The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

(Elwyn) Whitman Chambers (1896–1968) was born in Stockton, California, and went on to become a prolific pulp story writer, mystery novelist, and screenwriter. Chambers is a member of the hard-boiled, wisecracking school of fiction, and his tone lacked sufficient originality to withstand the passage of time; he is seldom read today, though he is the stylistic equal of some writers whose works have sporadically been reprinted. It is his work as a screenwriter, and the mysteries that served as the source for still other films, for which Chambers will undoubtedly be best remembered. Among his chief works for motion pictures are The Come On (1956), based on his 1953 novel, which starred Anne Baxter as a manipulative woman who tries to convince a drifter (Sterling Hayden) to murder her husband. Chambers also wrote the screenplay for Manhandled (1949), another film noir starring Sterling Hayden, in which small-time hood Dan Duryea victimizes Dorothy Lamour; in 1960, Chambers wrote the novelization. Also his 1949 screenplay Special Agent features William Eythe as an agent for the railroads who goes after two brothers, played by George Reeves (later famous as TV’s Superman) and Paul Valentine, who pull a huge payroll heist. His The Campanile Murders (1933) was filmed as Murder on the Campus (1933); Murder for a Wanton (1934) was filmed as Sinner Take All (1936); and Once Too Often (1938) was filmed as Blonde Ice (1948).

“The Black Bottle,” his only Black Mask story, was published in the April 1936 issue.

Three men, a girl, and — the black bottle.

I

Lieutenant Larry McMain came into the wardroom at nine. He dropped wearily into a chair, stretched his long legs with a sigh and sat watching Doc Lucas, who was practicing alone at the billiard table. There was no other person in the room.

It was one of those oppressively humid nights at the beginning of the rainy season, when a man’s nerves are raw and there is no relief in sight from the maddening monotony of heat and dampness and deadly routine. It was a night when one thinks anything may happen, and yet knows that nothing will. Larry’s face reflected the mood.

“Been dining out?” Doc Lucas asked, swabbing his shining bald head with a handkerchief.

“With the Murdocks...Everybody gone to the dance in Colón?”

“Yes.” Doc Lucas squinted down his cue, chuckling. “You should be there, Larry. You’re not going to let Tommy Glade beat your time with the little Southern girl, are you?”

McMain shrugged broad shoulders. “It’s Tommy’s last night in Panama. I hope he makes the most of it. He’s going north on the S-96, with the Fourth Division, you know.”

The pink-cheeked, round little doctor raised his cue and cocked a mild blue eye at the three balls. “Well, that’s a break for you, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say so. Not so long as Benson Clark is on deck.”

“Benson Clark. He’s the etymologist chap, isn’t he? The one who’s studying the San Blas Indians.”

“He hasn’t shown much interest in Indians lately,” McMain said irritably. “He’s dragging Billie Dean tonight.”

“Tommy Glade won’t think much of that.”

“I don’t think much of it myself,” the lieutenant growled. “Clark’s just a poser with money to spend, and why a girl like Billie Dean should fall for his line of—”

He broke off as a crash of thunder shook the thin walls of the bachelor quarters. Rain pattered briefly on the roof. The moan of the surf, pounding on the other side of the submarine base, came whispering into the room.

“I only hope,” McMain muttered, “that Tommy Glade doesn’t take it into his head to tangle with Clark. That kid is too damned quick-tempered.”

“Yes,” Doc agreed. “I heard him having it out with Pete Adams tonight.”

“With Pete!” McMain sat erect, eying the pudgy little man at the billiard table. “Good Lord, why did he jump on that inoffensive old fellow?”

“Don’t know, I’m sure. He had a hot argument with Pete in the pantry and then hustled off ashore.”

McMain frowned. “Odd thing for him to do. He’s quick on the trigger, all right, but I never knew him to quarrel with a servant. And speaking of servants, how about joining me in a drink?”

“An excellent idea.” Doc Lucas racked his cue and waddled around the table. “I’ll ring for Pete.”

He touched the button on the wall and then came over and sat down beside McMain. Short and pot-bellied, the sixty-year-old medical officer was a sharp contrast to the tall vigorous submarine commander who sat beside him.

McMain leaned back in his chair and tried to relax. A long day in the sub’s engine room had left him exhausted, his nerves on edge.

He thought of Billie Dean, cool, fresh and youthful, dancing the night away at the Strangers’ Club.

He thought of Benson Clark, handsome, wealthy, dangerous enough to be enchanting to a kid like Billie Dean.

And he thought of Tommy Glade. It wasn’t like Tommy to jump on poor Pete Adams, the old wardroom steward.

Again thunder rolled, banging across the sub base. McMain’s head jerked.

“You’re the last man in the world,” Doc remarked very casually, “I’d expect to develop nerves.”

McMain shrugged, grunted: “Until tonight I never knew the meaning of nerves. But tonight — Well, it’s something I can’t put a name to. A tension in the air. But where the devil is Pete?”

“I’ll ring again.”

Doc Lucas rose and stepped to the button. McMain glanced irritably towards the pantry, and felt his hair stand on end. He was out of his chair in a flash. He caught Doc’s arm, whirled him around. He pointed to a shining dark stain on the bare floor next to the pantry door.

“Doc!” he gasped. “That’s blood!”

The doctor took a slow deep breath and said calmly: “It certainly looks like blood, Larry.”

McMain strode to the pantry and pushed the door. It jammed against something. He threw his shoulder against it and hurled it wide.

“Good Lord, Doc! Look!”

Old Pete Adams lay sprawled face downward on the floor of the little cubby. The negro’s white uniform was soaked with blood, which had spread in a wide pool across the floor and under the wardroom door.

Doc Lucas, business-like and outwardly unmoved, bent down and turned the old man on his back. The eyes were wide open, the pupils rolled back until only the whites were visible. Set deeply in the black, contorted face, they were awesome and horrible. The throat had been slit from ear to ear by a long butcher knife which lay beside the body.

Doc Lucas slowly backed from the pantry and stood for a moment looking down at the lifeless old steward.

“I’ve seen him slice bread with that knife. It has an edge like a razor. Well, Larry” — the doctor’s voice became brisker — “this is a matter for the commandant. Close the pantry, will you?”

McMain pulled the door shut and, turning, saw that Doc Lucas had sat down at the telephone stand.

“Wait a minute, Doc!” he blurted. “Look here! You mentioned an argument between Pete and Tommy Glade.”

Doc Lucas nodded placidly.

“When was it?” McMain demanded.

“Oh, perhaps half an hour ago.”

“What were they quarreling about?”

“I don’t know. I was on the other side of the room here, practicing billiards.”

McMain’s dark eyes were bleak. “Doc, have you got the idea that Tommy Glade killed that poor devil?”

“It looks that way,” the doctor calmly admitted.

McMain, glaring, took a step towards the round little man. “Doc, you’re crazy!” he snapped. “Tommy Glade has been under my command for six years. I never knew a finer—”

“Now see here, Larry,” Doc Lucas interrupted. “I haven’t been out of this room for two hours. The last person to go into the pantry was Tommy Glade, and I tell you frankly he had blood in his eye. The last person to see Pete Adams alive was, so far as I know, Tommy Glade.

“Stop and think a minute. The lone window in the pantry is screened and perhaps you noticed that the screen hasn’t been cut or tampered with. There is no other entrance but that door. Now! If Tommy Glade didn’t kill old Pete—” Doc Lucas paused pointedly...“Well?”

“Pete killed himself.”

“Exactly. One or the other. Now I’ll have to phone the commandant.”

The doctor picked up the telephone. McMain stood indecisively for a moment. Then he turned and hurried into the passageway and down it to his own quarters. Feverishly throwing off his clothes, he took a quick shower. Within five minutes, dressed now in neat and freshly pressed linen cits, he was back in the wardroom.

“I’m going ashore,” he said crisply.

The doctor shrugged. “Suit yourself. Personally, I think you ought to keep out of it. There is something, Larry, damned peculiar about this whole affair. I sensed it first tonight when we were talking about Tommy Glade, and this Benson Clark fellow and Billie Dean.”

“Oh, yes? Why drag Billie into it? Or Clark, for that matter?”

Doc Lucas smiled gently. “Or Tommy. Well, call it a hunch.”

McMain turned towards the outer door. Then he stopped and again faced the doctor. “What did you tell the Old Man?”

“I didn’t get him. He’s at some affair in Balboa. I notified the executive officer and he’s on his way over here. We’ll take care of the body.”

“Chuck Dean is acting exec.”

“I know. Billie’s brother. What of it?”

“Look here!” McMain took a nervous step or two towards the doctor. “How about soft-pedaling this quarrel between Tommy Glade and Pete? Why spill it to Chuck? Why not wait till the skipper gets back? Better yet, wait till tomorrow. You can’t do much tonight, anyway. And maybe after I’ve seen Tommy, we’ll have some sort of a lead.” McMain paused, breathless. “Well, how about it?”

Doc Lucas, his eyes half closed, asked slowly: “Are you taking the responsibility for investigating this murder?”

“Isn’t it my duty, as senior line officer quartered in the wardroom?”

“I imagine it is,” Doc Lucas said thoughtfully. “I imagine, in a case of this sort, a line officer ranks a staff officer.”

“Do you want the job?” McMain asked flatly.

“I do not.”

“Very well. Then leave it in my hands.”

McMain strode out of the wardroom into the humid, oppressive night. Walking around the building to the officers’ garage, where he kept his car, he regretted that he had been so downright short to Doc Lucas. He was too keyed up, however, to worry about it.

Where would this thing lead? Tommy Glade implicated in the murder of an obscure wardroom servant? That was nonsense!

Billie Dean involved? And Benson Clark? Absurd! The only possible connection was in his own mind, in associating Glade with Billie and Clark.

II

McMain parked his car in the driveway in front of the Strangers’ Club and climbed the stairs to the hall on the second floor. A dance had just ended. He singled out Billie Dean and Benson Clark almost immediately. They were walking towards a table in the dimness of the far corner. Tommy Glade, the lieutenant reflected, would not be far away.

McMain strolled over to their table. There were three empty glasses on it. Three! Where was Tommy Glade?

“Good evening, Billie,” he said. “How are you, Clark?”

Billie’s eyes lighted as she smiled at him. “Hello, Larry. You’re lookin’ warm. Been dancin’?”

Her low-pitched, lazy Southern drawl was as calming and caressing as a cool breeze.

“No, I just got here.”

Clark had risen, but he did not offer his hand. He was a tall, muscular man of thirty-five; he carried himself, he moved, with a studied grace and poise. His blond hair was brushed back from his high forehead in a nice wave. With his strong, cleft chin, his regular features, he was just a bit too handsome to be human.

“Good evening, McMain,” he said crisply, and sat down again.

Where, the lieutenant asked himself, was Clark’s usual, well-known courtesy? Even in the dim light McMain could see that the man’s face was sharply drawn, his eyes restless. Had he, too, developed nerves on this hot and humid night?...Where was Tommy Glade?

“Are you with a party?” Billie asked.

“No. I’m on my own tonight.”

Billie looked at Clark and the latter, with an almost imperceptible shrug, said gracelessly:

“Sit down and have a drink with us, McMain.”

“Thanks, I will. Beer for me.”

He sat down, feeling uncomfortable over the way he had forced himself on them. Clark gave an order to the waiter.

“Has Tommy Glade been around?” McMain asked casually.

“Tommy was here when we got up to dance,” Billie said. “I reckon he’s around some place. Down at the bar, perhaps.”

McMain turned to Clark. “How are the Indian studies coming along?”

Clark stirred himself with an effort. “Not so well,” he said, and blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling. “I’ve been pretty busy here in Colón.”

McMain looked at Billie Dean and saw that her eyes, usually placid, were dancing with excitement.

“Are you holding something out on me, Billie?”

The girl asked breathlessly, “Haven’t you heard the rumors about Mr. Clark?”

“Rumors about Mr. Clark?” McMain repeated. He had heard rumors, but they were hardly the kind to be discussed in mixed company.

Billie leaned across the table. “Mr. Clark isn’t an etymologist at all,” she whispered. “He doesn’t really give a darn about those Indians he visits down there in his yawl. Actually, he’s a Secret Service operative.”

Clark’s smile was patronizing. “According to rumor, my dear,” he corrected.

“Isn’t it thrilling?” Billie asked.

“Yes. Very thrilling.” It didn’t sound thrilling at all to McMain; it sounded impossible. “Where do you suppose Tommy Glade is keeping himself?”

“Are you ridin’ herd on Tommy tonight?” Billie asked. “Because if you are, I reckon you’ll have a job on your hands. He took two drinks with us and seemed quite tight.”

“If he’s tight, it will be the first time in the six years I’ve known him.”

“What a model young man,” Clark said dryly.

Billie Dean looked sharply at her escort; she frowned and the color rose in her cheeks.

The drinks arrived. They drank them in silence, under a pall of dissonance that was in sharp contrast to the gay chatter of the surrounding tables. The music started again and McMain stood up.

“Like to dance, Billie?”

He was conscious that Clark sat glaring at him as he swung the girl out onto the floor. They danced for a moment in silence.

“Larry!” the girl said abruptly.

McMain looked down at the shining black head nestled against his shoulder. “Yes?”

“What’s wrong with Tommy tonight?”

McMain’s heart skipped a beat. “Nothing that I know of. Why?”

“There’s something wrong with him. I felt it.”

“You said he was tight.”

“That was just talk,” Billie said. “He wasn’t tight. He was — strange.”

“How do you mean strange?”

“Well, it’s hard to explain exactly. You know how he’s always jokin’ and kiddin’. Tonight he acted as though he carried all the troubles of the world on his shoulders.”

“He’s leaving for Boston tomorrow and he doesn’t want to go.”

“It isn’t that. Tommy wouldn’t whine over a transfer. It was something deeper.” She leaned back and gazed up into his face with troubled gray eyes. “Larry, why are you lookin’ for Tommy?”

“I can’t tell you,” McMain said stubbornly.

“Why cain’t you tell me? Is — is it so serious?”

“It’s damned serious, Billie.”

“But what—”

They paused by common accord. There was a commotion down the hall, near the balcony which overlooked the bay. Everyone at that end of the floor had stopped dancing.

McMain saw Cal Clemens, one of the supply officers from the base, bearing down on him. Cal’s face was dead white and he was shouting:

“Larry! Oh, Larry! Come here, will you?”

McMain’s heart sank with a dread foreboding. “You’ll have to excuse me, Billie,” he said crisply. “Come! I’ll take you back to your table.”

He took her arm and started rapidly with her across the hall. “You stay with Clark. I’ll be back.”

He shoved her towards the table, turned and hurried over to Cal Clemens.

“What’s wrong, Cal?”

“It’s Tommy Glade.” Cal’s face was beaded with sweat.

“What about him?” McMain snapped.

“He’s out there on the balcony,” Cal said, “hanging over the rail.”

“Good Lord!” McMain exclaimed in disgust. “Why all the fuss? Can’t a man get drunk and—”

“He isn’t drunk, Larry.” Cal gulped. “He — he’s dead!”

III

By the time McMain got out to the balcony, someone had lifted Tommy Glade off the railing and laid him on his back. McMain dropped to his knees, jerked a flashlight from the hand of a frightened waiter and shone the beam on Tommy’s face.

The ensign’s mouth was contorted. His plump cheeks were blue-black, his eyes staring and glazed. McMain scanned the circle of men who had gathered on the balcony, barked hoarsely:

“Who found him?”

“Hi did, sar,” the waiter said, speaking with the unexpected British accent of the Barbados negro. “Hi see ’im ’anging there over the rail. First Hi think ’e’s sick and Hi go over to give ’im a ’and. But he ain’t sick, sar. ’E’s dead.”

McMain got to his feet. What an end for cheerful, happy-go-lucky Tommy Glade! Doubled over a railing on the balcony of the Strangers’ Club, like any common drunk. Dying there. Dying alone and in agony.

Cal Clemens elbowed his way to McMain’s side. “What do you think, Larry? Did he have a bad heart?”

“His heart was all right.”

“But there doesn’t seem to be a wound. Good Lord, man, what could have killed him?”

“Only an autopsy will determine that.”

“You — you think — he killed himself?” Clemens asked.

“Not in a million years. Tommy Glade was murdered.”

“Murdered! But—”

“Now see here, Cal! I’m going back to the base. This thing happened in Panama and the Colón police will have to take over. Call them, will you?”

“Okey, Larry.”

McMain pushed through the hushed throng and made his way onto the dance floor. The music had stopped now and everyone was standing around, looking towards the balcony, talking in low tones. Clark and Billie Dean were not in the hall.

McMain ran down the stairs two at a time, leaped into his car and drove swiftly back to Coco Solo. At the entrance of the military reservation, where he pulled up at the sentry box, he asked:

“Did Lieutenant Dean’s sister just go by in a car?”

“About two minutes ago, sir,” the marine sentry told him.

“Who was with her?”

“There was a tall guy, some civilian, in the back seat and a native chauffeur driving. It was a black Cad touring car, sir.”

McMain put his car in gear and drove on to the wardroom, shut off his motor and lights, and went inside.

Doc Lucas was gone. McMain glanced at the board beside the door and saw the doctor’s peg had been shoved into the “sick bay” hole. Emergency call, probably, and every other doctor on the base ashore.

McMain walked over to the pantry and glanced inside. Pete Adams’ body had been removed and the blood mopped up. He closed the door and walked down the corridor. Passing his own room, he went on to the end of the passage and paused before Tommy Glade’s.

The key, he noted, was on the outside of the door. McMain turned the knob and stepped inside. The odor of some exotic perfume, so strong as to be almost stifling, smote his nostrils as he groped for the light switch, found it and snapped on the lights.

He heard a gasp before he saw the slim girl in the pale green dress. She was standing on the other side of the room, one hand at her breast, the other resting on a square black bottle which stood on the table in the corner. She was breathing fast and her gray eyes were frightened.

“What in hell!” McMain cried.

Billie dropped her gaze, but did not speak.

The lieutenant glanced around swiftly. Save for a heavy trunk which stood beside the bed, a few toilet articles on the chiffonier, the room was bare of Tommy’s belongings.

McMain looked back at Billie. “For God’s sake, girl, what’s this all about? You rush away from the club the instant you hear Tommy’s dead. You tear out here with Clark. And now I find you rifling Tommy’s room. Are you, by any chance, a Secret Service operative, too?”

Her laugh was forced. “No, I’m just a member of the Ladies’ Auxiliary.” The attempt at humor was flat; humor was out of tune with the tragedy in her eyes.

McMain sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Oh, hell!” he groaned. “Let’s not try to be funny. What are you doing here, Billie?”

She came towards him, carrying the black bottle in her right hand. Pausing at the foot of the bed, she pleaded:

“Won’t you please not ask me that question? Won’t you please let me go away from here and forget you ever saw me?”

“You know I can’t do that,” McMain said unhappily.

She met his eyes and then looked away. “And two weeks ago, that night drivin’ home from the club, you told me you loved me.”

“You’re not being fair, Billie. Whether or not I love you doesn’t enter this mess at all. Two men have been murdered tonight and—”

“Two!” the girl cried.

“We found Pete Adams in the pantry a while ago with his throat cut.”

“Pete Adams!”

“Our old wardroom steward.”

“Yes, I know.” She stood there staring at him, her lips parted, her shining dark hair wind-blown and awry.

“What, precisely, do you know?” McMain asked gently.

“I know it all fits.”

“What fits?”

“Don’t you know?” Billie countered.

“I haven’t the faintest idea. Can you tell me?” His voice was mild, patient. “Can you tell me why Pete’s throat was cut? Can you tell me why that fine young officer was murdered? And how?”

“Tommy,” she said, her voice trembling, “killed himself.”

“How?”

“I... I think — he drank poison.”

“Tommy Glade?” McMain shook his head. “No. Tommy Glade was a man. If he wanted to go out, he’d choose a man’s way. He wouldn’t drink poison at the Strangers’ Club. He’d come here to his room and blow his brains out with a service .45.”

“Don’t! Don’t!” Billie begged.

McMain tried a new tack. “Is that alleged Secret Service man waiting for you outside? Around the corner of the building where I didn’t see him when I drove up?”

“Mr. Clark brought me over and then went back to town,” Billie answered quickly — too quickly.

“And you had time, after he brought you home, to walk over here?” he asked skeptically. When he received no answer his eyes shifted to the square bottle. “What have you there?”

“A bottle of perfume.”

“The perfume that’s so rank in this room?”

“Yes.”

“Then you opened it?”

“Yes.”

McMain saw that the glass stopper was sealed with a heavy coating of wax. “Then how did you seal it up again? And why?”

She lifted the black bottle, staring in surprise at the wax around its neck.

McMain did not wait for an answer to his questions. His voice, now, was not so gentle. He was prodding himself, forcing himself to be hard. “Why did you open it in the first place?...Did you sprinkle it around the room?...If you did, why?”

The girl breathed heavily; her eyes were like a cornered animal’s. She screamed suddenly:

“Please! Let me alone! I won’t listen to you any longer. I won’t answer your questions. I won’t!”

Her eyes met his for a brief moment. Then, before he realized her intention, she had leaped towards him. Her open left hand, the whole weight of her body behind it, struck him in the face and bowled him over backwards on the bed.

By the time he gained his balance and got to his feet, the door was slamming behind her. He heard the lock snap home and then the patter of her footsteps running down the passageway.

A hurt, regretful smile twisted his lips. Then, with a quiet shrug, he switched off the lights and went to the window. He heard the outer door of the wardroom slam and a moment later the low purr of a powerful car.

Not until then did he release the screen and hop over the sill. Running around the building, he was just in time to see Clark’s black touring car swing onto the concrete of the base’s main street, heading towards Colón. McMain went back into the wardroom, picked up the telephone and called the sentry box at the gate.

“Lieutenant McMain speaking. That big Cad with Miss Dean is on its way up. Stop it. Close your gates and stop it if you have to use your rifle. Got that?”

“I got it, sir.”

McMain put the telephone back on the stand. He was still smiling that twisted, regretful smile, but with his lips alone. His dark eyes were hard.

IV

McMain went out to his car and drove to the Deans’ quarters. He found Chuck Dean, his wife and the Mayers in a bridge game. He greeted them, said briefly:

“Sorry to break up your game, but I’ll have to see you for a few minutes, Chuck.”

Chuck, a lanky, blond six-footer, rose from the table. He got his cap and followed McMain out of the house, down the stairs and to the small roadster.

“What’s it all about, Larry? Pete Adams?”

“That’s the beginning of it,” McMain acknowledged, and briefly sketched the night’s events.

“Good Lawd, I cain’t understand it!” Chuck Dean said dazedly at last. “Billie has always been adventurous, reckless you might say, but getting involved in a thing like this — Why do you suppose she wanted that bottle of perfume? She must have got it for Clark. But why didn’t he do his own dirty work?”

“He’d need her with him to get onto the base after nine o’clock.”

“But after he was here, why didn’t he drop her at home and go back to the wardroom himself? Why did he have to drag her into this?”

McMain said quietly: “Chuck, she was in it already.”

“My sister?” Chuck raged. Then he caught himself, asked more calmly: “You say this fellow is a Secret Service man?”

“Billie believes he is and he doesn’t deny it. Personally, I think he started the rumor himself as a blind.”

Chuck thought about that for a moment or two, while he nervously coiled and uncoiled his long legs. “And Tommy’s room, you say, was rank with perfume?”

“Terrible. And yet the cork wasn’t out of the bottle.”

“Then where did the smell of perfume come from?”

“I didn’t take time to investigate.”

Chuck Dean sighed heavily. “Well, I reckon we better round up Billie and that Clark fella and see what they have to say.”

“Right.”

McMain drove through the silent base and down the road to the sentry box.

“Good Lawd!” Chuck Dean exclaimed. “Look at that gate!”

The double gate was a mass of twisted steel, folded outward. The marine guard came over, uncomfortably at attention.

“I’m sorry, Mr. McMain. I stopped ’em and told ’em they couldn’t go through. They argued a little, and then the driver threw his car into gear and — blooey! — bang through the gate he went.”

“You’re a hell of a sentry!” McMain snorted. “Did you fire at the car?”

“No, sir. I was afraid I might hit Miss Dean. And I didn’t like to take the chance, sir, just because of an elopement.”

“Elopement!”

“Sure. Didn’t you know, sir? They were eloping. Miss Dean and the big guy. He told me.”

McMain viciously jerked his car into motion, shoved the gears into high, and shot down the road.

“Now what?” Chuck Dean asked.

“We have to find Clark’s car.”

McMain jammed the accelerator to the floorboard. The white ribbon of concrete, the black jungle on either side of the road, shot past at seventy miles an hour.

Suddenly Chuck Dean cried: “Hold her, Larry!”

McMain came down on his brake. “What was it?”

“Body, looked like. Back there beside the road.”

“Not—”

“No. A man. Reckon you better come about, fella.”

McMain cramped his wheel and swung the car around with its tires screaming. “Good God! This gets worse all the time. Where’d you see that body? Which side of the road?”

“My side comin’ in. Your side now. Wait! There it is. See it?”

McMain drew up at the edge of the concrete. The body of a man, crumpled as though it had been hurled from an automobile, lay in the lush grass which bordered the highway. McMain and Dean piled out of the car and, in the glow of the headlights, turned the body over.

“Clark’s chauffeur,” McMain said laconically.

“You know him?”

“I’ve seen him around.”

The man’s face was bloody and caked with mud. He had been shot. The bullet had gone into his right temple at the height of the eye, passed through his head and come out at almost the same location on the left side.

“Must have died instantly, poor devil,” McMain muttered. “Well, we’d better hit for town, report this to the police and get their help in finding Clark’s car. Come on.”

McMain had turned to the car when Dean caught him by the arm, almost jerking him off his feet.

“Good Lawd, Larry! He... he moved!”

“Nonsense. The man’s dead as a mackerel.”

“No! Wait!”

Dean dropped to his knees beside the chauffeur. He unbuttoned the man’s coat with shaking fingers. Tearing the shirt open, he dropped his ear to the bared breast. He listened for a moment, and then sat up abruptly.

“By heaven, Larry. He’s alive!”

“With a bullet through his brain?”

“I don’t give a damn,” Chuck stormed, “whether he has a bullet through his brain or not. The man’s alive and his heart is strong. And we cain’t leave the poor devil here to bleed to death.”

“Then we’ll have to take him to the sick bay at the base. I hate to waste time going back, but there’s nothing else to do. Get hold of his feet.”

The chauffeur was a slight man; they had no difficulty in lifting him into the car. Then, with Dean standing on the running-board holding the unconscious man erect, McMain drove back to the sub base and to the sick bay. There they found Doc Lucas, who, taking one look at the man, said crisply:

“It’s a miracle, but not without precedent. Carry him into the operating room.”

McMain and Dean carried him in and left him there. They were in too much of a hurry to make explanations and the doctor, for a time, was too busy to listen to them.

At police headquarters in Colón, a large and dingy room through which passed the cosmopolitan port’s nightly stream of drunks and brawlers, they found the desk sergeant.

McMain introduced Chuck and himself. “Anything new on that death at the Strangers’ Club?”

The harassed, sweating sergeant shrugged lean shoulders. “My men report, gentlemen, that the young officer took poison because a lady spurned him. A most unfortunate affair. I have ordered an autopsy performed. After that we shall hold an inquest. And then the body will be turned over to the naval authorities.”

“And meanwhile whoever killed him has plenty of time to cover his tracks.” McMain snorted.

“But the young officer killed himself,” the sergeant insisted.

“Skip it,” McMain retorted. “See here! I need your help in finding a Cad touring car. It’s painted black and the radiator is probably caved in. Know anything about it?”

“Certainly. Such a car has been found, just as you describe. It was deserted. There was blood on the front seat. It is at the entrance of Pier 4.”

McMain caught Dean by the arm and dashed into the street. “Clark keeps his yawl at Pier 4. There may be time yet to intercept them.”

“His yawl!”

“The Thelma. The boat he uses to cruise the San Blas Islands. I should have thought of it before, but I never figured he was set for such a fast getaway.”

They found the damaged car at the entrance of Pier 4. The Thelma, Clark’s trim white fifty-footer, was gone.

“He must have had her all ready to shove off,” McMain said helplessly.

“And that trip we made back to the sick bay gave him the time he needed to get away.”

The two men turned and, heavy-footed, walked slowly back to the car. Misery and bewilderment had acted like a poison on McMain’s brain. He had stopped thinking, but he couldn’t stop the round of questions that kept turning over and over in his mind.

What was the meaning of all this insanity? Why had old Pete been murdered? Why had Tommy Glade been killed? What was in the black bottle? Why did Clark shoot his chauffeur? Where did Billie tie into the picture?

“It’s a hell of a puzzle,” he remarked finally, with a slow and regretful shake of his head. “And I’m afraid the end, Chuck, won’t be pleasant. A woman, you know, doesn’t go kiting around the country with a man, burglarizing rooms for him — unless—”

“Yes,” Chuck prompted dully.

“Unless she wants to do those things,” McMain finished with an effort. “When you consider the foray those two have been on, you’ve got to admit coercion was out of the question.”

Chuck’s lips were twisted; sad-eyed, he nodded in silence.

V

Chuck Dean and McMain drove back to the submarine base in the drenching rain.

“Clark’s chauffeur may be able to tell us something,” Larry remarked after a while, and added hopelessly: “If he ever regains consciousness.”

“But not even he, prob’ly, will be able to tell us why Billie is messed up in it.”

McMain slowed for the turn at the entrance of the military reservation. He began quietly: “If she’s in love with Clark—”

“But she’s not in love with Clark,” Chuck declared.

“She’s told you?” McMain asked.

“A dozen times. She doesn’t love Clark. She didn’t love Tommy Glade. She loves you! And if you hadn’t been such a sap, you’d have known it and asked her to marry you months ago...Oh, don’t start makin’ excuses. I understand your position. You were afraid she’d turn you down, and because of your silly pride, you wouldn’t give her a chance.”

McMain drew up before the sick bay and Dean ran inside. He came back in a moment, reporting that Doc Lucas had finished there and gone to the wardroom. They drove to the bachelor quarters and found Doc in his room getting ready for bed.

“Is that fellow going to live?” McMain asked without preamble.

Doc, a bit ludicrous in undershirt and shorts, nodded and said: “Without a doubt.”

“With a bullet through his brain?”

“The bullet didn’t touch the brain. It passed through the retrobulbar space, which is an area of fatty tissue behind the eyeballs. If a bullet goes through it, without touching the optic nerves, the patient usually suffers no permanent ill effects.”

“Has this fellow regained consciousness yet?”

“More or less. He’s still groggy.”

“Can he talk?”

“He can, but I won’t let you two men put him through any third degree. He’s lost a lot of blood and must have absolute rest. Who the devil is he, anyway?”

“Benson Clark’s chauffeur,” McMain replied.

“H-m.” Doc Lucas regarded the two men with narrowed eyes. “What’s happened?”

“Plenty. Tommy Glade killed himself — or was murdered — at the Strangers’ Club.”

Doc looked at Chuck Dean. “Not over—”

Chuck said unhappily: “I reckon Billie is mixed up in it. Tell him, Larry.”

McMain sketched briefly the night’s happenings.

“Strange about that perfume,” the doctor mused when McMain had finished. “Tommy Glade bought one of those square black bottles this afternoon to take to his sister up North. And he happened to mention to me that old Pete Adams had given him a bottle of the same perfume to mail, when he got to New York, to Pete’s daughter in Harlem.”

McMain sat down on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette. “I’m beginning to see a few things,” he said thoughtfully. “You know, the good-hearted naval officer who smuggles dutiable goods into the States, in order to do some friend a favor, is pretty much of a damned fool...See here, Doc. This chauffeur’s got to talk and he’s got to talk quick.”

“Tell you what I’ll do,” Doc offered. “I’ll go over to the sick bay and ask him a few questions. I know the situation pretty well from what you’ve told me and I may be able to get something out of him.”

“Good!” McMain said. “You don’t have to endanger the man’s life, but make him talk if you can. Chuck, let’s see what we can find in Tommy Glade’s quarters.”

Tommy Glade’s room still smelled of perfume.

“Where in the Lawd’s name does it come from?” Chuck muttered. “If Billie took the bottle—”

McMain gave the room and its scanty furnishings a swift survey. Then he grunted and pointed to a large irregular stain on the bare floor beside the heavy trunk.

“Never noticed it when I was in here before. Doc told us there were two bottles. And that’s where one of ’em went.”

McMain strode briskly to the metal waste-basket beside the small bare desk and hauled out a crumpled roll of damp paper. He smelled it, made a face and said:

“Whew! Here’s the wrapper. Tommy evidently broke the bottle.”

He spread the paper on the desk and smoothed out the wrinkles. He turned it over and found an address. The ink had run badly but he and Dean could decipher a box number, a station number and “New York, N.Y.”

“The bottle which Pete Adams gave Tommy,” McMain asserted, “was wrapped in this paper. You note, Chuck, there is no ‘U.S.A.’ in the address. That means Pete expected Tommy to mail it after he got up North — without the formality of a customs examination. Mailing it in the States would have saved Pete four or five dollars’ duty.”

Chuck took off his cap and scratched his head. He looked tired and baffled and disheartened. “But where are the pieces of the bottle?”

McMain started through the chiffonier. From the back of the bottom drawer he dragged forth a small parcel wrapped carelessly in newspaper. He took it to the desk and opened it, revealing a double handful of broken black glass.

“The pieces of the bottle!” Dean exclaimed. “Now why did he save pieces of—”

“Good Lord! Look!” McMain gasped.

He pointed a shaking finger at a gleaming object that, plainly, was not glass.

“A diamond!” Chuck Dean said in a dazed whisper.

McMain cried: “Why, there’s dozens of ’em!” He pawed through the pile of glass, spreading it over the newspaper. “And look at that. A ruby!”

“And that green one there! It’s an emerald!”

For the space of half a minute the two officers pawed over the jumble of glass and precious stones.

“See here, Chuck,” McMain said at last. “These stones represent a small fortune.”

“Yes, I reckon they do. And Tommy Glade was supposed to smuggle ’em into the States...Damn it, Larry. I cain’t understand how a fine young man like Tommy Glade could have been messin’ in a smugglin’ plot.”

McMain groaned. “Oh, you damned fool, don’t be so dumb!” he raged. “Don’t you get the picture? Tommy was the innocent go-between.”

“We-e-ell,” Chuck stammered. “I... I cain’t see—”

McMain caught him by the shoulder, shook him angrily. “Tommy, I tell you, was not in on this plot. Pete Adams gave him the bottle of perfume and asked him, as a favor, to take it into the States for him.”

“I get that part of it.” Chuck Dean nodded morosely.

“And somebody,” McMain rushed on, “has been using us to smuggle gems into the States. Pete Adams was their agent. Loyal, obliging old Pete, whom nobody would ever suspect and for whom everybody was willing to do a favor.”

“And that somebody you just mentioned—”

“One guess, Chuck,” McMain snarled.

“Benson Clark.”

“It’s a cinch! Look here!” McMain’s voice was brusque. “Tommy in some way broke that bottle. He was always awkward. He was always stumbling around and knocking things over. There’s his trunk. I know it’s half full of books and weighs a ton. It would have been just like him, in the rush of packing and getting ready for the dance tonight, to tip it over on the package Pete gave him.

“In cleaning up the mess, he discovered the bottle contained more than perfume. What would he do about it? Knowing Tommy, what would you say he’d do?”

Chuck smiled wryly. “I reckon you could count on the poor devil doin’ the wrong thing.”

“Of course you could. Would he come to me, or to the Old Man? Not Tommy! He went to Pete Adams. He forced Pete to tell him where the bottle came from. And then Tommy, full of the romance of adventure, went out to do some sleuthing on his own hook. Thought it would be a grand idea to run down, single-handed, a gang of gem smugglers.”

“And Clark got wind—” Dean began.

“More likely,” McMain broke in, “Pete Adams warned Clark by telephone. And Clark was all set to handle Tommy when Tommy got to the dance. He slipped something in his drink. He murdered him.”

Chuck Dean gave vent to his futile rage with a string of good Carolinian profanity. Then he asked: “But who, do you reckon, murdered Pete?”

“Pete wasn’t murdered,” McMain declared shortly. “Think a minute, Chuck. Pete was sixty years old and not too strong. Have you ever seen the inside of the Panama prison?”

Chuck slowly nodded. “I reckon I get it. Knowing Pete, it’s easy enough to see how the poor fellow felt. He thought he was trapped. He didn’t see any way out. He was an old man. So he cut his throat rather than face a term in prison.”

There was a brief and pregnant silence. And then Chuck, avoiding McMain’s eyes, said slowly:

“There’s only one thing I cain’t see.”

McMain took a deep, sighing breath. “I know, Chuck. Where does Billie fit into the picture?”

VI

The wind now was steady and high, moaning dismally around the building. Rain pounded on the roof in a relentless deluge. Tommy’s little room was like a steam bath and sweat dripped from McMain’s face as he gathered up the gems and pieces of glass. He rolled them tightly in the newspaper and went out, with Dean, to the wardroom. There they met Doc Lucas coming back from the sick bay.

“Would he talk?” McMain asked quickly.

“Yes, he talked. What have you there, Larry?”

“A small fortune in unset gems.”

Doc Lucas showed no surprise. “Cabrillo will be glad to hear you recovered them.”

“Cabrillo? Who the devil’s Cabrillo?”

“Clark’s chauffeur. United States Department of Justice operative.”

McMain blinked. “Department of Justice! Are you sure you don’t mean—”

“I mean Department of Justice. There is more to this than a mere smuggling job. It seems that Benson Clark is the head of a gang of jewel thieves who have been working the coast-to-coast cruise ships operating through the canal. It was their custom to steal the jewels on the night before the ship reached Panama. On that night there is usually a masquerade or some other damned foolishness and the dowagers drag their jimcracks out of the purser’s safe for the occasion.”

“But how did the thieves get the jewels into Panama?” McMain asked.

“They were slipped to one of the crowd of bumboat men that surrounds every ship as soon as she drops anchor in the harbor. Then they were smuggled ashore. With the jewels once in Clark’s hands, the stones were removed from their settings and concealed in bottles of perfume. The perfume was sent to a New York fence through old Pete Adams and the kindly co-operation of various naval officers going back to the States.

“Cabrillo tells me his department has broken up the gang that worked the ships and can pick up the New York fence whenever it pleases. Clark, he says, knew the jig was up, though he didn’t know the fence was being shadowed. He was risking everything to get that one last shipment through.”

“Yeah,” Chuck Dean said, “but that doesn’t explain—”

“Let’s skip that, Chuck, for a while,” McMain broke in. “Doc, how come this Cabrillo got himself shot?”

“Cabrillo realizes now that Clark has been onto him for some time. Tonight, after Cabrillo had driven through the gates with a gun at his back, Clark waited until they had gone a mile or so and then ordered him to stop. As he pulled up at the side of the road, Clark let him have it. By the grace of God, Cabrillo’s head was turned sidewise and, with the odds a million to one against him, he came through alive.”

“But why the devil,” McMain queried, “didn’t Cabrillo yell for help when he had Clark bottled up here on the base? There were three or four sentries within call while he waited outside the wardroom.”

“Cabrillo was under orders to get his man with the gems in his possession. Clark evidently realized the situation, because as soon as Billie came out with the black bottle, he shoved a gun against Cabrillo’s back. And from then on Cabrillo took orders.”

Chuck Dean mused: “And that black bottle, after all, wasn’t the one Clark wanted. Which, of course, is a lot of help to me in gettin’ my sistah out of this mess, Doc! What does this Secret Service fella say about Billie?”

“He didn’t say anything about Billie,” Doc replied. “Incidentally, Cabrillo had me phone his chief, man by the name of Bridges, over in Balboa. The wheels of justice — of the Department of Justice, anyway — are already turning.”

As a matter of fact, the Secret Service man was already on his way over, although McMain and Dean did not know this and spent half the night in impotent fretting.

At one o’clock that morning a plane roared in from Balboa. Ten minutes later the two officers were in the commandant’s office, where they were tersely introduced to Thomas Bridges, chief operative in the Canal Zone for the Department of Justice. The Federal man was about forty, a slight, pink-cheeked little person with graying hair and hard, direct, ice-blue eyes.

The commandant said briefly: “I have gone over the situation with Bridges, McMain, and I want to compliment you on the excellent work you have done so far. From now on, however, you and Dean will take orders from him. The Whipple has steam up and you will go aboard her immediately. She will head east, towards the San Blas coast.”

“We are almost certain,” Bridges explained in his precise, mild voice, “that Clark has headed for the San Blas Islands. He knows that country and it offers his best chance for a getaway, either into Colombia or overland through Darien.”

“Darien!” Chuck Dean exclaimed. “Surely that damnable cowa’d wouldn’t drag a woman into Darien.”

Bridges smiled gently. “That damnable coward, as you call him, is a bold and resourceful young man whose life is at stake.” His smile faded as he added: “And I don’t imagine the young woman will have to be dragged.”

Chuck’s fists clenched and his face went white as he glared at the little Federal operative. “You’re not inferrin’, are you, suh, that my sistah is a member of this ring of thieves?”

“I have found no evidence pointing to that conclusion,” Bridges said, “until tonight.”

Chuck’s jaw set. “And I assure you, suh, that her actions tonight will be honorably explained in due time.”

“I sincerely hope so, Lieutenant Dean.” The Federal man’s blue eyes were coolly skeptical.

The commandant said quickly: “By daylight the Whipple should be off Parvenir, the most westerly of the islands. I doubt if Clark’s yawl, in this storm, can make half that run. You’ll probably intercept him before he gets into the islands. Weather permitting, I shall send out all available planes in the morning. They will have no difficulty in picking up the yawl and they will keep in touch with you and direct you by radio. The rest will be up to you. That will be all.”

“Very good, sir.”

McMain saluted and walked out of the office in silence. He was vaguely aware that Bridges and Chuck Dean had fallen in beside him, but he did not speak.

What if the Thelma reached Parvenir and dodged into the islands before daylight? It was a run of only seventy miles and Clark, getting away about eleven, had seven hours of darkness. The Thelma should be fast with the wind on her beam and Clark would drive her.

He thought of the San Blas Archipelago, that amazing chain of more than four thousand islands and keys stretching along a hundred and fifty miles of coast, all the way from Parvenir to the Gulf of Darien. The Whipple drew too much water to navigate even the deepest of the narrow channels which wound through the group.

And behind that long necklace of green islands, protected by myriad uncharted coral reefs — was Darien!

Not a huge area, Darien. Perhaps fifty miles wide and three times as long. And yet, for its size, one of the wildest, most unexplored, most dangerous sections of the world. A land of high mountain and bottomless swamp, of heat and venomous insects and fever. Not many white men had gone into Darien and come out alive.

McMain thought of these things, and he thought of a girl in a pale green silk dress and high-heeled sandals, plodding through the swamps behind handsome Benson Clark.

VII

It was still dark at six o’clock the following morning when McMain climbed the ladder to the bridge of the Whipple. The destroyer, barely making steerage way, was rolling heavily to a beam sea. A fresh breeze from the northeast sang through the rigging and a steady deluge of rain thrummed the steel decks.

Holding to the hand rail, McMain groped his way forward and finally made out Ken Scott, the destroyer’s captain, in the port wing.

“Morning, Larry,” the commander greeted him cheerfully.

“Morning, Ken. What’s your position?”

“We’re about five miles due north of Parvenir. I don’t dare run in any closer.”

McMain peered over the weather cloth into the gray murk. Dawn was trying, with difficulty, to break. “Been here long?”

“Since five.”

“No sight of the Thelma on the run down?”

“Lord, no! It was as thick as the inside of your hat all the way. Nice going for the yawl, though. Steady wind and just the kind of a sea she’d like.”

“Think she beat us down?” McMain asked.

“No. We probably passed her along the way. Clark would cut the corners a lot closer than I could.”

“He’s probably standing in to Parvenir right now,” McMain growled. “How’s the barometer?”

“Falling slowly,” Ken Scott said, “but very, very steadily.”

McMain grunted. “A hell of a chance we’ve got!”

“One in a thousand. The Old Man won’t send out any planes to help us, either.”

“They wouldn’t be of any use if he did. It’s a tough situation, if you ask me, and damned little we can do about it.”

McMain turned towards the ladder to the main deck; then he paused and asked over his shoulder: “How’s your motor dory?”

“In good shape. Why?”

“I just wanted to know.”

“Look here! You’re not—”

“Good God, Ken!” McMain snapped. “We’ve got to do something!”

He went on down the ladder. It was virtually broad daylight now. And yet McMain, peering astern, could barely make out the after deck house, a hundred feet away. The rain came down in slanting sheets, steadily and relentlessly.

Below, in the small wardroom, he found Chuck Dean and Bridges, their chairs hooked to the table while a Filipino boy who looked sadly seasick served them breakfast. Chuck was haggard and hollow-eyed, but Bridges seemed cheerful.

“How are things outside?” he asked.

“Rotten. This storm has settled down for the day and Scott doesn’t dare take his ship any further inshore. Clark will slip by us and get into the islands, if he isn’t there already. And you know what that will mean...Boy, bring me some coffee.”

“No chance of this storm blowin’ over?” Chuck Dean asked.

“The barometer’s falling steadily.”

The boy brought McMain’s coffee. He drank it in three or four quick gulps, said abruptly: “See here! There’s only one thing to do. We’ve got to take the motor dory and try to make Parvenir. We might intercept Clark there. But in case we miss him, in case he’s slipped in among the islands ahead of us, we’ll go after him. What do you say, Bridges?”

The Federal man smiled. “I say let’s go.”

They put a cask of water and a box of emergency rations in the twenty-one-foot motor dory. They stowed away a rifle and a belt of ammunition, and armed themselves with .45 Colts. They put in a chart and a boat compass, filled the gas tank.

Then Commander Scott made a lee and, with the dory’s coxswain standing by to unhook the falls, the boat was dropped over the side. Bridges, McMain and Dean scrambled down the ladder and piled into the pitching dory.

Thirty minutes later the little island village of Parvenir loomed out of the rain almost dead ahead. Tall palms first, their fronds thrashing in the wind; then the white government house; finally the double row of thatched Indian dwellings.

Dean and Bridges came out from the hooded forward cockpit, and joined McMain, braced themselves and stood watching the village as the dory bore down on the white line of breakers which piled up on the shore.

“Well, what do you say, McMain?” Bridges asked.

“I say, if he isn’t anchored in the lee of the island, he’s ahead of us.”

Bridges turned to the coxswain, who crouched in his oilskins in the after cockpit. “Head around the island, son,” he ordered.

A few Indians, short men with broad shoulders, narrow hips and thin legs, came out of their huts and stolidly watched the dory go by. On the lee side of the island there was no sign of the yawl, nothing but a half dozen native cayucos pulled up on the beach.

“The next village is Carti,” McMain said briefly. “And from there it’s only a short way over to the mainland.”

“How far away is Carti?”

“Ten miles across the Gulf of San Blas in an air line. Nearer fifteen or twenty by the channel.”

“You think he’d head that way?”

“He’s got to head that way. There’s only the one channel until he gets further east, in the neighborhood of Nargana.”

“Then Carti it is.”

The coxswain, at McMain’s order, cut his engine to half speed and they cruised along watching for the settlement. They made it out finally: a long line of native dwellings stretching along the beach and, anchored off shore, a gray and weathered submarine chaser which was used as a trading station.

“Pull over to the chaser, cox’n,” McMain ordered.

As they drew alongside the ancient sub-chaser an old man came out of the cabin and stood staring at the dory. McMain threw him the painter. He caught it, expertly made it fast and shouted cheerily:

“Come aboard, friends.”

“Haven’t time,” McMain replied. “We’re looking for the Thelma. Has she been by here?”

“The Thelma, huh? What’s Ben Clark been doin’ besides marryin’ a right nice little woman?”

Chuck Dean gulped, but McMain said quickly: “Clark is wanted in Colón for murder.”

“Murder, huh?” The old trader never batted an eye. “Well, I ain’t surprised. I never did like that young feller. He’s too damned pretty.”

“Hell!” Bridges spoke up. “Has Clark been along this way?”

“Huh? Sure he has. ’Bout an hour ago. Him and his wife stopped in and bought some supplies off me. Then he went ashore there and got a cayuco. He tied it astern of the yawl and headed east. He’s prob’ly makin’ for Cidra. That’s a big island due east of here ’bout ten mile.”

“Thank you and much obliged,” McMain said. “Cast us off, will you?”

The old trader untied the painter, the coxswain kicked his clutch and the dory drew away.

“We’ll have to get a dugout,” McMain said.

“Why?” Bridges demanded.

“Because Clark means to head up a river and we can’t follow him in this dory. It draws too much water. Cox’n, head in as close to the village as you can get.”

“How do you mean to get a dugout?”

“I mean to take it!” McMain retorted.

He buckled on a .45 and, when the dory reached shallow water, leaped over the side and waded ashore. From the dozen or more cayucos drawn up on the beach, he selected one, saw there were paddles in it and laid hold of it.

The Indians crowded towards him, jabbering. He waved them back with his .45, hauled the dugout into the water, pulled it out to the dory and made it fast at the stern.

The dory drove on. No one mentioned Billie Dean. McMain tried not to think of her. It seemed so certain, now, that she was willingly, and knowingly, accompanying Clark. His one forlorn hope, that she was under compulsion, had been blasted by the trader’s account of their visit.

Fifteen minutes after leaving Carti they made out a low line of dark green forest. A moment later Chuck Dean shouted:

“There’s the yawl! My Lawd, he’s scuttled her!”

Off to port, and not more than a hundred yards away, they saw the upper third of a mast sticking out of the water at a sharp angle.

“Water wasn’t as deep as he thought it was,” Bridges remarked. “H-m. Where’s the nearest river? He wouldn’t plan to go far on the open gulf in a dugout.”

Chuck Dean smoothed out the chart with shaking fingers.

“Nearest river from here is the Carti, about half a mile farther to the east.

“That must be the one. Cut over to port, cox’n, and head along the shore. Well, boys, it won’t be long now.”

VIII

Heading east they came shortly to an area of muddy water which told them they were at the mouth of the Carti. They found a break in the dense jungle which lined the shore and headed into it. The river here was a good two hundred yards wide and the current barely noticeable.

“Heah’s where we’ll pick up on him,” Chuck Dean said tensely. “He can’t make time in that cayuco.”

Half an hour later they ran, without warning, onto their first sandbar.

“All out but the cox’n!” McMain cried.

The three men leaped into the knee-deep water and hauled the dory astern until she was clear.

“Reckon we better take to the dugout?” Chuck Dean asked.

“Not yet,” McMain returned. “Try it to port, cox’n. The channel seems to be that way.”

During the next half hour, while the river grew steadily more narrow and shallow, they went aground three times. McMain finally gave up.

“We can’t waste any more time with the dory. Cox’n, stay here till we come back.”

The boy’s jaw dropped. “How long might that be, sir?”

“It might be all winter,” McMain snapped. “But it will probably be less than twenty-four hours. You have emergency rations. Put out a light tonight as soon as it’s dark and keep your eye peeled for us.”

As they stowed a box of rations and the rifle in the dugout, McMain said briefly: “We have eight hours of daylight left. Once it’s dark, we can consider that he has slipped us for good.”

They wasted no more time in talk. They got into the narrow dugout, took up their paddles and bent their backs to the task ahead. Within five minutes they had settled into a smooth rhythmic pace that shot them swiftly up the swollen river.

Within a half mile after leaving the dory the three men were hauling their dugout over a short and rocky rapid. Above the rapid they found a quarter-mile stretch of river which ran deep and swift. It was all they could do to make headway against it.

And then Bridges, in the bow, raised his paddle and pointed to a sandbar in the middle of the river. They all saw the footprints there: the large prints of a man and the small prints of a woman. No one said anything.

But McMain hitched his .45 forward.

The three men toiled onward, doggedly, in silence, paddling the deep stretches, dragging the frail dugout through or around the rapids. They worked feverishly, rain and sweat streaming from their faces.

And then abruptly, unexpectedly, the chase was over. They rounded a bend, paddling in deep water. They saw Clark and Billie Dean standing beside their canoe at the foot of a rapid less than thirty feet away.

McMain’s hand leaped to his Colt. Bridges reached for the rifle. But Benson Clark waved his empty hands and called, with a laugh:

“Put your guns away, gentlemen. I know when I’m licked.”

McMain’s hand did not leave his automatic. He sensed there was something wrong with the picture. It wasn’t normal for a man in Clark’s position to give in without a struggle. The Federal man must have felt the same way about the situation, for he kept his rifle ready and did not again pick up his paddle.

Only Chuck Dean, with a stricken, hurt look in his eyes, kept paddling towards the other cayuco. Benson Clark said:

“I see you don’t believe me.” He turned to Billie Dean, who, in a torn yellow slicker a dozen sizes too large for her, stood knee-deep in the water. “Billie, take the gun out of my holster and toss it in the river.”

With a weary sigh, without looking at the approaching men, Billie pulled the revolver from the holster at Clark’s hip and tossed it in the rushing water.

“You’d never have got us,” Clark said cheerfully, “if I hadn’t stove this damned cayuco on a rock.”

They saw then that the dugout was half full of water and was afloat only by virtue of the buoyant wood of which it was made.

“Hold the boat steady, boys,” Bridges ordered crisply.

He stepped out into the water. Producing a pair of handcuffs, he slipped them over Clark’s wrists. He searched the prisoner with practiced hands. Then he jerked his head towards the dugout.

“In you go, Clark. Into the bow. You too, Miss Dean. Into the stern.”

Then he grinned at McMain, as much as to say, “Well, that’s that.”

But McMain’s hand remained on his gun. He felt no sense of triumph. For there was Billie Dean, haggard, bedraggled, ready to drop with weariness — her part in the drama still unexplained.

And he felt no sense of security. For there was Clark, tired but debonair, and smiling! Taking it all as a joke, though he knew he must go back to Colón and stand trial for murder.

It had been too easy. Much, much too easy.

IX

They started down the river in the storm, five of them in a dugout built for three. Benson Clark, handcuffed, sat in the bow; Bridges behind him; then Chuck Dean and Billie, with McMain in the stern. They paddled in silence.

Billie, finally, turned and looked up at McMain. Her dark hair was wild and matted. Her gray eyes were tired, lifeless, her cheeks sunken. She spoke so quietly that McMain alone caught the words.

“Aren’t you ever goin’ to smile at me again?”

Her voice was husky and provocative, but McMain kept his eyes straight ahead. He didn’t want to talk. He was too tired to talk. He felt empty and torn by strife.

“You haven’t even so much as looked at me since you caught us,” Billie pointed out. And then added querulously: “Cain’t you even speak to me?”

At that moment Clark, though he could not have heard the conversation in the stern of the long dugout, turned and said:

“Look here, you people! You might as well get this straight right now. Billie Dean is in the clear on this job.”

No one said anything. Clark wheeled further, glaring at Bridges.

“Steady, you damned fool!” the Federal man snapped. “Do you want to capsize us?”

Clark laughed hollowly. “I wouldn’t mind,” he retorted. “What’ve I got to lose?...Billie, tell them how you happen to be with me.”

“Go ahead, Miss Dean,” Bridges urged. “It’ll help kill time. Besides which, I am very much interested.”

“This gentleman is Mistah Bridges, Billie,” Chuck Dean explained. “He’s chief operative for the Department of Justice in Panama.”

Sighing, the girl leaned back against McMain’s knees.

“Clark told me at the dance last night that he was a Secret Service operative. He showed me credentials that certainly looked genuine and I had no reason for disbelievin’ him.”

“Didn’t it strike you as odd that a Secret Service man would tell you his business?” Bridges asked skeptically.

“Odd?” Her voice was contained, slightly belligerent. “After all, when a man asks a woman to marry him, doesn’t he usually tell her his occupation?”

“Sorry,” Bridges said, without sounding at all sorry. “Hadn’t realized he’d gone that far.”

“Oh, shut up and let her tell her story,” Clark growled wearily.

“Anyway,” Billie Dean went on, “Clark had dropped a few hints about his mission in Panama, when we heard Tommy Glade was dead. Then he came right out and told me he was workin’ on a big smugglin’ plot and had all the evidence against Tommy, but hadn’t arrested him because he wanted to get others too. Clark felt sure, he said, that Tommy must have taken poison when he found the law closin’ in on him.”

“He took poison, all right,” Chuck Dean growled, “but he never knew it. Clark murdered that poor young fella.”

“I realized that later,” Billie replied. “But at the time — well, everything dovetailed and it seemed logical enough.”

“But even if it all did seem logical,” Chuck Dean said unhappily, “and even if you were convinced Clark was a Federal, why did you go out to the base and steal that bottle of perfume?”

“Because Clark convinced me that by getting the bottle of gems out of the way Tommy’s name might be kept clean. I know Tommy’s family, I know his two brothers in the service and” — she laughed humorlessly — “I’m a Southern girl.”

Bridges’ voice was no longer skeptical; it was merely tired as he said: “Southern chivalry can get a person into lots of trouble on occasion. Go on, Miss Dean.”

“Well, Clark told me the situation as we drove out to the base. He told me that he, naturally, couldn’t take those gems but he was willin’ to stretch a point and let me do it. The government had to recover the gems, of course, but it would serve no purpose to dirty Tommy’s name and disgrace his family now that he was dead.”

“But Billie!” Chuck exclaimed. “When Larry McMain walked in on you there in Tommy’s room, why didn’t you tell him the situation? Why did you lie and evade?”

She said quietly: “I’ll tell you, although a little later, when it was too late, I knew I’d made the mistake of my life. I know how much Larry thought of Tommy. He’d had him under his wing for six years. He was like a kid brother to him. He had a world of respect for him and high hopes for his career. And it was to spare Larry’s feelings that I wouldn’t tell him what I really thought then: that Tommy had been smugglin’ gems. I took the risk of queerin’ myself for life with him. Well, I took it. I was wrong, but—”

“Uh-huh,” Bridges put in. “And perhaps it was all for the best anyway. We might never have caught him if it hadn’t been for you, Miss Dean.”

After a few moments Billie said quietly: “I didn’t realize the true situation until Clark shot his chauffeur. Then it dawned on me like a flash just what I’d been doin’, just what it was all about.”

“And yet,” her brother said in a stricken voice, “you went on with Clark. You let him take you aboard his boat. You fled into the jungle with him.”

“Did you evah ride along with a gun proddin’ you in the ribs?” the girl flashed.

“God knows,” Clark said, still markedly cheerful, “I hated to drag her along at the point of a gun. But what could I do? I couldn’t turn her loose. Not until we crossed Darien and I was in a position to make a clean break. Then I planned to turn her over to some friendly natives who’d get her back to Panama.”

Chuck Dean growled something deep in his throat and jabbed his paddle viciously into the water. Billie patted his shoulder, turned and looked up at McMain.

“And now, darlin’, do you suppose you could smile at me?” she asked softly. “Because you’re goin’ to marry me, you know, and it would be simply awful to go through life with a husband who never smiled...You are goin’ to marry me, aren’t you? Because if—”

“Steady!” Bridges shouted. “There’s white water ahead.”

Benson Clark rose to his knees in the bow. “Look here, Bridges! I don’t like the idea of heading into that rapid with my hands cuffed. I’m a lousy swimmer and this dugout is overloaded. If it capsized I’d go to the bottom like a rock.”

“That’d be too damned bad,” Chuck Dean jeered. “I’d feel right sorry if you got drowned.”

Clark ignored the sally. “You men are all armed. I haven’t a weapon of any kind. You certainly can’t be afraid of me. If I’d wanted to fight, I’d have done it up the river. I gave in, without any resistance, because I figure I can beat this rap. For God’s sake, Bridges, take off these cuffs.”

A warning bell was ringing far in the back of McMain’s mind, but Billie Dean was leaning back against his knees and McMain’s heart was so full of happiness he barely heard it.

He did not protest when Bridges laid his paddle across the gunwale, took out a key and silently unlocked the handcuffs.

“Thanks,” Clark said. “You’re a right guy, Bridges, even if you are a dick.” He faced forward again.

They ran the short rapid without difficulty and came out near the right bank of the river, which was fully a hundred yards wide. Here the water ran deep and black and swift.

Benson Clark looked over his shoulder. Something in his eyes caught McMain’s attention, and the lieutenant’s heart started suddenly to pound. He dug his paddle in the water, shot the frail craft shoreward with all his strength.

Clark, leering at the men behind him, cried:

“I may be a sucker, but not so much of a sucker as you damned fools think!”

He caught the gunwales with both hands. He threw all the weight on his left arm and jerked upward with his right. The cayuco tilted and went over.

McMain heard Billie Dean screaming as the warm black water closed above her head. He knew Billie was a poor swimmer and he realized, as the swirling currents tugged at him, that only a good swimmer could get out of this mess without help.

Fighting to the surface, he shook the water out of his eyes and took in the situation.

Bridges had struck out for the near shore, swimming awkwardly but adequately. Chuck Dean had caught hold of the overturned dugout with one hand and was holding his sister with the other. And Benson Clark, swimming a neat crawl, was churning the water to foam as he headed straight across the river towards the left bank.

“Can you handle Billie?” McMain cried.

“We’re all right,” Chuck Dean puffed. “Boy, get goin’!”

McMain got going. Clark, by that time, had a lead of fifty feet. The navy man cut it to forty in the swift swim across the river. He saw Clark gain the bank, slip in the muddy slime and fall. The man was up in an instant. Catching hold of a trailing branch, he hauled himself up to firm ground.

Then McMain’s hands struck muddy bottom. He lurched erect in knee-deep water, steadied himself. Clark was leaping away into the jungle like a frightened deer.

It dawned upon McMain in a split second that Clark was escaping into the jungle on a trail he knew.

The man was thirty feet away, charging into the bush. McMain realized that in another second or two, he’d be out of sight. He clawed at his holster — and found it empty! His gun had slipped out when he was hurled into the river.

Splashing through the shallows, McMain caught a branch and swung himself up the slippery riverbank. He found the trail, a dark tunnel plunging straight into the thick forest.

McMain raced on, stumbling over protruding roots, catching his arms and head in trailing lianas, sinking at times almost knee-deep in mud. The sound of Clark’s steps and his flounderings among the vines drew no closer.

The lieutenant lowered his head. With his arms close to his sides, his fists in front of his face to protect his eyes from the brush, he shot forward.

He did not know how far he went, nor how long. But at last when his breath came in sobbing gasps and his heart was beating like a riveting machine, he hurtled out of the bush into the dull gray light of a small clearing.

And there, not twenty paces away, was Benson Clark. The man stood in a half crouch, panting, waiting.

McMain dropped into a walk as he saw a knife gleaming in Clark’s hand. And yet he did not stop. Fighting for breath, he moved relentlessly towards the fugitive.

“Go back, you damned fool!” Clark snarled. “Do you want me to have to kill you?”

McMain plodded forward. “I’ll take a chance.”

“You can’t stop me,” Clark snapped. “Nobody can stop me. If you want me to slit your throat first, come and get it.”

The distance between the two men lessened until they were no more than three paces apart. Then Clark, nervous, screaming a curse that echoed through the forest, lunged at McMain.

As the lieutenant had hoped, and counted on, Clark misjudged his distance. McMain saw the knife coming. He knew what he must do and he had time to do it. Fancy footwork, in that jungle slime, was impossible. McMain threw his body to the left, falling on his hands with his right leg straight.

He felt a blow against his right calf and realized with a thrill, even before he heard the crash of Clark’s body, that his tactics had been successful. He was on his feet in a flash, whirling to where Clark had fallen headlong.

He leaped on him, caught his outthrust right arm at the wrist. He whipped it backward and over, viciously. The knife fell out of the hand. And all at once, as Clark screamed in agony, the bone snapped and the arm went limp.

McMain caught up the knife and rose. Clark did not stir. Flat on his face in the mud, his right arm twisted grotesquely across his back, he lay motionless.

McMain waited a moment, getting his breath. Still Clark did not move.

“Fainted,” the lieutenant muttered, and dropped to his knees. He tossed the knife into the jungle and reached out to roll Clark onto his back.

At that instant the man turned on McMain like a wounded jungle animal. He rolled onto his right side, oblivious of his broken arm. His left fist shot out with all the viciousness and inhuman power of desperation.

It caught McMain in the pit of the stomach; it struck him like a shot of high-voltage current. Flame danced before his eyes. Every muscle of his body was paralyzed. He knew he was on his back, his knees in the air. He knew he was helpless.

He saw Clark leap to his feet. He heard Clark curse. He knew what was coming but there was nothing he could do.

He saw Clark stand off a pace, like a place-kicker measuring the distance of the ball. He saw Clark’s useless right arm hanging limp. He saw the insane gleam of desperation, and of murder, in his eyes. And he saw Clark’s right foot go back, and then start towards his head.

Time slowed and all motion became slow motion. It seemed seconds that he lay there while Clark’s foot grew steadily larger. Then, summoning all his will, he jerked his head sidewise. He saw the boot go past his face, still in slow motion.

All at once his nerves began to function. Time speeded up. He caught Clark’s foot, while the man was off balance. He gripped it tight and rolled sidewise.

Clark’s weight crashed on him. He felt the futile tattoo of Clark’s left fist against his ribs. Still holding the foot, ignoring the other’s blows, he lurched to his knees and finally worked himself to his feet.

He stood there, legs wide, Clark’s ankle under his right arm.

“I can break this leg as easily as I broke your arm...Well, how about it?”

“Break it, damn you!” Clark cried.

McMain gripped the toe and started to twist, while Clark kicked at him futilely with his other foot. Then McMain heard the crashing of branches, a moment later voices. He dropped Clark’s leg and stood back.

“The jig’s up, guy,” he said quietly. “Why prolong the agony?”

Bridges and Chuck Dean came tumbling into the clearing.

“Got ’im, eh?” Chuck Dean cheered. “Nice goin’, fella.”

McMain grunted. “The next time you search a man, Bridges, look in his shoes. He had a knife.”

“Good Lord! Did he get you?”

“No, by the grace of God I got him.” McMain turned wearily towards the river. “Where’s Billie?”

“She’s somewhere behind us. We got the cayuco righted and came after you.”

Billie appeared at that moment, her yellow slicker hanging in ribbons, her hair awry, her face scratched and bleeding.

“Larry, are you all right?” she cried as she ran towards him.

“I guess I’ll do now.” He grinned and put his arm around her.

She didn’t draw away. She snuggled closer. “Me too, Larry — if I can stay this way.”

Arm in arm they walked back to the river, slipping between the branches and creepers, plowing through the mud. It would have been much easier if they had gone single file, sanely. Somehow they didn’t seem to think of that.