Chapter 3
Englehorn had never known time to pass so slowly. Lighting a cigarette, he took a long drag from it, blowing out the cloud of smoke into the cold morning air.
"How long are they going to stay up there?"
Jack's tired eyes had been glued to the Empire State Building for all of the long twenty minutes they'd been on the rooftop, as he lay against a wall beside the makeshift wheelchair Englehorn had found for him. It was the early hours of the morning, but the first rays of the sun crept over a city very different from what it had been the evening before.
"I guess we'll have to wait till he gets bored and comes down," Jimmy said, but Englehorn shook his head.
"The army's already been called out, it's just a simple matter of waiting for the air force."
Jack let out a low moan, and Jimmy stared at the Captain in horror.
"They can't do that!" he exclaimed. "Ann's still up there, and they can't fire on an innocent American!"
"The ape'll protect her," Jack murmured.
Jimmy said nothing more for the moment, but, like the writer he sat beside, stared up at the distant black silhouette perched on top of the tallest building in the world. Soon, his eyes turned back to the Englehorn, and he risked asking the question that had been on the tip of his tongue for hours.
"Skipper, won't you tell me about your time flying aeroplanes?"
The Captain gave him a dark look. "It's none of your business."
"No disrespect, sir, but my past is really none of your business and you still made me tell you."
Englehorn said nothing; he knew Jimmy was right. Unbeknown to Hayes, within days of allowing Jimmy to remain on board the Venture, the Captain had bullied him into telling all of his origins, not liking to be kept in the dark about just who he was employing. It turned out Jimmy had been brought up in New York and Glasgow by an English mother and an Irish father, hence his unidentifiable accent. His father had beaten him freqently, provoked by the slightest of actions, so the fourteen-year-old ran away one night after a particularly violent beating. He wound up at the docks with the full intention of stowing away one of the ships there, so had been found in the bat cages of the Venture the next morning by Hayes and Choy, with his arm broken in two places by his father.
"Fine," Englehorn muttered. Jimmy couldn't hide his triumphant smile, and even Jack turned his head to listen.
"It was during the war. The Great War, you call it. There was no way I could get out of fighting, and, as my father was a mechanic who helped build planes, it seemed fitting that I should fly them. Flying is a wonderful feeling, and I loved it, at first. The freedom I felt while up in the air was so great I can hardly describe it. That was simply my training, however. I joined up with a friend of mine, his name was Thomas, and a few weeks into fighting, I watched his plane be shot down in flames and explode in a field far below at the hands of a British pilot. That put me off flying for the rest of my life."
"Were you scared?" Jimmy asked.
"Not for myself, no, but the memory of Thomas prevented me from ever going up in the air again. After this, I joined the navy, electing not to be blown to pieces in the trenches, and was posted to a battleship in the Atlantic. There I served out the remaining six months of the war. I was high ranking, but not enough so to escape losing my job on the terms of your treaty, so I boarded a ship out of Germany and wound up on the Venture not long afterwards."
There was silence now. The Captain tapped his cigarette ash onto the floor while Jimmy watched him in astonishment. Driscoll turned his eyes back to the Emprie State Building.
"Do you regret that you lost it?" Jimmy asked.
"Lost what?"
"The War."
"I've told you all I'm willing to tell."
Englehorn stubbed out his cigarette and flicked the end over the edge of the roof. He stopped dead, suddenly, mid-flick, before turning towards the sun, squinting.
"What is it?" Jimmy asked.
"Here they are," the skipper announced.
Jimmy didn't have to turn to know what his fellow seaman had spotted – he too now could hear the drone of the approaching aeroplanes. They looked impressive, set against a beautiful sunrise, but Jimmy frowned. He knew they spelt doom for Kong.
They could hear the noise of the guns even from this distance, rousing particularly unpleasant memories in all of the last time that they'd heard machine guns fired, but could see nothing except the far-away bi-planes swooping around the skyscraper.
All three lost track of how much time had passed. Englehorn lit several cigarettes, but all were forgotten about, and burnt his fingers before quickly being flicked away. A plane missing one of its wings crashed to the ground with an explosion a few streets away, but no more followed it.
"He must be dead by now," Jimmy muttered to Englehorn after maybe ten minutes had passed, but the skipper simply shook his head and gave the youth a dark look.
They heard Jack let out a whimper of pain, and Englehorn looked at him in concern. The writer was badly injured, but any offers to take him to a hospital had been refused as violently as possible. He could barely keep his eyes open, being incredibly weak, and looked to be in great pain.
"Skipper! Look!"
Englehorn's sharp blue eyes flicked back to the Empire State Building as he heard Jimmy's frantic shout, and quickly picked out the falling black shape that had caught the youth's attention.
"The airplanes got him!" Jimmy cried.
There was no mistaking the form of the enormous ape, gathering momentum as it fell, before hitting the ground with a thud audible even from their vantage point.
"Ann!"
Jack's voice was at its most feeble as he inquired after his loved one yet again.
Englehorn squinted up at the skyscraper. "I can't see anything," he told the writer, and a sigh of distress was the only reply he received. A quick glance over his shoulder told him Jack had lost consciousness.
"Christ, no!" The skipper ran to Driscoll's side. "Help me, Jimmy!"
"Jack!"
The writer was still semi-conscious, they found, and they revived him quickly simply with their frantic shouts.
"It's ok now, Jack!" Jimmy exclaimed as he blinked dazedly. "The ape's dead! They got him!"
Driscoll's face was a picture of despair. "But what about Ann?"
Englehorn caught his eye and shook his head. "We don't know anything about her yet."
Jack groaned. "Then get me back to the car so we can find out!"
The combined efforts of Jimmy and Englehorn somehow managed to accomplish this in the quarter of an hour that followed, but the crowds that filled the streets around the Empire State meant they couldn't go far in the car. Soon, Jimmy and Englehorn ended up wheeling Jack along on the trolley they'd kept.
They pushed their way along the snow-covered pavement, Englehorn swearing and using his elbows a substantial amount more than was necessary, passing the colossal body of the ape that was now being swarmed over by public and journalists alike. The Captain was certain Arthur Bailey would be somewhere in the melee.
Eventually, they arrived at the main entrance to the building, only to find it still surrounded by soldiers.
"You have to let us through!" Jimmy started to argue straight away. "There's a woman up there and—"
"The building's off-limits," was the harsh reply of one young man.
"You don't understand!" Jimmy insisted. "We're—"
"Jimmy."
The youth turned to face the skipper upon hearing him speak, but Englehorn's blue eyes were focused elsewhere: on the familiar figure that was being led through the glass doors of the building.
"There she is, Jack," the Captain said softly in the writer's ear, and he struggled to sit up to see Ann led outside.
He called her name feebly and she looked up in surprise, her face glistening with tears and her golden curls windswept and dishevelled.
"Jack?"
She shook off the hands of the policemen that had been guiding her and ran towards him, grasping the hand that he reached out to her.
"Jack!"
For the first time all night, the playwright's face broke into a wide smile of peace and relief.
"Are you alright?" Ann asked frantically, eyeing him anxiously.
"Just a couple of broken bones, nothing too important. But you, Ann, what about you?"
She ignored him. "You need a doctor!"
"No!" He waved her away. "I'm fine for now."
"But how did you get here in this state?"
Jack looked across at Englehorn in reply, and the relief in Ann's face disappeared quickly as she saw him.
"I guess I owe you my thanks then, Captain Englehorn," she said, sounding not in the least like she meant it.
He frowned; it was clear this was not all she wanted to say to him. He had always expected her to blame him for everything in Denham's absence, and, sure enough, her true feelings were swiftly brought to the surface.
"Why did you do it?" she asked. "Why did you bring him back to New York?"
"Do you think I foresaw any of this?"
"Oh, come on! A giant ape in a theatre? What did you expect to happen?"
"Ann," Jack begged, "Please don't be like this."
"He wasn't doing any harm!" she cried, ignoring him, her voice rising quickly in anger.
"No," Englehorn muttered, "Just eating young women."
Ann's eyes flashed in anger. "He fought for me! He saved my life countless times, yet you threw chloroform in his face and brought him back into captivity to be shot at and pursued constantly, and now he's dead!"
"And so are most of my crew!"
Silence had fallen around them; Englehorn's voice had risen higher than he had intended.
"Had you forgotten that?" he asked. "And do you want to know something else? All of them died for you. To save you."
The actress looked alarmed. Englehorn took a step closer to her and she quailed under the glare of his cold blue eyes. He spoke again, this time in so low a tone even she could barely hear it.
"You are not the only person to have lost something dear to you."
His gaze flashed briefly to Jimmy before turning back to her. Now the sorrow in her eyes was mingled with guilt and shame.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
Englehorn's face softened. "Me too."
"Ann," Jack called, and she retreated into his weak arms. He whispered something into her ear that no one else could hear, and, smiling through her tears, she exclaimed, "I love you too, Jack," before their lips met in a loving and passionate kiss.
Englehorn turned away; a couple that had been through as much as they had together deserved all of the privacy they could get in a crowded street. Jimmy stared, but the skipper muttered his name sharply, and he too turned his back.
"What now, skipper?" he asked. "Where do we go now?"
Englehorn didn't reply. He didn't know how too. Instead, he reached in his pocket for a cigarette, but didn't get as far as lighting it, having suddenly spotted an all too familiar face moving through the crowd towards them. Jimmy had seen him too; that much was clear from the way he tightly clenched his fists. The Captain caught hold of his arm quickly.
"Don't hit him, Jimmy," he warned, "Not before he hands me my cheque. After that you can rip him to pieces for all I care."
Carl Denham looked dazed, and didn't see them at first.
"Englehorn?"
"Good morning, Denham," the seaman said. "Pleasant evening?"
The ruined film-maker gave him a dirty look and made to walk straight past them, but the skipper grabbed hold of his coat and pulled him back.
"No, Denham. There's still the small matter of two thousand dollars I have yet to receive."
Carl groaned. "I don't have any money."
"That's not my problem. My cheque, if you please."
Mumbling to himself, Carl pulled out a pen.
"And I could do with an extra thousand or so to pay for repairs to my ship," Englehorn added.
Sighing in frustration, Denham wrote out a cheque for three thousand dollars, which the Captain folded up carefully.
"He's all yours, Jimmy," he said, stowing it away carefully in his top pocket.
Carl glanced at the youth in horror, but Jimmy punched him squarely in the face. Englehorn laughed out loud for the first time in months as a wide grin of satisfaction spread across his companion's features. The film-maker caressed his probably broken nose, before being hit again and again.
"That's enough!" Ann pulled Jimmy away, and a grateful smile lightened the now bleeding face before her.
"Thanks, Ann!"
Englehorn grinned; he knew the actress well enough to guess her real motive behind stopping Jimmy. Sure enough, the sound of her palm colliding with Carl's cheek could be heard streets away. Ann administered another two slaps, then a swift knee in the groin that left her victim rolling on the floor in agony. Jimmy and Jack both gazed at her in awe.
"Mr. Denham!"
The eyes of the addressed snapped open in horror, and he scrambled to his feet as he saw the police officers working their way through the crowd towards him.
"Holy Christ!" he exclaimed. Denham hurried away, and that was the last they ever saw of him. Jimmy giggled, and smiles rose to the faces of even Ann and Jack.
"What now, skipper?" Jimmy asked for the second time.
Englehorn shrugged. "What now, Driscoll?"
The playwright grinned. "A lift to a hospital wouldn't go much amiss, for starters," he said weakly.
Jimmy instantly took his place again as the driver of Jack's janitor trolley. Englehorn walked behind them, content in his cheque, if slightly chilly. And Ann? She walked at the head of the odd party, beautiful and proud, her awe-inspiring appearance creating a handy path through the crowd.
"What am I then, Captain?" Jack called back to Englehorn. "A lion, or a chimpanzee?"
The skipper exchanged grins with the writer, his blue eyes sparkling. "Oh, I couldn't possibly decide. What do you say, Miss Darrow?"
Ann sent an enchanting smile over her shoulder to the writer she had only seconds ago been in the arms of. "A lion, perhaps?"
A/N: Ah, I do love nice, happy endings! Hope you do too! Thanks for reading, and any last reviews you are willing to leave me will be very much appreciated. Next, I plan to submit ANOTHER Englehorn fic, this time romantic. Kindly take the time to read it, if you're into that genre! Oh, and please let me know what you think of the histories I invented for Jimmy and Englehorn!
Thanks,
the green lama