by Paul Malmont
“What the hell! If we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die!” Driftwood shouted as the sail snapped across the boat. “That’s what my monkeys are telling me!” He barked out a laugh. The Flash’s side was aching where he had fallen against the hold door. He rubbed it. Driftwood looked at The Flash. “All monkeys reporting for duty.”
“Good.”
Driftwood made a quizzical face, his eyes rolling up. “Hey! You little bastards better clean up your crap when you’re done.”
As the yacht drew near to Dent, the wind changed again and what was left of the gas began to flow the other way, toward the dock. It dribbled down the side of the ship and the Chinese men broke and ran, clambering over the wreckage and shattered planks to reach the truck. Finally, the tall man in the long coat turned around and looked out to the river. He was Chinese, his face fierce and strong. His eyes glittered like carved obsidian, and The Flash could feel his rage radiating across the water toward them. Thin tendrils of gas crept across the dock toward his feet. At last he broke his gaze and spun rapidly away. He moved with the athletic deftness of an animal across the broken pier, leaping aboard the truck as it roared down the pier and into the night.
The last of the gas dissipated across the waters and a strange silence fell across the river, the stillness of a big city on its way to dawn. Not a pure silence. A silence that vibrated with life and energy in a single, inaudibly low tone.
Lester struggled feebly as Otis expertly brought them alongside the hull. Hubbard threw the life ring out to Dent’s upstretched hand, and within minutes the two men were finally back on the Albatross. Norma threw herself against Lester, feeling the cold water soak into her jacket. He was shivering uncontrollably and his lips were blue. Ron emerged from belowdecks with blankets and she wrapped Lester as he sat on the deck. He grinned at her.
“Don’t try that Dent smile on me,” she said. “I am not in the mood for charm.” Slips of paper about the size of dollars bills were plastered against his hair. She was not gentle about slapping them off; in fact they seemed to require the extra effort. “You just had to go up on the deck of that ship, didn’t you? Protection luck, my ass.”
He tried to look sorry. He tilted his head so his eyes looked even guiltier. “If it makes you feel any better, you can cross jumping off a ship into icy water off my list of things to do before I die,” he managed, through chattering teeth.
In rapid succession she slapped the last few pieces of paper from his head. “You’re an idiot. You’d just better hope you got a good story out of it, that’s all I have to say. ’Cause that one might cost you. It might cost you some toes. It might cost you a marriage.”
Ron hurried up from below with some more blankets.
“Who is that?” Norma asked Ron as he covered the second man.
“That’s Walter Gibson. He writes The Shadow.”
“I know what Walter Gibson writes, thank you, Ron,” she said icily, snatching a blanket from him and wrapping it around her husband.
“We’re taking on some serious water. I’m going to tie us up to the dock,” Otis said. “Before we sink,” he added.
“Okay,” Ron answered, standing to prepare the dock lines. “It looks clear.”
“Ahoy below!” A voice hailed them. Standing on the bow of the Star of Baltimore and looking down at them with a curiously worried expression was Lew, the cowboy. “Everyone all right?”
“Appears to be the case,” Otis shouted back. “How’d you stay alive?”
“I can tell which way the wind blows, pard. Gas heads that way,” he pointed starboard, “I heads this way.” He pointed to the prow. “It’s all evaporated now.”
“Get down and help us tie up.”
“Sure,” Lew called back. “I reckon everyone’s dead up here. How’re them fellas?”
“Little cold. Little wet. Little closer to a divorce.”
Lew found some cargo netting, tossed it over the side and scrambled down to the wrecked dock.
After some careful negotiation they managed to get the yacht into what Otis and Ron agreed was a safe berth. Lester emerged from below in a dry set of clothes and was able to lend a hand. He had stuffed as much sailcloth as he possibly could into the crack in the hull, stopping the flow of water for the time being.
Upon stepping foot on the dock, Ron eagerly scooped up a fistful of paper. “Chinese money,” he said, examining it. “Worthless.” He flung it away, exasperated. “Just my luck. When money finally falls from the sky it’s useless to me.”
“What the hell happened up there?” Driftwood demanded. “I thought you were just gonna disable the engine.”
“It was my fault” Lew replied. “I just wanted a look up top. The crane operator, he saw me. He shot first.” He tossed Lester his pistol back. “Thanks for the loan.”
“We need to get Mr. Gibson to a hospital,” Norma said.
“No,” a weak voice said. She turned around. Gibson was sitting up. He coughed. “Just take me home.”
“You need a doctor.”
“Mrs. Dent, right?”
She nodded. “Please?”
“Well, Mrs. Dent,” he said with a cough, “I’m either gonna die or not and there’s not a thing any doctor can do. Just take me home and I’ll find out.”
“Mr. Gibson,” she began, “there’s something I’ve always wanted to say to you if ever we met. You are a damned piehead!”
“Mrs. Dent, I’ve never heard it put exactly that way before but that sounds about right.”
“Fine. Now we’ll take you home.”
“Hold on a split second,” said the cowboy, “I’m afraid this is where we say adios.”
“You’re not coming?” Lester asked.
“This here is my ship. I lost her once but I ain’t losin’ her again. I’m staying with the old girl until the police come by. Somebody needs to tell ’em this story. Might as well be me.”
“Okay. Otis, would you mind staying with the Albatross until I get back?” Lester asked.
“Can’t Hubbard do it?” Driftwood asked.
“Why me?” Hubbard said. “It’s not like you’ve got to be anywhere. And you know her so well, now.”
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
“Hey,” said the cowboy, twirling the pistol. “I’m all out here. Got any more bullets?”
Lester shook his head. “I never thought I’d need more than six.”
Norma approached the young man and hugged him gratefully. “Thank you,” she told him. “You never did tell me your last name. So we can look out for you.”
The man hung his head bashfully. “Aw, ma’am,” he said, “it’s kind of embarrassin’.”
“Don’t be silly. Tell me.”
He whispered it softly into her ear and she smiled and laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “I love it. I absolutely love it.”
“You think?”
“Absolutely. Much prettier than Dent!”
As she helped Lester and Walter change into warm clothes below she could hear Otis and Ron up on deck. They had discovered what was left of a bottle of Lester’s Cuban rum and were already spinning their recent adventure into tales, as if they hadn’t been at each other’s throat only a half hour before. There were things she would just never understand about men.
They disembarked and moved around the gaping hole in the pier, Ron and Lester supporting an unsteady Walter. Soon they were able to hail a wandering cab on Joralemon Street and were on their way back over the Brooklyn Bridge and into the city. Through the suspension cables they could see the two boats and the smashed pier in the distance. Then they lost sight of them altogether.
“Walter,” Lester finally asked, simply, “what the hell happened?”
Walter Gibson stared back at him and life seemed to come back into his eyes. “Let me tell you a story. You can decide what’s real and what’s pulp.”
Episode Forty-One
HE HADN’T given them every detail. For instance he didn’t tell them about his surprisi
ng fondness for opium, or about having seen The Shadow in gas. It was his story and he told them what they needed to know.
“What’d he say to you?” Lester asked, as the cab pulled to a stop before the Hotel Des Artistes. “I saw Zhang Mei whisper something to you before he left you to die. What did he say?”
Gibson rubbed the palm of his hand across his chin, feeling the growing stubble. He gave a little snort. “He said that perhaps I wasn’t a biographer of great enough stature for his story after all. He felt he needed to find Ernest Hemingway. Can you believe that he said that to me? Me?”
“Well,” said Norma, even as Lester tried to shush her, “he is a well-regarded author.”
Gibson looked mortally offended. “I could outwrite Ernest Hemingway any day of the week. Name the weapon. Spikes and stone? Clay tablets and straw? Pen quill and parchment? Hell, straight bourbon and blarney, and I will tell the story straight and clear over Ernest any day of the week in any land under any weather. ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’ my ass! Try that against ‘I Rode the Black Ship of Death with the Dragon of Terror and Peril!’ Huh!” A coughing fit ended his grand speech. As he caught his breath, weakened by the exertion, they helped him out of the cab. The crisp night air and the feeling of Manhattan firma, known to all, far and wide, as the most stable land in all the world, the rock that will be there for you to walk on, to run on, to chase after another pair of feet running away from you on, to ride the subway through, to fall on, to sleep on if you’re desperate, slip on, spill on, urinate on, spit on—to feel his feet stake their claim seemed to imbue him with the ability to draw himself to his full, and expansive, five-foot-eight-inch height. He looked at his three concerned companions and, sweeping his arms up and to the sides, proclaimed grandly, “Anyway, I have lived to tell the tale.” The exertion made him cough hard enough that they all had to turn away.” For a little while.”
The first thing Norma noticed when the doors opened on his hallway was the chicken. It was a healthy representative of the species and it fixed a suspicious eye upon the four people in the elevator. She felt that it demanded a response from her so she greeted it with a casual “Hello,” as if she were used to stepping off big-city elevators and being greeted by chickens every day of the week and twice on Sundays. The bird clucked at her. Then there was a shriek from one end of the hall and a beautiful young woman had rushed past them and thrown her arms around Mr. Gibson. Norma had never given any thought to Mr. Gibson’s private life and she found herself surprised that such a stylish and attractive young woman might be Mrs. Gibson. Norma had seen her hairdo in Harper’s Bazaar only last month.
“I knew that something had happened,” she said to him, kissing his face. “I knew it. I knew it!”
“He needs to lie down,” Norma said to her; the young woman nodded back, and in that gesture, polite though it was, she let Norma know that she would now be tending to Walter.
She led them through the open door into Mr. Gibson’s apartment, which was large and full of books and magazines and magical apparatus. The chicken followed them in. Framed posters of Houdini, Blackstone, Porter Hardeen, and others were hung on the walls. The young woman opened another door for them and then followed them into the bedroom. Lester and Ron lay Mr. Gibson gently on the bed. His body was limp and his eyes remained closed. Unconscious or asleep or somewhere in between—Norma couldn’t tell which.
“I’m going to get him some water.” The young woman swept out of the room. Her motions and movements were light and graceful.
“What do we do now?” Lester asked Norma. Even though he was speaking as softly as he could, his voice bounced around the room. Hubbard leaned over to hear the answer. “He lives or dies and we wait and pray and try to help out his wife.”
“Oh, he’s not married,” Hubbard said discreetly, as if he was surprised that they didn’t know this.
“Who is she?”
“Well, from what he told me on the way up to Providence, she’s some kind of trouble.”
“Ah,” she said. “Should we keep an eye on her?”
Hubbard looked down at his feet, a little embarrassed.
“A different kind of trouble,” Lester said with a faint smile.
The young woman came into the room again with a bowl of water and a washcloth. The two men excused themselves from the bedroom, Lester to get some coffee brewing and Ron to slip out and get some Bromo. The two women went about stripping Gibson and making him comfortable.
Norma was reconsidering all the thoughts and feelings she had let build up inside her about Walter Gibson over the years. In her mind he had taken on the bearing of a giant, because of the way he had loomed over her and Lester. It was shocking now to see how short he was. She carefully placed his glasses on the credenza next to the bed. She looked around his room. It was clean and the furniture was well chosen. Walter Gibson was short, and wore glasses, and lived in a nice apartment like theirs, and someone seemed to care for him. He was not some malevolent villain bent on destroying the Dents. He was just a writer. A man.
“My name’s Norma Dent,” Norma introduced herself.
The young woman tucked the sheet under Walter’s chin, then tucked a wayward lock of hair behind her ear. “I’m Litzka. Do you think we should call a doctor?”
“He won’t have one. I didn’t know Mr. Gibson was married,” Norma said, indicating the ring on Litzka’s finger.
“He’s not,” she replied, returning Norma’s quizzical gaze coolly. “I am.”
“Oh.”
“Well, he’s not going to die. I won’t let him.” Litzka sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his arm with her hand. Then she took his hand in hers. He opened his eyes and saw her. He smiled, slipped his hand from hers, tenderly touched her cheek, and retucked that lock of hair, then put his hand back in hers again.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she answered. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
“What happened?”
“I got myself into a little trouble.” He closed his eyes and sank back upon the pillows. His breathing was shallow but even and some proper color had returned to his face. “I’m sorry I acted like such a”—he smiled—“a damned piehead.”
“So am I,” Litzka replied.
“Well, you’re here now.”
“I am.”
Norma left her caressing Walter’s hand and slipped out as quietly as she could. Lester drowsed on the sofa. The chicken scratched at the magazine on the floor. Ron had had it in his coat pocket and had tossed it onto the sofa when they arrived. Lester must have knocked it to the floor. Norma thought Ron might not appreciate having his magazine scratched up by a chicken, so she shooed it away and picked it up. On the cover of the Astounding Tales magazine yet another tentacled beast menaced a lingerie-wearing damsel. Someone had taken a pen to the cover and scrawled some letters but they appeared to her to be gibberish: GZXUVG HKRRGJUTTG VRAY/SOTAY NEUYIEGSOTK.
She sat down, feeling rather helpless, on the sofa, and thankfully, Lester wrapped a comforting arm around her. She settled in against him and closed her eyes, still holding the magazine.
Ron came in a while later with a big blue bottle of Bromo Seltzer and a New York Post. While he and Lester exchanged their stories of the events, he prowled around the apartment looking at the magic equipment and giving the chicken a wide berth. Eventually he picked up a wicked-looking dagger. It had a curved golden hilt and the long blade comprised three sides forming a triangle, each one having a razor edge. He pressed the point gingerly into the palm of his hand.
“That was a gift Harry Houdini gave to me when he returned from Egypt,” Mr. Gibson said from the doorway. He had put on an undershirt and a fresh pair of pants. He coughed but held himself up. Litzka stood anxiously behind him.
“Is it magic? Does it retract or something?” Ron still pressed the point into his hand.
“No. It’s just very, very sharp.” Hubbard had just come to the same conclusion and put the knif
e back quickly.
“You know, I always wondered how he escaped from jail cells when he was naked.” Ron remarked, stanching the blood flowing from the tiny cut in the palm of his hand.
“Easy. He’d take a lock pick kit. Like this.” Gibson picked up several small, thin strips of metal. “He’d roll it in soft wax until it formed a pellet. Then he’d stick it up his ass. Enter the jail cell, and abracadabra! Magic!”
“Glamorous,” Ron muttered with a disillusioned tone.
“You should be resting, Mr. Gibson,” Norma said.
“Please, call me Walter. Or Walt. Wally even.”
“Walter, then.”
“And there’ll be plenty of time for resting,” he said, with a cough. He looked at Lester. “I could hear you telling what happened on the Star of Baltimore. It’s got a good ending. You save my life.” He stepped unsteadily into the room. “As long as we’re on the subject of endings I’d like to give another story a new and better ending. I’d like to apologize about The Golden Vulture. I guess it comes as no surprise to you that after I read it, I had Nanovic squash it. It was not my finest moment. I was afraid of losing The Shadow. If it’s any consolation, I did it because it was obvious you were a natural pulp man and you had written such a great pulp.”
“It really wasn’t a good Shadow story,” Lester replied. “Too much story and not enough atmosphere.” Norma could see no trace of the anger which Lester had held for Mr. Gibson.