The Spicy-Adventure

by Robert Leslie Bellem

  They paused in the shadow of a warehouse at the end of the wharf. At the end of the pier the dark hull and superstructure of a ship rose out of the water. “That’s her,” said Maxie. “Just slip aboard and ask for Captain Carlson.”

  “Maxie,” said Rhodes, holding out his hand, “you’re a pal!”

  “Forget it!” said Maxie. “Maybe you can do as much for me some day.” He melted swiftly into the shadows.

  Rhodes waited until he was certain Maxie was out of sight. Then he counted the money and read the note that was wrapped with it. The note was typewritten and said simply: “This is the guy.”

  The newspaperman turned away. Avoiding the infrequent street lamps of San Juan’s waterfront, he headed back the way he had come. Once the approach of a group of men sent him deep into the shadow of a building, and as the men passed he saw that they wore the khaki uniforms of the police. They were going toward the pier he had just quitted.

  He had never intended to run away. Now he was glad he had not lingered near the freighter. To have been caught there would have strengthened the case against him immeasurably.

  There were two persons he wanted to check on. Vincenzo, in Maxie’s shop, loved Maria. If he had known or suspected that Rhodes had gone to her house, he might not be above trying to frame him for a murder. The dim form he had seen—the form of the man who had bludgeoned him into insensibility—had been tall and slender, as was Vincenzo.

  And Jarvis would bear watching. He did not love the woman he had married, but cared only for her money. If she were dead, the money would be his. Jarvis, too, had seemed fond of Maria—had probably been her secret lover for a long time.

  As for the girl—it was entirely within the realm of possibility that she had stabbed Margaret Jarvis. It would have been in keeping with her character. Yet he could not make himself think that she would have tried to make it appear that it had been the work of the man she had so recently held in her arms. He preferred to think that she had done it to protect him from the woman’s bullets.

  A roundabout route through alleys and those narrow passages between houses which are a part of the picturesqueness of San Juan brought Rhodes to the narrow space in the rear of Maxie’s store. There were lights showing through the windows, but the back door was closed and he could hear no sound.

  A cellar window opened to his touch, however, and he let himself through it. He had no definite plan, but he thought that if he could climb the stairs to the door that led into the shop he might overhear something that would help him, or might have an opportunity to seize Vincenzo and try to force a confession from him.

  He took three steps through the blackness of the cellar and then stumbled over something that lay upon the earthen floor. The thing moaned softly.

  Rhodes dropped to his knees and ran his hands over the obstruction. His fingers brushed small breasts, quivering limbs, a face with the mouth bandaged. He struck a match and looked into the tearful face of Maria, whose hands and feet were bound tightly with rope.

  When he had torn the gag from her mouth she said: “Madre de Dios! I was mad with fear that you had been arrested for what I had done!”

  He was slashing the ropes that held her with his pocket knife. He stopped suddenly. “What you had done!”

  “Certainly,” she said. “When she shot you, I took the knife from you and stabbed her. It was no more than she deserved, the slut! But I never intended that you should be blamed.”

  “Then how—”

  “Ah,” she said sadly, “it was because he loved me so much. He struck me, so that I knew nothing. When I awakened he had tied me as you see, and he had made it seem as though you had killed her. I could not say or do anything. He carried me here. He meant to keep me a prisoner until you had been sent to prison or executed. But I should have told the truth when I was free, whether you were dead or alive, because I am not ashamed!”

  “Then it was—Jarvis?”

  “No!” Her voice was heavy with scorn. “It was Vincenzo! Did you think Jarvis would love me enough to take such a chance for my sake? He is not a man at all!”

  “And I suppose you love Vincenzo?”

  “Why not? I love Vincenzo and I love you, too, because you have both been good to me. But I shall probably marry Vincenzo, because he is of my race and temperament—although I should be sorry not to see you again. That is—I shall marry Vincenzo if I am not sent to prison.”

  Rhodes laughed. Her psychology amused him. He bent and kissed her. Of course she would marry Vincenzo! It would be the best thing for both of them. But she should not go to jail…

  Something whizzed past his ear, so close that he could feel the breeze of its passage. From the steps that led into the shop a man launched himself in a desperate spring. His body struck Rhodes, knocking him flat. The man rolled away from him with a muttered curse, and the voice was Vincenzo’s.

  Rhodes scrambled to his feet. In a moment the Spanish youth rushed at him, and the newspaperman met him squarely. Vincenzo had another knife, and the blade of it sliced through Rhodes’ sleeve, cutting a thin gash in his right arm.

  Rhodes swung his fists blindly in the darkness. They battered against a face. Vincenzo was staggering backward, too groggy to use a knife a second time. Rhodes groped with his left hand, located the youth’s chin and brought his right fist up from his hip. His knuckles smashed against bone. Vincenzo dropped limply to the floor.

  “Come quietly,” Rhodes said, helping Maria to rise. “We’ll get out of here before there’s more trouble. We’ll see whether we can figure out a way to keep both of us out of jail.”

  They tiptoed up the steps. Maxie’s shop was dark, but a crack of light showed under the door to the rear room, and there was the low murmur of two voices.

  Rhodes put his ear against the door. He heard Maxie saying: “They ought to have him now. It’s been half an hour since I tipped off the police to the ship he was on. I hope they bring back my hundred bucks!”

  “I still think it would have been better if the girl had had to take the blame,” said another voice, that Rhodes recognized as belonging to Jarvis. “Under the circumstances, it would be more logical for her to have done the killing.”

  “Nuts!” Maxie retorted. “She would have talked too much and made people suspicious. Now she won’t dare open her mouth, nor will Vincenzo. As it is, Matt Rhodes has practically confessed by trying to run away. You know what the courts are like here—they’ll railroad him right to the gallows, what with fingerprints and everything. I’ll fix the judge with a hundred or so of the money I’ll get out of it.”

  “Yeah,” said Jarvis with bitterness. “The money you’ll get! There won’t be much left for me. I doubt if she’s got thirty-five thousand dollars altogether, and you say you’ve got to have twenty-five of it!”

  “Don’t be dumb, Jarvis! Look at the money you owe me already. Haven’t I kept you going for over a year, waiting for something like this? Didn’t I send your blushing bride to Maria’s house, knowing there’d be a quarrel and that Maria would kill her? If it wasn’t for me, you’d have nothing but a lot of debts—and maybe a rope around your neck if I decided to talk.”

  “All right! All right!” Jarvis was nervous. “I’m not squawking. Only—” There was the sound of a quick movement. “Only, if I kill you, I won’t have to give you a dime!” There was a sudden triumph in his voice.

  After a half-minute of silence Maxie said softly: “Put down that gun, you fool!”

  Jarvis laughed. “Not till I’ve done—this!”

  A shot crashed out. While the thunder of it still rang in his ears, Rhodes flung the door open and sprang into the room. He was upon Jarvis before the latter could turn, had grabbed the smoking revolver and had smashed the killer into a corner.

  Maxie had fallen out of the chair in front of his desk, and lay sprawled on the floor. His sightless eyes stared vacantly at the
ceiling. Between them was a hole big enough for a man to poke his finger in.

  “Sit down at the desk, Jarvis!” Rhodes rasped. “I want you to write a confession.”

  “Good God!” the man pleaded, his face a fish-belly white. “Don’t make me do that! Let me get away. He was a rat!”

  “And so are you,” Rhodes said. “Sit down or I’ll put a bullet in your belly!” He thrust the gun forward menacingly, and Jarvis obeyed, trembling.

  “Take that pen and that pad of paper,” Rhodes commanded. “Write: ‘I killed Maxie Werner because we quarreled about how much of my wife’s money I was to give him for arranging to have her murdered.’”

  The pen scratched across the paper, wrote the damning words and paused.

  “Now,” Rhodes continued, “write: ‘Werner and I were solely responsible for the murder of my wife Margaret. I stabbed her to death.’”

  “But I didn’t!” Jarvis said, his face twisted.

  “I swear to God I didn’t! I won’t write that!”

  “They can only hang you once,” Rhodes said, “and I want you to clear the girl who was your innocent tool. However, if you’d rather, you can say: ‘Maxie stabbed her to death.’” Again the pen scratched. “Finish it up,” Rhodes ordered, “by writing: ‘After she was dead, Maxie Werner lured Matt Rhodes to the place of the murder, knocked him unconscious with a blackjack, and made it appear that he had done the stabbing.’”

  Jarvis finished the confession, signed his name at the bottom of the sheet, then buried his face in his hands. Rhodes picked up the paper, said “Thanks!” and laid the revolver on the desk near the killer’s elbow. He left the room.

  At the door Vincenzo and Maria stood, their arms around each other. The youth had retrieved one of his knives. The lust to kill was in his eyes, but this time it was not directed towards Rhodes. “Would it not be better,” he asked, “to kill him, so that he cannot say the confession was forced?”

  “No,” replied Rhodes. “It won’t be necessary.” He led them outside.

  In the street in front of the weirdly-equipped, malodorous shop in which Maxie had capitalized on the age-old fears and hopes of superstitious men and women, the three paused, as if waiting for something.

  “I heard Maxie and Jarvis planning to send that woman to Maria’s house,” Vincenzo said. “I went there to keep her from being killed by Maria. I wouldn’t have tried to make trouble for you, except that when I found you there I thought perhaps you had been making love to her.”

  “I’m surprised at you!” Rhodes said. “Maria is a good girl and will make you a good wife. She would not permit anybody but you to make love to her, I’m sure!”

  He had difficulty in restraining a smile as he saw a warm blush creep into her cheeks, tinting them a dull red in the faint light of a street lamp.

  “All I ask,” he continued slyly, “is that you name one of your children after me—perhaps the very first one. Rhodes, if it’s a boy, and Rhoda, if it’s a girl.”

  “Certainly—” Vincenzo began, then stopped. From the room behind the shop had come the roar of another shot. Rhodes nodded as though he had expected it.

  “I didn’t think he’d have the guts to face arrest and trial,” he remarked. “I left the gun there so he could take the easiest way out if he wished. Now I’ll go back and put his confession on the desk for the police to find. They’ll never question it.”

  When he had done that he walked a little distance with the couple beneath the pulsing stars. He was going to his office, where he meant to spend the night writing a story of tropic romance and sudden death to cable to New York.

  “Go easy on the Manhood Moss,” he warned as he bade them farewell, “but use plenty of the Croesus Shinbone and Solomon’s whiskers. Don’t keep any stilettos in the house, don’t cheat on each other—and don’t forget what to name the first baby!” He took the Good Luck disc from beneath his shirt and hung it around Maria’s slender neck. “Wedding present,” he said. “I can vouch for it!”

  When he looked back they were clasped in an ardent embrace. He was just a little bit jealous, remembering…

  MESSAGE TO MORGAN, by Guy Russell

  Originally published in Spicy Adventure Stories, March 1937.

  The big, blond-bearded lieutenant was very drunk. And the tale he was telling the dark-eyed girl across the rough deal table amused him enormously. He chuckled into his flagon of chicha de-maize, paying scant attention to the red, roaring hell that filled such a ruffian’s tavern of nights in Spain’s farthest-flung outpost of San Cristobal.

  Lithe, bright-bandanna-ed Caribs, huge, nose-ringed West Indian blacks, hawk-nosed Spanish soldiery; they filled the smoky, low-ceilinged room in cursing, jostling tumult. The bearded one pulled deeply at the flagon and wiped his chin with a hairy-hand. He leaned over the table and laughed again.

  “Why do I laugh, little one?” He reached for the girl’s tight, silken bodice. She pulled away, black eyes flashing disdainfully.

  “Yes, Don Jaime,” she repeated coolly, “why do you laugh? With Sir Henry Morgan’s fleet within gun-shot of the town, it seems to me that a Spanish officer would have scant cause of mirth.”

  “Hah, but that is why I laugh.” He winked, drunkenly. “Morgan only risks his bloody pirate’s neck this close to our guns because he knows that Admiral De Vaca has taken the fleet to Cartagena. He thinks to catch us asleep.”

  “As he has,” she said, shortly. “Everyone knows that De Vaca has sailed for Cartagena. Why should not Morgan know it?”

  “Morgan thinks he knows everything. Just as you do, chiquita. But you’re both wrong. De Vaca did not go to Cartagena!”

  The girl started, imperceptibly. “He didn’t?” she asked, carelessly. “That was the talk about the tavern.”

  “It was meant to be the talk about the taverns. So that Morgan would also hear and believe. And he would run his head into the noose which we have prepared for him.”

  “Noose? The noose for Morgan has not yet been woven,” she said, contemptuously.

  “Ho ho!” the Spaniard chuckled. “That’s what Morgan thinks. But tomorrow we’ll surprise him. When his men are ashore and De Vaca falls upon his ships from the southward.”

  “Southward? But you said that the fleet did not go to Cartagena! I fear your boasts come from the belly of that flagon, Don Jaime.”

  Nettled, he whispered, “Drunk I may be, but De Vaca did not go to Cartagena. Set sail for there, perhaps, but—he went no farther than Manzanilla Point!”

  She shrugged. “Well, ’tis interesting, Don Jaime. But of no importance to me.” Rising from the table, she said, “Unless you should bring me the monstrous jewel, after you have caught Morgan in your noose, which ’tis said he wears in his neckerchief.”

  Don Jaime caught at her wrist. “Gladly—if you’ll take me with you now.”

  She pressed a firm thigh against his shoulder but twisted away before his clutching hands could hold her. “After I get the jewel, Don Jaime,” she said, laughing. “I trust not your promises.”

  She pushed through the crowd toward the rear of the tavern. She all but felt the Spaniard’s eyes hot upon her lush hips and she slipped from sight behind a knot of sailors lest their provocative roll should inflame Don Jaime into following her. One of the sailors dropped a swarthy hand on her shoulder. A ribbon gave way and a firm, white-curved breast escaped from its flimsy moorings to gleam, naked and inviting.

  She spat at the man in sudden fury, a short, glinting dirk leaping from her sash. But she had no need to use it. The black-browed sailor felt steel fingers close on his out-thrust wrist in a bone cracking grip. Snarling, he whirled to face cold, grey eyes above a tall, wide-shouldered body.

  “Let the girl be, friend,” his captor advised him, quietly. The grey-eyed man was dressed in the same rough seaman’s blouse and wide-flaring trousers. But there was that in his l
ean, hawk-nosed face and level eyes that compelled obedience.

  Hot, black eyes tried to meet those level ones and fell away. “I meant the wench no harm,” the swarthy man muttered. His wrist released, he turned back to his drink.

  The girl swished away without a word of thanks. But there was some obscure message in the fleeting glance she threw her rescuer. He drained his flagon and tossing a coin on the table made his way to the door.

  Out in the velvety tropic darkness, the tall man strode, his big body moving silently as a cat’s, past a group of clanking soldiers, off to change the guard at the wharf. At an alley-way around the corner, he shot a swift glance up and down the dim-lit street and stepped into the black shadows of the alley’s mouth. He had doubled back until he was behind the tavern and waited there, his back to the rough bole of a great palm.

  She came all in a rush. Almost before he heard the rustle of silk in the gloom, soft arms were about his neck and hot, seeking lips glued themselves to his mouth. Round, firm breasts set tingling fire to his skin as their warm flesh burned through his thin shirt; and he felt the trembling of her long, tapering legs as the length of her throbbing body was hugged to him. “Rosa!” he chuckled. “Do those cat’s eyes of yours never make a mistake in the dark? Did you attack some wandering Spaniard in this fashion, you’d not be used so gently, I can tell you!”

  “Do not talk so, Roger,” she murmured against his cheek. “Do you think I’d not know you if I had no eyes at all? And I’ve worried so about you. I was afraid the guard would catch you.”

  Roger Blake tightened his arms about her. “A few flea-bitten Spaniards trap a man of Morgan’s?” he scoffed. “Never. But—tell me! What did the drunken one say?”

  “De Vaca’s fleet did not go to Cartagena. They wait beyond Manzanilla Point for your men to come ashore. Then they will fall upon your ships.”