The Case of the Musical Cow

Chapter 16

It had been dark for some hours when Rob Trenton heard the car driving up. Judging from the sound of the motor, the machine was being operated at high speed.

A few moments later he heard quick steps on the planks of the mooring pier just outside the porthole of the room where he found himself confined.

There was something hauntingly familiar about those steps. The quick, nervous impact, the light, lithe footfalls. They were the steps of a woman. Could it be...? Rob struggled to a sitting position and listened hopefully.

He heard the sound of excited voices, then the low hum of a conference. The steps of the woman were heard again as she ran back down the pier. Then Rob heard heavy steps coming towards his room. They were steps made by men who seemed to be walking irregularly and with an effort, as though they were carrying something heavy.

The steps approached his room. Quite evidently they were the steps of men carrying some burden.

The key twisted in the lock. The door was kicked open, and Rob saw only two grim-faced men, each carrying a steel shaft which apparently weighed some seventy-five or eighty pounds. They also carried several lengths of baling wire.

The men were ominously silent as they dropped these articles on the floor, turned and started out without a word.

“What’s the matter?” Rob asked.

“Matter enough,” one of the men said. “You thought you were pretty damn slick. Okay, buddy, you’ll pay for it when you start blowing bubbles.”

“Look here,” Rob said desperately. “That wasn’t a trap...”

“Oh, no,” one of the men said sarcastically. “That State Police just happened to be waiting there. They just happened to grab my buddy! Well, you’ve taken the first trick. Let’s see how you do on the rest of the tricks.”

The two men left the room, slamming the door behind them. The key once turned in the lock.

Rob knew from the expressions on their faces, from what he had already seen of their methods, that he could expect no mercy. These men were clearing out. They had played the game to the end of the string and now within a few hours they would be scattering to the four winds, hunting places of concealment, before the State Police and the Federal Narcotics Division could broadcast accurate information.

Rob gloomily contemplated the two steel shafts and the baling wire so mutely eloquent of the fate in store for him. He knew now that these men didn’t intend him to leave the boat alive.

The knowledge gave him a certain desperation.

He thought back with self-anger to the opportunity he had missed, to the knife in his pocket. He had never had to cope with a situation such as this, and as a result he felt as though he were backing against a stone wall. At the same time he realized he either had to use every bit of concentration and ingenuity he possessed or it would be too late.

His eyes roamed over the room without finding anything that furnished the inspiration.

Then suddenly he thought of the glass. That glass was sitting on a corner of the table where the man had placed it when Rob had finished drinking and just before the smuggler had started to search Rob’s pockets. The results of that search had been so important that the man had forgotten all about the glass.

Rob squirmed and twisted, snaking his way like a sidewinder, until he had his feet against the legs of the table. Then he flung himself up and around like a desperate floundering fish. The rope jerked at his wrists with a strain that threatened to part the skin as he kicked; he struck the water glass and it rolled to the floor but did not break.

Rob followed the glass, picked it up in the fingertips of his bound hands, then squirmed his way back to the nearest steel shaft and started pounding the glass on it.

The second smash cracked the glass into sharp fragments, and Rob wedged one of these circular, knife-edged fragments in between the shaft and the wall, then lying on his back, started sawing away at the rope which held his wrists.

He found it difficult to move his arms so as to keep the glass cutting in one place, but he kept sawing away until he had cut his wrists in half a dozen places, until he could feel the warm trickle of blood over his fingers, until it seemed his cramped muscles could no longer endure that tiresome pushing and pulling as he rubbed the strands of the rope across the glass.

Then, when it seemed almost impossible to carry on, the rope suddenly parted, and Rob, stretching his cramped arms, was able to untie his ankles, get to his feet and start flexing his muscles. Returning circulation made him feel that his extremities were full of pins and needles.

He could hear people moving around the interior of the big houseboat. Doors were slamming, steps sounding in the corridors, then climbing the stairs. So far, for the moment, Rob had been undisturbed, but he knew that at any moment they would he calling far him. He felt like a condemned man in death row, waiting for the tramp of the solemn death march.

Rob dragged the table over to the locked door, unknotted the rope which had been used to tie him, and then tied the cut pieces together. He found he had a strip of rope some ten feet long. He hastily knotted one end of this rope over one of the heavy steel shafts, stood on the table and managed to elevate the shaft so that it was balanced on a small beam which ran directly over the door, some two feet above the level of the door itself.

Then Rob quietly climbed down from the table, picked up the other shaft, and, by using great care, was able to get this shaft also in position, balanced on top of the other, both of them directly over the door, both looped with the slender rope.

Rob dropped the rope to the floor, got down, moved the table back, stepped over, took hold of the rope, and waited.

He didn’t have long to wait.

He heard steps coming towards the door.

If the manner in which the key on the other side was turned was any indication of the emotions of the man who was entering the room, that man was in a violent and nasty temper. The bolt shot back with a vengeful click.

Rob stepped back so that he would be slightly behind the door as it opened.

The door shot back with a jerk. The heavy-set man standing on the threshold could not immediately see Rob. He took a half-step forward into the room said, “What the hell!”

Rob pulled the slender rope a hard, quick jerk.

The man sensed the menace about him, started a forward leap, but was too slow. A hundred and sixty five pounds of steel shafting descended unexpectedly on his head and shoulders. He went down with hardly a moan.

Rob sprang forward.

He had no time to engage in any of the niceties of deception. The prone, quiet figure of the heavy-set man lay motionless save for a heavy deep breathing. The lighted Havana, which had been in his mouth, had rolled a few inches away and, still glowing, sent up a spiral of blue, aromatic smoke.

Rob bent over the figure and for a moment seemed to be all thumbs. He realized how difficult it is to search someone else. A side trousers pocket yielded Rob’s knife, which he knew was razor sharp, and then he turned back the man’s coat and found a .32-caliber automatic which he withdrew from a shoulder holster.

Rob listened and could hear nothing. He tried to drag the heavy-set man inside the door. It was too much of a job. Rob rolled him, pushed him entirely over the threshold, then shoved in the bars of steel.

Consciousness started to return to the sprawled figure. His muscles twitched. He groaned, flickered his eyes open, tried to sit up.

Rob slammed the door shut, locking it from the outside and pocketed the key which had been left in the lock on the outside. He grasped the captured gun in his perspiring hand and walked quickly to the bend in the corridor, then hurriedly climbed stairs to the deck of the boat.

There were no lights of any sort visible, and Rob gathered that the portholes had all been darkened, but in the starlight he could plainly make out the form of the boat and saw that it was as he had gathered, a big roomy houseboat.

There seemed to be no one on deck. Rob cat-footed to the gunwale and jumped to the dock, still holding the automatic in his hand. He had made certain there was a shell in the chamber, had slipped the safety off and was ready for business. He was under no illusions as to the stakes. He was now playing for his life.

The boat was moored to the dock, fore and aft, and there was a slight current gurgling against the little pier in the tree hidden alcove where the boat was moored. He decided to take a chance on gaining more time to perfect his escape.

Running to the stern, he used his razor-sharp knife, cutting through the light hawser which was holding the boat by the stem. Then he ran back to the bow line and pulling it over the bollard cast it into the water. Watching, he was pleased to see that almost instantly a black gap some few inches in width began to appear between the boat and the dock. The gap constantly widened.

He turned back to the trees, paused motionless as he heard an automobile coming from the direction of the road. Powerful headlights danced through the trees, then were turned down to dim and shut off. Rob heard the sound of the motor for a second or two, then silence. He was now squarely between two fires.

So absorbed had he become with this threat in his rear, that he momentarily took his eyes from the deck of the boat. When he looked up a figure was running along the deck.

“Hey!” the man shouted at him.

Rob knew that he was only an indistinct figure in the starlight, probably less distinct than that of the man who was running towards him. The bow had swung clear of the dock, but the stern was coming in close and there was still opportunity for the man to jump ashore, grab the stern line, tie the boat up, give the alarm, and take after Rob.

Rob turned and started to run.

“Hey, you!” the man on deck called. “Come back here.”

“It’s okay,” Rob called back over his shoulder, racing for the land.

He looked back and saw that the man had turned and was rushing towards the rear of the boat, apparently preparing to execute the very maneuver which Rob feared. Rob knew that if he only had some way of holding the men’s attention, of freezing him into immobility for even a few seconds, the boat would then have swung out into the current, and the gap would be so wide that the man would have to jump in the water and swim before he could gain the pier. By the time he did that, the boat would have drifted far out into the middle of the stream and it would be too late for reinforcements from below to head Rob off. It might be a matter of some fifteen or twenty minutes before the engines could be started, the boat brought back to the pier, and anything like organized pursuit placed in operation.

“Halt!” Rob shouted. “You’re under arrest,” he added as an afterthought.

The man kept running.

Rob squeezed the trigger on the automatic, firing twice, blindly. He saw tongues of blue-orange flame spurt from the muzzle of the gun, felt the reassuring jar of the recoil as the mechanism kicked fresh shells into the barrel, and saw that his ruse apparently was effective. As nearly as he could tell in the starlight, the man had ceased to run and had flung himself full length on the deck of the houseboat.

By this time, Rob was clear of the pier, and he could see that the boat had swung completely around and was now well out away from the dock, the current carrying it out towards the middle of the stream.

Rob turned and raced for the friendly protection of the shadows, holding the automatic in his hand.

At the point where the trees made deep shadows and where soft, black loam muffled his steps, Rob paused and waited, taking stock of the situation, trying to locate the motorists who had just driven up.

He could hear someone running, someone coming towards him from the direction of the road.

Rob slipped in closer to the trunk of a towering oak tree. As nearly as he could tell, there was only one person running down the trail.

Rob looked back towards the houseboat and suddenly became rigid.

A shaft of ruddy light was coming up through the bow of the houseboat and, even as Rob looked, a streak of orange flame licked up into brilliance, extinguished itself momentarily, and then shot up once more, fiercer than at first. A moment later there was something similar to a muffled explosion and the flames seemed to blast a channel for themselves right up through the deck at the bow of the ship. Ten seconds more, and the whole front of the houseboat was a mass of flames.

Rob watched the boat as it drifted out into the river, the flames rearing skyward. The boat gradually drifted farther and farther out into the center of the current, until a ruddy reflection was flung back, not only from the low clouds which were coming up from the south, following the course of the river, but also from the swirling waters of the river. The ruby-red glow outlined the pier to which the ship had been tied, as well as the over-hanging tree limbs. Then, even as Rob looked, a woman stepped out from the trees, to stand on the edge of the river, silhouetted against that red, flaming spectacle. A woman who, judging from her slender figure and easy grace, was young and lithe.

Rob could see only her back. Silhouetted against the glow from the burning boat, she seemed frozen into immobility by the blaze, apparently hypnotized, entirely oblivious to everything but the shooting flames roaring skyward from the river.

Rob slipped the safety catch on his stolen automatic, so that no unexpected stumble would cause the gun to discharge. Turning his back to the flames, using their light to guide him, he found the trail, slipped as quietly as possible through the rim of trees along the river bank, came to the driveway and found a big, black sedan standing there with the lights off, but with the motor running smoothly at idling speed.

Rob took advantage of the opportunity. He jumped into the car, slammed the door shut, groped for and found the light switch, turned on the headlights, eased the car into gear and drove away fast until he came to the main road.

He had no means of knowing which direction he wanted to turn, save that he had located north and south from the stars. The big river was on the west side of the state, acting as a boundary between it and the adjoining state, and Rob was on the west bank.

He turned north just on a hunch, and within two hundred yards came to a drawbridge. He turned east, crossed the river and then turned south. He felt certain now that he was well to the north of Noonville.