The girl kept yelping, as if she truly expected it to hatch and spill a lot of little baby brains down the front of me. “Gaaah! Eeek!” she yelled, in a shrill blast that must have given them the creeps back at the Sunrise.

  I said, “Tell John Farrow—listen to me, dammit.” The guy kept staring at me. “Tell John Farrow that Rule and Burder killed his partner, Paul Yuré, and Ellen Underwood. Rule's dead now, and I'm chasing after Burder—I think."

  He nodded, sort of dumbly. But I had no more time for explanations, so I wheeled and sprang aboard the “SeaHeaven."

  Damn! Oh, boy! There wasn't enough wrong with me already. Boy, my shin! Barked hell out of it. Same damn shin as before, too. I wondered if maybe my luck was running out.

  I got the engine started, fiddled it into gear, and, fortunately, found myself headed away from the dock—I'm not much for boats. It isn't that I have anything against them; I like boats, in fact; I just don't fiddle around with them much. Usually when I'm on them someone else is driving. There was a big twanging thum, and I looked back in time to see a rope part and flop into the water. Ah, I should've—No matter, I was on my way.

  I shoved it up to maximum speed and soon was fairly flying over the water. This was keen! I might take up yachting after this. If I didn't get shot, that is. Or bleed to death. Or drown. Or rupture one of my concussions. Or—the hell with yachting.

  This wasn't yachting, anyway. This was a desperate pursuit of—I guessed—Joshua Burder. The “Wanderer” was only about two hundred yards off now, and very soon only a hundred yards separated the two boats. I was gaining lickety-split. He'd been running under power alone when I'd first spotted the big twin-screw diesel, but now all sails were up. I hadn't seen anybody aboard the boat, though. Maybe he didn't yet know that Nemesis was behind him, gaining lickety-split.

  Yeah, he knew. Somebody knew. Crack! The sound of the shot was faint, much of it drowned by the clattering noise around me, but I heard it. Well, I'd been spotted, no question about that. And even with the “Wanderer's” engines going and all that sail up, I was still gaining on him. Perhaps because he was heading smack into the wind. The fool didn't know any more about yachting than I did.

  He wasn't a bad shot, though.

  And “he” was, indeed, Joshua Burder. In another couple of minutes I'd pulled up close enough to the “Wanderer” so that I could see and recognize Burder as he aimed his gun at me. Crack! Closer, this time: too close.

  The “Wanderer” was about twice the size of my little cruiser, and lanky Joshua was on the port side of its enclosed bridge, leaning out and blasting down at me. I was at the controls on the main deck of the “SeaHeaven,” and that second bullet crashed through the glass, slivering it two feet from my head. I could see Burder, but not very well, and I couldn't get a good shot at him without firing through the glass myself.

  So I left the engine turning full speed ahead and clambered up the ladder from the main deck to the flying bridge and the duplicate controls there. The boats were now no more than thirty yards apart, not too far for fairly accurate shooting under normal circumstances, but with the damn boat bouncing like a horse the circumstances were not normal.

  I squeezed off two shots at Burder anyway, leaning out past the starboard side of the flying bridge, and at least I had the satisfaction of seeing him jump back out of sight. I knew I'd missed him, but the slugs hadn't been very wide of the mark at that. Which was due primarily to luck, since the Colt Special's two-inch barrel is not designed for long-range accuracy.

  In a matter of seconds, however, we were going to be at extremely short range. The distance was ten yards, and narrowing. And I began wondering what I was going to do now. There was no chance I could stop the guy unless I got aboard the “Wanderer."...

  I didn't stop to figure it out. He who hesitates is lost, and all that jazz. What they don't tell you is that he who doesn't hesitate is sometimes lost a lot sooner. But I had a hunch that, if I tried to analyze all the factors, determine the angles just right, get into geometry and trigonometry, plus the possibility of getting drilled by a slug or two, I'd simply putter along after him until I ran out of gas.

  So I just did it. I swung the wheel around and angled the “SeaHeaven's” bow in toward the “Wanderer” amidships, hoping it would kiss the big cruiser's port side near the bridge. Then I climbed over the starboard side of my boat and, with my feet planted on a narrow runway and left hand clinging to the downward-curving glass window to the right of the wheel, aimed my right hand—and gun—at the spot where I'd last seen Burder.

  In that somewhat embarrassing position I saw him again. He appeared in the doorway into which he'd ducked earlier, and blam. This time I heard it clearly. The gun was the usual killer's cannon, a .45-caliber automatic pistol, and he let go with two shots, one right after the other. Both missed, but I felt the second one go by, whispering like Death's lover.

  I emptied my gun. It wasn't an especially good idea, but it was better than letting Burder, undisturbed by returned fire, take his time and pick me off. Even a nick from a .45 slug would drop me into the water, which would have been equally as fatal as getting drilled in the head. So, as he fired those two shots and got off a third, I blazed away at him with total ineffectiveness—at least, as far as hitting him was concerned. But it's a pretty good bet I didn't help his aim.

  I barely had time to cram my empty gun back into its holster before the bow of the “SeaHeaven,” slicing through the water, slammed at an angle into the “Wanderer's” side. I had already picked my spot—a pile of tarpaulins directly aft of the other boat's bridge—and I jumped. It wasn't a jump so much as simply a flight through the air, from a combination of the “SeaHeaven's” speed and its sudden slowing when it cracked into the other boat's planking, but it did the job.

  Oddly, when everything up to and including trigonometry seemed to be against me, it was perhaps my best jump of recent history. I flew through the air like an impala and landed like a gazelle, right on those tarps. Of course, then I fell all over the place, and cracked my head somewhat, and just about busted an elbow, but none of it was more painful than I could bear—and I was aboard the “Wanderer.” Aboard, and on my feet.

  Joshua Burder came racing after, spotted me, stopped, leveled his big .45 at me, and: nothing. He squeezed and squeezed, but the slide stayed open, clip empty. So, we were even, just him against me—I thought. For a little while I thought that. I jumped for him, and he threw the gun at me, and it bounced off my side, and then I slid to a stop before him and ducked the right hand he threw at my head. I cocked my right fist, dropped my shoulder and pivoted, and—Pow!

  Only that wasn't my pow. I missed his long chops by about eight inches, as something landed on the back of my neck. I didn't turn, though. I measured Burder in a hurry and got him under the chin with my left fist—and my wrist felt as if it had exploded—then I turned.

  Because I already knew what a vista of joy and delight I would find behind me. Besides, I'd been smacked a couple more times, on the neck again, on one shoulder, and squarely on the mess she had already made at the back of my skull. Yeah, she. And she was not alone. There were two shes—at least.

  You know the sounds women make when all excited? Yips and squeals and bloody-murder screams and such? Well, there was all that—in at least two tones of falsetto hysteria—plus, “Kill him, hit him, scratch him, bite him, gouge him, get his eyes ... ears...” and even unmentionables, in the sweetly feminine spirit of fair play women sometimes evidence in the heat of emotion.

  I turned around, ducking, wincing, and yelling. “Dammit to hell! Quit it!” Pow, right in the kisser. “Quit it!” A beefy hand—Mrs. Ghastly Burder's—and the long red fingernails belonging to Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, otherwise known as Vanessa Gayle, flew at me from seven or eight directions.

  Joshua had gone down from that left to the chin, but not for the count, and I could hear him scrambling up. I turned around just in time to yank my head out of the way of a right hand that might have damn near done me in, and then I got him once in the gut. Once.

  Damn those women. It wasn't enough that Burder was doing his best to kill me, these babes had to be swinging at me with odds and ends of movable equipment they'd found aboard. Joshua was on his behind, groaning, but trying to get up again. I got ready to bust him good.

  Smack! Right on the back of the damned head. Right on that sore spot. Well, I have never gone around hitting women; but a guy can change.

  I cranked my head around and shouted, “Listen, you babes, if you don't get the hell off my back, I am going to pop you. And if I pop you, I guarantee you will stay popped. And I am not kid—Ow!"

  Burder hadn't had time to get up. He'd just stayed there on his fanny and banged one heel into my kneecap. Damn near broke my leg.

  O.K., I thought. Fair's fair, but I have had it. Joshua, happy to have broken my leg, was about halfway up off the deck. I took a short step forward and swung my right leg, the one he hadn't kicked, up and forward. The toe of my big shoe dug into his solar plexus like a ditch digger's pick, and he was back on the deck once more. He still wasn't out, but he wasn't springing lightly to his feet, either. Now, I told myself grimly. Now there was time for those babes.

  I swung around, face alight with the joy of battle—but, whatever joy it was alight with, it was not experienced vicariously by Vanessa and Mrs. Burder. Vanessa looked at me, and her eyes got very wide. She screamed. Nobody to hear and help her—except Mrs. Burder. Naturally old Ghastly was screaming, too.

  Women. Phooey. Beat hell out of you. That's all right. That's fine. But then, when you're merely going to murder them, they start screaming.

  I reached out—fast—and got hold of Vanessa.

  “Shell!” she screamed. “You don't understand!"

  “HA!” I roared.

  Boy, I'll tell you the truth. I wanted to hit her. I really wanted to hit her. But I didn't. I picked her up and hoisted her over my head and walked to the rail. For the first time I realized that Joshua must have killed the engines before racing back to find me, because there was no sound from them, and we were drifting. Faintly I could hear the engine of the “SeaHeaven” and I caught a glimpse of it way, way off toward the horizon.

  Vanessa was screaming magnificently. Then, as I reached the railing, she stopped and yelled, “Shell, don't. Shell—darling!"

  Would you believe it?

  I leaned over the rail and yelled, “Sweetheart!"

  “Darling—you wouldn't!"

  “Sweetheart—wait and see!"

  “But—I can't swim!"

  “So drown!"

  I tossed her in. Yes, I did. Gave me a great deal of satisfaction, too. Probably she could swim. But even if she couldn't, people can usually stay afloat for a little while, even without swimming. Either that or they drown. Vanessa hadn't come up yet. Ah, there was her dear blonde head. Pretty wet, of course.

  She was blubbering and splashing ineffectually.

  “I'm drowning!” she yelled.

  “O.K.,” I said.

  “But—blub—blut—I'm drowning!"

  “O.K. I'll throw you something."

  Then I chased after Mrs. Burder, and caught her, and carried her back to the rail, and threw her to Vanessa.

  Vanessa was still afloat.

  Burder was just getting up again.

  And now, with time to really concentrate on him, I moved across the deck, set myself, and gave Joshua's chin my entire attention.

  * * * *

  I had both the “Wanderer's” engines started again, and we were cruising west, back toward Verde and the Sunrise Hotel. It was the same view as the one I'd had two nights ago—hotel curving toward the sea like a segment of a white skull, tall cone of Damballah-Loa rearing up behind it, lush green vegetation everywhere—but the view was about all that was the same.

  In fact, there was even a little difference in the view, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. To the left of the hotel I could see what I thought was the dock where the “Wanderer” had tied up before, but it seemed much more colorful than I remembered it. Maybe this was a big market day or something. No matter; another mile and we'd be there.

  We. All four of us. Yeah, I'd hauled the two miserable women out of the drink. Burder was tied up, and I'd searched the boat for more guns and not found any, so I'd left the women untied. They had promised not to swat me any more, and I didn't believe they would. They both looked pretty sick and weak, anyhow.

  So, with me at the wheel, I headed for the Sunrise with my cargo of Pratts. Mr. Pratt, Mrs. Pratt, and Miss Pratt. That's right. Joshua Burder was Danny Pratt, Ghastly was his legal wife, and his daughter had adopted the snazzy name of Gayle as part of the equipment with which to bewitch me. The least important part, really.

  During the heat of battle I'd heard her yell “Daddy” a couple of times. “Hit him, Daddy!” and, “Kill him, Daddy!” Like that. But it hadn't penetrated, till I'd found time to think about it. Then, of course, it made sense.

  All three of them had talked freely, two of them while dripping. They knew Rule was dead, that Count Mordieux was also dead, and that the jig was entirely up. According to Joshua—Danny Pratt, that is—the whole operation had been Marcus Rule's idea; Danny himself had merely carried out orders. Sure, orders which had included such things as killing George Knowles—with the same “white man's voodoo” that Rule had intended to use on me and had in fact used on Ed Wylie.

  Behind all the muscle and murder had been Marcus Rule's plan to take over the entire Sunrise operation, making a fat initial profit for himself; and, of course, I knew he'd also had plans to turn the lovely spot into a gambling center bigger and flashier than pre-Castro Cuba—which meant the Mob would have moved in.

  I got most of it from the women even before Danny-Joshua came to. It had been necessary merely to lift one of them up and walk to the rail in order to elicit from her perfectly ear-ripping flows of conversation. Vanessa—I couldn't quite think of her as Miss Vanessa Pratt yet—admitted that Rule had ordered George Knowles's murder and then left for Verde Island so he would be here when Knowles got it in L.A. Also that her father had learned of Knowles's bequest to me as soon as the will was read, and thus even before I had; he'd sicced Vanessa on me, telling her to stick to me like a plaster and keep him informed of my reactions, and actions. She had done that, all right, and more.

  As soon as she informed him that I'd received a letter from John Farrow and was going to the island to investigate Ed Wylie's death, Daddy Pratt and his wife grabbed a plane to the Caribbean and made connections with the “Wanderer,” which was making its last regular trip to Verde prior to the special one that brought me, and my Vanessa, to the Sunrise.

  By the time the Pratts, traveling as Mr. and Mrs. Burder, sweet bird watchers, checked into the Sunrise, Rule had knocked off Farrow's partner. That was the only murder originally planned for Verde Island, and it was assumed—correctly enough—that the one murder would get by as a natural death. But Paul Yuré, as Mordieux’ confiance, was privy to much that passed between Rule and the Count, and he finally got—in Rule's opinion—too large an earful. Since Rule figured he couldn't afford to be seen with Mordieux, Yuré had been their go-between, carrying messages, arranging meetings and such. Certainly he knew plenty, and Rule decided—at least, he decided as soon as Pratt told him I was on my way to the hotel—that it was too much, and Yuré also had to go.

  Danny handled that job, then the killing of Ellen Underwood, who had simply run into bad luck. While making her rounds as temporary maid on that boozy Friday afternoon, the day after all the help had walked out, she'd been in Rule's suite, cleaning the bedroom, when he and Pratt had come into the living room and started discussing a murder—the murder of Paul Yuré on the preceding night. When they inevitably spotted Miss Underwood, it was obvious she'd overheard their “business” conversation. It just wouldn't do for anybody to learn that the “voodoo” deaths had been plain old murders. Especially, murders done by Rule and Danny Pratt. So, exit Miss Underwood.

  At any rate, except for a few odds and ends that could be taken care of at my leisure, the case was wrapped up. Now all I had to do was maneuver this big boat in to the dock and get myself on dry land again.

  The dock was only two or three hundred yards away now, and...

  There was something different. When we'd started sailing in, I'd thought something was awry there. Finally I realized what all that color around the dock was. It was people.

  All kinds of people. Looked like half the island's population. What the hell? I hoped they didn't think I'd stolen the boat. Well, maybe one boat. But not both boats.

  We were getting pretty close now, and I was trying to see all that activity up ahead, while at the same time sort of practicing with the wheel and the gears and levers and such.... I'm not very good with machinery.

  But this was a great big boat, practically a damned ship, so I'd been practicing throwing her into reverse and whipping the wheel around, then nudging her ahead again, just as if I were landing her—or parking her, or whatever it is—at a dock. I believe in planning ahead, I do. But the wind had kicked up somewhat, and the seas were rougher than on the way out, so I'd reasoned a little extra practice was in order. I wanted to do it right.

  Anyhow, the last time I threw her into reverse and whipped the wheel around and all, we were maybe a hundred feet from the dock—and now I could see very clearly. I'd been wondering if perhaps that gang was waiting for me to kill me and cut me up, things like that. But, no. There was—yeah, a band playing!

  It could have been the tin-can band from Joe's. Hell, it probably was, because there, gyrating around in splendid gyrations, was—Chicha.

  I spotted other faces. John Farrow, smiling. Alexandria Maria Ducharme, looking beautiful, and waving. In fact, damn near all of the people were waving. I could hear the band's music, peppy and twangy and dandy.

 

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