Ralph Compton: Bounty Hunter

Brown looked quickly away, but not before Tone saw that he too was grinning. It seemed that the abrasive Mr. Penman had few friends on land . . . or sea.

Fifteen minutes later, as Penman sat hunched and miserable beside him, Tone saw a long black shape emerge from the gloom.

“The Spindrift ,” Penman said, gulping as he fought to keep down what little was left in his stomach. As though it was something he’d memorized, he added, “She’s an iron three-masted steam schooner, one hundred and seventy feet long, built in 1880 by Ward, Stanton and Company of Newburgh, New York. My client made certain modifications to her deck a few years ago.”

Tone had little interest in boats, but from where he sat in the rowboat, the craft looked enormous, graceful and beautiful.

“How much does something like that cost?” Tone asked.

“A small fortune, Mr. Tone,” Penman said brusquely. “No questions. Be circumspect, now.”

After Brown identified himself and his passengers to a seaman on deck, ladders were lowered and grinning sailors helped Tone and Penman clamber ungracefully from the pitching rowboat and climb on board.

An officer saluted smartly and said, “Welcome to the Spindrift , gentlemen. I’m instructed to take you below to the owner’s stateroom.”

A voice called out from the bridge, a glass-covered structure forward of the raked funnel. “Mr. Tyler, are the gentlemen aboard?”

“Aye, sir.”

Through the drifting fog, Tone could make out a shadowy, squat figure leaning out of the port side of the bridge. “Then let us get under way, Captain Tyler, and head for open water. I don’t want to get trapped in the strait.”

The officer saluted. “Aye, aye, sir.” He looked at Tone and Penman apologetically. “Duty calls, gentlemen. I will have a seaman show you to the stateroom.”

After the man left, Tone turned to the lawyer. “What did he mean ‘trapped’? Trapped by what?”

“All will be explained presently, Mr. Tone,” Penman said. He looked sick, weak and miserable, like a man who desired only a quick, merciful death.

The ship thrummed into life and the stern dipped as the screws bit into the water. Burly seamen thronged the deck, performing mysterious tasks that Tone couldn’t even guess at, but one detached himself from the rest and picked up Tone’s bag. “This way, shipmates,” the man said, motioning with his head.

The sailor led the way down a steep, almost vertical ladder into a narrow passageway with doors along each side leading to the galley, officers’ quarters and storerooms. Though the ship had been built as a pleasure craft, the overhead was so low that Tone had to remove his top hat and stoop to clear the supporting deck beams.

He and Penman followed the sailor to a door that marked the end of the passageway. The man knocked, got no answer and opened the door wide. “Inside, shipmates,” he said. “The cap’n said to make yourselves comfortable and the owner will be with you shortly.”

Tone followed Penman into the stateroom and the sailor set the bag on the floor, then quietly closed the door behind them.

To call the small spartan cabin a stateroom was a gross overstatement. An oak desk stood in the middle of the carpeted floor and an iron cot was jammed against the starboard bulkhead. A few straight-backed chairs and a liquor cabinet displaying a variety of crystal decanters and glasses completed the furnishings.

The overhead was as low as the one in the companionway and Tone was grateful to take a chair and straighten out his back. Penman also perched on a chair and sat hunched and forlorn, gulping now and then as his seasickness threatened to rebound on him. As the Spindrift made her way through the Golden Gate to the open sea, she rolled like a wallowing sow and the little lawyer’s distress grew more and more evident.

After a few minutes the door opened and a short, stocky man stepped inside. Penman immediately got to his feet, and Tone, deciding that was what protocol demanded, also rose, only to bang his head hard into a deck beam.

“Be seated, gentlemen,” the stocky man said. He sat behind his desk, making no attempt to shake hands.

Despite his aching head, Tone studied the man. He was short, heavily muscled in the arms and shoulders and dressed in the rough wool and canvas garb of an ordinary sailor. His skin was as dark as mahogany, the weather-beaten face deeply lined. Stark white against his dark complexion, a terrible scar ran the length of his left cheek, close to the mouth. The scar had drawn the corner of the man’s top lip slightly upward, as though he was wearing a permanent sneer. His eyes were bright blue, lively and not devoid of humor.

The man looked at the lawyer. “Not puking your guts up, Penman? This is a change. Of course, the seas are calm at the moment—maybe that explains things.”

“I did it earlier—puke, I mean. I’ve got nothing left in my belly.”

“Well, you’re not spewing now, so I say we’ll make a seaman of you yet—lay to that.”

“Never,” the lawyer spat. “I’m more than happy to take care of your business interests without ever leaving dry land.”

The man looked at Tone for the first time. “Penman doesn’t like ships, or sailors or me.” His blue eyes went to the lawyer again. “Is that not so, Luther?”

“Sir, you pay me to conduct your business affairs. Likes or dislikes do not enter into it.”

As though he hadn’t heard, the stocky man said to Tone, “Luther doesn’t like women either, though a plump and rosy-cheeked young cabin boy will turn his head fast enough.”

Penman scowled, but retreated back into his own nauseated misery, drawing what was left of his dignity around him like a tattered cloak.

“And you, I presume, are John Tone,” the man said. Tone allowed that he was.

“My name is Lambert Sprague. I own this craft.” He rose to his feet and crossed to the liquor cabinet. “Drink?”

Tone nodded and Sprague said, “Does Old Fitzgerald suit your taste?”

“That’s just fine.”

Sprague poured three fingers of bourbon into each of two glasses and handed one to Tone. “As you probably know, Luther doesn’t drink.” He grinned and looked over at the lawyer. “What else don’t you do, Luther, apart from women?”

Penman made no answer, but Sprague had decided to needle him. “I tell you what you don’t do, Luther—you don’t live. You’re a pathetic, dried-up old mummy who is only happy when he’s in the tomb he calls an office, surrounded by mice and dusty lawbooks.”

“I take care of your business from that tomb, as you call it.”

“I know, and that’s the only reason I keep you around, you puking old turd.”

Tone realized that there was a sadistic streak in Sprague that he apparently had the wealth and power to indulge, and its roots would run deep, all the way back into the man’s murky past. He was an hombre to be watched and reckoned with.

Sprague raised his glass. “ ‘May no son of the ocean ever be devoured by his own mother,’ as the Limey sailors say.” The man drained his glass and Tone followed suit.

Sprague replenished their bourbon, then said, “How old were you when you killed your first man, Mr. Tone?”

“Seventeen. It was back in the old country.” Tone believed what was left of his brogue identified the country he was talking about.

“And how many since?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never counted them.”

“Including the three men you killed earlier tonight, I make it an even score.”

Tone shrugged. “Some men need killing.”

Sprague nodded, then said, “Come over and sit at the desk.”

Tone did as he was told and Sprague opened a drawer and laid six separate bundles of bills on the desk in front of him. He added a seventh, considerably thicker than the rest. Tone was aware of Penman struggling to his feet. Pale and sick, he stood behind his client.