Return to Skull Island (6 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

“You know, I just remembered I got an old pal who ought to be around Shanghai somewhere.”

I was talking to Pat. We were leaning against the railing on the foredeck of the
Venture
, watching the foaming waves breaking around the bow. We were only a couple of days out of Shanghai. She’d been taking pot shots at a flotilla of jellyfish with an enormous antique Colt she told me was a kind of family heirloom. She had let me take a look at the monster. It must have weighed four pounds and, I’d noticed, had a fanning spur welded to the hammer.

I noticed she never missed.

“Yeah?” she said, not taking her eyes from her target.

“Fella named Buck. Frank Buck.”

“Not the bring-em-back-alive guy?”

There was a BANG! and a miniature geyser of water where an innocent jellyfish had been floating.

“Sure. He’s got a place in the city, a kind of warehouse for the animals he collects. And, ah, well, his other business interests.”

“Other business interests?”

“Well, Frank never was one to pass up a good opportunity.”

“An entrepreneur, is he?”

“Yeah, if entrepreneur means what I think it does.”

She turned and looked at me speculatively.

“So . . . you think Buck can help me?”

“That’s exactly what I had in mind. If anyone knows his way around China, he does.”

*****

Shanghai wasn’t exactly as I’d remembered it from the last time I’d been through there, on my way to Indochina to shoot
Man-Eaters of Angkor Wat
, and what a picture that was, too, boy oh boy! The Japs were running the city, with the Chinese gnashing their teeth on the other side of the Whangpoo River, in Pootung. Pat and I checked ourselves into the Cathay Hotel, which was owned by an old acquaintance of mine, Ellice Victor, a British millionaire who’d built at least a dozen modern buildings in the International Settlement—which was now, I understood, controlled like everything else by the Japanese, a fact that must irk Ellice no end. I’d cherished the hope that the place’d be so crowded with foreigners that Pat and I would have to share a room, but no such luck. With people evacuating the city in droves, the hotel was practically empty and we stood out like big white thumbs.

“Look,” I told Pat, “you go on up and get yourself settled. I haven’t got anything other than what I’m wearing on my back, anyway. I’ll go look up Frank. If he’s in town, he’ll be sure to give us a hand.”

“All right. Take it easy, though. The Japanese are suspicious as hell. No one’s inspected the
Venture
’s cargo yet, what with all the confusion in the harbor, but they’re going to get around to it eventually, have no fear. We have to be out of here before that happens.”

I told her I’d try to be back within the hour and went out in search of a cab, which was mighty hard to find as I should have figured. Twenty minutes of my hour were wasted before I found myself standing in front of number thirty-two Kwang-an Road. I rang the bell and waited.

I counted off two and a half more minutes before a little peephole popped open and a beady eye glared out at me.

“Holy damn! It’s Carl Denham!”

There was the sound of heavy bolts being unlatched and the door swung open. A medium-sized, well-built man stood in the opening, hands on his hips. He was as handsome as a movie star, right down to his Clark Gable moustache and square, cleft chin.

“Well, I’ll be damned! If it ain’t Carl Denham! What the hell’re you doing in Shanghai, of all the godforsaken places in the world?”

“Well, Frank, it’s kind of a long story.”

“Well, come on in—it’s a lot safer talking behind doors nowadays.”

He shut the heavy panel behind me and shot home what must have been half a dozen heavy bolts.

“Say,” he said, “come on upstairs and we’ll catch up over a couple a cold drinks.”

I told him that sounded swell and followed him up a dark flight. The whole place was dark, with all the windows boarded up, so the room that Frank led me into seemed dazzling even though there was only the single electric floor lamp providing any light.

“That sure was something,” Frank said, getting glasses and a bottle from a cabinet, “that big monkey of yours. Boy oh boy, what I wouldn’t’ve given to have been in on that!”

“You’re lucky you weren’t, Frank. Thanks,” I said, taking the drink he offered me. A good, stiff one, I was glad to see. “It’s been nothing but a big headache, I can tell you. I’m on the run now, with Tom Dewey’s boys on my heels.”

“Dewey, huh? He’s a pretty tough cookie, I hear.”

“You’re telling me. But what’re you still doing in Shanghai, Frank? I’d think it’d be pretty hot for foreigners right now.”

“Aw, the Japs are all right, I guess. They don’t want to get any of the European powers involved in this fracas of theirs.”

“Yeah, but it must be kind of tough for your line of work.”

“You mean the animals? Well, I tell you—it ain’t exactly lions and tigers I been dealing in lately.”

“No?”

“No. I mean, on the face of it, that’s what I’m
supposed
to be doing, shipping out monkeys and whatnot to zoos and circuses, but that’s just a front, you know? What I’ve
been
doing is running arms into China. They’re hot to get the Japs outta their territory and’ll pay just about anything for guns and ammo, whatever they can get their hands on.”

“Say, Frank, who’s your pal?”

This last was from a voice in the doorway. I turned and saw a tall, rangy-looking fellow wearing a khaki outfit. He looked like a surveyor or an engineer or something, with his round ranger’s hat, jodhpurs and canvas puttees. He had a friendly, open, cowboy’s face that reminded me somewhat of Lindbergh’s, but the twinkle in his eyes was more predatory than schoolboyish.

“Hey!” cried Frank, leaping to take the stranger’s hand. “Glad you’re here, Roy. Got a swell ol’ pal here I’d like you to meet. Roy, this is my old pal Carl Denham, the movie man you must’ve heard of. Carl, this is Roy Andrews.”

“Glad to meet you, Roy,” I said, extending my hand. His grip nearly squeezed the juice out of it.

“Roy’s just back from Mongolia.”

“Mongolia?”

“Yeah,” said Andrews. “Say, that there’s some mighty fine lookin’ likker you got there, Frank.” He talked just like that. Like Tom Mix. I got the distinct feeling, though, that it didn’t come naturally to him. He was putting on a show of good old boy toughness that that was as phony and obvious as a Mardi Gras mask.

Buck told him to help himself as Andrews was in the process of doing that very thing. He tossed back a tumblerful of the amber liquid and said, “Yup, Mongolia. Got tossed out cause old Tang Yulin was gettin’ kinda antsy bout the Japs who was movin’ in. Sure like to get back in there, though!”

“So would I,” agreed Frank. “I’ve got a standing order for three Manchurian tigers and half a dozen cases of carbines ready to trade for ‘em.”

“So,” I said, “the difficulty would be getting overland into Mongolia?”

“That’s about it,” replied Roy. “The Japs have all the routes pretty much sewn up. They’re keeping a sharp eye on anyone heading into the territory.”

“What about the Luan Ho?”

“Well, that’s there’s a real thought. That’d circumvent the Jap-held territory, I reckon. The province of Jehol is held by Tang and it borders on the river. I suppose if we could get that far up the river, we could meet him at, oh, somewhere near Changteh, say.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I think I might be able to work out something for you boys that would be to our mutual advantage.”

I told them about the
Venture
. I didn’t mention its cargo of seaplanes, but hinted that we were pretty anxious to get ourselves in touch with the Chinese as soon as possible. If we could say we were part of a Frank Buck expedition, we could probably go anywhere we wanted. Both Roy and Frank were tactful enough not to press me on the details. My hour was about up, so I told them I was staying at the Cathay, at Bund and Nanking, where they should meet me in the morning.

I got back to the hotel around four o’clock with a song in my heart.

“Roy
Chapman
Andrews?” was the first thing Pat asked me when I got back and told her what I’d learned.

“I have no idea. He didn’t tell me his middle name.”

“Well, it must be him. Who else could it be?”

“I have no idea. Who is Roy Chapman Andrews?”

“He’s a paleontologist—maybe the most famous one in the whole world.”

I didn’t even know there
were
such things as paleontologists, let alone famous ones, and told her so.

“He looks for dinosaur bones. And finds them, too.”

“Dinosaur bones?” Well, that was okey dokey by me. The only good dinosaur, so far as I was concerned, was a dead dinosaur. If I never saw one with meat on its bones again, it’d be too soon.

“No one thought there’d be fossils in Mongolia, but Andrews proved them all wrong. He’s famous for his discoveries.”

“Well, that’s nice.”

“Nice?’ Do you have any idea what he had to go through to find those fossils? When the whole story comes out, it’s going to be one of the great adventures of all time.”

“I suppose it was pretty rough going . . .”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

That seemed to be Pat’s usual assessment of me, but I let it pass. Instead, I said, “Whoever he is, the point is that Englehorn can take the
Venture
up the Luan Ho with Frank Buck’s charter. Chapman will then take over, since he knows all the local warlords. He’ll help you to unload your planes onto the hapless Chinese.”

“Well, I have to admit, I don’t see anything wrong with that plan.”

“Of course not! What
could
go wrong?”

Nothing either of us could think of, anyway, until the hotel blew up.