Color Him Dead by Charles Runyon Read Free Book Online Page B

damp from perspiration. He saw Doxie standing self-importantly beside the helmsman, his tight riding pants misshapen by the bulge of his armament.
    “Twa!”
shouted the crewman, then,
“Doo!”
    The engine whined a higher key as it slid into reverse. An anchor chain rattled, then splashed. The little dinghy creaked down from its davits and rocked in the water. Doxie strode across the deck, paused for a quick look at the shack, then descended the ladder to the dinghy.
    Eh eh, trouble comin',
thought Drew, then smiled because the words could have been Leta’s.
    As quickly as he could, he carried out the boxes Leta had packed, then stowed them in the grass thirty yards up the slope from the shack. He squatted beside them and peered through the screening grass.
    Doxie landed on the white beach, climbed over the groins which extended from the terrace to the sea, and walked beneath the gray, somber manchineels which ruled the black sand beach below the shack. He turned right at the big banyan and strode up the slope. He kicked open the door of the shack and entered. A minute later he stepped out with deep disappointment inscribed on his face. Damn, thought Drew, the man wanted a fight. He watched Doxie return to the yacht, and thought to himself: Now Edith will come out of her hole.
    But instead of Edith came two dinghy-loads of black men and women with kerchiefs on their heads. They attacked the house like a troop of commandos, scrubbing, sweeping, dusting, and polishing, while the dinghy shuttled back and forth with trunks, suitcases and crates. The tide rose, the current changed, and the
Edie III
swung out of sight behind the big house. Drew thought of moving to a new vantage point, then decided against it. He’d waited ten years to see Edith alone; a few more hours would make little difference.
    It was four in the afternoon when the purr of the dinghy stirred him from a sweaty doze. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear it whining around the northern tip of the island. He hobbled quickly over the ridge and saw the dinghy approaching a clump of gray rocks about a half-mile out. He glimpsed a green scarf blowing in the wind, a white arm holding the tiller, then the dinghy disappeared behind a large hump-backed rock which looked like a beached whale. In it was a woman, alone.
    But was it Edith? There was only one way to be sure. From his suitcase he took the skin-diving gear which Leta had gotten from a Frenchman in exchange for a week of love. He returned to the shack, stuck his hand into the hole in the wall, and retrieved a flat, canvas-wrapped package from among the tangled wiring. He dropped it into a plastic bag he found in the kitchen, then added a layer of oilcloth from the washstand. He tied it around his waist and dropped it down the front of his Levis. He left the shack and followed the path down the steep northern slope of the island, twisting through rubbled fortifications left by the defeated French. Emerging on a pebble beach, he left his crutch above the high-water line and weighted it with rocks. He crawled to the edge of the water, pulled the swimfin onto his right foot, fixed the mask and snorkel in place, and slid into the water.
    Whale Rock was joined to Barrington’s Isle by an underwater ridge fifteen feet beneath the surface. Drew swam above the ridge, fighting the current which threatened to pull him out to sea. Below him the ridge lay clothed in coral grown in the shape of fans, stubby trees, and human brains laid bare by surgery. Black sea eggs clustered in the sheltered crevices and gently waved their poison spines. Zebra fish flitted through the branch coral; a hundred-pound stingray rippled its wings and glided along the bottom. On each side of the ridge the sea dropped into deep purple depths. He seemed to be floating in space above a strange twilight forest where everything glided and waved and rippled, a slow-motion world which made him feel lithe and powerful. In the water he was a better