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Argosy, 27 April 1940, with "The Red-Banded Pearl"
Ignoring the gun, he leaped down beside the girl with green eyes.
Walk softly in Gooniguddury. It's a town as malevolent as the sound of its name, frequented by the roughest rascals of the South Seas. But especially beware Miss Annie Catlett, lady's maid.
IN that year the town of Gooniguddury lived twelve weeks instead of the usual ten. The makeshift settlement huddled under the beefwood-clad cliffs inside the coral breakwater, drank and gambled, wooed women of four shades of skin and forty shades of sin, and fought with fists, knives and guns, while the seasonal Cockeyed Robs screamed their fury across the Indian Ocean.
Gooniguddury was peopled only by pearlers, pearl buyers, purveyors of food or drink at prices thrice those current in Broome, Perth or Perak, and parasites male and female.
The eight- or ten-ton schooners found a snug harbor there. The owners, and black, brown or yellow crews found diversion of the sort they preferred. Drink, women, gaming, fighting. Those who came with pearls tried to sell them at good prices. Those who had few pearls tried to steal more, or win them at cards.
Gooniguddury was nominally under the jurisdiction of the West Australian police, of course—hard-jawed, grim men who came by power cruiser if called. But for most part they stayed away, knowing that with the end of the hurricanes these murderers, cheats and worse, would depart. To get a policeman you had to send to Broome; and no one had done that since 1919, when they caught a German spy trying to get home after the War. It was much simpler to deal out crude justice at the weekly town meetings.
The town buried its dead in the lagoon, where some twenty huge white-pointer sharks officiated as pallbearers. In the eyes of the police it was too bad only that so many of these tough men and tougher women survived, to come back year after year.
Annie Catlett had been all prepared to be a very wicked woman, when she came to Gooniguddury. Fate, her own stern, plain features, and strong but stringy, mannish figure, kept her from sin—if not from crime.
Annie had been a personal maid in a family at Perth, a very respectable family. Now those of the family still alive were scattered far, and fortunes were adverse. Annie had come grimly determined to make any bargain she could to obtain the price of a steamship ticket back to England.
Now Annie was earning her tucker and occasional gurgles of squareface stolen from the Crip's private supply, serving steam beer over a plank bar in Crip's barrel-house. It was a tribute to Annie's stern and virtuous-looking face, that even the worst beer souses never made a pass at her; and the heavy, groaning man who hobbled awkwardly about on his black steel crutches, her employer, invariably frowned and looked away as though pained, when his bulging, pig-blue eyes rested upon her rouged cheeks and gray-yellow hair.
So Annie, balked, clumped down on bony knees every night at the side of her cot, and prayed from habit for the better fortune of her lovely young mistress—doomed now, because she spoke four languages, to be the underpaid and probably insulted secretary of the Dutch resident on Tehani, an island near Timor.
Crip was just a fat beer-seller who extended no credit, or so Gooniguddury deemed. He never gambled or sought out women. He could just manage to clump around the barrel-house and the living shack behind. Or so the careless town had supposed.
Annie Catlett never had paid any attention save to snarl at him when he tried to hold back part of her pay for a broken mug.
Never that is, until the night she got the crazy idea of going out alone to the lagoon, stripping, and flopping about in one foot of tepid salt water, her hands and knees on the sand-shell bottom. That was swimming as Annie Catlett knew it. Also, the first bath in weeks.
That night, suddenly cowering in the water, staring at the shore, she saw her employer walking and talking with two black fellows, saying something guttural in the Kimberley dialect, about pearls.
And her employer, supposed by all to be a British citizen named Henry Marle, was interspersing growled Dutch oaths—and carrying the two supposedly indispensable black crutches slung diagonally over a heavy right shoulder that had straightened from its usual crouch.
There in the moonlight he walked—and did not even limp.
INCREDIBLY, none of the three on shore saw the stringy
white thing in the water, which was Annie. Later, shaking
as in an attack of dengue fever, Annie lay on her cot,
thinking furiously, a thumb between her yellowed teeth to
keep them from chattering audibly.
Her wits were travail-sharpened. She guessed Crip's secret. She knew now why he often took her place late at night at the plank bar, though he showed not the slightest consideration for her at any other time. She knew now why once in a while a patron who had not drunk more than two or three quarts of beer—mere tonsil spray to these tough customers—had drowsed to sudden sleep.
Mickey Finns! A search by the two black fellows of the sleeping customer's quarters. The lifting of pearl or money caches. There had been three such mysterious robberies this season. The previous year at Gooniguddury there had been a full dozen reported.
Next day, next night, and from then on, though the piggish, crafty, lazy Henry Marle failed ever to guess the fact—he was studied inside and out, body, brain, house, bed and hiding places.
He was haunted by that supernormally keen snooper, a frustrated, vengeful, wholly unsuspected middle-aged woman; the kind of spy who actually will unfold every one of a man's bandanna handkerchiefs, so thoroughly does she go over his possessions in her thirst for knowledge of guilt.
At first, of course, Annie had her mind set on only a stake for herself. She got that cleverly enough—a mighty good stake, too—by finding parcels of loot and abstracting just a few small pearls from each aggregation. These pearls were not catalogued. They were not even missed.
Annie Catlett took only very small amounts of money when she found any—just enough, in driblets, to take her safely away from Gooniguddury when the time came.
Then one day, in a cache which must have been part of an old robbery, Annie found some really large pearls. Evidently Henry Marle had been afraid to sell these until a few years had passed. He had packed them in Merino wool, and hidden them inside the brass ball at one corner of his bedstead.
They were too big for Annie to handle, also. But one of the pear-shaped pearls brought a gasp from her, and an amazed recollection. It was a queer freak, probably the only pearl of its sort, in the world. The markets knew blush pearls, of course; but this was a lustrous milk pearl around the very breast of which was a quarter-inch band of pink, deepening to blood crimson in a center line.
Quick memory told Annie the truth. The elder brother of her beloved young mistress had died, presumably at Gooniguddury, or in his schooner not far away. He had written Bliss Redding, his young sister, about this marvelous pearl. It, and the others he had found on an almost virgin bed two days' sail from Ninety Mile Beach, were to restore the wasted Redding fortunes, and to send the accomplished and pretty Bliss to America and college and life among her own kind.
But Clarke Redding had disappeared, presumably had died. No trace of the red-banded pearl ever had come to light. Here it was—and the snooping thief, Annie Catlett, experienced a shiver of awe and thrill along her rickety spine. Crip, her employer, had been a murderer as well as a sneak thief. He deserved no consideration at all. But turn him up to the police?
No, there, was a better way—one which made Annie breathe fast as she lay alone at night, staring wide-eyed up into the darkness.
Annie Catlett had been transformed into a woman of destiny. It might take two whole years to work out that destiny, but Annie knew she was consecrated to the task. It was a sort of holy crusade, vengeance that would be ennobled.
MYNHEER Jan Pieter Vanderhuyck came back this time to
Pindar Api in style. He owned this fly-speck paradise
in the Flores Sea, paid taxes yearly direct to the
governor-general in Surabaya, but never before had been
able to afford anything better than a dirty and decrepit
schooner.
Now he had a new schooner of solid Dutch teak, with chromium and stainless steel everywhere, and an auxiliary engine which would drive even the stubby craft at a comfortable ten knots.
He was dressed in tailored clothes, the suit he wore looking moderate unless one knew it was natural-colored wild silk spun on the looms of Kobe, a fabric which will outwear a copper-riveted overall. He smoked a huge new Dutch meerschaum covered with chamois skin for the year it would take to color. He had a flowered white stock below his perspiring chins; and in the stock was a new stickpin made from a red-striped pearl.
Mynheer Jan had been away four months, and he was a little anxious about his island plantation, his turtle-shell trade and the drying of the bêche-de-mer, not to mention the copra presses which could be ruined by neglect. He looked from pig-blue, narrowed eyes up the curving white shell path that led between the leaning royal palms toward the store, the sheds and godowns, past the warehouse to the white-painted bungalow on the hillside.
That young American overseer! Why had he not come down to meet the schooner, even if he did not recognize it as his master's? Had anything gone wrong—anything which might interrupt this pleasant and profitable enterprise which occupied Mynheer Jan for eight months of each year?
The bronzed red-headed American came then, clad only in a singlet and sandals, with a web belt of clips and holstered automatic swinging at his thigh. He wore no hat, which was evidence of hurry. He stopped on the way to toss into hiding under the leaves of a ground palm the leather case containing his prism binoculars.
Jack Halsey perhaps had his own personal reasons for watching the disembarking passengers from any strange craft in the water—the same reasons which kept him working for the fat Dutch miser at a stipend of twenty guilders a month and found.
It had surprised him to find that his employer had loosened up to buy this gorgeous boat; though Jack was aware that the island enterprise, free of tidal waves and serious native trouble now for several years, was making splendid money for Mynheer Jan.
"How iss everyding? All righd? De presses? Wass de shipment of trepang paid for in cash? Have—?"
Under his pith helmet, Mynheer Jan's face oozed sweat down into the creases of his triple chins. Though he could speak almost flawless English, it pleased this man to exercise his cunning even in tiny details. He exhibited a heavy Dutch accent when he spoke English—in Pindar Api Isle.
"Hold up, chief," protested Jack Halsey, smiling good-naturedly. "I've got a whole chest of Straits dollars for you. The bêche-de-mer sold to Matt Matthews at a rise in price of twelve dollars a hundred. There are twelve new hogsheads of coconut oil ready for Matthews on the down trip of the Malabar Queen. The presses are okay, the plantation is doing fine—and I got Rome on the short wave set yesterday morning.
"Just one thing, chief. Ever hear of a desperate jigger named Sonny Boy Jardine?"
Vanderhuyck scratched the line of rope-colored hair at his forehead, pushing upward the helmet. He halted the slow walk up the shaded path from the pier.
"De gun-shooter, hey!" he exclaimed. "De scrouse who killed de planter over to Gunong!"
"I wouldn't be surprised if that was one of his crimes on record," said Jack, a queer glint in his blue eyes. "Anyhow, this killer is the fella who has the unique distinction of being the only living man to escape from Isle d'Nou, the French convict prison.
"The sharks didn't touch him. Neither did the bullets of the pursuers. I've some clippings on Sonny Boy Jardine. I'll show 'em to you. He's somewhere up north of us now, according—"
"Vell, vat de hell difference does it make to me?" broke in Vanderhuyck. "I ain' lost no Sonny Boys. Vy talk aboud him to me?"
"Because he wrote you a letter," said Jack slowly. "I thought it might be regular business, when Matthews brought it, so I opened it. It may be business, all right. Understand, your secret—if he has it right—is none of my business. But you'd better get your marksmanship in order. He says he's coming to pay you a visit."
He handed over a blue envelope.
One look at the single sheet enclosed, and the Dutchman yelped in agony and very real terror. He pressed the letter against his fat paunch, and started waddling up the shell path.
"Coom! Coom!" he gasped, out of breath before he started to run. "You must help me, Jackie! Dis murderer, he knows too much." And with that he broke into a waddling dog-trot.
Jack Halsey waited to give certain instructions to the Lascar boatswain of the new schooner. Then he shook his head, and ascended the path to the screened porch of the bungalow.
He knew that curious and exciting letter word for word. It had been brought to Captain Matthews by a native with a proa, off one of the islands south of Celebes. The writer seemed to know that the Malabar Queen made a regular tramp-cargo stop at Pindar Api—the only steam vessel to stop with any regularity at Vanderhuyck's island.
The letter, a scrawl in purplish indelible pencil on rough gray notebook paper, read:
Mynheer Jan Marle Vanderhuyck,
I have learnt all about your pearl stealing and the killings. I don't mind cept you got away with too much, I want my share which I will call for now and for quits, twenty thousand English pounds or two hundred thousand Straits dollars—or, I'll make it seventy-five thousand if you get it all in good U.S. jack.
If you can't have it all in cash when I or my woman calls for it, I'll take pearls. But listen to this you fat hog. If those pearls don't sell for full price, I'll come back for the same amount more! Or I'll come shooting! You know me.
Sylvester (Sonny Boy) Jardine.
The overseer, Jack Halsey, knowing that his employer's middle name was Pieter, had been puzzled by the Marle. He shrugged then, and chuckled at thought of the clippings he had collected of this almost legendary killer who had done the only Houdini on record at Noumea—and who was credited with at least fifteen robberies and murders at widely separated points of the Arafura and Banda Seas.
It had been guessed by the reporter of an Australian paper, that the bandit killer somehow had got himself a seaplane, and a mysterious means of fueling it. Else how could he have operated at points a full eight hundred miles apart, in the space of less than a week? Boats went slowly in these waters, even the great liners to Sydney, Melbourne and Singapore.
The inclusion of the Marle in his name was, of course, no mystery to the owner of Pindar Api. It reduced him to an oozing jelly of terror. Not only was the killer a horrible menace in himself, but if he ever broadcasted his information, the vengeance not only of the authorities but of a score of mulcted, hard-bitten men who had lost pearls at Gooniguddury would be loosed upon Mynheer Jan.
There was a devil of lurking humor back in the blue eyes of the overseer. He seemed not to note the quaking panic in his employer, but calmly brought forth a sheaf of clippings, most of which told highly-colored stories of deeds Jardine had committed.
He had been in Noumea for life anyway. He had nothing to lose. It was hinted that he had come from a desperate town in the United States of America called Cicero. Even the jackaroos of Ballarat and the smiling little brown men of Bali knew about Cicero, from the gangster films.
Sonny Boy Jardine was supposed to have been an apt pupil in the school of that great teacher, Scarface Al....
WHILE Mynheer Jan drooled, sweated and moaned over those
clippings under the gasoline lamp, slowly disintegrating
into a spineless jelly, Jack spent that evening reading the
bundle of newspapers brought, back by his employer.
He found two more clippings, one a double-spread supplement feature with imaginative drawings, which showed Jardine as a giant with snarling lips, buck teeth, and a growth of heavy black beard. He was firing two weapons into an unfortunate trader and his almost nude native woman, who were falling over backward in gory death.
"I'm afraid you'd better start target practice, chief. I think I'll have to be leaving you, when Captain Matthews comes back down. I—well, I don't want to be around when he drills you. Of course you haven't any sum like that to give him—"
"Who says I ain'd got dat much—to safe my life?" Jan's voice was shrill. "Id iss a lie, of course, but vat can I do? You... you. You got a pistol, an' are American! You shoot him ven he coom! You—"
"Not me," said Jack with a perceptible shiver. "I've never even loaded this pistol you gave me, chief. There's been no reason. No trouble at all. But I couldn't even shoot at a native with it. I'm afraid of firearms. No, you'll have to defend yourself."
Jan paced the floor with waddling tread, or sat in the sodden canvas deck chair all that night. He emptied two stone crocks of Holland's, and smoked his mouth raw on the new meerschaum. All the night he clutched an ancient muzzle-loading tight-gauge shotgun, filled with buckshot, ball and shingle nails. In his holster was a Luger pistol, loaded. On the mahogany table at his side was a keen, waved kris.
Just before sunrise he dozed. A nightmare came, probably, for there was the sudden shattering roar of a terrific explosion. He had tightened his fingers around both triggers of the shotgun and blown three square yards of green lattice from the window.
But no one was lurking out there when Jack Halsey, and two of the wahines came running, the women squealing with fear. Mynheer Jan himself was so totally unnerved by the explosion, that he drank a tumbler of neat gin, and then lay down clothed to snore steadily and groan in his sleep, till mid-afternoon.
That day, before going out to tend to usual routine, the tall American packed his few belongings in a pair of dilapidated cane suitcases.
Matthews with the Malabar Queen was due sometime this week. Jack Halsey would really accompany the vessel, which would beetle its way southward and eastward to Moresby, its easternmost port of call. From there a man could get a fireman's job to Australia or Spore, and eventually transship to the States.
Jack Haisey felt no regrets—rather, a fierce joy. The miserliness and cowardice of his employer made leaving the trim island plantation less of a wrench than he had expected it would be. He grinned and hoped that the much-advertised Sonny Boy Jardine put in an appearance and collected his swag from Jan, before the Malabar Queen came. Jack felt a great curiosity to see this bandit of the seas, and exactly how he did operate.
Toward Jan the American felt a kindly contempt. Jan would pay, of course; and in his great safe sunk under the floor of the corrugated iron godown he probably had three or four fortunes—especially if these four months of each year had been devoted to theft and murder, as the outlaw had hinted.
Jack had wondered just what the Dutchman did on these trips, but had supposed the fat fellow went to Surabaya or somewhere, and rented himself a harem for a time. He never made any passes at the brown or black women on his island, which was the chief reason why he had lived and prospered so long.
THE following afternoon Jan locked himself in the
corrugated-iron godown. There the iron floor unlocked,
a safe the size of a room could be opened upward, and
the fat Dutchman could go down with a lamp on the little
iron ladder to the interior, Doubtless he spent the hours
counting money, and fingering pearls grudgingly, trying
to estimate just how little he could get away with paying
Jardine for the ransom of his life.
When bedtime came, Jack Haisey almost showed Jan the second clipping he had cut from the paper, for now if seemed probable to the Yankee that the letter had been just a sort of joke on Jan. The clipping told that a Frenchman, dying, had confessed to the crime which had sent Sonny Boy Jardine to Isle d'Nou originally.
That, of course, did not cancel any of the crimes he had committed since his daring escape from the prison. But Jack did not want to go out to the godown, and so let the matter ride.
Next morning he went out as usual to check and inscribe credit on the books for the trepang (sea cucumbers or bêche-de-mer) brought in by the native fishermen, stuff which was carefully dried and shipped to the South China Coast, where it was a highly esteemed delicacy of diet.
Mynheer Jan was still sleeping the next afternoon when Jack brought him the whispered, exciting news. Two women had landed from a flying proa. One was a native amah, and the other was a well dressed young woman with red hair and green eyes.
"She says she is Mrs. Sylvester Sonny Boy Jardine!" whispered Jack Haisey, a thrill in his voice which came from the breath-taking sight of the most beautiful female liar he had ever met in his life. "She is coming now to collect that ransom on your life, and says you'd better have it, as Sonny Boy Jardine probably will get here by dark—or after dark!"'
With a squeal of terror the sleep-dazed Dutchman leapt up. He grabbed the Luger, then hastily hid it under the bedclothes. He ran over and opened the windows, threw up the lattices. His heavy legs were knocking, and the insides of his elbows dripped steady streams of the perspiration that poured from every inch of his gross body.
"Oh, how can I pay so much? How can I pay it?" he moaned.
"Well, I'm sure I don't know. I'm just here to make the demand: and I warn you to accede immediately. Sonny boy will be here any minute—and I don't think he has killed a fat Dutchman for almost a month!"
THE voice had been a soft contralto, a voice which might
have been charming, save for the words it spoke. Into
the room, confronting the quaking Dutchman, came a tall,
red-haired girl in a daring green dress that matched her
eyes. She was a beauty, slender and perfectly formed, and
there was imperious command in the slight gesture of one
flashingly jeweled white hand.
Jan was out of his mind with indecision. He looked at the native maid who attended this bandit queen, and Jan's pig-blue eyes nearly started from their sockets. He had seen somewhere this stringy, horse-faced native woman with the obviously-hennaed, magenta hair. But where? Oh, what the hell did it matter?
"I will wait exactly one more minute and tell you one thing while I wait," said the tall redhead ominously. "Sonny Boy has heard that you killed and robbed a man named Redding, who was a friend of his. If Sonny Boy, who ought to be here now, finds you have not paid me gladly, he is apt to be cross. He has spent a lot of time with the Chinese, you know. There is a punishment, you know, they call the Death of The One Thousand Slices."
With a choked scream Mynheer Jan dropped the curved kris he had been fingering, and dove to the corner of the room behind the bed. He came up blubbering, and fairly forcing into the hands of the red-haired girl a heavy Gladstone bag of alligator hide.
"Take id!" Jan implored, his voice shaking. "Take id—and go quigg."
"I'll wait on the veranda for Sonny Boy. You may bring me a swizzle. This way, Mary." And she turned, with a last queer glance and what might have been a nod of invitation to Jack Halsey.
BUT at that moment a striking, swashbuckling figure
appeared. It was a swarthy giant of a man who looked like
an eighteenth century pirate.
"Hi, Mandy!" he bellowed, scowling as he pushed through the screen door. "I'm Sonny Boy Jardine!" he announced for all the wondering native servants and the two white men to hear.
"Where's that damn Dutchman? Bring him here. I want to shoot his guts out!"
"Oh, let him be," whispered the woman in green. "Here's your share." She passed him a roll of money taken from the bag.
"T'hell with that," he said, suddenly dropping his voice and bending close. "You come with me. You can keep the money. I—"
"Our bargain is over. We're going—you in your proa, I in mine," she retorted in a low voice. "I hope I never see you again, you dirty pig!"
Over at one side, the native amah drew a knife from her bosom, but she had no chance to use it. Sonny Boy Jardine, with an oath, grabbed the girl in green and swept her toward him. For the moment he forgot the bag of jewels and money. The roll of paper money fell to the floor.
"Let me go!" she gasped. "You crazy fool, you—"
"Let her go, and get out of here!" The voice was deadly calm. A hand seized the bandit's shoulder, tore him from the girl in green. It was the overseer, Jack Halsey. He stepped back a pace.
With a bellowed curse, Sonny Boy slapped down both hands on his automatics. He drew them. One shot spurted low into the boards of the veranda.
But magically a snub-nosed pistol had appeared in Jack's hand. A steady stream of orange fire, punctuated with whitish wisps of smoke, poured from the muzzle. Four shots thudded into the chest of the outlaw.
Sonny Boy tried to step forward, choked up blood, and tumbled heavily to his face with arms spread. He was dead before he hit the boards.
The girl in green gave a choked cry and seized the arm of the native amah. They both ran out of the door, paying no attention to Jack's words sent after them, and went flying down toward the beach where their proa waited.
Jack scooped up the bills and the Gladstone, then watched till he saw the outrigger racer pass the breakers safely. Finally he turned back into the room.
Mynheer Jan was hiding under the bed, gibbering. The shots had sapped his last remnant of courage.
"Here you, listen to a funny one," Jack said contemptuously, hauling his employer forth by the hair of his head. But it was no use. The Dutchman merely squealed added fright, and tried to ball his bloated body like a hedgehog.
"Oh, all right," said Jack then, a smile coming to his blue eyes. "I'll send back your boat in a few hours." He stuffed the roll of paper money in the bag and clicked it locked.
At the doorway he paused. "You won't lose much, Jan," he called back. "You've got plenty native witnesses who will swear—if you make them—that this man who is dead out on the veranda called himself Sonny Boy Jardine. There are at least a dozen rewards you can collect, and the world will be glad he's dead. Goodbye."
THERE was only the dying trade-wind, ruffling the
Flores Sea. So it was less than an hour later that the
motor-driven schooner of teak and chromium came alongside
the flying proa, taking all the wind from the lateen sail.
A young white man with blue eyes that smiled, leaned over
the two crouching, desperate women there in the outrigger
craft.
He tossed the black Gladstone the intervening two feet, into the hands and lap of the girl in green.
"Now I'm coming," he warned, and clambered over, managing not to tip the craft. Behind, the brown boatswain of the larger boat waved farewell, but Jack did not see him. He had eyes only for the lovely girl crouched there with the tiny pistol, the island queen whose green eyes searched his wonderingly.
"I figure to come along," the man announced easily, settling himself, and smiling more widely as he saw how covetously the glance of the other white woman, made up as a native amah, fastened upon the black bag.
"Of course you want an explanation. It is short. I have some clippings regarding this celebrated outlaw, Jardine. It appears now, because of a deathbed confession, that he was innocent of the crime for which he was sent to Noumea.
"Also"—and the young man chuckled earnestly—"all these later crimes were simply other men's acts which were fastened upon him as a convenient scapegoat. The ruthless villain, Sonny Boy Jardine, is just a myth."
"But I still don't see—" began the girl.
"Let me finish." He smiled. "For some reason, which I can see clearly must have had a connection with the pearl robberies committed by that fat Dutch pig back there—and which I can guess had to do with a certain Clarke Redding—"
"My brother!" almost whispered the girl with the green eyes, "He disappeared, after writing me—us—about his great fortune. And especially, about that red-banded pearl which Mynheer Vanderhuyck wears as a stickpin."
"Oh, for sure," Jack nodded soberly. "Well, of course you and this other lady just decided on revenge of the sort which will hurt my miserly employer most—taking it out of his purse. The swaggering bandit you brought to the island was just some beachcomber dressed up to a pirate part—"
"He was loathsome!" the girl broke in with a shudder.
"Took his part too seriously," Jack said. "I hated to kill him, but he was running amok and would have shot all of us if I hadn't.
"But enough of that. I've got an excellent reason to leave that fellow dead there as Sonny Boy Jardine, and let Vanderhuyck collect the rewards—if he can. I want to get away from there forever. And in doing so, Miss Redding, I intend to allow you to make good your bluff to the limit. That is, if you come to feel that way after we sail this craft to your island home."
"Make good my bluff?" she breathed.
"Well," he said, "you called yourself the wife of Sonny Boy Sylvester Jardine. And, you see, I'm Sonny Boy Jardine!"
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