THE ANGRY GHOST by J.R.A

Author:J.R.A. [J.R.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-04-26T23:21:36+00:00

Chapter XI. SCREAM IN THE NIGHT

MONK and Ham were becoming particularly interested in finding the attractive, regal-looking Annabel Lynn. Somewhere near the eastern shore of Staten Island, the two were walking. It was almost midnight, and intensely dark. They had left their car parked at the end of a road that led to a sandy stretch of deserted beach; they were now headed northward, toward the United States government reservation known as Fort Watson.

They were interested in finding a girl with gray-blue eyes, who was tall and slender and lovely, who, in well-dressed Ham’s opinion—to say nothing of the opinion of Monk—was one of the most exquisite pieces of femininity he had ever encountered.

Off to the right lay the ocean, and through the darkness came the occasional, mournful note of a fog horn, a warning to liners entering the Narrows to New York that there was shoal near.

Monk and Ham pushed along, making noise for their own entertainment, for another half mile.

Finally a wire fence loomed up in the darkness, and on a pole embedded in the sand was a sign:

WARNING

U. S. GOVERNMENT

RESERVATION

KEEP OUT!

The two men ignored the warning and climbed through the wire.

Monk said gloomily: "I don’t think Annabel Lynn is here. They don’t allow women in these forts."

"I was thinking of that," agreed Ham. "Maybe there was something phony about that note at headquarters."

Then the scream came out of the darkness somewhere ahead, emanating from a spot where there was the vague outline of some massive structure above the beach, and the terrified yell came from there. And the outcry dispelled all thoughts the two aids might have had about there being no women allowed at the fort, for it was a girl’s high-pitched, frantic cry that they were hearing.

THEY lunged forward now. Up the loose sand of the beach, climbing over rocks and an embankment that rose above the shore, the two raced toward the source of that outcry.

A high wall of part of the fort bulked before them. Last dying echoes of the girl’s scream, like the last jangle of breaking glass, seemed to come from somewhere beneath this very wall, close ahead.

Monk, worried, barked, "You got a flashlight?"

Ham was already pulling a flashlight from his pocket. He thumbed it on, sent the white beam waving ahead, and the glare revealed a prisonlike wall on their left, with rough, stony ground underfoot.

A blond girl in a two-piece knitted suit was just lifting herself from her knees, where she seemed to have fallen on the stony ground below the fort wall. Her shapely, slim legs flashed in the glow of Ham’s flashlight as she started running again, and her slender hand hovered near her throat in terror.

"Annabel!" Monk howled. "Annabel Lynn!"

Ham, always the more self-controlled of the two, drew up short. He called to the tall blond girl, "Miss Lynn! It’s the two Doc Savage men you met in Washington!"

After that, the girl halted in the flashlight glare, but seemed undecided as to which way to turn or what to do.

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