Read Online Return to Skull Island by Ron Miller, Darrell Funk - Free Book Online Page A

eventually, have no fear. We have to be out of here before that happens.”
    I told her I’d try to be back within the hour and went out in search of a cab, which was mighty hard to find as I should have figured. Twenty minutes of my hour were wasted before I found myself standing in front of number thirty-two Kwang-an Road. I rang the bell and waited.
    I counted off two and a half more minutes before a little peephole popped open and a beady eye glared out at me.
    “Holy damn! It’s Carl Denham!”
    There was the sound of heavy bolts being unlatched and the door swung open. A medium-sized, well-built man stood in the opening, hands on his hips. He was as handsome as a movie star, right down to his Clark Gable moustache and square, cleft chin.
    “Well, I’ll be damned! If it ain’t Carl Denham! What the hell’re you doing in Shanghai, of all the godforsaken places in the world?”
    “Well, Frank, it’s kind of a long story.”
    “Well, come on in—it’s a lot safer talking behind doors nowadays.”
    He shut the heavy panel behind me and shot home what must have been half a dozen heavy bolts.
    “Say,” he said, “come on upstairs and we’ll catch up over a couple a cold drinks.”
    I told him that sounded swell and followed him up a dark flight. The whole place was dark, with all the windows boarded up, so the room that Frank led me into seemed dazzling even though there was only the single electric floor lamp providing any light.
    “That sure was something,” Frank said, getting glasses and a bottle from a cabinet, “that big monkey of yours. Boy oh boy, what I wouldn’t’ve given to have been in on that!”
    “You’re lucky you weren’t, Frank. Thanks,” I said, taking the drink he offered me. A good, stiff one, I was glad to see. “It’s been nothing but a big headache, I can tell you. I’m on the run now, with Tom Dewey’s boys on my heels.”
    “Dewey, huh? He’s a pretty tough cookie, I hear.”
    “You’re telling me. But what’re you still doing in Shanghai, Frank? I’d think it’d be pretty hot for foreigners right now.”
    “Aw, the Japs are all right, I guess. They don’t want to get any of the European powers involved in this fracas of theirs.”
    “Yeah, but it must be kind of tough for your line of work.”
    “You mean the animals? Well, I tell you—it ain’t exactly lions and tigers I been dealing in lately.”
    “No?”
    “No. I mean, on the face of it, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing, shipping out monkeys and whatnot to zoos and circuses, but that’s just a front, you know? What I’ve been doing is running arms into China. They’re hot to get the Japs outta their territory and’ll pay just about anything for guns and ammo, whatever they can get their hands on.”
    “Say, Frank, who’s your pal?”
    This last was from a voice in the doorway. I turned and saw a tall, rangy-looking fellow wearing a khaki outfit. He looked like a surveyor or an engineer or something, with his round ranger’s hat, jodhpurs and canvas puttees. He had a friendly, open, cowboy’s face that reminded me somewhat of Lindbergh’s, but the twinkle in his eyes was more predatory than schoolboyish.
    “Hey!” cried Frank, leaping to take the stranger’s hand. “Glad you’re here, Roy. Got a swell ol’ pal here I’d like you to meet. Roy, this is my old pal Carl Denham, the movie man you must’ve heard of. Carl, this is Roy Andrews.”
    “Glad to meet you, Roy,” I said, extending my hand. His grip nearly squeezed the juice out of it.
    “Roy’s just back from Mongolia.”
    “Mongolia?”
    “Yeah,” said Andrews. “Say, that there’s some mighty fine lookin’ likker you got there, Frank.” He talked just like that. Like Tom Mix. I got the distinct feeling, though, that it didn’t come naturally to him. He was putting on a show of good old boy toughness that that was as phony and obvious as a Mardi Gras mask.
    Buck told him to help himself as Andrews was in the