by Don Wilcox
Her friendly manner had suddenly become cool, and Ross knew he had lost ground. He went on casually.
“Another thing people always like to talk about is their operations. Very cheery topic in America. If you’ve had a complicated operation you can be an interesting conversationalist. Operations, they say, have made talk ever since Adam.”
“Adam?” she said absently.
“In the Bible—you know. Adam got more conversation out of an operation than anybody. Good joke, eh?”
“I suppose so,” said Vivian, looking at him as if she hadn’t heard a word. She was studying him, trying to penetrate his mask. “You arrived here three days ago, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must have been on this island the night of the last storm.”
“I was flying over,” said Ross. “It caught me.”
“Oh?” Her dark eyes were intent.
“I heard your voice that night on my radio. It was you, wasn’t it?” Vivian nodded. “The storms are so terrible. I try to send out warnings. I never know whether they do any good. Not many people on the Flinfiord have radios. But I have to do something. I can’t just sit quietly in my room when I know that there’s danger and death—but why talk about it?”
The careless tone with which she concluded her words left Ross wondering. She walked past him and sauntered along the log railing of the long winding porch. He stood watching her for a few seconds, muttering to himself that she was either darned innocent or darned clever.
No, the radio warnings left no doubt. She was as innocent as her childlike manner betrayed. That would make things doubly difficult, for Ross was going to have to be clever.
Yes, clever and ruthless, and violent, if necessary—let lives or hearts fall where they might.
But for one brief moment Ross Bradford shut these thoughts out. Before him was a breath-taking picture—a wide ocean, a vast sky just blue enough to show off two or three bright evening stars, a soft sea breeze, castle walls and turrets—all this and a beautiful girl.
He walked over to stand beside her, his shoulder barely touching hers.
“Your voice on the radio that night,” he said, “is something I could never forget—even if I hadn’t seen you.”
“Are you trying to be sentimental?” she asked without smiling.
“I’m simply straightening out my opinion of you,” he said. “Don’t forget that the first time I saw you, you were throwing things. That’s what got me off the track. But the way I’ve got you figured out, you’re all right—on things that matter.”
“And what things matter?”
“Storms,” said Ross. “I’ve got a hunch they’ve got some meaning—something more than shaking houses and knocking down bombers and upsetting ships. But it’s none of your guilt. That much I’m sure of.”
“You take a lot of pride in getting me all figured out, don’t you?” Again there was a note of half-suppressed distrust in her voice.
It was a note that Ross chose to disregard. Yes, he liked to figure people out, he said. He’d had a lot of practice, especially at the hotel for transients, where he had met every type of person imaginable.
He talked on, and Vivian sat beside him watching him, as the darkening sky deepened the lines of his face. His easy friendly way was disarming, disturbingly so.
But to Vivian Graygortch this man was a stranger, and no stranger was to be trusted. For her that was the first rule of life. The men who came to Flinfiord to knock at the gates of Graygortch castle were men who lied and cheated.
And so, as they sat talking, Vivian Graygortch refused to relax her suspicions. If in a heedless moment she was tempted to sink into reverie, some reminder would bring her back—the sight of a passing guard, the sound of a bell, or a wisp of whistled Schubert air from farther down the winding porch.
A deep-throated gong sounded.
Ross sprang up to gaze curiously at the tallest tower, from which the heavy musical note sang out. The porch floor vibrated against his feet.
As the note resounded away, Vivian’s hurried footsteps penetrated his consciousness. She had crossed the porch to the nearest door. She had left him without a word, but now she turned her head and motioned him to follow.
She fairly ran through the hallway, Ross at her heels.
They passed a group of seven or eight sailors who were striding along in the other direction, a second group that were busy moving some furniture back against the walls. Everybody had come to life at the sound of the gong. Everybody was on the move.
Schubert zipped past, whistling in double tempo. He waved but didn’t stop to speak. Pounding footsteps and sounds of moving furniture came from everywhere.
“Keep back!”
Vivian uttered the words with a gasp of breath. She stopped short, caught Ross by the hand. Just ahead was the elegant, lavender-hued circular hallway, the converging point of several halls and stairs.
“We don’t want to bump into Rouse,” Vivian whispered. “We haven’t time to explain.”
“Explain what?” Ross asked.
“You.”
Ross caught the gleam of danger in her eyes as they flashed on him for an instant. She added, “This South Pole plaza—” she indicated the big circular hallway—“is the worst place in the castle for running into folks.”
Ross smiled to himself. What the furor was all about he didn’t know, but he felt like Mary’s little lamb, standing here in the semi-darkness with Vivian Graygortch clutching his hand. A few servants crossed and recrossed the circular hallway, busying themselves with removing pictures from the walls and packing them away in shelves. Occasionally they would glance upward into the lavender light—light that apparently sifted down from the vast open tower overhead.
“What is this?” Ross mumbled. “Moving day?”
Another gong sounded. The “South Pole” rang through and through with the deep resounding note.
“That was a different chime,” Ross whispered. “The first one was a perfect middle C. This one came up to D.”
“That means Uncle Graygortch is on the second landing,” Vivian breathed “He’s climbing the tower. There’ll be six more gongs—I must hurry!”
CHE dropped Ross’s hand and struck out across the South Pole plaza. Again he followed. Full under the lavender lights he cut squarely across the path of Rouse.
The heavy man, pacing toward a staircase, gave a sudden thrust of his high shoulder and threw Ross a challenging glare. On the instant Ross cut away from Vivian’s shadow and made tracks toward the nearest wall. If Rouse’s glare meant danger, there was no use letting Vivian get involved.
Ross had his wits about him. He began to remove a picture from the wall, as the other servants were doing. He watched the reflection of the husky man in the picture glass. Rouse paused only for a second, then went on his way. A moment later Ross had rejoined Vivian.
“That was quick thinking, Mr. Bradford,” she whispered. “My compliments.”
“I know the way back to my corner room from here,” he told her.
“You’d better come with me,” Vivian advised. “You’ve just had a close call.”
By the time the third gong rang out with the next upward tone of the scale, Ross was in a room where he could hardly hear it. Vivian’s childhood playroom had been equipped with sound insulation that absorbed all but the loudest castle noises.
Ross sat on a bearskin rug in one corner of the little room. Across from him was the curiously designed three-foot door—securely locked from the inside.
In another corner of the room sat Vivian, leaning forward in a tense halfcrouched position from her small rocking-chair. Her face was outlined with light from glowing radio tubes. Her girlish lips were close to the silvery microphone. Her voice was low, throbbing.
“A storm is about to break . . . Fishermen . . . Travelers . . . Take warning. . . Storm over the Flinfiord . . .”
A few minutes later the dim echoes of the eighth and last gong died
away.
Vivian was still at the microphone. Ross was watching her, drinking in her words, her exciting beauty—
Suddenly the lights of the radio tubes were blacked out. The little room was total darkness. The floor rocked and shuddered. Through the insulated walls came the hard irresistible percussions of earthquake and storm and electrical fury.
Then out of the blackness Ross saw that weird unbelievable something he had seen before—a pair of strangely hypnotizing eyes, fiery with evil—glaring—coming closer—closer—closer—
CHAPTER VI
Hank Kills a Man
Hank Switcher released the left oar, looked tenderly at the palm of his hand, and said, “It busted.”
“Good,” said the girl sitting in the stern “Is that the last one?”
Hank nodded. “Sixth and last.”
“Then you can forget about them.”
“Did you ever row a boat with a handful of busted blisters and forget about them? Besides, I’ll have some new ones by the time we get back.” They slipped along through the gray morning fog that screened all but the nearest surfaces of the promontory. The rowboat scraped the edges of the rock wall.
“I don’t see any floating bodies,” said the girl cheerfully. “What was your friend, blonde or brunette?”
“You’ll know him if you see him,” Hank grunted. “He looks like a movie hero.”
“I’d like to meet him,” said the girl, “preferably before he falls from the cliff.”
“It’s been four days since he struck out,” said Hank. “I’ve a notion by this time he wouldn’t mind meeting someone from America—even if her name was Sue Smith.”
Susan Smith retorted with a saccharine smile. “If you think he might come swooping down, I’ll put makeup on.” She touched a comb to the ends of her yellow hair beneath her jaunty tan felt hat, glancing at the effect in a small mirror. She rarely bothered to add any rouge to her cheeks. Her recent air and sea voyages had given her a strong healthy color that went well with her tailored tan suit.
“Hi, there!” Hank shouted into the fog. “Oh, Jimpson! . . . Are you there?” Susan Smith arched an eyebrow. “Does this place give curb service? I’ll take a large cherry coke.”
“Jimpson!” Hank shouted. A minute or so later an answer came back out of the opaque gray. Then the ragged figure emerged, his bony twisted legs dragging along over the rocks. His bright eyes, as Susan Smith mentioned afterward, were practically luminous.
“You remember me, Jimpson? I rowed out the other morning with Ross Bradford.”
“Four days ago,” said Jimpson pertly.
“Right,” said Hank. “I’ve been thinking over what you said about—er—statistics. Have there been any—”
“No statistics since I saw you, Mr. Switcher.”
“He’s a smart one,” Sue whispered. “Anyone that can say statistics and not muff it—”
Her whisper was drowned out by a surprised ejaculation from Hank Switcher. “Wait a minute, Jimpson. How’d you know my name was Switcher?”
“I had a communication from Mr. Bradford this morning. He dropped me a note on a string. He said if you were still on the Flinfiord you’d be coming around to inquire for him. If you did, I was to tell you not to wait because he might remain here for some time.”
“Some time, huh?” Hank pursed his lips. “That’s not too definite.”
“He also said that if you had any intentions of coming to the castle, don’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Sounds to me like he’s in trouble,” Hank groaned. “All this business about staying away from the castle—it’s a sure sign something’s wrong up there. Jimpson, can you get a message back to him?”
“If he lets a string down for me.” Hank frowned. His suspicions of four days ago that this poor creature was crazy returned in full force. This talk was simply a pack of lies from a demented mind. Where would Ross Bradford get a string that would reach down five hundred feet? Still, Jimpson had got the name Switcher from somewhere—
“Do you still have Bradford’s note?” Hank asked.
“The wind blew it out of my hand,” said Jimpson, spreading his fingers guiltily.
Sue bent over toward Hank. “Ask him what he knows about the castle. Does he think your friend is in trouble?”
Hank relayed the questions. Jimpson’s answers were evasive. He said he’d dropped out of the castle’s social whirl several years ago. But he was still close enough to know when storms were brewing, and there had
been a pretty good one last night.
“Yes, we heard the storm,” said Sue. “They probably heard it all the way to Iceland.”
Jimpson grinned. “Yep, it was a good one. Every one is better than the last. Well, take my word for it, where there are storms, there’s trouble.”
Sue nodded slowly. “Trouble.”
Hank handed the crippled man a pencil and some blank pages out of his notebook. “If you get a chance, tell Bradford I’m coming up there to help him out. Sorry you can’t come along, Jimpson.”
“I’ll stay here and gather statistics,” said Jimpson.
Hank applied his six raw blisters to the oars. When well out of hearing he said to Sue, “What did you make of him?”
“Smart. Too smart to waste his life hermitting. He may have some good reason for staying there.”
“I don’t know what it would be,” said Hank.
“He must have some drive that keeps him going,” said Sue. “Otherwise he’d go to pot creeping around on stone walls like a box-elder bug . . . When do you hit the trail for the castle, Hank?”
“After lunch.”
“Wait till tomorrow morning and I’ll ride with you—assuming that we don’t have another storm tonight and Exhibit A of my H.K. case doesn’t have another fit.”
There was no storm that night, but Susan Smith was in a stormy mood when she met Hank at the tavern for breakfast the following morning. The Japanese—Exhibit A of her “H.K.” case—had left his rooming quarters sometime during the night.
“Don’t think I’m going to let him get away, after following him all the way from Japan,” she said.
“He’d have to be a Houdini to get away from you, Any clues?”
“Don’t think I’ll need any,” said Sue. “There haven’t been any outgoing boats in the night, and this island’s no bigger than a weed patch on a Texas ranch. Ten to one we’ll pick up his trail on the way to the castle.”
The other possibility, as Hank suggested, was that he had gone over to the other village on the east side of the island. These fishermen weren’t too cordial to foreigners, no matter what their color. The wonder was that this Japanese had been able to get a lodging here in the first place. It must have been his superb manner—together with the wide curved sword he carried so conspicuously at his side.
Hardly anyone but Susan Smith knew that Exhibit A had been the organizer of a chain of suicide plots back in Japan before he had yielded to some strange urge to travel the globe. No one but herself, her news agency associates, and a few chance confidants such as Hank Switcher, knew that this Japanese was being followed, studied, written up as one of the most phenomenal case histories of modern journalism.
This was Susan Smith’s job—to take this king of hara-kiris apart and see what made him tick.
What an assignment! Hank Switcher was all hot coals with jealousy when he first heard about it. Why couldn’t he ever stumble onto a story like that? He never had any luck. Here he’d been on his way over to get a bird’s-eye of the big European scrap, and he’d had to bog down on this fly speck of an island. And all he’d got so far was a snail’s-eye view of a five-hundred foot promontory. Which added up to nothing more than a black question mark in his notebook.
The main things he’d bumped into that furnished story notes were two good earthquakes.
Three, counting Susan Smith.
Hank had filled fourteen pages with note
s on Susan Smith. He’d soon need more notebooks. Especially now that he’d got into Sue’s confidence and learned about her big assignment of dissecting a hara-kiri king.
They tramped along the upward trail, watching for foottracks. Soon they knew they were following in the wake of the Japanese, Yes, “H.K.” had passed this way since the light sprinkling rain of last evening. His boottracks were well known by Susan. At one point she noted the marks of his sword where he had slipped along a steep grade. He must have been hurrying. No doubt he had wished to reach the castle before daylight.
“Yesterday it was my hands,” said Hank, plodding along turtle-like a couple of steps behind the girl. “Today it’ll be welts on my feet.”
“You shouldn’t be bothered, considering the welt you carry on your waistline,” said Sue.
“That’s muscle,” said Hank. “I used to be a wrestler when I was down in Cuba.”
“If you’ve been all the places you claim,” said Sue, “you’re ready for an old age pension. Do Cubans wrestle? I thought they hurled knives.”
“Schucks, I always took their knives away from them and made them play my way,” said Hank grinning proudly. He wasn’t exactly lying. His writer’s imagination told him it could have happened that way—if he had gone to Cuba.
“You’re gonna be a handy man to have around,” said Sue. “This H.K. has a mean disposition, and if he should draw his sword and show signs of being unsociable—”
“Wait a minute,” said Hank. “I haven’t wrestled for a couple of years. I’m rusty—”
“That’s all right. So’s his sword,” said Sue.
They forded the Flinfiord river and ascended through morning mists. A short climb through the upper reaches of the canyon lay between them and the castle. Sun glinted against its towers.
“Suppose we’d bump into the Japanese?” said Hank, feeling slightly pale.
“It’s exactly what I expect,” said Sue. “From all reports, everyone who approaches this place is turned away—your friend Bradford being a strange exception. If they’ve turned H.K. away, he’ll have to come back down this trail.”
