Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926
- Автор: Bailey H. C., Bechdolt Jack
- Год: 1926
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926». Краткое содержание книги:
There was no sleep for me after that.
Querolle, Miss Mary Lee — was she still on that island with her father?
I had often wondered how the Lees were faring there with Captain Fawcett. Of course, I no longer put any stock in Brakely’s insinuations that Berivou, Captain Lee’s mate; Fanier, his engineer, and the others of the yacht’s crew were probably in league with the crooks.
That had been part of his trick to get me aboard the yacht and out to sea before I could discuss my suspicions with the Lees. I was certain that Captain Fawcett was the only enemy of the Lees at Querolle, with the possible exception of Splinters, the galley boy, who probably was dominated by the skipper of the Seabird.
John Vernon, my new friend who was also imprisoned, had told me of giving Miss Lee a warning in the hurried moments before he slipped back aboard the yacht. She would tell her father of this. He would warn his officers and crew. Captain Fawcett and Splinters would be watched closely, and the odds were greatly against the captain. Splinters himself would turn on Captain Fawcett if given half a chance. He had been a friend of Radd, the murdered cook.
And lurking in the background, creeping about the cliffs and peering down upon the little ship in Marble Cove, trailing them whenever they went ashore, was Hippolyte, the deaf mute, with his big hands and powerful limbs.
Hippolyte had given every sign that he was my friend. He was the sort of man who once having bestowed his friendship would cling to it with a doglike devotion. He would understand that I had been the victim of a trick. He knew that the girl must be protected.
No, I wasn’t greatly alarmed as to the welfare of Miss Lee and her father at the moment. Their danger lay in the return of this gang of crooks to Querolle.
There were two or three hours of inactivity, after the stores and provisions were aboard. Then some one for whom they had evidently been waiting came aboard.
“They’re back,” I heard a man say to my guard.
Some of the crew had returned from some mission ashore.
And then they got the Angela Lee under way as quickly as possible.
She went out of the harbor under the power of her engine, and I had an idea that enough gasoline had been put in to enable her to make the trip that way. This gang wouldn’t bother with sail if they didn’t have to.
We were at sea again, bound for Querolle.
There was no indication that they intended to take me out of the hold. Hours went by, hours of stirring about and hours of drowsing. My routine was the same at sea as in port.
They had given me a pillow and a blanket. They gave me plenty of food and cigarettes. The cigarettes left one soft spot in my heart. Only a man who has been in that position, with nerves on edge, with intermingled hope and despair of the future, with a feeling that disaster might fall at any moment, can understand what the cigarettes meant to me. My guard held the match for me whenever I wished to light one. I wasn’t permitted to have matches with me.
Of what went on aboard the Angela Lee all that day and up to midnight I didn’t know, and I am even unable to say whether I was asleep or awake when the big commotion broke out in the passage outside. I know I was lying on the floor, wrapped in the blanket, but sleeping for me had become a series of fits and starts.
I heard feet running in the passage and out again, excited words. I didn’t hear what the words were, but it seemed to me that my guard left with the man who had come tearing in. I got up hurriedly and tried the door. It was locked.
The stir had transferred itself to other parts of the yacht, but the excitement was enough for the sounds of it to reach me. They all seemed to be racing aft — the men from the crew’s quarters over my head. Danger, pregnant in the air, communicated itself even to that isolated hold. I began to hammer on the door with my handcuffed hands.
None answered.
The motion of the Angela Lee was smooth and even, with just the faintest suggestion of a quiet swell on the sea. The danger couldn’t be from wind. I heard no sounds that indicated the pumps were being employed. The possibility that such a stoutly-built craft might spring a leak in that sea was remote, hardly to be considered, as she hadn’t struck anything.
I continued to hammer on the door — and added yells to the din.
And then I smelled it. Smoke.
The pungent odor held a tale of flaming wood, and paint, and oil — and in just a moment the reek of flaming gasoline gained the ascendancy and told me the story.
“Turn me loose!” I yelled, hoping some one would hear. “I know how to fight a fire aboard ship! Hey-y-y! Turn me loose!”
No answer. All hands were aft, fighting the fire, which was somewhere near the engine — and the gasoline tanks, too!
I could hear muffled cries. I strained my ears, but could not hear the noise of the gas engine. The engine was out of business, and the Angela Lee was drifting. I yelled myself hoarse, but none answered.
The only sound I heard close by was when men came into the passage to get chemical fire extinguishers which hung on the walls there. They paid no heed to my clamor, and left me there alone.
The smoke was increasing in volume.
Disaster moved swiftly. The passage of time became an unknown quantity for me, and I couldn’t have said whether a minute or an hour elapsed between the outbreak of the fire and the explosion of the gasoline tanks. There were two explosions.
The Angela Lee lurched violently, going down at the head and righting herself slowly. I realized, still beating on the door and crying out, that the smoke had become almost suffocating.
It seemed as though I had been forgotten by every one. I supposed that John Vernon was in the same fix.
Chapter XXV
Captain of the Raft
There must have been a rush for the boat deck, judging by the cries that now filled the night and which came to me through the passage and the open transom.
And then, as I waited for some sign that I wasn’t to be abandoned, a kind of a frenzy came over me — the frenzy that comes to a doomed man denied a fighting chance for his life. I shrieked, and hauled at my irons until the flesh of my wrists and ankles was cut.
I don’t know how long it was after that that Julius Brakely opened the door.
I had kept up an incessant clamor against the stout walls and door and my hands were bleeding.
“Sinking,” he said. He stared at me, as though doubtful of my identity.
I calmed down the instant the door was open. An opportunity to struggle for his life has that effect on a man. I was a sailor again, and I was on a ship going down, and I seemed to realize that I was the most capable sailor aboard.
“How’s she sinking?” I asked, as Brakely got at my irons with the keys.
“Stern first,” he said. “Gas tanks went up — tore a hole in the side, below the water line.”
I could now feel the yacht settling astern. My irons were off and Brakely and I were rushing down the passage.
“Where’s Vernet?” I demanded, not forgetting even then to conceal John Vernon’s identity.
“He’s in one of the boats,” Brakely told me. “We had him quartered aft — turned him loose before the explosion. You’ll go in the other boat. We want a real sailor in each boat — understand?”
The smoke was thick, but the fire hadn’t come very far forward yet. We reached the forward deck, Brakely first.
“Well, I’ll—”
That was all he said, and he began shooting out to sea just as I got to the deck.
Both boats were in the water, and the men in them were rowing as fast as they could away from the doomed yacht.