Collection of Stories

Popular Detective, September, 1950

Chapter I Radio Warning

Crisply the voice came over the loud speaker:

“That is all,” Lieutenant Steve Koski repeated silently, snapping the toggle on the two-way from Listen to Talk. Just “some small craft” adrift in boiling whitecaps on a night so wind-lashed even the cross-bay ferries were taking a terrific beating!

Maybe some late-season eel-fisher-man overturned in the ugly channel chop. Or perhaps only a reckless kid whose leaky scow got swamped in the tide rip. Nothing really important, the dispatcher’s tone had indicated. No hot headline police stuff, like a Broadway theatre stickup or a Third Avenue bar battle!

Koski was burning up at the casual way the radio room at headquarters handled such relay calls. As if it were only the big crimes — and as far as the Harbor Precinct was concerned — only the big seagoing ships that mattered. The particular small craft referred to in the message might not have looked like much to that tugboat captain, high and dry in his pilot house. But it would have been pretty important to anybody who happened to be on the small craft when it went down. In Koski’s book, any boat was as big as the people on board, and human lives were all the same size.

Of course this might be a false alarm. Harbor Squad patrols were used to shagging after floating fruit crates or waterlogged mattesses somebody’d mistaken for drifting boats. But this was a tough time to be doing it.

It was his own dumb fault he was out here at all, in weather a walrus would avoid if he could, Koski reminded himself. He could have accepted that proffered promotion. He’d now be sitting pretty in a padded desk-chair instead of trying to keep his footing on a desk that buckled like a sunflshing bronc.

But he always had liked saltwater work better than paper work. Besides, the Commissioner’s offer of a captain’s gold badge, instead of a lieutenant’s silver one, hadn’t mentioned what would happen to Sergeant Mulcahey. It would take more than a pay raise to break up the roughest, toughest two-man crew on New York harbor’s six hundred miles of waterfront.

He leaned close to the mike. “Patrol Nine, checking,” he said — and swung the wheel to starboard.

In the dim glow from the binnacle his face had the weather-chiseled quality of a stone gargoyle, accustomed to the worst that wind and water could offer. His close-cropped hair, beneath his uniform cap, might have been cut from the frayed ends of a new hawser. “Better get your nose wet, Sarge.”

The bulking shadow beside him stirred resentfully. “Would you so kindly explain why some people get all the breaks, Steve?” Sergeant Joe Mulcahey tucked a towel inside the collar of his slicker. “Only five minutes and we’d be off duty. Now we got to play Ring-Around-the-Rosy with that rotten channel chop just to salvage a rowboat for some rich poop who is prob’ly sittin’ aboard this palatial yacht right this minute, a highball in one hand an’ a choice chick in the other.”

“You’ve got more beefs than a Chicago packing house.” Koski squinted at the amber beads strung across the slim neck of the distant Point; the riding lights of schooners, yawls and power cruisers at the Neptune Yacht Club. “It costs these upper-bracket boys at least a hundred clams per day to spend their time on the Sound; you get paid for doing the same.”

Mulcahey stepped out into the spray; his round face glistened like a wet tomato in the Vigilant’s running light:

“Call this doin’ the same thing? Gettin’ soaked to the shorts? Imibin’ sea-water instead of bonded likker? Putting in overtime with no extra pay on account some dumb clunk forgets to secure his dinghy?”

“Your crystal ball must have spray shields, if you can see a dinghy adrift at this distance.”

“What I can see is I am going to have to stand up my doll tonight — whilst we go chasin’ after a wild goose.”

“A nice night for geese, Sarge.”

“You ask me, ’tis a nice night for homicide. That I wouldn’t mind so much. Putting in overtime — if we was after a floater, say, or grappling for some stool-pigeon who took a dive with his feet in a concrete block. But this huntin’ after a boat that’s gone adrift — that’s for children.”

Koski switched on the searchlight, pointed the long finger of the light across the churning froth of the channel, let it feel its way along the jagged rocks of the windward shore. “I hope there were no kids in that, Sarge. See her, beyond those pilings?”

The white finger touched a spot of pale blue, bobbing in the lashing surf between barnacled boulders.

“Eyes like a goonie you have, Steve. That’ll be one of them plastic beauties they advertise as non-sinkable.”

“She’s not exactly sunk.” Koski slowed the hundred and eighty horses beneath the Vigilant’s motor-hatch. “Sure stove-in, though.”

Mulcahey ducked a dollop of water sloshing over the coaming. “I take it back about other people getting the breaks. We won’t be held up. at all, at all. My doll will not bawl me out for standing her up, either. We just shortwave our report.”

“Report my stern.” Koski threw the clutch to neutral. “We’re going in after her.”

“ ’Twill make kindling of us, Steve! Thrashing around in those rocks! There’s no more’n two feet of water!”

“It’ll be enough. Lash a grappling iron to a life-ring. Let the wind run it in.” Koski gauged the sweep of the tide, the force of the gale. “I’m curious to know how a dink from the club managed to drift in there. Current ought to have carried it out in the Sound if it broke loose from any of the yachts.” “Maybe ’tis second sight you have an’ not gull-eyes, at all. Always imagin-in’ some fidoodling. The dinghy prob’ly went ashore at high tide.” The sergeant squatted by the transom with a three-pronged hook and life preserver.

“Tug reported her adrift ten minutes ago,” Koski reminded him. “Pay your line out fast.”

He maneuvered the thirty-footer like a jockey coming through by the rail at the head of the stretch. The life-ring hit the water, was driven to leeward as if it was under power.

The ring bumped the bobbing blue hull. The hook took hold. Mulcahey hauled in the dinghy.

Koski helped the sergeant empty the tiny egg-shelled craft, hoist it into the cockpit.

“Sea-Pup!” Mulcahey read the lettering on the stem. “The names some nitwits give boats!”

“Yair. This pup got hurt, Joe.” Koski knelt with his trouble-light.

“Don’t look like those holes come from bein’ smashed on rocks, for a fact.” The sergeant scowled. “More as if they were stove in with a boat hook.” He pointed to inch-wide wounds in the shiny plastic hull.

“What would you say made that?” Koski held the trouble-lamp close to the white nylon rope which ran around the dinghy’s gunwale.

Mulcahey gawked at the blob of crimson smearing the rone where it coiled into a knot just above the lettering: Pup. “For a guess and without no tests from the Broome Street lab boys, I would say that was prob’ly not pooch blood. Indeed it’s not second sight you’ve got, either. ’Tis a super-human sense of smell. To sniff out somethin’ fishy about this rowboat!”

“Right sizeable fish.” Koski tapped one of the oarlocks where red glinted from the bronze plate. “Or else whoever was rowing was hurt bad.”

He peered across the boiling rip toward the opposite shore. “If she was sunk this side, no telling where she came from. But if she got those holes in her bottom across the channel, that’s about where she started her drift.” He pointed.

“No yachts over there,” Mulcahey said. “Nothin’ except Allied Diesel Works. Hulburt’s sand and gravel dock. And — the Beacon Light.”

Koski went forward, got the police boat underway. “Some of the hands off the club yachts spent their off-time in the Beacon, don’t they?”

“Spend their pay, too.” Mulcahey nodded. “Would it be your notion one of the engineers or stewards got a little schwocked, maybe?”

“Haven’t any notion.” Koski sent the Vigilant smashing into the chop with a bone in her teeth and feathers of spray streaming from her pilot house. “All I’ve got is a dink somebody tried to sink. Plus a glob of blood somebody might have figured would wash off if the boat did sink. I don’t know what it adds up to. It doesn’t look like the score of a tiddlywinks game.”

Chapter II Barroom-Fight

Abruptly the bedlam in the Beacon died to a hush as Koski stalked in, alone.

The noisy group at the far end of the bar became abruptly silent. A belligerent argument between a drunken youth in dungarees and a stringy blonde in a low-cut dress, broke off unfinished. The off-key yowling of an alcoholic quartette, in a booth near the door, trailed away in discord. Even the juke, wailing the final notes of “Drop Dead,” became quiet Everybody eyed the lieutenant’s cap.

Koski’s long slicker said “cop.” The cap said “Harbor Squad.” Ordinary patrolmen caused no stir along the waterfront. Francy’s customers had learned, through hard experience, to respect men of the Harbor Precinct. Men wearing that cap seldom interfered in mere barroom brawls.

Bull-necked, hog-jowled Francy himself broke the spell.

He wiped his hands on a dirty apron, sidled along the bar, mopping up beer slop with a filthy rag.

“Crummy night, Lieutenant.” His voice held no welcome. Uniforms were bad for trade.

“Little breezy, yair.” Koski gave the customers the once-over. They glared back.

He went to the bar. “Know who belongs to a yacht called Sea-Pup?”

He directed the question to Francy, kept his eyes on the back-bar.

The proprietor shook his head. “Any you scuts know a craft called Sea-Pup?”

A rumble of negatives answered him. But in the mirror Koski saw heads down at the end of the bar swivel toward a keg-chested banty with long arms and a close-shaven bullet-head. He glowered pugnaciously at Koski’s back.

“What goes, Francy! You op’ratin’ without a license or somep’n? Just because a John Law crashes the Joint, we all got to hold our breaths?! Set ’em up in the same alley!”

Francy frowned uneasily. “Cornin’ right up, Buzz. Two Jamaick, one sloe, one rye, four lights.”

Koski murmured: “Make mine Scotch and tap.”

Swiftly the proprietor slapped a whisky glass in front of him. “Any special brand, Lieutenant?”

The barrel-bodied character hammered the bar with his fist.

“Look at that muckin’ sign over yer cash register, Francy! Says Thirst Come, Thirst Served, don’t it? Well, I got my order in first and my friends ain’t takin’ no back seat for any fuddlin’ badge!”

“Take it easy,” Francy warned, “and you’ll get it constant, Buzz. I’m servin’ one on th’ house.”

Buzz banged the bar with the flat of his palm. Beer glasses jumped. “Rush them drinks, hear me? I ain’t waitin’ on any clabber-brain copperoo!”

Koski strode down the length of the bar.

The group around moved aside to let the Harbor Precinct man pass, shouldered in behind him as he came close to the cocky man with the shaven skull.

Koski kept his voice casual: “Full of fizz and vinegar tonight, aren’t you, bud?”

Buzz stuck out his jaw; fumbled for an empty beer glass on the bar. “I’m mindin’ my own business and buyin’ a few drinks for my pals, and I don’t want no trouble from any bulldozin’ ftatfoot! Hear?”

“Spendin’ free and easy, aren’t you?” Koski cut in. “Hit the jackpot, somewhere?”

Buzz’s right hand dug into the pocket of his soiled ducks, came up with a thick roll. “My own dough! You any right to tell me how to spend it?”

“Depends on how you got it.” Koski watched the beer glass dangling at the edge of the bar. He spoke mildly to Francy, over the shoulders of Buzz’s companions. “I’ll try some of that pinch bottle.”

Buzz stuck out his lower lip. His eyebrows, rust-colored and unshaven, met scowling above the bridge of a flattened nose. “I don’t earn my jack stickin’ my snoot into other folks’ business, like some mugs aroun’ here!”

Koski grabbed the man’s Melton jacket at the top button. He was in too close to use his gun. He didn’t like to go for his automatic unless it was necessary. It didn’t seem necessary at the moment.

He jerked Buzz toward him, crowding him against the bar. “Where do you work, Buster?”

Buzz was caught with his right hand stuffing the money back in his pants. His left elbow was jammed against the bar. He wrenched around, to free it.

“I’m an engineer. Leggo!”

“What ship?” Koski ignored the angry undercurrent of mutterings behind him.

“No ship. Ain’t workin’ now.” Buzz got his right fist free, swung it.

Koski blocked the blow with his elbow. “Just paid off tonight, hah? Where was your last job? Aboard the Sear Pup?”

Buzz snarled: “I never hear of no yacht with that name. You show me any yacht with that name around the Island, I’ll buy you enough Scotch to swim in!” He levered his left arm loose, smashed the beer glass on the bar.

Francy yelled: “Stow that stuff, Buzz!” He banged the pinchbottle in front of Koski.

Buzz jabbed the jagged glass at Koski’s eyes.

The Harbor Squad man swept the whisky bottle off the bar with his right hand, sent it flying. It caught Buzz in the teeth, threw him off balance for a second. Koski seized the engineer’s left wrist, stooping, pivoting!

The wrist came up over his shoulder. So did Buzz, slashing downward in midair with the deadly glass.

Lancing pain bit into Koski’s forearm as Buzz did a no-hands cartwheel up over the bar into the bottles ranged against the mirror.

Before Buzz fell on his head in a mess of busted glass, Koski was going up and over in a one-hand vault.

He landed heavily on Buzz. The engineer was out cold. He lay with his mouth open, his eyes glazed.

Koski wound his fingers in the other’s collar. “Anybody wants a helping of the same potatoes — I’ll meet him up at the end of the bar.” He dragged Buzz along past Francy who kept hollering:

“Who’ll pay for the damage? Who’ll pay the damage?”

Koski bent, felt in Buzz’s pockets.

“Here.” He peeled two twenties off the fat roll. “Take your breakage out of this. He’ll need the rest for cigarette money, where he’s going.”

When Koski got his prisoner back to the Vigilant, Sergeant Mulcahey was working in the cockpit. Mulcahey called: “Love of cheeses, what you got there, Steve?”

Koski clumped down to the float. “Buzzsaw with a few teeth missing.” He dumped the unconscious engineer off his shoulder to the coaming. “Maybe we can get him to humming again if we work him over a little.”

The sergeant laid Buzz on the engine hatch. “Are you sure it would not be better if a medico did the work? This guy looks in very poor shape.”

“Cut his puss diving into a mirror. Broke a couple of choppers when he bounced off the edge of the sink.”

“Either he is a very dumb dodo or else he does not know your rep at that Pier Six stuff, Steve. Or maybe he has enough booze aboard to make him a trifle reckless?”

“He was flying higher than a B-Thirty-Six when I brought him down, Sarge. Bring that ammonia.”

“ ’Twill be more’n smelling salts you’ll need to patch up that tear in your own slicker — and what’s under it.”

Koski felt of his arm. “Stings a bit. Spilled some hooch on it Be all right. Patch it with tape. Rub that cork on his smeller.”

The sergeant shook the ammonia bottle, touched the rubber to the engineer’s nostrils. Buzz didn’t stir.

“Daub iodine on his cuts, sarge. That ought to do it.” Koski went through Buzz’s pockets.

Sailor’s case-knife, razor-sharp; pack of blood-soggy cigarettes; book of matches from Sloppy Joe’s, Avenida Santiago, Habana; another from Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant, New York. Rubber tobacco pouch; no tobacco but a union card made out to Benjamin F. Cotlett, Norfolk, Va., and a folded picture postcard addressed to Buzz Cotlett, c/o Ketch Sea-Dog, Porto Abrillo, Cuba.

That was all except for a trick magnifying glass that showed an enlargement of a naked girl — and sixty-four cents in coin.

Mulcahey poked the glass applicator at a corner of the engineer’s blood-caked mouth.

Buzz moaned. He cursed thickly, opened his eyes.

“My shoulder! You pulled my shoulder outa joint.”

“You’ll have more than a shoulder to worry about,” Koski said.

“Yah! You caught me off guard with that Commando trick. I should have give it to you right off the bat.” Buzz fumbled at his teeth.

Koski hunkered down beside him. “Never heard of the Sea-Pup, hah?”

“Didn’t say that,” Buzz twisted his head to look at the dinghy lying against the transom. “No yacht of that name, I said.”

“How about the Sea-Dog? With a Sea-Pup tagging along behind?”

“So all right, you got me.” The engineer grimaced, propping himself on one elbow. “So you’re gonna beat the tail off me, if I don’t talk. Okay, I’ll talk. What you want me to say?”

“You worked on the ketch? How long?”

“Six, seven months.”

“Who’s the owner?”

“Maury Perris. Do I get to smoke? Or you gonna third me?”

Koski stuck a cigarette in Cotlett’s mouth, lit it. “Sorry if this isn’t your brand.”

Buzz squinted balefully. “What the devil! It’s tobacco.”

“Yair.” The lieutenant rubbed his chin. “This Perris. He the big bustle and leg man?”

“That’s him. Duke of Dames, they call him on Broadway.” Buzz inhaled, coughed, retched.

Mulcahey helped him to the cockpit coaming.

Koski wondered if he was handling this thing right. The wise heads down at Harbor Precinct headquarters would probably have told him the way to handle anything connected with Maury Perris was with gloves on. Koski reflected that it was too bad he’d left his gloves at home.

Perris, the wonder-boy of Neon Alley; the musical comedy maestro who’d rocketed into the public eye with “Undress Parade”; who had his face in more newsreels and on more television sets than the President — always against a backdrop of what his press agent called the “Perris Lovelies.”

Mysterious Maury, the gossip papers dubbed him. Nobody knew where he’d come from, how he got his money. Nobody knew whether he had the millions he claimed or was merely ballyhooing a bluff into a fortune. Young, good-looking, glib, smooth as a silk-stockinged leg — Mysterious Maury.

Koski said to his prisoner, “Must have been a soft touch, working for a boss like that, Cotlett. When did you quit?”

“Tonight.” The face with the flattened nose was shiny with sweat; the voice was sullen instead of truculent. “I didn’t quit, either. He paid me off, with a bonus on account of it’s late in the season to get another job on a pleasure craft.”

“Why’d he fire you?”

Buzz spat out blood. “Well, you see, it’s like this: Mr. Perris wasn’t on the Sea-Dog much. Too busy running his show biz, I guess. Like you say, it was a cincheroo job. We’d be on the club mooring a couple weeks. Then we’d run down to Cuba with some movie tycoons, hit the high spots in Havana, run back up here and play sitting duck another couple weeks.

“Three of us did the work. Jeff Vaugh, he’s the cap; a smart sailorman, Jeff is. Frank Kaalohti, he’s cookee an’ steward, from Honolulu. Frank’s all right, too. And me. All we got to do, most the time, is to be nice to Mrs. Perris. And that ain’t bad!”

Koski nodded to keep the faucet flowing. “Wife stayed on board most of the time, alone?”

Buzz’s fingers hid his mouth. “Well, you see, she wasn’t exactly alone, most of the time. There’s this sidekick of the boss, Mr. Belton. He sort of hung around practically all the while the boss was away. Very cuddly with Mrs. Perris, when he thinks nobody is lookin’ or listenin’.”

Mulcahey grunted: “Does Maury Perris know what goes, behind his back?”

“Well, no. That’s what got Mr. Perris sore tonight, see. Belton is on board with Mrs. Perris; they aren’t expectin’ the Duke until tomorrow night. I’m in the clubhouse ferryin’ out a bucket of icecubes — we run short — and boom! I run smack into the boss, luggin’ his suitcase.

“I guess I looked surprised. Or maybe he’s wise to the setup, because right off lie wants to know who’s on board his ketch. I can’t duck it, because for sure he’s going out there and see for himself. So I tell him.”

Koski stripped off his slicker, got busy with adhesive. The gash in his arm was deep. It probably needed stitching. But it could wait; he had more urgent matters to attend to. “Was Belton’s being aboard news to your boss?”

The engineer’s eyes narrowed: “How would I know? All I know is, Perris got redhot. Said he’d fix Belton’s wagon so it wouldn’t squeak any more. Wanted me to row him right out. I says ‘Whyn’t you wait till the club launch gets back to the float and go out on that, Mr. Perris? You’ll get drenched, in the Sea-Pup, so much spray. Your suitcase’ll get soaked.’

“Well, that tore it, see? He accuses me of bein’ in with ’em — of wanting to get out to the Dog ahead of him and tip ’em off. He hauls out a roll of bills and asks me how much I got comin’. He adds some extra to it and gives me walkin’ papers then and there. Wouldn’t even let me go back to the ketch for my stuff. Said he’d ship it to me.

“Then he rows out to the Sea-Dog by himself. I come up to the avenue, walk down to the Beacon. And that’s all.”

“All,” Koski said, “except why you had enough moola to choke a whale, when you wouldn’t have that much coming to you if you’d drawn no pay since you wore diapers. Why you were so eager to pick a scrap with me when I mentioned the Sea-Pup. Why has the dink got blood all over it? And who tried to sink it by punching holes in it?”

Buzz Cotlett stared. “So! He did kill them, after all? I never thought he really meant it. Honest truth, I didn’t think so. He don’t seem like that kind of a mug at all!”

Koski punched the starter button.

“Let’s go see what kind he is, hah?”

Chapter III Distracted Wife

In the last two hours the wind had increased. Despite Mulcahey’s careful handling, the Vigilant bucked like a rodeo bronc.

Buzz sprawled in the cockpit, his back against the Sea-Pup, his head held between his hands. Koski studied the listing in Lloyds Register of Yachts:

Well, it wasn’t unusual for a man to transfer ownership of his yacht to his wife, Koski told himself. But that Panamanian registry; that was a horse of another collar.

Why would a Broadway personality, a member of the exclusive Neptune Club, prefer to fly the flag of the tiny canal republic instead of his own country’s ensign?

Then, why had the Sea-Dog come to New York in September, after that Havana cruise? Most pleasure craft, about this time, were heading south for Florida waters.

“Which mooring’s the ketch on?” asked Mulcahey.

“Last one,” Buzz spoke as if he had a mouthful of hot spaghetti. “End of the line. Out south.”

Koski said: “What’s with this Belton boy?”

The engineer looked up. “A skunkerino. Useta be a professional wrestler. Big-a da muscle. Likes to pose around in swim trunks. I think he wears a chest wig.”

“What’s he work at, nowadays?”

Buzz held out one hand, palm up. “Mrs. Perris, mostly. He eats for free on the Sea-Dog. He wouldn’t spend a nickel to see an earthquake. Frank says he’s a nixy-never for tips.”

The patrol boat swung inside moored yachts, pitching uneasily on their buoys. Only a small sloop and one bridge-decked sport-fisherman showed lights below. Three blue bulbs on the club mast glowed ghostlike a hundred feet to leeward.

The Sea-Dog was dark, except for the pale spark of her riding light.

Mulcahey slanted in toward her starboard quarter. “Give ’em a hail, Steve?”

“No,” Koski ordered. “Run alongside.”

The Vigilant rubbed her black nose against the ketch’s flank.

Koski went up on the foredeck with a hand torch.

“Hold her, Sarge.”

He stepped across to the Sea-Dog’s cockpit. “Anybody aboard?”

No answer. But the companionway was open. Below the deck shone a dim radiance.

Queer way to leave a yacht. Cabin unlocked. All hands ashore.

Koski went down.

A galley. Unwashed dishes. Main cabin. Dirty dishes on the gimbal-swung table. Cigarette smoke. And a queer, sweetly sickening smell that was an offense to the nostrils.

On the carpeted floor, beside one of the built-in bunks, was the torn coat of a girl’s pajamas. Gauzy, pink silk. Collar ripped. Buttons off. And one red, high-heeled slipper.

The glow came from a stateroom, forward on the port side. It hadn’t been visible at the angle from which the Vigilant approached.

Koski moved warily toward it. From behind the door, someone screamed:

“No, no, no, Maury! Don’t! PLEASE, MAURY!!!”

She crouched against the head of a big, double bed. All she had on was the pajama pants to match the torn jacket, but she hugged a pillow tightly in front of her.

Her dark eyes bulged with terror. A sleek mane of chestnut hair fell tousled across her face. Her lips made a scarlet O in her bronze-tanned face.

Koski looked at the disorder of feminine clothes on the chair at the end of the bed. “Expecting your husband, Mrs. Perris?”

She nodded dumbly. Then she whispered. “Who are you?”

“Police. Harbor Patrol. Koski, Lieutenant. Where’s Perris?”

“He — went to the club.” The fear remained etched on her face. “Has anything bad — happened?”

“You tell me.” He heard a dull thump, as if a rowboat bumped the hull.

“Maury’s out of his mind!” She tossed her head to get the hair away from her eyes. “He came aboard while I was asleep. Ham was here. I heard a terrific battle in the cabin. Maury was beating Ham’s brains out with a pistol. I tried to stop my husband. He came at me like a maniac, ripped my pajamas, called me all kinds of vile names, struck me. That’s all I remember — until I came to a minute ago. I thought he was coming back to kill me too.”

The muffled thumping sounded once more. It wasn’t from the hull, Koski decided. “Ham? The wrestler boy?”

“Yes.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “My husband accused me of — two-timing him.”

“No-o-o!” Koski was sardonic. “Where’s your crew?”

“The engineer went ashore. Aren’t the others here?” She closed her eyes, leaned against the bed as if she was about to keel over.

“Get some duds on.” Koski stepped out of the stateroom, listening. The bumping came from the crew’s quarters, up in the bow. “Make it fast.” He let his flash-beam precede him.

The forecastle was a cramped space with low headroom. In one of the pipe-berths lay a trussed-up giant with blood on his forehead and a sock in his mouth. He wore blue corduroys, a blue jersey, sneakers. His ankles were tied to the pipe-frame of the berth with canvas sail-stops. He was thumping his skull against the bulkhead. Koski cut the gag binding, jerked out the sock.

Belton let out a croak: “Did you get the dirty buzzard? Where is he?”

The lieutenant used his knife on the canvas strips around Belton’s wrists. Then he used the strips to wipe blood off the wrestler’s forehead. Belton put up his hands, pushed Koski away.

“Never mind. I’ll be all right.”

Koski pursed his lips. “Think so?”

The big man scowled. “I wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t come aboard before that bloodthirsty buzzard got back. He nearly killed me. Only reason he didn’t was he wanted to take his time about finishing me off.” He peered up, puzzled. “How’d you hear about it?”

Koski was curt. “Haven’t heard all I want to, yet. For instance, no marks on you. Where’d all the blood come from?”

“I slugged Maury in the snoot. That’s where the blood came from.” Belton got his ankles freed. He slid out of the bunk. He was inches taller than Koski. His shoulders bulked like a bull’s, beneath the blue jersey. “What’s the idea, putting the quiz on me?”

Koski pointed at the bunk. “Funny his nosebleed didn’t get any gore on the bedding.” He made a grab for the neck of Belton’s jersey. “None on your shirt, either.”

Belton struck at the lieutenant’s arm: “What are you strong-arming me for? I’m the injured party!”

Koski jolted him with a short-arm to the chops.

The wrestler wrapped his arms around Koski’s waist, lifted him off the cabin floor. Koski’s toes barely touched the planking. His ribs were being crushed in a paralyzing bear hug. Koski decided it was no time to be dainty. He jabbed stiff fingers at Belton’s nose. Fingertips caught the wrestler’s nostrils, forced his head back.

Belton’s hold relaxed. He stumbled backward, twisted away, put his hands to his face, whimpering.

Koski poked him in the pit of the stomach to straighten him up. “Stop blubbering. If you don’t come through quick with the low-down about what happened on this tub, I’ll make you squeal louder than that. One way or another — you name it.”

He shoved the wrestler aft.

Through the open port in the Sea-Dog’s main cabin came the hollow hoarseness of the Vigilant’s loudspeaker:

Mulcahey bellowed above the wind. “Hear that, Lieutenant?”

Koski put his face to the porthole. “Tell ’em we’ve already got hold of one end of that line. We’ll follow it up.” That was another of headquarter’s angles that always irked him; the big shields downtown always seemed to pay more attention to dead bodies than live people. Koski looked at it differently; if a man was dead enough to float, he’d wait for you to come and get him. A human in danger might not be able to wait for help.

He wasn’t quite sure how pressing the peril was, here on the ketch. But he could sense its close presence from the frightened glances Sydna Perris shot at Ham Belton.

The wrestler huddled against one end of a main-cabin berth; his face was slack-muscled with fear, but there was still some bluster in his voice.

“You’ve no right to keep me here on board, against my will.”

Koski eyed him bleakly. “I’m not keeping you. I didn’t tie you up. Remember? I cut you loose. You can go ashore any time you like. It’ll be a sweet swim. I’ll have a resuscitator ready to pump air into you when they drag you ashore.”

Sydna Perris cried: “Why don’t you find that — floating man and use it on him! Maybe it’s Maury!”

Belton nodded heavily. “Be just like that neurotic buzzard to put us in a jam by doing the Dutch.”

Koski picked up the cowhide suitcase that stood by the lavatory door. “You two act like you’re rehearsing a duet in double-talk. Here’s a jealous husband catches his wife alone with his best friend. You say he beat you up. You claim he went away but you can’t say why. Your story is he was coming back to cut your gizzards out... but both of you are alive. And Perris hasn’t showed. What makes you so sure he’s dead?”

Sydna retorted angrily: “I’m not so sure! He went ashore in the dinghy. Maybe it tipped over. Maybe he’s still alive. You should hurry and find him before it’s too late to help him — instead of browbeating us!”

“You don’t know why he went ashore. You can’t tell whether he got there or not. Still, you seem pretty sure he’s drifting around up there by the Causeway. You’re a big help.”

Belton growled: “I’ve told you all I know. Maury got excited about my being here alone with Sydna. He went clean off his rocker.”

“Don’t give me that broken record routine again.” Koski shook the suitcase. It was light. He opened it. It was empty, except for another, whiff of that queer, sickeningly sweet odor. “Perris comes to spend a weekend on his yacht. Brings along a suitcase. What happened to the stuff that was in it?”

Belton snorted scornfully. “You going to blame us for everything Maury did? He brought the luggage aboard. I never even noticed the blame thing until just now. How would we know when he unpacked, or what he did with his things?”

Koski said: “Things. Yair.” He opened the lavatory door. Linoleum-covered floorboards around the toilet had been pulled out, exposing piping and the curved planking of the hull.

“Who’s the plumber?” he asked.

Sydna cried irritably: “Captain Vaugh did that. He thought a valve was leaking.”

“Um.”

There was plenty queer about the Sea-Dog, but it wasn’t valves. Panamanian registry. Trip to Havana. Wrong-way Corrigan business about coming north when everybody else was going south. Guy who seemed to have gobs of money, still nobody knew how he got it. To top it, the stove-in dinghy — and a dead man out there in the darkness somewhere.

Koski looked in the galley. Behind the door was a white steward’s jacket. In one pocket, a bank book. Seaman’s Savings Bank. In account with Frank Kaalohti. $204 balance. Regular weekly deposits.

Koski stuck the bank book in his slicker. The couple in the cabin weren’t in a position to see what he was doing.

He went up to the cockpit. “Bring that buzzsaw on board, Sarge.” He stood by the bowline Mulcahey had cleated to the ketch. “There’s a couple more Kilkenny cats down below, Joe. Don’t think there’s much yowl left in ’em. But don’t let either of ’em get behind you.”

The engineer crawled painfully from the police boat’s forward deck to the Sea-Dog.

Mulcahey followed. “You towing us in, Steve?”

“No. Going in, myself. To the club. After the steward and captain. Then I’ll slide over and look for that floater.”

He crossed to the Vigilant, cast off, backed away, swung the black nose toward the three blue lights on the Neptune Club mast.

The northwester was a half gale now; the moored yachts heeled over under bare spars.

Chapter IV Runaway Ketch

Deftly Koski brought the Vigilant beside the club float, put out lines, went up the gangplank to the graveled walk with its whitewashed stones.

A swingy trumpet hit a high jive note above a soft-stringed guitar background in the club diningroom. The long, low clubhouse was mellow with light. This would be the Saturday night party for club members and guests. Koski thought of a dead man, dancing in the channel chop.

He went around to a screened veranda. Half a dozen shadowy figures sat in the gloom, rocking, talking. The crewman’s porch. He called:

“Captain Vaugh?”

A gruff bass query: “Who wants him?”

“Harbor Police.”

The movement of the rocking chairs ceased. There were low murmurings. One figure got up, pushed open the screen door, came out.

A tall, rawboned hulk of a seafaring man. Sharp beak of a nose. Steel-framed spectacles. Iron gray hair.

The man asked sourly, “Did Perris trim the lovebirds’ feathers?”

Koski started back toward the float. “When’d you see Perris last?”

Captain Jeff Vaugh followed reluctantly. “Hour and a half ago, I’d say. Here at the club.”

“Ordered you off the ketch, with the others?”

“Yep. Not that I’m taking any orders from him — Mrs. Perris owns the boat. But it looked like I’d best be ashore while they had their brawl out. So I didn’t argue with him when he told me to pack and shove off.”

“This before he had his bout with Belton?”

“How’s that?” Vaugh cupped palm to ear. “There wasn’t any bout. That scut Belton wouldn’t have talked back to a kitten. He was scared witless whenever Perris was around.”

“Um. Did the steward come ashore with you?”

“No, sir. Perris rowed me in, tried to make me take a fistful of cash. I wouldn’t touch it, of course.”

“Why not?”

“Couldn’t afford to let him think he could discharge me like that. I signed on as master, regular ship style. Owner is the only one who can pay me off. Besides, I know Perris. Tomorrow he’d likely accuse me of robbing him. They say he’s made a great success in putting on those theatrical shows. But I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw an anchor. No, sir. He’d steal your last piece of change if you were starving; that’s the kind of fella he is.”

“Didn’t happen to see him bring the steward ashore?”

“No, sir. Expect he did, though. Said he was going to. Good Godfrey Mighty!” Vaugh stopped by the gangplank rail, shaded his eyes. “Who’s taking her out, on a night like this?”

Silhouetted against the lights of a tug, the dark outline of the Sea-Dog was moving swiftly out past the Point.

Koski took the float in two strides, hurdled the police boat’s coaming, slapped the starter. “Cast off, Cap.”

Vaugh ran to the cleat. “Take it away.” He swung himself on the stern deck as the horses snorted under the motor hatch.

Koski threw the clutch lever. The Vigilant shook solid water off her bow, lifted her nose, gained speed.

Vaugh shouted over the hrrush of water: “Who’s aboard her?”

Koski told him, curtly. His concern was — who wasn’t on board the sketch. Had one of that bunch managed to shove Mulcahey overside?

He probed the night with the searchlight, holding it on the buoy where the Sea-Dog had been moored. If Joe had gone in the drink, he’d have tried to make that buoy — if he’d been able to swim. But then, if they’d been able to heave him over, it would have been because the sergeant wasn’t in any shape to navigate.

There was no sign of an uplifted arm or any bobbing head in that welter of water.

The ketch had vanished around the Point. Whoever was at the wheel of the Sea-Dog probably intended to run her inshore on the other side of the Island.

Vaugh came into the pilot house. “Myself, I wouldn’t care to handle her in this. Not for all she’s worth! She’s been taking in water so fast the last few days I’ve had to run the pump every couple hours.”

That wouldn’t make any difference, Steve told himself, if they planned to beach her right away.

The police boat plunged wildly as she roared around the Point. The searchlight poked through the spray. There was no vessel of the Sea-Dog’s size in there.

Then she must be heading for Hell Gate, the East River, the Bay — and open ocean! What lunatic thought a leaky auxiliary could run away from a police patrol in narrow waters like that? And why would anyone want to risk it? Was there something about the Sea-Dog that justified taking that kind of crazy gamble?

“Grab the wheel.” He waved to Vaugh. “Keep her a point west of Stepping Stones. We ought to catch her before she gets to Throgs Neck.” He took the Thompson from its rack, checked the load.

He snapped the switch on the two-way:

“Patrol Nine to W-N-P-D. Are you getting me? Over.” He flicked the lever.

A hollow voice from the speaker said:

“We get you, Vigilant. Are you checking on that floater? Take it.”

He told the dispatcher what he was doing. Gave his position. Requested Patrol Six at Randalls to cover Hell Gate if by any mishap Nine failed to overtake the Sea-Dog.

Vaugh peered across the storm-wracked waves. “Don’t see anything looks like a ketch.”

“You’re heading too close to Throgs. Hold her in the channel.” Koski bit off his words. How could a man hold master’s papers and not know how to steer a course! Or could there be a purpose to that sort of blundering?

He went up on the foredeck, manipulated the search beam from atop the pilot house.

The Sea-Dog would be running without lights. That was dangerous at any time, in ship traffic. It was worse, when whitecaps hid a white hull in the dark.

The faraway emerald eye of the Stepping Stones light flickered — once, twice. Twin masts of a ketch, coming between the lighthouse and the police boat, might cause such a flicker.

Koski knelt, indicated the course to Vaugh.

The Sea-Dog was a half mile ahead. Patrol Nine smashed through the tumbling crests at a good twenty knots. The auxiliary couldn’t be making more than five.

Koski clung to the handrail, moved along the waterway to the ventilator. “Come up on her starboard quarter, Cap. Slow her to the ketch’s speed. Hold her there while I find out what makes.”

The Sea-Dog’s masts swung in erratic pendulum sweeps as she buried her bow in the troughs.

The oilskin-wrapped figure crouching by the wheel might have been man, woman — or wrestler. It wasn’t Mulcahey.

The Vigilant drew alongside.

Koski shone the beam in the helmsman’s face. It was Buzz Cotlett. The engineer tried to shield his eyes but the ketch fell off, broadside to the sweep of the waves. Her masts swung down so the spreaders touched water.

Koski pounded on the pilot house roof. “Slow her, Cap! SLOW!!”

The Vigilant turned to follow the Sea-Dog’s bow. The police boat heeled, pitched. Her propeller came out of the water. The motor screeched.

Through the glass, Koski could see Vaugh, face screwed up, fumbling at the throttle. The lieutenant dived for the pilot house.

The patrol boat’s tail went down. She plunged ahead at top speed. Her nose crossed the Sea-Dog’s bow. The motor died.

Koski seized Vaugh’s shoulder, wrenched him around. “Get your flippers off that wheel.”

Vaugh swung his arm up clumsily, as if to steady himself. Koski drove a stiff right at his chin.

There was a violent crash. A splintering of wood. The Vigilant rolled over on her side. Koski was flung off his feet, hit the wheel with jarring force.

At the same instant he felt the paralyzing impact of the length of pipe Vaugh swung up and down — once — twice!

The gloom burst into flaming light that became so over-poweringly bright it was utter darkness.

The shock of cold water made Koski gasp. The gasp was choked before it barely began; he was drawing salt water into his lungs instead of air. He was under water!

He let his muscles go limp. No sense swimming while he couldn’t tell which way was up. The current tugged at him. Something smashed at his skull, stunned him. He opened his mouth, gulped.

A tremendous roaring in his ears. A motor exhaust! He had surfaced.

He’d come up beneath the police boat’s stern, banged his head against a propeller blade.

Vaugh had probably tossed him over-side from the pilot house; he’d drifted the length of the Vigilant’s hull under water!

He caught the patrol boat’s exhaust pipe; held on, though the metal scorched his fingers. The black transom above him, with the white letters: POLICE, New York City, lurched and twisted like a frantic porpoise. It would be tough to climb aboard over the stern even in calm weather. With the old girl rearing and plunging like this, it would be almost impossible.

A few yards off to port the Sea-Dog loomed up against the ghostly green of the Stepping Stone Light. Her Diesel was going cuddle-up, cuddle-up, but her clutch wasn’t in, she wasn’t moving. The ketch wallowed sluggishly in the tumbling waves. She seemed to be lower in the water than she’d been on the mooring.

Koski gauged his chances. He might not be able to muscle himself up over the Vigilant’s stern, with his water-soaked clothes, his knife-slashed arm, that crack on the skull from Vaugh’s piece of pipe. But if he was going to be able to do anything for Joe Mulcahey, he had to get back aboard.

He had one knee on the exhaust pipe, his fingertips touching a stem chock, was summoning all his reserve strength to pull himself up to the gunwale, when a voice only a couple of feet from his ear growled:

“She’ll go down in half an hour; it’ll look as if she simply sank in the storm.”

That was Cap Vaugh talking! He was still on the Vigilant!

Who was the treacherous old rat speaking to? Who had come aboard from the ketch, to join him?

Koski let himself down into the water again, listening. It would be committing suicide to climb into the cockpit with Vaugh waiting for him with that Thompson sub-machine-gun.

But he heard no more voices, nothing except the slam of the patrol boat’s motor hatch. Vaugh was getting set to drive the hundred and eighty horses, leaving the ketch, with anyone who might still be on her, to founder.

Maybe Joe Mulcahey wasn’t on board the Sea-Dog. Maybe the sarge wasn’t even alive now? But that was the only chance Koski could grasp at.

He toed off one boot, pulled loose his sock. He swam around to the Vigilant’s starboard side, dived beneath the hull.

He stayed under until he heard the starter whine, the motor explode into life.

He took two desperate strokes to get clear of the propeller before the clutch gears meshed. He nearly made it, but one of the spinning blades sliced at his right foot.

When he came to the surface, he was in a lather of foam from the police boat’s wake. His foot was numb; he couldn’t be sure how many toes he still had left but he wasn’t stopping to count them now.

The wash of Patrol Nine had swept him another five yards away from the Sea-Dog. The ketch was drifting downwind.

He swam after her, putting everything into the first minute. He could sprint that long. But if he couldn’t catch her in sixty seconds, then he would probably never be able to make it.

He gained, but the effort whipped him. He felt as if his legs were weighted with lead diving shoes.

The minutes became two. He was still ten feet away. The wind drove the ketch faster. The gap between him and that white stem widened slowly.

He had been in a spot like this once before. Washed overboard, offshore in a gale, stunned and unable to swim back to the Vigilant. He would have been a goner that time if Mulcahey hadn’t jumped over and come for him.

The thought of the blundering, fearless, slap-happy, wise-cracking Irishman who’d been in — and out, of so many tight spots with him, kept Koski’s arms threshing long after there was any possibility of his catching up with the Sea-Dog.

He couldn’t have hold how long it was before a comber picked him up, flung him forward like a surf rider. He rode the crest, calling on his last ounce of energy.

He touched the ketch’s tail-pipe as the comber went under her stem, dragging him down. He hung on.

The Vigilant’s port running light was a red pinpoint off toward City Island by the time he’d summoned strength enough to pull himself up to the Sea-Dog’s taffrail and over it.

Water was sloshing ominously below deck. Also something was churning around in the water which half-filled her cockpit, too. A dead man.

Maybe that’s Joe, Koski raged silently. Maybe that’s old sarge!

It was Buzz Cotlett. His skull had been beaten to a pulp.

The lieutenant stumbled below. Lights were on. Water was up to the floorboards. Nobody was in the main cabin.

“Joe!” he called hoarsely. “Irish!”

Bump! From the forecastle. He had heard that bump before.

He slipped and slid on oily floorboards, skidded up forward. There was a different figure in the bunk where he’d found Belton.

A slim, dark, mustached man lay there, bound and gagged as the wrestler had been. A man whose features Koski had seen on movie screens and television sets.

Maury Perris!

Chapter V Cornered Wildcat

Koski ripped the gag out of the man’s mouth with no unnecessary gentleness. “Where’s the sergeant?”

Perris’ lips were puffy with blisters. “Who? What sergeant? They only let me out a half hour ago.” He groaned. “And then only to bum my mouth with cigarettes.”

“Great bunch you had on board.” Koski cut his bonds. “Where’s the seacock on this craft?”

“Beside the motor. Starboard side.” Perris rolled off the bunk, staggered to his feet.

“Close it,” Koski ordered. “Know how to start your bilge pump?”

“Yes.”

“Get it going.” The lieutenant searched the sail locker, forward. Looked in the toilet, the galley. No sign of Mulcahey.

He went back to the cockpit, pushed the clutch lever. The Sea-Dog shuddered, answered her helm heavily.

He put her stem to the wind; pointed her bowsprit down Sound toward the spot where he had last seen the Vigilant’s running lights.

From the motor-room, Perris called: “Seacock’s closed.”

“Get that pump going.” Koski examined his foot. The screw-blade had sheared off the side and toe of the boot. He felt of his own toes. They were all there. But his hand came away warm and sticky.

He felt weak.

Can’t droop off now, he told himself angrily.

Neither Mrs. Perris nor Ham Belton was aboard. It must have been one of that pair who had escaped on the Vigilant with Vaugh. Which one it was and what had happened to the other one, was of strictly secondary importance until Koski had learned what had happened to Mulcahey.

He lashed the wheel with a rope becket, went below to the galley, found a bottle of Cuban rum, nearly full.

He let half a pint bum his throat, poured the rest over his cut foot. The sting, inside and outside, braced him.

Perris emerged from the motor room under the companionway. “Pump’s running. But it’ll take a week to get her dry.”

“Not if you bail, too,” Koski snapped. “Grab a bucket and squat down there in the bilge. Get a pail to work.”

“I can’t,” Perris whined. “I can hardly stand.”

“You’ll stand. And for a lot, before this is done! Jump!”

“You can’t blame me for any of this.” The producer began to pour water into the galley sink.

“Not for your engineer’s death, I suppose?”

“Buzz?” The swollen mouth hung slackly open. “Buzz killed?”

“Back there in the cockpit. With his dome caved in.” Koski lifted a bunk cushion. There might be just room enough in the locker beneath to cram a body as big as the sergeant’s.

“I didn’t do it.” Perris shivered. “I’d never have hurt Buzz. He was a great little joker. I liked Buzz.”

“How about your steward? Like him, the same way?”

“I hate him. He’s Sydna’s pick, not mine. He does what she tells him, never sees anything she doesn’t want him to. I paid him off quick, when I got out here, but they tied me up and threw me in the lazarette before I could row him—”

Koski didn’t hear the rest of it; he was running aft.

The lazarette. How could he have been dumb enough to forget that a ketch like this would have to store its bottled gas, for cooking and refrigeration, in a cubbyhole beneath the stern deck!

The tiny hatch was right behind the wheel. He had been sitting on it while he lashed the becket in place!

He tore the hatch open, leaned over, stuck his arm down into the darkness. Water sloshing, tiller lines creaking. And rubber! Mulcahey’s slicker!

Koski glanced forward to make sure Perris was still emptying water into the galley sink. It would be too easy for somebody to bop him, once he squeezed into that deep, narrow compartment.

He let himself down, not daring to hope.

Yet why would Mulcahey’s body have been kept on board? More likely the intent had been to hold him as a hostage. That idea might have been abandoned after Vaugh took over the Vigilant.

Joe was breathing. The hair on the back of his head was matted with oil and blood.

It took a while to hoist him up through the hatch, into the cockpit. Koski didn’t want to move him any more than necessary. Maybe the sarge had a fractured skull.

In the galley was an unopened quart of Pieper Heidsick, ’28. Perris stared as Lieutenant Koski knocked the head off the bottle.

“I’d let you try some of your own champagne, but the bubbles might bruise your tender little lips. What were they trying to get you to tell ’em?”

Perris just shook his head.

“Where you’d hidden the stuff you’d brought up from Cuba and meant to take ashore in that suitcase, I expect.”

Perris said nothing.

Koski peered into the toilet-room. “Where is that suitcase? Did they find the stuff and take it with them?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The Duke of Dames wiped a smear of oil across his nose.

“That’s why they didn’t mind letting you go down with the ketch,” Koski nodded. “They made you sing. You told ’em where you’d hidden it.”

Perris clamped his mouth shut, winced at the pain it caused.

Koski took the champagne, went back, dribbled a little between Mulcahey’s half-open lips.

The sergeant sputtered, made gagging noises, opened one eye. “I’ll break every living bone in your — Steve!”

He tried to sit up. Koski put a palm on his chest, held him down.

“Easy. Drink this moose juice. How you feel?”

“Head aches,” the sergeant grumbled. “Ears ring. I see double. I could spit sewage. But show me that cruddy wrestler and I’ll feel just grand!”

“Maybe can do same, chop-chop.”

Mulcahey took a gulp of the champagne, rolled over, got his knees under him, peered overside.

“Where we at, Steve?”

“Off Greenwich.” Koski pointed to a red light beneath a white one, bobbing back and forth in short, irregular arcs a mile or so ahead. “There’s the Vigilant — and maybe your wrestler and his girl are aboard her with Cap Vaugh.”

Mulcahey tried to focus. “You been chasing a police boat in this old tub of a ketch?”

“Yair.”

“Are you daft? We couldn’t catch the old girl if she was running in reverse, Steve.”

“No. But she’s not running. She’s waiting for us.”

“You do these things with mirrors, perchance?”

“With a sock. And a handkerchief, Sarge. Stuffed into her water intake. Our hundred and eighty horses must have overheated slightly, I’m afraid. Maybe we’ll find cylinders frozen, so the repair boys at Randalls will have to do a little reaming on her. But that won’t be all we’ll find.”

Mulcahey breathed: “Ah, now, Steve. Does your magic wand routine include producing some weapons with which to pacify these dillies? Or do we go after them barehanded?”

Koski said tightly: “We’ll try dosing them with their own medicine, Joseph.” Finally, after a long chase, the Sea-Dog hauled up even with the Vigilant. Koski hailed her:

“Ahoy, police boat.”

Koski repeated the hail as the Sea-Dog slid slowly up to the Vigilant’s starboard quarter. Above the Vigilant’s coaming three heads watched the rubber-coated figure standing by the ketch’s wheel.

Captain Vaugh shouted: “Sheer off!”

The Sea-Dog closed in. Flame spat from the ketch’s rail.

A scream came from the figure at the wheel. The man toppled. Before he hit the deck, Mulcahey sprang from the shadow of the ketch’s forecastle hatch, landed in the patrol boat’s stem. At the same instant, Koski’s pistol spoke sharply — once, twice.

Vaugh’s head lolled over the coaming. The other two turned toward the sergeant. Koski took a flying leap from beside the body of Maury Perris, hit Sydna between the shoulders as she aimed her automatic at Mulcahey.

The sergeant took a full minute to subdue Ham Belton. The last forty seconds were not precisely necessary.

“Creep up on me from behind, would ye?” Mulcahey reverted to the Hibernian when in full cry of battle. “Leave me to drown, would ye?”

Sydna squirmed beneath Koski’s weight. He stamped on her wrist, got the automatic. She clawed at his eyes. He batted her on the ear with the forty-five. She spat in his face.

He called grimly, “Hustle that first aid kit, Sarge.”

Mulcahey’s voice was anxious: “Did that tommy get you, Steve?”

“No. It got Perris. I just want some tape to fix this hellcat’s wrists.”

Mulcahey tripped over Vaugh: “This one here — you’ll not be needing to tie him.”

“Maybe he got the best deal at that, Joe. All over, quick. These two will have a long time to think about what’s coming to them. For the steward’s murder. Cotlett’s and Perris’.”

Mulcahey brought the adhesive.

“Most likely a jury will take pity on the poor little girl who was misled into a life of sordid crime by her unscrupulous husband.”

Sydna snarled something no poor little girl should have uttered.

Koski slapped the first piece of tape across her mouth.

“My guess, Sarge, is that this unwholesome little witch was the core of the whole, rotten apple. The yacht was hers. Idea of making dough with it was probably hers, too. She hired the crew from around her home town. She most likely corrupted that engineer so he’d do anything she wanted. Likewise the steward. Chances are she had the Cuban connections to get the stuff, too.”

“What stuff?”

“Marihuana. What did you think those trips to Cuba were for? The Sea-Dog went down there, loaded up with a hundred pounds or so of raw weed, brought it to New York.”

“There is such h thing as customs inspection, is there not?” The sergeant opened the motor hatch, touched the hot metal.

“Yair. Easy for a yacht to skip it by sailing in from Block Island Sound instead of through the harbor. Illegal, of course, but the whole setup would have earned them pen-sentences, anyway.”

Mulcahey found the suitcase, opened it. “This is the junk they make muggles out of?”

“Muggles. And murderers. And stick-ups. Dozen kind of crimes. Yair. Also you can make a lot of moola out of that weed, if you don’t care how you make it. Sells for around a hundred bucks a pound, raw.”

“They were all In it, Steve? The crew, and all?”

“Doubt it. Vaugh was. Buzz was smoking the stuff, whether he was in on the whole smuggling deal or not. He was loaded to the gills when I ran into him in the Beacon tonight. This dame had to gun Cotlett, after conning him along into taking the ketch off the mooring. She was probably afraid of him while he was on the stuff, thinking he’d talk too much and give the game away. That’s the way she paid off all her crew — with lead.”

Mulcahey puffed out his cheeks, sagely.

“This floater up by the Causeway. You figure that he is Frank Kaalohti?”

“I figure Perris snapped the switch on the steward, soon’s he got on board. Likely Kaalohti was on a muggles-jag, too, and tried to interfere when Perris began to bawl out his wife for double-crossing him. It didn’t look right for him to have gone ashore leaving his bank deposit book. But the amounts he’d been sticking away in savings were too small for him to have been in on the Mary Warner smuggling. So they must have settled on knocking him off after he overheard Mrs. Perris toning down her husband.”

“I thought he half killed his wife,” Mulcahey protested.

“He might have meant to. He came on board with homicide in his heart, I suppose. Maybe he did beat up Belton. But she must have cooled down the late Mr. Perris by telling him she had left incriminating information ashore somewhere, covering their weed-running together. If he did anything to her, the evidence would come out. Then Perris would go to the clink, lose his business, so on.”

Mulcahey felt of the motor again. “This one is getting cooled off, too.”

“We’ll try turning her over in a minute and go after that ketch before she hits the rocks. That’s all there was to it, Joe, except that after she slowed Perris down, she and Belton jumped him. They tied him up and tried to get him to tell her where he’d stached the stuff they’d brought in on the last trip north. He must have kept that secret to himself.”

“Ah, ha! He knew if he told her, that would be curtains for him!”

“Sure. I’d say he stowed it in the lazarette, where they found it when they went to put you in there in place of Perris. But Perris must have known she meant to exit him anyway. Because after she got him where she wanted him, she took off his rings and his wrist-watch and all the stuff that would identify him, put ’em on the dead steward and dumped him overboard.”

“I take it back about the jury. If you go on the stand to tell ’em.”

“Yair. They probably let Kaalohti’s face get chewed up a little by the propeller, so he wouldn’t be recognizable. Then they ran him ashore in the dink, and punched it full of holes. Left it near the joint where Buzz usually went to lap up beer, so he’d get blamed — if it did come to a murder indictment.”

“All that mahuska about Perris tying Belton up and walloping his wife was just window-dressing they fixed up when they saw the Vigilant coming to investigate, huh?”

“Might say so, Irish. A dummy trick, all right. If a dame was really scared she was going to get her throat cut, I figured that she’d have something better than a pillow to defend herself with.”

The loudspeaker began to squawk:

Mulcahey swore. “Now it’s some scow ashore on a mud flat they want us to chase after. I never will be able to square myself with my doll!”

“What you kicking about?” Wearily Koski pushed the starter button. “It’s a nice night for a boat ride, isn’t it?”