“We’ll want pictures of the village, DeCourcey,” Scanlon was saying as the party started toward the trading station.
* * * *
Gregg stood where he was, staring after them; and to himself he reflected that Scanlon hadn’t said, “May we take pictures of your village?” No. Scanlon had announced what he wanted! A bossy, demanding, snooty buzzard!
Gregg stood where he was, letting the party get ahead of him. For Susan Lanphier had pressed something into his hand.
He looked at it guardedly. It was a strip of newspaper, folded over. He unfolded it. On it, in lipstick, had been hastily scrawled—I’m in desperate trouble—No more. As if there hadn’t been time for more.
Frowning, Gregg thrust the note into his pocket. What the hell, he had enough troubles of his own!
Susan Lanphier was glancing back at him. For an instant there was pleading in her lovely eyes. The sun shone with a flaming beauty in her hair.…
“We’re looking,” the white-haired director told DeCourcey, “for a scene to be the background for the main sets of our picture. I’ll sketch what I want. You can tell me if I’ll find it on Puna-Puka.”
He scrawled on a sheet of paper. “See? A narrow river valley, with a plateau halfway up one wall. On it maybe there should be ruins of an old stone house. Back of the plateau is a high cliff, with a waterfall. See?”
DeCourcey looked at him in amazement.
“You ever been on Puna-Puka before?”
“You mean, there is such a place on the island?” the cameraman blurted, his deadpan face excited.
“Yes.” DeCourcey rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Come along. I’ll show it to you.”
Funny, Gregg thought as he followed the party. The little trader seemed flabbergasted at Scanlon’s precise description of a place he had never seen.
“This movie crowd looks damned eager to find the spot,” Gregg told himself. “As if they’ve been looking for it so much that it’s just too good to be true that they’ve actually located it! Wonder what they expect to find?”
The trader led the party through the village. The Puna-Pukans stared with smiling curiosity at the whites. They were a friendly, courteous people, as hard-working as they were attractive of appearance. Beyond the village, the young men were busy spreading a fertilizer of green pukatea leaves on the taro beds. And on the trail leading inland, the party met young men carrying loads of coconuts, brown ripe drinking nuts; and others bringing in scores upon scores of squawking birds, young boobies, tied together by the feet like bunches of onions.
“Lord, what beauty!” Director Scanlon kept repeating. “Hawes, get that on film!”
And Hawes, his face as expressive as the butt of a log, set to whirring the compact camera he carried.
DeCourcey led the party to the main river of Puna-Puka, and turned inland along its bank.
It was cool on the trail, for overhead arched ancient trees—banyans and mangos and breadfruit. Giant ferns, and clumps of towering bamboo, crowded the path. Tropical flowers, that looked as though they had been carved right out of flaming sunsets, covered the steep walls of the canyon into which DeCourcey led the way.
* * * *
Mile after mile the party walked. The canyon became a steep-walled gorge. Waterfalls pitched in lacy beauty from the rimrock high overhead, plunging down into wide pools as beautiful as the dreams of sweet repose. And neither snakes nor insects existed here to pester men who passed.
DeCourcey stopped, and pointed ahead.
“There it is, Mr. Scanlon! See, where the river forms a wide, shaded pool? Above there, on the east side, the mountain wall cuts back in a flat space. And at the back of the flat, a waterfall drops from the cliff. Like a bridal veil. Right?”
“Right!” Scanlon snapped, his bushy white brows knitted over his steely eyes as he peered ahead. “Isn’t it, Hawes?”
“Sure as hell looks like it,” Hawes breathed.
“But are there ruins of an old stone house up there?” Susan Lanphier put in.
“Well,” DeCourcey admitted, scratching his chin, “used to be a lot of natives living along the river. Every flat you’ll find practic’ly has the stone platform for a house on it.”
“Then, look,” Susan said, pointing farther upstream, “there’s another flat above a river pool—and a waterfall pouring over a cliff behind the flat. Maybe that’s the spot?”
Scanlon muttered an oath. And Hawes grunted:
“Damnation, Chief, we don’t want to make any mistakes.”
Scanlon’s face mottled with crimson, as if he had a furious, explosive temper that couldn’t brook hindrance.
“We’ll come back tomorrow,” he rapped, “after we’ve gone over our specifications again.”
The party turned back to the village.
By the time they neared the beach, it was dusk. The people of Puna-Puka were strolling down to the lagoon for their evening bathing. Gregg knew what to expect. Though the scene made his pulse quicken, it didn’t make his jaw drop and his eyes pop. But it did for the movie people.
Nude bathing in the evening was an ancient custom of the Puna-Pukans. An active people, untouched by want or hardship or disease, they were a handsome and attractive race. The men were muscular, smiling; and the young women, with their smooth, tawny skins and shining hair and great dark eyes and slender, shapely figures, were breathtakingly lovely.
The whole village, grandparents and tiny toddlers as well as young adults, were on their way to the lagoon, laughing and chattering as they walked.*
“Say!” Scanlon gasped. “Hawes, get that! Don’t stand there like your camera was a satchelful of cough medicine. Shoot this! Get it all on film. Talk about Bali and Goona-Goona—Lord, what beauty!”
“Got fast film in here, but dunno if it’s fast enough,” Hawes murmured, lifting his chunky camera.
“DeCourcey,” Scanlon rapped, “would they do some of their dances for us? Ask ’em, man!”
The little trader looked doubtful; and Gregg thought, “He doesn’t like to see the natives exploited that way any more than I do. He’s a good egg, DeCourcey.”
* * * *
The trader talked to an elderly native. A couple of big bonfires were started on the white sand of the beach. And some of the pretty young women started dancing the native dances of love. In silence the movie people watched.
After a while, Susan Lanphier ran out among the dancers.
She started dancing with them, her light skin and vivid red hair in heart-stirring contrast to the tawny, dark-haired beauty of the island girls. In their swaying and supple gestures was a beauty distilled from nature around them—the pliant bending of palm fronds moving in a sea breeze, the rhythm of the surf, the lightness and vivacity of tropic birds and flowers.
They danced with an easy and natural pleasure, the Puna-Puka maidens. In Susan Lanphier’s dancing was a difference. In it was schooled artistry. In it was knowledge and sophistication. The girl’s good, Gregg reflected. Lord, she’s got fire!
Abruptly Susan Lanphier straightened out of her dancing, whirled, flung herself in an arrowing dive into the dark waters of the lagoon, utterly vanishing from sight.
Scanlon yelled, and sprang forward. Hawes flung down his camera, and whipped an automatic from his belt. Flame spurted from its muzzle and the flaring whack! whack! of .38 reports thundered across the beach.
Gregg jumped. His fist smacked to the side of Hawes’ head and knocked him sprawling on the sand, and Gregg kicked the .38 from his fist. Hawes scrambled up, fists doubled.
“Lay off, you dumb fool!” Scanlon yelled at him, and Hawes subsided. Together, they ran to the lagoon. Nigel Rorke and Skipper Rogg followed close behind.
“Susan!” Scanlon bellowed, hands cupped to his mouth. “Don’t be foolish. Come back here!”
But the girl had vanished. Gregg figured that she must have swum under water, and pulled out into some brush, up the beach a way, hidden by the darkness.
“Mr. Scanlon,”
DeCourcey snapped, “your cameraman shot at the girl. I think you’d better explain that.”
“It’s none of your business, Mister. I’m fully responsible. Ask your people to find the girl!”
“I will not, since she seems to be in danger of getting shot,” the little trader retorted. “I suggest you take your party back aboard ship.”
Scanlon crimsoned. His steely gray eyes glinted as he surveyed DeCourcey.
“Forget it, Chief,” Nigel Rorke put in hastily. “The girl can’t go nowheres. She’ll keep.”
Scanlon shrugged, turned, and said mildly, “Hawes, you damn fool, likely you ruined your film, dropping your camera that way.”
Hawes muttered something, and whirled back to pick up the camera. It had come open, and he hastily clicked it shut. But not so hastily that Gregg didn’t get a look inside.
Gregg stood rooted in staring surprise. For the glimpse he’d got of the inside of that camera filled his brain with startled suspicions.
There was no film in Hawes’ camera!
CHAPTER III
A MEETING OF LIPS
The movie people went back aboard their yacht.
“Lend me a flashlight,” Gregg said to the trader. “I’ll see if I can find the Lanphier girl. She’s in trouble.”
“I’ll go with you, lad.”
For two hours they hunted along the beach. Fruitlessly.
“I could send the villagers to hunt her,” DeCourcey said, “but maybe she’ll be safer if she stays hid. Wonder what it’s all about?”
Gregg shrugged. He had enough troubles of his own without taking on somebody else’s grief. Only, he would like to take a good swift poke at that fake cameraman, Hawes. Wasn’t often he saw a human pan he’d like so much to sink a fist into.
Returning to the trading station, they started inside.
“Funny,” DeCourcey said. “Veranda lamp’s blown out.”
Crossing the porch, the trader walked into the store, flashlight on.
“Who’s there?” he called suddenly.
And then the flashlight was dashed to the floor, smashing. Something went cr-a-ack! like the sharp impact of a savage hook to the jaw, and the little trader collapsed onto the matting. Gregg lunged forward, and sprang at a shadowy figure—and crashed headlong over a table shoved at him in the darkness. Instantly he was scrambling erect again. But the shadowy figure had fled out of the door, and off the veranda into the darkness.
Gregg followed. He realized he might get a slug triggered into him from ambush, but a reckless, obstinate anger sent him running wildly toward the beach in the hope of tangling with DeCourcey’s attacker.
But he found nobody, and no sign of the prowler. Realizing that the trader might have been hurt badly and in need of attention, Gregg finally turned back to the store.
DeCourcey was sitting up and groaning ruefully as Gregg came in. Gregg hastily lit a lamp, and poured a glass of brandy.
“Thanks,” DeCourcey said, taking it. “My jaw ain’t broken, but it feels like every tooth in my dental plates had a galloping ache!”
“Look around,” Gregg said in his earnest, headlong way. “Anything stolen?”
“Why, yes, there is. My shotgun’s gone from the wall pegs. So’s the pistol I keep on my desk.”
“DeCourcey, look! Your radio set. Smashed!”
The sending and receiving set, next to the trader’s safe, looked as if a typhoon had struck it.
DeCourcey breathed a rueful oath of dismay.
“One of your natives did it, maybe?” Gregg asked.
“No. I don’t lock doors. Any time this past year, a native wanting to rob me could’ve done it.”
DeCourcey looked out the window at the yacht anchored beyond the reef, and gestured toward it.
“Looks like friend Scanlon is making sure I won’t be able to communicate with the authorities at Raratonga.”
“And that you’ll have no guns to defend yourself with!” Gregg added harshly. “What’re they up to, DeCourcey?”
“Don’t know. Have another drink, lad?”
* * * *
Unable to sleep, Gregg lay on his cot on the veranda, staring at the ceiling. His thoughts ached around in worry.
“You’re brooding like a scared woman,” he railed at himself. “Forget it! Go to sleep.”
But he couldn’t forget it. Over and over he asked himself:
“Suppose Scanlon’s party pulled something raw, and a fight started, and DeCourcey was killed. Where would I be then, with DeCourcey dead? Headed for twenty years in the penitentiary, if I ever returned to Honolulu.…”
Gregg started violently. Listening hard, straining to see in the dark, he realized he had dozed off and something had wakened him.
A hand grasped his wrist. He reacted like a striking rattler—grappling with the prowler, hooking an elbow about the man’s throat and pulling him flat onto the cot as he groped with his other hand for the man’s throat.
Fragrant, silky hair pressed against Gregg’s cheek; and his arm was clamped about slim shoulders. It was a girl; her breast was soft against his chest. He released her and sat up violently. Snatching the flashlight from under his pillow, he switched it on.
“Please, don’t make a light. You nearly ch-choked me—”
It was Susan Lanphier. She was wet; the thin play suit was molded against her slim, lovely figure and she was shivering with chill.
He wrapped a blanket about her, and demanded, “Where’ve you been, for Pete’s sake!”
“Hiding, up the beach. In the water. Th-thanks,” she stammered as Gregg poured her a stiff drink of brandy.
“You mind telling me what a movie actress is doing here in the—’tail end of creation,’ your director called it, dodging around—”
“He’s not my director, and I’m not a movie actress!”
“—like a fugitive from a reform school,” Gregg finished. He hated being interrupted. “But you are a fugitive?”
“Look, Mr. Gregg.” She spoke with a fire and firmness to match his own temper. “My brother and I started from Honolulu with a party for a vacation trip. That boat out there is his. It’s a small diesel cruiser, and we have four men as crew. Mr. Scanlon and his wife and his so-called cameraman came along as guests.
“But they seized the boat. Captain Rogg and one of the crew were men they had planted on us—and they scared the other two men into joining them. There was a fight, and my brother got hurt. Not badly. They keep Tom locked in a stateroom. They’ve let me be up and about, but they’ve warned me that if I didn’t do what I was told, they’d kill Tom!”
“So why did you bust off the reservation?” Gregg demanded.
“Because, if they find what they’re after here, they’ll be sure to kill me and Tom anyhow!” Susan exclaimed.
“What’re they after?” Gregg swore at himself, as he asked the question.
Damn it, he mustn’t let her involve him in her troubles! As far as he was concerned, Susan might as well be a sourpuss maiden aunt. When his own neck was in a sling, he’d be a sucker to take on her troubles too.
But damn it, he had to admit, she wasn’t an old maid. Moonlight streaming through the vines over the veranda shone on Susan’s lovely young face. The blanket had slipped back from her shoulders, and the line of her throat was sweet and innocent. Her bosom lifted shakily as she sighed with concern.
“You see, we headed for Puna-Puka because, a long time ago, my family owned property here. It got around Honolulu that we were coming here. That’s why Scanlon’s outfit wished themselves onto us, I guess. We believed what they told us about taking moving pictures. Especially since it looked like we could make a really nice sum of money from them.”
“But they’re not here to take pictures!” Gregg protested.
“No. They have a map. Oh, I guess it sounds simply insane—”
“Yeah, but go on and tell it,” Gregg said grimly.
“You’ve heard of the German raider, the cruiser Emden?”
“Well, besides the Emden, there were several other German battle cruisers raiding the steamship lanes. It seems that one of them realized it never would get back to Germany. The commander had a lot of money, a big part of it in gold, taken off merchant ships.
“According to Mr. Scanlon, this German raider was on its way home from Australian waters. The commander decided to cache the money on some little island that nobody ever visited, where it would be safe until after the war.”
“So they buried the coin on Puna-Puka!” Gregg’s eyes widened.
“Scanlon says so. And he says that the raider was sunk before it got to Germany, and the money’s never been recovered!”
“And Scanlon has come to dig it up,” Gregg surmised.
“Yes. He has a map he claims was drawn by one of the officers of the German raider.”
“Barnum was wrong,” Gregg said disgustedly. “There’s two suckers born every minute.” He looked sharply at Susan. “Or do you believe the money’s here, too?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care!” she flared. “Good heavens, all I’m interested in is getting my brother away from Scanlon. Won’t you help me? Can’t you get in touch with the authorities?”
Gregg shook his head. “No.”
Susan leaned closer to him. “You probably think I’m just throwing hysterics, but don’t you see—if Scanlon finds that money he’ll kill Tom, and he’ll kill me if he can, to shut our mouths! That’s why I’m so—”
Gregg interrupted her harshly.
“Look. If I can get your yacht away from them, will you make a bargain with me? I want to leave Puna-Puka. I want to take—something with me. Will you agree to help me in whatever I want to do?”
“I have to agree,” Susan said shortly. “But how can you take the Leeward away from Scanlon’s men?”
Yeah, how could he? Alone, with no weapons, and no way of radioing for help, how could he do the job?
“You just leave that chore to me!” Gregg said, banging it out all the more emphatically because he was so uncertain.
Susan looked at him a little strangely. “You’re a pretty skeptical, determined sort of person, aren’t you?” she said. Gregg flushed. “What makes you say that?” he demanded. Her eyes clashed with his, but hers were the first to lower.
The Adventure Megapack Page 24