Seemingly some people never observe the fact that the calendar travels
on a non-stop schedule, and the longer we live the faster it speeds.
After my talk with Charlie Haines about Norma Byng, I spent another
four years in Europe, and by that time we were up to the catastrophe
that rocked the world and butchered millions of people.
It caught us short of men in all departments. I was given some odd
jobs outside the regular schedule, while we were trying hard to be
neutral, and waiting for the Monarch of Death and his cohorts of
three-cornered, degenerate minds, to discover they had overlooked
another big bet besides Belgium and Italy.
Suddenly I drew a trip to Florida. I was to attach myself to the
United States' Court as an ostensible necessity, for the purpose of
learning what the Boche were doing toward helping themselves to our
cotton, copper and crude rubber in the Gulf by means of undersea cargo
carriers, and also, if they were trying to cash in on their mortgage
on Mexico.
One morning the judge, hard-headed and practical, called me into his
chambers and gave me two warrants to produce dead or alive the body of
a certain man in court to answer charges of smuggling tobacco from
Cuba, and violating our neutrality. He said the "Paper case," which
meant the affidavits, upon which the warrants were based, were
altogether regular, but there was a distinctive odor about them that
indicated "a nigger in the woodpile." And that meant that if I went
slow, it was believed that I would find out something worth while.
The clerk and myself studied elementary geography for a while, and
found that the best we could do was to locate the defendant by
longitude and latitude, either on the barren Keys, or on one of the
numerous islands nearby. The affidavits appeared to be made by members
of the firm of Bulow and Company, in Key West, and thither I went at
once.
Bulow and Company were big handlers, wholesale and retail, of heavy
hardware, ship chandlery, and spongefishers' supplies. They had a few
sponge boats themselves, deep-sea vessels, also docks and tugs. I saw
nothing to justify the honorable judge's angle on the case, but took
his advice and went slow.
At the hotel in Key West I met Ike Barry, a traveling man in just such
a line.
"Been selling the Bulow people for twenty-five years," he informed me.
"Always discount. The manager is director in the People's National.
The Bulows were German--all dead now. Will take you down and introduce
you to present managers--fine people. No--well, I'm going to be here a
week or two fishing--see me if I can make you happy--I know what Key
West has for breakfast."
I was making no progress in getting a line on the man Canby charged in
the warrants. Finally I changed clothes and went down to the
waterfront looking for a job as marine engineer, or anything in that
line. It may have been an accident that I got on the Bulow wharf first
with my license, membership card, and enough letters to convince even
a doubting Thomas that I was fit and willing.
I found Scotty in the engine room of a speedy gasoline craft and pried
his mouth open with a hard-luck story. This boat was used as sort of
scout for trade all the way from the Bermudas and Cuba to Vera Cruz
and New Orleans.
Scotty soon showed his Highland Scotch by starting in to brag.
"It'll split the water faster than anything on the Gulf," said he,
looking proud, "but I've got to give the Devil his due--there's one
boat down here that passes us at our best, like we hadn't cast off
yet, and the old man is wild about it--or maybe it's something else
that's the real reason."
This was the first information I had received regarding Canby. It was
his boat that excited Scotty, and I soon had the story and enough
geography to locate him.
Scotty walked uptown with me, and before parting said, after swearing
me to secrecy, that unless things looked better on the other side he
was going back home to take his old place in the Royal Navy, and that
if I stuck around awhile I might have his job. In fact, there were
some things about his job he didn't like, he informed me, getting more
friendly before I left him.
I had to get an order from the superintendent to have the train stop
the next morning about midway between Key West and the Everglades. The
conductor, a veteran on the road, said he had never stopped there. As
far as he knew it was a sort of a Saturday and Sunday rendezvous for
spongers and thought that, without an arsenal on my person, I was
taking chances. "Queer fish," he added, shaking his head, "but someone
there knows something about flowers."
I wondered what he meant.
He let me off at the open back door of a rambling building of many
additions, perhaps one hundred and fifty feet long, beginning near the
track, and ending with two stories near the water on the Gulf side.
Not a soul was in sight and everything as still as a country church on
a weekday. I went through the store stocked with fishermen's supplies,
encountering no signs of life, until I emerged at the other end on a
wide veranda with a double-canvas roof. Here I saw an old-time darkey
standing near the side rail, sharpening an eighteen-inch,
murderous-looking knife on a big whetstone held in his palm.
He jerked his head toward me and double-tracked his face from ear to
ear, but did not speak. Then I saw a boy of about twelve, with a rifle
beside him, a hundred feet away, his bare legs dangling over the pier,
which began at the veranda and extended out into the water,
terminating at a corrugated warehouse that looked like a
daddy-long-legs, in the retreating tide.
The boy glanced at me, then riveted his eyes on a spot in the murky
water twenty feet in front of him and seemed to forget my presence.
The old darkey silently continued whetting the big knife. There was
something in the situation that I didn't understand. Had I struck a
crazy house?
But that straight-nosed, clear-featured boy, as alert as a sparrow,
was not crazy. Faded khaki pants, puckered above his knees, and a
sleeveless garment of the same material pulled down over his head
covered a plump, well-developed chest and body, round and sinuous as a
minnow.
The negro continued to whet, occasionally trying the edge with his
thumb and glancing at the boy, who continued to gaze at the water as
though hypnotized.
I moved a little uneasily, clearly unable to understand. I recalled
what the conductor had said about flowers and noticed that the space
between the veranda and high tide, more than fifty feet, and a hundred
feet either side of the narrow pier that passed above it, was a most
luxuriant flower garden, planted in artistic figures. The coral
formation threw an arm nearly around the warehouse on the wharf,
enclosing several acres of water, protecting it from the fierce
tropical Gulf storms. A smart-looking motorboat tugging at its chain
completed the scene.
I became fascinated and moved over near the edge of the veranda some
distance from the negro, who had stopped work on his knife; the boy's
hand moved cautiously toward the rifle, a watchful glitter in his
eyes; then raising it to his shoulder, fired at a spot in the water he
had been watching. Instantly the waters of the little bay were lashed
into a crimson foam. He had shot a bull alligator through his sleeping
eye.
[Illustration: The boy's hand moved cautiously toward the rifle.]
"That's the fellow who has been wallowing among my flowers lately.
Don't go near him yet, Don!" cautioned the boy, bounding to his feet
with rifle in hand, and watching his victim like a hawk.
"He's done dead, ain't he?" asked the negro, seeing the giant saurian
floating on his back, his yellow belly turned toward the sky.
"Maybe not, Don. Wait till I reach his heart through the flank,"
replied the youngster, moving near me in order to get a better shot.
The second aim was more effective than the first, the monster's tail
lashing the deep water into a repulsive shade. He then turned belly
up, inert; his heart had been pierced.
"Now he is safe!" exclaimed the boy to the negro, who was already
wading out with the murderous knife and a short-handled axe. The boy
then walked toward me with a frank, honest gaze of inquiry, still
holding the rifle, which was fully as long as himself.
At that moment I discovered that this marksman was not a boy but a
girl!