The Avenger 36 - Demon Island (3 page)

“Maybe,” said Tucker, “the whole notion of buried money was a hallucination of his.”

“Maybe,” said Stark. “But none of us would be here if we really believed that. I helped look after Silva in the prison hospital and he told me a lot, confided in me because I was a con like him. So trust me, the dough’s here somewheres.”

“Three days,” said Morrison as he wiped his face with a large white handkerchief. “That’s hardly time to thoroughly search.”

“If we don’t find it before them Hollywood cruds get here, we’ll find it afterwards,” said Stark. “And we’ll see to it they don’t spend too long here on Demon Island.”

Cole Wilson yawned. Standing under the awning on O’Malley’s sundeck, he was watching the rain fall down across the gray morning. “A fittingly gloomy day on which to embark,” he said.

The freckled director was wandering around inside the house, a glass of tomato juice in one hand. “It’s going to get gloomier.”

After listening to the rain drum on the canvas for another half minute Cole returned to the livingroom. “What’s the source of your wimwams, old fellow?”

“Nothing supernatural this time,” said O’Malley. “It’s Fanny Fiddler I’m worrying about. Her damn agent’s been on the phone three times already this morning.”

“Fanny Fiddler? She is to portray Heather’s sister in
Demon Island,
is she not?”

“Yeah, but you’d think she was going to do Scarlet O’Hara for Selznick the way her agent talks. She’s not happy with her billing, her salary, her accommodations . . . Yeah, she’s unhappy with her accommodations before we even get to the blasted island.”

“Can’t say I blame the lass on that score. That old, decayed castle isn’t going to be any too cozy.”

“Don’t you start in. It’ll do fine,” insisted O’Malley. “By the time we get out there it’ll be ready to live in. A crew landed there at dawn to set up a couple of generators for the equipment and to rig wires and lights in the house itself. Accommodations won’t be that bad.”

“Methinks I’d best have a chat with Miss Fiddler,” said Cole. “I’ll quote a little Thoreau and extol the virtues of the simple life.”

“Didn’t even want to use her in this flicker. She gave Rovics nothing but headaches when he shot
Belle of Old San Bernardino.
One scene of hers took fourteen takes. And Rovics is known as ‘one take’ Rovics.”

“You being coerced into working with her?”

“Yeah, the studio is grooming her for stardom, or so they claim. I just hope she doesn’t foul us up too much.”

“If I recall the script I was perusing the other eve, Heather’s sister in the film is carried off by beast men quite early on.”

“Not that early. I’ve got three or four days of shooting with Fanny.” He crossed to the open suitcase on the sofa and slammed it shut. “Let’s get going. The launch will be waiting for us in San Pedro.”

“Demon Island, here we come!” Cole picked up his own suitcase and followed the director.

The rain persisted.

The path leading from the beach up to the mansion was muddy.

“How are you faring?” Cole asked Heather, who was holding on to his arm.

“Quite splendidly.”

“What about me?” demanded Fanny Fiddler. She was stomping up the path behind them, winging a suitcase in each hand. “I’m just about up to my elbow in gunk.”

“Too bad it’s not quicksand.” O’Malley was bringing up the rear, with three more of Fanny’s suitcases.

“I heard that,” said the little brunette. “And don’t think my agent isn’t going to hear about it.”

“Ah, fair Miss Fiddler,” said Cole, grinning back at her, “don’t let Terence’s badinage disturb you. I happen to know his quips mask a deep and heartfelt affection for—”

“Who asked you to poke your beezer in, Sappo?”

“It’s part of the code of the Wilsons, dear lady, to intrude whenever a good deed can—”

“The last guy I ran into who blabbed like you was a pansy.”

“The best way to get along with Fanny,” advised Heather, “is to ignore her.”

“I hate to think my famed golden tongue can’t win her over.”

“Wow, what a creepy dump,” said Fanny. “Looks like a home for retired rats and spiders. Ugh!”

They had reached the courtyard of the many-spired mansion. The rain beat down on the cracked stones.

“I bet it’s going to be as cold as a well-digger’s knee,” continued Fanny Fiddler. “Okay, okay, O’Malley, let’s get in and find my room. And it better be warm and snug or my agent is going to—”

“You’re in the master bedroom, Fanny,” the director told her. “You even have your own fireplace, they tell me.”

“What do I need a fireplace for? Isn’t there central heating?”

“Let’s get inside and see.”

Cole meanwhile escorted Heather up the wide stone stairs. He opened the wide oaken door and stepped aside to allow her to pass inside. “Disappointing, the portal doesn’t even creak.”

“I been oiling it,” said a coveralled workman who was fixing a light fixture in the huge foyer.

“I want it to creak, Candy,” said O’Malley, dropping Fanny’s luggage.

“Okay,” said Candy. “I’ll put the creak back in, soon’s I finish with this.”

“You better pray nothing broke when you dumped my stuff on the parquet, O’Malley,” said the dark-haired little actress. “I got my collection of perfumes and—”

“Come along this way, Fanny.” O’Malley grabbed her by the arm and led her off.

Candy came halfway down the ladder he was perched on. “You’re that Cole Wilson guy, ain’t you?”

Heather pressed Cole’s hand, saying, “I’ll go find my room . . . and make sure Terry doesn’t strangle Fanny. I’ll meet you later.”

When Heather was gone Cole said, “Yes, Candy, old chap, I am indeed Cole Wilson in the flesh. We first encountered each other on the set of
The Purple Zombie
last year.”

“Yeah, I know.” He came down a few more rungs. “You work with this guy they call the Avenger, don’t you?”

“Yes, such is my occupation.”

Candy nodded to himself. “You guys in Justice, Incorporated, mess around with all kinds of goofy stuff, don’t you?”

“Goofy stuff is a specialty of mine. Why?”

Candy hesitated, then said, “I think we’re going to need you around here. This place is haunted.”

It was still raining at midnight.

Cole Wilson was sitting up in his four-poster bed, reading the latest Norbert Davis mystery novel by the light of a dim-bulbed table lamp.

The rain slashed at the windows; wind rattled the leaded panes.

Someone tapped softly on his door.

Steepling the book on the blanket, Cole swung out of bed. He put on a paisley robe and eased across the beam-ceilinged room to the door. “If it’s the castle ghost, we don’t want any,” he said.

“It’s me . . . Heather.”

“Ah, the fair enchantress.” He opened the door.

The auburn-haired actress was still dressed as she had been at dinner. “Maybe this is nothing . . . but I thought I’d better tell you about it.”

“I’m getting a considerable reputation hereabouts as a shoulder to cry on,” said Cole as he invited her in. “All the grips and stagehands have been telling me about their ghostly encounters and now—”

“It’s Fanny Fiddler,” said Heather.

“Has something happened to her?”

“Well, I don’t know. The thing is . . . she’s not in her room.”

“Perhaps she had a midnight rendezvous with one of the other actors,” suggested Cole. “I’ve heard that romance oft blooms on location.”

“No, I don’t think it’s anything like that,” said the slender girl. “I came off without my nail file and, after getting a look at all the baggage Fanny hauled along with her, I figured she’d have one I could borrow. So I knocked on her door . . . about ten minutes ago. The pressure of my knock caused the door to swing open. So I went in. . . . Her bed had been turned down and the sheets were rumpled. In fact, they were still warm. I felt them. Her clothes, the clothes she’d been wearing, were tossed around on the floor and on a chair. Her robe was hanging on a post of the bed. But Fanny wasn’t in the room. And . . . the window was wide open. Wind and rain were blowing in. The floor was all wet and slippery. And Fanny’s bare footprints showed on the floor.”

“You think she went out the window?”

“It certainly looks like that.”

“Went out the window in nothing but her nightclothes on a rainy midnight?”

“That’s why I came to you . . . It seems very strange to me.”

“Strange it does seem,” said Cole. “Let me slip into my fighting togs and we’ll take a look.”

“It may be nothing.”

“And, on the other hand, it may be something,” said Cole.

The flashlight did him very little good. The heavy-falling rain swallowed the light a few feet ahead of Cole.

He was alone, having left Heather back in the mansion. A search of Fanny Fiddler’s room had indicated that the girl had indeed gone out the window and down to the rocky ground a few feet below. On a bush about twenty feet off he’d spotted a tatter of white silk which must have come from the missing actress’s nightgown.

Now wearing a trenchcoat and hat, Cole was exploring the night woods which stretched away behind the turreted mansion.

I dearly hope this isn’t merely some little prank of Miss Fiddler’s, he thought. Though even Fanny Fiddler doesn’t seem nasty enough to risk a case of the grippe merely to play a joke.

There was another twist of something white, twined around a thorny branch. A tear of lace.

Cole knelt beside the thorny bush and played his light along the mushy ground. Yes, there was the print of a bare foot rapidly being washed away by the hard rain.

If the lass is a somnambulist, she picked a dreadful night for it, he mused.

He rose up, tugging at his left ear, scanning the dark forest. Circling the bush and exploring with the beam of his light, Cole spotted another footprint. The bare toes pointed eastward, toward the sea and the cliffs.

Cole felt very uneasy. This was obviously not a joke. And it also appeared that the actress was alone. What could she be doing out here alone and wearing only a flimsy silk nightgown?

Suicide? he asked himself as he pushed eastward into the woods.

Fanny Fiddler certainly hadn’t seemed the suicide type. She was surely capable of driving others to jump off cliffs, but she hardly appeared the kind to take her own life.

The things Candy and a couple of the other grips had told him earlier came back to Cole now. Candy was positive he’d seen, when they were coming up through the forest at dawn, the figure of a woman watching them from among the trees.

“Not a living, breathing woman,” the movie hand had insisted. “It was a ghost woman.”

Cole had grinned then, tried to make it seem like a trick the fog had played.

But now . . .

Get a grip on yourself, Wilson, old fellow, me lad, Cole told himself. Remember that there is a logical explanation for ninety-nine percent of the weird things one encounters. Ah . . . but it’s that other one percent that causes all the trouble.

All at once he fell.

Something had been stretched across the path he was following, a taut wire or cord.

He fell on his face with a mighty splash.

Before Cole could rise something hit him hard across the back of the head. Hit and hit again.

Candy saw her wandering in the dawn.

He grabbed up a spare blanket and ran out into the fog. “Here, get this around you, Miss Fiddler.” He draped the blanket over her shoulders.

“What?” Her dark hair was damp and clinging to her head, her silk nightgown torn and muddied. “What have . . .” She swayed and fell against the stagehand.

“Aw, don’t go passing out on me.” Candy picked her up and carried her back into the mansion. “Hey, Doc Mandell! Are you up yet? Is there a doctor in the house?”

His shouts echoed through the vaulted hallways.

In a moment a short, bearded man, working into a flannel bathrobe and carrying a black medical satchel, came hurrying down a wide staircase. “Another one of the crew drunk, Candy?”

“This is something serious, Doc. Miss Fiddler’s in some kind of trance or something. I found her roaming out in the woods.”