by Unknown
VII
t was still dark at six o’clock the following morning when McMain climbed the ladder to the bridge of the Whipple. The destroyer, barely making steerage way, was rolling heavily to a beam sea. A fresh breeze from the northeast sang through the rigging and a steady deluge of rain thrummed the steel decks.
Holding to the hand rail, McMain groped his way forward and finally made out Ken Scott, the destroyer’s captain, in the port wing.
“Morning, Larry,” the commander greeted him cheerfully.
“Morning, Ken. What’s your position?”
“We’re about five miles due north of Parvenir. I don’t dare run in any closer.”
McMain peered over the weather cloth into the gray murk. Dawn was trying, with difficulty, to break. “Been here long?”
“Since five.”
“No sight of the Thelma on the run down?”
“Lord, no! It was as thick as the inside of your hat all the way. Nice going for the yawl, though. Steady wind and just the kind of a sea she’d like.”
“Think she beat us down?” McMain asked.
“No. We probably passed her along the way. Clark would cut the corners a lot closer than I could.”
“He’s probably standing in to Parvenir right now,” McMain growled. “How’s the barometer?”
“Falling slowly,” Ken Scott said, “but very, very steadily.”
McMain grunted. “A hell of a chance we’ve got!”
“One in a thousand. The Old Man won’t send out any planes to help us, either.”
“They wouldn’t be of any use if he did. It’s a tough situation, if you ask me, and damned little we can do about it.”
McMain turned towards the ladder to the main deck; then he paused and asked over his shoulder: “How’s your motor dory?”
“In good shape. Why?”
“I just wanted to know.”
“Look here! You’re not—”
“Good God, Ken!” McMain snapped. “We’ve got to do something!”
He went on down the ladder. It was virtually broad daylight now. And yet McMain, peering astern, could barely make out the after deck house, a hundred feet away. The rain came down in slanting sheets, steadily and relentlessly.
Below, in the small wardroom, he found Chuck Dean and Bridges, their chairs hooked to the table while a Filipino boy who looked sadly seasick served them breakfast. Chuck was haggard and hollow-eyed, but Bridges seemed cheerful.
“How are things outside?” he asked.
“Rotten. This storm has settled down for the day and Scott doesn’t dare take his ship any further inshore. Clark will slip by us and get into the islands, if he isn’t there already. And you know what that will mean.… Boy, bring me some coffee.”
“No chance of this storm blowin’ over?” Chuck Dean asked.
“The barometer’s falling steadily.”
The boy brought McMain’s coffee. He drank it in three or four quick gulps, said abruptly: “See here! There’s only one thing to do. We’ve got to take the motor dory and try to make Parvenir. We might intercept Clark there. But in case we miss him, in case he’s slipped in among the islands ahead of us, we’ll go after him. What do you say, Bridges?”
The Federal man smiled. “I say let’s go.”
They put a cask of water and a box of emergency rations in the twenty-one-foot motor dory. They stowed away a rifle and a belt of ammunition, and armed themselves with .45 Colts. They put in a chart and a boat compass, filled the gas tank.
Then Commander Scott made a lee and, with the dory’s coxswain standing by to unhook the falls, the boat was dropped over the side. Bridges, McMain and Dean scrambled down the ladder and piled into the pitching dory.
Thirty minutes later the little island village of Parvenir loomed out of the rain almost dead ahead. Tall palms first, their fronds thrashing in the wind; then the white government house; finally the double row of thatched Indian dwellings.
Dean and Bridges came out from the hooded forward cockpit, and joined McMain, braced themselves and stood watching the village as the dory bore down on the white line of breakers which piled up on the shore.
“Well, what do you say, McMain?” Bridges asked.
“I say, if he isn’t anchored in the lee of the island, he’s ahead of us.”
Bridges turned to the coxswain, who crouched in his oilskins in the after cockpit. “Head around the island, son,” he ordered.
A few Indians, short men with broad shoulders, narrow hips and thin legs, came out of their huts and stolidly watched the dory go by. On the lee side of the island there was no sign of the yawl, nothing but a half dozen native cayucos pulled up on the beach.
“The next village is Carti,” McMain said briefly. “And from there it’s only a short way over to the mainland.”
“How far away is Carti?”
“Ten miles across the Gulf of San Blas in an air line. Nearer fifteen or twenty by the channel.”
“You think he’d head that way?”
“He’s got to head that way. There’s only the one channel until he gets further east, in the neighborhood of Nargana.”
“Then Carti it is.”
The coxswain, at McMain’s order, cut his engine to half speed and they cruised along watching for the settlement. They made it out finally: a long line of native dwellings stretching along the beach and, anchored off shore, a gray and weathered submarine chaser which was used as a trading station.
“Pull over to the chaser, cox’n,” McMain ordered.
As they drew alongside the ancient sub-chaser an old man came out of the cabin and stood staring at the dory. McMain threw him the painter. He caught it, expertly made it fast and shouted cheerily:
“Come aboard, friends.”
“Haven’t time,” McMain replied. “We’re looking for the Thelma. Has she been by here?”
“The Thelma, huh? What’s Ben Clark been doin’ besides marryin’ a right nice little woman?”
Chuck Dean gulped, but McMain said quickly: “Clark is wanted in Colón for murder.”
“Murder, huh?” The old trader never batted an eye. “Well, I ain’t surprised. I never did like that young feller. He’s too damned pretty.”
“Hell!” Bridges spoke up. “Has Clark been along this way?”
“Huh? Sure he has. ’Bout an hour ago. Him and his wife stopped in and bought some supplies off me. Then he went ashore there and got a cayuco. He tied it astern of the yawl and headed east. He’s prob’ly makin’ for Cidra. That’s a big island due east of here ’bout ten mile.”
“Thank you and much obliged,” McMain said. “Cast us off, will you?”
The old trader untied the painter, the coxswain kicked his clutch and the dory drew away.
“We’ll have to get a dugout,” McMain said.
“Why?” Bridges demanded.
“Because Clark means to head up a river and we can’t follow him in this dory. It draws too much water. Cox’n, head in as close to the village as you can get.”
“How do you mean to get a dugout?”
“I mean to take it!” McMain retorted.
He buckled on a .45 and, when the dory reached shallow water, leaped over the side and waded ashore. From the dozen or more cayucos drawn up on the beach, he selected one, saw there were paddles in it and laid hold of it.
The Indians crowded towards him, jabbering. He waved them back with his .45, hauled the dugout into the water, pulled it out to the dory and made it fast at the stern.
The dory drove on. No one mentioned Billie Dean. McMain tried not to think of her. It seemed so certain, now, that she was willingly, and knowingly, accompanying Clark. His one forlorn hope, that she was under compulsion, had been blasted by the trader’s account of their visit.
Fifteen minutes after leaving Carti they made out a low line of dark green forest. A moment later Chuck Dean shouted:
“There’s the yawl! My Lawd, he’s scuttled her!”
Off to port, and not mo
re than a hundred yards away, they saw the upper third of a mast sticking out of the water at a sharp angle.
“Water wasn’t as deep as he thought it was,” Bridges remarked. “H-m. Where’s the nearest river? He wouldn’t plan to go far on the open gulf in a dugout.”
Chuck Dean smoothed out the chart with shaking fingers.
“Nearest river from here is the Carti, about half a mile farther to the east.
“That must be the one. Cut over to port, cox’n, and head along the shore. Well, boys, it won’t be long now.”
VIII
eading east they came shortly to an area of muddy water which told them they were at the mouth of the Carti. They found a break in the dense jungle which lined the shore and headed into it. The river here was a good two hundred yards wide and the current barely noticeable.
“Heah’s where we’ll pick up on him,” Chuck Dean said tensely. “He can’t make time in that cayuco.”
Half an hour later they ran, without warning, onto their first sandbar.
“All out but the cox’n!” McMain cried.
The three men leaped into the knee-deep water and hauled the dory astern until she was clear.
“Reckon we better take to the dugout?” Chuck Dean asked.
“Not yet,” McMain returned. “Try it to port, cox’n. The channel seems to be that way.”
During the next half hour, while the river grew steadily more narrow and shallow, they went aground three times. McMain finally gave up.
“We can’t waste any more time with the dory. Cox’n, stay here till we come back.”
The boy’s jaw dropped. “How long might that be, sir?”
“It might be all winter,” McMain snapped. “But it will probably be less than twenty-four hours. You have emergency rations. Put out a light tonight as soon as it’s dark and keep your eye peeled for us.”
As they stowed a box of rations and the rifle in the dugout, McMain said briefly: “We have eight hours of daylight left. Once it’s dark, we can consider that he has slipped us for good.”
They wasted no more time in talk. They got into the narrow dugout, took up their paddles and bent their backs to the task ahead. Within five minutes they had settled into a smooth rhythmic pace that shot them swiftly up the swollen river.
Within a half mile after leaving the dory the three men were hauling their dugout over a short and rocky rapid. Above the rapid they found a quarter-mile stretch of river which ran deep and swift. It was all they could do to make headway against it.
And then Bridges, in the bow, raised his paddle and pointed to a sandbar in the middle of the river. They all saw the footprints there: the large prints of a man and the small prints of a woman. No one said anything.
But McMain hitched his .45 forward.
The three men toiled onward, doggedly, in silence, paddling the deep stretches, dragging the frail dugout through or around the rapids. They worked feverishly, rain and sweat streaming from their faces.
And then abruptly, unexpectedly, the chase was over. They rounded a bend, paddling in deep water. They saw Clark and Billie Dean standing beside their canoe at the foot of a rapid less than thirty feet away.
McMain’s hand leaped to his Colt. Bridges reached for the rifle. But Benson Clark waved his empty hands and called, with a laugh:
“Put your guns away, gentlemen. I know when I’m licked.”
McMain’s hand did not leave his automatic. He sensed there was something wrong with the picture. It wasn’t normal for a man in Clark’s position to give in without a struggle. The Federal man must have felt the same way about the situation, for he kept his rifle ready and did not again pick up his paddle.
Only Chuck Dean, with a stricken, hurt look in his eyes, kept paddling towards the other cayuco. Benson Clark said:
“I see you don’t believe me.” He turned to Billie Dean, who, in a torn yellow slicker a dozen sizes too large for her, stood knee-deep in the water. “Billie, take the gun out of my holster and toss it in the river.”
With a weary sigh, without looking at the approaching men, Billie pulled the revolver from the holster at Clark’s hip and tossed it in the rushing water.
“You’d never have got us,” Clark said cheerfully, “if I hadn’t stove this damned cayuco on a rock.”
They saw then that the dugout was half full of water and was afloat only by virtue of the buoyant wood of which it was made.
“Hold the boat steady, boys,” Bridges ordered crisply.
He stepped out into the water. Producing a pair of handcuffs, he slipped them over Clark’s wrists. He searched the prisoner with practiced hands. Then he jerked his head towards the dugout.
“In you go, Clark. Into the bow. You too, Miss Dean. Into the stern.”
Then he grinned at McMain, as much as to say, “Well, that’s that.”
But McMain’s hand remained on his gun. He felt no sense of triumph. For there was Billie Dean, haggard, bedraggled, ready to drop with weariness—her part in the drama still unexplained.
And he felt no sense of security. For there was Clark, tired but debonair, and smiling! Taking it all as a joke, though he knew he must go back to Colón and stand trial for murder.
It had been too easy. Much, much too easy.
IX
hey started down the river in the storm, five of them in a dugout built for three. Benson Clark, handcuffed, sat in the bow; Bridges behind him; then Chuck Dean and Billie, with McMain in the stern. They paddled in silence.
Billie, finally, turned and looked up at McMain. Her dark hair was wild and matted. Her gray eyes were tired, lifeless, her cheeks sunken. She spoke so quietly that McMain alone caught the words.
“Aren’t you ever goin’ to smile at me again?”
Her voice was husky and provocative, but McMain kept his eyes straight ahead. He didn’t want to talk. He was too tired to talk. He felt empty and torn by strife.
“You haven’t even so much as looked at me since you caught us,” Billie pointed out. And then added querulously: “Cain’t you even speak to me?”
At that moment Clark, though he could not have heard the conversation in the stern of the long dugout, turned and said:
“Look here, you people! You might as well get this straight right now. Billie Dean is in the clear on this job.”
No one said anything. Clark wheeled further, glaring at Bridges.
“Steady, you damned fool!” the Federal man snapped. “Do you want to capsize us?”
Clark laughed hollowly. “I wouldn’t mind,” he retorted. “What’ve I got to lose? … Billie, tell them how you happen to be with me.”
“Go ahead, Miss Dean,” Bridges urged. “It’ll help kill time. Besides which, I am very much interested.”
“This gentleman is Mistah Bridges, Billie,” Chuck Dean explained. “He’s chief operative for the Department of Justice in Panama.”
Sighing, the girl leaned back against McMain’s knees.
“Clark told me at the dance last night that he was a Secret Service operative. He showed me credentials that certainly looked genuine and I had no reason for disbelievin’ him.”
“Didn’t it strike you as odd that a Secret Service man would tell you his business?” Bridges asked skeptically.
“Odd?” Her voice was contained, slightly belligerent. “After all, when a man asks a woman to marry him, doesn’t he usually tell her his occupation?”
“Sorry,” Bridges said, without sounding at all sorry. “Hadn’t realized he’d gone that far.”
“Oh, shut up and let her tell her story,” Clark growled wearily.
“Anyway,” Billie Dean went on, “Clark had dropped a few hints about his mission in Panama, when we heard Tommy Glade was dead. Then he came right out and told me he was workin’ on a big smugglin’ plot and had all the evidence against Tommy, but hadn’t arrested him because he wanted to get others too. Clark felt sure, he said, that Tommy must have taken poison when he found the law closin’ in on him.”
“He took poison, all right,” Chuck Dean growled, “but he never knew it. Clark murdered that poor young fella.”
“I realized that later,” Billie replied. “But at the time—well, everything dovetailed and it seemed logical enough.”
“But even if it all did seem logical,” Chuck Dean said unhappily, “and even if you were convinced Clark was a Federal, why did you go out to the base and steal that bottle of perfume?”
“Because Clark convinced me that by getting the bottle of gems out of the way Tommy’s name might be kept clean. I know Tommy’s family, I know his two brothers in the service and”—she laughed humorlessly—“I’m a Southern girl.”
Bridges’ voice was no longer skeptical; it was merely tired as he said: “Southern chivalry can get a person into lots of trouble on occasion. Go on, Miss Dean.”
“Well, Clark told me the situation as we drove out to the base. He told me that he, naturally, couldn’t take those gems but he was willin’ to stretch a point and let me do it. The government had to recover the gems, of course, but it would serve no purpose to dirty Tommy’s name and disgrace his family now that he was dead.”
“But Billie!” Chuck exclaimed. “When Larry McMain walked in on you there in Tommy’s room, why didn’t you tell him the situation? Why did you lie and evade?”
She said quietly: “I’ll tell you, although a little later, when it was too late, I knew I’d made the mistake of my life. I know how much Larry thought of Tommy. He’d had him under his wing for six years. He was like a kid brother to him. He had a world of respect for him and high hopes for his career. And it was to spare Larry’s feelings that I wouldn’t tell him what I really thought then: that Tommy had been smugglin’ gems. I took the risk of queerin’ myself for life with him. Well, I took it. I was wrong, but—”
“Uh-huh,” Bridges put in. “And perhaps it was all for the best anyway. We might never have caught him if it hadn’t been for you, Miss Dean.”
After a few moments Billie said quietly: “I didn’t realize the true situation until Clark shot his chauffeur. Then it dawned on me like a flash just what I’d been doin’, just what it was all about.”
