Rogues on the River

by Alice Simpson

  “‘The hour of the Great Deluge approaches,’” he read aloud. “‘Come to my ark, and I will provide shelter and comfort.’”

  I allowed myself to breathe again. The message was one that Noah had written. Unless Antonio opened another bottle, he would not suspect that Flo and I were the authors of other messages pleading for help.

  “Stand back and allow me to throw my bottles into the stream!” Noah shouted. “Even though you are a guest aboard my ark, your actions are not pleasing.”

  “Go ahead, Grandpa,” Antonio said with a shrug. “Heave out every last one of your bottles if it will keep you happy.”

  As Noah began to toss the bottles out of the porthole, Mr. Battaglia again ordered Flo and me out of the bird room.

  “Upstairs!” he said, giving Flo a shove toward the stairway.

  I looked toward the shoreline. The gangplank was still down. I considered making a run for it, but it was Antonio’s revolver that made me nervous.

  As if reading my mind, Battaglia said: “I wouldn’t run, if I were you. Behave yourself, and you’ll be set free before morning.”

  Antonio marched Flo and I up the stairs to the third floor of the ark. Although Noah’s living quarters were more comfortable than the bird room, they were considerably less private. Battaglia and Luciano remained in the passageway just outside, and Flo and I couldn’t even whisper to each other without being overheard.

  Noah soon appeared, apparently much mollified after throwing out his bottles. He attempted to strike up a friendly conversation with Battaglia and his companion, but they were uncommunicative.

  After that, Noah picked up his banjo and went down to the lower deck and began to sing spirituals. His voice, as cracked as the fingers which strummed the strings, irritated Antonio.

  “There’s a limit to what a fellow can stand,” I hear Battaglia say over the sound of Noah’s singing.

  “It won’t be much longer now,” Luciano replied.

  “Why can’t we pull the job now and get out?”

  “Because the car won’t be waiting for us. Everything’s got to move on schedule. Remember we don’t get any bonus if that floozy comes out of this without a scratch on her.”

  I could only conclude that the floozy in question must be Mrs. Maxwell.

  As the night wore on, a light rain began to fall. Battaglia and Luciano went frequently to the windows, seemingly well pleased by the change of weather.

  Another hour elapsed, or at least it seemed that long. Noah had tired of singing, but he had not returned to the third floor.

  “Well, I’m shoving off,” I heard Antonio say. “At fifteen after one, lock ’em up in the bird room, and make for the shack. The car will pick you up.”

  “Good luck, Battaglia,” his companion responded.

  I heard receding footsteps as Antonio went downstairs. I heard him cross the gangplank, and then his footsteps died away.

  I looked at Florence in despair. Battaglia had gone to blow the Maxwell Mansion to bits and quite possibly Mrs. Maxwell and her domestic staff with it. I could not be certain of Antonio’s plans, but I expected that he intended to use Anne Halvorson’s boat to transport explosives from the stash hidden in the forest.

  Noah came back upstairs. If he found his assortment of visitors unwelcome, he didn’t show it. Noah seemed to have no inkling that we, and he himself, where being held against our will.

  Luciano came inside Noah’s apartment and began to pace the floor nervously. Suddenly he halted by a porthole, listening.

  “Someone’s out there in the trees,” Luciano muttered. “This ark is being watched. Noah, stick your head out the window and ask who it is. And no tricks.”

  Noah did as he was told.

  “Hello, the ark!”

  It was Jack.

  “Are you alone there, Noah?” Jack continued. “I’ve come with ten friends.”

  “Tell him you’re alone,” said Luciano in a low voice. “Say that you are just going to bed and aren’t receiving visitors.”

  “But my son, that would be a base falsehood,” Noah argued. “I have no intention of retiring—”

  It was my chance. Luciano’s attention was diverted. I rushed forward, raised my cosh and brought it down smartly on the back of his head.

  Luciano fell to the floor. I bent over the semiconscious man and removed the revolver from his pocket.

  Then I rushed to the window and dropped the revolver into the river as I screamed to Jack for help.

  Luciano did not remain a spent force for long. He staggered to his feet and stumbled toward me.

  I braced myself and gripped my cosh in anticipation of Luciano’s attack, but just then, Florence began to scream so loudly I was sure her cries must be audible on the riverbank.

  Luciano realized he was cornered. He lurched out of the room, and a few seconds later I heard a loud splash. He had leaped from the high deck into the stream.

  “Get him! Get him!” I shouted through the window to the group of men on shore.

  Then Flo and I, trailed by a baffled Noah, went out on the deck to witness the action.

  Luciano swam the short distance to the far side of the stream and scrambled up the bank.

  “He’s going to get away,” Florence said mournfully.

  Then, as Luciano reached the top of the bank, two men rose from their hiding places in the tall bushes and nabbed him by the arms.

  “It’s Dad,” I said, “and Shep.”

  Flo and I ran down the gangplank to reach the rescue party. My father and Shep were still on the other side of the stream, but the rest of the party was comprised of various reporters, newspaper staff, and Anne Halvorson.

  “I found your message in the bottle,” Anne said.

  “I can’t believe it worked,” said Flo.

  “I was in the little cove just below here, guarding my boat,” Anne explained. “I intended to get back earlier to relieve you two, but I was detained at the police station. While I waited at the bend, wondering what to do, a swarm of corked bottles came floating downstream.”

  “Noah threw out a box full of them,” I said. “So you read our message, asking for help, Anne?”

  “Yes, one of the bottles drifted ashore. Usually, I don’t bother to read the messages, but this time I did.”

  “How were you able to bring help here so quickly?” I asked her.

  “Actually, I didn’t. Earlier in the evening, Eddie Franks telephoned the Examiner office, and your father came across the river to retrieve you.”

  “Dad was here hours ago, and the saboteurs tricked him into leaving, but I assumed he was alone.”

  “He was alone, and I didn’t see him at the time,” Anne said. “When your father returned home and learned you had still not returned, he organized a searching party. Just as the men reached Bug Run once more, I found your message. I gave it to your father and—well, you know the rest.”

  “Has Antonio Battaglia been captured ?” I asked. “That’s the important thing!”

  “Battaglia? You mean the man who stole my motorboat?”

  “Yes, he went away from the ark about ten minutes ago. I’m sure he intended to use the hidden boat, Anne! You left it well guarded, I hope.”

  “There’s no one watching it now.”

  “Then we’ve got to move fast!” I went to the bank of the stream shouted across to my father. “Battaglia plans to blow up the Maxwell Mansion. He’s probably hiding somewhere close by now, waiting for a chance to make his get-away.”

  Dad handed off care of the prisoner to Shep and another of his reporters and crossed the stream.

  Just as he made it to the other side, we heard the engine of a motorboat sputter. Anne stopped short, listening.

  “That’s my boat!”

  “Battaglia is getting away!” I said. “We must stop him!”

  Dad and Jack ran toward the mouth of Bug Run. Anne, Flo, and a couple of the search party followed, but by the time we reached the river, the boat had disappeare
d. I could hear the popping of its engine far out on the water.

  “We’ll never overtake him now,” Anne said. “That boat is faster than any of ours.”

  Anne had beached the boat she’d come in nearby. Even though pursuit seemed useless, Dad and Jack launched it, and the five of us piled aboard, leaving the remainder of the search party behind.

  “We haven’t a chance to overtake that fellow,” Anne repeated as piloted the boat against the current.

  “If only we could notify Coast Guards,” I said. “Their station is up river. They still might be able to intercept Antonio Battaglia before he reaches the Maxwell Mansion.”

  “No way to contact them,” Dad said, his voice grim. “If there were any houses along shore, we could telephone. As it is, the situation is pretty hopeless.”

  “Shall we give up the chase?” Anne asked.

  As my father hesitated, I glimpsed an approaching craft. It was the Eloise III.

  “Dad, we still have a chance. We can call ahead by radio telephone.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The Eloise has a radio telephone,” I explained. I took up Anne’s flashlight and began to signal to the yacht. “If only they see us in time, we still may yet save Mrs. Maxwell.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Inside the radio room of the Eloise III, we hovered at the elbow of Commodore Phillips who sat at the radio-telephone.

  “I’ve done all I can,” the Commodore said, putting aside the instrument. “The Coast Guard station has acknowledged our message; they are relaying it to the Greenville Police Department. Now all we can do is wait.”

  The Eloise headed at full steam toward a stretch of shoreline bordering the Maxwell estate. Unmindful of the rain, Jack, Flo, Anne and I went out on deck. Huddling in the lee of the cabin, we anxiously watched and listened. The Maxwell mansion stood peacefully in the moonlight, every window dark.

  “It’s one fifteen,” said Jack, glancing at his watch. “Any minute now—”

  A loud report sounded over the water.

  “Poor Mrs. Maxwell!” Flo gasped. “The house has been dynamited!”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “That was gunfire!”

  “The police have gone into action,” Jack said.

  A moment later there was another flash of fire and heard another loud report. There was an exchange of gunfire, then all went silent, and lights started coming on in the Maxwell Mansion. An exterior light flooded the back terrace which overlooked the river, and soon I could see moving figures on the back lawn.

  I returned to the radio room.

  “You may rest easy now,” the Commodore told me. “I’ve received a message that the police have neutralized the explosives and are in the process of apprehending the suspect. He’ll be very lucky if he escapes with his life.”

  I sagged weakly against the railing of the Eloise. Now that I knew the inhabitants of the Maxwell Mansion were safe, I felt exhausted from the long period of suspense.

  “Antonio Battaglia can’t be the only one involved in this plot,” my father said. “There must be others.”

  “Oh, there are,” I told him. “Someone named Luciano and also Clarence Sinclair. He’s a paid accomplice. He’s waiting at a shack not far from the ark. Fred Halvorson is being held prisoner there.”

  “Fred?” Anne said. “Why are you just now telling us that?”

  “In all the excitement, it just passed out of my mind,” I confessed. “I forgot about everything except saving Mrs. Maxwell.”

  Once more Commodore Phillips busied himself on the radio telephone. Before long, a police squad had been dispatched to the shack in the woods. Likewise, a message soon came that Antonio Battaglia had been captured.

  “I can’t wait to see Fred,” Anne said as she paced the deck. “I hope he’s not seriously hurt.”

  Commodore Phillips put our entire party ashore not far from the entrance to Bug Run. We hurried through the woods and reached the shack only a few minutes after the arrival of police.

  “What became of Clarence Sinclair?” Dad asked a sergeant. “Did you get him?”

  The policeman pointed to a downcast figure who sat handcuffed inside the patrol car. Sinclair, he explained, had been captured without a struggle.

  “And Fred Halvorson?” Anne asked.

  “They’re taking him to the ambulance now.”

  Four men came out of the shack bearing the injured young man on a stretcher. Pale but conscious, he grinned as Anne tearfully bent over him.

  “I’m okay, Anne,” he mumbled. “Feelin’ fine.”

  Anne rode with her husband to the hospital, but the rest of us remained behind.

  I tried to learn from police officers if Fred had made any statement.

  “Sure, he was able to spill the whole story,” Police Detective Bradshaw told me. “Seems he set out to prove that he was innocent of any association with the saboteurs. Instead of cooperating with the police, he went to work on his own. He investigated an organization known as the Broadside Gang. That put him on the trail of a headwaiter at the Green Parrot, a man by the name of Antonio Battaglia.”

  “I understand now why Fred acted so oddly about that wallet he lost along the river,” I said. “He didn’t want me to know that he was meeting one of the saboteurs at the Parrot.”

  “How many were involved in the dynamiting plot?” Dad asked.

  “Twelve or thirteen. According to Halvorson, Antonio Battaglia is the brains of the group. By pretending to go along with them, the young fella gathered a lot of evidence.”

  “But at first the saboteurs tried to throw the guilt on Fred,” I pointed out.

  “True,” Officer Bradshaw said. “They used a boat stolen from the Halvorson dock, and they planted evidence to make it appear that Fred was the guilty one.”

  “Then why would they take up with him later?”

  “They never did. One of the saboteurs met him at the Green Parrot to try to learn how much the kid knew. Young Halvorson was slugged over the head when he tried to get into a basement room where the gang held their meetings.”

  “I guess that explains why we found Fred lying outside in the alley,” my father said. “It’s a pity he couldn’t have told us what he was attempting to do.”

  “The kid did get a lot of evidence. With the information he’s given us, we expect to mop up the entire gang.”

  “But what about the man who’s behind it all?” I asked Officer Bradshaw. “I hope you don’t think that the Broadside Gang spontaneously decided to make the Maxwell family’s life a living Hades on a whim?”

  “Antonio Battaglia has indicated they were being paid to do the job, but I find I can’t quite believe that portion of his story. The man he’s implicating as being the money behind the plot is one of Greenville’s most upstanding citizens.”

  “Which of Greenville’s upstanding citizens?” I pressed the officer.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Morris Stedman?”

  Officer Bradshaw’s face registered astonishment, but he declined to affirm my suspicions.

  “If you hung around more with middle-aged ladies,” I told him, “you’d be familiar with the stories going around—”

  “I’d better be moving along,” Officer Bradshaw said. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “But Florence and I found Fred Halvorson a prisoner here at the shack,” I persisted, hoping to get something more from the police detective. “I suppose in seeking evidence he tangled with the saboteurs again.”

  “Yes, young Halvorson was foolhardy. He was caught spying a second time, and they slugged him. Lucky for him his injuries aren’t likely to prove serious.”

  My father and Jack asked many more questions, knowing the story would be on the front page of the Greenville Examiner in the morning. They then rushed off to scoop the rival papers.

  “Dad nor Jack even took the time to say they were happy we escaped from those saboteurs,” I complained to Florence. “Isn’t that a newspap
erman for you.”

  Before another hour had elapsed, reporters and photographers from other papers swarmed the woods. Florence and I were quizzed regarding the capture of the three saboteurs. Determined to preserve the Greenville Examiner’s scoop, we had very little to say.

  The next morning, over a late breakfast at home, I learned that police had lost no time in acting upon information provided by Fred Halvorson. The entire group of men known to be associated with the Broadside Gang had been arrested at the new Fourteenth Street location of the Green Parrot. A complete confession had been signed by Clarence Sinclair who claimed that he was not a member of the gang but had been simply hired to do as instructed.

  Morris Stedman, in anticipation of the police knocking on his door and asking uncomfortable questions, skipped town, but he only got as far as Chicago before he was picked up and broke down under questioning.

  He’d toyed for years with the notion of getting revenge on Mr. Maxwell for the death of his sister for years, Morris Stedman admitted, but he’d always stopped short of taking action. Losing the big army contract to his enemy had pushed him over the edge. It had been his intention to destroy Mr. Maxwell’s business and take from him the only person Mr. Maxwell seemed to care about, the second Mrs. Maxwell.

  “But did the first Mrs. Maxwell, really kill herself?” I asked my father. “Mrs. Timms said our Dr. Hamilton was the one who was treating her at the time.”

  “I looked into that,” Dad said. “Dr. Hamilton says he was with Maria Maxwell when she died. There was no suicide. The rumor that Maria took her own life was started by her brother, Morris. He may have believed his own lie, but there was no truth to it.”

  “But Mr. Maxwell really did remarry within the month?”

  “He did. However, according to Dr. Hamilton, Mr. Maxwell met the second Mrs. Maxwell at least a week after his wife’s death, so although it may have appeared hasty, there is no question that Mr. Maxwell was far more loyal to his late wife than Morris Stedman believed.”

  “Mr. Maxwell got married that quickly? He must have known the second Mrs. Maxwell all of a couple of weeks when he married her.”