James Chase - Lay Her Among the Lilies

A girl with the top half of her dress torn off, fell on my neck and screamed in my face. Her breath, loaded with whisky fumes, nearly blistered my skin. I tried to shove her off, but her arms threatened to strangle me. Paula pulled her away, and boxed her ears hard. The girl went staggering into the crowd, screaming like a train whistle.

We reached the deck-rail. Spread out all over the sea and coming in all directions was an armada of small boats. The sea was alive with them.

“Hey! Vic!!”

Kerman’s voice rose above the uproar, and we saw him standing on the deck-rail, not far from us, clinging to the awning and kicking the crazy crowd away from him whenever they threatened to tear him from his hold.

“Come on, Vic!”

I pushed Paula ahead of me. We reached him after a struggle, and after Paula nearly had her dress ripped off her back.

Kerman was grinning excitedly.

“Did you have to set fire to the ship?” he bawled. “Talk about panic! What’s got into these punks? They’ll be off weeks before the tub goes down.”

“Where’s your boat?” I panted, and shoved an elderly roué out of my way as he struggled to climb over the rail. “Take it easy, pop,” I told him. “It’s too wet to swim. All the boats in the world are coming.”

“Right here,” Kerman said, pointing below him. He swung Paula up on to the rail while I struggled to keep the customers from following her. He guided her feet on to a rope ladder hanging down the ship’s side, and she descended like a veteran sailor.

“Not you, madam,” Kerman yelled, as a girl fought her way towards him. “This is a private party. Try a little farther along.”

The girl, hysterical and screaming, threw herself against him and wrapped her arms around his legs.

“For Pete’s sake!” he yelled. “You’ll have my pants off! Hi, Vic, give me a hand! This dame’s crazy.”

I swung myself over the rail and on to the ladder.

“I thought you liked them that way. Bring her along if she’s all that attached to you.”

I don’t know how he got rid of her, but as I dropped into the boat he came sliding down the ladder and nearly knocked me overboard as he landed.

“Take it easy,” I said, and grabbed him to steady him.

Mike had started the outboard engine and the boat began to draw away from the ship. We had to pick our way. The number of boats coming out to the Dream Ship was something to see. It looked like Dunkirk all over again.

“Nice work!” I said, clapping Mike on his broad back. “You guys timed it about right.” I looked back at the Dream Ship. The lower deck was on fire now, and smoke was pouring from her sides. “I wonder how much she was insured for?”

“Did you touch her off?” Kerman asked.

“No, you dope! Sherrill’s dead. Someone shot him and set fire to the ship. If we hadn’t spotted him when we did he would never have been found.”

“A pretty expensive funeral,” Kerman said, looking blank.

“Not if the ship’s insured. You talk to Paula. I want to look at this,” and I pulled Anona Freedlander’s dossier out of my hip pocket.

Kerman gave me a flashlight.

“What is it?” he asked.

I stared at the first page of the dossier, scarcely believing my eyes.

Paula said, “Vic, hadn’t we better decide what we’re going to do?”

“Do? Jack and I are going right after Anona. I want you to tell Mifflin about Sherrill. Get

him to come out to Maureen Crosby’s cliff house fast. It’s going to finish tonight.”

She stared at him.

“Wouldn’t it be better for you to see Mifflin?”

“We haven’t the time. If Anona’s at Maureen’s place she’s in trouble.”

Kerman leaned forward.

“What is all this about?”

I waved the dossier at him.

“It’s right here, and that lug Mifflin didn’t think it important enough to tell me. Since 1944, Anona had endocarditis. I told you they were trying to keep a cat in a bag. Well, it’s out now.”

“Anona’s got a wacky heart?” Kerman said, gaping at me. “You mean Janet Crosby, don’t you?”

“Listen to the description they give of Anona,” I said. “Five foot; dark; brown eyes; plump. Work that out.”

“But it’s wrong. She’s tall and fair,” Kerman said. “What are you talking about?”

Paula was on to it.

“She isn’t Anona Freedlander. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“You bet she isn’t,” I said excitedly. “Don’t you see? It was Anona who died of heart failure at Crestways! And the girl in Salzer’s sanatorium is Janet Crosby!”

We stood at the foot of the almost perpendicular cliff and stared up into the darkness. Far out to sea a great red glow in the sky pin-pointed the burning Dream Ship. A mushroom of smoke hung in the night sky.

“Up there?” Kerman said. “What do you think I am—a monkey?”

“That’s something you’d better discuss with your father,” I said, and grinned in the darkness. “There’s no other way. The front entrance is guarded by two electrically-controlled gates, and all the barbed wire in the world. If we’re going to get in, this is the way.”

Kerman drew back to study die face of the cliff.

“Three hundred feet if it’s an inch,” he said, awe in his voice. “Will I love every foot of it!”

“Well, come on. Let’s try, anyway.”

The first twenty feet was easy enough. Big boulders formed a platform at the foot of the cliff; they were simple enough to climb. We stood side by side on a flat rock while I sent the beam of my torch up into the darkness. The jagged face of the cliff towered above us, and, almost at the top, bulged out, forming what seemed an impassable barrier.

“That’s the bit I like,” Kerman said, pointing. “Up there, where it curves out. Getting over that’s going to be fun: a tooth and fingernail job.”

“Maybe it’s not so bad as it looks,” I said, not liking it myself. “If we had a rope…”

“If we had a rope I’d go quietly away some place and hang myself,” Kerman said gloomily. “It would save time and a lot of hard work.”

“Pipe down, you pessimistic devil!” I said sharply, and began to edge up the cliff face. There were foot and handholds, and if the cliff hadn’t been perpendicular it would have been fairly easy to climb. But, as it was, I was conscious that one slip would finish the climb and me. I’d fall straight out and away from the cliff face. There would be no sliding or grabbing to save myself.

When I had climbed about fifty feet I paused to get my breath back. I couldn’t look down. The slightest attempt to lean away from the cliff face would upset my balance, and I’d fall.

“How are you getting on?” I panted, pressing myself against the surface of the cliff and staring up into the star-studded sky.

“As well as can be expected,” Kerman said with a groan. “I’m surprised I’m still alive. Do you think this is dangerous or am I just imagining it?”

I shifted my grip on a knob of rock and hauled myself up another couple of feet.

“It’s only dangerous if you fall; then probably it’s fatal,” I said.

We kept moving. Once I heard a sudden rumble of fall-ling rock and Kerman catch his breath sharply. My hair stood on end.

“Keep your eye on some of these rocks,” he gasped. “One of them’s just come away in my hand.”

“I’ll watch it.”

About a quarter-way up I came suddenly and unexpectedly to a four-foot ledge and I hoisted myself up on it, leaned my back against the cliff face and tried to get my breath back. I felt cold sweat on my neck and back. If I had known it was going to be this bad I would have tried the gates. It was too late now. It might be just possible to climb up, but quite impossible to climb down.