The Complete Novels

by Don Wilcox

  It was.

  “Vivian’s in there with him,” one of the maids said. “I took their lunch in. They were having a big talk and weren’t to be disturbed.”

  “Dot gong viil disturp him,” Fantella retorted, “or I’m a burnt pie crust.” Rouse bounded through the corridors, wheezing and puffing like a runaway locomotive.

  “I’m onto the roof-climbin’ rats,” he snarled. “I’ll take care of this. Outa my way!”

  The sailors snapped to attention and awaited orders. Captain Rouse, ignoring them, strode down the dead-end corridor toward Graygortch’s study.

  He came to an abrupt military halt in front of the table where the old man and Vivian sat.

  “Yes?” said Graygortch in a low-rasping voice.

  “Did you hear that gong? That’s those two devils of steeplejacks we’ve been chasing. They’re up there, your honor.”

  “Well?”

  The forward thrust of Graygortch’s head was slight, but it carried a potent challenge. Rouse was already on the defensive.

  “It’s the first slip in all these years, your honor.”

  “Make it the last,” Graygortch said, his words as thoroughly frozen as his bodily attitude. “That tower is sacred.”

  “Yes, your honor. I’ll get them down at once.” Rouse gave a quick nod, turned to go, then hesitated. “You are aware, your honor, that this situation is hellishly complicated?”

  “Why?” said Graygortch.

  “Well, it’s not so much what they might do to the instruments—”

  “All the dynamite they could lift wouldn’t dent those metals,” said Graygortch.

  “Sure, that’s what I say. It’s the principle of the thing—pouncing in on sacred premises like a couple of Nazi parachute jumpers. It’s a ticklish situation.”

  “Get them down,” said Graygortch. “Stop bothering me. I’m busy.”

  Rouse nodded, but he didn’t want to go. He looked for some excuse for further conversation. His eyes lingered on Vivian. Her girlish face had the look of a frightened kitten.

  “Busy, you say?” He nodded meaningfully at Graygortch. “Sure, I understand. Vivian and me. You go ahead and fix things up, your honor, and I’ll take this little platterful of trouble off your hands. Nor a bad dish—”

  “Rouse!” Graygortch’s cough was like the scraping of heavy timbers.

  “I’m going,” said Rouse, smirking. “I’ll capture those birds somehow. It may take time, though.”

  “Why?”

  “The trouble is, your honor,” Rouse moved closer to the table, planted himself on the arm of a chair. “I’m not allowed to send any sailors up the stairs, you know.”

  “Well?”

  “Nor up the rope either. In the first place, none of ’em could climb it. In the second place, you’ve forbid ’em to go up . . . unless you’ve changed your mind.”

  “So?”

  “So that leaves it all to me, your honor.”

  “It’s up to you,” said Graygortch. The wrinkles around his aged eyes gathered as slightly as a contracting spider web. Rouse flinched.

  “Yes, your honor. But have you stopped to think that after I’ve climbed a rope, hand over hand, eighty feet straight up, I’d be at a hellova disadvantage scrappin’ with a couple of dead-shot desperadoes—”

  “Get out, coward!” came Graygortch’s deep growl. “If you can’t handle this I’ll find a new captain.”

  “Yes, your honor.”

  Rouse bowed out and a little bell clinked as he turned into the corridor.

  “Rouse,” the low volcano rumble of Graygortch’s voice followed after him. The captain whirled back and gave a salute. The old man’s head tilted toward him. “Don’t forget, you know how to ring the tower gongs with switches.”

  “Yes, your hon—”

  “But stay off the stairs. They’re mine.”

  Rouse nodded. He mumbled that he would get some sailors onto the roof at once to keep guns trained on the tower windows. But as for gongs, he didn’t see how—

  “Think it over,” said Graygortch. Rouse strode away, thinking it over.

  The old man returned his attention to his nineteen-year-old niece. Before the gong had interrupted him, Graygortch had been in the midst of a lengthy lecture to Vivian. He had had several things to say about the conduct expected of a young girl who was soon to come into the possession of not only a castle and all the wealth that went with it, but also certain other properties which could not be accurately described.

  “You can’t be a little girl all your life,” he resumed. “Grown-ups have to face responsibilities. I’m planning for you a highly unique inheritance—”

  “Uncle Graygortch,” the girl interrupted anxiously. “Does Rouse intend to kill those two—”

  Slap. The old man’s bony hand cracked down against the table.

  “You’re not listening to me, child.”

  “Yes, I am, Uncle. But—”

  “Forget what Rouse said. Listen to me.”

  “I’m trying to. Uncle. But you talk so slow and—and sort of hard. Not like you used to when I was a little girl. You used to be so mild and gentle—”

  “Vivian,” said Graygortch, extending his long pointed fingers across the table toward her, “you must choose a husband at once. I insist upon it. It’s for your good.”

  The girl’s nostrils flared belligerently. She rose and started toward the door. “If that’s all you have to say to me—”

  “For your own good,” he repeated.

  “Why this sudden interest in my own good?”

  “I’ve always watched out for your best interests, my dear.”

  “For the past nine years you’ve practically ignored me.”

  The spider-web wrinkles around the old man’s eyes gathered into something meant for a smile. “I’ve been so busy. But now I’ve only a little while left. I must put things in order. Your husband must be chosen—someone strong enough to defend you against the outside world, my dear. Make up your mind to it—”

  “I won’t!” Vivian blurted, flinging her hands angrily, knocking some tea things off the table. She whirled on her heel.

  “Vivian!” Again that low arresting voice.

  “But I’m not going to marry into this swarm of criminals!” she shrieked, fighting angry tears.

  “What do you want out of life, Vivian?”

  “Before I’d marry one of your murdering sailors, I’d throw myself over the cliff!” For a moment she caught her breath at violence of what she had said. But she followed through, every word a breath of fire. “I mean it, Uncle Graygortch! You can sugar your tea with that and drink it!”

  The old man eyed her steadily, searchingly. He raised his wrinkled old brow with a hint of sympathy. It wasn’t much of an expression but it did something to melt Vivian’s fury. She slumped down in her chair and gave way to a case of weeps.

  Graygortch waited in silence until she slackened her crying.

  “What,” he repeated, “do you want out of life?”

  “I want to be left alone,” she sniffled. “You want to spend all your days in your room, playing with your dolls, acting like a little girl?”

  Vivian shook her head slowly. She looked up into the old man’s face, trying to retrace the lines of sympathy that she had once loved. Why couldn’t things be like they used to be, years ago, when he had been such a good, soft-tempered old man—the old man of the castle that everybody loved?

  Her lips began to move, the yearnings of her heart welled up, she was suddenly confessing to him all the pent-up disappointments, sorrows, fears, longings of the past nine years, her hatred of all this criminal driftwood that had come to populate the castle.

  “I used to love those evenings in the big living room,” she said, “with a big red fire burning in the fireplace. There’d be a box of apples we’d just shipped in, and Fantella would peel them for all of us. And that new house man, Jimpson, would tell us marvelous stories about his hobo travels. And you
and Dr. Zimmerman would always sit over in the corner by the big red tapestries and play checkers—”

  “Dr. Zimmerman? Who’s that?”

  “Don’t you remember—” Vivian broke off. Chills spread through her neck and shoulders. Had Uncle Graygortch lost his mind? She knew that was what some of the villagers thought. Fantella and some of the castle folk speculated about it too. But the thought was too frightening for Vivian. She shrank from any reminder of it.

  “Zimmerman?” the old man repeated, apparently turning the name over in his mind. The spider webs around his eyes seemed to close, but he was watching her through narrow slits.

  She crossed to the bookcase, packed with dusty papers and books that hadn’t been touched for years. She found a photograph of Dr. Zimmerman, a large man with a high bald head, an honest, good-natured face, and a couple of extra chins.

  “He was always your very best friend, Uncle Graygortch.” She caught his eyes studying her sharply. “But you can’t have forgotten him.”

  “My memory has gone to cobwebs,” he said.

  “But you still ask for him. I’ve heard you myself—only a few months ago.”

  For a moment all the wrinkles in Graygortch’s face widened into an expression of questioning.

  “When?”

  “One night when you were walking in your sleep. Fantella brought me in to see you. She was excited, and so was I because all at once you seemed to be just like you used to be before you—you—”

  “Before I went crazy?”

  There was something brutal in the old man’s rasping voice. Vivian couldn’t stand to hear him talk that way. Her trembling fingers dropped the picture. She scurried to the door.

  “Wait,” said Graygortch. “I wanted to hear more about that night that gave you and Fantella such pleasure.”

  “That wasn’t the only time,” said Vivian tremulously. “There’ve been other nights in the past nine years that you’ve walked in your sleep. You walk into the big living room, past the fireplace over to the tapestries. Then you settle in your old yellow leather chair and ask why Doc Zimmerman doesn’t come. You get restless. You think you’ve only a few hours to live, and you say you wanted to play one more game of checkers with Doc. We try to put you back to bed, but you don’t hear us—”

  Graygortch’s deep scowl grew deeper, more sinister. “You know a lot about me, don’t you?”

  The taunt in his voice grated on the girl’s mood of reverie. “But something always wakes you up, such as a corridor bell—”

  The old man started faintly, then lapsed into his wrinkled old pretense of a smile.

  “But when you wake you’re not your old self any more.”

  “I’m my new self, the self you hate,” the old man muttered bitterly, and began to rock himself restlessly in his chair with short jiggling motions that made his big shadow on the corridor wall do a nervous dance. “What happened to this Dr. Zimmerman?”

  “I wish I knew,” said Vivian. Her memory of the jolly, baldish old fellow told her that wherever he was he was doing good. She replaced the picture in the bookcase. “Now, may I go?”

  “One thing more,” said Graygortch, and he placed his corded knuckles down tightly on the girl’s hand. “My new self—you won’t mind it after you understand. Very soon—before I go—you’ll know me better.”

  His steady eyes drove the fearful words home. She wanted to run. The bones of his fingers ground against the back of her hand.

  “Nobody knows me,” he said. “Do you see that shadow?”

  She glanced toward the corridor. “Yes, of course.”

  “Is that me?”

  “No, not really. It’s just your shadow from that table lamp.”

  “That’s all anyone knows of me—just my shadow. Graygortch pointed to his own face. “Neither is this me, Vivian. You cannot see me. You only see this shadow, done in rotten flesh and bones—”

  His terrifying words were too much for her. She turned, started running toward the door. His foot reached out and tripped her. She sprawled on the floor.

  She bounded up, her blood boiling, and sprang back toward the table.

  Then she drew back, put her stinging palm to her lips, realized that she had struck the old man full in the face. She drank in his hurt expression, heard his deep old voice speak injured words. “So you slap your old Uncle Bill.”

  A fitful compassion surged through her. “Uncle, I’m sorry. I didn’t know—” her words were swallowed in sobs that overflowed from tormenting, chaotic emotions. “You couldn’t have meant to—”

  “You slap your old Uncle . . . You hate him . . . But wait! One stroke of power will change all that!”

  Vivian fled as fast as she could go. She raced through the South Pole plaza, where Rouse was conducting a hard-boiled general assembly, but she didn’t stop—not until she was safely behind the little three-foot door.

  CHAPTER XII

  Jag Rouse Prepares a Trap

  On leaving Graygortch several minutes earlier, Captain Rouse had marched back to the South Pole plaza bristling with plans. The throngs were waiting, their mouths watering to know what was going to happen.

  The sailors were eager for gun action. Could they shoot on sight?

  “Hold your horses,” Rouse growled. “We’re gonna smoke ’em out. Get all the sailors in here for a general assembly—all but the machine-gun squad. I’ll see them out on the roof. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Rouse and the machine gunners went to the roof.

  “Get ropes and ladders and get your guns up here ready for action from three sides of the tower, and train your fire on the windows. Don’t be afraid of busting any tower equipment. The only bustable stuff up there is those two murderin’ monkeys.”

  One of the gunners questioned the charges. Were these two men to be slain because one of them had shot Killer McLoogin, Sailor Number 47, or because they were trespassing in Graygortch’s private sanctum?

  “What’s the difference?” said Rouse. “Plenty,” said the gunman. “We’ve got an old rule that if a sailor on guard duty gets his bean busted its his own fault, and the fellow that gets him goes into sailor uniform on his number.”

  “Yeah,” Rouse grunted. He scraped his feet on a ladder rung thoughtfully. “Yeah, that rule still goes. But this stranger that got McLoogin has knocked over his own applecart by crashin’ the tower. Same with the other bird. I’ve seen both of ’em and they’re up to no good. As for McLoogin, he’ll get his verdict in the morning.”

  “McLoogin? I thought he was shot dead.”

  “He is. But that don’t make him any less guilty of lettin’ a man through.” Before leaving the roof Rouse went over the probable trend of events step by step with his gunmen, to leave no loopholes. If the two fugitives hadn’t climbed out the windows and collected a perforation of bullets apiece by the time the top note of the gong sounded, then these sailors were to move up with their guns and ladders, ascend the outside of the tower, fire in at the windows.

  “But watch where you fire,” said Rouse. “I’ll come up from the inside myself by that time. In fact, I’ll probably take them single-handed before you get there.”

  That, indeed, was the very thing Rouse wished to avoid doing but his scheme was calculated to make the assembly in the castle believe he took them single-handed.

  “I’ll probably have them,” he repeated, “but don’t hang back. These birds are tricky. You know that from the way they fooled you on that fake busted rope.” Rouse permitted himself the luxury of a superior chuckle. “I knew, the minute I saw the rope, that that was a bum steer. And you saps combin’ the sea with field glasses for bodies. All right, don’t let yourselves get slipped up on this time. Understand?”

  A few minutes later, when he reached the thirty-odd assembled sailors in the South Pole plaza, Captain Rouse was ready with a full head of thunder.

  “Sailors of the Graygortch Castle!” he shouted, and before he knew it he had plunged into a speech—the most
powerful and moving speech he had ever unleashed. The semicircle of sailors stood stiffly, hung on every word.

  But no one was carried away by the speech so much as Jag Rouse himself.

  No matter that the ideas were simply a bombastic glorification of cruelty to one’s enemies, of hidebound discipline for one’s own men. The point was that for the moment Jag Rouse felt himself to be out-Hitlering Hitler.

  That was the secret elation that swept through him. For had he not been given a broad hint that he might soon rise to stand side by side with the other twelve disciples of Graygortch—the makers of death, the arch-slaughterers, the oppressors, the spreaders of disease?

  While he flung words like firebrands at the thirty-odd sailors and the excited throngs of maids standing by, a weighty question pounded at his consciousness. How could he hope to accomplish, with so small a number of followers, any destruction or other evil comparable to the mighty achievements of the other twelve?

  Or were there larger forces somewhere awaiting his command? Did Graygortch have a plan for him—if he proved himself not too soft?

  “Look what happened to McLoogin,” he growled, hurling a gesture from his high left shoulder. “Yesterday I would have told you McLoogin was a man. Today I reverse that judgment. Any sailor on guard duty who lets an outsider walk into him with a gun deserves to have his flesh spattered over the cliff walls and eaten by flies.

  “McLoogin, famed as the Irish Killer, took his thirty-three bump-offs to be a charm. He thought he was invul—invulnerbullish. He wasn’t. Now he’s done in. That’s what comes of being overcocky. Tomorrow morning there’ll be a ceremony but it won’t be a funeral. It’ll be a trapdoor disciplinary. For Killer McLoogin. Also for those two slippery roof-hoppers that are hidin’ their carcasses somewhere over our heads in a tower that nobody but Graygortch and me ever sets foot in.”

  Rouse paused to draw a husky breath. In the ranks of sailors, Schubert shuffled restlessly, refrained from whistling with difficulty.