“Locked her up like the cat she is.”
It was plain to the Agent that Banton was in some way double-crossing his client, Rosa Carpita. The girl had followed him, come on board to find out what was going on. All this was consistent with Banton’s character as the Agent had sized it up.
Banton went back to the pilot house. For nearly an hour the speed boat rocked in the swells, its engines muttering idly, while Banton swung it in slow circles.
Banton’s voice came down from the open window of the pilot house at last. He gave an order that his assailants understood. They walked among the men on deck, marshaling them like soldiers.
Agent “X” saw the gleam of hidden weapons being brought out. Four submachine guns were taken from a locker. One of Banton’s men manned the tripod gun up forward.
“All you mugs get ready,” Banton said.
Off on the night-darkened horizon, in the mouth of the harbor, Agent “X” saw a shape moving, a boat slipping out, showing no lights. His nerves tingled with excitement. It came toward them like a sea ghost.
For an instant, as it was silhouetted against a short light, he saw that canvas still mantled its deck, that it was the same covered yacht he had seen tied up. It passed them a half-mile away, slipped out to sea. And then he heard the engines of the speed boat beneath him throb into life. Its bow swung, it seemed to leap ahead across the dark waters. The chase of death had begun.
Chapter XX
LIKE a snarling gray wolf of the sea Banton’s speed boat lunged ahead. Its prow was the snout of a wolf worrying a bone in bared fangs. The wake it kicked up was the lashing plumed tail of a marauding sea beast.
And Banton, wide-legged in the pilot house, was the man-demon who urged the beast on to the kill.
A tenseness had crept over that murderous crew. Agent “X” saw clawlike hands fondling gun butts; he saw the blood lust in the rolling whites of eyes. He heard short, barking sentences hurled from beneath bared teeth. A huge wolf with a pack of lesser wolves! There was blood on the moon tonight.
He was glad that the girl was below decks, glad that she was to escape the horror that lay ahead. For the whole fantastic outline of the deathly enigma he had been fighting was beginning to take shape. His own pulses were racing. His eyes were points of shimmering light.
The sea itself was silent, seemingly deserted. It was the silence before a storm — the dreadful silence that bore in it the threat of doom.
The covered yacht ahead was speedy. But Banton’s gray speedboat was faster still.
The distance lessened minute by minute. The white ghostly canvas covering the yacht’s deck showed. Those on board, whoever they might be, were keeping up the farce that the vessel was empty. What would Banton’s method of attack be?
The answer came soon.
“Stand ready to give ’em hell!”
It was Banton’s voice calling down from the pilot house. Agent “X” caught a glimpse of the man’s red face. Banton’s eyes were gleaming slits of wolfish cruelty.
“Rake her from stem to stern,” he bawled. “Now!”
One of Banton’s men crouched behind the tripod-mounted machine gun, pressed the firing lever. The gun leaped on its fastenings. Bronze-jacketed bullets sped across the night-shrouded waters. The cartridge belt writhed like a gleaming snake uncoiling, spitting its venom. The man behind the butt had once handled a Tommy gun for a mob of rumrunners. His fingers were practiced. His aim was true.
The bullets were riddling the canvas covering in a death-dealing stream. If men were there they would meet their doom. But the covered yacht sped on. There was no sign of life on board, only that grim white wake.
Cursing, as though steeled to something expected which did not come, Banton ordered two of the submachine gunners to open fire. The deathly, bone-rattling tattoo of the Thompson guns joined the clatter of the heavy-caliber weapon up front. Their snouts sprayed lead on the craft ahead.
THEY were close astern of it now. Banton twisted the wheel. Like a huge gray wolf circling its prey, the speed boat heeled over and went around the larger yacht. It tore past the yacht’s side while Banton’s henchmen kept up their withering fire.
Behind the bows of the yacht, the pilot house showed. The leaden spray from the muzzles of the Tommy guns concentrated there. Glass smashed. Sheet metal crumpled. Boarding was ripped as with a thousand fangs. The yacht suddenly heeled over. Its white spray lessened. It lay wallowing in the trough of the seas like a still gray ghost.
There was something ominous about its stillness. No moving thing showed. Banton began to swear like a madman. He bellowed another abrupt order. A man dived into a locker of the ex-rumrunner. He reared up clutching two corrugated missiles — hand grenades, “pineapples.” These were Banton’s aces in the hole.
“Give ’em hell,” he said again, and the man with the grenades hurled one across the space that separated the two craft. With unerring aim it dropped on the yacht’s deck.
A blast of orange flame came. A roar sounded. Pieces of wood and strips of canvas rose into the air. The bomb left a gaping black hole in the yacht’s deck, but Agent “X” doubted that it had penetrated below decks.
The yacht seemed to wallow like a great, still beast, watching, crouching.
Banton circled her again, making the engines of the speedboat roar as though by this display of sheer speed and power he could cow those on board the yacht.
“Get the grappling hooks out,” he shouted.
From another locker, two-pronged hooks were brought with ropes attached — relics, too, of rumrunning days — relics that had been used by hijackers.
With a burst of speed Banton cut into the yacht’s stern again. This time he didn’t sheer off. He held the speedboat’s bow straight for the other craft, turned slightly and ran alongside, so close that the metal sides of the two vessels scraped. Then he reversed the engines, backed water in a smother of foaming spray.
“Fling ’em,” he snarled.
The grappling hooks dropped on the yacht’s decks, caught in scuppers, hatchways, and capstans. The ropes were made fast. Then a gangster shrieked a hoarse warning. Like rats, the men, ready to board the yacht, fell back.
For a point of brilliant flame stabbed out from the yacht’s superstructure. It was a hissing, scorching will-o’-the-wisp of fire, that dropped like a lightning bolt on the speed boat’s deck.
Where it fell, sizzling flame burst up. The deck boards smoldered, crackled, flamed. The gray enamel turned black. The frightened yells of men mingled with the hissing of the flames.
Banton alone seemed calm. He had snatched up a submachine gun himself. He sprayed lead at the spot where the flame came from. The jet of flame flickered, forked out. It touched the cruiser’s pilot house.
With a howl of fear Banton left his perch, clattered down the iron stairs into the boat’s interior. The wicked tongue of flame licked the pilot house. It heated the metal sheathing, turned varnished boards and framework into crackling embers. It reduced the pilot house into a smoking ruin.
Banton’s men had taken refuge in the offside of the cruiser. Here, protected by twenty feet of the boat’s cabin, they were safe. Banton appeared among them, sweat streaming from his face, his lips curled back from his teeth, his eyes the eyes of a devil. He still held the machine gun in stubby fingers.
“We’ll get ’em,” he said. “Stand ready to board her, you rats.”
He walked stiff-legged through the cabin, smashed a port, and thrust the muzzle of his machine gun through. As a police lieutenant he had had practice with Thompson guns. He was a dead shot.