Return to Skull Island

by Ron Miller

  “Look,” I told Pat, “you go on up and get yourself settled. I haven’t got anything other than what I’m wearing on my back, anyway. I’ll go look up Frank. If he’s in town, he’ll be sure to give us a hand.”

  “All right. Take it easy, though. The Japanese are suspicious as hell. No one’s inspected the Venture’s cargo yet, what with all the confusion in the harbor, but they’re going to get around to it eventually, have no fear. We have to be out of here before that happens.”

  I told her I’d try to be back within the hour and went out in search of a cab, which was mighty hard to find as I should have figured. Twenty minutes of my hour were wasted before I found myself standing in front of number thirty-two Kwang-an Road. I rang the bell and waited.

  I counted off two and a half more minutes before a little peephole popped open and a beady eye glared out at me.

  “Holy damn! It’s Carl Denham!”

  There was the sound of heavy bolts being unlatched and the door swung open. A medium-sized, well-built man stood in the opening, hands on his hips. He was as handsome as a movie star, right down to his Clark Gable moustache and square, cleft chin.

  “Well, I’ll be damned! If it ain’t Carl Denham! What the hell’re you doing in Shanghai, of all the godforsaken places in the world?”

  “Well, Frank, it’s kind of a long story.”

  “Well, come on in—it’s a lot safer talking behind doors nowadays.”

  He shut the heavy panel behind me and shot home what must have been half a dozen heavy bolts.

  “Say,” he said, “come on upstairs and we’ll catch up over a couple a cold drinks.”

  I told him that sounded swell and followed him up a dark flight. The whole place was dark, with all the windows boarded up, so the room that Frank led me into seemed dazzling even though there was only the single electric floor lamp providing any light.

  “That sure was something,” Frank said, getting glasses and a bottle from a cabinet, “that big monkey of yours. Boy oh boy, what I wouldn’t’ve given to have been in on that!”

  “You’re lucky you weren’t, Frank. Thanks,” I said, taking the drink he offered me. A good, stiff one, I was glad to see. “It’s been nothing but a big headache, I can tell you. I’m on the run now, with Tom Dewey’s boys on my heels.”

  “Dewey, huh? He’s a pretty tough cookie, I hear.”

  “You’re telling me. But what’re you still doing in Shanghai, Frank? I’d think it’d be pretty hot for foreigners right now.”

  “Aw, the Japs are all right, I guess. They don’t want to get any of the European powers involved in this fracas of theirs.”

  “Yeah, but it must be kind of tough for your line of work.”

  “You mean the animals? Well, I tell you—it ain’t exactly lions and tigers I been dealing in lately.”

  “No?”

  “No. I mean, on the face of it, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing, shipping out monkeys and whatnot to zoos and circuses, but that’s just a front, you know? What I’ve been doing is running arms into China. They’re hot to get the Japs outta their territory and’ll pay just about anything for guns and ammo, whatever they can get their hands on.”

  “Say, Frank, who’s your pal?”

  This last was from a voice in the doorway. I turned and saw a tall, rangy-looking fellow wearing a khaki outfit. He looked like a surveyor or an engineer or something, with his round ranger’s hat, jodhpurs and canvas puttees. He had a friendly, open, cowboy’s face that reminded me somewhat of Lindbergh’s, but the twinkle in his eyes was more predatory than schoolboyish.

  “Hey!” cried Frank, leaping to take the stranger’s hand. “Glad you’re here, Roy. Got a swell ol’ pal here I’d like you to meet. Roy, this is my old pal Carl Denham, the movie man you must’ve heard of. Carl, this is Roy Andrews.”

  “Glad to meet you, Roy,” I said, extending my hand. His grip nearly squeezed the juice out of it.

  “Roy’s just back from Mongolia.”

  “Mongolia?”

  “Yeah,” said Andrews. “Say, that there’s some mighty fine lookin’ likker you got there, Frank.” He talked just like that. Like Tom Mix. I got the distinct feeling, though, that it didn’t come naturally to him. He was putting on a show of good old boy toughness that that was as phony and obvious as a Mardi Gras mask.

  Buck told him to help himself as Andrews was in the process of doing that very thing. He tossed back a tumblerful of the amber liquid and said, “Yup, Mongolia. Got tossed out cause old Tang Yulin was gettin’ kinda antsy bout the Japs who was movin’ in. Sure like to get back in there, though!”

  “So would I,” agreed Frank. “I’ve got a standing order for three Manchurian tigers and half a dozen cases of carbines ready to trade for ‘em.”

  “So,” I said, “the difficulty would be getting overland into Mongolia?”

  “That’s about it,” replied Roy. “The Japs have all the routes pretty much sewn up. They’re keeping a sharp eye on anyone heading into the territory.”

  “What about the Luan Ho?”

  “Well, that’s there’s a real thought. That’d circumvent the Jap-held territory, I reckon. The province of Jehol is held by Tang and it borders on the river. I suppose if we could get that far up the river, we could meet him at, oh, somewhere near Changteh, say.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, I think I might be able to work out something for you boys that would be to our mutual advantage.”

  I told them about the Venture. I didn’t mention its cargo of seaplanes, but hinted that we were pretty anxious to get ourselves in touch with the Chinese as soon as possible. If we could say we were part of a Frank Buck expedition, we could probably go anywhere we wanted. Both Roy and Frank were tactful enough not to press me on the details. My hour was about up, so I told them I was staying at the Cathay, at Bund and Nanking, where they should meet me in the morning.

  I got back to the hotel around four o’clock with a song in my heart.

  “Roy Chapman Andrews?” was the first thing Pat asked me when I got back and told her what I’d learned.

  “I have no idea. He didn’t tell me his middle name.”

  “Well, it must be him. Who else could it be?”

  “I have no idea. Who is Roy Chapman Andrews?”

  “He’s a paleontologist—maybe the most famous one in the whole world.”

  I didn’t even know there were such things as paleontologists, let alone famous ones, and told her so.

  “He looks for dinosaur bones. And finds them, too.”

  “Dinosaur bones?” Well, that was okey dokey by me. The only good dinosaur, so far as I was concerned, was a dead dinosaur. If I never saw one with meat on its bones again, it’d be too soon.

  “No one thought there’d be fossils in Mongolia, but Andrews proved them all wrong. He’s famous for his discoveries.”

  “Well, that’s nice.”

  “Nice?’ Do you have any idea what he had to go through to find those fossils? When the whole story comes out, it’s going to be one of the great adventures of all time.”

  “I suppose it was pretty rough going . . .”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  That seemed to be Pat’s usual assessment of me, but I let it pass. Instead, I said, “Whoever he is, the point is that Englehorn can take the Venture up the Luan Ho with Frank Buck’s charter. Chapman will then take over, since he knows all the local warlords. He’ll help you to unload your planes onto the hapless Chinese.”

  “Well, I have to admit, I don’t see anything wrong with that plan.”

  “Of course not! What could go wrong?”

  Nothing either of us could think of, anyway, until the hotel blew up.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When we got to the street, the place was in ruins. Autos were strewn around like toys and rubble, still smoldering, was everywhere. Sirens were screaming and explosions were still going off in the distance. Three Chinese planes, I learned later, had tried to bo
mb the Jap flagship, the Idumo. Instead, they had missed entirely, hitting the wharves of the NYK line instead. Which was just as well, I suppose, since had they missed in the other direction they would have wiped out the US consulate, which would have been a pretty damn serious mistake. The Chinks might have taken their first serious poke at the Japs, but they’d done a mighty poor job of it. Aside from the 1000-pound bomb that’d fallen into Nanking Road and destroyed the street in front of the hotel as well as most of the hotel’s once-stylish façade, one dropped into the Great World Amusement Park, on the edge of the International Settlement. This killed five hundred Chinese refugees outright. Not, I think, exactly what the Chinks had had in mind. A supposedly well-known American missionary named Rawlinson was killed, too, but I didn’t find that out until much later.

  “I think it’s time for us to be on our merry way,” said Pat and I wholeheartedly agreed.

  It was impossible to get any sort of transportation to Kwang-an Road, so Pat—who flatly refused to wait at the hotel—and I had to make our way on foot through mobs of panicked Chinks. It was like trying to make headway through a mudslide and it took us over an hour to cover the scant half mile that separated the hotel from Frank’s place. I pounded on the door, afraid that he’d already fled the city.

  The door suddenly flew open with Frank shouting, “Jesus, Carl, what the hell are you doing back here?”

  “Offering you a way out, Frank, but we’ve got to go now. How much time you need?”

  “Time?” He held up a battered valise. “I started packing when I heard the planes coming.”

  “Got room for one more, I hope?” This was from Andrews, coming down the stairs behind Frank He stopped on the last step and let loose with a low whistle. “Say, who’s the wren?”

  “If you boys are ready,” I interrupted, “we’d better get to the Venture before the harbor’s shut down. It’s going to be tough going—everyone in the city’s trying to get to the water.”

  “I got a car around back—that should make all the difference.”

  It sure did. By dint of blaring the horn and making it clear that he wasn’t about to slow down regardless of who was in front of him, Frank plowed through the seething mob like an icebreaker. Andrews and I were in the back while Pat rode shotgun with Buck. The paleontologist leaned forward, stuck his hand out to the girl and said, “Say, I’m Roy Chapman Andrews, ma’am.”

  She took his hand, shook it and replied, “Glad to meet you. I’m Pat Sa—Wildman.”

  “The pleasure’s all mine, ma’am.”

  I slouched in the corner, crossed my arms and frowned. That was the second time Pat had stumbled over her last name. I wondered what it really was and what the big secret was supposed to be.

  “You wouldn’t be the same Roy Chapman Andrews who found the dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert?”

  “The very one, ma’am!”

  “Well! This is a real honor! I’ve read your reports at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Incredible work you’ve been doing, just incredible!”

  “Thanks a lot, ma’am. That surely is appreciated. Say—now that you mention the museum, you do look mighty damn familiar. I’m plum sure I’ve seen you before. Aren’t you on the board of—”

  “Look, I hate to interrupt old home week,” said Frank, “but I think a war’s just started and it just might behoove us not be in the middle of it. This is only a suggestion, you understand.”

  They all agreed that this did indeed seem to be a fine idea—and it didn’t escape me that Pat seemed to be particularly eager for an excuse to cut the conversation short.

  Making our way to the harbor wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected. Buck and Andrews took the lead, since they were the only ones who knew their way around Shanghai. The bombing had stopped some time earlier and much of the initial panic was over, so all we had to deal with was dazed people, screaming fire engines and the occasional detour around a street blocked by a collapsed building or a barricade of sandbags. And we missed even most of that, since Frank’s route took us through a maze of back alleys—something he seemed more familiar with than I thought any honest man ought to have been.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A week later found us about as far up the Luan Ho as the old bucket could go and Englehorn wasn’t about to take her an inch further. The countryside reminded me a little of Arizona or New Mexico: arid with lots of scrubby-looking plant life. In the near distance were some rugged-looking highlands.

  There was a port town at the headwaters, called Yulin. It was a sizeable place set in a flat valley that rose quickly from the river. Andrews told me that the surrounding territory was the province of Jehol, which was ruled by the infamous bandit warlord Tang Tulin. “Old Two-Gun Tang,” he added.

  “What do they call him that for?”

  “You’ll enjoy it a lot more if you find out for yourself.”

  While we prepared ourselves for the overland trek to Tang’s hideout, Frank Buck bid us adieu. He was off, he said, to the deserts to the north, where he hoped to find the tigers a couple of stateside zoos had been panting for. “Worth twice their weight in gold,” he said.

  Andrews’ plan was to take us as far as Two-Gun Tang, who had been his patron and protector while Andrews had been hunting for fossils in the Gobi. Being old chums with the warlord, he would help broker the sale of Pat’s planes. Once he’d done that and gotten Tang in an amiable mood, he would negotiate an escort for himself back to the Gobi Desert, where he hoped there was a nest of dinosaur eggs with his name on it.

  Meanwhile, Englehorn would wait for both Buck and our party to return, using the time to reprovision the ship.

  Buck lost no time in taking off in search of his Mongolian tigers, taking along a couple of cases of the antique carbines he was going to use to bribe the locals.

  Pat, meanwhile, was excited by the prospect of the coming adventure. Too excited to suit me. I don’t think she cared one way or the other whether Tang bought her planes and when she met me by the gangway, ready to board the launch that would take us into Yulin, I was sure of it. She was dressed in khaki jodhpurs and shirt, a khaki tie, a brown leather jacket lined with sheepskin, high laced boots and a pith helmet. She had a a nickel-plated .45 automatic and her granddaddy’s Colt slung at her hips and together they didn’t look half as dangerous as the glitter in those coppery eyes of hers.

  “Well, I’m ready to go, Carl!”

  “I think maybe you’re too ready by half, Pat.”

  We met Roy on shore, where he had good news for us. A messenger from Tang had just arrived bearing greetings and Tang’s eager anticipation of our arrival.

  “Oh, goody, Carl!” Pat shimmered. “Did you hear? The old bandit will pay the asking price for my planes! Isn’t that just peachy of him?”

  “Yeah, peachy. We aren’t there, yet, Pat. Let’s wait and see what he’s got to say when we see him face to face.”

  “I am sure he’ll be a darling. Look, Carl,” she continued in a soberer tone, “I know what I’m doing. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “That’s more or less what is worrying me.”

  It took two days to get to Tang’s hideout, riding those shaggy little ponies that are about twenty-five percent mountain goat, and a good thing, too. I had to laugh at Pat, whose long legs nearly touched the ground on either side of her mount. She scowled and stuck her tongue out and by God I thought I’d never seen her look more appealing. In my career as a film maker, I’ve come face-to-face with charging rhinos, lions, tigers, boa constrictors, giant clams and, of course, Kong—but I don’t think I’ve ever come up against anything as dangerous as that bronze-eyed woman—nor anything as attractive . . . which was exactly the reason she was so damn dangerous.

  The trail our guides followed seemed to wander aimlessly through the mountains northwest of Yulin, through as barren, rugged and primeval territory as I’ve ever seen, Skull Island included. Aimless the trail might have seemed, but it inexorably took us deeper int
o the wilderness and always higher.

  We finally reached a pass where our guides stopped. One came back to where I waited and said—through Roy—”The Great Tang will see you soon and you must be prepared.”

  “Prepared?”

  Instead of replying, the Mongol drew a melon from his saddlebag. He handed this to me, along with a red ribbon about four feet long. He didn’t say a word—just stood there expectantly.

  “Tie the melon to the top of your head,” Roy said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Tie the melon to your head. It’s the only way Tang will meet you.”

  Well, if I’ve learned anything in my life it’s to go along with local customs, so I did as asked—though it was tricky enough, as you might imagine. Meanwhile, Pat had received the same instruction and had her melon balanced neatly atop her copper head long before I’d managed the trick, looking—naturally—like a magazine model showing off the latest fashion in vegetable wear. Roy, who’d apparently been through all of this before, was wearing his melon as well.

  Once the guides were happy, we continued on over the pass. On the far side and about two hundred feet down the far slope, we entered a broad level area about the size of a football field and surrounded by towering blocks of granite.

  “We’re to wait here,” said Roy, as our guides disappeared among the boulders.

  “What’s up, d’you think?” I whispered to Pat.