Part 1 (1/2)

THE FRECKLED SHARK.

A Doc Savage Adventure.

by Kenneth Robeson.

Chapter I. THE TOUGH LUCK OF JEP DEE.

MATEc.u.mBE is one of the largest of the string of islands extending south from the tip of Florida and called the Florida Keys.

Jep Dee came to Matec.u.mbe. He stayed two weeks and nothing out of the ordinary happened, except that he did a lot of crawdadding-every day, once in the morning and once in the evening, Jep Dee went hunting crawfish.

That is, he pretended to go for crawfish.

The Caribbean lobster-called crawfish-really looks much like a crawdad from a Missouri creek, although it is served in restaurants and cafeterias and called ”Florida lobster”; and there are recorded instances where these tropical lobsters have weighed fifteen pounds, which is fully as large as the regular Northern lobster. But it is always called by the natives, crawfish. Properly cooked, the tropical lobster, or crawfish, makes a very savory, succulent and appetizing viand.

True, Jep Dee never ate any of the crawfish he caught.

As a matter of fact-but that was a secret-he never caught any crawfish. He bought them from an old cracker who lived on a nearby island. The old cracker made a living, such as it was, by crawfis.h.i.+ng for the market Jep Dee never made any effort to catch a crawfish.He did tell a lot of lies about how he caught them. He would tell how he reached into coral holes and under ledges in the daytime and pulled the big ones out.

He told how he sculled his boat over the reefs at night with a gasoline lantern burning in the bow, until the eyes of the crawfish gleamed like the eyes of cats in automobile headlights along a road at night, after which he gigged them with a little three-tined spear. He was a liar. All he ever gigged was his leg, by accident, one night.

Jep Dee had a nose and fists that looked as if they'd had accidents in the past. He had a mouth that never said much; it had thin lips. Suns had burned him. Sea brine had turned his hide to leather. He was about a foot shorter than an average man, also a foot wider.

One night Jep Dee got drunk and said he could whip his weight in wild cats. There were no wild cats available, but he did very well with four tough crackers and three big yacht sailors who got tired of his chest-beating and tied into him.

They still talk about that fight on Matec.u.mbe; it's the main topic of conversation. The main topic used to be the big hurricane of 1934.

Jep Dee paid fourteen dollars and ninety-five cents for the boat-twelve feet long, cypress-planked, rusty iron centerboard, two oars, a ragged, dirty sail-in which he went ”crawfis.h.i.+ng.”

He came to Matec.u.mbe, and every day for two weeks he went out and came back and said he had been crawdadding, until finally he found what he was looking for.

Jep Dee went out on one of his usual nightly crawdad hunts, and found what he sought, and never came back.

A COLLEGE boy in a yawl was the next person to see Jep Dee. This was weeks later.

At first, the college boy thought he was seeing a wad of drifted seaweed lying on a beach, and his second opinion was that it must be a log. Fortunately, he put the yawl tiller over and went in to look.

The college boy was sailing down to Dry Tortugas to see the flock of flamingos, birds that are getting about as scarce as buffaloes. He was on vacation. He was just pa.s.sing a tiny coral island about sixty miles from Key West, Florida.

The island had no vegetation-it was almost as naked as Jep Dee.

Jep Dee could not talk enough to give his name. So he became, in the newspapers, ”an unidentified man.”

The only thing Jep Dee wore was a rope about four feet long and an inch thick. It was tied to his neck. Not with a hangman's knot, however. From head to foot he was a ma.s.s of blisters and sores, the result of exposure to terrific tropical sun and salt water, and the fact that the crabs had not waited until he was dead before starting to eat him.

He had no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no finger nails. These items had been plucked off.

Also, Jep Dee seemed to be insane.

He had just enough strength to kick the college boy in the face; and while the astonished young alumnus sprawled on his back, Jep Dee got up and ran. His sense of direction was bad, and he dashed into the sea, where he floundered until the college boy caught him.

They had quite a fight. Jep Dee had no strength, but he knew all the evil tricks of brawl fighters, many of which didn't require much power.

Jep Dee did much yelling during the struggle. Most of it was incoherent, but now and then a phrase was understandable. Once he screeched: ”d.a.m.n you, Horst! You go back to the island and tell Senor Steel-”

Just what he wanted a man named Horst to tell one named Senor Steel was unintelligible. The fight went on, in water about waist-deep. Once more, Jep Dee spoke understandable words.

”I've seen men being tortured to death before,” he screamed, ”but the way these-”

He did not finish that sentence, either.

The college boy got him overpowered, rolled him into the dinghy and rowed out to the yawl and spread him under thec.o.c.kpit awning. Jep Dee lay limp and sucked in breath, making weak whistling sounds. It seemed remarkable that he should be alive.

”Hey, fellow,” the college boy said, ”you have had some tough luck, haven't you? How are your eyes? Can you see me?”

As the doctor explained, later, Jep Dee couldn't see anything. He was temporarily blinded.

”Who is this Horst?” the college boy asked. ”And who is Senor Steel?”

No answer.

”What about men being tortured to death?” inquired the young man. ”What did you mean by that?”

Jep Dee went on breathing with whistles.

”You're pretty far gone, old boy,” the college boy said kindly. ”I'll untie that rope from your neck, and you'll feel better.”

The college boy took hold of the rope, and Jep Dee began to fight again. He fought with a whimpering desperation, wildly and unceasingly, as long as the other made any attempt to get the rope loose.

Jep Dee wanted to keep that rope around his neck more than he wanted to keep alive.

THE yawl sailed into Key West, and they put Jep Dee in a hospital that stood in a nice part of town in a grove of palm trees.

”Exposure,” the doctors said. But this was before they looked more closely at Jep Dee. After a better examination, they stared at each other in bewilderment.

”Hair, eyebrows and eyelashes have been-pulled out,” one doctor said.

”And fingernails plucked off,” another stated.

”Take the rope off him,” said the head doctor.

So Jep Dee began to fight again. He struck at them, and although his eyes were swollen shut, so that he couldn't see, his hands managed to find a tray of medicines; and he threw bottles at the spots where he imagined doctors would be until he grew so weak that his most furious heaves barely got the bottles over the edge of the hospital bed.