Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

So I carried her through the door Ace opened, and we come into a big inner room, well lighted with candles and fixed up with tables and benches and things. It was Ace’s secret hangout. There was Big Bess and a tall, lean feller with a pale poker-face and hard eyes. And I felt the girl stiffen in my arms and kind of turn cold.

  “Well, Bain,” says Ace jovially, “here she is!”

  “Good enough,” he said in a voice like a steel rasp. “You men can go now.”

  “We can like hell,” I snapped. “Not till you pay us.”

  “How much did you promise them?” said Bain to Ace.

  “A grand apiece,” muttered Ace, glancing at us kind of uneasy, “but I’ll tend to that.”

  “All right,” snapped Bain, “don’t bother me with the details. Take off her gag.”

  I done so, and untied her, watching her nervously so I could duck if she started swinging on me. But it looked like the sight of her brother wrought a change in her. She was white and trembling.

  “Well, my dear,” said John Bain, “we meet again.”

  “Oh, don’t stall!” she flamed out. “What are you going to do to me?”

  Me and Bill gawped at her and at each other, but nobody paid no attention to us.

  “You know why I had you brought here,” said Bain in a tone far from brotherly. “I want what you stole from me.”

  “And you stole it from old Yuen Kiang,” she snapped. “He’s dead — it belongs to me as much as it does to you!”

  “You’ve hidden from me for a long time,” he said, getting whiter than ever, “but it’s the end of the trail Catherine, and you might as well come through. Where’s that formula?”

  “Where you’ll never see it!” she said, very defiant.

  “No?” he sneered. “Well, there are ways of making people talk—”

  “Give her to me,” urged Big Bess with a nasty glint in her eyes.

  “I’ll tell you nothing!” the girl raged, white to the lips. “You’ll pay for persecuting an honest woman this way—”

  John Bain laughed like a jackal barking. “Fine talk from you, you snake- in-the-grass! Honest? Why, the police of half a dozen countries are looking for you right now!”

  John Bain jumped up and grabbed her by the wrist, but I throwed him away from her with such force he knocked over a table and fell across it.

  “Hold everything!” I roared. “What kind of a game is this?”

  John Bain pulled hisself up and his eyes was dangerous as a snake’s.

  “Get out of here and get quick!” he snarled. “Ace can settle with you for this job out of the ten thousand I’m paying him. Now get out, before you get hurt!”

  “Ten thousand!” howled Bill. “Ace is gettin’ ten thousand? And us only a measly grand apiece?”

  “Belay everything!” I roared. “This is too blame complicated for me. Ace sends us to rescue Bain’s sister from the Chinks, us to split a three-thousand- dollar reward — now it comes out that Ace gets ten thousand — and Bain talks about his sister robbin’ him—”

  “Oh, go to the devil!” snapped Bain. “Barlow, when I told you to get a couple of gorillas for this job, I didn’t tell you to get lunatics.”

  “Don’t you call us looneyticks,” roared Bill wrathfully. “We’re as good as you be. We’re better’n you, by golly! I remember you now — you ain’t no more a milyunaire than I am! You’re a adventurer — that’s what old Cap’n Hurley called you — you’re a gambler and a smuggler and a crook in general. And I don’t believe this gal is your sister, neither.”

  “Sister to that swine?” the girl yelped like a wasp had stung her. “He’s persecuting me, trying to get a valuable formula which is mine by rights, in case you don’t know it—”

  “That’s a lie!” snarled Bain. “You stole it from me — Yuen Kiang gave it to me before he got blown up in that experiment in his laboratory—”

  “Hold on,” I ordered, slightly dizzy, “lemme get this straight—”

  “Aw, it’s too mixed up,” growled Bill. “Let’s take the gal back where we got her, and bust Ace on the snoot.”

  “Shut up, Bill,” I commanded. “Leave this to me — this here’s a matter which requires brains. I gotta get this straight. This girl ain’t Bain’s brother — I mean, he ain’t her sister. Well, they ain’t no kin. She’s got a formula — whatever that is — and he wants it. Say, was you hidin’ at Yut Lao’s, instead of him havin’ you kidnapped?”

  “Wonderful,” she sneered. “Right, Sherlock!”

  “Well,” I said, “we been gypped into doin’ a kidnappin’ when we thought we was rescuin’ her; that’s why she fit so hard. But why did Ace pick us?”

  “I’ll tell you, you flat-headed gorilla!” howled Big Bess. “It was to get even with you for that poke on the nose. And what you goin’ to do about it, hey?”

  “I’ll tell you what we’re goin’ to do!” I roared. “We don’t want your dirty dough! You’re all a gang of thieves! This girl may be a crook, too, but we’re goin’ to take her back to Yut Lao’s! An’ right off.”

  Catherine caught her breath and whirled on us.

  “Do you mean that?” she cried.

  “You bet,” I said angrily. “We may look like gorillas but we’re gents. They gypped us, but they ain’t goin’ to harm you none, kid.”

  “But it’s my formula,” snarled John Bain. “She stole it from me.”

  “I don’t care what she stole!” I roared. “She’s better’n you, if she stole the harbor buoys! Get away from that door! We’re leavin’!”

  The rest was kind of like a explosion — happened so quick you didn’t have much time to think. Bain snatched up a shotgun from somewhere but before he could bring it down I kicked it outa his hands and closed with him. I heard Bill’s yelp of joy as he lit into Ace, and Catherine and Big Bess went together like a couple of wildcats.

  Bain was all wire and spring-steel. He butted me in the face and started the claret in streams from my nose, he gouged at my eye and he drove his knee into my belly all before I could get started. But I finally lifted him bodily and slammed him head-first onto the floor, though, and that finished Mr. John Bain for the evening. He kind of spread out and didn’t even twitch.

  Well, I looked around and seen Bill jumping up and down on Ace with both feet, and I seen Catherine was winning her scrap, too. Big Bess had the advantage of weight but she was yeller. Catherine sailed into her, fist and tooth and nail, and inside of a minute Big Bess was howling for mercy.

  “What I want to know,” gritted Catherine, sinking both hands into her hair and setting back, “is why you and that mutt Barlow are helping Bain!”

  “Ow, leggo!” squalled Big Bess. “Ace heard that Bain was lookin’ for you, and Ace had found out you was hidin’ at Yut Lao’s. Bain promised us ten grand to get you into his hands — Bain stood to make a fortune outa the formula — and we figgered on gyppin’ Costigan and McGlory into doin’ the dirty work and then we was goin’ to skip on the early mornin’ boat and leave ’em holdin’ the bag!”

  “So!” gasped Catherine, getting up and shaking back her disheveled locks, “I guess that settles that!”

  I looked at Bain and Ace and Big Bess, all kind of strewn around on the floor, and I said I reckon it did.

  “You men have been very kind to me,” she said. “I understand it all now.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “they told us Yut Lao had you kidnapped.”

  “The skunks!” she said. “Will you do me just one more favor and keep these thugs here until I get a good start? If I can catch that boat that sails just at dawn, I’ll be safe.”

  “You bet,” I said, “but you can’t go through them back-alleys alone. I’ll go back with you to Yut Lao’s and Bill can stay here and guard these saps.”

  “Good,” she said. “Let me peek outside and see that no one’s spying.”

  So she slipped outside and Bill picked up the shotgun and said, “Hot dawg, will I guard these babies! I hope Ace will try to jump me
so I can blow his fool head off!”

  “Hey!” I hollered, “be careful with that gun, you sap!”

  “Shucks,” he says, very scornful, “I cut my teeth on a gun—”

  Bang! Again I ducked complete extinction by such a brief hair’s breadth that that charge of buckshot combed my hair.

  “You outrageous idjit!” I says, considerably shooken. “I believe you’re tryin’ to murder me. That’s twice tonight you’ve nearly kilt me.”

  “Aw don’t be onreasonable, Steve,” he urged. “I didn’t know it had a hair- trigger — I was just tryin’ the lock, like this, see—”

  I took the death-trap away from him and throwed it into the corner.

  “Gimme a nip outa the flask,” I said. “I’ll be a rooin before this night’s over.”

  I took a nip which just about emptied the flask, and Bill got to looking at the wadded-up fly-leaf which was serving as a stopper.

  “Lookit, Mike,” he said, “this leaf has got funny marks on it, ain’t it?”

  I glanced at it, still nervous from my narrer escape; it had a lot of figgers and letters and words which didn’t mean nothing to me.

  “That’s Chinese writin’,” I said peevishly. “Put up that licker; here comes Miss Deal.”

  She run in kind of breathless. “What was that shot?” she gasped.

  “Ace tried to escape and I fired to warn him,” says Bill barefacedly.

  I told Bill I’d be back in a hour or so and me and the girl went out into those nasty alleys. I said, “It ain’t none of my business, but would you mind tellin’ me what this formula-thing is?”

  “It’s a new way to make perfume,” she said.

  “Perfume?” I snift. “Is that all?”

  “Do you realize millions of dollars are spent each year on perfume?” she said. “Some of it costs hundreds of dollars an ounce. The most expensive kind is made from ambergris. Well, old Yuen Kiang, a Chinese chemist, discovered a process by which a certain chemical could be substituted for ambergris, producing the same result at a fraction of the cost. The perfume company that gets this formula will save millions. So they’ll bid high.

  “Outside of old Yuen Kiang, the only people who knew of its existence were John Bain, myself, and old Tung Chin, the apothecary who has that little shop down by the docks. Old Yuen Kiang got blown up in some kind of an experiment, he didn’t have any people, and Bain stole the formula. Then I lifted it off of Bain, and have been hiding ever since, afraid to venture out and try to sell it. I’ve been paying Yut Lao plenty to let me stay in his house, and keep his mouth shut. But now it’s all rosy! I don’t know how much I can twist out of the perfume companies for the formula, but I know it’ll run up into the hundred thousands!”

  We’d reached Yut Lao’s house and I went in through a side-gate — she had a key — and went into her room the same I way me and Bill had brung her out.

  “I’m going to pack and make that boat,” she said. “I haven’t much time. Steve — I trust you — I’m going to show you the formula. Yut Lao knows nothing about it — I wouldn’t have trusted him if he’d known why I was hiding — he thinks I’ve murdered somebody.

  “The simplest place to hide anything is the best place. I destroyed the original formula after copying it on the flyleaf of a book, and put the book on this shelf, in plain sight. No one would ever think to look there — they’d tear up the floor and the walls first—”

  And blamed if she didn’t pull down the very book Bill got to make his stopper! She opened it and let out a howl like a lost soul.

  “It’s gone!” she screeched. “The leaf’s been torn out! I’m robbed!”

  At this moment a portly Chinee appeared at the door, some flustered.

  “What catchee?” he squalled. “Too much monkey-business!”

  “You yellow-bellied thief!” she screamed. “You stole my formula!”

  And she went for him like a cat after a sparrow. She made a flying leap and landed right in his stummick with both hands locked in his pig-tail. He squalled like a fire-engine as he hit the floor, and she began grabbing his hair by the handfuls.

  A big clamor riz in some other part of the house. Evidently all Yut Lao’s servants had returned too. They was jabbering like a zoo-full of monkeys and the clash of their knives turned me cold.

  I grabbed Catherine by the slack of her dress and lifted her bodily offa the howling Yut Lao which was a ruin by this time. And a whole passel of coolies come swarming in with knives flashing like the sun on the sea-spray. Catherine showed some inclination of going to the mat with the entire gang — I never see such a scrapping dame in my life — but I grabbed her up and racing across the room, plunged through the outer door and slammed it in their faces.

  “Beat it for the wall while I hold the door!” I yelled, and Catherine after one earful of the racket inside, done so with no more argument. She raced acrost the garden and begun to climb the wall. I braced myself to hold the door and crash! a hatchet blade ripped through the wood a inch from my nose.

  “Hustle!” I yelled in a panic and she dropped on the other side of the wall. I let go and jumped back; the door crashed outwards and a swarm of Chineeses fell over it and piled up in a heap of squirming yeller figgers and gleaming knives. The sight of them knives lent wings to my feet, as the saying is, and I wish somebody had been timing me when I went acrost that garden and over that wall, because I bet I busted some world’s speed records.

  Catherine was waiting for me and she grabbed my hand and shook it.

  “So long, sailor,” she said. “I’ve got to make that boat now, formula or not. I’ve lost a fortune, but it’s been lots of fun. I’ll see you some day, maybe.”

  “Not if I see you first, you won’t,” I said to myself, as she scurried away into the dark, then I turned and run like all get-out for the deserted warehouse.

  I was thinking of the fly-leaf Bill McGlory tore out to use for a stopper. Them wasn’t Chinese letters — them was figgers — technical symbols and things! The lost formula! A hundred thousand dollars! Maybe more! And since Bain stole it from Yuen Kiang which was dead and had no heirs, and since Catherine stole it from Bain, then it was as much mine and Bill’s as it was anybody’s. Catherine hadn’t seen Bill tear out the sheet; she was lying face down on the divan.

  I gasped as I run and the sweat poured off me. A fortune! Me and Bill was going to sell that formula to some perfume company and be rich men!

  I didn’t keep to the back-alleys this time, but took the most direct route; it was just getting daylight. I crossed a section of the waterfront and I seen a stocky figger careening down the street, bellering, “Abel Brown the sailor.” It was Bill.

  “Bill McGlory.” I said sternly, “you’re drunk!”

  “If I wasn’t I’d be a wonder!” he whooped hilariously. “Steve, you old sea-horse, this here’s been a great night for us!”

  “Where’s Ace and them?” I demanded.

  “I let ’em go half an hour after you left,” he said. “I got tired settin’ there doin’ nothin’.”

  “Well, listen, Bill,” I said, “where abouts is that—”

  “Haw! Haw! Haw!” he roared, bending over and slapping his thighs. “Lemme tell you somethin’! Steve, you’ll die laughin’! You knew old Tung Chin which runs a shop down on the waterfront, and stays open all night? Well, I stopped there to fill my flask and he got to lookin’ at that Chineese writin’ on that paper I had stuffed in it. He got all excited and what you think? He gimme ten bucks for it!”

  “Ten bucks!” I howled. “You sold that paper to Tung Chin?”

  “For ten big round dollars!” he whooped. “And boy, did I licker up! Can you imagine a mutt payin’ good money for somethin’ like that? What you reckon that sap wanted with that fool piece of paper? Boy, when I think how crazy them Chineese is—”

  And he’s wondering to this day why I hauled off and knocked him stiffer than a red-brick pagoda.

  * * *

  VIKINGS OF THE
GLOVES; OR, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN!

  First published in Fight Stories, February 1932. Also published as “Including The Scandinavian!”

  NO SOONER had the Sea Girl docked in Yokohama than Mushy Hansen beat it down the waterfront to see if he couldst match me at some good fight club. Purty soon he come back and said: “No chance, Steve. You’d have to be a Scandinavian to get a scrap right now.”

  “What you mean by them remarks?” I asked, suspiciously.

  “Well,” said Mushy, “the sealin’ fleet’s in, and so likewise is the whalers, and the port’s swarmin’ with squareheads.”

  “Well, what’s that got to do — ?”

  “They ain’t but one fight club on the waterfront,” said Mushy, “and it’s run by a Dutchman named Neimann. He’s been puttin’ on a series of elimination contests, and, from what I hear, he’s been cleanin’ up. He matches Swedes against Danes, see? Well, they’s hundreds of squareheads in port, and naturally each race turns out to support its countryman. So far, the Danes is ahead. You ever hear of Hakon Torkilsen?”

  “You bet,” I said. “I ain’t never seen him perform, but they say he’s the real goods. Sails on the Viking, outa Copenhagen, don’t he?”

  “Yeah. And the Viking’s in port. Night before last, Hakon flattened Sven Tortvigssen, the Terrible Swede, in three rounds, and tonight he takes on Dirck Jacobsen, the Gotland Giant. The Swedes and the Danes is fightin’ all over the waterfront,” said Mushy, “and they’re bettin’ their socks. I sunk a few bucks on Hakon myself. But that’s the way she stands, Steve. Nobody but Scandinavians need apply.”

  “Well, heck,” I complained, “how come I got to be the victim of race prejerdice? I need dough. I’m flat broke. Wouldn’t this mug Neimann gimme a preliminary scrap? For ten dollars I’ll fight any three squareheads in port — all in the same ring.”

  “Naw,” said Mushy, “they ain’t goin’ to be no preliminaries. Neimann says the crowd’ll be too impatient to set through ‘em. Boy, oh boy, will they be excitement! Whichever way it goes, they’s bound to be a rough-house.”