“Come out of there, or I’ll shoot!”
The lid opened. A red, raw face showed, at each side of which was an outstanding red ear, like a sail. Frosty blue eyes stared into Benson’s deadly gray ones.
“MacMurdie!”
“I’d have got the skurlie with a boat hook, if you hadn’t nabbed him,” MacMurdie said calmly enough.
“Mac! How—”
“I saw the man come in this boat, from behind the crates. I saw him go into the general store, and twigged he was Murdock. So I changed our plans, I hid in the locker, thinkin’ the boat would bear me to where we want to go, and that later I could get back and lead ye to it. But it seems ye came along, too.”
Already circumstances had proved what a rare man this red-faced, bony-fisted Scot with the enormous feet was. This capped it.
Benson’s hand touched the bony shoulder for an instant.
“Thanks,” he said. Then, voice expressionless again as his dead, white face: “But the plan has misfired. We didn’t find where the hideout is—”
“I’m thinkin’ we did,” MacMurdie interrupted. He went back to the locker in which he’d hidden, bent down, and came up with a dirty, water-stained piece of paper.
“It seems more than one mon runs this boat. So for the convenience of those who might not know the lake around here to the last detail, some laddie among the gang we’re after drew a neat little chart. And here it is. I found it when I jumped into that fish-smelling coffin.”
Benson spread it out. Rough pencil lines showed an island with a curiously shaped tree on a high point. The tree was low on one side and high on the other. It resembled a gigantic setting hen.
In a line from the east to the tree, the shore was indicated as a straight low cliff. And in the cliff was a black circle, arching from the water.
“A hole in the cliff!” said Benson, pale eyes blazing. “That’s their dock!”
MacMurdie nodded. The meaning was plain.
“And that’s our island dead ahead,” added Benson.
Even from that distance the two could see the tree resembling a setting hen.
Benson slid the clutch, and the motor started bearing the motor cruiser toward the island.
“Mon, mon!” expostulated MacMurdie. “ ’Tis broad daylight. We haven’t a chance of landing on that island, with no guessin’ how many of the murderous rats waiting to greet us. We ought to wait till night—”
“We go now,” said Benson. There was death in the pale eyes. “My… wife and daughter… may be on that island, Mac. And every passing hour might make it too late.”
“But the minute one of the skurlies sees us, the game is over,” said MacMurdie earnestly.
“I think not,” said Benson. “Bring Murdock into the light.”
Benson dug around and found a half of a cracked mirror. He propped Murdock on the floor, back against the wall, and sat beside the still-unconscious man. Mac held the mirror so that both faces, side by side, were reflected for comparison.
Man of a thousand facesl That was what Benson had become with the shock that killed the flesh of his countenance. Till now, he had used this odd phenomenon only incidentally. Now he utilized it to the full. And the result was something like magic. Anyhow, it left MacMurdie mumbling under his breath.
Murdock had a flat face. Benson massaged his own cheeks and forehead till some of that flat look was attained. It was mainly illusion, for the bony structure under the plastic flesh was unchangeable. But the illusion was startling, artistically good.
Murdock had high cheekbones. Benson massaged the flesh of his face up and forward a little. The flesh stayed where it was left — and he had high cheekbones.
Murdock had a faint cleft in his chin. Benson pressed the tip of his thumb against the gruesomely plastic flesh at the tip of his jaw — and a small cleft appeared.
When the miracle was done, Benson’s face resembled Murdock’s as a blurred carbon copy resembles an original letter. With the two faces side by side in the mirror there was, of course, no question of telling which was which. But separate the two, and the resemblance would hold!
“Mon, ye ought to go on the stage!”
Benson didn’t answer. He stripped the ancient pants and sweater from Murdock’s unconscious body and donned them. They were too big for him.
“Your height and your eyes,” said MacMurdie, “are what will give ye away.”
Murdock’s eyes were muddy brown. Benson narrowed his pale-gray eyes sleepily, to minimize the difference. Later, in a life destined to be perilous and active as the lives of few men ever are, he would have a dozen pairs of shell-thin eyeball glasses, with different-colored pupils, to slip over the telltale gray flames in his dead face. But he had no such thing now.
Later, he would have dozens of pairs of shoes, with varying thickness of soles or with no soles at all, to change his height. But he could only bear himself on tiptoe, now, to reach some of Murdock’s slouching stature.
“All we want is to land,” Benson said. “This ought to get us ashore. After that—”
He went aft, to the cockpit controls, and slipped the hook from the wheel. The boat, held on its course by the hook, was very near the island.
“Inside, Mac.”
MacMurdie hid in the cabin, beside Murdock’s still form. Benson sent the boat straight at the low cliff.
There was no hole in sight!
Benson’s pale eyes widened a little. There had to be a hole there! The chart showed it. Meanwhile, he didn’t dare slacken speed or show uncertainty. It might be noted from the shore and arouse suspicion.
It wasn’t until the prow of the fast boat was within fifty yards of the cliff that a rocky knob just off-shore was passed enough to reveal the water-edge cavern. Benson breathed a sigh and sent the boat into it at reduced speed.
Not far back in there was a roughly leveled rock ledge. There was a mooring ring in it. Benson brought the boat to a stop and moored it. There was a sound of steps.
He looked around and saw a crude stairway, cut in the rock, leading up. A man appeared at the foot of these, a bald-headed, paunchy fellow with a gash for a mouth.
“Took your time, didn’t you, Murdock?” snarled the man. “You know we want that insulin fast. And the other supplies.”
In the cabin, MacMurdie literally held his breath. Benson calmly straightened up from the mooring ring, and took a step toward the paunchy man.
The man stared pugnaciously at the flat face with the high cheekbones and the cleft chin. The face of Murdock.
“Farr wants to see you right away. He wants to work on Vincent some more, and you’re the boy for that, with your little tricks—” The man stopped, then stared, slack-jawed.
“Hey! You’re not Murdock—”
Size and eye color had given Benson away. But not till the resemblance had let him get near the man — which was all Benson had asked it to do.
Benson leaped. The man crashed back against the rock cave wall, with hands like a steel vice at his throat. He tore and twisted and turned, and could not break the pressure.
MacMurdie came from the cabin. Benson’s eyes held a reflection of Alicia and little Alice, victims of this man among others. The flaming pale orbs also, for an instant, held madness.
But before the purpling unconsciousness of the man could pass into the blackness of death, Benson forced his eager hands to relax their grip.
He laid the man down, and MacMurdie, with rope from the boat’s locker and swabs of waste from the same source, bound and gagged him and the still-unconscious Murdock.
Then the two went up the rock stairs.
The stone steps ended in a clump of bushes cleverly concealing them from any chance walker on the ground.
They peered from the bushes at an old house a hundred yards away.