altogether, but he’s not about now. I saw him shot. It was in a dust-up at San Leandro.”

6

“Have you seen the papers this morning?” asked Abrahams.

“Nope.”

“Well, Vanderdecken, or Amsterdam Joe, or whatever you call him, has held up the Satanita as she was coming up from Avalon. She’s no two cent yacht, she’s all of eight hundred tons. He went through her and skipped with ten thousand dollars’ worth of stuff.”

“Give us the yarn,” said Hank.

“Oh, it was as easy as pie. Connart was coming up in the Satanita—got his wife with him too—and somewhere off St. Luis Obispo they sighted a yawl. She wasn’t more than forty or fifty tons and was lying hove to with her flag half masted. They stopped the engines, like fools,7 and the yawl sent a boat on board. Two fellows came over the side. One fellow put an automatic pistol to Connart’s head and the other man with another automatic covered the officer on the bridge. There was nothing on board the Satanita but a deck gun and a nickel plated revolver, so she was helpless. Then two more fellows came on board from the boat and went through her. They smashed up the wireless first. Then they skipped and that old broken-down looking yawl went off to the south under an auxiliary engine.”

7

“And why the blazes didn’t they chase and ram her?” asked Hank.

“Couldn’t. The rudder was jammed. The fellows in the boat had done some tinkering work to it. It took them two days to get it right, and they can’t even give a full description of the men, for they wore caps with slits in them. Pulled the caps over their faces as they came aboard and looked through the slits.”

“I expect the Navy will take it in hand,” said George du Cane. “A couple of destroyers will soon run them down wherever they are hidden.”

Hank Fisher laughed. “You might as well go hunting for an honest man in Market Street with a couple of rat terriers,” said Hank. “First, you wouldn’t find him, second he wouldn’t be a rat. Why, that auxiliary yawl is either at the bottom by now, or converted into something else—and the guys on board her, do you think they’re traveling about the Pacific with their slit caps over their8 faces waiting for a destroyer to fetch them home? What did you say the reward was—twenty-five thousand? You wait one minute.”

 Prev. P 7/172 next