I heard a woman's voice first She sounded like she was crying.
" . . . no, they can't do that . . mustn't let them . . . do to us?"
"Easy, Baby." That was a man's sound. Hoarse, low and worried.
"But I don't want to die! I don't want you to die!"
The man sighed.
"Oh, it's been so awfully long. All these years without a word from you. It isn't fair—it just isn't fair!"
"Stop it, now. You hear me? It won't do any of us any good. Maybe I can make a deal with them. . . ."
"Oh, Dad! Why couldn't we have been together all this time? Now, no matter what happened, it wouldn't hurt as much . . ."
"I know, Honey. I know. Cut it out for God's sake. You're kicking me in the lungs. . . ."
For a second I was sure the radio had been left on. Another installment of soap opera. The feminine voice was so young, so teary, so full of Channel Two devotion and daughterly passion. The masculine one equally as stolid, brusquely affectionate. Typical father role for the women who stay at home and suffer with the trials and tribulations of John's Other Wife and Life Can Be Beautiful and As the World Turns.
"Harry," another female voice suddenly broke in, cutting my train of thought in half with a cleaver of cold reality. "She'll be all right. Be thankful for small favors. At least you got to see each other again."
"Not this way," the man grumbled. "I didn't want it this way, Serena."
"Who did?" I could hear that the second woman was older, more experienced. There was a tender sadness in the voice. "This way none of us gets a chance to be happy again. . . ."
"Jeezis!" the man bellowed and gone were all my notions about daytime soap opera. All shot down in flames. They never curse on TV. The sponsors wouldn't stand for it. "How the hell did I ever get into this mess? Me. All I wanted was to earn a living and be left alone."
"None of us," the woman said sadly, "have much choice about what happens to us."
A fadeout line if I ever heard one. But there was more to come. My ears strained against the darkness, the fresh silence. Thoughts and suspicions flickered in what was left of my reason.
"What about him?" It was the young girl again. Sounding wistful but still a little frightened.
"Same treatment they'll give us." It was the man once more. "We all know too much. We could spoil it for them. They won't stand for that. When this plane gets to Florida . . ."
Plane. We were on a plane.
That plane? Images and pictures unreeled for me. The apartment, Madame Roti, Leo the chauffeur, Linden Airport, the limousine. The sweet sickly smell within the confines of the car. Madame Roti's swell figure across my lap. My brain rallied. The weightless feeling, the sensation of traveling in a void began to dissipate.
I fought to bat open my eyes.
"He looks like he's coming to. Amazing guy in a way. We think he's gone forever, he pops up out of nowhere. I wonder why they bothered to bring him along. They could have killed him in New York. They should have—if they had any sense."
"Dad," the young girl whimpered in a low, tearful, badly-frightened voice. "That sounds so cruel. . . . You sound just like them."
"Do I? Those bastards. I wish I had a grenade. I'd blow them out of the sky. Anything to take them with us. . . ."
"No, Harry," the woman answered. Her voice now sounded loud and clear to me. "You wouldn't So stop talking like a fool. You'd sacrifice your own daughter like that? I don't think you would."
"Ahhrrr." The man sighed helplessly. I heard him very plainly now, too. Total recall was just an eye-opener away.
I opened my eyes and all the euphoria fled out the nearest exit. At once I had an awful headache, my body felt cramped and stiff and my throat and nostrils reeked of flamed-out passages. It was a perfectly horrible transition, coming back from the painless world to the painful one. I batted my eyelids, knowing they felt like someone was trying to hold down the lids. I felt like a mauled alley cat who has been allowed to slink off into a corner to nurse his wounds.
I saw Harry Healey, Arvis Healey and Serena Savage.
We were all crowded into a dim compartment of some kind in which there was just enough room to face each other without our extended toes touching. Everybody was sitting down, propped against the wall of the compartment Harry Healey and Serena Savage were facing me and little leggy Arvis was right by my side. I saw all their-bonds before I saw mine. Everybody's ankles were lashed together with both hands tied in a double-hitch to the ankle bonds.
Everybody could move but not very far or very gainfully without imitating a very slow crab. I leaned back against my part of the compartment took a deep breath to clear the pounding in my skull and opened my eyes, fully. The compartment came into sharp focus. Dim, metallic, a composition wall. I heard the muffled drone of big engines, sensed rather than felt the easy fluid power and grace of a smoothly operating plane flight. There was nothing to see out of but I took the word of my senses. Madame Roti impressed me as a woman who did keep her mind on her plans, however she made deviations in the mechanics of same. I looked Harry Healey straight in the deeply-tanned, worried face.
I looked at Serena Savage. Gorgeous looked more like a goddess than ever, but the green eyes were without hope.
On my right, Arvis Healey tried to smile. But it didn't come off. All three of them were stripped down to their underwear. Black bra and panties for Serena, shorts and T-shirt for Healey, and his leggy daughter was barely hidden in a torn, shredded half-slip that had been a brilliant pink once. The females were incomparably enticing that way, but so what?
My own attire matched Healey's. Only he wore boxers and I had briefs.
They were all watching me, each with his own estimation of the sad pickle we were all in. They wanted me to speak first. I could see that. So I did. I felt about as clever as the classroom dunce.
"All right, boys and girls," I said slowly with a brightness I was far from feeling. "Now, here's my plan . . ."
NIGHT PLANE TO NOWHERESVILLE
NOBODY laughed. I didn't expect them to. None of us seemed to have any immediate future worth thinking about.
I took my mind off the half-naked wonders of Serena Savage and Arvis Healey and stared directly at Harry Healey, the father of all our troubles.
"I don't know how much time we've got left," I said, "or if we have any time at all, but I'd appreciate it a whole helluva lot if you kind of bring me up to date."
Down to the underwear as he was, I could see he was ropily muscled and hard the way you'd expect a guy who lived an outdoor life to look. His face was still rugged but he seemed to have added some extra wrinkles since last we met. His eyes were very, very worried. Like he'd already given up. In a guy as big as he was, it wasn't a pleasant sight.
"Mr. Noon—" Serena began—"leave him alone——"
"And you shut up," I growled. "I want to hear it from him."
At my side, Arvis was staring down at her toes as if she had been caught necking in the family car. Harry Healey's face, no more than a few feet from my own, glared at me helplessly.
"What's to tell?" he demanded sourly.
I shook my head. "About a week ago we had a cozy hare-brained chat in Serena's place. I walked out and I saw Arvis here go barreling into the flat with Dandy Jaxon. About five seconds after that, Jaxon came stumbling out looking like Swiss cheese. He's very dead, in case you didn't know. When I went back into the apartment, you three had flown the coop. What happened?"
Arvis looked up from her toes. Her fine young face was almost defiant.
"It was all my fault. I never should have lied to Dandy about Dad and what he had. That story about the treasure. I didn't know that Dandy was such a cruel person. And that little friend of his—Killy." She shuddered. "Once Dandy had his mind set on something . . . well, he got to know where Serena was staying. After we left your office that day. He wanted a showdown and——"
"All right, Arvis," Harry Healey rumbled in a tired voice. "I'll tell him the rest o
f it." He studied me quietly. "Jaxon came busting in on us. He pulled a gun. I didn't stop to ask questions. I shot him as he came through the door."
"The Luger?" So Dandy had cursed Arvis but Healey had shot him.
He nodded. "Wish I had it now. But they took it when they took us. Damn it."
"So why did you all take off and where did you go?"
"Who wanted to hang around with a corpse? Besides, I didn't know if they were right on Jaxon's tail. So I took the girls to my place. I had a furnished room on the East Side down by Union Square. We holed up there for a couple of nights wondering what to do. I was half off my nut wondering exactly what to do next. This thing's got me real bugged, Noon."
"They again, huh? Water people, leprechauns or what?" I tried to read his eyes. "Why didn't you get back in touch with me?"
"What could you have done? Besides, I couldn't even be sure of you anymore. Jaxon did walk in on us right after you walked out. I lost my faith in you, too."
"I'll buy that for now. Go on. Then what?"
His smile was tragic. "They picked us up yesterday. At the furnished room—just as I was about to try the F.B.I. again to see what the Government really thought of my story. I'd made up my mind to blow to South America if it was no deal."
"How did they fox you?"
"The old Western Union messenger gag. I fell for it because the place didn't have any phone and I thought it might be from you. I could have put up a fight if I'd been on my own but with the girls being with me . . ." He shrugged and his enormous shoulders ridged with knotted muscles.
I looked at Serena Savage.
"I met your Madame Roti. She the one you told me about?"
Serena's mouth curved in a half snarl. "Yes, that's her. I'd like to be alone with her for about two minutes. I'd fix her good. She said some pretty disgusting things to Arvis. I didn't know there were women like her."
Obviously, the Madame had her lesbian side.
"There are. Forget the Madame for a second. Any idea, any of you, what they're up to now?"
The girls didn't know or they didn't want to think about it. But Harry Healey had. I could see it in his eyes. He didn't like it but he was man enough to face it.
"Be yourself, Noon. It's all pretty clear, isn't it? Since the damn beginning, they've been erasing everybody connected with me. First Artie Sothern, then Constant Smith and then Doc Ponto. Those poor bastards. And now Killy and Jaxon are out of the picture. Two tinhorns who wanted to make some extra cash. Now they've got you because Serena went looking for you after my daughter went to your office with Jaxon. So what can be left? They've rounded all the people up who've had anything to do with—or any knowledge of—their damn underwater scheme, whatever the hell it is. And why did they take our clothes?" His face shone sweatily in the dim compartment. Now, the roar of the plane engines thumped loudly as if he had brought us back to the awful present. "This is the tail section of a C-47. I remember these ruptured ducks from the second big one. It's a cargo plane and Madame Roti is up front and that big chauffeur of hers, Leo, is doubling in brass. He's flying this crate. And they're taking us back to where this all started. Florida. But all I can see is they've got to dump us. One way or the other. We might as well face up to that. I don't expect any miracles, either."
"Skip the crepe," I said. "Is there anybody else on this plane?"
"Hard to tell. I only saw Leo and the woman. We were brought on board after dark by a couple of other characters who I never saw before. But I think they took off in a car before you were brought on board. They're organized, I tell you. They've got people all over."
"Stop saying they like that. You'll give yourself the heebie-jeebies. These aren't phantoms or Martians or a third sex. This is just a high-handed, super-organized setup, Harry." I flung a glance at all of them, saving Arvis for last because she needed cheering up the most. As tall and beautiful as she was, she still was just a kid who should have had her whole life ahead of her. "We've gotten into something we could louse up just because we know something about it. Our little knowledge is a very dangerous thing. But I've been mulling over the possibilities."
"Sure," Healey almost sneered. "And the F.B.I. didn't even give me a tumble."
"They did. Remember, that's how I got into the picture."
"You. One man. A lone wolf. One gun. You call that taking a lot of interest? Don't make me laugh, Noon, but you're funny as hell sometimes."
"You can't be sure," I said. I couldn't see any reason for telling him about my visit to the Bureau and my talk with Frederick O'Malley. "The F.B.I. can move in mysterious ways."
Serena Savage laughed humorlessly. "Don't quote the Bible. There's no God that I can see in this mess."
Arvis Healey coughed. An interruptive kind of sound. We all knew she wanted to say something. We looked at her.
"You got something to say, Baby," her father said, "you say it."
Arvis Healey lifted her head with an impatient gesture.
"Mr. Noon is trying to tell you something and you're not letting him. I wish you'd let him say it, Dad."
Harry Healey looked astonished but only for a second. Then he smiled almost proudly and shifted his bound hands so that he could pat her toes with the tips of his fingers.
"Sure. You're right. Go ahead, Noon. You've got the floor."
"Haven't we all?" I agreed. "Thanks, Arvis. It's nothing earth-shattering and maybe just a theory, but I do want to chase some of the dragons and spooks off this whole caper. So let's organize our thinking. In my lifetime, everything I've run into on a grand scale has had money and profit at its base. You dig? Money, the buck, the Almighty Dollar. Now hear me out. Harry tells us all about swimming dames and so does Serena. And then people start getting killed for no good reason. So I believe Harry and Serena. The corpses exist, too, so they aren't made up. Now, in my racket people get killed because they know too much, are in the way, and generally aren't wanted. You know what it spells to me? Just another big hoax or swindle—some kind of scheme. But what's behind it? Who's behind it? The possibilities are endless and if you'll bear with me awhile longer, I'd like to take them one at a time."
"You are the talkative one, aren't you?" Serena Savage murmured without wanting an answer.
But I had her interest and Harry Healey's and his daughter's, too. Everybody loves a mystery.
"Keep talking, Noon," Harry rumbled.
I wriggled my hands and toes which were starting to stiffen up from the ropes.
"Nobody lives underwater except scientists who've developed the way to do it. With oxygen and food and supplies and radio contact and all the works. I'm not even going to suggest that the Third Reich is hiding out from the world down there in the waters off Skeleton Key. We don't need science-fiction to cloud this up because it's more practical than that. If they were down there and hiding they wouldn't attract attention to themselves by sending bikini babes up to swim around and draw sightseers. Follow that? Just like with Artie and Harry, those dolls do that bit primarily to attract. Which spells out scheme to me. Like piracy and maybe rolling rich yachting men for their valuables. But let's examine that one more closely—who saw the swimming girls that we know of? Artie Sothern and Harry Healey. And what did they have worth taking? A lousy little sloop called The Naked Lady that wouldn't be worth much to anybody. If you're following me, what I'm saying is that the girls did their routine for the boys because these particular boys were the only fishermen for miles around who ever came to Skeleton Key. Which also means that your they or them were worried that Healey-Sothern would stumble onto their underwater cave or complex or whatever it is. Make sense?"
"In a screwy way, yes," Healey said. "So go on."
"I thought about the Bermuda Triangle. You know—that spot off the islands where all the ships disappear and nobody can explain it away. Is it a natural phenomenon or what? Nobody knows. But I don't think it has too much to do with what we're talking about because it is so far from Skeleton Key. But it's a good kind of cover st
ory for the bunch we're talking about, isn't it? Skeleton Key is another mystery like the Bermuda Triangle and the sea has a lot of unexplained mysteries that still aren't cracked. Like the Flying Dutchman, the Marie Celeste and ghost ships and Davy Jones's Locker. But—and a big one—who is down there and what exactly were they afraid that Healey-Sothern would stumble on because they keep diving off the shores of Skeleton Key for sponges? That's the core of the whole thing."
"What do you think, Mr. Noon?" Arvis asked in a hushed little-girl voice.
"Everything, Arvis. And too much of it." I blinked my eyes. The tail section was cool and unheated. But none of us had been worried about being cold. "The Russians could have something down there to do with missiles. Remember Cuba in '62 when Kennedy had to get tough. It could be that. Or it could be that there's something down in that water that's priceless—sunken treasure or uranium or some element—and it's being mined right now. Or there's just a bunch of crooks who are finding a supercivilized way to be pirates on the high seas. Ships sink all the time and salvage is so damn expensive, nobody usually bothers. Jaxon was willing to believe Arvis when she talked about her father's story having to do with a lost galleon from the old Spanish days. See what I mean? People are willing to believe almost anything when it involves the sea because so much has happened down through the centuries that is still unexplained and hanging open as a question. But whatever this kookie set-up is about I go back to my original statement. Profit and greed is at the bottom of it. We are not dealing with spooks, men from another planet or some superrace of beings out to dominate the world as we know it We're smack in the middle of somebody's prize dream and we are obstacles. Which makes us very undesirable and very expendable. End of talk."
Nobody said anything for a long time.
I had spelled most of it out and now each of them was kicking it around for size and credibility. There was a large gap in my theory but none of us could fill it just at that precise moment. Harry Healey was probably thinking of all the dead men who had followed in the wake of that first trip that Serena Savage took on The Naked Lady. It was hard to tell what Serena was thinking. Her limpid green eyes were bottomless and beautiful. Young Arvis might have been wondering how the strange man who was her father had so blindly and innocently wandered into a world of fantasy and sudden death. If she was calculating her own chances of survival, it didn't show in her youthful, doelike face.
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