by Peter David
And that was when the net, severed of its supports, fell on the Rocketeer, snaring him and bringing him crashing to the floor, completely entangled.
Cliff immediately cut the engine. Hogtied as he was, he might very well set himself on fire in a matter of seconds. And then he heard the shouts of “The rocket! Get the rocket!” It was Sinclair, and leaving concerns for his own life behind, Cliff boiled at the thought of the no-good bum getting the last laugh at his expense. This was more than life and death. This was personal.
Lothar converged on Cliff just as the Rocketeer thumbed the ignition buttons. Like a rocket-powered wrecking ball, the Rocketeer leapt off the ground, shrouded in the net. He collided head-on with Lothar and gave it everything he had, but the giant had a grip on him and couldn’t be shaken loose, even though the Rocketeer dragged him in circles around the dance floor.
They rolled to a tumbled stop, and the world was swirling so much around Cliff that he was forced to cut the ignition once more. Even if he’d managed to get off the ground again, he was so dizzy that he would have just smashed headlong into something. Maybe even driven his head down to somewhere around his hips.
And as he waited for the few seconds he needed for the world to stop spinning, Lothar very graciously did not provide them. Instead, the behemoth came up behind him and threw a massive bear hug around the Rocketeer, pinning his arms at his sides. Cliff felt such power in those huge arms that it seemed as if the giant could break him in half without serious strain.
Cliff gasped and tried to struggle free, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t even draw a breath, much less the strength he needed to liberate himself—and he doubted he would have had that strength, even with air in his lungs.
Suddenly there was the sound of a crash, and the giant moaned and sank to the floor. Released of the choking grip, Cliff hungrily sucked air into his lungs and spun in time to see the giant falling to his knees. Lying next to him on the floor was the shattered remains of what appeared to have been a plaster sea horse. It was as if someone had appeared from behind and beaned the giant a good one.
Cliff had no time to speculate further, for he saw more of the goons moving through the thickening smoke, weapons at the ready. As they closed in, Cliff jabbed the ignition buttons once more.
The engine fire and the Rocketeer arced upward, propelled by the screaming rocket pack. Directly overhead was the skylight, and the Rocketeer threw his arms over his head and smashed through it like a linebacker.
He struck the skylight with the impact of an artillery shell, every bone in his body shaking. The stained glass tropical scene exploded, dropping rainbow shards onto the dance floor in a deadly, jagged hail.
There were the sounds of machine gunfire once more, but the skies were beckoning to the Rocketeer and he knew that he had made it . . .
And then, as if issuing a reminder to him of just how close things could be, a bullet caught him a glancing blow to the helmet, creasing the bronze. The Rocketeer spiraled away, leaving a twisting curl of flame across the Hollywood sky.
Within the South Seas Club, smoke all around her, Jenny emerged from a line of potted palms, brushing the dust from the plaster sea horse off her hands. She felt a small sense of accomplishment. Cliff had risked life and limb to warn her and save her from dangerous men—not the least dangerous of which, it seemed, was the man who had attempted to wine and dine her. Well, she was going to have a lot to say to the police, to the director, to anyone who would listen. As she dashed for the door, she thought to herself, We’ll see who’s the patsy, Mr. Neville Sinclair!
A shadowy figure stepped from the smoke and grabbed her by the arm, just a few feet shy of her escape. She started to struggle and then gasped as a small automatic pistol was pressed into her ribs.
And into her ear breathed a voice that mere hours before would have made her swoon had it been whispering the selfsame words in a different setting. “Don’t go,” urged Neville Sinclair, jabbing the pistol farther into her side. “Our evening has just begun.”
17
Dressed in a smoking jacket, looking the picture of elegance, Neville Sinclair moved down a hallway of his Hollywood Hills home, satisfied with the way things were going. He had just emerged from his radio room. This communication had been far more satisfying than the previous one—especially when he had been able to tell the recipients that he would be able to come through with the rocket pack on time after all. He stopped at a door, smoothed his hair, unbolted the lock, and entered.
He stepped into his richly furnished guest room. It was dimly lit, but the casual eye could make out a large mirror poised above the bed, and large portraits of nudes decorated the walls. This particular guest room had hosted a number of female luminiaries that would dazzle even the most casual of autograph hounds. Now, though, it was occupied by someone who was a virtual nobody—to everyone except Sinclair. To him, she had become the most important individual in the world.
Well, the second most important. The first was cutting through the skies of Los Angeles somewhere. But she could bring the Rocketeer down to earth.
He switched on the lights and smiled at Jenny, who was lying on the wide, opulent bed. She was still dressed in her evening gown, her image reflected in the mirror. Her eyes were shut, her head lolling to one side.
He crossed the room to a cabinet, from which he removed a decanter of brandy and a snifter. He carried them to the bedside table, put them down, and studied her unmoving form for a moment. Then he sat down next to her on the bed, ran his hands along her thigh, over her hip. She moaned softly, stirring.
He reached into his pocket for a vial of smelling salts, which he uncorked and passed beneath her nose. That brought her around immediately, coughing and sputtering. Sinclair smiled down at her. “Welcome to my home,” he said. He proceeded to pour the brandy. “Here . . . drink this.” When she put a hand to her head and looked dizzy, he continued calmly. “The affect-effects of chloroform. It’ll pass in a moment.”
He held the brandy up to her lips for her to drink. She sniffed it suspiciously. How quaint. She thought it was poisoned. He could have just as easily shot her and no one would have heard. What made her think that he had to resort to such parlor tricks? Undoubtedly she had seen too many movies.
“Don’t worry,” he said calmly. “I wouldn’t spoil a fifty-year-old brandy.”
“Do you have to drug your women to seduce them?” He laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion, and then her eyes widened as she remembered. “Oh! Those awful men!” She turned away as if to physically remove herself from the memory.
He touched her shoulder, comforting. “Shhhh. It’ll be all right. I promise you.”
She turned back, glaring at him with frightened eyes. “You’re involved in this! You kidnapped me!”
He’d anticipated the response from her and already had his lines prepared. “Against my will, believe me. I’m as much a victim as you.”
She looked at him suspiciously. Perfect. Already the seeds of doubt had been sown. Now all he had to do was spread a little more manure to help them grow. “It’s true!” he said, desperate for her to believe him. “They’ve used threats, blackmail. The tools of their gangster trade. I’ve been forced to cooperate. I’m not proud of it.”
He reached out and touched her hand. At first she resisted, but then she let him hold it.
He lowered his voice in a perfect approximation of fear. “These are brutal, ruthless men”—then he added a touch of hope—“but they can be reasoned with. As long as they get what they want.”
“Oh, Neville,” she said forlornly, “I’m so frightened.”
He pulled her into his arms and said, “There, there. I won’t let any harm come to you. I swear it on my life.”
She gazed up at him, clearly wanting to believe. “You feel that way . . . about me?”
“Earlier, when we danced”—here he used the full force of his thespian prowess—“I felt something move inside me . . . I felt it te
ar loose . . . and take flight . . .”
Her eyes lit up and she said, “That’s what you said to Greta Garbo in Napoleon’s Mistress.”
He was momentarily taken aback. He wasn’t accustomed to women nailing his lines that quickly, if at all. Then he recovered and said, “You’d have been fantastic as Lady Catherine. You have beauty, grace, and a certain raw talent. With the proper nurturing you could become a great star.” He approached her and sat mere inches away. “If you would put yourself completely in my hands, I could teach you, mold you into a leading lady . . . clay in the hands of a master sculptor.”
He leaned forward, attempting to kiss her. They drew closer and closer and then suddenly Jenny put a finger against his lips and frowned. Then she brightened, snapping her fingers. “Moonlight on Broadway with Carole Lombard! The scene at the top of the Empire State Building.”
He was almost ready to belt her, but he forced himself to maintain his gentility. “But that was make-believe. This only seems like a dream. A dream from which I hope I . . .”
Then he saw the concentration in her eyes that indicated she was about to nail yet another source of what he was saying. He quickly changed gears. He ran a fingertip along the strap of her dress. “You can’t be comfortable in that gown.”
He crossed to an armoire and opened it with a flourish. A dozen negligees hung inside.
He turned to face her, once again the picture of elegance. “Oh, come along. Don’t be shy.”
Jenny rose from the bed and went to the wardrobe. She fingered the fine laces and silks and said in a hushed and breathy voice, “They’re beautiful . . .”
He selected a sheer black lace gown and passed it to her. “This one, I think,” he said with finality.
Jenny held it against her body, studying the reflection in the armoire’s mirror. He stepped behind her, eyeing her hungrily.
And then she lowered the negligee self-consciously and said, “What am I saying? You kidnapped me! I don’t know what to think, you’ve got me so confused . . . !”
Seeing the moment slipping away, Sinclair took definite action. He spun her around, crushing his mouth to hers hungrily. He felt her hands tremble for a moment and then slide up his back, grasping and flexing urgently.
With what seemed a supreme effort of will, Jenny pulled away and said in a deep, hoarse voice, “Don’t you want me to put this on?” She looked up at him with pure desire in her eyes.
“Desperately,” he said.
Then she looked down with an utterly charming moment of modesty, and said, “I’ll be back.”
She went into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar. Sinclair smiled and started to unbutton his shirt while attempting to sneak a glance into the bathroom. It was all, all too easy.
In addition to having his sport with her, he could not wait to tell Secord—and he would catch him, sooner or later—of how his girlfriend had been utterly and completely Sinclair’s, body and soul . . . but especially body. Oh, that would strike at the core of the Rocketeer’s pride. That would begin to even the score for how much inconvenience and frustration Cliff Secord had caused him. He looked forward to the expression that the pasty-faced pilot would have when he learned of Sinclair’s exploits. Sinclair made a mental note to make sure that Secord wasn’t wearing that garish Rocketeer helmet when he learned the news. Couldn’t see his face that way.
“Neville?” Jenny’s voice floated from the bathroom. “Would you come in here, please?”
Eagerly he headed toward the door. He entered the gilt and marble bathroom and smiled in anticipation. Jenny’s evening gown was open down the back, exposing a wedge of smooth, pale skin. She looked demurely at him over her shoulder, her glance then going to the zipper on her back that was down to her waist.
“Can you help me?” she said with an annoyed little pout. It looked scrumptious on her.
Sinclair stepped forward, more than eager to assist.
Jenny suddenly turned, a ceramic pitcher in her hand. Using the same form and style that she’d employed to bring the formidable Lothar to his knees back in the club, she brought it down on Sinclair’s head. It shattered satisfyingly, and Sinclair dropped to the floor, unconscious.
Jenny shuddered in revulsion, looking down at the unconscious actor and quickly zipped up the back of her dress. Still, the bleak humor of the moment was not lost on her. Pretending so convincingly that she was interested in the advances of the hypocritical thug validated her own acting skills for all time.
“I finally played a scene with Neville Sinclair,” she said.
Moments later Jenny was creeping out to the stairway landing, and then she came to a halt. Crouching low, she peered between the banisters and saw that escape down the stairs was impossible. A big, hulking, brute of a man who looked like a leftover from a B horror flick was seated in the foyer below. Incongruously, he was delicately eating a plate of cold chicken as Amos ’N’ Andy played on the radio. Once, just once he uttered a laugh that sounded like a wheezing freight train.
Then she heard Sinclair’s voice, bellowing and filled with pain and fury from the bedroom. “Lothar!”
The giant got to his feet, and she could hear his heavy shoes ascending the stairway.
Afraid of remaining exposed up there on the landing, Jenny ducked into another room, praying that there would be no one inside.
She found herself in what appeared to be a library, and there was a balcony on the other side. She ran to it and opened the large double doors, but a glance outside confirmed her fears—she could make the drop to the driveway below only if she didn’t mind having two broken legs, not to mention probably the rest of her body shattered as well. Either way, once she landed, it seemed unlikely she would have a chance at a getaway, much less a subsequent film career.
She had one advantage though. She knew about the hidden room.
When Sinclair had emerged from the room in the wall a few minutes earlier, he had not been unobserved. Jenny had already recovered from the chloroform. She had gotten up from her bed and found that she was locked into the bedroom. As she had tried to find a way out, she had gone to a window and discovered she could see into the library across the way through the balcony entrance. And she had been amazed to see Sinclair emerge through a sliding wall panel in the library.
It was that clandestine activity that had confirmed for her that Sinclair was willingly in on this up to his eyeballs. But she also had been able to make out Sinclair’s casual dress—he was clearly intending some romance, and one did not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out who was the intended romancee. So she had quickly retreated to the bed and lay down, feigning unconsciousness. It took all her strength not to scream when he had had his hands all over her, but now at least her subterfuge had enabled her to have the last laugh.
Except, unless she managed to hide quickly, Sinclair would be the one laughing.
Suddenly she heard voices in the hall, and from the sounds of them the owners were coming her way. Turning quickly, she went to the bookshelf. She had seen what shelf his hand had gone to in order to trigger the sliding panel, but not which book he had pulled.
She scanned the shelf, knowing she had virtually no time, and then spotted a book called The Secrets of Casanova: Seduction Made Easy. Somehow she had a funny feeling that that would certainly appeal to Sinclair’s sense of humor, and she pulled on it, praying. To her great relief, the bookcase obediently slid out, revealing what seemed to be a small radio room.
Reasoning that any shelter was better than none, Jenny darted into the cubbyhole and closed the panel.
She crouched there, holding her breath, and the voices seemed to be pausing just outside the library. Whether they were arguing or what, she couldn’t quite make out. What she could make out, though, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, was the transmitter and assorted documents and code books piled on the radio table.
She saw a sheaf of papers clipped together, papers about aviation and speeches by FDR, articles about the Turro
u spy inquiry, and cuts in the wages of steel workers . . .
And clippings about the Rocketeer. She sifted through them, amazed. Cliff hadn’t been exaggerating; there were articles from every major newspaper. Here she was caught up in romances with creeps and nowhere parts in movies, and she was blind to her boyfriend making genuine banner-headline history.
Then she discovered some handwritten notes, and what appeared to be some sort of diagram that said Ambrose Peabody—Aviation Mechanic above it. Jenny studied it and frowned. It looked like mechanical drawings for some sort of rocket . . . and then her eyes widened. It must be for the rocket that Cliff had been wearing! Had Peevy actually invented the thing? Or had Peevy been making a diagram while studying it? Either way, the paper had no business being in the hands of Neville Sinclair. She folded the diagram and hid it in the bosom of her gown.
The voices grew louder now, having entered the library, and Jenny’s heart pounded. She knew now that any second she risked discovery. If she kept her mouth shut, it was possible that whoever was outside wasn’t going to look in here for her. On the other hand, if she kept mum and was discovered, she’d blown her only chance to improve her situation.
It was a desperate gamble, but one she felt she had to take. She grabbed the radio microphone and blindly hit switches until the transmitter lit up and static crackled over the speaker.
“Hello, hello!” she called. “This is an emergency! Can anyone hear me? Please send help, I’ve been kidnapped—”
To her joy, a voice—male and guttural—began to reply. And then her heart sank as she realized that she couldn’t understand a thing he was saying. Moments later, a chill seized her spine as she realized just precisely why the voice was incomprehensible.
It was speaking German.
The dawn rose in her brain, bringing revelation, and as the light reached her mind, so did the dim light in the room also reach her eyes enough to find a code book with a swastika emblazoned on the cover.