Return to Skull Island Read online

  “Oh, sure! I know all about that. It’s why I’m here, as a matter of fact.”

  That was pretty intriguing, but the conductor was asking for our tickets and I clammed up. I stared out the window until he left the car, then turned to ask Pat what the hell she had meant but a white-coated steward entered and sounded his chimes—bing bong bing—for the first call to dinner.

  “Come on, Mr. Cacciatore,” the girl said, springing from her seat, “we can talk while we eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  This didn’t surprise me in the least: the girl obviously had so much energy she couldn’t sit still for five consecutive minutes. She must burn up calories like a Bessemer converter. When I stood to join her I was astonished again to see how tall she was: she could look directly into my eyes and—I noticed—she wasn’t wearing high heels, either. A practical girl, but I had already figured that from her pageboy haircut. Those long legs of hers had to account for more than half of the six feet that separated the soles of her feet from the crown of that fabulous bronze head.

  I was relieved to find the dining car virtually empty. There were only a half dozen tired-looking businessmen either sitting by themselves or engrossed in some business deal or another. Pat and I found a table well away from the others, where I felt we could talk with some privacy. As soon as the waiter had taken our order, I leaned toward her and asked: “What the hell are you doing here? How’d you know who I am? What d’you want?”

  “Goodness, Mr. Cacciatore! So many questions and we haven’t even gotten our soup yet.”

  “You a reporter?”

  “Heaven forfend! It’s all I can do to keep out of the papers!”

  “Is it money you want? I can tell you right now, I’ve got less money than anyone on this planet.”

  “Don’t be silly. I have more money already than I know what to do with, and I can always get more if I want it.”

  “So you’re filthy rich. What’s your game, then?”

  “Adventure, Mr. Cacciatore.”

  “What?”

  “Adventure. You know, thrills, excitement, danger—that sort of thing.”

  “You’re nuts, if you’ll forgive the familiarity.”

  “That’s an opinion I’m in no position to debate, though I fail to see your point.”

  “The point is, Miss Wildman—”

  “Pat, please!”

  “—Miss Wildman, the point is that if it’s your intention to tag along with me, the answer is: not a snowball’s chance in hell.”

  “Mr. Cacciatore, you’re not thinking this through. You need to eat something. Get your blood sugar up. Your brain cells will be much more coöperative for a little gesture from you like that, you know.”

  “My brain cells are perfectly happy as they are.”

  “I’ll bet they’re just starving, the poor things. I can tell. They’re going to revolt like a bunch of Russian peasants and then you’ll have a stroke or something. You’ll say you’re sorry then, if you even remember who I am after that. In case you forget, I’ll be the nice lady spoon-feeding gruel to you.”

  “Don’t you think for a moment I’d be able to forget you.”

  “Why, Mr. Cacciatore,” batting her eyes coyly, “now you’re just trying to flatter me!”

  The woman was maddening. She wasn’t being stupid—I could tell there was a mighty sharp brain under that sleek bronze hair—her answers were too quick, too glib and too knowing to have been the product of a lightweight mind. In fact, she was downright snotty. But I still couldn’t figure out for the life of me what she was after. Maybe she was telling the truth when she said all she was after was adventure and excitement. There are women like that, you know. I’d run across my fair share. They were usually rich girls bored with night clubs and brilliantined wolves, who thought it’d be fun to be chased by a tiger or fall off a mountain.

  “I know what’s going through your mind, Mr. Cacciatore—may I call you Carl? It seems only fair since you’ve been calling me Pat for half an hour—I know what you’re thinking, Carl, but I’m not here on the behalf of anyone other than myself.”

  That’s not what I’d been thinking but I didn’t argue with her.

  Our soup arrived just at that moment, damn it, and we spent the next few minutes eating, the conversation drifting toward the darkening landscape that rolled past us.

  “Don’t you just love traveling?” she asked.

  “Sure, but it’s a lot more fun when it’s done voluntarily.”

  “Makes no difference to me at all. Any excuse to get away from the city and somewhere where something exciting might happen is okey dokey by me. And speaking of exciting . . . just where is it, exactly, you’re going, Carl?”

  “My ticket’s for Miami. I thought maybe I could catch a ship for South America from there.”

  “Looking for passage are you?”

  “It’s the only safe way out of the country I can see.”

  “Well, then, if you get off at Mobile instead you’ll find a ship waiting there for you.”

  “Ship? What ship?”

  “The Venture. Captain Englehorn’s steaming there as we speak.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  It’d be no exaggeration to say you could have knocked me over with a canary. This strange woman knew a hell of a lot more about me than I cared for. I mean, after all, she knew perfectly well who I was. For a moment I thought she might be an agent of Dewey’s—but I just as quickly realized how little sense that made. If she was working for that bastard, what was she doing aiding and abetting my escape? Besides, that bozo didn’t have half enough class to have a babe like this Pat Wildman working for him. Besides, if she had the money she said she had, and I didn’t doubt for a minute that she did, why would she be working for anyone at all? It was a mystery to me.

  We went back to the coach after dinner, without saying too much about anything other than the usual things people say on trains. I took my seat, expecting her to join me, but she remained standing, looking at me with those uncanny, golden eyes. I felt very much like a mouse must feel staring up at a hungry cobra.

  “It’s been a long day, Carl,” she said. “It’s time we got some sleep.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay. I’ll ask the conductor to find you a blanket and maybe a pillow.”

  “Whatever for? I’ve got a compartment.”

  “A compartment?”

  “Well, of course. No need making myself any more uncomfortable than I have to. There’ll be plenty of time for that later on.”

  While I chewed on several responses, she said, “Good night, Carl. See you for breakfast? First call?”

  “Yeah.”

  Then she was gone.

  What the hell.

  The next morning I found her waiting for me in the dining car, looking as bright and efficient as she had the night before. God knows what I looked like—I hadn’t slept much, tossing around in my seat until some ungodly hour in the morning, finally falling to sleep only moments, it seemed, before the steward’s gong was ringing in my ears. It was okay, I guess, because I’d started dreaming about dungeons. I did the best I could with my face in the men’s room, but gave it up after a few minutes. The girl’d just have to take me as I was or lump it.

  “Good morning!” she said with irritating cheeriness. She had on a new outfit this morning. Something in green that worked wonders with that weird bronze skin and hair of hers. It made me kind of dizzy to look at her. “You look like you had a hell of a night. Didn’t you sleep well?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Well, good heavens, why didn’t you get a compartment? It’s ever so much more comfortable.”

  “I wanted to, but they’d all been booked.”

  “I see. Well, isn’t that funny? Wouldn’t it just be something if I’d reserved the very last one? What a laugh that’d be!”

  “I need some coffee.”

  I got it and it helped. Not enough, but a little.

  “How
is it you know old Englehorn?”

  “I don’t know him at all. I’d never even met him until the day before yesterday.”

  “The day before . . . Say, that was before Kong went nuts.”

  “Sure. You don’t think that everything I do is done with you in mind, do you?

  “But . . . Englehorn and the Venture . . . “

  “Well, of course I wouldn’t ever have heard of Captain Englehorn if he hadn’t been in the news because of Kong and having brought him here on his ship and all that. The newspapers made him sound very tough . . . and discrete.”

  “He is and he is. Definitely. So you looked up Englehorn. Then what?”

  “I offered him a job, a job hauling some . . . cargo for me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And he took the job.”

  “He’s in Mobile now?”

  “He will be by the time I . . . we get there. Don’t you think he’ll be awfully glad to see you?”

  “He’ll be ecstatic. But what business have you got with him, anyway?”

  “If I tell you everything now, what’ll I have left to surprise you with later?”

  “I don’t think you’ll never run short of surprises.”

  This sort of thing went on for the next day and a half, until we finally pulled into Mobile. We had lunch, dinner and another breakfast, and sat watching the scenery together and chatted about this and that and although she talked a blue streak I never did get one more word out of her about either herself or what she had planned for Englehorn. Or for myself, for that matter.

  I did notice something strange, though. Although she chattered away like a coed, her speech wasn’t the least bit scatter-brained. She told me what the factories were that we passed and what they made and how they made it, and when we were in the country, she told me what the farms were and what they raised and the history of the land we were passing through. And when there weren’t any factories or farms, she told me what kinds of rocks were in the hills and riverbeds. I’d never heard of synclines and anticlines before she pointed them out to me, though I’m still not sure if know they are. She seemed to know just about everything about everything.

  And she was dead right about old Englehorn. He was certainly surprised to see me. In fact, I thought he was going to have a seizure. As soon as he was able to compose himself, he rushed me into his cabin, with Miss Wildman right behind us. As soon as he got the door shut and locked he turned to me, almost biting the stem of his pipe in half.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Denham? Um, pardon me, Miss Wildman.”

  “Oh, you can just pretend I’m not here, Captain.”

  “I knew you’d be glad to see me, Englehorn.”

  “On the run, I take it?”

  “Got Tom Dewey and his boys hot on my heels . . . and, no doubt, half the insurance dicks in the country. Sailing soon, I hope, I hope?”

  “Not soon enough to suit me if you’re planning on coming along.”

  “Is my cargo on board, Captain?” asked Pat.

  “Everything arrived yesterday morning, Miss. It’s all been loaded for a couple of hours now. I’m just waiting for the chandler to finish getting our supplies settled and we’ll be ready to sail.”

  “Today, do you think?”

  “I think so, Miss. We should just make the noon tide.”

  She nodded, obviously pleased at that. She was a girl in a hurry, I could see, but I was a guy in hurry so that suited me just fine. A couple of hours after clearing the harbor, the Venture’d be beyond the three-mile limit and I’d be safe. I hoped.

  “Where’s this cargo bound for, Captain?” I asked.

  “San Serif,” Pat replied for him.

  “San Serif? What’s that?”

  “Just a little backwater banana republic south of the Yucatan.”

  “Good grief. And what’ve you got for San Serif that’s so all-fired important? Sombrero oil?”

  “Guns.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I stewed on that until later in the afternoon, when we were well into the Gulf and the low Alabama shore had finally disappeared over the northern horizon. So Pat was a gun runner! Whoever would have thought it? It was somehow a little disappointing.

  I was leaning over the railing near the bow, watching the water curl and froth as the sharp bow cut through the low, calm swells, when I felt a hand touch my arm. I didn’t need to look to know it was Pat. It certainly wouldn’t have been Englehorn.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” she said.

  “Thanks. I need the money.”

  “One saved is one earned,” she replied, handing me the coin, “or so Ben Franklin or some other wise man once said. Maybe it was John D. Rockefeller. No . . .he was all about dimes, wasn’t he?”

  “Speaking of money, I don’t get this deal of yours.”

  “Is that what you’re moping about?”

  “I’m not moping.”

  “Of course you are. Well, the answer is easy: I’m backing a revolution. San Serif was, until just a few months ago, one of the only true democracies in the entire Central American isthmus. It was a real showcase until it was taken over by General Rollo Culebra, who in turn was secretly backed by a certain foreign power with a special interest in establishing a friendly base in this continent. The rightful president, Raoul Espumoso, was imprisoned and his army disbanded and scattered. They outnumber Culebra’s men but the first thing the General had done was to take over the armories—Espumoso’s army is completely weaponless.”

  “So you decided to remedy that, did you?”

  “Sure did! It’s all for a good cause, naturally. San Serif is poor as dirt. The army was virtually helpless anyway since most of their weapons were surplus from the Crimean War or something like that—as outdated as flintlocks. There’s no way Espumoso can afford to buy new weapons. The U.S. government might give him a loan, but that’d take months and months—even if it was aware of the real danger that Culebra represents, which it is not. And by the time anyone in Washington gets wise to what’s going on, it’ll be too late. So I got the president some good modern up-to-date stuff. Culebra won’t have a chance.”

  “How d’you know all this? I mean, how do you know stuff that’d be news even to Uncle Sam?”

  “Oh, I have all sorts of connections.”

  “I can but imagine.”

  I spent most of the few days it took to steam around the Yucatan Peninsula wondering what would happen if we happened to be stopped by a U.S. Navy warship. It’d be hard to explain a hold full of high-powered artillery. And I knew it was high-powered because Pat had gleefully shown me the cargo, which consisted of several dozen big wooden crates all stenciled “Norpen Lumber Company.” She opened a few for me. I was horrified. She had everything short of tanks and field artillery. Even at that there was enough firepower to fight a small war. But then, I suppose that’s exactly what she had in mind. It kind of worried me, the expression on her face when she looked at all of those lethal crates. A girl shouldn’t look at guns and ammunition and bombs the way she did.

  The captain had given her his largest cabin—the same one, as it happened, that I’d occupied on the Skull Island expedition—and had set apart an area of the poop deck for her private use. I got Jack Driscoll’s old digs, which kind of shows you how I was rating with Englehorn at the moment, but it was all I needed anyway.

  I could see the poop from the bridge and I watched as Pat set up a deck chair she’d dug up from somewhere. She had on a sleek bathing suit—one of those new two-piece jobs that leave the midriff bare. The suit was the same smooth bronze color as her skin. It fitted her like her skin too, and in the bright sunlight it was hard to tell where suit ended and Pat began. And that was a mightily disturbing effect, I can tell you. When she lay still, it was just like looking at a gleamingly new bronze statue. “Reclining Nude” or something like that. She was built like an athlete—not overtly muscular, more like a swimmer or gymnast, maybe, or a professional dancer. Long and sleek, strea
mlined like an otter or barracuda. And I was right, too, about those legs. She had more of em than a centipede. It wasn’t real obvious, but I could see genuine power beneath those slinky curves—even relaxed, she looked like a cheetah, ready to spring.

  “Sure is something, ain’t she?”

  I turned to see that Englehorn had come up behind me. He was looking past me at the girl like I’d seen him look once at a racing yacht.

  “I wouldn’t have the slightest doubt about that, Captain. What do you know about her, anyway?”

  “Not much. She’s got money, no question about that, and plenty of it. So much money that I’m pretty sure she’s not in this for the profit. She paid me in cash and it was all in brand-new thousands.”

  “An idealist, huh?”

  “Maybe. But she never mentioned any politics or causes or nothin’ to me. To tell you the truth, I think she’s in it more for fun than conviction.”

  He shook his head and I knew he was having thoughts about Pat similar to those I’d been having.

  I jerked my thumb toward the poop and said: “I’ll say this: she makes your old tub look like a cruise ship.”

  “She does add a certain element of distinction, I admit.”

  Distinction, indeed, I thought, as the girl stretched and began doing a peculiar series of exercises—not calisthenics or anything like that. Just sitting there, almost motionless, pitting one tawny muscle against another. She barely moved but I could see sweat break out all over her in a glistening shimmer. It made that bronze body look molten.

  “You know,” said the Captain as much to himself as me, “for all of that dynamite in my hold I think that girl out there might be the most dangerous cargo this ship has ever carried.”

  I had to get back to my cabin and make myself a stiff drink. Holy cow, but this was going to be some trip.

  Pat and I ate our meals with the captain and the first mate—a tough mug but honest and absolutely dedicated to Englehorn. His name was Bart and he never opened his mouth but to eat. The rest of us talked about everything but the guns. Pat had the knack of an expert newspaperman in getting people to talk about themselves, not that it was ever very difficult so far as I’ve been concerned. But what amazed me is that she got the usually taciturn Englehorn to open up, Englehorn who normally had little to say about anything that didn’t directly involve whatever matter was immediately at hand, and at that he’d think twice about it. Good old practical level-headed Englehorn. She had him talking about his adventures in the South Seas before and after the Great War and he told her stuff that raised even my jaded hair. Cripes, I thought, I’ve been wasting my time. I should have been making movies about the captain instead of big game hunters and cannibals. Pat couldn’t seem to get enough of it, with no story too harrowing or too gruesome for her. She wrung every last detail from him, licking her pretty lips at each blood-curdling incident as though she had just eaten a liqueur-filled chocolate. I tell you, it kind of gave me the creeps.