The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries

There was cunning on his face as he looked toward the thatched lean-to where I slept. And I knew then that he had made his decision, finally. He had decided that the three of us could live no longer on this island. It might come to me tomorrow, or next week. He might use a club, or report to her that I’d drowned accidentally.

Or he might not wait at all.

He was looking around. Cat-like, he moved toward the fire. From the old edges of the fire he picked up a stick. It was thicker than my wrist. Its end had been burned to a fire-hardened point.

With a sound that I didn’t recognize as coming from my own throat, I threw myself out of the lean-to as he came toward me with the spear upraised.

He cursed, changed his mind, swung the stick as a club.

I stumbled and fell. I rolled away. He was in a momentary fury, beyond all reason, goaded with the knowledge that he had actually put dark thought to action and could not turn back now.

I grabbed a club, larger than Corson’s, from the wood pile. I met him snarling. The clubs crashed together. We both fell back, circled. Panting, sweat rolling down our faces and naked chests, we went at each other savagely.

This was the picture of us that Peri received. She had wakened, and she stood looking at us.

As I fell back from Corson’s heavy blows, I glimpsed her face.

For a brief instant I could visualize what she was seeing. I saw the change hit her face as a horrible understanding came to her.

Corson s swing brought his club against mine. The weapon almost left my hands. I continued to fall back. She was out of range of my vision now. All I could see was Corson’s face, the exultation in it as he sensed triumph.

He was less cautious, and I was filled with a sudden cunning. He was stronger, but I was faster. I invited a blow by appearing to be off balance. When he swung, I slipped to one side, and I had him.

I laid the stick along the side of his head. He fell, legs twisting.

He went scrabbling away like a killer crab. He seized his club, tried to rise, and I knocked the weapon out of his hands.

He fell hack and lay gasping, looking up at me.

“Corson,” I said, “you’re not king any longer.”

“You’re the boss, Danton. All the way the boss,” he panted. “Danton! She’s gone!”

I thought at first it was a trick. I stepped back, still watching him. Then I glanced over my shoulder.

He hadn’t been lying.

“Peri!”

There was no answer from her. I forgot Corson for the moment.

I couldn’t see her around the edges of the clearing. I moved down the pathway we d worn toward the beach.

I didn’t see her there, either.

Not at first.

I was in water to my waist when Corson grabbed me from behind.

“You fool,” he said, “you’d never catch her.”

Together we stumbled backward to the beach. I hated him as I’d never hated before, and I knew the feeling was mutual. I knew too that we’d live in uneasy truce until the day in the indeterminate future when someone else fished these waters and saw our smoke column and came to investigate. There was no reason now for blood letting and neither Corson nor I wanted to face the future alone on the island.

We stood and watched, and as the golden head crested the low, murmuring waves, we called to her.

I shouted, the sound an agony in the bright night, until I had no voice left.

She was out of sight then, and she would keep going. Until she reached that spot far, far out where the part of her known as Marty Janus had gone down.

Finally, Corson and I stood under the vast sky in silence, not looking at each other, thinking of the way we had killed her, and of the weapon we’d used...