“You spoke to him. On the phone at Rodd’s. Told him Merrill suspected how the sub commander knew ‘Captain Ovett’ was aboard the Mercede. Merrill probably came direct to you. Or phoned you at your club soon’s he hit town. You saw the fat was in the fire. You had to put him out of the way. Or your slimy game was up—
He shook the spy until the white hair flopped down over his eyes.
“You figured out how to decoy Merrill to Dommy’s place. You got over there, waited for him... and I don’t have to figure out how you spent your time that night!”
Berger screeched: “Fross! Hurlihan! Take him... off me... Take—”
Joslin snatched up the poker from the set by the grate. “Who wants it first! You’ll get it, if you cut in!”
None of the others moved.
Koski flattened his lips against his teeth. “You’re the sort of scum who always wants someone else to do your dirty work. Can’t stand to be told what you have to do. Not even by your own government. In wartime. Don’t mind bullying your hired hands. But have apoplexy when they tell you what they consider fair treatment. Want a country run your way or to hell with it. Well...” he put his face close to Berger’s. “You’re not going to run it your way. You’re not going to send it to hell. Not with all the brown-shirted, black-hearted bums behind you...”
Berger struggled desperately: “You’ve no proof! But I have. You can’t prevent me... common decency... my brief case.” He lunged in a frenzy toward the brief case he had set against the bulkhead.
Koski struck him in the face. The Executive Director fell back on the seat.
The Lieutenant picked up the brief case. “Don’t care for the tilings you do with luggage. What’s in this you want so bad?” He unbuckled the leather strap.
“Letter,” Berger spat out savagely. “From the... Navy Department. Read it... Then you’ll understand—”
The detective snapped the catch, opened the case.
Poong!!
There was a flash like a thousand photobulbs at once. A burst of dense smoke. No detonation. No concussion. But an instananeous sensation of terrific heat — numbing in its fierce intensity. It galvanized Koski into reflex action. He flung the case toward the companionway. A dazzling streak of molten metal like the tip of an acetylene torch showed through the trailing fumes.
The streak of incandescence flowed through the engine-room bulkhead as if it had been paper, left a blazing gap in the paneled pine. Through the aperture, for a split second, vivid blue sheeted out.
There was no time for anything except a frantic groping up the companion way to the deck-house. Berger got to the steps first, tore up on deck. Barbara got in Koski’s way long enough to balk him; then the Harbor Squad man waited until the others had all gone ahead of him.
On deck, the whistle went into frenzy with Cardiff hanging to the cord. The Vigilant came thundering up on the starboard quarter. Flame breathed up the companionway. Something said, “Huff” in a tremendous voice that seemed to ring in Koski’s ears for ten endless seconds. The transom and after deck of the yacht opened up like a wet cardboard box.
While he herded the others over into the Vigilant’s cockpit, Koski scanned the water. He could hear Berger swimming. In the fog there was no possibility of seeing him.
“Come on, Steve!” Mulcahey yelled. “I got them all aboard here. Except the one that jumped. Come on!”
“Hold it, Irish.”
The yacht’s deck tilted sharply to port. The bow canted up. A long tongue of orange leaked out over the water. The fog was suddenly luminous — white steam in the brilliant glare of a giant headlight. There was a curious rushing sound in the air. For a hundred feet around the burning yacht, the sea blossomed out in a quivering carpet of orange and yellow. The gas from the tanks had spread.
Twenty yards astern of the sinking Seavett a white spot rose above the surface. A hand shot up into the air, clutched flame.
Berger screeched once, went under.
The hand showed again for an instant. The head didn’t.
Koski pointed. “Jam her full reverse, Joe! Watch it! Don’t slash us with the wheel. I’m going for him!”
He jumped in, feet first, the way a waterman does when debris floats on the surface.
XXVIII
“What was it, Steve?”
“Thermite. Stuff they use for incendiaries. Had it fixed to go off when the brief case was opened.” Koski glanced at the soggy heap beside the Vigilant’s engine housing. “There was no bandage around Rolf Berger’s face now, but there would be one as soon as the police-boat could reach the Coast Guard control boat. The white hair was burned off one side of the man’s head, his coat had been ripped by the boathook when Mulcahey dragged him up over the gunwale.
“I am cruising along beside the yacht wondering if all goes according to plan,” Mulcahey peered off toward the violet haze where the water still blazed, “and I see this flash about twice as bright as the loom of Greens Ledge light. Then boom and you all come shooting out on deck like in one of them old shifting pictures in which everything is speeded up double.”
“It happened like that, Irish.” Koski pressed his lips together and caught his breath at the jagged agony in his side. “One second there we are, building brother Berger up to a terrific letdown. Next second, where are we!” He squdged water out of his shoes.
“Four hundred gallons of super-test, so the Cap’n says. Went up in one minute. And down in five. She sank while I was draggin’ you both aboard.”
“Lucky you were there to hold my hand...”
“Not bad for a foggy night, coach.” Mulcahey cut the motor switch, stuck his head out into the fog, listening for the howl of the Penfield siren. When he heard it he held his hand over the compass card, pointing toward the reef. He started the motor, swung the Vigilant on a course directly opposite. “Personally, I will feel better when this reptile is out from underfoot.”
“I thought you were going to say underground.”
“Okay. I say it. At that he reminds me of the only other guy I ever knew who would rather work for Hitler than his own country.”
“I heard that one. Gravedigger up at the cemetery, hah?”
“So you know all the answers. Be so kindly as to tell me some.”
“Hell of a lot of them I don’t know.”
“What I have been attempting to elucidate on my own with no success is, how did the short-wave crystal happen to get in that suitcase with the mangled remains?”
“That comes under what the defense attorney will call the realm of pure conjecture, Joe. You want my conjecture?”
“So who has a better one?”
“Oke. Mine is, when Merrill got to Room Five, he expected to meet Joslin. Guy he did meet was Ratzi here. Probably was a set-to. At a guess, on or near the bed. Say the crystal was in Berger’s pocket. It fell out during the fracas. He didn’t notice it. Later, when he needed the sheet for a little shroud-work, he probably crumpled it up without noticing the crystal, jammed it over the body in the suitcase.”
“There seems to be a slight loophole, Steven.”
“Such as—”
“If the crystal was Berger’s, how could Ansel have been using the short-wave set on the yacht, tell me that?”
“Sure. They’d both have crystals. So they could plug ’em in or pull ’em out of the set in Berger’s office or on the Seavett as opportunity might knock. Be too dangerous for them to always send from the same place.”