Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 62, No. 2, October 3, 1931
- Автор: Энгланд Джордж Аллан, Philips Judson P.
- Год: 1931
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 62, No. 2, October 3, 1931». Краткое содержание книги:
“Good enough. We’ll need men we can count on before the night’s over.”
Docksee fingered his beard.
“You ain’t told me yet, mister,” he reminded Radway, “what all this is about.”
“It won’t take me long to tell you when I get started,” promised Radway. “You’ve got a man in your crew that’s taking money from smugglers — big money. If my information is straight, a very large proportion of the dope entering the country lately has been finding its way across this beach of yours.”
“The hell you say!”
“It’s fact.”
Docksee’s thin shoulders lifted and his beard jutted belligerently as his jaw squared.
“Name the man!” he challenged. “Point him out to me and watch me handle him!”
Radway shook his head.
“I know how you feel, skipper,” He said, “but this is a case where Uncle Sam will do the handling. The first job is to catch our man — get him dead to rights. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion right now that I know who he is. But that isn’t evidence by a long shot.”
“Lazzaro?”
“He’s the man I’m thinking of,” admitted Radway. “Does he have a trick of beach patrol duty again to-night?”
“Let’s see. Yes. Midnight to four.”
“The dog watch, eh? That pretty near clinches it, captain. It will most likely be some time between twelve and four when the stuff is landed. There’ll be a couple of tough boys — quick-on-the-trigger gunmen — aboard the boat that brings it in. Maybe we’ll have to do some shooting.”
“You won’t find my regulars running if there is,” Docksee remarked grimly. “You’re sure your information is on the level, though, mister?”
“Absolutely. It came from one of the best under-cover men in the service. He wasn’t able to learn the name of the Coast Guardsman who was fixed, but I’m expecting to meet an old acquaintance of mine in charge of the load. He’s a fellow I had the pleasure of sending to Atlanta a few years ago — ‘Dopey Moe’ Buxbaum. This time he’ll go away for a real stretch.”
A splatter of rain was falling as Docksee and Radway started back toward the station and a red sun was dipping back of the dunes. Off in the northeast, the small schooner still lay in the same position, her slatting sails dots of white on the oily sea. The clouds behind her were piling up blacker. Docksee threw an anxious glance toward them.
“The dudes on that yacht are going to have their hands full before they’re much older,” he predicted. “They were a bunch of dumb fools to take their women out, with the glass falling and not a practical sailor on the ship. If they had a grain of sense among ’em, they’d be getting their canvas in now and heaving to. When that squall smacks she’s going to smack hard, mister.”
III
Radway blessed the squall. It might have been made to order to suit his purpose. The rain was coming down faster before he and Docksee were halfway to the station, and they finished the trip running. Manifestly, it was no time for a summer tripper in “ice cream” clothes to be starting on a five-mile hike. It was perfectly natural that Docksee should invite the visitor to dinner and equally natural that Radway should accept.
At table, the old-timers of the Sandy Point crew were easy to pick out. They were a grizzled and weather-beaten quartet, none exactly loquacious, but all friendly enough. Silent among them, Lazzaro bolted his food. He pushed back his chair before the others had risen and went clumping up the stairs to the attic dormitory. The other new man, Karger, bull-necked, heavy jowled and moody, followed in Lazzaro’s wake a moment later.
Docksee walked to the ascending stairway and carefully closed the door at its foot. He called back two of his four dependables as they were starting out in oilskins, one for the lookout tower and the other on beach patrol. Re-introducing Radway to them and to the other pair under his own name, he informed them in a hurried whisper of their guest’s real errand.
Black night had fallen then, and the first gust of the rising squall was tearing at the heavy shutters.
“Keep an eye to the nor’east for signs of trouble,” was Docksee’s last admonition to the departing guards. “There ain’t nothing but a crowd of rocking chair sailors on that schooner out there.”
The squall struck full force as he spoke. Its impact shook the sturdy building, and Docksee had to put his back to the seaward door to close it after his men. A vivid flare of lightning ripped across the sky, whitening the windows, and the station shook again to a mighty thunderclap. When Docksee turned on the radio, the program he got was mostly static.
Under cover of the racket, Radway crept up the stairs that led to the dormitory. Lazzaro and Karger hadn’t turned in. He could hear them talking, but their voices were so low that he could make out their words.
“Maybe,” he said to Docksee, returning, “you’ve got two crooks in your outfit instead of one. Anyhow, I don’t like Karger’s looks any more than I liked Lazzaro’s. Where are you going to bunk me? I’m dog tired after that long haul up from New York. If I could snatch a couple of hours sleep now I’d be that much wider awake at midnight.”
There was a cot in Docksee’s little office. Radway parked on it, but his nap didn’t last until midnight. It was only a little after eleven when he was awakened. Through the open door he could see a dripping figure in oilskins. It was the coast guardsman who had been on duty in the watch tower. He was making an excited report to Docksee, interrupting the rummy game that had started when Radway lay down.
“The yacht weathered the squall all right, cap, but she’s in distress now, for sure. They’re shootin’ rockets out there.”
The three card players were on their feet as Radway joined them.
“Here’s a howdy-do, mister!” exclaimed Docksee. “Them dude sailors have messed up the deck for you for fair. I know that tub they’re in. She’s no boat for heavy weather. She’s probably leaking like a sieve after the pounding she got. Nothing for me to do but go out to her.”
“Of course, you’ve got to go,” agreed Radway.
“But that’ll leave you in a fix, mister. If there’s a chance of saving the schooner, I’ll have to put a crew aboard her. That means I’ll need all hands.”
Radway glanced at the clock.
“Eleven twenty,” he said. “How soon could you be back?”
“No telling! We’ll go in the power dory that’s moored back in the inlet, and she’s good for thirty miles an hour. But if the people on the schooner have used up all their rockets, we may have a time finding ’em. It’s as black out as the inside of an undertaker’s hat. We’ll have to trust to lightning flashes to show the yacht to us.”
“You’ve got to take the whole crew?”
“My four regular men, anyhow. Karger and Lazzaro don’t count so much in a pinch like this, being all the same as landlubbers. I’d as soon leave ’em on the beach.”
Radway’s relief showed in his smile.
“That’s all right, then,” he said, patting the little bulge under his left arm where a police positive hung in a shoulder belt. “If the weather hasn’t caused any change of plans, I’ll probably have more company for you when you get back.”
IV
The wind was down and the rain had settled to a steady drizzle as Docksee, yellow slickered, started with his three experienced hands toward the speed dory riding in the inlet. They were to pick up the fourth man of the regular Sandy Point crew on their way along the beach.
Routed out ahead of their time, Lazzaro and Karger pulled on oilskins and sea boots and came clumping down from the dormitory directly afterward. They walked together in the direction of the lookout tower. Looking after them from the veranda, Radway saw an arching streak of red drawn across the inky sky as another rocket went up far at sea. Then a lightning flare showed him the storm-beaten schooner yacht under bare poles, hull down on the horizon.