Corkscrew and Other Stories (18 page)

“You'll be in my way.”

“I will not,” she retorted. “You'll probably find I can help you. I'm as strong as you, and quicker, and I can shoot.”

The reports of scattered shooting had punctuated our argument, but now the sound of heavier firing silenced the dozen objections to her company that I could still think of. After all, I could slip away from her in the dark if she became too much of a nuisance.

“Have it your own way,” I growled, “but don't expect anything from me.”

“You're so kind,” she murmured as we got under way again, hurrying now, with the wind at our backs speeding us along.

Occasionally dark figures moved on the road ahead of us, but too far away to be recognizable. Presently a man passed us, running uphill—a tall man whose nightshirt hung out of his trousers, down below his coat, identifying him as a resident.

“They've finished the bank and are at Medcraft's!” he yelled as he went by.

“Medcraft is the jeweler,” the girl informed me.

The sloping under our feet grew less sharp. The houses—dark but with faces vaguely visible here and there at windows—came closer together. Below, the flash of a gun could be seen now and then—orange streaks in the rain.

Our road put us into the lower end of the main street just as a staccato rat-ta-tat broke out.

I pushed the girl into the nearest doorway, and jumped in after her.

Bullets ripped through walls with the sound of hail tapping on leaves.

That was the thing I had taken for an exceptionally heavy rifle—a machine gun.

The girl had fallen back in a corner, all tangled up with something. I helped her up. The something was a boy of seventeen or so, with one leg and a crutch.

“It's the boy who delivers papers,” Princess Zhukovski said, “and you've hurt him with your clumsiness.”

The boy shook his head, grinning as he got up.

“No'm, I ain't hurt none, but you kind of scared me, jumping on me like that.”

She had to stop and explain that she hadn't jumped on him, that she had been pushed into him by me, and that she was sorry and so was I.

“What's happening?” I asked the newsboy when I could get a word in.

“Everything,” he boasted, as if some of the credit were his. “There must be a hundred of them, and they've blowed the bank wide open, and now some of 'em is in Medcraft's, and I guess they'll blow that up, too. And they killed Tom Weegan. They got a machine gun on a car in the middle of the street. That's it shooting now.”

“Where's everybody—all the merry villagers?”

“Most of 'em are up behind the Hall. They can't do nothing, though, because the machine gun won't let 'em get near enough to see what they're shooting at, and that smart Bill Vincent told me to clear out, 'cause I've only got one leg, as if I couldn't shoot as good as the next one, if I only had something to shoot with!”

“That wasn't right of them,” I sympathized. “But you can do something for me. You can stick here and keep your eye on this end of the street, so I'll know if they leave in this direction.”

“You're not just saying that so I'll stay here out of the way, are you?”

“No,” I lied. “I need somebody to watch. I was going to leave the princess here, but you'll do better.”

“Yes,” she backed me up, catching the idea. “This gentleman is a detective, and if you do what he asks you'll be helping more than if you were up with the others.”

The machine gun was still firing, but not in our direction now.

“I'm going across the street,” I told the girl. “If you—”

“Aren't you going to join the others?”

“No. If I can get around behind the bandits while they're busy with the others, maybe I can turn a trick.”

“Watch sharp now!” I ordered the boy, and the princess and I made a dash for the opposite sidewalk.

We reached it without drawing lead, sidled along a building for a few yards, and turned into an alley. From the alley's other end came the smell and wash and the dull blackness of the bay.

While we moved down this alley I composed a scheme by which I hoped to get rid of my companion, sending her off on a safe wild-goose chase. But I didn't get a chance to try it out.

The big figure of a man loomed ahead of us.

Stepping in front of the girl, I went on toward him. Under my slicker I held my gun on the middle of him.

He stood still. He was larger than he had looked at first. A big, slope-shouldered, barrel-bodied husky. His hands were empty. I spotted the flashlight on his face for a split second. A flat-cheeked, thick-featured face, with high cheek-bones and a lot of ruggedness in it.

“Ignati!” the girl exclaimed over my shoulder.

He began to talk what I suppose was Russian to the girl. She laughed and replied. He shook his big head stubbornly, insisting on something. She stamped her foot and spoke sharply. He shook his head again and addressed me.

“General Pleshskev, he tell me bring Princess Sonya to home.”

His English was almost as hard to understand as his Russian. His tone puzzled me. It was as if he was explaining some absolutely necessary thing that he didn't want to be blamed for, but that nevertheless he was going to do.

While the girl was speaking to him again, I guessed the answer. This big Ignati had been sent out by the general to bring the girl home, and he was going to obey his orders if he had to carry her. He was trying to avoid trouble with me by explaining the situation.

“Take her,” I said, stepping aside.

The girl scowled at me, laughed.

“Very well, Ignati,” she said in English, “I shall go home,” and she turned on her heel and went back up the alley, the big man close behind her.

Glad to be alone, I wasted no time in moving in the opposite direction until the pebbles of the beach were under my feet. The pebbles ground harshly under my heels. I moved back to more silent ground and began to work my way as swiftly as I could up the shore toward the center of action.

The machine gun barked on. Smaller guns snapped. Three concussions, close together—bombs, hand grenades, my ears and my memory told me.

The stormy sky glared pink over a roof ahead of me and to the left. The boom of the blast beat my ear-drums. Fragments I couldn't see fell around me. That, I thought, would be the jeweler's safe blowing apart.

I crept on up the shore line. The machine gun went silent. Lighter guns snapped, snapped, snapped. Another grenade went off. A man's voice shrieked pure terror.

Risking the crunch of pebbles, I turned down to the water's edge again. I had seen no dark shape on the water that could have been a boat. There had been boats moored along this beach in the afternoon. With my feet in the water of the bay I still saw no boat. The storm could have scattered them, but I didn't think it had. The island's western height shielded this shore. The wind was strong here, but not violent.

My feet sometimes on the edge of the pebbles, sometimes in the water, I went on up the shore line. Now I saw a boat. A gently bobbing black shape ahead. No light was on it. Nothing I could see moved on it. It was the only boat on that shore. That made it important.

Foot by foot, I approached.

A shadow moved between me and the dark rear of a building. I froze. The shadow, man-size, moved again, in the direction from which I was coming.

Waiting, I didn't know how nearly invisible, or how plain, I might be against my background. I couldn't risk giving myself away by trying to improve my position.

Twenty feet from me the shadow suddenly stopped.

I was seen. My gun was on the shadow.

“Come on,” I called softly. “Keep coming. Let's see who you are.”

The shadow hesitated, left the shelter of the building, drew nearer. I couldn't risk the flashlight. I made out dimly a handsome face, boyishly reckless, one cheek dark-stained.

“Oh, how d'you do?” the face's owner said in a musical baritone voice. “You were at the reception this afternoon.”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen Princess Zhukovski? You know her?”

“She went home with Ignati ten minutes or so ago.”

“Excellent!” He wiped his stained cheek with a stained handkerchief, and turned to look at the boat. “That's Hendrixson's boat,” he whispered. “They've got it and they've cast the others off.”

“That would mean they are going to leave by water.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “unless— Shall we have a try at it?”

“You mean jump it?”

“Why not?” he asked. “There can't be very many aboard. God knows there are enough of them ashore. You're armed. I've a pistol.”

“We'll size it up first,” I decided, “so we'll know what we're jumping.”

“That is wisdom,” he said, and led the way back to the shelter of the buildings.

Hugging the rear walls of the buildings, we stole toward the boat.

The boat grew clearer in the night. A craft perhaps forty-five feet long, its stern to the shore, rising and falling beside a small pier. Across the stern something protruded. Something I couldn't quite make out. Leather soles scuffled now and then on the wooden deck. Presently a dark head and shoulders showed over the puzzling thing in the stern.

The Russian lad's eyes were better than mine.

“Masked,” he breathed in my ear. “Something like a stocking over his head and face.”

The masked man was motionless where he stood. We were motionless where we stood.

“Could you hit him from here?” the lad asked.

“Maybe, but night and rain aren't a good combination for sharpshooting. Our best bet is to sneak as close as we can, and start shooting when he spots us.”

“That is wisdom,” he agreed.

Discovery came with our first step forward. The man in the boat grunted. The lad at my side jumped forward. I recognized the thing in the boat's stern just in time to throw out a leg and trip the young Russian. He tumbled down, all sprawled out on the pebbles. I dropped behind him.

The machine gun in the boat's stern poured metal over our heads.

IV

“No good rushing that!” I said. “Roll out of it!”

I set the example by revolving toward the back of the building we had just left.

The man at the gun sprinkled the beach, but sprinkled it at random, his eyes no doubt spoiled for night-seeing by the flash of his gun.

Around the corner of the building, we sat up.

“You saved my life by tripping me,” the lad said coolly.

“Yes. I wonder if they've moved the machine gun from the street, or if—”

The answer to that came immediately. The machine gun in the street mingled its vicious voice with the drumming of the one in the boat.

“A pair of them!” I complained. “Know anything about the layout?”

“I don't think there are more than ten or twelve of them,” he said, “although it is not easy to count in the dark. The few I have seen are completely masked—like the man in the boat. They seem to have disconnected the telephone and light lines first and then to have destroyed the bridge. We attacked them while they were looting the bank, but in front they had a machine gun mounted in an automobile, and we were not equipped to combat on equal terms.”

“Where are the islanders now?”

“Scattered, and most of them in hiding, I fancy, unless General Pleshskev has succeeded in rallying them again.”

I frowned and beat my brains together. You can't fight machine guns and hand grenades with peaceful villagers and retired capitalists. No matter how well led and armed they are, you can't do anything with them. For that matter, how could anybody do much against a game of that toughness?

“Suppose you stick here and keep your eye on the boat,” I suggested. “I'll scout around and see what's doing further up, and if I can get a few good men together, I'll try to jump the boat again, probably from the other side. But we can't count on that. The get-away will be by boat. We can count on that, and try to block it. If you lie down you can watch the boat around the corner of the building without making much of a target of yourself. I wouldn't do anything to attract attention until the break for the boat comes. Then you can do all the shooting you want.”

“Excellent!” he said. “You'll probably find most of the islanders up behind the church. You can get to it by going straight up the hill until you come to an iron fence, and then follow that to the right.”

“Right.”

I moved off in the direction he had indicated.

At the main street I stopped to look around before venturing across. Everything was quiet there. The only man I could see was spread out face-down on the sidewalk near me.

On hands and knees I crawled to his side. He was dead. I didn't stop to examine him further, but sprang up and streaked for the other side of the street.

Nothing tried to stop me. In a doorway, flat against a wall, I peeped out. The wind had stopped. The rain was no longer a driving deluge, but a steady down-pouring of small drops. Couffignal's main street, to my senses, was a deserted street.

I wondered if the retreat to the boat had already started. On the sidewalk, walking swiftly toward the bank, I heard the answer to that guess.

High up on the slope, almost up to the edge of the cliff, by the sound, a machine gun began to hurl out its stream of bullets.

Mixed with the racket of the machine gun were the sounds of smaller arms, and a grenade or two.

At the first crossing, I left the main street and began to run up the hill. Men were running toward me. Two of them passed, paying no attention to my shouted, “What's up now?”

The third man stopped because I grabbed him—a fat man whose breath bubbled, and whose face was fish-belly white.

“They've moved the car with the machine gun on it up behind us,” he gasped when I had shouted my question into his ear again.