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Show ffgAU Over But the MJW J Mfj Richard Powell - ShOOtifiq W f"hZl AN INNER SANCTUM MYSTERY ' . Av- Ult STARRING ARAB-0 ANDY BLAKE wu tus r W I TRB STORY THUS PAR: IX And; Blake and nil wife, Arab, discovered evidence of a ipy rlnf beaded by a Mr. Jones. Ttarjr went to Andy's home, knowing know-ing that Jones would follow. Rente, Jones' agent, came through the window and was captured by Andy and Arab. Arab In trying to escape, was captured by Jones. When Jones broke Into the cellar he took Renee, but left Andy, believing be-lieving him dead. Andy went to his superior su-perior and reported all the facts. He then rushed to a service station, friendly to Jones, tied up the operator. Before be could get away a car with friends of Jones drove up. They made Andy get In with them. He had got word through to Intelligence, but not In time. j CHAPTER XIV i "Keep the change," I said, hand- lng the coins back to her and grip- ping her hand hard. Her mouth closed limply. She looked at me in wonder but didn't speak. I had almost been spraining my eyes trying try-ing to give her a warning. ! We went back to the car, and the driver said, "Got dough, have you? What else you got in your pockets?" ! They gave me a fast cleaning, found a ten-dollar bill, a quarter, my pencil, a watch and a handker-i handker-i chief. They let me keep the handkerchief. hand-kerchief. There was nothing suspicious sus-picious for them to find. My dog tags were in a corner of the garage back near Washington, and my A.G.O. card was In my blouse also back In the garage, j We headed north, circled Camden, l and swung east. Route signs announced: an-nounced: Lakehurst, Toms River, Lakewood, Barnegat, Manahawkln, Beach Haven. It didn't pay for me to make quick moves now. When I j reached suddenly for my handker- I chief to catch a sneeze, a big hand locked my wrist. The guy was fast I I sneezed and told him what I want ed and he released his grip. A half-hour half-hour later the same move brought me a clip on the Jaw and a growled order to sit stilL They were getting Jumpy as they neared the hangout. The sun dove into a foxhole on the mainland. For a few minutes the western sky dripped splotches of red Into the bay, then it was dark. No street lights came on. The Island was dimmed out. The car crept south on cowl lights. Beach Haven drifted past like a ghost town. I had been there once for a week end. We had gone fishing for kings and flounders in Beach Haven Inlet, and had caught dog sharks and skates. The Inlet wasn't far south of Beach Haven. The hangout must be near. Two miles farther on we swung over to the bay, and stopped. There was nothing Interesting to be seen except a small shack and a dock that weaved tipslly out into the bay. The driver patted a tune on the horn. A man came out of the shack, peered doubtfully at us. "Take a good look, Pop," the driver snarled. "You better make sure I got the same number of whiskers whis-kers I had last time or I might be a different guy." "I know you," the man said, "and I know your friend back there, but I don't know that feller in the corner cor-ner of the back seat." "He's our business, Pop." "Nobody was lookin' for you to come. What's up?" "We got a reason. Where's the garvey?" "It ain't here. Nobody was look-In' look-In' for you to come." "So It ain't here. So nobody was 'lookin' for us to come. Get it back 'here!" "Now, wait a minute," the man said. "This ain't rum-runnin' in ! twenty-nine. They's patrols on the beach and maybe a cutter lyln off the inlet. You diddle around with flashlights and you'll be combin thirty-caliber slugs outta your hair. It ain't healthy to signal at night." "What are we supposed to do, swim? I couldn't make it across a bathtub." "I got a rowboat. But iff two miles even if you could row straight, which you can't. The way the tide's takin' out you'd have to detour the 'inlet. You better lay over to morning." morn-ing." "We got business that won't wait" "Can you handle a sailboat?" "You mean one of them laundry-on-a-raft things?" "I don't guess you can." I cleared my throat, and said, "I can." The caretaker and driver looked at me, whispered together for a moment mo-ment Then the caretaker said, "What's a centerboard?" "Centerboard?" I repeated. "That's a keel you can drop to keep shallow-draft boat from being shoved sideways by the wind. You raise it when you're going over shoals." "I guess he can sail a boat" the caretaker said. We left the car and walked out I along the rickety w harf. An eight-'ten-foot oversize sneakbox was moored at the end. They ordered me to get It ready, and sat on the dock watching suspiciously while I made sail and fitted rudder and tiller till-er Into place. Then the two big men climbed In and huddled down Inside the tiny cockpit leaving the caretaker care-taker on the pier. Starlight gleamed on blue steel In their hands. They couldn't have looked much more ! worried If I bad been playing with bomb. The caretaker dropped the hawser on deck,, gripped the mast and prepared pre-pared to cast us off. "Watt min ute," I said. "What happens if the ' Coast Guard spots us?" "Nobody'll bother you in the bay," he said. "Just don't go outside." "He won't." one of my pals said. The caretaker shoved us off. I brought In the sheet rope until the sail filled and tugged at my arm. Water chuckled under the hull. We slid out of the tiny cove. The figure of the caretaker, back on the dock, got fuzzy at the edges and faded. I took a deep breath. I felt good for the first time in twenty-four hours. Things were looking up. In a short time I would know the location loca-tion of the hangout and maybe where to find Arab, and now I wasn't Jammed helplessly in a corner of a cnr. This time it was my party. Lots of interesting things can happen in sailboats. The man yelled, "Get this thing back on the road!" I let the sheet rope run free. The boat came back to an even keel, lost headway. The hands loosened She looked at me In wonder but didn't speak. on my throat. I gave him a lecture on sailing, explaining that all sailboats sail-boats tilt in a breeze. The wind was south-southwest and the big sneakbox wouldn't point close into the wind and I had to tack. The boom swung over and my passengers passen-gers almost shot me. I explained that it was called going about and that often in a sailboat you couldn't head right where you wanted to go. You had to zigzag to it, first on one tack and then on another. I demonstrated how the sail fluttered flut-tered and spilled wind when you tried to point too close into the direction di-rection from which the wind was coming. They grumbled about that They said it was the screwiest setup they ever heard of. They wanted to know why anybody had been crazy enough to invent sailboats when motor boats were so much better. They complained for several sev-eral minutes but finally had to let me have my way. We racked along smartly. In half an hour a nun buoy slipped by and the inlet opened up off to port The boat heaved in channel swells. The stars were making a night of it. You could see surprisingly far, but I couldn't spot the loom of a cutter across the sequin shimmer of waves. A can buoy bobbed past heeling far over. It took plenty of tide to do that "You better tell me exactly where you want to go," I said. "There seems to be a little Island across the inlet I'll have to make long tack west to clear it" "That's the Island we want," one of them said. I peered south. At first I could only see a narrow strip of beach. Then a shadow formed, bulky and dark, In the middle of the Island. A house. A big one. "Where do wt land?" I asked. "There'a dock on the bay side." "How do you boys get away with it?" I said. "Don't nobody ask what you're doln this time of year?" One of them grunted, "We're supposed sup-posed to be fishing. For striped bass. A month ago the chief made me stand on the beach all day with a lousy pole and hunk of string." I said innocently, "If you two guys would sit up here with me wt wouldn't Ult so much." "Not me. That boom's too much like a blackjack when It comes over." "Maybe you're right" I laid. Under cover of the darkness I looped the sheet rope around a cleat beside mt. It was time to glvt them final lesson In sailing. A lesson on the danger of Jibing a sailboat when the sheet rope can't run free. In a Jibe, you turn the stern Into the wind instead of the bow, an- the boom thunders across with full leverage of the wind behlna It Jibing is a racing trick and nothing to fool with even In a mild breeze. "Going about," I droned. ' "Hard-alee!" "Hard-alee!" The big men ducked their heads. They didn't see that the stern was creeping into the wind Instead of the bow . . . and probably it wouldn't have meant anything to them, anyway. any-way. We were running before the wind now. Water -hissed past The rudder got sluggish. I Jammed It hard over. A little more . . . a . . . little . . . more . . . The taut sail crumpled for an instant. in-stant. Then it bellied the other way, flitted across the boat like the beat of a giant wing. I dodged the bat-tleax bat-tleax sweep of the boom. In the next split second the sheet rope snubbed the boom up short. The sail flapped tight bellowing like a gun fired in a barrel. The power behind it switched to cleat and mast and hull. Wood shrieked and crackled. crac-kled. I half started a dive overside when the boat reared and flipped me out sprawling. For a few seconds everything was scrambled. Water slapped half the air out of my lungs. I went down, fighting the drag of sweater and pants and shoes. Sparks were flickering flick-ering In my head before I clawed back to the surface. I gulped air twice, let myself go under and wrestled wres-tled out of the sweater. It wasn't so hard to climb to the surface this time. After a few breaths I curled under to work on my shoes. The laces turned Into angry little snakes, but I Anally managed to loosen them and to kick off the shoes. Then I relaxed, treading water, and let the tide carry me along. It was difficult to see anything. Salt stung my eyes and the black glitter of waves tired them. There was no sailboat. Once or twice something gleamed faintly - out across the waves. It might have been the curved green bottom of a boat. Once I heard a distant shout. It might have been a man calling, a man who couldn't swim across a bathtub. I thought grimly: if they don't like it here, let 'em swim back where they came from. The water was cold but not numbing. numb-ing. I peeled off my shirt The Island where we had been heading seemed to be about a quarter mile away. I angled toward it with a quiet side stroke, going with the tide Instead of trying to fight it I would miss the inlet side of the Island, but with luck there would be a return eddy to help me make the ocean side of the beach. It took less time than I had estimated. esti-mated. The tide set toward the island is-land after boiling through the Inlet narrows. And my angled course helped. In a way, I used some of the force of the tide Just as the boat had used the wind. I was stiU fairly fresh when I got into the pound and drag of the breakers. Fresh enough to take a few bruising somersaults and struggle out of the undertow onto a hard-packed beach. I didn't take time to rest there. The beach was empty. Too empty. There wasn't even much driftwood. The house was only a hundred yards away, and a big dark blob on the beach might make an observer curious. curi-ous. I stumbled across the beach and up a dune. I flattened to the sand, gasping. The breeze chilled my body and the sharp beach grass stung my face, but gradually a little strength seeped back Into my arms and legs. I sat up to study the situ- A hundred years ago, perhaps, a sand bar hod started at the bottom and worked its way up In the world. Not very far up, however. From north to south it was only a few hundred yards long. You could cross its widest part with two or three throws of a clam shell even allowing allow-ing for the way clam shells curve. Low dunes, protected by a double row of piling stuffed with brush, formed its backbone. The house sat on a central dune, close enough for me to pick out details. de-tails. It was a gaunt three-story affair af-fair with unpalnted shingles weathered weath-ered almost black. In its shadow was a concrete structure the size of a four-car garage. Starlight silvered a small boathouse on the bay side, a dock, and a board gangway leading lead-ing across the bayslde marsh to the house. The place might once have been a sportsmen's club, In the days before be-fore civilization caught up with the ducks and stripers and big tide-running weakflsh. Judging from what I had heard earlier, the house had been a drop for rum-runners In the twenties. Apparently the ambitious sand bar hadn't done so well recently. recent-ly. It might have moved In better company if It had stayed on the bottom. bot-tom. I hadn't the slightest Idea what to da My resources consisted of a pair of pinks, wet; ont undershirt, wet; ont pair of shorts, wet and one handkerchief, wet I began to realize real-ize what an unusually helpless guy had been carrying the name of Andrew An-drew Dlake around for thirty-odd years. I wasn't a good enough swimmer to make the mile-wide crossing back to the main Island. Of course I could send signals. All I had to do wss to spot a Coast Guard cutter and find a flashlight and locate lo-cate somebody who would give me "ons In International code. I TO BE CONTINUtDl |