Slay Ride for a Lady

by Harry Whittington

  I caught his coat and he slid out of it.

  “Run,” I hissed at him. “Run, but you can’t run back to Henry Nelson this time.”

  “Leave me alone, copper,” he snarled over his shoulder, “or I’ll kill you!”

  He was running and panting as he talked.

  “Why didn’t you kill me before?” I taunted him. I threw his coat over the rail. He saw it go, and losing his footing, sprawled to the slippery deck.

  The roll of the waves sent him down hard against the railing, and he screamed.

  I pounced upon him. He kicked up as hard as he could and I felt dynamite explode in my middle.

  He rolled out and away from me. Another roll sent him on along the deck, and slipped him against the bulkhead. He tried to dig his fingers into it, as the return roll sent him sliding away again.

  My fingers closed in on his shoulders. He tried to scramble free. I had forgotten the cut in my shoulder. As he twisted his head away from me, I hit him across the face as hard as I could.

  “Henderson,” he groaned. “Henderson, for God’s sake.”

  “So Nelson sent you after me, eh Garcia?”

  “Yes! For God’s sake, Henderson. It’s him you want, it ain’t me.”

  “It’s you, too,” I said. “You tried to knife me in that cabin. You framed me for Connice’s murder. Did you kill her, Lungs?”

  “No! It’s God’s truth, Henderson. I didn’t kill her. Nelson warned me to keep my hands clean. I — I hired the tramp. He — he’s confessed, Henderson. He’s done it. You’re out of it. You’re clear. Let me go, Henderson, I’ll help you get away. I swear it.”

  My fingers tightened on his throat. His hands tore at mine and his eyes bulged. We slid far up toward the fan tail of the ship. We struck hard against metal bitts that knocked the breath out of Garcia.

  He lay there groaning and gasping.

  “I’m not trying to get away, Garcia,” I told him. “You’re just the first one. I’m going all the way back to Nelson.”

  He gulped in air through his open mouth.

  “You — fool!” he gasped. “Nelson will kill you before you start. Why do you think he sent me?”

  “I don’t care why he sent you,” I told him. “Not now.”

  He began to cry then, sobbing out loud.

  “Don’t, Henderson,” he moaned. “I can help you.”

  “Sure you can,” I said. “And you’re going to. Who killed my brother?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I laughed at him. It sounded like a snarl.

  “You got a chance to tell me, Garcia,” I said. “It might keep you out of hell.”

  “Henderson, listen to me!” Garcia’s gasping voice was a wail. “I didn’t kill him! I had nothing to do with it!”

  I snarled again.

  “You threw a knife at me, Garcia. You tried to stop me. If you won’t tell me, I don’t care. I’m going on and you’re not. I’m going back. I’ll find out.”

  Garcia’s frantic hands tore at my fingers.

  “Nelson means to kill you, Henderson.”

  “Sure he does. Sent one of his own big boys to finish me, didn’t he Garcia?” My fingers tightened. “I didn’t know I was such a big shot I’d kill one of Nelson’s big four in self-defense — ”

  “Henderson! Don’t!”

  “This is your last chance, Garcia. For the sake of your soul in hell, tell me which one of the boys killed my brother!”

  “None of them! I tell you! None of us! Would I lie, Henderson? Now? I swear to you. I’m scared. I know you’re going to kill me. Why would I lie?”

  “Because even now, you think I might not kill you. And you know if I don’t, Nelson will now. Because you’re no good to him any more.”

  Terror, anger and fear worked for Garcia then. He thrust up with his hands and knees, and I went sprawling over backwards and he scrambled up to his feet.

  I landed hard against the last foot of the stern railing. Garcia pulled himself up against the bulkhead as the ship went into a long dive down into the trough of the waves.

  A shudder went through the whole ship as it hit.

  He strained himself there, as I snapped his knife from my pocket and flung it at him.

  I heard it hit with a dull thud. He cried out and then I saw the knife raised high in his hand. His teeth bared, his arm upraised, a violent glob of blood spreading on the middle of his shirt. Garcia ran at me with a cry like a banshee.

  At that instant the fan tail of the Hilotania dipped hard. It was over just like that. The look of anger changed to terror and Garcia clutched out for support of any kind.

  There was none out there on the fan tail of that flailing ship. He screamed as he was hurled out past me, and over the extreme stern of the Hilotania.

  I stood there, watching the water churning, white and gray and black in our wake. I hung on to the railing with all my strength as the wind howled, the spray stung at me, and the fan tail now bucked high in the air.

  There was no sight of Garcia. There was no sound of him. There was the empty thunder from the bowels of the ship as she struck the deep troughs between the waves. The black sky was unbroken by any lightning, and the whipping wind howled at gale force across the open decks.

  Pulling myself along the railing, I moved back past the lighted bar. I was still breathing through my mouth. I began to be cold now, all over and my arm ached. I shoved it back into my coat pocket.

  Inside the bar I could see the few drinkers who remained there were having trouble with their drinks, and the bartender was having to pick up broken glasses. The lights swung and dimmed as the ship wallowed through the storm.

  I could hear the p.a. system warning all passengers to stay off the open decks. The upper decks and main decks were closed to passengers for the duration of the gale. The speaker was then blaring out the velocity of the wind, but I was moving along the deck now toward a companionway. I knew if I was seen out here, I was going to be held for questioning when Garcia was missed from the ship.

  Dancing had stopped in the salon as I slipped past its lighted windows. A man was at the piano. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. His eye was squinted up to keep out the smoke as he played dreamy music that was lost and diffused in the thunder of the storm.

  I went down the ladder to my stateroom. The corridor was dim and silent. There were two men in white talking in the Ship’s sick bay. They didn’t even look up as I went by.

  I knocked on the door of my stateroom.

  There was no answer. I heard Patsy crying.

  I knotted my fist to strike the door panel again. I knew I had to restrain myself to keep from kicking it in.

  At last, weakly, I heard a woman’s voice from within the cabin.

  “Who’s it? Who’s there?”

  “Henderson,” I growled. “Let me in!”

  “Jus' — min’it.

  I heard her fumbling with the lock then. She opened the door and I slammed it shut after me.

  The lights were on brightly. Patsy was sitting up in her bed, with her baby bottles, play things and rattles piled up around her. She was crying inconsolably.

  I glared at Viola Keeley. I saw then that she had taken the curlers out of her hair. The wrap-around she wore now was daintier and more feminine than the one I had first seen her in. Then I saw her face. It was green, a pale and sickly green. Her mouth was compressed until there was a chalky white outline about her colorless lips.

  “I’m so sick,” she moaned. “Please help me back to my cabin. Please. I’m so sick, and that damned baby has screamed her head off.”

  I picked Patsy up from her bed. She was wet, but I didn’t stop to change her. Viola put her arm around my shoulder and I half carried her down the corridor to her stateroom.

  We met three stewards hurrying with vessels from sick bay. They looked at Viola and grinned. She didn’t even see them. She just kept moaning until I got her to her cabin.

  I began to feel better. I knew
I had lost a lot of blood, but the three stewards with their grins and their seasick remedies would be all the alibi I would ever need for this night. They could swear Henderson had his hands full, with a crying baby and a seasick woman.

  Dorothy opened the door. She glared disapprovingly at us. Viola only stared greenly at her and brushed past. I bowed to Dorothy, but she slammed the door shut.

  Before I got back to my cabin and got Patsy dry and asleep I was no longer so sure of myself.

  Sure, Garcia was forever gone overboard. And I had scrambled somehow over another of the walls Henry Nelson had thrown up between himself and me. I had beat the first one when I had stopped the two killers in the Bombay Grill. I got past the second when I bluffed an alibi from Alkao and Nakayama. And now Lungs Garcia, one of the three men closest to Henry Nelson was out of the way.

  But blood was still streaming from the slit in my shoulder. It needed a doctor’s attention. Already I was beginning to feel feverish. I managed to pull off my coat, and cut the clotted shirt away. I knew I couldn’t call a doctor for that wound. Somehow, I had to take care of it myself, and somehow keep anyone from knowing I had it.

  And that wasn’t going to be easy, I knew as I fell across my bed. The fever was mounting already — and the room was beginning to whirl.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE STORM lasted almost two days. It was the best break I got in the whole business. The fever in my shoulder raged all that night and most of the next morning. I had to call in a steward to get food for Patsy. He took one look at me and said, “Don’t feel too bad, Mr. Henderson. You are not by yourself. Almost all the passengers aboard are seasick.”

  I wasn’t seasick, fever was raging through me, but I let him think I was seasick. The doctor even dropped in. When he saw the gash in my shoulder, he diagnosed it as a rugged cut, sustained sometime during my seasickness, which had gone untended and almost unnoted.

  I let them believe just what they wanted to believe. The shoulder, cleaned and dressed, seemed to cool down and heal right away.

  The doctor sent in a nurse to care for Patsy. He took my temperature, and said that if it got any higher he would give me glucose intravenously so that I didn’t dehydrate completely.

  They brought my food to me and said nothing when I ate all of it, hungrily at every meal. I slept a lot while the nurse was there, and the time went quickly. After a while, the roll and slap and dip of the ship became old stuff and you lay in the bed and thought nothing of it.

  With the nurse there, I could put Rafferty out of my mind. Despite what he had threatened, I was sure he wasn’t ready to kill me with witnesses present. He knew I was looking for him. He knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I decided he had picked the moment he wanted.

  No, it wasn’t Rafferty I thought about during that storm. It was Dorothy.

  I don’t think she was out of my mind for very long while I was awake, and I know I dreamed about her. She was something I wanted, and I knew I had never wanted any woman as I wanted her.

  She didn’t come near me during those two days. I tried to put her out of my mind, but I couldn’t. I could see her small, lovely body before me as surely as though she had stood there.

  One day out from San Francisco, the storm lifted and the sea rolled as calm as a potato patch. There was no more seasickness, and I could hear people laughing in the corridor again.

  The nurse kept Patsy out in the sun morning and afternoon. I don’t know, I was sure that I was in Dorothy’s thoughts. You know how it is. When you think constantly of someone, it’s difficult to believe they’re not as aware of you.

  I expected her to call. I lay there in bed, with my heart beating unnaturally, waiting for her to knock on my door. I willed her to do it. I expected it.

  The whole day passed and nothing happened. After the nurse had fed Patsy her supper she told me that she had enjoyed caring for my baby, and she was being recalled by the doctor. I gave her one of Henry Nelson’s hundred dollar bills, and for a minute I thought she was going to kiss my hand.

  Then I realized I had been planning to go out that night to look for Dorothy on the ship. I had told myself that I had better get out of here and make one last effort to find Rafferty and pay a surprise call on him before the big man made his final visit in my cabin.

  With Patsy back on my hands, there was nothing I could do. I gave her her things to play with on the floor and tried to read. But I read with one eye fixed on the door, waiting for Dorothy to knock. I knew my ears were unnaturally keyed, waiting for the ship telephone to ring on the table beside my bed.

  I cursed myself, all right. Here I had a man, a desperate man trying to kill me, and I mooned like a school kid over a dame. A dame who didn’t even know the score, as a matter of fact. Such a woman as I had never had anything to do with in all my misspent life. What could I do with a dame like Dorothy? What could I say to her?

  But it didn’t help. The very fact that I could never have her, made me want her all the more urgently.

  At eight o’clock I gave up. I called her stateroom on the telephone. The operator rang ten times, but there was no answer. Where was she? Up dancing with the bald, fat man again?

  Well, she’d certainly found herself a prize specimen there. I dropped the telephone back in its cradle. Ten minutes later, I tried again.

  This time the telephone rang only once. She picked it up as though she were standing there waiting for it to ring.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Dorothy?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Dan. Henderson.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know your voice. I’m glad you called.”

  “I’ve got to take care of Patsy,” I said. “It’s the last night. Why don’t you come down and baby sit with me?”

  She was silent for a moment. “All right,” she said at last.

  I got up and paced the room as I waited for her. Patsy sat on the floor and looked up at me. My heart was pounding with anxiety.

  When she came and I opened the door to her, she never looked more beautiful.

  The soft, blonde hair and blue eyes, the gentle smile about her lips. The very paleness of her face that meant she had been looking forward to this, too.

  I closed the door after her.

  “Do you mind?” I said trying to tease her.

  Her blue eyes met mine squarely.

  “Lock it,” she said.

  I locked it. She was kneeling beside Patsy. When she stood up, I took her in my arms. I felt my heart hammering against hers.

  “Dan,” she said.

  “Hello,” I said. “Close your eyes, you’ll like it better.”

  She continued to look up at me, with her eyes wide.

  “A man was lost overboard,” she said, “two nights ago. It wasn’t reported until the next day.”

  “Was he?” I said. “Did they find him?”

  “No,” she said. “They didn’t find him.”

  “That’s too bad. Did he have a family?”

  “I didn’t ask. I only asked to find out that it wasn’t you.”

  “I never go swimming in mid-ocean,” I said.

  “Then I asked if it was a big red headed man,” she went on. “They said, they didn’t think so. The man was small and dark. I tried to be glad. But I couldn’t.”

  “And so you stayed away from me?”

  “I had to. I hate violence. You know that.”

  “Do you think I had anything to do with it?”

  “At first I did. I thought, he did it. And it might have been Dan who went over instead. I knew I had to put you out of my mind. I tried.”

  I tightened my arms. She seemed to slide in more closely and snugly against me.

  “But you couldn’t?” I persisted.

  “I couldn’t,” she answered. “I wasn’t proud of it. I’m not now. I kept telling myself if only I could get off this ship, get away from you, I’d never see you again, and I�
�d be all right.”

  “All right,” I said huskily. “You’ve tried Dorothy.”

  She laughed sharply. “You don’t know how I’ve tried. You don’t know anything about trying. I walked by your door a dozen times. At last I even got so I hoped maybe you would walk out as I passed, and we’d meet accidentally. I just wanted to talk to you. Then I heard that you were seasick. I tried to laugh at you. I tried to tell myself the terrible Dan Henderson was seasick. I tried to picture you looking like Viola did, green and sick. I wanted to laugh at you.”

  I laughed. She looked up at me as though she hated me. I suppose she did. But she didn’t move away from me. I could feel our bodies growing warm.

  “When you telephoned,” she said. “I stood there by the telephone. I knew it was you. I let it ring ten times — and then at last it stopped. I sat down on the bed and prayed — do you hear that — I prayed that you would call again. How b-big a fool can you be?”

  “I’m glad,” I said. “I haven’t thought of anyone but you, Dorothy. Not for two days.”

  I tried to kiss her. I cupped her small chin in my hand but she shook her head and held back rigidly away from my lips.

  “I’ve had enough of kisses that don’t mean anything,” she said. “I suppose that sounds crazy when I stand here straining against you like a slut from the streets. But I can’t help that. It’s what I want to do.”

  “Sure you do,” I said. “You want just what I want.”

  “And what then?” she said bitterly. She struggled and pulled away from me. With her gone, I suddenly was cold, and incomplete.

  I wasn’t going to beg her. I went over and sat on the arm of the chair.

  “What do you want then? You’re a big girl, Dorothy, and I’m a big boy. We know what we want.”

  “I know what I want,” she said evenly. She went over and knelt beside Patsy again. She looked up at me. “I want to be married. I want one man to love me, and for me to love. I want to belong to him, and him to me. It’s a silly and dull thing I want, I suppose you’d say. But it’s all I want. It’s all I’ll settle for.”

  “Then, I don’t know why you came here,” I said. “I’ve told you about my life. It’s a short one. I haven’t time to talk about love and marriage. I’m not interested. What do I want? I want you in bed with me. I’d love it, and you’d love it. I don’t think anyone wanted something more than I want you, ever.”