He stood up quietly as Laurie, lamp in hand, came toward him from the bow, where the red and green lights were already lighted. Stranway smiled in savage appreciation to himself—the men he was dealing with were far indeed from being fools—there were the police boats on the river to be reckoned with, and to attempt to evade them with the crackle of the exhaust shrieking out the boat's whereabouts was but to invite investigation and arrest for the infringement of that most stringent of all laws that demanded the prescribed lights on every craft under way.
Laurie clambered past him, placed the stern light in its socket, and, after examining the dinghy's tow-line, went forward again. A moment later, footsteps sounded on the quay above; and then Krinler's voice:
"All right, below there?"
"All right," Laurie answered.
"Cast off, then!" Krinler ordered, dropping into the stern of the boat beside Stranway; and then crisply, as the other two let go the lines and took their places forward at the steering wheel: "Go ahead, Fallon—and give her all she's got! It's dark to-night, and we can make an early start. We don't want to lose any time on the way over."
Chapter XXIV.
On Narrow Margin
Table of Contents
Once under way, there was no more talking. Shouting alone would have been of any avail against the roar and crackle of the exhaust from the high-powered engines, and, as Stranway opened them out, he smiled grimly. She was fast—the fastest boat he had ever been in. They shot under Brooklyn Bridge, towering like a gigantic black ribbon above their heads; and then, before he could well realise it, they had rounded the Battery, and were heading up the Hudson, heading in a diagonal course across the river for Hoboken.
For perhaps fifteen minutes they held this course, pointing well up the river, and then Krinler leaned over, suddenly extinguished the stern light, and shouted in Stranway's ear to stop the engines.
Stranway, as he obeyed, could see that the boat was swinging shoreward in a long turn toward the Jersey side, and that the bow lights, like the stern, were out. And now, with the engines silent, there began to come the night sounds from the river, and the occasional clang of trolley bells from the shore, the dark outline of which was just discernible against a background of scattered street lamps and lighted windows.
"Fast, ain't she?" whispered Krinler. "Isn't anything like her up at the Wayagamack, is there?"
"No," said Stranway. "I guess there ain't."
"You bet there ain't!" exclaimed Krinler boastfully. "There's nothing in these waters to touch her. We'll drift down now with the tide and current to the dock we want—just ahead there a bit. Mind you keep quiet, and don't let a sound out of you!"
It had been a clever manoeuvre. The motor boat, had any one been watching, would have been swallowed up in the darkness and have disappeared utterly at the spot where her engines stopped and her lights went out—while now, much nearer inshore and drifting silently, she was safe from prying eyes. Again Stranway smiled grimly. There was no sign of the Cherokee of course, though he knew that she must be lying somewhere near at hand, hidden in the darkness, and ready to play her part when Krinler should have finished his work and could be caught red-handed with the stolen goods in his possession.
And now something black loomed up above them on their right. The boat's side scraped gently—the dock—they were alongside the river end of it. The pound of Stranway's heart quickened—the game was on in deadly earnest. The boat scraped on a few yards more; then the two men in the bow stopped her way, and Krinler shoved a boat-hook into Stranway's hand.
"Hold on with that, and don't let her bump," he breathed; then, leaving Stranway, he went forward to join the other two, who were working busily at the pier-head planking.
It was very dark, and, for a few moments, Stranway could not make out distinctly what the three men were about, until presently a plank, short, dripping, was lifted from overside and laid in the bottom of the boat, then another and another, until a yawning hole showed black even against the blackness—and then he barely suppressed the exclamation that rose to his lips as understanding flashed upon him. The pieces of planking, which obviously formed part of the sheeting of the pier-head, were being taken from just low enough below the water's edge to allow for the boat's draft, and just high enough above to allow her to pass in through the opening! But how the planks came to be so uniform in length, and how they had been removed so easily and expeditiously was another matter—and one that puzzled him.
He had, however, little time to give that problem any thought—Krinler was calling to him in low, guarded tones:
"Let go there, Fallon, and push the stern out!"
They were going in underneath—that was evident enough now! But then—what? The two men, with Krinler aiding, were warping the boat's nose into the opening. Slowly they got her around; and then all three men seemed to disappear suddenly from Stranway's sight in the blackness, as, with not more than two feet of clearance above the boat, they stooped to allow the planking above to pass over them. Then, with the bow well in beneath the dock, the boat stopped again, and Krinler with one of the others came clambering over the engines to the stern where he, Stranway, stood.
"Here, Fallon," Krinler ordered, "help Laurie with the dinghy while we get in the rest of the way. Get hold of the dinghy's line, and haul her in close against our stern. You, Laurie, take your boat-hook and keep her straight so's she won't raise the whole of Hoboken slapping her sides against the piling going in."
"Sure!" said Stranway promptly, and, leaning over the little flush-deck at the stern, reached out for the dinghy's line—and then, in a flash of premonitory intuition, he whirled around—too late! A crashing blow from the boat-hook caught him on the side of the head; lights, streaks of them, red, burning like fiery brands, danced for an instant before his eyes, and then the sense of falling into unutterable depths was upon him, and he lost consciousness.
When he opened his eyes again, an intense blackness seemed to have settled down like a pall around him, and he could see nothing; nor could he hear anything except a soft, constant sound of lapping water. His head was confused, and throbbed with intolerable pain. Something seemed to choke him, stifle him, nauseate him. He tried to move, to cry out, and he could do neither. Where was he? What had happened? For a moment he lay staring helplessly into the blackness, and then suddenly his brain cleared, and a full realisation of his peril surged upon him. Trapped! Charlebois' unusual fears, the Orchid's fears that had caused her to act as she had never acted before, fears so real that they had even led her into making a tacit confession of her love, were grimly justified—he was gagged, his hands tied behind his back, his feet tightly bound together.
There came then the sound of some one moving; and then a round, white ray of light hovered for an instant over him—and went out. He was still in the motor boat—he had caught a glimpse of the engines as the light touched them.
"Got your senses back at last, what little you ever had of them, have you?" It was Krinler's voice, pitched in oily, taunting, vicious tones. "You poor fool, did you think that officious old maniac with one foot in the grave could beat me? Well, you'll pay for thinking so with your life! You, and he, and the lot of you! I've got you all to-night—all, do you understand? You've been in my road too long! You've become too dangerous!" The man's voice rose in hoarse, brutal passion. "Did you think I didn't know you? Did you think I didn't know every move that's been made to-night? Old Charlebois is hanging around outside there now in a launch waiting for me to come out loaded down with cases! Well, he won't be disappointed—I promise you that! Whitie Wilkes played his cards pretty well, didn't he? Perhaps it will interest you to know that I was the one who put him up to falling for bribery when my man over in Paris tumbled to what yours was doing there."
Krinler paused, laughing low, menacingly.
For an instant Stranway closed his eyes. There was no bluff in what Krinler had said. He knew that well enough—too well to delude himself with any false h
opes. But he would have liked to have had a chance to fight for his life! He began to tug silently at his bonds—it was the one meagre hope he had.
"Wanted to find out how it was done, eh?" continued Krinler, but now there was a change in his voice again—it had dropped to a mocking sneer. "Well, seeing that you're paying a pretty stiff price for the information, I'll tell you. You see, we know two or three weeks ahead what dock the stuff is coming to, and a few hours' work each night for three or four nights is more than enough to get an opening ready by cutting the sheeting of the pier-head so that we can lift it out when we want to. We know the markings on the cases, and it's not a very hard job to find them again, no matter how much cargo is in the dock-shed, when Leowitz, who is a first-class stevedore, keeps his eye out for them in unloading. But what's puzzled you, maybe, is how we get the cases away, seeing that most of them are tolerably heavy and the size of a small house. Well, just look up above you!"
Stranway was still tugging at his bonds—futilely; but his eyes followed the ray of the flashlight in Krinler's hand to a little cross directly above their heads that was chalked in white on a small trap-door which, at most, could not have been more than two and a half feet square.
"Doesn't look big enough to get a case through, does it?" Krinler chuckled maliciously. "Well, it isn't—not according to the way you and the police have got it into your heads we do it. That's the trap-door of sweepings and rubbish that every dock's got one or more of. The case comes through there, every sliver of it—after it's been opened above, the bolts of silk passed down, and the case itself broken up into pieces! Simple, isn't it—when you know how!"
Once more Krinler paused—and then he bent his head suddenly close to Stranway's.
"Do you know why I'm telling you this?" he rasped in a lowered voice. "To show you where you stand—what your chances are—yours and the others! I wouldn't tell you if you were going to live, would I? Well, I'll tell you more—for the same reason. You know who I am, but those two forward there don't. To them I'm just Sullivan. You'd like to know how the stuff gets into Krinler's store on Broadway? Well, it's taken from here to a little hiding place on the East Side—even these fellows don't know what becomes of it after that. They get their share in cash. All they know is that Sullivan sells it somewhere. Simple again, isn't it? Sullivan sells it to Krinler." He straightened up. "And now I guess we'll get along with the performance. I don't want to keep you waiting any longer than necessary! We're not dealing in silk to-night, but as old Charlebois is waiting for us to come out with some cases it wouldn't do, as I said, to disappoint him—three or four small cases, no matter what they are, that will come through the trap-door ought to look big enough in the dark when they're piled together to satisfy him. Now then"—Krinler raised his voice a little to carry to the two men in the bow—"now then, let's get busy!"
In the minutes that followed Stranway watched the three men force the trap-door above the boat, and hoist themselves up and through it. And then, realising that he was alone in the boat for a moment, he began to wrench at his bonds with the frenzy of a madman. Danger and peril he had been in before, but he had never been nearer his death, he knew all too well, than he was at that instant. And it was not only his own peril with which he had to reckon now! There was Charlebois, and those with him in the Cherokee! He did not know in what manner Charlebois was to be trapped, but he did not question either Krinler's intentions or Krinler's ability to carry out his threats by means of some preconceived plan—the man was too confident, too brutally sure of himself to leave any room for doubt on that score. It was death, too, for Charlebois and those waiting with him somewhere there outside, Krinler had boasted—unless he, Stranway, could in some way get a warning to them. The sweat oozed out in great beads upon his forehead—not a strand of the ropes that held him would yield a fraction of an inch in spite of his almost superhuman efforts. And then, as he squirmed, he felt something hard and lumpy on the floor under the small of his back, and suddenly a wild hope thrilled him. The knife! The opened knife that he had laid at the edge of the grating! If his fingers could only reach it, he could saw his wrists apart!
Quickly now, raising his body by throwing his weight upon his shoulders, so that he would not disturb the position of the knife, he shifted his own position slightly. He could feel the knife now against his coat sleeve. Again he moved, and this time his fingers touched the blade—and then, suddenly, he lay passive, quiet, still. A ray of light from the trap-door was directed full upon him. Krinler was giving some directions about lowering a case.
The light vanished. Instantly Stranway's fingers seized the blade, turned it around, gripped the handle, and, sawing back and forth, succeeded in severing the cords that bound his wrists. And then again he lay still as the light reappeared from above, and one of the men dropped into the bow of the motor boat.
An agony of minutes followed. From the trap-door they lowered in succession four small cases, while the flashlight streamed almost continuously down upon the boat—and to Stranway there seemed to be something cruelly ironical in that prolonged glare, for now, more than ever, he needed another instant during which he might be free from observation.
Would it never come? Yes—now! The light for the moment was gone again from above—the man in the bow was stumbling about, piling the cases one on the other. With a quick, noiseless movement, Stranway twisted forward, cut the knot at his ankles—and had time only to resume his apparently helpless position as Krinler dropped through the trap-door into the stern of the boat, and took a fifth box, a very small one, from the man still above. A cold drop trickled from Stranway's forehead to his cheek—he had won the trick by a margin of seconds.
Stranway lay motionless. He had not had time to remove the gag; but his hands, that were again under his back as though still tied, were free, and a jerk at his ankles would equally free his feet—if Krinler did not notice that the knot, which was underneath and against the flooring of the boat, was cut! But for the moment at least, Krinler paid no attention to him, and it seemed to Stranway that he scarcely breathed as he lay there grimly determined now to let circumstances dictate his next move; for, though impulse prompted him to take the initiative and fling himself suddenly upon Krinler, he realised it was too desperate a chance to attempt other than as a last resort, since his first thought now was to find some means of warning Charlebois and those on the Cherokee that, far from playing into their hands, Krinler, instead, was but setting a trap of some kind for their destruction.
He heard the trap-door being closed. This was followed almost immediately by the faint splash of oars and the low tones of Leowitz and Laurie, who were now obviously in the dinghy. The dinghy seemed to be moving away. Krinler was busy fumbling with the box he had brought aboard. Presently the dinghy returned, and Leowitz spoke:
"They're outside there around the pier-head in their launch."
"All right," rejoined Krinler gruffly. "Get the motor boat's head into the opening, so that we can shoot her out to them to play with!"
The dinghy edged around to the bow, there was a slight splashing again, and then Stranway felt the motor boat begin to move slowly. After what seemed an interminable time the dinghy came back again to the stern, and Krinler leaned over the side.
"That'll do," he directed. "She's far enough out to go straight the rest of the way herself once we start her. Keep the dinghy close to the stern there where I can jump for it. Pass me the line! I'll be ready in a minute."
He stepped the few feet forward of Stranway to the engines, dropped the dinghy's line there, set the box down and suddenly threw the rays of the flashlight upon it. Stranway's eyes followed the light involuntarily. One side of the box had been loosened, and from it Krinler now took out a small package; then, turning abruptly around, he bent down, and held the package to Stranway's ear—it gave out a faint, regular, ticking sound.
"Hear it, can't you?" Krinler inquired with a malicious chuckle. "It's a little token of my regard for your friends out ther
e—nitro-glycerine—enough to blow them, and you, too, into smaller pieces than'll ever be found." And then passion crept hoarsely into his voice. "I'll teach you to meddle with me!" he snarled. "It's set for five minutes—you can amuse yourself by counting 'em! We'll send the boat out at half speed, and I guess if your launch out there isn't alongside by that time it'll be close enough to answer the purpose—they'll be kind of anxious to get their claws on the bait, meaning the cases! And"—he reverted suddenly to his malicious chuckle—"you'll excuse me now if I hurry, won't you?"
For a moment Stranway's brain seemed to react only to a sort of horrified fascination, as he watched Krinler replace the bomb in the case, and make the dinghy's line fast to the motor boat's self-starting lever—and then in a lightning flash relief swept upon him. After all, the game was his—all his! Krinler with every move now was playing into his hands. He had only to wait. Krinler would clamber back into the dinghy, jerk the starting lever open, let go the line from the dinghy end, and the motor boat would shoot out into the stream. He had then only to kick off the ropes from his feet, get up, throw the case with the nitro-glycerine overboard, and Krinler, together with the others in the dinghy, would be caught like rats in a trap underneath the pier where——
"Good-bye," sneered Krinler. "I guess you're——" He stopped suddenly as his flashlight's rays shot full on the cords around Stranway's feet, and an oath burst fiercely from his lips.
Stranway waited for no more. His one chance now was to fight for his life and for the lives of those outside there depending upon him—Krinler had seen the severed knot. Desperately he wrenched his ankles free, jumped to his feet, and, forgetting the numbness that would be occasioned by the tight-drawn bonds, lurched forward unsteadily, stumbled heavily against the dinghy's line that Krinler had fastened to the starting lever—and the lever was jerked open. And then, before Stranway had time fairly to realise what had happened, the boat, under the sudden prod of her powerful engines, lunged swiftly forward. He caught a momentary sight of Krinler standing upright, an unreal, wavering, grotesque shadow forward by the engines—and then something, a wall of blackness, rushed toward them, and struck Krinler's head with a sickening crunch, dropping the man like a log, stunned and senseless, to the bottom of the boat. Instantly Stranway ducked his head and threw himself downward toward the flush-deck at the stern. But he was not quick enough—not low enough! The solid top of the opening that had caught the other's head now struck Stranway full upon the shoulder with a smashing blow that swept him across the little deck and flung him headlong into the water.
The Red Ledger Page 19