Read Online Aground by Charles Williams; Franklin W. Dixon - Free Book Online

almost at once. What appeared to be scores of long wooden cases were piled high on both sides of the cabin and in two of the four bunks, held in place by a criss-cross network of rope lashings. But it was one of the other bunks, the one on the port side forward, that riveted his attention and caused him to mutter a startled oath as he hurried down the last two steps. In it was the body of a slender, dark-haired man in khaki trousers, lying face down with one arm dangling over the side. He crossed to the bunk with three long strides and reached down to touch his arm, expecting to find it rigid. It was warm, and yielded to his hand, and in the brief fraction of a second in which this registered in his mind and the man began to turn on his side he heard Mrs. Osborne scream, “Look out!” and he turned himself. In back of him, leaning against the companion ladder behind which he’d apparently been hiding, was a hairy and half-naked giant cradling a Browning Automatic Rifle in the crook of his arm. He looked like a wartime atrocity poster. “Welcome aboard, Herman,” he said. “We’re glad to see you.

5
    The immobility of shock was gone then. “Get off!” Ingram shouted. He could see nothing of Mrs. Osborne except one slender hand grasping the top of the ladder railing, but knew she was looking down right on top of the man. The latter swung the muzzle of the BAR up through the hatch, and said, “Come on down, baby. That plane’s a mile away. He can’t hear you.”
    Ingram was already pushing off the bunk to lunge at him when he realized what he was doing and caught himself. Crashing into him with that BAR pointed up at her could cut her in two. At the same moment something pressed into his back just below his shoulder blades, and the man behind him said, “Relax.”
    Rae Osborne came down the ladder. The big man jerked his head toward the other bunk, opposite Ingram. “Sit down,” he ordered. “You too, Herman.”
    Ingram stepped across and sat down beside her, silently cursing himself for an idiot. But how could he have known? There’d been no footprints in the dew up there. Apparently the big man guessed his thoughts, for he grinned. “We had a hunch you might be back early if you came by plane, so we stayed off the deck.”
    “All right, all right! What do you want?”
    “Just a little help.” He turned to Rae Osborne. “You’d be the owner, right?”
    “I was under that impression,” she said.
    “And you brought Herman out here to see about getting this scow off the mud?”
    “What business is it of yours?”
    “Just checking, baby. I think we can use him.”
    She stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
    “Experts. We’re fresh out.” He cradled the BAR in one mammoth arm, and reached over to the shelf on the port bulkhead where the radiotelephone was installed. He switched on the receiver. He picked up a pack of cigarettes and shook one out, popped a large kitchen match with his thumbnail, and inhaled. He was one of the biggest men Ingram had ever seen, and he seemed to radiate an almost tangible aura of violence. Not evil, particularly—just violence. He had, in fact, an almost likable face, rugged and not unpleasantly ugly, spattered with the brown freckles and peeling sunburn of the heliophobe, and stamped with the casual recklessness of the utterly self-confident. His pale red hair was largely gone on top, showing a freckled expanse of scalp, though he was obviously not much over thirty. He wore nothing except unlaced shoes and a pair of khaki trousers hacked off at the knees.
    The other man had rolled off the bunk and was standing near the foot of it with his back against the wall of boxes. He appeared to be in his early forties, and had a slender Latin face and grave brown eyes. He had shoved the Colt .45 automatic into the waistband of his trousers as if he were only a spectator. It was the big one who completely dominated the scene.
    Rae Osborne looked around. “Where is the