Tiger Milk

by David Garth

  She carelessly stuck them in a pocket of her frock.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m glad it wasn’t my birth certificate.”

  “I’d have brought it to you sooner,” he said, “except that I did have to pause and greet my family.”

  “There was no hurry, Court, really.”

  He stayed an hour or so, walking over the grounds with her, inspecting the ripening orchards and waxing rhapsodic over the three Jerseys grazing in their meadow.

  About to leave, he paused with one foot on the running board of his car.

  “I’ll be back again soon, of course,” he said casually. “Is that all right with you, Berkeley?”

  “Yes,” said Berkeley, “if it doesn’t make that little Irene Carver too jealous.” She smiled. “You smote her badly, Court.” He winced. “That little jitterbug!” Then he grinned. “But she knows more than her grandma, at that.”

  His light touch gave her a distinct lift. He reminded her of other things besides stealth and cunning and cold ruthlessness.

  But after he had gone she drew those clipped cable messages out of her pocket and regarded them very pensively. Of course, there was no real reason why she should have saved them in the first place. But she had and, having retained them, she knew she would not lose them any more than she would lose her passport. Why anybody should have taken them, she could not surmise, but the fact that somebody had, opened up the interesting possibility that it could have been any one of the flight passengers between Horta and New York.

  She considered telling her father about it, then decided not to worry him with any extra cares. But after she had visited with her mother that night she dropped into his study.

  He was working at his desk, in smoking jacket and reading glasses and with pipe smoke curling above his head. Berkeley lounged down in a deep chair.

  “Case work?” she inquired.

  “No,” he said, “I was just going over the political record of Sam Buckthorne.” He picked up a typewritten sheet. “He has been active in machine politics, needless to say, his entire career. He practiced law with no distinction, was later appointed corporation counsel of his city, then Chairman of the State Highway Commission. Nothing elective, you’ll notice, simply a case of the machine taking care of its own.”

  “That’s the old Tresh machine?”

  “Yes. About as corrupt and rotten a gang as ever made a mockery of election day. Since Tresh fell from grace, it’s been run by a tough little Irishman named Carney. And you can’t tell me,” he said restlessly, “that Carney and Buckthorne aren’t part of the same set-up. Carney gives the orders here. Buckthorne is just front man.”

  He was silent a moment, drumming on his desk with restless fingers.

  “Of course, you understand, Berkeley,” he said finally, “there are absolutely no grounds against him. Just Tresh’s unsupported word. And he did not know whether Buckthorne had any connection with the strange business of The Ivory Tiger.”

  He shook his head. “It’s hard to believe. I would hate to see him take the governor’s chair of that important industrial state, in any event. But if he was a traitor, it would be horrible—controlling the National Guard, appointing commissioners and inspectors, having access to all the data of the state’s part in the armament program, contact with Washington, responsible for vital legislation!”

  “I don’t think anyone could be so utterly base,” she said in a low voice. “So utterly lost to democracy.”

  “My dear, that Tresh machine is no rose pinned to our democracy. It’s a tight little dictatorship in itself.”

  He drew on his pipe. “Of course, that alone could not constitute the whole threat that seems to be in the air. It must be only part of it.”

  “It would seem, any way you look at it, that Buckthorn is the one clue,” Berkeley said thoughtfully.

  He nodded. “I imagine the Department of Justice is working along that very line.” He knocked out his pipe. “By the way, I’m seeking information from the Passport Bureau on Robert Luce.”

  The girl acted as though she had not heard him.

  “I’d like to get a look at this Buckthorne,” she said slowly. “Get right into his campaign office.”

  Richard Britton eyed her suddenly. “You don’t actually think you could find out anything that way?”

  “Who knows? I’d like to try.”

  “Well, you’re going to follow the schedule we agreed upon,” he said firmly. “You had one close call. This thing is no taffy pull.”

  She was on her feet, bending across his desk toward him.

  “Oh, don’t I know it’s no taffy pull! Don’t you think I wonder who put that little ivory tiger in my room in Horta and why? My God, what does it mean? That thing?” She took a breath. “But somebody on that plane with me does know about it, I’m positive. Somebody came into this country who has something to do with it. I felt that—but I couldn’t handle it. Perhaps, I wasn’t smart enough. Somebody ran rings around me and I nearly lost my life, as a result.”

  Her father was listening intently. She was aroused to her very depths, he could see that.

  “Well, I’m going to be smart from now on, I’m going to follow through. In these two weeks that I’m waiting before going West to establish residence I’m jolly well going to discover all I can about Buckthorne and his connections.”

  He shook his handsome, graying head.

  “Berkeley, it’s a senseless risk for what you could possibly stand to gain.”

  “That’s the legal opinion,” she said crisply. “Very reasonable, and all that. But that’s not the basis on which I’m thinking.” She flung out her arm in the direction of the window. “That road running past our place—do you know what happened out there? A small bunch of Colonial farmers tangled with two thousand British redcoats who were marching back to their ships after burning the military stores at Danbury. There wasn’t much those farmers could do, but, at least, they made the British run instead of walk back to their boats.”

  “You’re overwrought…” began her father.

  “No, I’m not. Listen to me,” she said tensely. “I know what a patriot you are. You’ve done a lot for this country. You’ve fought for the highest standards of justice and morality in the law. I’m going to do what I can, also. Maybe, it won t amount to shucks—but for two weeks I’m going to feel as though I made the best try I could.”

  Her father frowned and ran a hand over his forehead, troubled. He was up against a tough quality in her and he knew it.

  That horse-swapping western editor who had written his editorials with a pistol sticking out of a pigeonhole in his desk…

  “All right,” he said quietly. “It will have to be. When you gave your information to that department agent, you ceased to be an immediate menace to anybody, because the Government is in on the know, now.” He sighed. “I’ll help you all I can. Locke Lindsay should have a lot of pull in that state. I’ll put through a long distance call to him tonight. You’d like to work in Buckthorne’s campaign office. Observe practical politics.”

  She went into action with the same swift drive with which she had headed off Robert Luce at the airport. Two days after she turned up in the law offices of her father’s friend, Locke Lindsay. He was a lugubrious appearing man with a dry, deliberate voice. He had procured a letter for her to the personnel head of the campaign headquarters.

  “My father’s name has been kept out of it?” she asked earnestly.

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re Miss B. Britton. The campaign is about ready to roll. I hope it proves interesting to you.”

  She looked at him with a smile. “I hope so,” she said.

  There was no time to present her letter that day. She established herself in a modest midtown hotel, wired her father, and then took a taxi for a short, sightseeing trip of the metropolis.

  * * * *

  The Buckthorne campaign offices occupied a huge suite in a streamlined office building. Berkeley was there the first thi
ng in the morning, but, early as she was, the reception room was crowded with job-seekers and party hangers-on. She sent in her letter and while she waited had ample opportunity to study the likeness of Sam Buckthorne whose picture stared at her from every angle.

  She had imagined him to be something on the order of Tresh, but, according to his pictures, he was a rather personable man, looking to be in early middle-age, with dark hair parted in the middle and a square-chinned face, a little fleshy, but by no means gross.

  Then she was called into the office of the personnel manager, and found a stout man at a much littered desk. He eyed her at length—a tall slim girl dressed with the greatest simplicity, which, to a more discerning eye, was also the quintessence of elegance.

  “How many votes in your family?” he asked finally.

  “Five,” said Berkeley, with dispatch.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess we can find a place for you. What can you do? Steno? Receptionist?”

  “I’ve done filing,” she said quickly. “I’m good at that.”

  “Filing, huh?” He thought a minute. “Well, I’ll place you in files and see how you make out.” He buzzed an office phone and spoke briefly. “Sending you Miss B. Britton for file work. What? Don’t care—she’s got to be placed.” He hung up. “Second door down the corridor,” he said.

  Berkeley reported at the second office down the corridor. It was a large room with rows of steel filing cabinets around the walls. Three girls were working with card indices at a table and at a small desk. A thin, elderly man was checking long typewritten lists with a city directory.

  Nobody paid any attention to her for some moments. She stood by the desk, waiting, conscious of the beat of driving rain against the windows.

  The man threw down his pencil finally and looked up.

  “You’re this B. Britton?” he said. “Ready to go to work?”

  And with Berkeley’s nod she was absorbed forthwith into the clicking machine for the election of Sam Buckthorne.

  It was raining hard in other places, too. Three hours by air from Brownsville, Texas, the rain swept in from the Atlantic over the small port of Mecupan—a thick mesh of rain that obscured the water-front lights of the little Mexican port. The warehouses loomed bulkily shapeless against the blurred glow of street lamps and the dull light of the bars.

  Robert Luce stood on a small dock and looked out through the darkness toward open sea. His trench coat was buttoned tightly around him and his snap-brim dripped with the rain. Every once in a while he had to wipe his eyes free of the downpour pelting straight into his face.

  It was impossible to see much anyway, although the yellow ports of the Mexican gunboat that had dropped in earlier from Vera Cruz shone across the rain-whipped water in the lee of a cumbersome lighter at its mooring.

  A whistled rendition of It’s a Long Way to Tipperary came through the darkness behind him. Luce turned. He had heard that whistle off and on ever since he had been standing here. It seemed to come from the shadows of a warehouse, although he could not be sure. There it went again—It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. Strange thing to hear—that British marching song in this Mexican port.

  His eyes again veered around to the harbor and instantly he became alert. He dashed the rain out of his eyes and looked keenly out into the night—a red and green light studded the darkness. Freighter coming in.

  Luce watched those riding lights and suddenly his mouth broke into a faint smile.

  “Right on the nose,” he murmured. “Come to me, baby.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Riding lights of an approaching freighter studding the dark, rain-swept night over the little Mexican port of Mecupan—a freighter creeping in off the Gulf of Mexico to an anchorage. The blurry glow of its superstructure was discernible although in the darkness no conception of its size could be ascertained.

  But Robert Luce seemed to know all about it. He watched it intently, his eyes narrowed against the driving rain.

  “Almaric,” he murmured. “Swedish registry. Six thousand tons. Right on the dot.”

  He saw it lay to at the entrance of the harbor. Mecupan pressed heavily at his back, the dark wet port exuding an atmosphere of stagnant sea foam mingled with an omnipresent smell of henequen fiber stored in the warehouse.

  Luce glanced out again toward the anchored freighter and then turned to leave the dock. He had taken only a few steps when that whistled melody sounded again.

  “It’s a long way to Tipperary

  It’s a long way to go—”

  It sounded as though it came from the doorway of the nearby warehouse. That British marching song whistled from the shallow shelter of a warehouse door—the tall man standing motionless and attentive, frowned. Without knowing just why, he did not like it. It lent an indefinable strangeness to the night, an undercurrent of something ominous beneath the spattering tattoo of the pelting rain.

  He went on again, passing close to the soft clear whistle. Suddenly it ceased and an instant later somebody partially collided with him in the bulky shadow of the long, corrugated-iron warehouse. Luce shot out a hand and pinned the other by the lapels. No, he did not like any of this.

  The other tried to tear himself free, but Luce tightened his right hand into a fist and crossed it to the point of a chin, with a shock of contact that he felt all through his arm. The other buckled at the knees and slumped down without a word.

  In the next instant Luce was kneeling over the person he had felled. He drew a small electric torch from his pocket, shrouded its lens with one hand, and gave a quick inspection. The unconscious man looked like a derelict, unshaven, baggy and shapeless in drenched limp ducks, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. But he was armed. Well armed. A small revolver hung in a holster under his left arm and a blunt object encased in leather and hanging by a short thong was stuck in his belt over one hip.

  Luce switched off his torch and glanced briefly out toward the freighter. Sometimes you could not take a chance on what might happen from minute to minute. You hit first in a spot like this or you missed the boat.

  Again he went into action. He dragged the man into the doorway of the nearby warehouse, gagged him with a handkerchief, secured his wrists and ankles with henequen fiber that was as tough as rope.

  The little water-front was just about deserted as Luce strode quickly along the street. In the blurred yellow globules that were the infrequent street lamps he could see the rain like a fine silver mesh. From the bars came a familiar tinny strain of an automatic piano and also a turgid scent of stale beer.

  Luce swung off along the sandy strip fringing the semicircular shore line that formed the harbor. Snapping out his pocket torch he plowed over the sand to the entrance of a little cove. From the shelter of some drooping palms he pulled a small rowboat and slid it into the water. Then dipping the oars he swung it out toward the harbor and began to row.

  The freighter had anchored nearly a half mile out and the blackness of the night made it seem doubly that. Out in the little rowboat with nothing but those blurred and scattered pinpoints of light from the direction of the shore and the riding lights ahead, it was like being the only tenant of a black and formless world.

  Luce rowed steadily, stealthily, feathering his oars so that there was not the slightest clink of oarlocks to betray him. As the lighted ports of the dark bulk came closer, he ceased using two oars and, sitting in the stern of the rowboat, sculled slowly and noiselessly the rest of the way. And then his eyes picked out the anchor chain just in time and he swerved the boat and drifted in close under the shadowy, overhanging stern.

  Motionless, he sat there for several moments, then carefully shone his torch up on the name and registry port. White letters painted on the rusty black: Almaric—Göteborg. Robert Luce nodded thoughtfully and snapped off his light.

  The Almaric of Göthenburg. It rode quietly at its anchorage. Most of the crew must be below deck on a night like this, although there was an anchor watch on the bridge, of cour
se, and most likely a skeleton watch scattered here and there over the ship.

  Luce pushed the rowboat’s painter around the rudder post and waited. “Almaric—Göteborg.” The name carried him back. He could see the little sitting room in the apartment on the Moravská Ulice looking toward the main square of Prague. Funny. Lying low at the stern of the Almaric in a small Mexican port and yet he could see so vividly the crowds in the Prague street below; those orderly Czech crowds, and in the Václavské Námesté the Nazi military band was giving its daily concert. And he and the young Czech, Duchnod, had discussed the Almaric in that apartment in Prague—a converted yacht posing as a Swedish tramp, but capable of fifteen knots and deceptively armed. They had planned for this very moment, back in that apartment on the Moravská Ulice.

  Yes. He glanced up at the stern again. An armed Nazi merchantman under fake registry lying quietly at anchor—he stiffened to instant attention suddenly as a light flashed twice just over the stern rail. Luce waited a moment, then cautiously winked his torch twice in return. Everything was working out according to plan. He heard a soft hurried voice.

  “My friend?”

  “Yes,” said Luce. “Luce, Duchnod.”

  There was another moment of silence and then a narrow rope ladder dropped over the stern. Luce grasped it and held it steady while a figure descended and dropped into the boat. He crouched there, hands gripping the gunwales, his face barely perceptible in the indirect light above the stern, white and haggard. His blue dungarees were soaked through and damp blond hair curled beneath the visor of his cap.

  Luce looked at him, then gripped him by the shoulder. “Good to see you, Duchnod.” He smiled, then again his thin mouth straightened. “It’s aboard, isn’t it?”