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.”