The H. Bedford-Jones Pulp Fiction Megapack

by H. Bedford-Jones

  The Filipino laughed. One guessed at suave strength in his brown, finely chiseled face; one imagined an inward man of steel, finely tempered, like the gold-inlaid steel of the Moros.

  “My dear captain,” he said, “I assure you that I shall not smuggle. All I desire is to be taken as a passenger on this trip. Let us be frank! I know that you hesitate because you are to take your owner and his daughter down to Remedios plantation; well, then, I shall not even be seen by them. I love business on the island there, and since you’re sailing tonight it will help me immensely to get off at once. That is all.”

  “All right,” said the captain, as though impelled against his better judgment. “For old times’ sake, then. You’d best have your dunnage aboard by midnight, for we’ll sail on the turn o’ the tide. I’ll have to pick up a couple o’ men before then, too.”

  “Natives?” queried the other, rising. A hint of eagerness was in his voice.

  “No. I want white men, and Lord knows where I’ll get ’em! If it were the old days, now, all fine and good; but with this law an’ order a man never knows what’s what.”

  The Filipino laughed softly and disappeared in the crowd. The captain leaned back, sucking at his pipe and watching the bandstand. So it happened that he witnessed a most extraordinary thing.

  The bandmaster came to the front of the stand and held up his hand until the crowd fell silent through curiosity.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “Sir Gerald Desmond, of the Royal Flying Corps, has asked to make an announcement regarding a hitherto unknown atrocity of the late war which has come under his observation. I am sure you will all be very glad to hear from so distinguished a gentleman; one who has achieved great fame as an aviator and whose name will be known to many of you.”

  As the bandmaster ceased and bowed, the crowd broke into instant applause. Coming to the front of the platform was Desmond. It was observed that he had removed hat and coat, and that he held a second man firmly by the arm. It was also observed that the members of the band seemed fully as puzzled as every one else.

  When Desmond bowed, and his flashing smile lighted his aggressive, finely carved features, the applause redoubled. It died down when he raised his hand.

  “My friends,” his rich voice carried clearly to the staring throng below, “this is one of the happiest moments of me life, I assure you ’tis so! On this momentous evening it has fallen to me to make right a great wrong that has been done to one of the finest gentlemen under God’s creation, it has that!”

  The charming informality of this address was such that a vague suspicion was impressed upon his auditors; but Desmond recaptured them with his smile, and continued.

  “Here beside me,” and he jerked forward the rather abashed fiddler, “ye behold a victim, an Irishman like me-self, an artist of the first water! It’s the truth I’m telling you, so listen now. O’Sullivan Beare is the name of him, and any Irishman present will recall the glorious life an’ death of that grand gentleman, who has been playin’ the fiddle all this while in your midst, only to be drowned miserably night after night by the glorious discords of this constabulary band, by whose leave I’m addressing you.”

  Desmond paused for breath. The rising storm of laughter died instantly as he proceeded.

  “My friends, for the sake o’ fair play, I’m asking you one and all to stand by and see no interference done while this gentleman entertains us. It’s a strugglin’ member of an oppressed race he is, and when ye consider the jealousy which has led the band to be drownin’ him out night after night, while his unhappy country is starvin’ for the ha’pence and dimes which he should be sendin’ home to help beat the Kaiser and establish democracy in the land of Erin—well, it’s all true, anyhow. I have every respect for the Stars an’ Shtripes; in fact, I’m intendin’ to become an American citizen now that me uncle is dead and me without a shilling to me name, but I will—”

  Desmond turned indignantly to his companion. “Why the divil don’t ye play? D’ye expect me to stand here blathering all night until ye get tuned up? Play, ye divil! Play, or I’ll smash that fiddle—”

  At this point the scandalized bandmaster touched Desmond’s elbow. What he said was lost in the roars of mirth that swept over the Luneta. The situation was perfectly clear to every one by this time, yet so cool and easy was Desmond that to imagine him drunk—

  When the bandmaster was through speaking, Desmond took the conductor’s baton from under his arm, lifted the uniformed gentleman by the collar, and with one hand dropped him over the edge of the stand. Then he turned to the bandsmen.

  “Now, ye brown divils! Strike up the ‘Wearin’ of the Green,’ and mind ye follow this baton or I’ll murder ye! When me friend here gets into tune, see that ye don’t drown him out. Thunder o’ Finn! Are ye goin’ to play or not?”

  The constabulary band banished its grins and seized its instruments. The Luneta was a shrieking, howling mass of joyous humanity, through which the constabulary officers tried vainly to reach the bandstand. And then the band started playing.

  Michael Terence O’Sullivan began to enter into the spirit of the occasion. He whipped out fiddle and bow, and with a wild grin on his pinched face fell to scraping away; the brown musicians, such of them as could play for laughing, answered Desmond’s baton with a pianissimo, and for one intoxicating moment O’Sullivan was at the apogee of his ambition.

  An instant later a flushed and panting constabulary officer appeared beside Desmond. The latter turned to him, knocked him over the edge of the stand after the conductor, and calmly continued waving his baton. This was too much. The law had been insulted, and the law demanded its victim. After all, the bandsmen were constabulary.

  O’Sullivan saw the coming storm. He hastily stowed away his fiddle, tucked the case under his arm, and tried to escape; but, caught in the tide of bandsmen, he stood back to back with Desmond and fought valiantly. The end, of course, would never have been in doubt had not some kindly soul switched off the lights which flooded the bandstand.

  There was a riot in the Luneta that night—a riot which became historic. Gerald Desmond was not at all certain of what happened, although he remembered events fairly well up to the moment of concluding his speech. It was certain that when he reached the outskirts of the milling mob he was still hanging to Michael Terence O’Sullivan; and the fiddler, who had received a tap over the head from a bassoon and who was only half conscious, still clung to his beloved fiddle.

  “It’s a most successful evening,” observed Desmond vaguely, pausing for breath. “Now, what the divil went with my collar? Upon me soul, I do believe I had a drink too many—”

  A dark figure materialized at his elbow.

  “Come on, Desmond!” said a voice. “Here’s a cab waiting for you.”

  “Good!” responded Sir Desmond. “Though ye’ll have to lend us your arm, for this man hangin’ to me disturbs the street most amazingly. Either he’s drunk, or I am—”

  A powerful hand gripped his arm and steadied him forward. A brown constabulary officer came shrieking up to them, but the unseen protector met him with a blow that sent him under a heap of shrubbery.

  “Hurry along with you!” growled the unknown.

  Sir Gerald Desmond felt himself bundled into a cab, falling in a heap over the protesting Michael Terence and the fiddle case. After this all grew dim.

  Order came gradually out of that historic chaos, and the authorities combed the city for Gerald Desmond, who was now a baronet; the Manila Hotel disclaimed all knowledge of him. The fiddler O’Sullivan, a licensed beggar who had once been honorably discharged from the army by reason of tuberculosis, had likewise failed to turn up at his lodgings.

  The two men had completely vanished, and naturally no one connected this disappearance with the fact that the inter-island trading schooner San Gregorio had left her berth at the Muelle shortly after midnight, bound for her owner’s plantation on Mindoro Island.

  Upon the following day was ra
ging the worst typhoon which had struck the islands in years. An inbound Singapore steamer reported that she had sighted a schooner off Lubang running west before the gale; at the end of a week the San Gregorio was accounted lost. The loss occasioned some comment, for aboard the schooner had been her owner, the wealthy Don Gregorio Salcedo y Montes, and his daughter, Doña Juliana. The presumed widow of Don Gregorio was prostrated by the event.

  It was remarked by the authorities that about this time disappeared one Señor Juan Arevalo—somewhat to their relief. Arevalo was a native of great ability, a member of the legislature from Cavite, who had made much money in devious ways. The consumption of opium fell off noticeably after his disappearance, and he left no family to mourn him. So, taken all in all, the authorities were very glad, that he had vanished.

  CHAPTER II

  THE SCHOONER

  The agonies of Gerald Desmond’s awakening to reality were harrowing, but need be lightly dwelt upon. They had much to do with the filthy forecastle of the San Gregorio; with violent seasickness; with huge cockroaches; with brief but tender ministrations from a pinched-faced little man with a hacking cough; and with a terrific visitation from no less a person than Captain Miles Canaughan.

  “When I need all hands, I need ’em,” concluded the skipper caustically. “But I’m makin’ some allowance for your condition, my man. So ye have until eight bells to pull up; if you’re not on deck at four o’clock by your wrist watch, Gawd help ye!”

  Desmond merely groaned and collapsed in a throe of nausea. Captain Canaughan punctuated his remarks, unwisely, with two hearty kicks in the ribs.

  “I pulled you out o’ trouble,” he finished, “so don’t try no shanghaied talk to me. I know ye’re a gentleman, and I mean to make ye work; it’s my guess that you’re a papistical south of Ireland man, for which I’ve no love. So, then, mind your eye!”

  By six bells in the afternoon, Desmond knew all there was to know about his situation. The crew numbered six, all of them riffraff white men, none of them Americans. Lying white and weak in his bunk, Desmond heard two of them talking; they had slid below to swallow pannikins of hot coffee in comparative peace.

  There was only one mate to the little schooner—a half-caste—famous for his brawn and his knowledge of the islands. Little O’Sullivan was being badly mauled above decks, and the men laughed at mention of the fiddler. Desmond writhed in his bunk as the talk reached him, and cursed his own helpless plight. He was clad in the remnants of his evening attire.

  A little time thereafter, Michael Terence O’Sullivan slipped down into the empty fo’c’s’le with two mugs of boiling coffee. He forced one of them on Desmond. The fiddler was blue with cold, and there was a purpling bruise across his cheek.

  “Lord help you!” he observed between coughs, dragging his ragged coat about his throat. “Bitter cold outside it is; you in the skipper’s watch, me in the mate’s. Blowin’ the guts out o’ hell, sir; just that!”

  Desmond sipped at the steaming fluid, which gave him warmth and life. “What are you coughing for, O’Sullivan?” he asked suddenly.

  “T. B., sir,” responded the fiddler with a sharp look. “That’s how I come to be stranded in the islands, worse luck! Discharged from the army, I was.”

  “And what the divil are we going to do, aboard this bloody-minded craft?”

  “We might do worse than take charge of her ourselves,” and the fiddler laughed with a touch of impudent deviltry. “There’s a lady aft, they say, and a couple o’ fine brown gentlemen. But it’s seasick ye are, sir, and seasick ye’ll stay for three days—”

  “Not I,” returned Desmond. “Divil a bit was I ever seasick in me life, lad; it’s the smells and last night’s liquor. Listen, now! How did ye come aboard here? If I remember right, you weren’t drank last night.”

  “Somebody had to be lookin’ afther you,” was the response. “Besides, there was the police back yonder—”

  “You, O’Sullivan!” roared a billowing, thunderous voice from the hatchway. “Come out o’ that, you rat! Sangre de Dios, I’ll show you something!”

  The fiddler made an abrupt dive for his bunk, in which by some miracle his fiddle case still reposed. Feverishly he snapped open the case and slipped something out of it, then turned as the giant bulk of the mate filled the ladder.

  “Leave me alone now!” he cried out shrilly. “It’s warnin’ ye I am.”

  Gerald Desmond staggered to his feet and stood, clinging to a bunk, before the mate. A brutal dog was this half-caste, hulking and broad-lipped, who looked at Desmond with the glimmerings of Asian cruelty in his eyes.

  “So it’s the fine gentleman!” he laughed. “On deck with you!”

  “I’m going,” said Desmond, reeling a little. “But, me man, you’re to leave this lad alone, understand? He’s a sick man—”

  “On deck, and mind your own business!” roared the mate furiously. “I’ll kill the dirty-dog before I’m through with—”

  Desmond forced a blow. Weak as he was, he managed to get himself behind it, and the mate reeled. Then, with a startled oath, the mate swept out his hands and sent Desmond hurtling, head first, into a corner with a crash.

  An instant later little O’Sullivan threw up his arm, and the explosion of a pistol filled the forecastle with reeking fumes. The mate, shot squarely between the eyes, lumped himself at the foot of the ladder, a great, dead hulk of flesh.

  “There’s more’n one way of fighting,” shrieked O’Sullivan, with a wild laugh.

  Desmond rose and wiped blood from his lips. He wasted no time in recriminations or questions; he lashed his sick brain into energy, and faced facts.

  The mate was dead. Who, then, was on deck? Not the skipper; the skipper would take charge at eight bells—in less than half an hour. Then why not seize the ship, as the fiddler had suggested?

  A laugh reeled from Desmond’s lips as he faced the defiant O’Sullivan.

  “Well, it’s done, me lad; now to pay the piper! Have ye another o’ those popguns?” He indicated the cheap little revolver, so small that O’Sullivan’s hand almost concealed it. “I’ve not much use for a gun ordinarily, but at the present moment I’ll admit that—”

  “He has one in his coat pocket; he did be smashin’ me with the butt,” cried the fiddler, pointing at the dead man. “What will you be doin’, sir? It’s a hangin’ job for me now—

  “For both of us, I’m thinkin’,” said Desmond coolly. He stooped over the mate, and rose with a brutal automatic in his hand. “Who’s going to do the hanging, eh? That’s the question. Now, O’Sullivan, if I had a bit of a drink it might put life into me—ah! Thunder o’ Finn, it’s a magic fiddle ye have there!”

  With a grin, O’Sullivan plunged again for his fiddle case, and presently held up a small flask. Desmond took it and drank.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, returning the flask. “This was a case of necessity, lad!”

  “And what was last night, then?” queried the other whimsically.

  “A case o’ damn foolishness.” Desmond’s smile was shadowy, though cheering. “Now, let’s go. Ye may have to lend me a hand on deck, but I think I can weather it. The skipper’s aft?”

  “Aye.” O’Sullivan was eager, wistfully marveling. “You’re goin’ for him?”

  “Just that,” Desmond indicated the body of the mate. “It’s hit or be hit, me friend, after this. Make no mistake! We have to hit every mortal head that shows aft; never mind the poor divils for’ard—”

  “Will you be waiting, now, a minute?” O’Sullivan caught Desmond’s arm, a quick struggle in his pinched features. “I shot him without thinkin’, sir, but when it comes to goin’ against them aft, and the lady an’ all, why I don’t—”

  Desmond comprehended, and, with a sudden wild laugh, clapped the little man on the shoulder.

  “Oh, it’s a murdering divil ye thought me, eh? Well, O’Sullivan, or, rather, Michael Terence, I’ve never planned to kill a man in me life, so have no fears. And as for
the lady, God bless her sweet face, we’ll take good care of her. Come along with you, before the whisky dies out o’ me and the nausea comes back. I think the clean air will blow me fine an’ strong again,”

  He stepped over the mate’s body and went up the ladder. At the deck, he paused, aghast; partly through a gust of weakness that smote him and partly at the sight which met his eyes.

  The little schooner, under a scant rag of storm sail, was boring into the western sky. Down upon her out of the south and east was pouring the hurricane—such a storm of wind and rain as almost blew the waves flat, suppressed them into an oily scum of froth and whirling waters, hurled the tiny craft as though from some giant hand. Soon enough the rain would cease, the sea would rise, and the battle begin, but for the moment was comparative respite.

  Desmond clawed his way aft along the starboard rail. Three or four of the crew were visible, flattened out in sheltered corners; these eyed him curiously, yet without menace. Behind him followed O’Sullivan, long black locks blowing in the wind. As he progressed, Desmond noted that the schooner was no dirty little island trader, but well appointed. The whaleboats were new and well found. At the galley door the face of a Chinaman appeared for an instant, and almost caused Desmond to halt, for it was the straight-eyed face of a Manchu, and no son of Han.

  They were at the after companion now. A single figure stood at the wheel in the stern—a wild, giant statue of a man, locked against the spokes by the following wind. The hatches were ready to be clapped on when it became necessary. With a last glance at the storm wrack in the sky, Desmond fought his way to the ladder and plunged down into peace and obscurity. A moment later the fiddler, panting hard, joined him.

  The two men advanced, ignorant where they were to find their prey. As they hesitated, however, a door opened, and the figure of a man lurched out in front of them and pounded at another door.

  “Cap’n!” it called. “Oh, cap’n! You’d better open up and—”