So, with all their money — in most cases their life savings — invested in the common kitty, the would-be Argonauts lived on canned beans and waited for the great day. Captain Wanderwell was a natural-born leader, imbuing them with confidence, a brave and dashing figure — while he lasted.
Only recently, within the last year, he had led a similar group of starry-eyed explorers north from Buenos Aires through some of the most impassable jungles of South America, travelling by means of two specially-built, high-slung Ford trucks and stopping now and then to shoot movie film footage starring crocodiles, head-hunters, and of course the beautiful Aloha. She had shown herself in the film, of which more later, to be a crack shot with rifle or pistol, a real Amazon on the Amazon.
That particular expedition, as I have said, had wound up somewhat short of its announced goal of Beverly Hills, California, due to the fact that no motor cars had yet been built which could travel through those parts of South America where roads didn’t exist. Wanderwell and Aloha and their seventeen aides had finally worked their way to the Ecuador coast; they had taken passage on various tramp steamers and by the time they reached the Canal Zone had lost several people by the wayside and had also had a sort of mild mutiny among their staff. The trip had been a considerable disappointment and disillusionment to the members of the crew — the girls who had been promised roles in the picture found themselves fighting mosquitoes and snakes and doing chores around the camp or carrying lights and cameras for the photography which centered on Aloha and of course on Wanderwell himself.
The group broke up completely at Colon, and there a number of lawsuits against the Wanderwells were immediately instituted by members of the party. But the Captain and his fair bride managed to sail for Los Angeles before the suits came to trial. So now — after a few months of much-needed rest — Wanderwell was ready to take off again. His new volunteer crew had been recruited through advertisements in newspapers and magazines and literary weeklies by offering any footloose adventurer the opportunity of having his or her investment (which might range from $400 to $2,000 apiece) repaid tenfold from the profits of the new voyage — profits from the sale of the adventure movies they expected to make, from picture postcards, from curios and strange shells to be collected — and also possibly from the discovery of millions in buried treasure in case they happened to put in at the fabled Cocos Island or any other historic pirate hangout.
It may seem to contemporary skeptics that the investors were making a rather poor gamble. But it must be remembered that in that sad year 1932 the nation was gripped tight in depression, with no jobs anywhere for anybody; strong, able men with college degrees were selling apples on street corners and it was a time when many young, imaginative persons yearned for any kind of escape from the hopeless doldrums of ordinary existence. Somewhere else — anywhere else! — was the cry.
The fifteen who had signed on as the volunteer, amateur crew of the Carma did not know that the ship had already been condemned as unseaworthy, that an experienced marine engineer and carpenter had both quit in disgust after a couple of days aboard, and that the aged vessel had taken two days to make a run of a few nautical miles from San Pedro to Long Beach, during which both of her auxiliaries had broken down completely and the moldering queen of the seas finally was ignominiously towed to her new berth.
Here the Argonauts awaited her, ready to take off for anywhere. So, fifteen youths and maidens plus the Wanderwell family of four crowded aboard the cranky old Carma which boasted only three cabins furnished with six double bunks and a few sofas. On the night when the fantastic comedy-tragedy really got under way, not all were aboard. The majority of the crew were out enjoying the dubious pleasures afforded by the Long Beach waterfront at the time — movies and speakeasies — and the fair Aloha had gone up to Los Angeles to visit her sister. The Captain was alone in his cabin aft; the remaining members of the crew were crowded in a cabin, amusing themselves after their wont, presumably listening to an accordion on which one of the boys had some facility and probably trying to harmonize the popular songs of the day — “Moonlight Bay” and “I’d Love to Call You My Sweetheart” and “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby...”. Or else they were taking turns reading aloud — Jurgen, perhaps, or the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. There was certainly a jug of dago red nearby, or a few bottles of home brew.
But it was testified later that at least two of the crew saw a face suddenly appear at one open porthole, and heard a husky “Germanic” voice ask for Wanderwell. The visitor was directed to the other cabin — some said he was even guided there by one of the boys, but there is considerable conflict in the testimony about this point. Some of the gay young people in the cabin claimed not to have heard or seen anybody. Yet a while later — either a few minutes or an hour or so, you can take your pick — there was the sound of a shot.
The little group of intrepid adventurers investigated, and found Captain Walter Wanderwell kneeling against a sofa in his cabin in utter darkness. He was dying, having been shot through the back of the neck, the bullet ranging downward and through his heart. Rushing out on the deck, they saw no sign of anybody — the fog had settled over them... where it was to remain.
After some delay, the situation was reported by telephone to the Long Beach police, who proceeded to take charge after their fashion — a fashion which we sincerely hope has changed with the years. It is understandable now why the local authorities found themselves somewhat out of their depth in dealing with a murder case of this type but even so, the investigation could well go down in history as a horrible example.
The boys from Long Beach headquarters had a fresh corpse on their hands, and immediately ruled out suicide since there was no gun around and since it was unlikely even to them that a man could shoot himself in the back at a range of four feet or more. Then the officers remembered about the paraffin test (since officially discarded by crime investigators as useless and confusing) and spent most of the rest of the night giving it to everyone aboard, with negative results everywhere. All got a clean bill of health, including Aloha Wanderwell herself who had been brought back from her sister’s apartment on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood (about twenty minutes away by auto, or half an hour by street car or bus).
By next morning the Los Angeles police were in on the case after their fashion — aided and abetted by Carlton Williams, brilliant police reporter for the Los Angeles Times. It was immediately clear to all parties concerned that some old enemy of the Captain had done him in. According to police records, there was only one old enemy — a former member of his group, who had been jettisoned midway on the auto-boat jaunt upward through South America, and who later had the temerity to come to Los Angeles and ask for his money back, finally even appealing to the juvenile authorities and to the bunco squad at headquarters. This man’s description was printed in the Times — Carl Williams’s paper — and picked up by the other Los Angeles dailies, though for some reason his name was carefully withheld. And he was put on the police “Wanted” docket.