King Kong Read online

  “I just wanted to see,” Ann explained. She spoke meekly because she knew the fault had been hers.

  “Well, I’m sorry.” Driscoll looked sheepishly at his fingers. “I hope the sock didn’t land too hard.”

  “Not at all,” Ann cried, so vigorously that they both laughed.

  “So!” said Driscoll after a little pause. “You’re the girl Denham found at the last minute.”

  “An awfully excited one at this minute,” Ann smiled. “It is all simply bewildering. And I’ve never been on a ship before.”

  “And I,” replied Driscoll in a change of voice which recalled to Ann that he could be gruff, “have never been on a ship with a woman before.”

  “I guess you don’t think much of a woman on a ship, do you?”

  “Not to make any bones about it, she’s usually a cockeyed pest.”

  “I’ll try not to be,” Ann said flushing.

  “You’ve got in the way once, already,” Driscoll reminded her unsparingly. “Better stay below.”

  “What? Not the whole voyage?” Ann cried, and had to laugh.

  The mate’s eyes looked into hers and looked away.

  “You can come up once in a while,” he granted, struggling to suppress a grin. “Say, does that sock in the jaw hurt anymore? It was a clinger.”

  “I can stand it. Life’s been mostly socks in the jaw for me.”

  Ann’s tone was suddenly bitter, and Driscoll looked at her again, more closely.

  “If it’s been like that,” he said, “we’ll have to do something about it. I’ll tell you. Come up on deck any darn time you please.”

  Once more their eyes met, and Ann, in faint confusion, bent to pick up the chattering Ignatz, as Denham stepped out of the quarters aft.

  “I thought I ordered you to sleep the clock around?” he cried.

  “Impossible! I was much too excited to sleep.”

  “I see you’ve got acquainted with a couple of the crew already.”

  “Yes! I find the mate a little uncontrollable. But Ignatz is peaceable and friendly.”

  Denham gazed at Ignatz thoughtfully.

  “Beauty,” he murmured to himself. “Beauty and the Beast!”

  “I never claimed to be handsome,” Driscoll protested. “But…”

  “Not you, Jack. Ignatz. See how quiet he has grown. He never was that quiet before, not even in old Lumpy’s arms.”

  “Beauty,” Denham repeated to himself after a pause. “Beauty and the Beast. It certainly is interesting. It most certainly is.”

  “What?” Driscoll asked.

  “You’ll find out in plenty of time, Jack.”

  Denham turned to Ann.

  “Since you’re up, let’s find out where we stand. I’ll make some screen tests of you. Go down into the cabin. Captain Englehorn will show you the boxes that hold the costumes. Dig out any one that pleases you. By the time you get it on and add some makeup, we’ll have plenty of light for the camera.”

  Ann set Ignatz down.

  “Think you know the right make-up for outdoor shots?” Denham asked.

  “I think so,” Ann said, trying to hide her nervousness. “I won’t be long.”

  When she had gone Driscoll turned to his employer with a little frown.

  “She seems like a fine girl.”

  “I’d swear to that, Jack.”

  “Not the kind you usually find on a trip like this.”

  “A lot better.”

  “I—I wonder if she really ought to be going, Mr. Denham?”

  Denham gazed at his mate for a moment in a mixture of puzzled and impatient affection.

  “Come along,” he said at length. “Help me set up the camera.”

  They got at this while the crew went about stowing the freight which Driscoll’s blow on Ann’s face had interrupted. Both pieces of work were finished as Ann came back.

  She had found the costume boxes right enough. She wore now a glamorous something different by far from the nondescript dress of her first appearance. A curious primitive something blended of soft rustling grasses and softer, iridescent silken strips. Where it failed to cover her, the flesh of her arms and legs flashed in ivory contrast to the brown of the grasses and the brightness of the cloth.

  “She looks like some sort of queer bride,” Driscoll muttered.

  Denham showed a surprising delight over that impulsive tribute.

  “Sure enough?” he asked. “Do you really think so, Jack?”

  Driscoll nodded.

  “But not the bride of just a plain ordinary man?” Denham pressed him.

  “No. Not of…not of…it sounds insane to say it, but she doesn’t seem like the bride of any man that ever lived…of somebody, something else, rather…”

  “It’s my Beauty and the Beast costume,” Denham explained with creative pride.

  “Whatever it is,” Ann came up, “it is the prettiest costume of the lot.”

  “Right!” cried Denham. “Stand over there.”

  “I’m nervous, Mr. Denham. Suppose I don’t photograph to suit you?”

  “No chance of that, sister. If I hadn’t been sure of that you wouldn’t be aboard. We’ve got nothing to worry about but the minor problem of the best angles.”

  Ann smiled hopefully, and moved in obedience to her director’s gesturing hand. Driscoll, from a flank, clapped his hands soundlessly to tell her that in his opinion she had no need to be concerned. Lumpy and a half dozen sailors, rapidly augmented by another dozen, gathered attentively in the rear. Ignatz, on Lumpy’s shoulder, chipped in a soft interested cry at intervals. And finally the moustached Englehorn appeared and from jaws working deliberately over a piece of plug cut threw Ann a slow, encouraging smile.

  “Profile first!” Denham ordered. He squinted through the view-finder, threw the camera over and locked it. “Now! When I start cranking hold it a minute. Then turn slowly to me. Look at me. Look surprised. Then smile a little. Then listen. Then laugh. All right? Camera!”

  Ann obeyed. It was easier than she had expected; no different, indeed, than she had done often at the Fort Lee studio. From behind Denham the sailors’ comments began to drift up.

  “Don’t make much sense to me.”

  “But ain’t she the swell looker?”

  “Wonder if he’s going to use me in his picture?” Lumpy queried.

  “With cameras costing what they do? Not a chance, Lumpy. He couldn’t take the risk.”

  “That was fine,” Denham said, and nodded permission to relax. “Now I’m going to try a filter.”

  “Do you always take the pictures yourself?” Ann asked as he began expertly to change lenses.

  “Ever since my African picture. We were getting a grand shot of a charging rhino when the cameraman got scared and bolted. The fathead! As if I wasn’t right there with a rifle. He didn’t trust me to get the rhino before it got him. So I haven’t fooled with cameramen since. I do the trick myself.”

  Englehorn, chewing in a methodical placidity, came over to join Driscoll whose brows were knit in a faint frown.

  “What’s the trouble, Jack?”

  “He’s got me going,” the mate replied. “All this mystery…”

  “We’ve done well enough on two trips,” Englehorn reminded him. “He’ll bring us through this one all right.”

  “But with a woman aboard, it’s different.”

  “That’s his business,” Englehorn answered indisputably.

  “Let’s go, Ann!” Denham commanded. “Stand over there. When I start to crank, look up slowly. You’re quite calm. Don’t expect to see anything. Right? Camera!”

  A swift excitement transmitted itself to every watcher as Denham began to turn. He was, for his own part, strung to a tensity which caused his emotions to spill over. And as the scene got under
way his face hardened and grew red in his effort to charge Ann with his own mood.

  “Look up! Slowly, slowly. You are calm, you see nothing yet. Look higher. Higher. There! Now you see it. You are amazed. You can’t believe your own senses. Your eyes open wider. Wider. It’s horrible. But you are fascinated. You can’t look away. You can’t move. What is it? You’re helpless, Ann! Not a chance! What can you do? Where can you escape? You’re helpless, helpless. But you can scream! There’s your one hope. If you can scream! But you can’t. Your throat is paralyzed! Try to scream, Ann. Perhaps, if you didn’t see, you could do it. If your eyes were turned away. You can’t turn them away, but you can cover them, Ann. Throw your arm across your eyes, Ann. And scream! Scream, Ann, for your life!”

  Arm across her eyes, and shrinking to smallness in her curiously glamorous dress, Ann screamed. Her wild, high cry swept up and up on the softly blowing wind. It was a scream of true terror. Denham had done what he had hoped to do. Ann was not simulating fear. She was afraid. So truly terror-stricken that in a sympathetic agony Ignatz flung himself around and buried his small head in Lumpy’s breast.

  “Great!” cried Denham and wiped his beaded forehead. “Sister, you’ve got what it takes and no mistake.”

  Driscoll caught Englehorn’s shoulder.

  “By God!” he whispered, “I’ve got to know more about this. What is he taking her into? What does he think she is really going to see?”

  “Slow speed!” Englehorn whispered back. His jaws never hesitated in their methodical, placid motion. “I guess we can trust him. I guess we’ve got to trust him.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Wanderer’s blunt and barnacled nose split the warm, oily expanse with a matter-of-fact precision. Crest after endless foamy crest arose, rolled along her rusty flanks, and was lost in the narrowing wake astern. All waters were alike to the Wanderer. Every last one was made to be split and rolled back along rusty hulls. All you needed was the power to do the splitting and, so far as the Wanderer was concerned, that flowed from her engines with the fidelity of the tides. Those engines throbbed now with no less constancy than when the hull they drove had ploughed the Atlantic at a sweet fourteen knots.

  The Atlantic was far astern. The slow drift through the Panama Canal was finished, too, along with the long slide to the Hawaiian Islands, to Japan for more coal, past the Philippines, past Borneo, past even Sumatra. Still the speed was a steady fourteen.

  The direction was south and west. The time was midday. The weather was hot. It was so hot that the crew wore only such garments as the presence of a lady commanded. Some wore hardly that much. Lumpy, sprawling in the shade alongside an inert Ignatz, was as naked as a Sioux down to his waist. There was nothing, not even an excess of flesh, to keep an interested anatomist from counting every one of his hard, thin ribs. From his waist hung a pair of frayed trousers that stopped halfway between his sharp old knees and his sharper ankles. And, on his own word, that was everything…to the last patch and thread.

  It was a costume admirably suited to the temperature. And yet the temperature might have been hotter, considering that the Wanderer ploughed the sultry latitudes of the Indian Ocean. The Wanderer’s first mate, in ducks and a pongee shirt, was fairly cool. At least he would have been if he had not worked up a warm impatience over the failure of an expected figure to appear.

  Ann did appear at last. She was wearing white, too, a soft linen sun hat, a stiffly starched linen dress, canvas shoes, but no more stockings than Lumpy himself. Her rounded ankles were shaded as golden as autumn leaves. And sunburn laid a rosy shadow upon her cheeks.

  “Good afternoon, Lumpy,” she called.

  Lumpy sat up, and rubbed his sun-kissed ribs, and made Ignatz sit up also, to bow.

  “And what about me?” Driscoll protested.

  “Hello, Jack,” Ann smiled.

  “Where have you been so long?”

  “Trying on more costumes for Mr. Denham.” She nodded with open satisfaction. “And I looked very nice in them, too.”

  “Why not give me a chance to see?”

  “You? You’ve had chances galore! All the times Mr. Denham has had me out here on deck, making tests.”

  “All the times! Once or twice.”

  “Dozens of times.”

  Driscoll shook his head pityingly.

  “Some people need a lot of convincing before they can make up their minds.”

  “It’s very important to find out which side of my face photographs best.”

  “What’s wrong with either side?”

  “Probably Mr. Denham has found a hundred terrible faults.”

  “Both sides look good to me.”

  Ann beckoned to Ignatz and that eager playmate leaped into her arms. From behind the partial concealment he offered she smiled a little shyly.

  “Yes, but you aren’t my movie director.”

  “If I were,” Driscoll said, turning solemn, “you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Well! That’s a nice thing to say.”

  “You know what I mean, Ann!” He maintained solemnity in spite of her beguiling eyes. “It’s fine to have you on the ship, of course. But what are you here for? What crazy show is Denham planning to put you through when we get to…wherever we’re going?”

  “I don’t care what he is planning. I don’t even mind that he is keeping secret where we are going. No matter where we go; no matter what he asks me to do, I’ve had this.” She waved a slim arm to take in all that was visible from the Wanderer’s stern to her prow. “I’ve had the happiest time of my life on this old ship.”

  “Do you mean that, Ann?”

  “Of course!” But she fled at once into smiling generalities. “Everyone’s so nice. Lumpy, and you. Mr. Denham and the Skipper. Isn’t the Captain a sweet old lamb?”

  “A what?” Driscoll looked around in dismay lest the crew had heard; or worse, the Skipper himself.

  “I said a sweet old lamb.”

  “What a row there’d be,” Driscoll cried, “if he heard anyone but you say so!”

  They strolled to the railing and looked idly down upon the tropical sea. The water flashed with countless tiny specks which closer inspection revealed as small jellyfish, each with its miniature upright sail. No one was too large to fit easily into the palm of a hand, but there they were, confidently a-sail in the middle of the ocean. Sea asters, Lumpy called them.

  Ann and Driscoll were contentedly silent. In the weeks which had elapsed since the Wanderer left New York, they had come surprisingly close. Driscoll was reticent, and unused to girls; yet he had told Ann about his running away to sea to escape going to college. He had told her of his mother, who had forgiven him and who had braced herself to all his dangerous adventures since his meeting with Denham. Ann had told Driscoll, and only Driscoll, of the past which had led up to the miracle working apple. She had told him of her ranch home, of the loss of her father and mother, of the treachery of the uncle to whom she had confided her inheritance after her father’s death. She had told him of her coming to New York, of the despairing quest for work, of her hunger and fear.

  Her thoughts were running on that now.

  “I was lucky,” she said suddenly, soberly, “to have Mr. Denham run across me that night in New York.”

  “Speaking of Denham, may he cut in?” asked a brisk voice behind them and they turned to see the moving picture director rocking on speculative heels.

  “More tests?” Driscoll wanted to know.

  Ann expectantly handed Ignatz back to Lumpy, but Denham shook his head.

  “Nothing to rush about,” he said, “but when you aren’t busy, Ann, you might do a bit of sewing. I noticed just now that the Beauty and the Beast costume was ripped along the lining. And above everything else, I want that piece all ready when we need it.”

  “I’ll mend it right away,” Ann promi
sed. “It must have got torn when I took it off yesterday.”

  As she disappeared, Denham lighted a cigarette. He offered one to Driscoll, but the first mate shoved his hands deep into his pockets, doubling them there so that they stood out in hard, distinct lumps beneath the white cloth.

  “Mr. Denham,” he said doggedly, “I’m going to do some butting in.”

  “What’s on your mind, Jack?” Denham asked, and considered the smoking tip of his cigarette.

  “When do we find out where we’re going?”

  “Pretty soon now,” Denham smiled.

  “Are you going to tell us what happens when we get there?”

  “Don’t ask me to play fortune teller, young fella.”

  “But damn it! You must have some idea what you’re after.”

  Denham snapped his cigarette over the side and eyed Driscoll questioningly:

  “Going soft on me, Jack?”

  “You know I’m not.”

  “Then why all the fuss and blow?”

  “You know it isn’t for myself. It’s Ann….”

  “Oh!” Denham grew coolly serious. “So you’ve already gone soft on her. Better cut that out, Jack. I’ve got enough on my hands. Don’t pile on a love affair to complicate things more.”

  “Who said anything about a love affair?” Driscoll flushed.

  “It never fails,” Denham said, looking thoughtfully up toward the crow’s nest. “Some big, hard-boiled egg meets up with a pretty face, and bingo! He cracks up and melts.”

  “Who’s cracking up?” Driscoll demanded indignantly. “I haven’t run out on you, have I?”

  “No-o-o! And I’ve always figured you for a good tough guy, Jack. But if Beauty gets you…” He caught himself and laughed a little. “Why, I’m almost into my theme song.”

  “What in blazes are you talking about?”

  “It’s the idea I’m building my picture on, Jack. The Beast was a tough guy, tougher than you or anybody ever written about. He could lick the world. But when Beauty came along, she got him. When he saw her, he went soft. He forgot his code. And the little ham-and-egg fighters slapped him down. Think that over, young fella.”