Long Live the Dead (26 page)

“The
Milly Mae
,” he said, “is at anchor off the Tortugas. Young fellow named Hale located her for me with his plane, and left a note for me at the hotel. There’s a girl on the
Milly Mae
, Gleeson—held aboard against her will, perhaps—and my job is to get her off. I’ll need help because Joe Bayha knows me.”

Gleeson merely grunted.

It took Kimm some time to locate the tow-head. He had grown tired of waiting, had drifted off to a barroom for a few drinks. He and Kimm talked; money changed hands. Kimm hurried back to the pier, where Gleeson was looking over the plane.

“She’s a beauty,” Gleeson said. “All set?”

“All set.”

It was the second time in his life Kimm had been in the air. He didn’t say so. He took his place, hung on, and closed his eyes as the ship raced over the water.All the wind in the world, it seemed, tugged at Kimm’s shuddering frame in an effort to pluck him loose. He opened his eyes and looked down.

The lights of Key West traced a delicate pattern far down in darkness. The plane roared west.

Sixty-five miles later Kimm peered down at the velvet waters of a lagoon surrounded by a ring of small islands.

There was a moon for a moment, slipping between clouds. It showed him the shadowed hulk of old Fort Jefferson, complete with courtyard and moat. It limned native homes under palm trees, whitened the rigging of a score or more ships of the kingfish fleet. He spotted the
Milly Mae.

Gleeson set the plane down lightly. He turned. “Now what?” he said, grinning.

“Does Joe Bayha know you?”

“Sure.”

“Tell him,” Kimm said grimly, “Miguel Reurto sent you to fly Miss Fern Macomber back to Key West.”

“You think he’ll believe me? That guy would suspect his own mother.”

Kimm was thoughtful for a moment, then produced from his pocket a small gold cigarette lighter. It was not an ordinary lighter, and it had not cost an ordinary amount of money. Engraved upon it, neatly, was the legend: “To Miguel, with love, from Fern.”

Kimm had palmed it from a table in the living-room of the island home of Miguel Reurto, in the belief that it might somehow come in handy. He thought probably it would come in mighty handy right now.

“Show Bayha this.” He passed it over. “Reurto gave it to you for identification.”

“What about you?” Gleeson scowled.

Kimm hunched himself into as small a space as possible and made himself invisible except from a line of vision directly above the cockpit. “I’m not here.”

The Great Unwashed gave him an approving grin, gunned the motor and sent the plane forward. He guided the ship neatly to the frowning stern of the
Milly Mae,
waved a flashlight and sent up a shout. He got an answer. A searchlight on the schooner’s deck swept the plane.

After that it was remarkably simple.

A boat was lowered, and Gleeson went aboard. He was gone about ten minutes, during which time Kimm kept under cover. When he returned, he politely handed Miss Fern Macomber into the rear cockpit, while the boat stood by.

The girl lost her balance, stepped on Kimm and screamed. Kimm grabbed her. He sat her down abruptly, scrambled over her and barked an order at the pilot. A yell went up from the schooner’s boat, and the searchlight caught Kimm full in the face.

The plane leaped under Kimm and dumped him. He caught himself. A gun spat at him from the schooner’s deck and the booming, cannon-like voice of big Joe Bayha hurled curses.

Kimm slipped his own gun from its harness and threw a shot at the searchlight. The fact that he hit it—from a moving plane—forever after amazed him. The light went out. The plane soared into darkness. Miss Fern Macomber came out of her trance, flung herself at Kimm and began clawing him.

He sat on her. A little out of patience by this time, he said gruffly, “Lady, you be good! Or else!”

She wasn’t good; Kimm clipped her.

F
ern Macomber shrilled, “I’m warning you for the last time, you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison for this!” She had a terrible voice. It rose in a high shriek above the drone of the plane’s motor and raised hell with Kimm’s eardrums.

She was a little thing, but she had a temper. What a temper! It went, Kimm supposed, with her pert, pug-nosed face, her reddish hair. Her eyes shed sparks at him. She was the only daughter of Julius Macomber and as such, had too much money. She was a spoiled brat but, in a way, Kimm liked her.

He said quietly, “Now, now, honey, you’ll thank me later.”

“I won’t thank you later! And I don’t believe Miguel is in Key West! He’s sick on board the
Milly Mae
, and you know it.” If glares could kill, hers would have left only a dark red smear where Kimm was sitting. “Now you listen to me!” she screamed. “Miguel was taken ill just before we left Key West. Mr. Bayha called a doctor, and the doctor said he had to have absolute quiet. The doctor said no-one could see him, not even me. And now you—you have the nerve to tell me …” She whipped her hands up to claw Kimm’s face again. Kimm grabbed them.

“So that’s it,” Kimm said. “I wondered about that, honey. Smart, this Miguel of yours.”

“You—!”

“Shut up,” Kimm growled, “and listen. If Reurto played sick, it was a fake, the idea being to get you out of Key West without arousing your suspicions. There was nothing sick about Miguel Reurto when I saw him in Key West a few hours ago. You’ll find out. If you think he sailed with you aboard the
Milly Mae
, locked up in his cabin with a doctor, you’re plumb crazy.” He looked down at the approaching lights of Key West and was glad the journey was about over. It had been a turbulent one. “If he’d really been on board, why’d Bayha let you leave?”

The girl was silent, biting her lip. When she spoke again, her voice dripped acid. “What are you planning to do with

me?”

“Daddy wants you,” Kimm said.

“I won’t go to New York!”

“Your father,” Kimm said firmly, “is in a jam. You’re his only out.”

“It’s ridiculous! Miguel says—”

“Miguel,” Kimm said, “is anxious to keep you
out
of New York. You can discount what he says. You’re going to New York—with Abel Kimm.” A thought suddenly occurred to Kimm and he gazed soberly into the girl’s face. Her lips curled. “By the way,” he said, “you might straighten me out about that plane of yours. The one that crashed. Or don’t you know it crashed?”

The lights of Key West were closer.The girl’s face was suddenly stiff, her mouth quivering. “C—crashed?” she gasped.

“In Kelver City, on the edge of the ’Glades.”

It hurt. He could see it hurt, because the hate went out of her eyes and she clenched her hands, hard. She said uncertainly, “Was—was Carmen hurt?”

“Carmen?”

“Carmen Molina. She came up from Bogota with me and stayed a few days at Miguel’s place. I—I lent her the plane to fly to New York.”

Kimm’s face did not betray him. It could be a poker face when the need arose and he sensed an ice-cold necessity, now, for concealing his emotions. Carmen Molina! Then the South American beauty at the hotel … the one he had saved from Bayha’s thugs …

“I wouldn’t know,” he shrugged, “whether Carmen was hurt or not. How long have you known Carmen Molina, anyway?”

“Ages.”

“Pretty good at handling a plane, is she?”

“She’s the best woman pilot in South America.”

“You gals sure do get around,” Kimm murmured. But he didn’t feel facetious. Under the mask he felt mean. His thoughts were storm-clouds.

Gleeson set the ship down and brought it to a stop while Kimm was struggling with those same storm-clouds. The girl balked, then. Stubborn, she shook Kimm’s hand off her arm and told the surrounding darkness, in a shrill howl, that she did not intend to go to New York with Abel Kimm or anyone else. Furthermore, Kimm was a blackguard and a liar and she would have him arrested, tried, convicted and hung for abduction and persecution.

Kimm put a hand over her mouth, gathered her in his arms and gingerly stepped into the dinghy. He had his troubles with her while Gleeson rowed them ashore. Gleeson thought it very funny. He grinned and made sarcastic remarks. The pier, Kimm noted, was deserted and damned dark.

He clambered out of the boat and set the girl on her feet, removed his hand from her mouth and let her get a breath. He needed a breath himself and would have liked a drink to go with it. He wondered how best to get Fern Macomber, temper and all, from Key West to New York, which seemed a million miles away; and then abruptly he stopped wondering about this and made a dive for his gun.

He was too late for it, but not too late to shove the girl aside and blast a fist into the teeth of the first man who rushed him.

They were strong teeth. They ripped his knuckles to the bone. A lunging shape dived for Kimm’s legs and upset him; then the crowding darkness was alive with legs, arms and ambitious mutterings.

Kimm battled to his feet again and laid about him. He couldn’t see much. A slashing heel had gouged his forehead, opened a gash, and warm blood trickled down into one eye.

He heard the girl yelling at full lung capacity and wished she would shut up. Then, with his hands full, he saw Gleeson clambering up from the dinghy.

Gleeson brought an oar with him and used it. For a man who subsisted on bottled nourishment and appeared to get most of his exercise with his feet up, he was good. With the oar gripped in both hands, he let out a roar and ploughed to Kimm’s side.

He almost made it. He caused as much damage, anyway, as a minor hurricane before the butt of a gun smashed him and sent him reeling. Then another gun bored into the small of Kimm’s back, and a noisy, familiar voice snarled in his ear, “Hold it, you damn octopus!” The “or else” wasn’t added, but was present in implication.

Kimm reluctantly released a handful of human face and heaved a sigh. He’d been enjoying himself. He lowered his hands and was grabbed from behind, yanked over an outstretched foot. He looked up into the scowling face of a Joe Bayha thug—the one he had tossed over his shoulder in the presence of the girl who called herself Carmen Molina. His name, Kimm remembered, was Dutchy Schmidt.

“For a little guy,” Dutchy growled, “you do right well. Get up.”

Kimm stretched his aching frame erect. He wondered at the sudden soothing silence around him, and realized Miss Fern Macomber had stopped shrieking. For that he was grateful. All the same, a couple of Dutchy’s pals were having their hands full with the girl. She was a lot like her father, Kimm thought. A fighter.

They quieted her, and Dutchy said matter-of-factly, “O. K., let’s go.” He removed Kimm’s gun and shoved him forward. No one appeared to be interested any more in Gleeson, who lay sprawled on the pier.

Kimm sucked his bleeding knuckles and walked no faster than he had to. He felt low. He thought probably the world was full of violent persons bent on preventing him from getting Fern Macomber to New York. What he needed, he decided, was a drink.

“You got a drink?” he asked Dutchy. “I could use one.”

Dutchy, behind him, said darkly, “You’ll get a drink, and then some.”

Kimm decided it was no use. He walked the rest of the way in sullen silence.

It was not far. The way led along the waterfront a short distance, through abysmal darkness, then along a short, inky lane to a house. The house was old. It smelled old and it smelled empty. One of Dutchy’s pals held open a heavy door, and the others filed past, Kimm and Dutchy ending the procession. The door clicked shut, and someone touched a match to the wick of an oil lamp.

The room was big, big as a barn, its windows shuttered. A dozen lamps would not have rid its corners of shadows. What little furniture it contained was a weird mixture of French, Spanish and English. The high dark walls were hand-planed boards, shiplapped and unplastered.

Kimm wished he were at liberty to look the place over. He tried it and was yanked back. Dutchy shoved him into a chair and stood over him, watched him with one eye while barking crisp orders to the others, in Spanish.

The big pistol in Dutchy’s fist was as old, almost, as the house. One of its slugs would have blown a hole in a brick wall. Kimm eyed it in silence, weighed his chances of revolt and decided to wait.

He watched while Dutchy’s pals backed Fern Macomber into a chair and made her fast with ropes. She didn’t protest. She couldn’t. A bright red bandanna, not too clean, had been knotted around her mouth.

This done, the gentlemen of Joe Bayha took their departure, and Kimm wondered what was next on the program. He scowled at Dutchy. The latter sat down, aimed his gun at Kimm’s stomach and said unpleasantly, “I don’t want no trouble from you, Kimm. Just keep quiet.”

Kimm was quiet. The whole house was quiet, except for the occasional creaking of a loose shutter somewhere high up in darkness. Fern Macomber glared at Kimm, her eyes laden with hate. She blamed him, he supposed, for what had happened. She was probably right.

“Would you mind explaining—” Kimm said, and was silent because the gun in Dutchy’s fist warned him silence was safer. He sighed, stretched his legs out and tried to get comfortable. His head ached.

About half an hour passed; then a knock on the door broke it up. Dutchy went to the door and said through it, “Yeah?” and got an answer which to Kimm was inaudible. He opened the door.

Miguel Reurto walked in.

Fern gasped through her gag.

R
eurto closed the door behind him and looked at Kimm. He bared his teeth in a mirthless smile, nodded to Dutchy and said briefly, “Good.” Then he saw Fern Macomber.

It seemed to Kimm, who was watching the South American’s face, that Miguel Reurto did some rapid thinking in the next few seconds. It seemed to Kimm that the man’s eyes clouded, he sucked the situation up in one noisy breath and made a snap decision concerning it. Because Reurto, face to face with Fern Macomber, hesitated just long enough to label his next act a phony; then he lurched forward, tore the red bandanna from the girl’s mouth and set her free. And then, whirling on Dutchy, he loosed a torrent of abuse.

“I didn’t order this!” he raved. “You stupid, blundering fool, I told you to protect Miss Macomber, not abuse her! What’s the meaning of this?”