!”
Jeffrey looked at him sharply, reclaiming his Winchester from the giant man’s shaking hand.
“Nonsense, Kilimi!” he barked. “Kilimi no run away! Understand? We fight together before, no?” he went on levelly in guttural Swahili. “We fight together again.”
For an instant Kilimi’s eyes wavered to the body lying at their feet and darted swiftly to the walls of the jungle on all sides. Then he squared his shoulders. His free hand came up clenched, and he struck his bare chest a mighty thump.
“No,” he growled, “Kilimi no run away. My master fight—Kilimi fight!”
“Good man,” Westman replied. “Tell your Wambubas to make a litter for the dead Wazungi. We camp tonight with Scotty Macrae in the ancient village of death. You remember, Kilimi?”
Kilimi’s face split in a savage grin of pleasure at the remembered battle in which he had partaken at that place Westman called the village of death.
“Ndio, bwana,” he growled. “I remember.”
Westman took the lead again. With their grisly burden coming directly behind them, the little safari pressed onward through the jungle.
CHAPTER II
“The Accursed Magic Again!”
The westering sun dove abruptly beneath the jungle fronds in a bombshell of color and light. Several moments later, Westman heard the cries and noise of many men crashing toward them. Dominating the native clamor, he recognized the periodic bass hail of Scotty Macrae.
“Craig! Darn ye, where are ye? Craig!”
A bitter smile flitted across the ivory hunter’s face at the Scot’s naïve manner of search. In a moment Westman and his safari burst upon the rim of a large clearing.
To the right, the short, stocky form of the Scotsman could be seen, returning at the head of his search party of blacks.
The huge compound was entirely surrounded by a high stockade. Behind the pointed stakes and through the open gates the wattled native grass huts reared their cones. Ahead of Westman rose the administration building, a rough hut of thatch with a narrow step; and directly behind it a gigantic banyan tree sent drooping creepers weaving ghostily in the twilight.
Suddenly Scotty Macrae spied the newcomers and, mistaking the Wambubas for his own blacks and the white man for the man he was in search of, he let out an angry bellow:
“Craig! Ye bloody fool! Don’t ye know better’n to run off at night into—”
“It’s not Craig, Mac.”
The Scot, coming forward on the run, stopped dead in his tracks. Then he let out a joyous shout.
“Jeff!” He sprang forward eagerly, rifle in hand. “Westman! God, and I’m glad you’re here. Didn’t even know whether my runner’d ever live to reach you in Murumwa.”
“Your runner came in five days ago. I left at once.”
“Knew you would, Jeff.”
“He brought some pretty gruesome tales with him, Mac. Now what’s all this magic nonsense?”
The stocky Scot sobered instantly, letting his huge hand come away from Westman’s, which all the while he had been clasping in hearty welcome.
“It—it’s a rotten mess, Jeff,” he bit off between clenched teeth. “Talk it over later. Right now I’m worried about that kid they sent out from Boma. Went off by himself into the jungle an hour ago, and—”
“Craig?”
“Yes, he—”
“Don’t hunt him any more, Scotty.”
“You— What do you mean, Jeff?”
“He’s dead.”
“Dead!”
“My Wambubas have him on that litter. Stabbed through the back. Kilimi will bury him, Mac,” the ivory hunter went on quietly, “like one of his own tribe. Standing upright with his rifle at his side like a warrior ought to be buried.”
“My God! Another!” The Scot said this with savage bitterness.
For a moment the two friends stared at each other. Then in silence Macrae led the way to the administration building. Behind them, the door flap of kasai cloth fell back in place without a f
lutter. Outside, Westman’s Wambubas mingled with Macrae’s men, Kilimi growling orders, his brilliant Mussulman tarboosh the envy of all.
Scotty Macrae fell wearily to the rattan settee and turned up the grease lamp. In its light, his square face showed itself set in stony ridges. Westman dropped to a camp stool, his long legs before him. For a moment the pair listened intently to the faint, maddening beat of distant signal drums until suddenly the Scot’s clenched fist came down with a thump on the narrow teakwood table. He swore savagely.
“I tell you, Jeff, it’s enough to drive a man crazy out here. Blackness—the jungle— clammy heat and snarling blacks. Them drums going all night long. Death ready to jump on your back any minute!” He leaned forward.
“Westman,” he barked fiercely, “I can stand the sight of blood drawn in a clean open fight as good as any man. I’m not squeamish, God knows. But this stinking back-sticking! It sends shivers up my spine. They don’t know what a man’s up against here, them company directors on the coast at Boma.
“Gold and diamonds, that’s what they want! And they send a poor kid like Craig out here. Why, he didn’t have a chance! I’m beginning to think I haven’t, either. But I tell you this, Jeff!” His fist pounded the table again. “I’ll get to the bottom of this if it—”
“Suppose you tell me about it,” Westman said softly.
“You saw as much of what it’s about as I know, Jeff,” the Scot replied, more soberly, “when you found young Craig.”
“Who—”
“I don’t know.”
“What was he doing in the jungle alone?”
“I’ve warned him a hundred times, Jeff. But he was a kid, full of fight. Only he didn’t know how to fight out here. He was looking for a black who skipped out with a few raw diamonds from the diggings.”
“Has that happened before?”
“The workmen making off with the stuff? Yes, before I sent for you, Jeff, half a dozen lit out.” The Scot leaned forward, his eyes ablaze. “And every one of them was found murdered in the jungle! Every one!” he repeated. “Stabbed and lacerated and torn, those we were able to find, with handfuls of their hair yanked out by the roots as if—”
The Adventure Megapack Page 53
