The Mark of Cain

by William J. Coughlin

  Cain spoke quietly. “If you even twitch, Van Pelt, I will kill you.” He stepped back to where Soldier lay. The big man’s breathing was shallow. Cain put his fingers against the pulse in Soldier’s neck. It was regular but weak.

  He looked over at the slack-faced girl. “I’m going to need your help.” She gave no indication that she understood him.

  “I am going to need your help,” he said slowly.

  She was unresponsive, although he thought he did detect a flicker of interest. “Look, you are Mrs. Stewart Hamilton,” he said, hoping that the sound of her married name might help jar her mental processes into working. “I’ve been sent here to take you home,” he said softly, “but I will need your help.”

  She blinked. Although her face remained impassive, a tear rolled down one cheek. “My husband is dead,” she said in a surprising little-girl voice. “He is dead.”

  “I know,” Cain said quietly. “There is nothing we can do about that. But I will need your help to escape from here.”

  Cain gestured toward Van Pelt with his pistol. “Come on. I want to take a look at your back room.” He roughly pushed the fat man ahead of him. The sightless eyes of the corpse in the doorway looked up at them as they stepped over his body.

  Cain played the flashlight beam over the room. It was a storage room with a multitude of food tins and other containers, mostly boxes. Cain pushed Van Pelt forward again as he studied the rows of provisions.

  “What are you looking for?” Van Pelt asked.

  “Medical supplies.”

  The fat man shook his head. “The only thing we have is up in the house. Just a first-aid kit, I’m afraid.”

  Cain’s beam fell on a small red box at the end of the room. “What’s that?” he asked Van Pelt.

  “A small cache of explosives.” Van Pelt’s voice had lost most of its fear. The man was a survivor. “We occasionally have use for it,” he added.

  Cain pocketed the flashlight and picked up the red box. “Okay, let’s go back.” He jammed the big pistol into Van Pelt’s flabby back.

  They walked back into the large room. The sickening smell of death was combined with the odor of gun smoke and marijuana. Once again Cain felt his stomach rebel. Again a wave of dizziness swept over him. He stood still until the feeling passed.

  “Okay, Mrs. Hamilton.” He addressed the girl, knowing that the sound of her married name seemed to provoke a response from her dulled mind. “Let’s get out of here. I want you to help my friend over there.” He nodded at Soldier, who sat on the floor, holding a cloth to his chest. Soldier’s color was bad, and Cain knew he would have to receive quick attention or risk death from shock.

  The girl languidly stood up, her young body discolored from the abuse she had received. She moved like a sleepwalker to Soldier. Cain saw a silk robe on one of the chairs and threw it to her. “Put it on,” he commanded. She responded like a robot, mechanically obeying his order. The girl was mentally ill, perhaps marred forever by what she had seen and endured. Cain put all thoughts of her future out of his mind. She would be someone else’s problem.

  “Can you stand, Soldier?” he asked.

  The wounded man tried to smile, but his grin was quickly replaced by a grimace of pain. His battered face stiffened with determination, and he forced his body up until he stood fully erect but swaying slightly.

  “Help him,” Cain commanded the girl. Obediently she put her shoulder under Soldier’s arm and offered herself as a crutch. “Let’s go,” Cain said.

  Cain collected all the weapons in the room and stuffed them into his pockets and belt until he felt as if he were wearing a hundred pounds of steel. He made Van Pelt wait at the bottom of the circular staircase as Soldier and the girl struggled up the steps.

  “Mr. Cain,” Van Pelt said, seemingly unconcerned about his position or nakedness, “you are very good at what you do. I’ll admit that my offers earlier were merely attempts to play for time or distract you, but I think I can make you a genuine offer that might really interest you. I do have control of the South American heroin traffic. I think you have the imagination to see just how much money such an operation brings in. From the standpoint of money it is as large an industry as your General Motors, and a great deal more profitable.” Van Pelt’s tone became friendly. “The reason I’m telling you all this is that I have great need of a man like yourself, someone who can move effectively and efficiently. In short, Mr. Cain, I need a man who can police my organization; someone who can enforce my orders.”

  “Like taking care of people like Finzanno?”

  He frowned. “A poor example, under the circumstance, but that is the general idea. I would be prepared to give you a percentage of the profits.”

  “Even after what we did to Ring Key?”

  Van Pelt nodded solemnly. “That was a bit of bad business,” he said. “It will be difficult setting it up again. But it can be done.”

  “And you would still want me as part of your organization?”

  The fat man’s small eyes regarded Cain thoughtfully. “It is a small setback at worst. We are moving millions each month into America. In fact your effectiveness at Ring Key could instill the right degree of fear into my people. It might prove an asset in the long run.”

  “Tell me, Van Pelt, how much ‘horse’ do you think you’ve moved with your operation?”

  Van Pelt thought for a moment. “Well, it was small to begin with, and we really haven’t been in business a long time. We had to compete with the Turkish stuff coming in through France in the beginning. But since those people were closed down, we have become the major supplier. I would guess that something close to one million dollars’ worth of narcotics have been sent through the southern ports under our auspices.” He smiled. “Of course that’s not all profit, but we do very well indeed.”

  Cain thought back to his days on the police force, to the junkies he had seen sweating and jerking in the screaming pain of withdrawals. He thought of the bodies he had viewed—of old women beaten to death by a heroin-crazed man just so he could get a few dollars to satisfy the “monkey” clawing inside him. A thousand sights and memories filled Cain’s mind. He could see Cathy Drake’s body and he vividly remembered her beaten face. Glancing up, he saw that Soldier and the girl had made it.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Van Pelt, I’ll think it over.” He pointed the pistol at the man’s round protruding belly. “Now I want you to go into that supply room in the back and sit there until I talk this over with Soldier.”

  An almost silky smile played over Van Pelt’s sensuous mouth. “Of course, Mr. Cain. Be sure you impress upon your associate the amount of money that can be earned in this business.”

  “I will, Mr. Van Pelt, I will.”

  He watched the man’s fat buttocks as he made his way back toward the supply room. He stepped daintily over the body of Cathy Drake. He waved to Cain as he disappeared into the darkness of the storage room.

  Cain stuck his own pistol in his overloaded belt and climbed to the top of the circular staircase. The Hamilton girl was helping Soldier up the hall stairway which led into the house. Cain studied the rock formation at the top of the staircase. He opened the red box and found little packages of gelignite and sets of fuses. He was familiar with the stuff, and Slick had trained him in its use. He placed the puttylike explosive against the big ventilating fans at the top of the shaft. Setting the fuse, he unrolled it as he retreated into the hallway. He shoved the rest of the explosive into his pockets.

  Then he set off the explosion. It did just what he thought it would. All the rock in the shaft came down burying the staircase and blocking the entrance to the big room below. Unless someone knew the room was there, it would never be discovered.

  Van Pelt would have been quite safe from harm back in the protection of the storage room. Now he was buried alive, with only the fluttering hurricane lamps and the bodies for company. There was enough air in the large room and sufficient food and drink to enable Van P
elt to live a long time in his tomb. He had no weapons, so he had no convenient manner of suicide available. Cain listened. He thought he could hear muffled screaming coming from the sealed room, but he realized it also could be his imagination, and imagination fired up by memories of narcotics victims and the white death spread so viciously by the fat man, Van Pelt.

  Cain set another charge below the dining room. When it went off, half the house seemed to slide into the earth, covering forever the horrors that had been practiced below.

  He released the household staff and with their help was able to get Soldier and the girl back to the villa.

  The hurricane was moving on, leaving a wrecked island and a driving rain behind it.

  NINETEEN

  The radio had reported that the hurricane had veered over the Gulf and now faced the Mexican coast, although it had lost much of its intensity and had been demoted to a tropical storm. Cain stood at the stern railing of the Arrow, one of the Zinner Company’s freighters, as it plowed across the green Caribbean on its way to Florida.

  The staterooms below looked like hospital wards. Two of the company’s doctors and a complete nursing staff had been drafted to help treat the wounded. Slick’s leg was encased in a cast that ran from his waist to his toes. Massive doses of antibiotics were being pumped into him to kill off his leg infection; the doctors felt his prospects were good.

  Soldier’s thick sternum bone had deflected the small-caliber slug, but it had bitten into the upper part of his lung. A serious injury, but the doctors assured Cain that it would heal very nicely.

  The third patient’s outlook was not so bright. The Hamilton girl remained a human robot, displaying no emotion or feeling. The doctors could offer nothing but sedation until she could be delivered to a good psychiatric hospital. They informed Cain that the hope for recovery was not good, although they thought there was a possibility that with treatment, shock therapy, and loving care the girl might have a chance to return to the world she left when she had sailed away with her young husband.

  Cain had delivered the message by telephone to Mrs. Hamilton. She had cried over her lost son, but she had pledged that she would do all she could to help her daughter-in-law. Cain doubted that the woman could change her attitude toward the girl who had taken away her son. Perhaps she might, in memory of her son’s love, take the girl to her heart and comfort her. Cain hoped so. The girl would need all the help she could get.

  Cain still had a slight headache, but no further dizziness or other complications from the slight concussion he had received from the kick on the stairway at Van Pelt’s house.

  He watched the bubbling wake falling astern of the boat. Above them the sky was clear and blue. A few fluffy white clouds floated over the calm green sea. It seemed unreal to Cain, unbelievable that it could be so peaceful so soon after the wildness of the storm. The Spanish Main, they called it. Beneath its calm surface lay the skeletons of ships, old and new, each wreck marking its own untold tale of terror. Sharks policed the sea, cleaning it, feeding on the refuse and keeping the waters clear. They cared not what they ate, their beady eyes only obeying nature’s imperative command. Cain recalled the sight of the feeding sharks and shivered despite the warmness of the air.

  He studied the peaceful, quiet Caribbean, knowing that it masked the evidence of murder, death, and pillage. “The Spanish Main.” He said the words aloud.

  The setting sun colored the sea a thick blood-red as it sank into the horizon. Considering the history of the Caribbean, it seemed a suitable color to Cain.

  The sky retained a spectacular aura of gold and red although the sun had sunk from sight. Cain stared at the far horizon. He wondered what he would do next. It would be months before Soldier and Slick would be able to work again. He could not bear to think of being inactive that long. He hoped the old man would find something for him to do.

  He continued to watch the sky, feeling a nameless dread as he realized that it must be his fate to move across the earth and time forever, looking for more action, another chance to display his deadly skills. He remembered something from the Bible, something they had written about him in the newspapers when they had tried him for murder. They had said that he was cursed to the life of a fugitive, like the original Cain and his descendants.

  The mark of Cain; that was the lurid term the newspapers had used. They said he bore a killer’s mark and would be forced to wander the earth forever.

  Cain snorted. Such thoughts were the product of being kicked in the head, he decided.

  He stayed at the stern, watching the dying day until all trace of the sun had disappeared, and he was alone in the dark night.