“Aye, aye, sir.”
The door of the pilot house slammed. The deep throated motors purred into coughing life and the yacht slipped through the dark waters in a long circle of increasing speed. The lights of the ferry slips showed once more. The blinking electric signs threw varicolored reflections upon the waters. A ferry boomed a hoarse warning.
The yacht crossed the ferry lanes, swung into the more gloomy channel, and nosed its way past the small craft moorings to bump against the mooring float maintained by Sidney Zoom.
Lines thudded. The motors idled. Feet ran along the booming planks, and a voice from the darkness shouted, “All fast, sir.”
Chapter II
An Ungrateful Rescue
Sidney Zoom cut off the motor, the lights, turned on the cabin lights, and started for the locker where he kept dry clothes. His feet squashed water with every step, and the pilot house was steeped with that peculiar smell which comes from woolen wet with salt water.
Feet on the deck. The door was flung open, and Sidney Zoom found himself gazing at the business end of a squat automatic. Over the blued steel gleamed the almost shut right eye of the girl he had rescued. It was, by this time, turning a livid bruise color.
“All right, all right,” rasped the girl. “D’you think I’ve got all night. Get ’em up — and be quick about it.”
Sidney Zoom’s hawklike eyes challenged the glittering eye that bored into his over the barrel of the automatic.
“That,” he said, indicating the weapon with a toss of his head, “is not at all necessary — here.”
“Will you get ’em up,” asked the girl, “or have I got to spatter you all over the cabin?”
Sidney Zoom smiled.
“If you put it that way, I’ll get ’em up,” he said, and did so.
“All right,” rasped the voice of his visitor, “now get away from that locker and let me get some man’s clothes. Make any hostile moves and you’ll get drilled.”
Sidney Zoom moved away from the locker. There was in his eyes a glint of appreciation.
“If you want anything I can give you, you don’t need—”
“Shut up!” she snapped, and threw open the locker.
“My own clothes are far too big,” said Sidney Zoom, from the opposite end of the pilot house, “but there’s an assortment of yachting flannels over there on the left. Some of them will fit you.”
She reached gropingly in the closet with her left hand, her right holding the gun. She pulled out an assortment of garments and dumped them on the floor. Still covering the owner of the yacht, she pushed the garments with a bare foot until she found trousers, coat and shirt that suited her.
“Don’t move,” she warned, and started to strip off the soaked rags which covered her.
Zoom noticed that, beneath the outer garments of the male, she had the finest of sheer silks, lingerie that had been tailored to order from the finest materials.
“I can go out,” he ventured.
“You can stand tight there, and keep ’em up!”
She kicked aside the soggy outer garments, gazed ruefully at the wet undersilks. And Sidney Zoom saw that there was a money belt circling her slender waist.
She fumbled with the pockets of that belt, took out a packet of gold backed currency. She unfolded it, and Sidney Zoom’s eyes widened as he glimpsed the figure on the corner of the outer bill.
“That didn’t get so wet,” she remarked. “Any underwear in that place?”
“In the drawer below,” said Zoom.
“All right. I’ve got to take a chance on you. Turn your back, keep your hands up. Don’t look and—”
She never finished the sentence.
The door of the pilot house shook to the impact of a great weight. The girl turned the weapon toward it. There was a fumbling with the catch, the knob turned, then a moment’s silence.
“I’ll shoot!” warned the girl.
The door crashed open. The girl fired, breast high, the ruddy flame spurting in a stabbing streak of vicious death, straight toward where the heart of a man would have been.
But it was no man that shot through that door, rather low to the ground, fangs bared; but a tawny police dog. The bullet thudded over his head as he rushed. A low, throaty growl came from his great jaws.
Sidney Zoom sprang forward.
“Down, Rip!” he roared, and grabbed for the dog.
But the animal was already in the air, red lips twisted back from gleaming white fangs as he shot like a released arrow, straight for the girl’s throat.
But, at the command, he turned his head slightly. The girl flung up an arm. Then Zoom, the dog and the girl all collided at the same time in one confused impact of thudding motion that hit the floor and churned about in a heap.
From that heap came the form of Sidney Zoom, pulling and tugging. Next emerged the tawny police dog, his claws scraping along the floor of the pilot house. The girl sat up, looked at the dog, then at Sidney Zoom, and grinned.
“You win,” she remarked, and fainted.
Sidney Zoom frowned at the dog.
“Back, Rip, and stay there. Now watch! Guard! Careful.”
And then Sidney Zoom went through the door with swift strides, down the dark deck and into the cabin where he had left his secretary.
She was neatly bound and gagged, lying on the bed, her face red with rage and humiliation, her eyes glittering over the silken scarf that had been used as a gag.
Zoom slit the bonds, untied the scarf.
“The little devil!” exclaimed Vera Thurmond, sitting up on the bed.
Sidney Zoom grinned.
“I’m commencing to like her. I’m sick of these namby pamby women that are quitters. This girl looks like one that’d give a man a run for his money.”
“Go to her then!” snapped his secretary, and there was in her voice more than impatience, more than rage. There was a trace of jealousy. But if Sidney Zoom noticed it he gave no sign.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Atta girl!” he remarked, and started toward the pilot house. At the door he paused.
“How did she do it — cover you with a gun?”
“Cover me with nothing!” snapped his secretary. “The little spitfire hit me over the head with something when I wasn’t looking!”
Still grinning, Zoom gently dosed the door and went into the pilot house.
The girl was conscious now, sitting up stating at the dog. And the dog, muzzle on paws, yellow eyes slitted to a savage glare of wolf-like menace, was growling throatily.
“Sorry if you were frightened,” said Sidney Zoom. “He’ll only guard you. He won’t hurt you unless you try to escape.”
“Yes,” she said, “I found that out. I experimented. Give me a chance to put on some clothes and then you can ting the police.”
The door opened and Vera Thurmond came in, looking rather dishevelled.
“Sorry,” grinned the girl. “I was gambling for big things and I didn’t want to take any chances. I guess I did crack you a little hard.”
Vera Thurmond’s eyes were unsmiling.
“I’ve got a beastly headache,” she said.
The girl on the floor stretched forth a shapely limb.
“Headache’s nothing. Look at those bruises. And you aren’t seeing ’em all, not by a long ways.”
Vera Thurmond glanced at the livid skin, and swift sympathy flooded her warm eyes.
She turned on Sidney Zoom.
“Get out,” she said. “Let the girl dress, and take the dog with you!”
The girl reached for some white duck trousers.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said. “He’s a good scout, and the dog’s all right, too. He just did his duty.”