The Avenger 36 - Demon Island (11 page)

“Yeah, yeah. So what else is new? Whether a guy calls himself lieutenant or the Avenger, he’s still just a cop.” Stark prowled the chill room. “There’s something you ought to know, sweetheart. I went out to that damn island to find some dough. A million bucks, to be exact. I guess I don’t have to tell you I didn’t find it. Thanks to your movie gang and the cops, I come away empty-handed.”

“That’s really no fault of mine.”

“Maybe it ain’t,” said Stark. “Still . . . you’re going to help me make up for that loss.”

Heather asked, “How?”

“You should be able to figure that out, a smart dame like you.” Stark chuckled. “The movies are going to pay me to get you back.”

The girl smiled faintly in the flickering lamplight. “I’m afraid you’ve grabbed the wrong actress. I’m not worth a million dollars to anybody.”

“It don’t have to be a million,” said Stark. “I’ll give ’em a bargain price. We’ll settle for fifty thousand.”

Heather said nothing.

Stark took a few steps closer to her. “You’re worth at least that much, ain’t you?”

“We’ll soon find out,” she said.

“A light burning in the window,” said Cole.

“Someone’s in there, all right,” said the Avenger.

They were at the edge of the abandoned orange grove, about a quarter mile from the ranch house. The drizzle had turned to heavy rain.

“I can see why the orange business didn’t thrive in this location,” Cole said. “The weather isn’t conducive.”

The Avenger’s eyes narrowed as he watched the house. “Chances are that Stark is alone with Heather,” he said.

“Yes, the rest of his cohorts are either dead or trussed up.”

“Let’s work our way a little closer.” As he spoke Benson eased ahead.

Cole followed. “I have an ominous hunch,” he said, “that Stark is going to try to figure out a way to make back some of that million he was forced to abandon.”

“Yes, he may try to sell Heather back to us.”

“And if a deal can’t be made . . . he’s likely to kill her, Dick.”

“We’ll stop him from doing that.”

“There you are, sweetheart,” said Stark. “Just like a Christmas package.”

He had located a coil of greasy rope in a shed next to the house. The auburn-haired girl was now tied to a straightback wooden chair.

Chuckling to himself, Stark went over and sat on the sofa, watching the girl. He’d found a can of pork and beans in the kitchen and was eating it cold, out of the tin. “Ain’t this nice? Here I am having dinner with a big movie star. Boy, if the birds in Q could see me now.” He laughed around a mouthful of cold beans.

The hard rain hit the roof and found its way in through several cracks. Three wet splotches were growing on the threadbare oriental rug.

“We’ll take it easy tonight,” said Stark. “Let ’em stew for a while. Then bright and early tomorrow I’ll give some of your movie friends a call. What studio are you working for, anyhow?”

“The Wheelan Studios,” said the girl.

“Good, they should have plenty of dough. They got Humphrey Bogart working for them.”

“You’re thinking of Warner Brothers. Wheelan is not quite on that scale.”

Stark swallowed a mouthful of cold beans and shrugged. “They’ll have fifty thousand bucks,” he said. “If they don’t, they’ll know where to get it. Nobody likes to see a pretty dame die.”

“That’s not actually what you plan to do,” said Heather. “If you kill me you’ll be liable to a murder charge. I don’t know that much about you, but I don’t think you—”

“Don’t try to talk sense to me, baby,” cut in Stark. “I’m mad now. Sure, killing you means I might end up on death row. But if I don’t get the dough that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“But why? You can—”

There was a faint tinkling of glass. A small capsule landed on the floor a few feet from the seated Stark.

“Huh?” He popped up, gun rising.

The capsule broke and a thick black smoke began to pour forth. MacMurdie, who’d invented the pellets, often called them “portable blackouts.” In seconds Stark was engulfed in a cloud of impenetrable blackness.

If he’d stayed put the Avenger would have been able to burst into the ranch house and grab him.

Stark, however, chose to run. In running blind he bumped into the table which held the oil lamp.

The lamp hit the floor with a crash and a small explosion. Flame sluiced across the floor, nipped at the curtains, and caught hold of the nearest wooden chair.

As Stark threw himself out a window into the rainy night the flames rushed toward the tied Heather.

Restless, O’Malley had wandered up to the wardrobe room. He’d turned on the temporary lights and walked up and down the rows of clothes and costumes.

Is this cloak the right one for the baron? he mused. Sort of a B-movie cliché now that I think of it. Black cloak, white satin lining. Yeah, but it’s probably too late to . . . who’s that?

He couldn’t see the door from where he stood, but he’d heard it open and close.

No one answered him.

The young director walked slowly toward the door. “Fanny, what’s the matter?”

The dark-haired girl was leaning back against the oak door, a strange smile on her face.

O’Malley asked, “Are you having another spell or something?” A stupid question, he realized. If she was sleepwalking she wasn’t likely to be able to talk about it.

“I am not Fanny Fiddler,” the dark girl told him in a husky, careful voice.

“Who . . . who do you think you are then?”

“I am Nita DelMar!”

O’Malley started to say something, then noticed her eyes. Finally he said, “Nita DelMar is dead. She died years ago . . . too bad. She would have been one of the big actresses in the movies.”

“I was very good,” the girl said. “I think I would like another chance.”

O’Malley said, “What do you mean?”

“I was killed . . . murdered here on this island. I had barely had a chance to show what I could do.” The voice was not Fanny Fiddler’s, O’Malley felt that. “Watching you work . . . I realize that motion pictures have changed some since I was killed. You have sound now, don’t you?”

“Of course we have sound, Fanny.”

“I think my voice will be sufficient,” said the girl, smiling that grim smile at him. “This girl I’ve taken over is not as attractive as I was . . . still, she’ll do.”

The temperature seemed to be dropping in the room. O’Malley shivered. “You . . . you really are the . . . I don’t know . . . the spirit of the dead girl?”

“I told you who I am,” said the girl. “It is . . . it is something very difficult to explain to you. I was killed, you see. But my spirit stayed here. I had thought that time would mean nothing . . . but it has seemed a very long time since I died. There have been people on the island now and then. Gangsters . . . and now you motion-picture people . . . I took one other body over. You see, at first I didn’t know what I could do. I took over a horrible fat woman who’d come here with a man named Silva. She was his mistress . . . I couldn’t keep living in that body so I gave it up.”

“The stories about this island,” said O’Malley in a faint voice. “They’re true . . . it’s been you.”

The smile stayed on her face. “Yes, I’ve enjoyed terrorizing people . . . and killing them. It . . . it gives me a great deal of satisfaction. Sometimes I am able to make myself seen . . . seen as I really was when I was killed. It’s a poor, shadowy image . . . like a very bad film. That’s why I’ve decided to take this girl’s body. I want to leave here, to leave this island and this awful castle.”

O’Malley swallowed. “I . . . I don’t think I could go along with something like that,” he said. “Fanny is not the most lovable kid in the—”

“You misunderstand,” said the voice of the dead actress. “I’m not asking for your permission . . . or your blessing.”

“Then why—”

“I came here to find you, Terence O’Malley.” She took a step toward him. “I will have to kill you, since you suspected something already. I only told you about myself so that your mind would be at ease. I think it’s better to die with your mind at—”

The director moved back from her.

“You have no choice,” the girl told him. “I have come to kill you.”

O’Malley backed further. There was no door behind him, only the high window.

The possessed girl, the deadly smile on her face, stalked toward him.

“Other people know about you,” O’Malley said. “Even if you kill me, you’ll never be safe.”

“That’s not true.”

“Benson knows,” said O’Malley. “I told him what I suspected.”

“If that proves to be true . . . he’ll have to be taken care of as well.”

“The Avenger is not an easy guy to take care of.”

The girl only smiled and came moving toward him.

O’Malley reached out and grabbed the nearest costume rack. Tugging as hard as he could, he succeeded in toppling it over.

It fell with a tremendous clack and clatter, hangers jingling.

The dark-haired girl bent, picked up the entire rack, and hurled it.

O’Malley watched it smack into the far wall. The strength of the girl was something.

“Now then,” she said.

The door to the room was pushed open. “Hey, what’s going on in here?” demanded Smitty. “It sounded like Santa Claus and all his reindeer just fell down the chimney.”

“Smitty, go easy,” warned O’Malley. “She’s—”

The girl pushed at him as she ran by. The force of the shove sent O’Malley staggering into the wall. He fell over a prop trunk.

He heard glass smashing, felt wind and rain.

“Geeze,” Smitty was saying. “It’s fifteen feet down at least.” He trotted to the window to look out. “Holy moley . . . she landed on her feet and she’s hightailing it into the woods.” The giant hurried over to O’Malley and offered him a hand up. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I think so. She was going to strangle me, I think.”

“I was just checking up on her and I seen her bedroom door hanging wide open,” explained Smitty. “Then I heard the fracas in here and come up to nose around.”

“I think maybe you saved my life. So thanks.”

“That was the Fiddler dame, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Geeze, what’s gotten into her?”

“A very good question,” said O’Malley.

Cole ran at the door of the burning ranch house and hit it hard with his shoulder.

The door held.

There must be a simpler way to do this, he thought, then tried the doorknob.

The door wasn’t locked. Cole dived into the glaring orange room. The fire was already at work on the ceiling.

“Cole,” said Heather, “I . . . I’m very glad to see you.”

“I left my flourish of trumpets at home.” He sprinted to the chair which held her. “However, it is indeed I.” He grabbed her up, chair and all, as the flames came crackling to within inches of them.

“Over for a touchdown,” remarked Cole as he set the girl and the chair down several yards from the burning house.

The rain was making the burning roof hiss and sputter.

“Richard departed in pursuit of your abductor, who is a one-time felon named Stark,” said Cole while he worked at untying Heather. “Were you mistreated by the lad?”

When her hands were free the girl put one on his arm. “I’m fine,” she said, “but, Cole . . .”

“Eh?” He knelt to unbind her ankles.

“Well, I hope this won’t frighten you . . . but I wanted to say something to you.”

“Ah, another complaint, no doubt about my unfortunate habit of quipping in the most unlikely places.” He flung away the rope. “Would you, by the way, like to seek shelter ’neath one of those bedraggled orange trees?”

“No, I don’t mind the rain.” With his help she stood up and kicked aside the chair. “I’m very fond of your jokes, as feeble as some of them are. Although I do hope you won’t make any over what I’m going to tell you. And, please, don’t feel you have to . . . well . . .”

Cole grinned at her. “I’ll do my very best to be the prince of sobersides.”

The lovely girl looked away from him. “I was hoping some of you would find me in time,” she began. “Well, I was really quite anxious that it be you, specifically, Cole, who arrived to save me. At the same time . . . I had a very cold feeling right here. I was so afraid that he’d kill me, kill me before anyone found us. And . . . well, I don’t know. The thought that occurred to me . . . the worst thing about dying was . . . what I said to myself was, ‘I’ll never see Cole again.’ ”