The Complete Novels

by Don Wilcox

“Let him give the works to all of Graygortch’s candidates thought Schubert. “It’s no bones out of my spine—as long as he doesn’t carry his damned discipline too far.”

  With a few brusque, arrogant statements Jag Rouse then laid his plan for a quick capture of the two men aloft.

  “I’m the only one allowed to go up,” he said. “I’m doing this job myself—taking all the risk that goes with it. But first I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m not allowed to climb the stairs. I’ve never climbed the stairs with Graygortch. He goes alone. I have my own passage and it’s plenty perilous. It’s a hidden rope—eighty feet of it—straight up.”

  Rouse tapped the muscles of his arms, and watched the faces of his men light with envy.

  “If we can smoke them out with a gong trick,” Rouse went on, “I won’t have to go up. If we can’t, I’ll climb the rope and bring them down dead or alive.”

  His blunt boast held the group for a moment in silence. He didn’t bother to mention that the machine gunners on the roof would advance to the tower if gongs failed to smoke the men out. Secretly he knew he would arrive just as the machine guns nosed over the windows to distract the two culprits. That would let his pistol do the work. The machine gunners would look in to discover he had done it singlehanded.

  “You have your orders,” Rouse concluded. “Remember, for the first five minutes you’re going to hear gongs—as if a squad of sailors was climbing the stairs. That’ll be me at the gong switches. No storm, no earthquakes. Just a slick smokeout.

  “If they should come down these stairs, you capture them. Take ’em alive unless they open fire. If they go the other way, the roof gunners will drop ’em. If they sit‘tight in the top of the tower, they’re my pepper salad.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  Wrong Man on a Rope

  At the top of the tower Hank Switcher ran circles around himself. Ross crawled the inner ledge beneath the open windows, trying to catch a glimpse of the rooftops.

  The two men knew that the trap was closing in. Their minutes were numbered. That telltale gong had put them right back on the spot, and the appearance of men and machine guns on the roof proved that there would be no more time wasted in making the capture.

  Ross had looped his lithe fifty-foot rope and fastened it around his body to be ready to travel if any way opened. Hank’s nervous fingers had snapped a lace in putting his shoes on.

  Ross chanced one more quick look through a window. He drew back with a jerk. Machine guns rattled from the roofs below. The bullets ricocheted through the tower. Chips and dust sprayed from the bluestone window frame.

  “Almost lost my face that time,” Ross said.

  “I lost mine when I shot that guy,” Hank moaned. “If I’d go ahead and give myself up, Ross, you could—”

  “No point in giving up to machine guns,” Ross snapped. “Besides, I’m in this thing neck-deep, the same as you are . . . Well, we’ve got two ways open—the stairs and the rope. Those guns out on the roof are Rouse’s gentle way of telling us it’s our move.”

  “The stairs, then,” said Hank, displaying a couple handful of blisters. “I could no more climb down a rope—Dammit, I wish I could afford a jury

  “Quit wishing,” Ross barked. “Follow me.”

  Blonnng! The low note of the tower gong rang out. Ross felt the floor tremble under his feet.

  “I’ll let you down on this,” Ross said, drawing up the long heavy rope with a series of lightning-swift pulls.

  Blonnng! The second gong note thundered through the tower.

  “They—they’re coming up the stairs,” Hank stammered. “Fast.” Ross brought up the last of the rope, threw a loop in the end for Hank to ride down on. “When you get to the bottom, hide out and wait for me. And don’t breathe till I get there.”

  Hank poked a foot through the loop, let himself over the ledge. “Where does this shaft go to?”

  “Down,” said Ross. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  The third gong note rang out.

  Ross paid out the rope, Hank slipped down into the velvet-walled blackness like a turtle on a plumb line. The fourth gong sounded. The last of the rope slipped over the dark ledge.

  Three seconds later, Ross tugged at the rope and found that it swung free. That meant that Hank had found solid footing at the bottom. He must have slipped safely past the person or persons who were ascending the spiral stairs. Otherwise the gongs wouldn’t keep clanging upward. The fifth one had already sounded.

  Now the sixth rang out. It was a matter of seconds, Ross thought, until men and guns would reach the top of the stairs. Ross threw himself upon the mercy of the eighty-foot rope and climbed down.

  The descent into the darkness seemed endless. The last two gongs sang out before he reached the bottom. He fully expected a tug at the rope from overhead, but it didn’t come. Suddenly his feet struck a floor.

  “Hank!” he whispered. Everything was coal-black.

  “Thank heavens!” Hank breathed, within five feet of him. “I thought they’d got you.”

  “It won’t be long now,” Ross retorted. Then with an explosive breath, “Say, Hank, did you hear any footsteps going up those stairs?”

  “Holy smokes, I was too scared to listen.”

  “Well, something tells me—either these velvet curtains deadened the sound or else we’ve been tricked. I didn’t hear any up-bound traffic—”

  “Here it comes.”

  Noises filtered through from somewhere below—a confusion of men’s voices.

  “That loud one is Rouse,” Ross whispered. “How much room have we got back here? We don’t dare touch these curtains.”

  Ross made sure that the loop was removed from the end of the hanging rope, then he and Hank felt their way for a few feet, along the dusty floor between the draperies and the stone wall. It was a completely blind passage. Now they waited on their hands and knees in the pitch blackness. The sounds of heavy footsteps ascending unseen stairs were coming closer . . .

  A few seconds earlier, Rouse had finished his clever work at the gong switchboard. He emerged from the little hidden room beneath the lowest flight of the spiral stairs, strode out into the circular plaza. Thirty-odd sailors leaped to their places in the starchy semicircle, clicked their heels, saluted.

  Rouse paraded past them, stopped to salute the sailor who came running in from the east porch.

  “They only gave us one shot, your honor,” said the sailor. “After that they didn’t show their faces.”

  “So the gongs didn’t budge ’em,” Rouse snorted. “All right. Go back and instruct them to carry out their orders to the full.”

  The sailor saluted, dashed out.

  Rouse recrossed in front of the semicircle of sailors, shouting at them as he passed, hurling a few choice boasts. He was off to do the job himself.

  He was still shouting when he reached the first step. He planted his foot on it, looked back, gave his crew a signal to hand him a cheer. They came through royally. No one envied him the task of a singlehanded capture of two mystery men who would probably shoot on sight.

  Back of his bluster, Rouse was stalling for time. He knew what none of his cheerers knew—that the machine guns would move up just in time to put this singlehanded capture over.

  Rouse stalled a moment longer than he meant to. A group of five maids caught his eye, and when one of them asked if he could really climb a rope all the way to the top of the tower, he took a minute’s time-out for muscle demonstrating.

  Then he marched up the steps, disappeared around the spiral.

  Out of sight of the plaza, he slipped through the black velvet wall, groped through the blackness until his hands caught the rope’s end, began climbing upward hand over hand . . .

  Meanwhile, the castle roof had become a scene of rapid action. The machine gunners, having advanced on the tower with ropes and ladders, nosed their guns through the open windows.

  “Nobody home,” the first gunner announced.

 
“Hold it,” another warned. “We’ve not allowed inside the tower.”

  “But where’d the devils go? They couldn’t have beat it down the stairs without ringing gongs.”

  “Look—a rope.” One of the sailors grinned proudly over his discovery. “The slippery monkeys—”

  He gave a tug at the rope, found it weighted down like an anchor. He emitted a whooping shout.

  “I’ve got ’em right here, men! Give me a hand. We’ll bring ’em back.” Three sailors crowded the window, drew upward on the rope, which began to sway fitfully from side to side.

  “Feel ’em kicking, the damned—Oh-oh! What happened?”

  “They shook loose!”

  “They fell. I heard the thump.” The three machine gunners looked at each other blankly. The rope, though its lower end was too deep down in the blackness to be seen, unquestionably swung free. The three sailors released it.

  Just then a fourth member of the gun squad made his way up the ladder to a window. He looked into the empty tower room.

  “Where’s Rouse? . . . Get away from that rope, you saps! That’s Rouse’s way up.”

  The three sailors exchanged quick nudges. In that moment they gulped themselves into a permanent silence. Nobody would ever know they had touched that rope—not if they could help it . . .

  “What was that thump?” Hank asked in a whisper.

  “Hsssh!” Ross was barely breathing. For a moment everything was silent. The comfort of all this blackness, with no gongs or footsteps or machine guns to puncture the quiet, gave Hank Switcher’s imagination a chance to unclog.

  “When I was playing in the Kansas City Depression Band,” Hank whispered, “we had an old bass drum with one head knocked out, and it made a thump just like—”

  A low painful groan sounded. It came from within ten feet of where the two men were crouched.

  “That’s Rouse,” said Ross. “He fell from the rope.”

  “The hell! What’s the trick this time?”

  “Listen. The fellow’s in a bad way.” They crept through the darkness toward the groans.

  “Careful,” Hank warned, hanging back. “He’ll shoot us on sight.”

  “Maybe he’s too busted up to shoot,” Ross said. “Anyway we’d better give him a hand. Otherwise this mishap’ll be on our heads too.”

  The big man was groaning like the lion that got a thorn in its foot, Hank thought. The lion in the story had been grateful for help. But somehow Hank wasn’t so sure it would work out that way in this case. The lion and this Rouse were two different beasts.

  “Lift the drapery,” Ross ordered. “Let’s get some light on this fellow.” Hank pulled up an edge of the black velvet and light reflected in from the red carpeted stairs.

  “Take it easy, fellow,” Ross advised. The big man tried to raise himself off his back. His eyes, only half open, betrayed a treacherous mood of rage mingled with pain. He tried to reach, as if for a weapon. His effort unleased an awful groan, and for an instant his eyes went shut.

  Then he lurched and began fighting the darkness with his good left arm. Ross flew at that arm with both hands, pinned it to the big fellow’s side. By this time the fallen man was roaring like a mad man.

  But Ross and Hank stayed with him and succeeded in binding him with the rope, left arm, knees and feet. The right arm. and shoulder were too badly broken to be dangerous.

  “We couldn’t handle you without tying you, fellow,” said Ross, speaking in a low impassionate voice, as if Jag Rouse were just another fractious guest at the Transient Hotel. “We’ll have to get those bones set right away.”

  Hank and Ross picked the big man up and carried him down the stairs to the South Pole plaza.

  A wide circle of sailors and several clusters of maids and houseworkers stood waiting, marveling to see these two mystery men walk into voluntary captivity, marveling even more to discover how loud their Captain Rouse could groan. Something had slipped, all right; but no sailor doubted that every groan from Jag Rouse would be paid for.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Trapdoor to Death

  “A trapdoor ceremony tomorrow!”

  The rumor went the rounds in whispers. It might as well have been rung out from tower gongs. Within thirty minutes after Rouse, propped up in a chair, began to talk, the news had spread to all the castle’s inhabitants.

  In the kitchen department the maids broke dishes and spilled wines and mixed salt and sugar. Fantella scolded them for being nervous. But she cut her finger while paring potatoes for tomorrow’s dinner, and her peeled potatoes ran to cubes.

  Little bells kept ringing all evening long, there was so much coming and going throughout the castle. The sailors quarreled louder than usual over their games both in the recreation wing of the castle and out on the lighted hockey court.

  The hockey games ran far into the night. Partly because some of the sailors claimed that during the day they had seen a lone girl approaching the gate—a rare occurrence. It was while on the rooftop that they had seen her, and they assumed she had been frightened away. Still, she might come back. If so, there were numerous members of Rouse’s guard who would want her to have their version of a sociable welcome.

  But the important reason that hockey and other games lasted late was that no one was in the mood to sleep, knowing that a trapdoor disciplinary ceremony was scheduled for the following morning.

  The job of caring for the savage patient fell to Fantella.

  “Dot man takes more pampering dan der baby in three-cornered pants,” she stewed as she prepared a midnight snack for him. “Hass to haf his soup chust so colt, chust so hot. Hiss pipe I haf to put in his teeth and light. Hiss head I haf to prop up. Der mirrors I haf to fix so he can keep der eye on Graygortch’s shadow.”

  “What about setting his broken bones?” asked one of the maids. “Did you do that too?”

  “Dot I did not,” Fantella grunted “All der bone-setting vas done by dot tall young ’Merican. He say der bones needs der doctor mit der extra-ray.”

  “You mean X-ray, Fantella.” Fantella whirled to see Vivian standing in the doorway, clad in pajamas and dressing-gown.

  “And vot, young lady, might you be doing avake dis time uff night?”

  “I couldn’t sleep, Fantella,” said the girl.

  “Couldn’t sleep, iss it? You got nutting to vorry about.”

  “Fantella, I want to talk with you,” Vivian said. The two or three maids, finishing the kitchen clean-up, left the room for the night.

  Vivian’s voice lowered to a whisper. “When you take breakfast to Ross Bradford—”

  “Der tall young ’Merican?”

  “Yes—will you tell him something for me? The guards won’t let me through to the living room.”

  “You better not let Captain Rouse know dot you haf secrets—”

  “Tell him I’ve thought it over about living here. Tell him I’m going to take his advice—I’m going to run away from the castle.”

  “Nonsense. I don’t tell no such lies,” Fantella snapped. She picked up her tray and started off. But in the doorway she turned, eyed the girl critically. “Nonsense,” she repeated, but this time it sounded like a question. “To bed mit you, child.”

  “And tell him,” Vivian said, clutching the old lady’s arm with her trembling fingers, “that whatever happens to him, tomorrow, I only hope it will happen instantly”

  By two o’clock in the night the castle was quiet. Fantella took a tray of tea to Rouse only to find him asleep. She returned by way of the old living room where the two American prisoners were sitting, tied hand and foot to their chairs.

  “Veil, vat nice comforts we haf for our guests,” she said looking scornfully at the ropes. “Maybe you could drink der cup uff tea?”

  “I could drink pickle juice,” said Hank, as the old lady put the cup to his lips.

  “Fantella,” said Ross, “would you deliver a couple of messages for me?”

  “Vat am I playing, postal office?”<
br />
  “No kissing games,” Hank interposed. “My arms are tied.”

  “Will you tell Vivian that whatever becomes of me, I’m crazy about her,” said Ross. “If I ever break out of here—”

  “I know. You vould make her run away.”

  “Exactly. How’d you know?”

  “She say I vas to tell you dot’s her idea too. She say she vill go, der liddle liar. How could she, mit guards effry-where?”

  “If I could bet back to my room—”

  “You von’t get oudt no more, Meester Brafford. Your oudting days iss ofer, I could tell you dot. But Vivian, she vish you quick luck.”

  The old lady gave Ross a sip of tea. Then she started to go. The sailors on the night guard shift were sauntering back and forth beyond the living room doors.

  “One more message, Fantella,” Ross added in a low voice. “I want you to tell Jimpson—”

  The old lady’s fat arms twitched as if they had struck something hot.

  “Jimpson?” She swallowed the word with a mighty effort at innocence.

  “The crippled man who climbs up the precipice,” said Ross. “I have some confidences with him the same as you do. Whatever happen to us tomorrow, I want you to tell him everything. Sometime—maybe after the war is over—someone from the United States might come here and inquire what became of us.”

  “Vat happens to you—yess.” The old lady nodded dubiously. “Meester Brafford and Meester—”

  “Switcher. Hank Switcher,” said Ross.

  “I vill remember,” said Fantella, and walked out . . .

  In spite of the painful bonds on his wrists and ankles, Ross was almost asleep when the old man entered the room.

  “Look who’s coming,” Hank whispered. “What’s this old grandpa walking around for this time of night?” Ross looked up with a start. “Coming in to strike up a conversation, maybe. He looks harmless and peaceful enough. A pleasant contrast to these hard-boiled sailors.”

  “He acts like he’s asleep.” Ross frowned thoughtfully. “There’s something about that face—”

  “New to me,” Hank whispered. “I’ll bet he’s ninety years old.”