Departure Delayed Read online

  THE LOST WEEKEND OF A KILLER!

  Roy Marshall was afraid of John Wilson, and he had good reason for his fears. This Wilson went about always armed, mixed with criminal types in shady surroundings, had callously abandoned a bride, and was wanted by the cops for murder.

  And John Wilson was just another name for

  Roy Marshall himself!

  Roy didn’t remember any of this, but the more he probed into his past, the more it looked as if the cops were right. But Roy was a guy who couldn’t believe that a man with his principles could turn killer, loss of memory or not. So he determined to keep out of the clutches of both the homicide squad and the underworld’s triggermen long enough to find out the real truth about John Wilson’s lurid past.

  It took some tough doing, and it took a crack mystery writer like Will Oursler to tell it in DEPARTURE DELAYED. It’s a hum-dinger!

  Turn this book over for

  second complete novel

  Excerpts from the reviewers:

  "Suffering with what appeared to be amnesia, Roy Marshall suddenly recovers to find that he got into a peck of trouble while walking around as Johnny Wilson. He had married a society girl and walked out on her, then mixed with synthetic blonde, and the cops think he murdered a man. Stick with it and you’ll enjoy Mr. Oursler’s skill in developing new angles. Tease routines involve Roy’s war adventures, a villain who’s after the lad, jail, a friendly G-2 man called Spike Yamada and mysterious old Mr. Lazarus.”

  —New York Herald-Tribune

  "Roy Marshall’s memory is partially blacked out. When he comes to himself he is on a subway train. He does not remember getting on the train, nor does he know where he is going . . . While he is endeavoring to learn more about himself he is picked up by the police on suspicion of murder. . . . Somewhere among his fragmentary recollections there must be a clue and he is determined to find it. He finally does find it with some assistance from unexpected sources—which supply a bang-up finale to an absorbing yam.”

  —New York Times

  "Roy Marshall’s trailing of wicked Mr. Wilson and his murderous friends is swift, exciting, and consistently credible . . . Verdict: High grade thriller.”

  —Saturday Review

  Departure

  Delayed

  by Will Oursler

  ACE BOOKS, INC.

  23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.

  Departure Delayed

  Copyright, 1947, by Will Oursler

  An ACE Book, by arrangement with

  Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved, including the right of reproduction

  in whole or in part in any form.

  To Ad and Dukie

  The Drowning Wire

  Copyright, 1953, by Ace Books, Inc.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The subway train lurched. My head spun like a kid’s pin-wheel. I was afraid I’d pitch forward.

  My hand clung to the strap with a tight, sweating grip. The car was crowded. People jammed in against me. On the window before me I read the sign: “B’Way 7th Avenue Local.” A fleshy, unshaven man next to me was reading the New York Journal-American. The black headline was pushed half into my face. Another sensational story.

  The train jolted to a stop. “Thirty-Third Street-Pennsylvania Station.” I could read it through the window. People got off and got on. Doors closed. We were moving again.

  Questions came. Grotesque, impossible questions normal people didn’t have to ask. What was I doing here? Where was I going? They tumbled over in my brain. Why are you here? Why are you riding in this subway now?

  Another stop. It was Times Square. Most of the car was emptying, but a new crowd pushed and shoved through the doors. I still clung to the strap. The incoming crowd pressed around me.

  It was as if I were just returning to consciousness. . . .

  I knew my name. Roy Marshall. Sergeant Roy Marshall. Twenty-six years old. You were overseas. Serial number 1-457-387—no, that wasn’t correct but it was close. You’re from Ohio. Where your home is. Where your mother and dad are.

  The hospital began to cross my thoughts, confused, mixed up, fragments I had to put together. Nurses and Red Cross girls and white uniforms. People crowding around me at the hospital door. People singing, “Happy home-going to you— happy home-going to you—”

  They’d let me go. They’d let me out of there. Honorable medical discharge. You’re all well now, Sergeant. Done with the Army. You’re going home.

  How long ago was that?

  The train was starting again. The woman next to me had her elbow dug into my side.

  I’d left the hospital. I’d still been in khaki when I left. I remembered that. Now I looked down. I was wearing a gray overcoat.

  I was fuzzy and weak. Panic ran through me. I felt a stabbing pain in my shoulder. Where had I boarded this train? I didn’t even know that much.

  I had to get off the train. I had to find some place where I could sit down. I wondered what time it was. I lifted my free hand to look at my watch. The watch was gone.

  The train was stopping. This was Fifty-Ninth Street—Columbus Circle. I didn’t know New York well. I’d spent furloughs in the city, back when I was first in the Army. You learned New York the way servicemen learn any strange city —subways and buses, streets where you pick up girls.

  Still at Columbus Circle. I had to get off. I pushed through the crowd in the car. Somebody held the door open and I got out to the station platform.

  It was more than an impulse. I almost felt I was supposed to get off. Get upstairs. Get yourself a drink.

  I reached in my pocket and felt some coins.

  It was dusk outside. Dusk and cold with flurries of snow blowing along the streets. I turned my coat collar up. I heard the screeching of brakes as I crossed the street. Some driver leaned out of his car and called, “Why don’t you look where you’re going?” I didn’t pay any attention.

  I hadn’t been in this part of town often. I wasn’t sure of direction. Yet I seemed to know where to go. I got to the sidewalk, walked around the comer and up a side street. A short distance ahead I saw a red and yellow neon sign: “Hi Jinks Bar.” I was certain I’d been here before.

  I went inside. It was cramped and stuffy. A couple of men sat at a table in a comer, drinking beer. Behind the bar was a small bald-headed man in a dirty white apron. He glanced up and grinned. He said: “Hello, Mr. Wilson. What’ll it be?”

  I looked at him a moment without answering. This man thought he knew me. This little bald-headed bartender. Mr. Wilson he called me. The name struck a harsh, jangling chord.

  Chalk up one for the subconscious. I’d been right. I had been here before.

  I tried to sound casual. “Make it a double Scotch,” I said. “Don’t mix it. Water on the side.”

  He seemed puzzled. Then he said: “Sure. Sure. Coming right up.

  I watched him pour the drink. As he handed it to me, he asked, “Where’s the lady?”

  I took a quick gulp of the Scotch, felt its warmth inside me. “I—I’m drinking alone,” I told him.

  “I get it,” he said. “Time off for good behavior. But that’s a good girl. Got class.”

  I didn’t answer. I had no idea whom he meant, who the girl could be. I sat there looking down at the drink. The amber liquor caught lights and shadows in the dimly lighted barroom.

  I had to remember. The bartender—the girl he spoke of— they were part of the big missing world after the hospital. I was like a man who blacked out. Waking up. Waking up in a subway train.

  I went back to the first time. I hadn’t remembered anything then until I came to on the Solus—the hospital ship-two days out of San Francisco. Woke up with a nu
rse bending over me and asking, “What’s your name, Sergeant?” I told her it was Marshall and she gasped, ran out of the ward and came back with two doctors. They acted pleased. They told me later they’d given me a new shock treatment to try to straighten me out and it seemed to have worked.

  The thing had happened in Korea. That was a special deal —one you didn’t read about in the papers. Not that we are trying to be heroes. We were doing what they told us.

  I took another gulp of the Scotch. T felt the pain in my shoulder. The bartender still stood there, looking at me, not saying a thing. I didn’t mind that. I just wanted to sit.

  The Korea business we couldn’t talk about. It was like something out of a book. We were bringing in supplies for the underground—guerrillas working behind the lines, operating the escape route. That was how American flyers shot down had a chance to get back alive.

  They had to have supplies. Rations and clothes and guns the guerrillas could give to our fellows. Somebody had to bring the supplies in.

  They called for volunteers in our outfit. Ten of us. We’d go in by submarine—you surface at night off shore and paddle to the beach in a rubber raft. I told them sure, I’d go. You have to. You know plenty of lives depend on it.

  I got the rough end of that show. I didn’t like it. There was a man they called Downes. Nobody knew his nationality. He’d work for anybody with the price. They said before the war he dealt in narcotics. He had contacts with the Reds so he was helpful to them in putting the finger on guerrillas. Already he’d turned in over fifty.

  G-2 said he was a threat we had to destroy. Twice they’d tried to get him and he’d shot his way out. This time they weren’t taking chances. A native girl was luring him to a shack near the beach where we were landing.

  For the girl it was a special triumph. Few people had personal contact with Downes. She managed to trap him with an Oriental come-on.

  One of us was supposed to go up there to the shack . . .

  I’d killed men before in hand-to-hand fighting. This was different. It was more cold blooded. It was almost like murder. But somebody had to do it.

  I got through to the shack all right. There was dense growth around the place. I stood about five feet from the house. It was daylight then. I could make out the man and the guerrilla girl inside. There was another window on the other side. The man was silhouetted against it. I could see his profile, the repulsive, clownish outline of the large nose and receding chin.

  I stepped forward and raised the automatic. He must have spotted me at that instant. I saw him dodge back. He reached out and grabbed for something. It was the girl, the little guerrilla.

  My finger was pressing the trigger. It was too late. He had her as a shield in front of him. I couldn’t miss. I heard the shot, heard the girl scream.

  I stood motionless. Once when I was a kid I accidentally smashed a vase. This was like that. You stood there, frozen. I knew I should have ducked for cover but I didn’t.

  It was only a moment. Then he fired. I seemed to hear and feel the shot at the same second. A jolting, paralyzing, wet sensation at my temples. Round globules of color swimming in before my eyes. I tried to let out a cry.

  I didn’t actually ‘come to” until that day on the Solus. That was a whole month later. The nurses told me I’d been conscious during that month but I didn’t remember. They said all that time I’d been saying my name was John Wilson.

  I understood but I couldn’t explain it to them. We’d used make-up names in dealing with the underground people. That was for security, If we used real names and they leaked back it might have helped the bastards figure out what our outfit was, where we based and how we operated.

  I took the name John Wilson. I remembered an old story about a John Wilson who found a secret gold mine and became rich but nobody knew where the mine was and John Wilson never told. They said when he died, at ninety-four, he grinned up at relatives gathered around the death bed, shook his head and passed on. So I took that name.

  “Mr. Wilson,” the bartender had said. I wanted to ask him questions but I knew I couldn’t. Not directly. I had enough change in the coat pocket for another drink. I shoved the empty glass toward him and he filled it up.

  Some of the fellows had come to see me in the hospital in San Francisco. They told me the girl guerrilla had died. I’d killed her. I hadn’t meant to but I’d done it.

  The outfit on the beach had worried when I didn’t come back on time. They sent out a searching party. When they got to the shack, it was too late to do anything for the girl. They found me lying outside on the ground, shot in the head. There wasn’t any sign of Downes. They carried me back to the hiding place and that night took out in a raft to the sub that came to pick us up.

  It was about a week later, they said, before I began to come to but I didn’t make sense. I kept talking about John Wilson and gold. They shipped me to a base hospital and finally back to the States on the Solus. That shock treatment on the Solus was the first break—the first time I remembered anything about what had happened.

  Mother and Dad had come to see me in the hospital while I was in San Francisco. They’d stayed a few days. Then the Army sent me to Halloran in New York for specialist treatment.

  The last weeks at Halloran, they’d let me go into the city a few times. Sent us out in groups of ten or fifteen. The medics said it was occupational therapy for convalescents. We spent those afternoons doing odd jobs at Army G-2 storerooms in a loft building on West 44th Street.

  The job they gave me those times was taking inventory. I remembered writing down long lists. Portable radio equipment. Photo supplies. New type dictaphones which make sound records on film. Crates of Army automatics. Put it down, Sergeant: So many boxes of .45 calibre cartridges. So many boxes of G-2 report forms.

  Weeks ago, that was. Weeks or months. You didn’t know. In between was the gaping hole.

  There was a newspaper lying on the bar. The date was February 21. I kept trying to remember what the day was when they let me out of the hospital in New York. I seemed to recall it was some time in November.

  That would have made it over three months. Where were my parents? They would have tried to reach me. The police would be trying to find me.

  Fear crept in. I didn’t know what people I’d been with, what I’d been doing. Doctors said even with head injuries, you weren’t likely to try anything that went against your basic character? I’d read that in a book in the hospital. But who knew your basic character? For three years they’d been teaching me how to kill.

  One thing for sure—I didn’t volunteer because I liked the business. I’d hunted all my life and camped out, knew how to shoot and take care of myself. I figured I was the kind they needed. That was where I belonged. But all the time out in the Pacific, my one idea was to get it over so I could get home. Mom and Dad kept writing about troubles on the farm and how they were short of hands.

  The two fellows in the comer paid their check and went out. The place was hot. I looked in the mirror that ran the length of the bar but my own reflection seemed blurred.

  The little bartender was polishing glasses but he kept watching me. Finally he said, "You look like you seen a ghost.”

  I said, "Maybe I have.”

  Then I decided to make a try. “Tell me something,” I asked. “When was I in here last? Was it yesterday?”

  It was a blind stab. But the man said: “Sure it was. Yesterday afternoon. With the girl.”

  He seemed to be trying to figure it out. Finally he grinned. “I get it. You and the girl had a fight last night and you got yourself plastered.”

  It was a lead I hadn't thought of. “Yeah,” I said quickly. “That's what happened. I got lousy drunk. Whole thing's a blank. We start the argument here?”

  He lowered his voice. “Wouldn't call it exactly an argument. She was upset about something. Kept saying she hadn't meant to see you again. She was upset about a phone call from some girl—”

  He stopped. Hi
s expression was worried. “You don't look right.”

  I could feel my whole body sweating but I tried to grin. “What do you mean?”

  “It ain't just a hangover,” he insisted. “You look like you're in trouble.”

  I stood up, grabbed the stool a second for support. I took off the gray slouch hat I was wearing. There were wet drops of perspiration on my forehead. I started to take off the gray coat. I saw the man's eyes widen. I said, “What the hell's the matter with you?”

  He said, “With you, you mean. Look at yourself.”

  I looked in the mirror. I could make out I was wearing a blue suit. The coat was open. The white shirt was smeared crimson. I stared at the reflection, trying to tell myself it wasn’t so. I knew it was blood. I put my hand to where my shoulder hurt and it was wet and sticky.

  The bartender said, “I don’t know what you’re mixed up in. But you got yourself shot. Shot or stabbed or something. If you need a croaker there’s a fellow next door—up one flight. But I don’t want any jam in here. I want you to get out. Get out before I call the police.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The doctor’s office was one room in the rear. He was a bushy-haired, thick-set refugee named Gertz. He wore a white coat. The hair was graying at the edges.

  I told him I was in trouble. I said I’d been drunk and I didn’t remember what had happened but I thought I’d been stabbed or shot in some kind of brawl.

  He nodded, waved a pudgy hand. "The coat—take off the coat.”

  I stripped down to the waist. He made me lie on the examination table. The wound was in my left shoulder. He probed it with his fingers and it hurt and I swore.

  “All right,” he said. "It is not anything much. Not bad. The blood—it formed the clot—does not bleed now. Only seeping.”