Here and there, one of the big boats was preparing for sea. Half-naked men toiled like white beetles in the glare of incandescents. Donkey engines rattled, cables clanked against metal spars. But for the most part the black hulls of the boats towered in dark silence.
Sidney Zoom turned to the figure at his side — a young woman, well formed, alert, vital.
“Looking for someone?” she asked.
Sidney Zoom thrust forward his grim features. The hawklike eyes peered into the darkness.
“The Willmoto,” he said. “I want to see Captain McGahan. You’ll get a kick out of him, Vera. Most efficient captain in the coastal service. Gets more cargo aboard in less time, moves more freight faster with less crew—”
He broke off.
Over the chug of the engines, through the damp darkness of the waterfront, there sounded a scream. It was the scream of a woman in terror.
Sidney Zoom slammed the throttle shut, kicked out the clutch.
In the comparative silence the scream sounded the second time, knifing the darkness of the yacht’s pilot house. It was followed by the sound of a masculine laugh, and that laugh contained many emotions other than humor.
“There!”
The girl’s arm pointed and Sidney Zoom’s gaze followed the direction of the outstretched finger.
A little knot of struggling forms cast grotesque black shadows out on the end of one of the piers. Back of them showed a freighter, getting ready for sea. All the hatches were loaded except number four, and the donkey engines were busily clattering supplies into that hold. The lights were concentrated upon the section of the freighter that was being loaded. For the rest, the boat was dark and silent.
Sidney Zoom twisted the spokes of the wheel. In his eyes showed a sudden lust of conflict. At his side, in the darkness, came the sound of a low growl, and a tawny police dog, a bulking shadow of ominous strength, got to his feet and stood braced, shoulders low and forward.
“Steady, Rip,” warned Sidney Zoom. “I’ll handle this. Hold her against that pier head. Vera. There’s a rope ladder there. No, no, not so far over. There it is, right on the end. Throw her into reverse as you make the swing. Then stand by.”
And Sidney Zoom was out of the pilot house, on to the deck of the yacht in four swift strides that sounded merely as rapid thumps upon the planking. He went to the rail, paused, leaped out into the darkness.
His long arms swung his weight into the night as his hands clenched the rungs of the rope ladder. The yacht swung around, then bumped into the pilings of the wharf and flung clear.
Sidney Zoom went up the ladder, all angles, like a huge jumping-jack, yet with the swift efficiency of a climbing monkey.
The struggle was over when he reached the pier. Three men were carrying some limp object which might have been a sack of meal, but was not.
Sidney Zoom padded purposefully through the half darkness.
A masculine voice, coming in irregular spasms of sound, after the manner of a man who is talking after a struggle, reached his ears. “... so damned anxious... to travel... let her travel.”
“We can’t help it if she stows away,” said another.
And then there was another laugh, coarse, primitive.
“Gentlemen,” said Sidney Zoom.
They whirled at the sound.
“Just a moment,” said Sidney Zoom.
The men set their burden to the wharf.
“Well?” rasped one of the group.
“I heard a woman scream,” Zoom said.
“You’re a liar,” said one of the men, and rushed.
The other two followed, spread out a bit, one on either side. They came in, crouching low, men who had learned the advantage of being close to the ground in a rough-and-tumble.
These were no amateur fighters, but men who had learned the art of conflict in various ports of the world. The science of the padded gloves was not for them; rather, had they mastered the little tricks of the trade that were dirty, but effective. A trick with the knee, a bit of shoulder stuff, a butting with the head, and all combined with a swift aggression of purposeful silence that had been the result of long and bitter experience.
The leader reckoned without the terrific length of arm which had fooled more than one antagonist. His head snapped back as Zoom’s fist crashed out. Then the other two closed and the planks of the pier thudded to the rapid tattoo of swift conflict.
The struggling knot of figures milled into a circle.
There was the sound of a terrific impact and one of the men staggered backward and out of the circle. For what seemed a long breath he paused teetering on the edge of the pier, then he vanished into the night. An appreciable interval later, there sounded the noise of a terrific splash.
The other two drew back, hesitated, then charged again.
The inert figure that had been lowered to the wharf by the three men at the challenge of Sidney Zoom, stirred, got to its feet, ran blindly toward the struggling figures, veered off.
Sidney Zoom’s voice sounded from the midst of the melée.
“There’s a rope ladder at the end. Go down it to the yacht.”
But the running figure seemed in a daze. It dashed to the end of the pier, flung itself outward, and again came the noise of a splash.
The three figures separated for a split second. Zoom’s fist thudded home. A man staggered backward, wobbled, charged blindly once more.
In the interval, however, there had sounded twin thuds. The third combatant had reeled away, and Sidney Zoom, running lightly, made for the end of the pier.
He went out into the darkness in a long are of graceful motion. Down, down, down... a vast sea of black before him, a splash, the cold waters of the bay hissing past him, then a few swift strokes as he fought his way to the surface.
The Alberta F. was almost on top of him as he came up into the dark night. He could see her white sides, the knife-like overhang of her bow. He swung to his side, kicked out, made a long, powerful stroke, and shot to the side.
“He’s right over there behind you, sir,” said the voice of one of the crew, standing in white watchfulness against the rail of the yacht.
Sidney Zoom caught the ripple of water, the sound of hands beating frantically, and went to the place from which those sounds emanated, in a racing flurry of overhand strokes.
His questing fingers caught a woolen garment just as a rope snaked through the darkness and splashed to the water within an arm’s length.
“Okay,” said Sidney Zoom, clutching the garment with one hand and the rope with the other, “pull away.”
The rope tightened. The yacht loomed again. Strong hands clutched and heaved, and they had her on the deck, a bedraggled figure clad in men’s rough clothes. But the clothes had been torn almost to shreds. It did not need the revealing clutch of the moist garments to show that here was no man at all, but a young woman whose right eye was swollen nearly shut and growing very, very black.
She sat up and spat out salt water, loked at Sidney Zoom with her single good eye, and grinned.
“Thanks,” she said, “for the buggy ride.”
Sidney Zoom smiled, and there was approval in that smile.
“If you’ll go into that cabin,” he said, “Miss Vera Thurmond, my secretary, will see that you have dry clothes.”
She got to her feet, clutched at the hand rail on the top of the cabin for support, turned back to Sidney Zoom.
“Okay,” she said, and entered the cabin.
Sidney Zoom walked to the pilot house.
“Clothes, sir?” asked one of the men.
“Can wait, Johnson. I’m taking her into the mooring float. Get the lines ready. Make her fast when I come up alongside. The tide’s running fast, so I’ll come in with it on the port bow. Get the bow line first. The tide will swing in the stern.”