[Illustration: _It seemed as if every resident of the town swarmed in
the narrow street_]
A BIFF BREWSTER
MYSTERY ADVENTURE
[Illustration: Compass]
MYSTERY
OF THE
CARIBBEAN
PEARLS
By ANDY ADAMS
GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
© GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC., 1962
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I Discovery! 1
II Seeing Double 5
III Backfire 12
IV Who’s Fooling Whom? 19
V Appear and Disappear 28
VI Crunch 37
VII Gay Curaçao 43
VIII Uncle Charlie Spins a Yarn 48
IX Outmatched 55
X Plan of Action 61
XI Biff Meets Crunch 70
XII Double Chance 75
XIII Turnabout 82
XIV A Talk with Crunch 88
XV Almost Away 95
XVI A “Magic” Alarm 102
XVII Reunited 112
XVIII All Set To Dive 118
XIX Pearl Diving 125
XX Enemy Invasion 133
XXI A Gay Deception 140
XXII Dashed Hopes 147
XXIII Dietz Again 154
XXIV Attack from the Deep 159
XXV A Double Find 167
MYSTERY OF THE CARIBBEAN PEARLS
CHAPTER I
Discovery!
Lightning streaked the skies over the Windward Islands. The Caribbean
Sea was a tumbled mass of foaming, angry waters.
The _chabasco_ had struck with the quickness and lashing fury that is
the nature of this most feared of tropical storms. A _chabasco_ strikes
without warning, with tornado-like violence, whirling and smiting and
soaking. The storm ends as abruptly as it begins. The air regains its
calm. Only the churned-up waters continue to smash upon the shore.
A final, brilliant flash of lightning revealed the gaunt figure of a man
stumbling through the raging surf, fighting to reach the safety of the
beach. He staggered out of the roiling waters and fell face down on the
sand. His only motion was the agonized heaving of his shoulders as he
gasped for breath.
His boat, his diving gear were gone, smashed to bits by the wildness of
the storm which had washed him ashore on this tiny speck of an island.
The island, he knew, was in the Baie du Trésor, Treasure Bay, off the
east coast of the big island of Martinique.
As strength flowed back into the man’s body, he sat up. Frantically he
shot his hand into a pocket of his wet, worn, sun-bleached dungarees. An
expression of relief crossed his face. In the faint light of a rising
moon, he inspected the two objects in the upturned palm of his hand.
He held two perfectly matched black pearls.
This was the end of his search, the end of weeks under the blazing sun
of the Caribbean; the result of hundreds of dives to the bottom of the
sea. He knew, and he had the evidence in his hand, that he had made a
discovery which would startle the entire area of the Caribbean Sea from
the Florida keys to the coast of South America.
He had discovered a pearl fishery so fabulous, so unbelievably rich,
that his find would make headline news throughout the world.
He knew also that unless he could keep his find secret until his claim
on the pearl fishery was established, treasure seekers and money-mad
cutthroats would descend on him like hungry sharks.
He felt sure that his actions and explorations had been secretly
watched. He knew who the watchers were—unscrupulous men waiting hungrily
to move in and jump the claim he had struggled so hard to find.
His first problem was to get off this tiny speck in the bay and back to
Martinique. He was no more than five miles off the shore of the main
body of the big island. If he had reckoned his position correctly, there
was a long spit of land jutting out from Martinique that he could reach
by a two-mile swim. He would need to rest. Calm now, he settled into the
sand to sleep.
When the man awakened, the light of a brilliant tropical morning proved
that he had been correct in determining his position. The sandspit
jutted out, welcoming him. Farther beyond he could see the lush,
green-covered pitons rising in the center of Martinique. Some of these
peaks reached a height of nearly four thousand feet.
The man began his long, slow swim. He had no fear of the sea—though he
knew sharks abounded in these waters, and he was unarmed.
But by midmorning he had reached the mainland of Martinique safely. He
was pleasantly tired from his long swim, and stretched out on the warm
sands to rest and allow his clothing to dry.
In the early afternoon he reached the town of La Trinité, sprawling at
the approach of Presqu’île de la Caravelle, the peninsula that formed
the Baie du Trésor.
He found a room in a small _pension_, a rooming house, and spent most of
the night writing two letters. One of them was addressed to his son in
The Netherlands. The other was to Charles Keene on the island of Curaçao
in the Netherlands Antilles.
Along with the letters, he carefully prepared two small boxes.
In the morning, he was standing at the post office door the moment it
opened. It was with great relief that he saw his letters and packages go
into the mailbag that would be trucked over the pitons to Fort-de-France
at noon, then flown on to Curaçao on the night flight.
In his relief and great elation over his discovery, the man shed the
characteristic watchfulness that usually marked his movements. He
momentarily had dropped his guard, and did not notice that his every
action had been closely followed from the moment he had arrived in La
Trinité.