Rogues on the River Page 14

“I don’t want ’em at the shack. If young Halvorson comes around, I may have my hands full with him.”

  “This ark should serve my purpose,” Antonio said. “The old coot that lives here has gone off somewhere. Sinclair, get aboard and look around.”

  “There’s no way to cross to it,” Sinclair pointed out.

  “Use your head and find the gangplank, you lazy bum. It must be hidden somewhere in the bushes.”

  Sinclair looked aggrieved at the insult, but the moonlight glinting off Antonio’s revolver seemed to make him think better of issuing any retort. He searched along the stream bank and soon came upon the missing plank. He fit it into place and quickly crossed over to the ark. A dog started to bark, but the sound was choked off.

  “Well?” Antonio called out.

  I didn’t like Antonio’s increasing state of agitation any more than I liked the way he was waving that revolver around.

  “No one here except the animals,” Sinclair reported, reappearing on deck. “The only room that can be locked is the cabin where the old fool keeps his birds.”

  “That ought to do. We won’t have to keep ’em here long.”

  Antonio marched Flo and me across the gangplank, his revolver still trained on us and up the steps to the bird room of the ark. The parrot, arousing from slumber, squawked a raucous welcome.

  “Get in there and don’t make any noise!” the waiter ordered. “If you shout for help or make any disturbance, you’ll be bound and gagged. And that’s not pleasant. Get me?”

  “You seem to have got us,” I said under my breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I suspected the real reason Antonio wasn’t bothering to tie us up and gag us was that there was little hope of anyone arriving to rescue us before he returned to do whatever it was he intended to do with us.

  The door slammed, and a bolt slid into place.

  I listened as two sets of footsteps retreated up the stairs to top deck.

  “I’m too young to die,” Flo whispered mournfully. “I still haven’t lost enough weight to fit into that red dress I got last spring.”

  “Red dress?” I said. “Won’t your mother have a million fits if you appear in public wearing red.”

  Flo sighed. “She does insist that red is a color only appropriate for harlots and fallen women, but Martin wants me to wear it on our honey—”

  “Martin?” I keep forgetting that Florence insists on calling Shep by his given Christian name.

  “Don’t tell anyone!” Flo pleaded. “Nobody knows we’re engaged. Martin is dead set on a Catholic wedding, which means I’ll have to convert, and I’m still trying to think of a way to break it gently to Father.”

  I wasn’t aware that Shep had proposed, but now didn’t seem to be the time to discuss Flo and Shep’s plans for the future. It certainly wasn’t the time express astonishment at discovering that Shep was a papist.

  “I won’t breathe a word of it to a living soul,” I promised Flo.

  I tiptoed over to the porthole. It was much too small to fit through, but at least it let in fresh air and gave me a view of the shore.

  “Well, well, well,” cackled the parrot, tramping up and down on his wide perch. “Polly wants a slug o’ rum.”

  “You’ll get a slug, period, if you don’t keep quiet,” I hissed at him. “Give me a chance to think, will you?”

  “Thinking won’t get us out of this mess,” murmured Florence, sitting down with her back to a wall. “It must be after nine o’clock now. If anyone was coming looking for us, they would have come by now.”

  “Even if we escaped right now,” I muttered, “We’d never make it back to Greenville in time to save Mrs. Maxwell from being blasted out of her bed at one o’clock in the morning.”

  “The saboteurs intend to blame Fred Halvorson for that job, too. We have to stop them.”

  “We can’t stop them unless we manage somehow to get out of here,” I said, keeping my voice low as I paced the floor. “I’m as mad as a hornet.”

  “Shh,” said Florence. “I think those men are talking.”

  I heard a murmur of voices coming from the third floor of the ark. The partitions were thin. By standing on one of the pigeon boxes, I discovered I could understand nearly everything that was being said.

  “Clarence, you go back to the shack and keep an eye on Halvorson,” Antonio ordered the watchman. “As soon as Luciano comes, send him here. We’ll pull the job at one o’clock just as we planned, no matter what.”

  I slipped soundlessly down from the pigeon box and watched through the porthole as Clarence Sinclair left the ark.

  A few minutes later Antonio came outside dragging a straight back chair behind him. He sat down on the gang plank directly beneath the porthole. Soon the odor of his cigar drifted into the bird room.

  “I wonder if Antonio’s alias is Peters or Wendell, or if those are the aliases of another of Antonio’s accomplices.”

  “I don’t care who Peters or Wendell are,” Flo moaned. “All I can think about is getting out of here.”

  Flo and I sat side by side, our backs to the wall. All around us, in boxes and cages, Noah’s birds stirred restlessly. The parrot kept up such a chatter that I finally resorted to covering his cage with a sack.

  Time passed slowly. It seemed hours later when I heard another man’s voice calling from the shore.

  “Ark ahoy! Are you there, Battaglia?”

  Antonio Battaglia. That must be the headwaiter’s full name.

  “Luciano, come aboard,” said Mr. Battaglia. “Sinclair tell you what happened?”

  “Yeah, and I have more bad news. A searching party is out looking for those two women. Heading this way, too.”

  “In that case—”

  A minute later the door of the bird room suddenly was thrust open and a flashlight beam show in our faces.

  It was Antonio Battaglia and a short dark-haired stranger—Luciano. My first thought was that I had seen Luciano before. I thought he might be the man with whom Fred Halvorson had dined at the Green Parrot.

  I decided that revolver or no revolver, I wasn’t going down without a fight. I clutched the cosh in my pocket and was about to withdraw it in preparation for bringing it down on Antonio’s head.

  It was then that I noticed that both Luciano and Antonio had revolvers trained on us. I loosened my grip on the cosh, hastily withdrew my hand from my pocket, and docilely allowed Battaglia and Luciano to plaster tape over our mouths and tie us up hand and foot. After trussing us up like a couple of pigs destined for the spit, the men went out again.

  About fifteen minutes went by before I heard more voices along the shore. Someone hailed the ark and I recognized the voice of my father.

  Antonio Battaglia responded, his voice casual and friendly.

  “We’re looking for two young women lost in the woods,” my father called across to the ark. “Have you seen them?”

  “Yes. A couple of women went past here about an hour ago. They were on their way to the river. One was tall, thin, and blond and the other—”

  Flo was spared Battaglia’s description of her appearance, because my father interrupted him saying, “Then they must be heading home. By the way, you’re not the one they call Noah, are you?”

  “Just a friend of his.”

  “I see,” I heard my father say, apparently satisfied with Antonio’s answer. “Well, thanks. We’ve been worried about my daughter and her friend. It’s a relief to know they’re headed in the right direction.”

  All during this exchange, in the darkness of the bird room, Florence and I had squirmed and twisted. Though we succeeded in thumping or feet and our bound shoulders on the floor, the sound was swallowed up by the solid wooden walls of the ark.

  My father called out a cheery good night to Battaglia, and for a few minutes, I listened to the retreating footsteps in the underbrush. Then all was still, save for the restless stirring of the birds.

  Chapter Twenty-Thr
ee

  After what seemed like an eternity but was probably all of twenty minutes, Antonio Battaglia and Luciano reentered the bird room.

  Luciano wordlessly removed the tape from our mouths and set us free from our bonds, while Antonio Battaglia kept his revolver pointed at us. Then they went out again.

  I went to the porthole and watched as our captors walked down the gangplank and sat down together on a log on the shore line not far from the ark.

  “At least they didn’t torture us,” Florence said, close to tears. “Oh, Jane, your father believes we’ve gone home. How is anyone going to find us?”

  “I’m sure someone will find us, but not in time to save Mrs. Maxwell and anyone else unfortunate enough to be spending the night in the Maxwell Mansion, that’s certain.”

  I was feeling nearly as despondent as Flo, but I tried not to show it.

  As I groped my way back to Florence from the porthole, I stumbled against a box. It tipped over and made such a ruckus it got the parrot worked up again, even though his cage was still covered.

  “Noah’s bottles!”

  I wondered if the noise would bring back Battaglia and Luciano, but when I returned to the porthole and looked out, they still sat on shore.

  “Where do you suppose Noah has taken himself?” Florence wondered aloud.

  “Maybe the sheriff got him,” I suggested.

  “I doubt it. He probably just went off somewhere in search of more inhabitants for the ark. Still, I can’t imagine him staying away long of his own volition.”

  “I can’t very well imagine Noah abandoning his animals,” I said. “Surely, he’ll return soon.”

  I huddled up to Flo, and we both drowsed until we were aroused by the sound of low voices just outside the porthole.

  “It’s an old man coming,” I heard Antonio mutter. “Must be Noah.”

  “What’ll we do with him?”

  “Wait and see how he acts. He’s such a simple old coot he may not suspect anything.”

  It was then that I realized why Battaglia and Luciano had bothered to release us from our bonds. If Noah returned, they were counting on the threat of getting shot being sufficient motivation to get Flo and me to feign taking up residence in the bird room of our own free will.

  “If he makes trouble,” I heard Battaglia say, “we’ll have to lock him up with those women.”

  A silence ensued, and then we heard heavy footsteps on the gangplank.

  “Good evening, Noah,” I heard Antonio say. “Looks like rain, doesn’t it?”

  The remark concerning the weather was all that was needed to dull the old man’s perceptions and make him forget that the ark had been invaded by strangers during his absence. I watched through the porthole as Noah lowered an armload of groceries to the railing and peered intently up at the sky.

  “No man knoweth the hour, but when the thunder of the Lord strikes, the rain will descend. All creatures of the earth shall perish—yes, all except those who seek refuge here. Therefore, my sons, you do well to seek the shelter of my ark.”

  “The old fellow’s sure raving,” Battaglia remarked to his companion.

  I thought it very unwise on Antonio’s part to antagonize Noah, but the old man didn’t seem to understand that he’d been insulted.

  “A raven? Ah, yes! For one hundred and fifty days the waters shall prevail upon the earth. Then will I send forth a raven or a dove to search for a sprig of green. And if the bird returns with such a token, then shall I know that the waters are receding, no more to destroy all flesh.”

  “Toddle on, old man,” Antonio said, growing irritated. “Where’ve you been anyway?”

  “My burdens are heavy.” Noah let out a deep sigh. “All day I have labored, seeking food for my animals. Greens I cut for Bessie, my cow, and at the grocery store I bought seed for the birds, crackers—”

  “Never mind,” Antonio said. “Go into your quarters and stay there.”

  “Bessie, the cow, must be fed.”

  “Then go feed her,” Mr. Battaglia snapped. “Just get out of my sight.”

  I could not hear what Noah said in reply. However, a medley of animal sounds beneath the deck led me to believe that the master of the ark had gone into the lower part of the ship to care for his animals.

  “I wish he’d come here,” Florence said. “Maybe we could get the idea over to him that we’re being held prisoners.”

  “Not a chance of it. Those men evidently intend to allow him the run of the ark so long as he suspects nothing,” I said.

  “You may be right.”

  I sat on the floor beside Flo, idly rolling one of Noah’s bottles back and forth, until I was struck with sudden inspiration.

  “I know how we might bring him here!”

  “How?” Florence asked.

  “By stirring up the birds. Then Noah would get excited and try to break in.”

  “And what would that accomplish?”

  “Probably nothing,” I admitted. “Battaglia and Luciano are both armed. Noah’s a formidable man, but he couldn’t overpower two men with guns, even if he were inclined to do it.”

  “All Noah thinks about is the coming flood. With another rain in the offing, he’ll confine his worries to how he can attract more people to his ark.”

  “Flo! Maybe that’s the answer.”

  “What is?”

  “Perhaps we can summon help by sending a message in a bottle. Do you have a pen or a pencil with you, Flo?”

  “I might have a pencil.” Florence searched in the pockets of her dress, and finally brought forth a stub of a pencil with a dull, but usable lead. “I still don’t understand what you have in mind.”

  “This is my idea,” I explained. “You know that whenever it rains, Noah starts tossing message bottles into the river.”

  “True.”

  I groped my way across the room to the box which stood by the porthole. “Here are the bottles. What’s to prevent us from writing our own messages? We’ll explain that we are held prisoners here and appeal for help.”

  “How do you propose to get the bottles overboard? If we start heaving things into the water, it’s bound to attract attention.”

  “I’ll think of a scheme.”

  “Even if the bottles did reach the water, one never would be picked up in time to do any good,” Florence argued.

  “You’re probably right, I said. “But writing a few messages is better that sitting here and brooding.”

  We removed corks from several bottles and took out the papers already inside them. It was too dim to see much, even directly underneath the porthole, but Florence and I scribbled at least a dozen messages anyway. We then carefully recorked every bottle, making sure they were water-tight and put them back into the box.

  I then decided to stir up a bit of action. Moving from box to box, I aroused the sleeping birds. My final act was to jerk the covering from Polly’s cage and playfully pluck at the tail feathers of the startled creature.

  “Noah! Noah!” the parrot shrieked. “Heave out the anchor! Help! Help!”

  “Jane Carter! Whatever are you doing?” Flo demanded.

  “You’ll see,” I told Florence. “Keep it up, Polly,” I encouraged the parrot as I rocked his cage.

  The parrot squawked in righteous rage and the other birds set up an accompanying din.

  I did not have to wait long for results. I soon heard a heavy tread outside the bird room.

  Noah, found the door to the bird room locked.

  “Why is this room bolted?” I heard him say in a loud voice. “Has someone been harassing my birds?”

  “Calm down, Grandpa, calm down,” I heard Antonio trying to soothe the old man. “No one is going to hurt your precious birds.”

  The next moment, the bolt slide open. Noah stumbled across the threshold and began to murmur soothing words to the birds. He carried no light with him, and at first, he did not see Florence and me.

  When he finally noticed us, he said absently, “G
ood evening, my daughters. I am happy that you have come again to my ark, but I am afraid you have disturbed my birds.”

  I chose my words carefully for Battaglia and Luciano stood menacingly in the cabin doorway. I feared that it wouldn’t take much for them to lock Noah in with us, or to simply give us each a bullet to the head and be done with it.

  “The birds do seem excited for some reason,” I told Noah. “No doubt they’re alarmed by the approaching storm.”

  “Yes, yes, that may be it.”

  Noah went to an oil lamp on the wall and lit the wick. He then picked up a sack of bird seed and began moving from cage to cage refilling the feeders.

  “Upstairs!” Antonio mouthed at us behind Noah’s back. When we hesitated, he reached for the revolver he had concealed inside his coat.

  Flo began moving toward the door, while I chose a route which allowed me to bump against the box of bottles as if I’d mistakenly stumbled against them in the dim light of the oil lamp.

  “Ouch!”

  Flo paused as I bent to rub my ankle.

  “With another storm coming up, I suppose you’ll be throwing out more of your messages,” I said to Noah.

  Noah immediately dropped the sack of bird seed and strode over to the box of bottles.

  “Yes, yes, I have been neglectful of my duty. With the Great Flood coming, I must warn the good people of Greenville. I shall bid them seek refuge here before their doom is sealed.”

  Noah selected a half dozen bottles and started to heave them through the porthole. But Mr. Battaglia put a stop to his action.

  “Just a minute, Grandpa,” he said. “What’s in those bottles?”

  “Messages which I wrote with my own hand warning the people of the Great Deluge soon to break upon us. Would you like to read them, my son?”

  “That’s exactly what I intend to do,” said Antonio.

  Mr. Battaglia fixed me with a hard stare, before repeating the performance with Flo. Finally, he turned his attention back to the box of bottles, selected one off the top and started to remove the cork.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The cork was stubborn and refused to come out, so Mr. Battaglia smashed it against a wall of the ark. Picking up the folded paper, he flashed his light across the writing.