The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  "Picture-brides, eh?" muttered Scott, thinking of Yung's words of a few minutes ago. He saw the plot now, or part of it anyway. They were bringing these girls over by telling them that they had been chosen as picture brides, charging them for the smuggling as they had charged Foo Yung's sister, and once they were here, they were sold into houses like those of Slim Hammond's in Frisco's Barbary Coast. Whoever was doing the job was collecting from both ends. Scott's blood boiled at the fiendish injustice of it. But at the moment there was little he could do, for he had to get Julia and himself out of the spot they were in.

  "Listen, Light of Confucius," he said. "When they come around to run you up to the States, you put 'em off. Say you're not ready or something. See?"

  The girl impassively shook her head. "My all leady," she objected. "My want get mallied."

  Scott frowned pityingly at these girls bound for a life of white slavery. No, of yellow slavery. But at that moment Julia gasped, opened her eyes, and pushed herself dizzily to a sitting position.

  WHAT—what's this?" she gulped. "Where did you Chinks come from?" She brushed her forehead. "O-o-o-oh! What a headache! I never passed out on two drinks before. And—and where's my clothes?"

  "Do I look like I got 'em on?" asked Scott sarcastically. "Pull yourself together. We've got to get out of here."

  "Scotty!" Say, what is this? Are we at a masquerade or something? We're both Chinks!" She shook her head to clear it. "I get it!" she gasped. "I been mickey-finned! That dirty son of a Bakoff! Me! Me, Julia Dorni Slesson—mickey-finned!"

  "Moan about it tomorrow," suggested Scott. "We got to get out of here."

  Julia stood up, and Scott realized admiringly that' she was very beautiful, with her olive skin and jet-black hair, and her slimly rounded figure sheathed in the clinging silks.

  Suddenly there was a hubbub in the corridor. There was the sound of footsteps, and the door burst open to reveal Charlie Yung backed by a number of Mexicans and breeds.

  "There they are!" he yelled.

  SCOTT wasted no time in thought. "Come on!" he called to Julia, and flung himself at the mongrel, who was actually grinning in his rage. But Charlie Yung, had no mind to encounter another of those pile-driver blows, and he dodged back among his men. Scott flashed his automatic, but instantly he was the center of such a mass of human flesh that he was simply overwhelmed. A dozen pairs of hands clutched each of his arms and legs, and in a moment he was panting and helpless, watching other peons subdue the scratching and biting Julia.

  "So!" said the leering Yung. "The fighting Chink, huh? Well, you came in where you got no business being, so we're putting you out— for good!"

  He turned. "Lock the dame in a room until we can show her to a customer," he ordered, "and bring this guy down the hall. I got a notion to settle with him right away."

  He flourished Scott's own automatic, and suddenly leveled it full at his head.

  "Say your prayers, you Canton ape!" he snarled.

  There was a sound of voices in the corridor. Someone said, "A Chink? Chinks don't sock with their fists. They use toad-stabbers." A cough, hollow and sepulchral.

  "Well this one slugged me on de button, I'm tellin' yer."

  WONG turned, as forms appeared in the doorway. The first was Bakoff, and behind him, thin and sallow, his reptilian eyes glittering, was Slim Hammond.

  "Hello, Yung," he said pleasantly. "Giving this bozo the works, huh?"

  "Ain't you smart to guess it!" growled the mongrel.

  "Hammond stepped forward, peering closely at Scott. Suddenly he spat on his finger and rubbed it firmly against the fake Chinaman's yellow cheek.

  "Yeah," he said. "I thought so. Stain. This guy's a phoney." His eyes narrowed as he inspected Scott's features. He nodded. "H'are ya, Scott?" he said. "Nice day for a funeral, ain't it?"

  Scott grunted. "Any day's a nice day for your funeral."

  "Now, is that polite?" Hammond coughed, and turned to Bakoff. "You let me handle this," he muttered from the corner of his mouth.

  "But dis guy slugged me. Let Yung give him de works."

  Scott stared at the prone figures on the floor. The room had but one door.

  Hammond winked quickly at Scott. "Aw, now, he drawled, "me and Scotty have known each other a long time. Come over here, Yung."

  There was a low-voiced conference in the corridor. In a few seconds he was back, grinning crookedly.

  “SCOTT," said Hammond smoothly. "I've a proposition to put up to you. If I get you out of here, will you lay off of me?"

  The G-man shook his head. "Sorry, Hammond," he grimly replied. "You know as well as I do that you're wanted by the government for killing several of our men."

  Hammond shrugged and coughed: "I'm going straight, Scott," he said. "And I'm going to prove it by letting you loose without any strings on it. All I ask is for you to put in a good word for me now and then, and give me a break some time."

  SCOTT stared at him amazed. "Well, I'll be damned!" he exploded. "What is this? Some sort of gag? "

  "You’re clear, I tell you. Scram."

  "Not till I get what this is all about."

  "I tell you," said Hammond calmly, "I'm going straight. Get it?"

  "No, but maybe I'm asleep and dreaming," said Scott slowly. '"Does Julia get in on this too?"

  "Is she here? Sure. Both of you are in the clear." He spoke a few words to the glowering Yung, and the latter disappeared into the hall. "Come on, Scott. You and Julia scram."

  Scott walked slowly toward the hall, where Julia was approaching from the room in which she had been confined. At the door he turned.

  "I don't know whether I owe you anything or not, Hammond," he said grimly, "but just in case I do, I'm warning you now to keep out of this business of smuggling Chinks, because it's going to be dangerous. And I mean keep out of any part of it, see? I'm warning you."

  "Me?" asked Hammond innocently. "Why, I wouldn't have anything to do with a racket that ain't straight. You know that, Scotty."

  The Message

  STILL in their Oriental garments, Scott and Julia walked through the bar room of the Casa de Libertad and into the afternoon sun of Ensenada. Behind them came Hammond, a queerly sardonic light in his cobra eyes. At the outer door he paused.

  "Okay,"' he said. "You're out of a tough spot, you two; and don't forget your pal Slim in your prayers tonight."

  "How are we going to get to Coronado?" asked Julia sharply.

  "Hoof it," suggested Slim. "I ain't interested in how you get where. I'm down here for me health."

  He vanished into the cantina. Julia, still weak and a bit pale from the effects of her Mickey Finn, leaned against the adobe wall; and Scott, with neither money nor official-standing in Mexico, frowned for a moment over the problem.

  It was solved almost instantly by the appearance of Murray's sedan, swaying and bouncing over the dusty road. Murray himself was driving, and beside him sat Foo Yong. In the back seat was Mary Smith, her face strained and anxious.

  She glowed with relief as she saw them.

  SEATED between Mary and Julia, Scott turned his thoughts again to the problems that were involved in this curious case.

  "How'd you happen to come back?" he asked Mary.

  "How'd you expect I'd expect you'd get out of here?" she countered. "We hung around, waiting for you to come down the road, or something; and when you didn't, we came back for you." She glanced at Julia. "Why the costume?" she asked coolly. "Been to a party?"

  "Yeah, and we had a swell time," retorted Julia ruefully. "The next time I mix in anything like this, I bring my own liquor."

  "Her boy-friend from Long Island doped her," explained Scott. "Anyway, Julia, I heard him say he thought you ought to bring a thousand dollars cash."

  "Only a grand?" she flared. "Now I am mad!" Scott laughed. "Did you find out anything from Bakoff?"

  "Yeah, but he didn't know he was telling it. I asked him what he was doing down this way, and he started to say, "Oh, me and Slim,�
�� " and then changed it to 'me and a couple o' pals is down here for our health.' Get it?"

  “SURE I get it. It means first that the Man on Long Island is backing Hammond in his lousy string of dives; and second, it means that the Man on Long Island hasn't anything to do with the actual smuggling of the Chinks, or Hammond wouldn't have to pay Yung for 'em. The only thing that doesn't fit"—he frowned—"is why Hammond should turn soft and let us off. He could have let Yung bump off the two of us and been rid of me without dirtying his own hands at all."

  "Maybe," suggested Julia archly, "he likes me." "If he liked you, you'd have been on your way to one of his joints right now. That's the way he likes his women."

  "Oh well, if you're going to be nasty—"

  "Wait a minute!" growled Scott. "I think I've got it. Let me think a while."

  He thought all the way to Coronado, and kept right on thinking when they walked into the hotel in that city. The clerk at the desk handed him an envelope. He opened it, glanced at the message within, and whistled. It was brief, typewritten, and unsigned, and it said merely, "They're running them tonight."

  “ANOTHER tip!" he grunted: "Well, if my hunch about this thing is right, there'll be some fireworks tonight." He glanced at the sun visible beyond the window, sinking swiftly into a golden, molten ocean. "And we haven't any time to waste if we're going to head them off. It'll be dark in half an hour." He turned to Torchy Cullinane, who was sitting in the lobby, reading a movie magazine. "Where's Dan and Gregory?"

  "They went up to Long Beach for a better sea-going jalopy. They got a line on a speedy job."

  "Good. We'll head for the dock, and meet 'em as they come in. We can't waste time."

  “I WANT to go too," said Mary. "I want to see those murderers finished, or something."

  "Me too," said Julia. "That is, as soon as I get these Chink clothes off, and into some honest-to-God American duds."

  "It ain't no place fer skirts," retorted Joe Murray, a fatherly grin on his broad features. "Especially dames thot don't know a Mickey Finn from a pink lady. But, Foo Yong, yez c'n go along wid th' G-man. It's yer war, anyhow."

  "You can come too, Murray," the G-Man generously suggested.

  But the old Irishman shook his head. "Wan av us had better stay here ter watch th' gurls," he explained, "or they moight go traipsin' off ter Mexico again."

  For a long moment Scott held Mary's hand, looking into her deep and serious blue eyes, and then they were parted, and he was walking swiftly toward the dock. Scarcely had they arrived, when a long, swift, silvery shape roared out of the sea around the point and slid smoothly to rest at their side. Gregory Patton was at the wheel, and Dan O'Brien was just completing the installation of a vicious machine gun in the bow.

  “HI!" said the latter. "How do you like the Sting-ray? Neat job, eh? And here's a joke. When I come to rent her in

  Long Beach, who do you think owned her? Gus Svenson!"

  "Svenson!" ejaculated Scott. "One of Hammond's rodmen! Hammond knows what I'm here for, and that means that Svenson knows it too. Now why should Hammond rent me a boat for the purpose of cutting off a flock of smuggled Chinks that he himself has just bought for his hot-spots? Something's screwy."

  He was still scowling over the problem, as the Sting-ray slipped like a silver arrow out into the darkening Pacific. The last yellow beams of sunset had vanished, and night came swiftly down from the San Bernadino Mountains. The golden sea turned rapidly into a blue-black expanse of mystery, wherein glowed stars and a thin crescent moon like an echo of the sky above. With idling engines, they cruised back and forth across the course that would have to be taken by the smuggler, and now and again killed their motors completely to listen in the silence that followed. And then—far in the mysterious south came the staccato roar of an approaching motor launch.

  “THAT'S them!" cried Torchy Cullinane, to whom gasoline engines spoke as plainly as human voices to others. "I hear the low compression in their fifth cylinder, same as last night." He bent over his controls, and Scott realized with grim satisfaction that if their own engines were capable of one extra revolution, Torchy could get it out of them.

  "Head 'em off," ordered the G-man, and the Sting-ray leaped to the task like a living thing.

  The smuggler sheered away. But this time the pursuing craft was no lumbering cabin-cruiser, and even the low swift black shadow of the outlaw vessel could not outspeed it. Scott was gaining, slowly, and relentlessly.

  There came a flash, and a sullen boom. Just ahead of them the water rose in a silvery spray that glistened in the faint moonlight.

  "Cover that gun, Dan!" snapped the G-man. "Cut down anybody who tries to use it."

  THERE came the rattle of machine gun fire. Suddenly, high and thin above it, there sounded the cry of a man in mortal agony, and on the fleeing craft before them a dim figure rose, swayed, and dropped with a bright sprinkle of light into the black sea. And the Sting-ray kept on gaining steadily.

  There was a shadowy confusion on the smuggler. Figures moved and shifted as if in struggle, and then a black bulk, long and narrow, splashed into the sea.

  Scott swore softly and bitterly. "They dumped a girl," he grated. "Torchy, cut down and see if we can pick her up."

  "We'll lose distance," objected the red-head, inured as he was to death by the horrors of war. "All the same we've got to try. We can't let a girl, even a Chink girl, drown without trying to rescue her."

  The roar of the engines diminished, as they approached the spot where the dark figure had been tossed overboard. They coasted slowly through the dark waters, but the sea was as unruffled as though no slim, dark-eyed, girlish body struggled for breath beneath somewhere in its mystic depths.

  "No use," growled Scott, viciously. "They weighted her. Speed up again."

  THE Sting-ray roared into motion again. The smuggler had gained dangerously, and only the distance-muffled thunder of her engines guided the pursuers. But little by little they overhauled the outlaw, and her black silhouette grew into dusky visibility before them.

  Keen-eyed Dan O'Brien glimpsed a shadowy figure stooping over the one-pounder in the stern. Before the gun could be fired, his own weapon spat a dozen sharp lances of white flame, and that figure too crumpled with an agonized cry and vanished. And the pursuers kept on gaining on their quarry slowly, steadily, and relentlessly.

  Then—there was another glittering splash in the water astern of the smuggler craft. They had heaved another poor girl overboard!

  "Damn them!" swore Scott bitterly. "They're slowing us down with live bait. They know we can't pass up the chance of rescuing a woman, and they're dropping them one by one as we get near them. But if we can rescue just one girl alive——!

  Just one for evidence. But we can't. They're weighting them down."

  Again he swore. "Slow down, Torchy. Even if we lose the murderers, we have to try to rescue the girls."

  And ahead of them the smuggler sped off into the darkness.

  Unexpected Help

  AGAIN nothing but black and ominous waters met their gaze. There was no sign of the miserable victim now gasping out her life, fathoms down in the secret ocean depths. And again Scott ordered Torchy to continue the pursuit of the criminal ship, that now sped somewhere to the north, completely hidden by darkness and betrayed only by the faint purr of its exhausts.

  But once more the swift Sting-ray began to overhaul the smuggler. Once more a shadowy streak loomed far ahead of them, and again Dan O'Brien kept his keen eyes on the small cannon in the stern, and Torchy Cullinane bent more eagerly over his thundering motors, nursing every ounce of compression into the laboring cylinders.

  Scott's grim eyes were fixed on the fleeing craft. So intent was he that he started in surprise as a figure suddenly appeared at his side— Foo Yong, with his glittering Oriental eyes turned in implacable hatred toward the smuggler vessel.

  They were drawing near. Suddenly a third dark body splashed in the water.

  Scott drew a deep bre
ath. "Don't stop!" he gritted. "It's no use anyway. Keep going." There were signs of confusion aboard the fugitive. Dim figures seemed struggling. They were close enough now to hear a terror-stricken girl's scream above the roar of the engines and the hiss of the spray. And then—not one, but two bodies hurtled into the foaming sea. Two? Three, rather—five—a dozen!

  "By God, we've got to stop!" bellowed Scott. "They've thrown over half their cargo!"

  TORCHY CULLINANE cut his throttle. The Sting-ray slid smoothly into the area of death, the screws reversed, and the craft tossed gently, motionless save for the swells. Scott peered sharply at the surface, but nothing broke the smooth sheen. Then—a hundred feet to starboard a shapeless mass heaved on the surface—a brown, wriggling sack—and with a clearly audible tearing sound, a glistening arm flashed momentarily in the moonlight, a gurgling scream tore the air, and there was—nothing. Nothing save a swift glint in the water that might be shark or barracuda.

  "Damn those devils!" rasped Scott. "I'll get 'em, if it's the last act of my life!"

  But it seemed hopeless. When they moved swiftly north again, not even the faint hum of a distant exhaust remained to guide them. The smugglers were lost to them on the wide ocean. They bored into the darkness at random, hoping only for the remote chance of the telltale sound of engines. It came. Torchy Cullinane looked up with an eager twist to his grim mouth. "That's the boat!" he hissed. "And listen. It's coming toward us!" He listened intently. "By God, there's two of 'em!" he exclaimed.

  Now Scott could make out the sound of the second craft, and abruptly came the boom of the one-pounder and the rattle of a machine gun. Somebody was driving the smuggler into their hands! But who?