I put my hand on the carpet. It was hot all right: too hot. I opened the cabin door and put my hand on the planks of the deck. They were so hot they nearly raised a blister.
"Good grief!" I exclaimed. "You're right. The damned ship is on fire somewhere below." I caught her arm and pulled her out on to the deck. "You're not staying in there. Come on, kid, keep behind me. We'll take a quick look and then get up on the top deck." I checked my wrist-watch. It was five minutes to nine. "Jack'll be out in five minutes."
As we moved along the deck, Paula said, "Shouldn't we raise the alarm? The ship's full of people, Vic."
"Not yet. Later," I said.
At the far end of the deck was a door set in the bulkhead. I paused outside to listen, turned the handle and eased the door open.
It was hotter than an oven in full blast in there, and oil in the paint on the walls was beginning to run. It was a nice room : big, airy and well-furnished: half-office, half-lounge. Big windows on either side of the room commanded views of Orchid City beach and the Pacific. A solitary desk-light threw a pool of light on the desk and part of the carpet. The rest of the room was in darkness. Overhead came the sounds of dance music and the soft swish of moving feet.
I entered the room, my gun pushed forward. Paula came in after me and closed the door. There was a smell of burning and smoke, and as I moved to the desk I saw the carpet was smouldering and smoke was coming in little wisps from under the wainscoting.
"The fire's right below us," I said. "Keep by the door. The floor mightn't be safe. This looks like Sherrill's office."
I went through the desk drawers, not knowing what I was looking for, but looking. In one of the bottom drawers I found a square-shaped envelope. One glance told me it was Anona Freedlander's missing dossier. I folded it and shoved it into my hip pocket.
"Okay," I said. "Let's get out of here."
Paula said in a small voice, "Vic! What's that—behind the desk?"
I peered over the back of the desk. Something was there: something white: something that could have been a man. I shifted the desk-lamp so the light fell directly on it.
I heard Paula gasp.
It was Sherrill. He lay flat on his back, his teeth bared in a mirthless grin. His clothes were smouldering, and his hands, lying on the burning carpet, had a burned-up, scorched look. He had been shot through the head at close range. One side of his skull had been smashed in.
Even as I leaned forward to stare at him, there was a sudden whoosing sound, and two long tongues of flame spurted out from the floor and licked across his dead face.
II
The little Wop stood in the doorway, grinning at us. The blunt-nosed automatic in his small, brown fist centred on my chest. The dark, ugly little face was shiny with sweat, and the dark little eyes were shiny with hate. He had come silently from nowhere.
"Give me that," he said, and held out his hand. "What you put in your pocket—quick!"
I was holding my gun down by my side. I knew I couldn't get it up and shoot at him before he got me. I pulled the dossier out of my hip pocket with my left hand. As I did so I saw the sudden change of expression in his eyes: hatred to viciousness. The trigger-finger turned white as he took up the slack. I saw all this in a split second, knowing he was going to shoot.
Paula threw a chair forward to crash on the floor between the Wop and me. His eyes shifted and so did his aim. The gun went off; the slug missed me by about two feet. I was firing at him before he had time to get his eyes off the chair and on to me again. The three bullets cut across his chest like sledge hammers. He was hurled back against the wall; the automatic falling from his hand; his face twisting hideously.
"Out!" I said to Paula.
She bent and snatched up the Wop's automatic, and jumped for the door. As I ran across the floor I felt it give under me. There was a sudden loud cracking of breaking timber. Heat came up at me as if I were running across red-hot boiler plates. The floor sagged and gave. For one horrible moment I thought I was going down with the floor, but the fitted carpet held just long enough for me to reach the door and the deck.
There was a terrific crash inside Sherrill's office. I caught one brief glimpse of the furniture sliding into a red, roaring furnace, then Paula caught hold of my arm, and together we raced down the deck.
Tar was oozing out of the hot planks, and smoke was mounting.
Out of the darkness, half-way down the deck, someone took a shot at us. The slug crashed through the wooden partition behind me and ruined a mirror in one of the cabins with a crash of breaking glass.
I shoved Paula behind me, conscious that my white clothes made me look like a phantom out for a night's haunting.
More gunfire. I felt a slug zip past my face. The gun-flash came from around a lifeboat. I thought I could see a shadowy figure crouching against the rails. I fired twice. The second shot nailed him. He came staggering out from behind the boat and flattened out on the hot deck.
"Keep going," I said.
We ran on. The deck was so hot now it burned through our shoes. Somehow we reached the ladder leading to the upper deck. Above the roar of the flames we could hear yells and screams and the crash of breaking glass.
We scrambled on to the upper deck. The deck-rail was packed with men and women in evening-dress, yelling their heads off. Smoke made a black pall over the ship, and it was almost as hot up there as on the lower deck.
I could see three or four of the ship's officers trying to get the panic under control. They might just as well have tried to slam a revolving door.
"Jack must be somewhere around by now," I shouted to Paula. "Keep near me, and let's get to the rail."
We fought our way through the struggling mob. A man grabbed Paula and swung her away from me. I don't know what he thought he was doing. His face was twitching and his eyes wild. He clawed at me frantically, and I punched him in the jaw, sending him reeling, and then pushed and shoved my way to Paula again.
A girl with the top half of her dress torn off, fell on my neck and screamed in my face. Her breath, loaded with whisky fumes, nearly blistered my skin. I tried to shove her off, but her arms threatened to strangle me. Paula pulled her away, and boxed her ears hard. The girl went staggering into the crowd, screaming like a train whistle.
We reached the deck-rail. Spread out all over the sea and coming in all directions was an armada of small boats. The sea was alive with them.
"Hey! Vic!!"
Kerman's voice rose above the uproar, and we saw him standing on the deck-rail, not far from us, clinging to the awning and kicking the crazy crowd away from him whenever they threatened to tear him from his hold.
"Come on, Vic!"
I pushed Paula ahead of me. We reached him after a struggle, and after Paula nearly had her dress ripped off her back.
Kerman was grinning excitedly.
"Did you have to set fire to the ship?" he bawled. "Talk about panic! What's got into these punks? They'll be off weeks before the tub goes down."
"Where's your boat?" I panted, and shoved an elderly roué out of my way as he struggled to climb over the rail. "Take it easy, pop," I told him. "It's too wet to swim. All the boats in the world are coming."
"Right here," Kerman said, pointing below him. He swung Paula up on to the rail while I struggled to keep the customers from following her. He guided her feet on to a rope ladder hanging down the ship's side, and she descended like a veteran sailor.
"Not you, madam," Kerman yelled, as a girl fought her way towards him. "This is a private party. Try a little farther along."
The girl, hysterical and screaming, threw herself against him and wrapped her arms around his legs.
"For Pete's sake!" he yelled. "You'll have my pants off! Hi, Vic, give me a hand! This dame's crazy."
I swung myself over the rail and on to the ladder.
"I thought you liked them that way. Bring her along if she's all that attached to you."
I don't know how he got rid of her, but as I dropped into the boat he came sliding down the ladder and nearly knocked me overboard as he landed.
"Take it easy," I said, and grabbed him to steady him.
Mike had started the outboard engine and the boat began to draw away from the ship. We had to pick our way. The number of boats coming out to the Dream
Ship was somethi
ng to see. It looked like Dunkirk all over again.
"Nice work!" I said, clapping Mike on his broad back. "You guys timed it about right." I looked back at the Dream
Ship. The lower
deck was on fire now, and smoke was pouring from her sides. "I wonder how much she was insured for?"
"Did you touch her off?" Kerman asked.
"No, you dope! Sherrill's dead. Someone shot him and set fire to the ship. If we hadn't spotted him when we did he would never have been found."
"A pretty expensive funeral," Kerman said, looking blank.
"Not if the ship's insured. You talk to Paula. I want to look at this," and I pulled Anona
Freedlander's dossier out of my hip pocket.
Kerman gave me a flashlight.
"What is it?" he asked.
I stared at the first page of the dossier, scarcely believing my eyes.
Paula said, "Vic; hadn't we better decide what we're going to do?"
"Do? Jack and I are going right after Anona. I want you to tell Mifflin about Sherrill. Get him to come out to Maureen Crosby's cliff house fast. It's going to finish to-night."
She stared at him.
"Wouldn't it be better for you to see Mifflin?"
"We haven't the time. If Anona's at Maureen's place she's in trouble."
Kerman leaned forward.
"What is all this about?"
I waved the dossier at him.
"It's right here, and that lug Mifflin didn't think it important enough to tell me. Since 1944, Anona had endocarditis. I told you they were trying to keep a cat in a bag. Well, it's out now."
"Anona's got a wacky heart?" Kerman said, gaping at me. "You mean Janet Crosby, don't you?"
"Listen to the description they give of Anona," I said. "Five foot; dark; brown eyes; plump. Work that out."
"But it's wrong. She's tall and fair," Kerman said. "What are you talking about?"
Paula was on to it.
"She isn't Anona Freedlander. That's it, isn't it?"
"You bet she isn't," I said excitedly. "Don't you see? It was Anona who died of heart failure at Crestways! And the girl in Salzer's sanatorium is Janet Crosby!"
III
We stood at the foot of the almost perpendicular cliff and stared up into the darkness. Far out to sea a great red glow in the sky pin-pointed the burning Dream
Ship. A mushr
oom of smoke hung in the night sky.
"Up there?" Kerman said. "What do you think I am— a monkey?"
"That's something you'd better discuss with your father," I said, and grinned in the darkness. "There's no other way. The front entrance is guarded by two electrically-controlled gates, and all the barbed wire in the world. If we're going to get in, this is the way."
Kerman drew back to study die face of the cliff.
"Three hundred feet if it's an inch," he said, awe in his voice. "Will I love every foot of it!"
"Well, come on. Let's try, anyway."
The first twenty feet was easy enough. Big boulders formed a platform at the foot of the cliff; they were simple enough to climb. We stood side by side on a flat rock while I sent the beam of my torch up into the darkness. The jagged face of the cliff towered above us, and, almost at the top, bulged out, forming what seemed an impassable barrier.
"That's the bit I like," Kerman said, pointing. "Up there, where it curves out. Getting over that's going to be fun: a tooth and finger-nail job."
"Maybe it's not so bad as it looks," I said, not liking it myself. "If we had a rope . . ."
"If we had a rope I'd go quietly away some place and hang myself," Kerman said gloomily. "It would save time and a lot of hard work."
"Pipe down, you pessimistic devil!" I said sharply, and began to edge up the cliff face. There were foot and handholds, and if the cliff hadn't been perpendicular it would have been fairly easy to climb. But, as it was, I was conscious that one slip would finish the climb and me. I'd fall straight out and away from the cliff face. There would be no sliding or grabbing to save myself.
When I had climbed about fifty feet I paused to get my breath back. I couldn't look down. The slightest attempt to lean away from the cliff face would upset my balance, and I'd fall.
"How are you getting on?" I panted, pressing myself against the surface of the cliff and staring up into the star-studded sky.
"As well as can be expected," Kerman said with a groan. "I'm surprised I'm still alive. Do you think this is dangerous or am I just imagining it?"
I shifted my grip on a knob of rock and hauled myself up another couple of feet.
"It's only dangerous if you fall; then probably it's fatal," I said.
We kept moving. Once I heard a sudden rumble of fall-ling rock and Kerman catch his breath sharply. My hair stood on end.
"Keep your eye on some of these rocks," he gasped. "One of them's just come away in my hand."
"I'll watch it."
About a quarter-way up I came suddenly and unexpectedly to a four-foot ledge and I hoisted myself up on it, leaned my back against the cliff face and tried to get my breath back. I felt cold sweat on my neck and back. If I had known it was going to be this bad I would have tried the gates. It was too late now. It might be just possible to climb up, but quite impossible to climb down.
Kerman joined me on the ledge. His face was glistening with sweat, and his legs seemed shaky.
"This has cooled me off mountain climbing," he panted. "One time I was sucker enough to imagine it'd be fun. Think we'll get over the bulge?"
