But Banton was hardly better. He drove the other away at last, silencing the hissing snout of the Flammenwerfer above him.
Agent “X” was watching the fight, seeming to take part in it. The automatic in his hands gave barking reports from time to time. His bullets clanged off the steel sides of the yacht’s superstructure. He hadn’t forgotten that he was Tony Garino, gangster. He gave the appearance of being one of the battlers. But he was watching, waiting, his eyes sweeping the dark waters.
BANTON’S men were swarming into the luxurious cabin now. One of the steel doors had given in, loosed on its hinges by a pineapple bomb. At the head of the stairs, leading down to the saloon below, a helmeted figure appeared. Then the worst carnage of the battle took place.
Three gangsters, murderous rats from the city’s water fronts, were caught off their guard. Agent “X,” looking through a window, saw what happened. The jet from the Flammenwerfer reached them as they made a rush for the stairs.
It struck the foremost of them in the chest, and the man’s body seemed to disintegrate before the seething gush of flame. He stumbled backwards, his features disappearing. The others went down, too, became huddled hulks of men. The cabin’s interior was filled with the sickening odor of scorched flesh.
Then a submachine gun chattered from one of the cabin’s rear windows. Its quick death leaped across space before the man with the flame-thrower could change the direction of his jet. He dropped his weapon, stood at the head of the stairs for a moment like some goggling, hideous apparition. Then with a cry he threw up his arms and fell backwards, riddled with bullets — dead.
Banton was almost master of the ship now. His big face was bloated, red, his eyes bloodshot. The fear and carnage around him seemed only to whet his appetite for the thing he sought. He ran across the cabin, callously leaping over the grotesquely slumped forms of what had been three of his men. He started to plunge down the stairway, a flame-thrower in his hand. Then he paused. A shout had come from outside. It was a cry of fright and warning.
Above the crackle of automatics, above the sharp tattoo of a Tommy gun still playing, came another sound. It was a sound that sent prickles of fear racing up Banton’s spine. It was the eerie, wailing note of a siren — a note that he had heard often before in his life. Words came to his lips.
“The cops!” he gasped.
The siren’s note was joined by another — a third and a fourth, Banton stood trembling, white as a sheet. The sirens outside seemed to be clamoring like dogs, like hounds on the hunt — the hounds of the law.
He staggered to a window, looked out. From all sides it seemed, across the face of the dark waters, searchlights were stabbing, converging on the two boats that rolled and wallowed side by side.
He heard the throb of powerful motors, heard sharp bows cutting the swells. A gray shape like a leaping hound cut through a searchlight’s beam. It was a slim, fast coast guard patrol boat, and its decks were black with armed men.
With a hoarse cry of fury and fear Banton fell back.
“We’re trapped,” he said, and the words came from his lips as though wrenched by the quivering hands of Greed.
Chapter XXII
THE gangsters were like stricken men in that first moment of confusion while sirens wailed and searchlights stabbed upon them. They stood stunned, dazed — jaws slack, eyes wide. Then they took refuge in the yacht’s cabin with Banton.
He began cursing at them, ordering them to fight, telling them they would be killed if they didn’t. He lashed them with his tongue, put fear into their hearts. They commenced snarling like cornered beasts, then they crouched and fired at the patrol boats. A screaming, clattering volley of machine-gun bullets answered their shots.
Banton was almost like a maniac now. He saw himself cheated of the thing he sought. He lifted the captured Flammenwerfer gun, thrust its snout through a window of the cabin and squirted liquid fire across the water. He was making a desperate attempt to keep the patrol boats at bay.
The jet of flame missed its mark. Its line of trajectory became an arc. It hissed into the water, sending up billows of steam. Just beyond it, circling like slim greyhounds, the patrol boats edged nearer. Banton raised the gun higher. His face was a living fury. He had double motives now. He had never forgotten that the law had humiliated him, forced him to resign. And, wolfishly, he was ready to murder in order to guard the thing he had fought to possess.
The jet of flame almost struck the gray prow of a coast guard patrol.
Then the man disguised as Tony Garino made a slight movement with his left hand. He was in the cabin of the cruiser, crouched behind its steel walls with the others. No one noticed the darting motion of his fingers. No one noticed either the small glass vial that flashed through the air and shattered with a barely audible tinkle against a metal table leg. The colorless liquid in it seeped out.
But invisible fumes filled the air. A gangster nearest the table felt them first. He began rubbing his eyes. Then he dropped his gun, put both hands to his face and staggered across the floor, seeking air. The fumes were growing sharper, more astringent. They were the smarting fumes of concentrated ammonia that got into the eyes and made them burn and water.
A cloud of fumes drifted around Banton’s head, sucked through the draft of the window. The flamethrower waved his stubby hands. He howled with rage, screamed an oath. The gray boats in the sea before him became confused shadows as tears blinded his eyes. He lost all sense of aim, sprayed flame on the deck of the yacht. Then with a cry he flung the terrible weapon from him and put his hands to his eyes.
The gangsters’ fire had fallen off. The cabin was becoming untenable as the fumes filled it and thickened. One by one the gangsters stumbled through the exits to the deck. Some still clutched their guns, firing fiercely, aimlessly. A volley of machine-gun bullets smashed into one and he collapsed into a thrashing heap, then lay still. Others dropped their guns and raised their hands above their heads in token of surrender. The gray patrol boats began to edge closer.
AMONG the larger coast guard craft was one harbor police patrol. It was far from its accustomed beat tonight, but strange things were in the wind. Two of the most important officials of the city police department were on this boat, the commissioner himself, and Inspector Burks of the homicide squad. The trails of murder know no boundaries, and, though this sea battle was far outside the police boat’s territory, both men were following a murder path. Tense, rigid, standing beside the rail, Inspector Burks spoke.
“I thought it was phony when that tip-off came. The skirt wouldn’t give her name. She hung up on me — but after the killing at the bank tonight I was ready to try anything.”
The tall commissioner was silent a moment, then he touched Burks’s arm.
“They’ve had enough! They’re quitting. They know when they’re licked.”
He was pointing to the yacht, from the cabin of which the gangsters were stumbling, lifting their arms. The police boat came nearer and Burks let out a harsh curse.
“That fat guy — it’s George Banton, chief. What the hell’s he doing out here? Maybe he sent up those rockets!”
Both men were puzzled. All that had happened tonight was puzzling to the law. The tip-off had come into headquarters in a girl’s voice, informing the police that the death-torch murderers were planning a sea getaway. It had sounded fantastic, but a half-dozen coast guard boats had responded. The mysterious message had told them to wait until rockets went up. Those rockets were mysterious, too. Who was responsible for them?