“Making off to pick up another cargo, I reckon,” Jack ventured. “And so this is where our friend has his secret hideout at such times when he so mysteriously disappears from his big show place near Miami? Mighty interesting, I’d call it and the chances are he’s been keeping up this double play racket for many months, perhaps even for years, for he came to Florida not long after the war, fishing for tarpon down around the Ten Thousand Islands where we lay concealed lately.”
“But what’s the big idea, partner?” Perk wanted to know–“why under the sun does he play both ends o’ this queer game–what’s the sense o’ his havin’ this wee shack in the wilderness when he could carry on his racket just as well on the eastern shore?”
“Just because he fancies the idea of keeping his two personalities as far apart as possible, Perk. Uncle Sam’s Coast Guards, revenue officers and even Secret Service men fairly swarm around Miami most of the year so they’d be apt to make it more or less unpleasant for the elegant Oswald Kearns in his society functions if he had his pals dodging in and out of his princely palace. He prefers to drop over here in this desolate place instead when he has a lot of business to transact. He’s a wonder, all right, in his double line, Perk, and not to be underrated, understand.”
“Seems that way, partner,” grumbled the other quickly adding, “there goes the Lockheed-Vega spinnin’ out o’ the lagoon to the open lake so’s to get up enough speed for the take-off. Must be somethin’ mighty special to coax that pilot to risk bein’ seen in open daylight. So he used to fish in them passages ’tween the mangrove islands years ago, did he, Jack?”
“Sure did, and they told me his guide some years ago down there used to be a notorious smuggler and gulf-stream pirate, no other than Jim Alderman, right now in the jug over at Fort Lauderdale on the eastern shore and waiting to get a hempen collar for murdering three law officers in August two years back. Of course, he hadn’t started his real career of crime when he used to be a guide for Roosevelt, Zane Grey, the writer, and some other famous sportsmen.”
“Do tell,” murmured Perk, duly thrilled by what his pal was telling him concerning one of the most turbulent characters known along the Florida coasts since those days of old when buccaneers like Blackbeard, Gasparilla and others of their ilk roamed the subtropical waters and swarmed aboard such unfortunate Spanish galleons as chance threw their way.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Jack went on to whisper, “if he goes under quite another name while over in this hideout and even manages to alter his looks more or less. He’s capable of playing many parts if he’s half as good an actor as I suspect. But we’ll be apt to know a heap more before a great while slips by.”
“There he goes, Jack, swingin’ off toward the east in the bargain, but then it’s just as easy for a flier to strike across the lower end o’ Florida, if the notion strikes him, day or night. Crates are gettin’ to be a common sight these days down here. I read they expected to have a full hundred at Miami this very winter, takin’ part in a big air derby that’s scheduled to be pulled off.”
They watched the other two men walk back and enter the coquina bungalow and a little later Jack was saying:
“Strikes me we’d better pull up stakes and clear out of this, Perk, don’t forget we’ve got to pass that rattlesnake cove on the way back, and for one, I’m not so keen about doing it in pitch darkness.”