The Japanese said sarcastically, “You don’t wish to be killed? Think of that.”
“Does anybody?” Mary said. “I don’t know what happens to murderers down here, but they’re probably executed, and I should think you’d be willing to talk about an alternative.”
The first man broke in. “Don’t let Yami scare you. He’s not going to kill anybody—we’ve got enough headaches as it is.”
“That’s good,” she said, “because I told Mike Shayne about those phony suitcases, and maybe I told other people. You can’t be sure, can you? I’ve been chattering away to various people all day. Don’t you want to avoid trouble?”
“The thing we absolutely want to avoid is trouble.”
The Japanese said, “Dead people don’t bother anybody.” A thin beam of light slanted through a hole drilled in the plyscore to admit an electrical cable. Shayne saw Mary Ocain, her ankles and her wrists bound, lying in the middle of the long room near the lantern. The Japanese, the same man who had tried to kill Shayne in the Orange Bowl, was wearing a short-sleeved pullover, flowered shorts, and sandals. His legs were knotted and muscular. The second man was sitting on a nail keg, smoking a cigar. His name on the passenger list had been given as Samuel Thompson. He was conservatively dressed and looked like a businessman.
“But why do you think we shouldn’t kill her?” the Japanese demanded. “It worries me, all this changing around. When I make up my mind to do a thing, I like to do it.”
“If we do it,” Thompson said, “if we do it, it has to be right. This is an island, don’t forget. The police here were trained by the British.”
The Japanese cut the air with his hand. “We have to decide fast and get away. We need more than just twelve hours. They can come after us in naval vessels and catch us at sea. She knows everything, about the helicopter, the name of the ship.”
Mary declared indignantly, “How can you say that? I know nothing of the kind.”
“You heard everything said in the cabana,” Thompson pointed out, “and you won’t gain anything by lying about it.”
“All I could hear was a lot of profanity. Haven’t you got any sense at all? If you’re so worried about what I heard, change your plans! Use some other ship or bury the darn gold. Dig it up when everybody’s forgotten about it.”
“How do you know it’s gold?” Thompson asked quietly.
“All right, maybe I did catch a few words!”
The Japanese swung around. “Thompson,” he pleaded, “we don’t have time. There was a car behind us coming out of St. Albans. I have a bad feeling. Something will happen unless we finish this up fast and go. No one will come up here for days or weeks. I can use a rock and we can throw her off the cliff. It will seem that she fell.”
Shayne, ready to move, saw a glitter of light against the black building-paper on the floor behind the woman—a sliver of broken glass. She had another piece of the broken pane in her hands and was working it back and forth across the cord binding her wrists.
She said hurriedly, “I have a wild idea. All this is my own fault! I have a bump of curiosity as big as a hen’s egg, and it’s been getting me in trouble all my life. I had to sneak behind that cabana. I don’t know why.”
The Japanese growled under his breath. Shayne slipped along the wall to the unglazed window.
Mary went on, “I can see you’re working yourself up to kill me. I’ll tell you what you ought to do first. You ought to rape me! Don’t laugh! Why on earth would anybody believe I fell down a mountain? What would I be doing wandering around out here in the middle of the night? Dozens of people saw me go up to bed.”
“I don’t get it,” Thompson said in a puzzled voice. “Rape you?”
“Don’t you want to make it look convincing? You don’t want the police to think it has any connection with this stupid smuggling. What happened—I decided to go out for a walk and a couple of drunken natives picked me up. They brought me up here, and after they—abused me, they were so scared I’d have them arrested—”
The Japanese gave a grating laugh.
“All right,” Mary said desperately, “so I’m not a sexpot like some people. I’m a woman! I have quite a nice-looking figure—”
Thompson said thickly, “Cut her ankles loose.’”
“Thompson—”
“It’s got to be the real thing,” Thompson insisted. “They’ll examine the body. There was a case like it last year, an American college girl.”
“All this is, she’s playing for time. Can’t you see that?”
“Maybe. But nobody followed us, Yami. You were seeing lights that weren’t there. You’re still skittery because of what happened in Miami.”
“You weren’t there,” the Japanese said sullenly. “You didn’t see it. That Shayne—”
“I am partly playing for time,” Mary put in eagerly, continuing to work away with the sliver of glass. “But there’s something else. I’m”—she hesitated—“well, it’s ridiculous, but I’m a virgin. I’ve read all the books, but I can’t imagine what the sensation is really like. You’d be giving me my last wish, don’t you see? Don’t think you have to be gentle with me just because it’s the first time.”
Shayne thumbed back the hammer of his thirty-eight and drifted slowly into the window opening. Both men were intent on the woman. Her wrists were still together, but Shayne could see that the cord had been severed.
The Japanese swore softly. A knife in his hand flicked open.
“But leave me out of it.”
He leaned down and sliced the cord around Mary’s ankles. Thompson folded his glasses and put them away, then went down on his knees.
Shayne swung into the room. Thompson looked around, blinking, and at that moment Mary brought both hands, fingers laced, down on the back of his neck.
There was a sound behind Shayne. Before the detective could turn he was hit very hard with a short length of two-by-four. He fired, but he was off balance and the bullet went into the wall. The two-by-four came back in a chopping arc and knocked the gun out of his hand.
The blow drove him out of the way of the Jap’s savage rush. Shayne caught his knife hand as it went past. George Savage, his face a peculiar greenish white, was swinging a leg over the low sill, the two-by-four ready. Shayne levered the Japanese around, trying to use him as a weapon. But his responses were slow, and there seemed to be a heavy curtain in front of his eyes, curling out gradually to wrap itself around him.
The Japanese slipped out of his grasp and sliced his hand at Shayne’s throat. Moving slowly, with the desperation of motion in a dream, Shayne caught the blow on his shoulder. Mary was gone. Thompson, he saw, was stretched out face down on the floor. The Japanese swung viciously again. Shayne went backward, blood in his eyes. He collided with George, grappled with him weakly, feeling little resistance, and subsided to the floor.
As he slipped the rest of the way into unconsciousness, he heard the roar of a car motor. Mary. The Pontiac had been parked some distance from the house, and all she had to do was keep the pedal all the way down for about thirty yards, and they couldn’t catch her.
CHAPTER 12
Shayne came back gradually, an inch at a time. He was straining against imaginary ropes, unable to move. Slowly the ropes turned into real ones. His mouth was plastered with tape. His head was bleeding.
Outside in the darkness, George was being sick again. Light glimmered in Shayne’s eyes. He tried for a moment to move his head to a less sticky spot, then gave up and rested.
The puzzle began to assume a kind of shape as more pieces fell into place. He heard voices, and after a time, they began speaking intelligible words.
“I thought Japanese were supposed to be karate experts.” That was Thompson. “She threw you about twelve feet, or was I seeing things?”
“It was aikido,” the Japanese replied. “I was never trained in aikido. And what do we do now? We have perhaps twenty minutes before the police arrive. The first thing to take care of—”
Shayne opened his eyes as a shadow came between him and the light. The shadow changed into an arm. The muzzle of a gun was pressed between his eyes.
Thompson said sharply, “Not yet.”
He knocked the gun away. The Japanese said mildly, “I can wait. So long as you understand that I am the one to do it. I have a debt to pay from Miami.”
“I think we can use him before we kill him. There is a way out of this, if we can think of it.”
“It will take much luck,” the Japanese said flatly. “None of us knows these mountains. We must go different directions and make our way to the coast. We have no chance together.”
Thompson hissed for silence. “I hear something.”
The Japanese was quiet for a moment. “Not the police. It’s too soon.”
“Tell George for God’s sake to be quiet. Let’s get Shayne—”
Shayne felt himself being pulled over on his back. Lights whirled around him. The two men dragged him into another room.
The floor here was unfinished. Thompson worked him onto a plank and pushed it across the floor joists.
“Can you hear me, Shayne? I hope so, for your sake. Don’t wriggle around or you’ll go through to the basement. That’s a ten-foot drop to a concrete floor.”
He returned to the other room and Shayne was left in darkness. Now a new sound was added to the others in his head. A car was laboring up from the main road. Headlights slid across the bare joists overhead, and he heard the familiar tapping valves of the old Checker taxi.
A car door opened.
Reverend Crane Ward’s voice called out cheerfully, “Anybody around? Hello. Hello. Is anybody home?”
Thompson answered, “Well, for the love of God, will you look who’s here? Are we glad to see you! I thought we’d be stuck up here all night. Come in, come in. Careful of that plank.”
Shayne heard footsteps crossing the crude bridge leading up to the front door.
Ward exclaimed, “Mr. Thompson! What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Thompson groaned. “It’s a long story. This is a friend of mine, Yami Koniusha. Reverend Ward.”
The two men exchanged greetings, and Thompson went on, “I didn’t think we had a chance of getting back in time to catch the plane. Friend of mine back in Kansas City is building this place. He’s had nothing but trouble—strikes, mistakes, late deliveries. His foreman walked off with a week’s payroll. Finally he closed down to dig up some refinancing. He asked me to come up and see how it looked. Did you pass a Pontiac convertible on your way up?”
“I think I did. Going about sixty-five.”
“That’s the one. We brought a girl with us, a real wack. She took it into her head that we enticed her up here to take part in some kind of an orgy, and off she went, leaving us stranded.”
He paused, and Ward put in, “I’m looking for Mike Shayne. You haven’t seen him, have you?”
“You mean the big redhead? The one with the blonde?”
Ward chuckled. “That’s a good description. It’s a funny thing—he went barreling off in a taxi about an hour ago, and the taxi came back without him. Should I be worrying about Mike Shayne? Crazy, isn’t it? But I’m worrying about him, just the same. The driver told me where he dropped him, but he refused to go back. So I thought I’d hire the taxi and wander up to see if Shayne could use a lift back. I wonder if he could have been following you people.”
“We haven’t seen anybody.”
“There must be some explanation. He told the driver some wild story about an unfaithful wife, and unless I took the wrong road somewhere—”
Shayne, on the other side of the plywood wall, was inching toward the open doorway. His progress was steady, but much too slow. The men in the other room were winding up their explanations and preparing to leave. Shayne hooked his heels against one of the joists, and pushed off hard. The plank skidded away.
“Did you hear that?” Ward said, alarmed.
Thompson brought the lantern to the door and directed the beam around the unfinished room.
“Must be an animal,” he said. “Well, let’s get out of here. It’s a little spooky. We can cruise around and see if we can find him.”
When the light left the doorway, Shayne pivoted on one hip. For an instant his body was parallel to the joists and he was in real danger of slipping through. He completed the pivot, twisting, came forward on his knees and toppled into the room. When he looked up he was surprised to see that Ward was holding a heavy forty-five automatic.
“Put your light on the floor, Thompson,” he said pleasantly.
Thompson bent down slowly. George Savage, for the second time that night, appeared in the window opening, directly behind the clergyman. He had Shayne’s thirty-eight revolver. He looked almost too weak to stand.
Shayne began making gobbling noises behind the tape, bobbing his head at Ward and willing him to turn around. George stepped, almost fell, into the room and pressed the pistol against the small of Ward’s back.
“Too bad,” Thompson said, straightening. “You’d better drop your gun, Ward. George isn’t feeling his best tonight, but it doesn’t take much strength to squeeze a trigger. Three seconds, George. One—”
Ward’s hand opened slowly. The forty-five fell to the floor. George’s face began working. He retched, crumpling forward. Ward looked around warily as the light blinked off.
There was a rapid change of positions in the darkness. Shayne, in a series of jackknife motions, hitched toward the forty-five.
“Kill the car lights!” Thompson yelled.
Shayne’s knee struck the automatic. He reversed and convulsed himself backward, groping along the floor with spread fingers. The lights outside went off. Somebody tripped over him as his fingers gripped the butt of the forty-five.
“Reverend,” Thompson said softly, almost whispering. “Where are you now, Reverend? You shouldn’t fool around with firearms. You’re in trouble. It’s three against one, and you know you’re going to get clobbered.”
It was actually three against two, but Shayne, tied hand and foot, was not yet a part of the count. A lighted book of matches flew in the window. Thompson and Shayne were alone in the room. Thompson now had the thirty-eight which George had dropped. He whirled and stamped out the flame.
For a moment after that there was silence. It was broken by a flurry of action as two figures collided.
Shayne strained downward against the cord around his wrists. It slipped slightly, allowing him to get the muzzle of the heavy automatic to within three or four inches of his ankles. He wanted to cut the ankle cord, but it would be a risky shot. If he missed by an eighth of an inch, he would shatter his heel.
There was a stealthy movement near him. Glass crunched underfoot. Shayne backed toward the sound. After a half dozen twitching movements, he began feeling behind him for the glass.
For an instant Thompson’s figure, the thirty-eight in his fist, was outlined against a window opening.
“Move in, Yami. He hasn’t got a gun.”
George retched somewhere outside in the darkness. Shayne’s fingers scraped up a few crumbs of glass, but not enough to give him a cutting edge. Swearing to himself, he pressed down hard with the forty-five, doubling his feet up behind him and fighting to bring the muzzle of the automatic into contact with the cord. He raked the gun forward and back, within the limits of his contorted posture.
He was running out of time. He forced his ankles as far apart as they would go, corrected the line of the gun, concentrating hard, and pulled the trigger.
His feet sprang apart.
Thompson fired at the flash. Shayne rolled twice, coming up into a crouch. A figure loomed in a window. Identifying the bull neck and bristling haircut of the Japanese, Shayne hurtled at him, knocking him backward into a pile of sand.
Shayne came down with his shoulder against the other man’s throat. The Japanese grabbed up at him, raking Shayne’s face with his fingernails. Shayne uncoil
ed, went up in the air, and came down hard with both knees. While the Japanese clutched at himself, groaning, Shayne floundered to his feet and kicked him in the head.
He still had a firm grip on the forty-five, but he was unable to bring it around. He skidded back into the shadow of the building.
His feet struck an overturned bucket. Reversing it, he kicked it into the open. It rolled to the unguarded edge of the cliff and went over with a clatter. Thompson, inside the house, fired blindly at the sound.
There was a slight movement overhead. Looking up, Shayne saw Ward, on his knees, on the staging over the doorway, holding a cinderblock.
“Back,” the Japanese yelled. “Thompson!”
Falling forward, he wrenched at the staging. Ward threw the cinderblock and the staging came down. One of the heavy boards caught Shayne across the knees. He kicked himself free. Thompson, in the doorway, had taken the full weight of the scaffold.
The Japanese threw himself at Ward and the two men grappled, rolling over and over in loose sand. Shayne went on hunting for something sharp enough to cut the remaining cord. He kicked against a shovel. Crouching, he felt for the cutting edge of the blade. It was blunt and useless.
George stumbled against him. Shayne took him out of action again with a hard body block and kicked him twice after coming erect, making sure this time that he placed the kicks exactly where he wanted them.
Ward cried, terrified, “Don’t! For God’s sake, no! Shayne!”
The struggle had moved to the edge of the steep drop. Thompson was still clawing at the planks, trying to free himself. Shayne ran to the two grappling men, in time to see the Japanese, on top, raise his knife. Shayne crouched backward against the Japanese, touched him with the forty-five, and fired.
The bullet’s impact tore the Japanese out of Ward’s grasp and flung him sideward. He clutched out, yelled something, and went over.
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