He let her come in against him, although there were other things he should have been doing. Her words were muffled against his chest.
“I didn’t know I was getting involved in anything like this. I was just — oh, looking for entertainment. There was something patronizing about it.” She pushed away and looked up at him defiantly. “The cheerleader being nice to the school creep, to score an easy win and show everybody what an open mind she has.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“I’m explaining to myself. I’ve never — well, taken sex as seriously as some people do. And we got to the point where I would have cut him to ribbons if I’d turned him off. I thought I had to go on.”
She hammered her fist against his shoulder. “It was curiosity! I wanted to find out what was bothering him. Now I know. I have to go back in and stay with him, Mike. He claims that last night made a difference, but it didn’t, really. He’s still intending to get himself shot.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I can tell. Sex isn’t medicine. He was still the same person after it was over. Big deal, you know? But he thinks he has to convince me he’s a changed man. It’s his way of being polite. He’s willing to talk about squeezing through and going back to the old job, but he knows it can’t happen. And of course he’s scared.”
“You believe him, then.”
“I always believe what people tell me after an orgasm. It’s one of my rules. My mind’s going around in circles, around and around and around. He’s spent the last six months establishing himself as a red-hot radical, and he’s such a total political innocent, Mike! He’s been down inside that atom all these years. Whatever happens, there’s trouble ahead, isn’t there?”
Chapter 5
Shayne returned to his cabin.
He seldom carried a gun, but when Sally Marquand had called from Bermuda to tell him that she found herself in what was turning into a rather bad jam, he had taken a .38 with him. He hadn’t used it. Coming aboard the Queen Elizabeth, he had tossed it into a drawer. Now he pulled out his shirt so it hung loosely over his slacks, and stuck the gun in the belt.
He hesitated, about to leave the cabin, and took out the gun again to check the clip. It was empty.
He weighed the gun thoughtfully, and returned it to the drawer. He had left his passport beside it. Taking it out, he flipped it open. The passport photograph, in which Shayne looked like one of the FBI’s ten most wanted criminals, had been sliced out.
He swore briefly. It had been adroitly done. Only someone with Shayne’s highly developed sense of smell would have discovered the mutilation before disembarking. Presenting his passport to the Immigration officials, he would have been delayed until he could prove his identity.
He went back to A deck, consulted a cutaway diagram of the ship hanging outside the purser’s office, and went forward to the captain’s cabin. He gave the door a few hard knocks and went in.
“Captain?”
There were two rooms. When Shayne switched on a light, another light came on in the bedroom and a voice called, “What is it?”
When Shayne reached the doorway, the captain, a big beak-nosed man named Stackpole, was sitting up looking at him. Shayne held out his Florida private detective’s license.
“I’m Michael Shayne. I need some major cooperation, and before you give it to me you’ll need more to go on. Do you know the Bermuda Police Commissioner? Or the Deputy Commissioner, Ian Cameron?”
Captain Stackpole put in his teeth and made a quick pass at his graying hair before taking Shayne’s leather folder. He glanced at it and gave it back.
“I know Cameron. He’s the son of an old schoolmate of mine.”
“He can vouch for me if you call him. I know it’s late, but they owe me something.”
Captain Stackpole, like Shayne himself, was a man doing a job. Without requiring any more information, he picked up the telephone and gave a few quiet instructions.
“This is a police matter, I take it,” he said to Shayne.
“Smuggling. It seems to be something fairly big.”
“We’ve come to expect it on the southern run. They think the Miami Customs will be softer than New York, but it seldom turns out that way. Are any of the ship’s people involved?”
“I don’t think so. But there’s still a lot I don’t know.”
“We have a high personnel turnover these days. We take what we can get, and that includes some pretty doubtful people. If you find any crew connection, Mr. Shayne, I’d appreciate a little advance notice so we can have a company representative standing by. It may take a few minutes to get Cameron. Coffee? Whiskey?”
Shayne asked for whiskey. The Captain made the drink without ice and opened a soft drink for himself. Until the phone rang at the bedside, he talked easily about earlier smuggling attempts on the Southampton-Miami crossing. It was true, he admitted, that he only knew about those that had been frustrated.
The phone rang.
“Cameron, it’s John Stackpole here. Sorry about the lateness of the hour and so on. I have a person called Michael Shayne in my cabin. He says the name is familiar to you.”
He listened for a moment. “He appears to be moderately sober. I’ve given him a small whiskey. Should I trust him, and if so, to what extent?”
He listened another moment, thanked Cameron, and said goodnight.
“You have your clearance, Mr. Shayne. He seems to feel I should hand the ship over to you, but I won’t quite do that. What did you have in mind?”
Half an hour later, pushing a low-wheeled dolly, Shayne entered the Queen Elizabeth’s afterhold.
The big cavernous space was weakly lit up by unshaded bulbs on each exposed steel rafter. After relocking the door, he began the hunt for Little’s doctored Bentley.
He had brought a powerful four-cell flashlight. The cars were as crowded as they would have been in a busy downtown parking lot. Each was chocked to the deck and fixed to an adjustable axle clamp. He had to move sideways between rows, and step on bumpers to get from one row to the next.
He checked a Bentley in an outermost row, and found Dr. Quentin Little’s name on the red tag wired to the steering wheel. It seemed to be riding very low on its rear wheels. Shayne stooped to look at the gas tank.
The bright beam of his flashlight shot all the way across beneath the cars. A moving shadow caught his eye. He swung the flashlight instinctively, but nothing that shouldn’t have been there showed in the light. He pointed the beam another way, keeping his eyes on the spot where he thought he had detected movement.
The shadows changed slightly. He stabbed with the light, and picked up a man’s feet and legs.
They were in the opposite aisle, at the far side of the massed formation, scissoring rapidly. Straightening, Shayne saw a blurred, crouching figure.
He hurled the flashlight. It revolved end over end, and was still burning when it crashed against a bulkhead and went out. Shayne was already running. He was parallel with the figure, separated by the densely massed cars.
A light winked at him. The sound of a pistol shot hammered back and forth across the metal enclosure.
The shot had been snapped off at random, to let Shayne know that he was stalking an armed man. Shayne jumped into a pool of shadow.
There was a dimly lighted doorway ahead of the other man, and he was dearly trying to reach it without disclosing his identity. Bent low, Shayne ran to the door on his side of the hold, where he had left the dolly. He tipped the tools and equipment onto the floor. The clatter drew another shot.