The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ colossus, be caught in agony for the world’s delectation.

      “Are you the diver?” he asked, in a perfectly flat voice that seemed to be the voice of some queer mechanism.

      “Yes, sir.”

      “How soon can you get to work? It’s very important.”

      “Right off.”

      “And how long—”

      “Well, as I was just tellin’ the doctor, it all depends. It’s all accordin’ to depths and currents, and the like o’ that.”

      “Of course. But you’ll do your best—your quickest! I’m not appealing to you for my own sake. It’s his mother. She—she’s—”

      “Sure, I know, mister! Reckon I know what a mother thinks of her son. I’d oughta!”

      “You have a son, too?”

      “Yeah. Just one. And he’s—but never mind. I’ll do what I can. Can’t promise nothin’, o’ course. It’s that uncertain, divin’ is. But whatever I can do I will!”

      The millionaire’s thin hand went out. The diver’s massive one enfolded it.

      “Reckon I oughta know what an only son means!” repeated Spur­ling. “And you can count on me, mister, for all I’m worth!”

      Under the watchful eyes of the crowd now constantly growing, and the bitter, hostile gaze of the truckman, Spurling and McTaggart unloaded their equipment from the wharf onto the waiting raft. Doctor Olivier meantime sent for a rope and a ladder, weighted as the diver had specified.

      Presently Spurling, McTaggart, and the doctor got aboard the raft. With them they took three reliable workmen to help with the air pump and to do other work. The pump and diving gear, when laboriously lowered by ropes to the raft, fascinated the spectators now lining the string-piece. The atmosphere fairly vibrated with electric tensions of excitement. Never had Crystal Lake known so thrilling a day as this.

      Presently the motorboat towed the float out to the raft whence young Eccles had taken his fatal plunge. Spurling had the float an­chored there with long ropes lashed to heavy grate bars.

      The drowned boy’s father drove away. Silent and hollow-eyed, he went back to his stricken wife. It lay not in human nature for him to stay there on that wharf, waiting for those deep and cold waters to give up the dead.

      But it lay very much in human nature for townsfolk and gentlemen of the press to snatch all the boats available, and hover around the scene. A couple of newsreel scouts set up a movie camera in a boat and began grinding out footage.

      “Now then,” Spurling directed McTaggart, “let’s get busy and unpack. We got to test the pump. Sixty, seventy foot; that’s quite a dive!”

      “Think you’ll locate the body close by here?” queried the doctor.

      “Search me! Might be ’most anywhere, by now. Might even o’ drifted out the lake, down the outlet—no tellin’. We got to keep tryin’, movin’ round till we locate it.”

      “When is it likely to rise?” cut in a reporter, from a boat that had edged near.

      “Can’t say,” the diver answered. “In this here cold water tain’t likely to rise, at all. And, by the way, you get out o’ there! Think I want to get all balled up with a bunch o’ butters-in? Scram!”

      He turned to help McTaggart bolt the heavy iron flywheels and handles to the pump shaft, to test the compression on the air gauges, then to unpack the diving suit.

      The workmen were meantime lashing the weighted ladder to the edge of the float. A quarter of it rose in air; the rest hung down into the pale-green waters, so cold, so deadly.

      *****

      Unpacked, the diving suit sprawled on the float, with oddly turned-in feet, with loose arms tipped by rubber wrists. The suit looked like a fantastic burlesque of a body, a bizarre mockery of humanity.

      Then, Spurling laid out the massive metal breastplate and the goggly-eyed helmet, its windows crisscrossed by thick bars. His brain seemed humming, as he worked. Five grand! Five thousand smackers! And Bill with the T.B.! And far below, a dead boy’s body—the body of an only son—and somewhere, a mother going mad and dying.

      “Hell, I got to buck up!”

      Spurling bucked up. He forced himself to unroll and to examine the black rubber hose whereon his very life was to depend. Painstakingly he inspected the lifeline, and connected hose to pump, making sure all joints were tight and absolutely perfect.

      His mind seemed blurred and queerly confused, but his hands were deft as he oiled the helmet valves. Sitting down on the float he took off his worn shoes, tucked his trousers into his socks, soaped his hands, then struggled into the heavy suit.

      Around Tim’s neck McTaggart now laced the apron. Tim Spur­ling had already lost much of his human semblance, had assumed the guise of some extraordinary monster. He lubricated his soaped hands with water, then drew on the rubber bands that were to keep his arms dry.

      “All right, the breastplate!” he directed, while reporting went on apace, and townsfolk thrilled. Even Doctor Olivier forgot to feel professional sympathy for the bereaved millionaire and his wife, in the interest of watching this singular procedure of a diver preparing for his work.

      Rare sensation, this; a diver descending into fashionable Crystal Lake, for the body of a magnate’s only son!

      “Gimme a drag, Mac,” ordered Spurling. “I gotta have a drag before I go down!”

      Mac lighted a cigarette for him. Puffing deep lungfuls of smoke, Spurling stood up and let his helper fit the breastplate studs into the rubber collar of the dress. McTaggart made the plate fast. Faint tinks of metal sounded, blending with a quiet lap-lap-lap of water round the float. At a little distance, conversation buzzed, speculation passed from boat to boat. Now or then more cars arrived at the wharf. More, ever more curiosity-seekers gathered there.

      Bright sun, cheerful sky, and dazzling clouds all made it gay, all of them mocked the mystery of human grief.

      “Now, them shoes!” Spurling commanded.

      His helper drew on the heavy rubber shoes, buckled them over the clumsy feet of the diving suit.

      “Weights, Mac.”

      “Goin’ to use the foot weights, too?”

      “Nope. I’ll chance it without ’em. Can get round better with just the belt.”

      *****

      McTAGGART FITTED ON the leather belt, sagging with more than eighty pounds of leaden pigs. He fastened the buckles that, in case of accident, Spurling could unsnap in a jiffy for quick ascent. Then he tied the lifeline under his chief’s arms and secured it to the breastplate stud. After screwing the air hose firmly to the plate, he led it under Spurling’s left arm and fastened it in front.

      “Ready for the helmet, now?”

      “Yep!” СКАЧАТЬ