Spade stood wide legged on a slatted wooden dock at the end of Gas House Cove in the Marina Yacht Harbor. He wore a woolen cap, a waterproof coat, waterproof pants tucked into vulcanized boots. Water slopped up between the slats and over his boots.
The headlights of the few passing cars on Marina Boulevard were haloed in mist, their sounds muted. Henny Barber’s Austin turned off Laguna Street and stopped above the pier. The windshield was closed; Spade could just make out the two dark shapes close together on the front seat. At the same moment came the slow chug-chug-chug of Benny Ruiz’s fishing boat. Spade caught the line Benny tossed and tied it around the hand railing with a slipknot that could be undone with a sharp jerk.
“Good timing,” he called and jumped down into the boat.
By the light of the metal-caged bulb at the head of the ramp, Henny and Mai-lin edged cautiously down toward the Portagee, Henny with an arm hooked through hers as if he had already found his precious treasure. They were bundled up in heavy slickers, Mai-lin’s with an attached hood.
Spade held out a hand to help her down off the dock. He said to Henny, “See you back here in two or three hours,” but Henny was already crowding on behind Mai-lin.
“Not on your life. I’m coming with.” Mai-lin had moved off a few feet, staring out into the fog, subdued, only her small face visible within the encircling rain hood. Henny lowered his voice. “I don’t care about the treasure, only about Mai-lin.”
“What about your folks?”
“What about them? They’ll accept her, or I’ll talk Aunt Ev into opening a branch bank in Hong Kong.”
Spade raised his voice. “Mai-lin.” As she came back toward them he jerked the mooring line to undo the knot. Benny backed the boat off. “Did you tell Sabbath Zhu about tonight?”
“You don’t have the right to ask her that,” said Henny.
Ruiz swung the Portageés prow toward the narrow yacht harbor entrance. The dock disappeared into the mist behind them, leaving only the telltale glow of the caged bulb above the ramp.
Mai-lin raised her head. The imperious daughter of Sun Yat-sen was staring at Spade through dark slanted eyes.
“Sabbath Zhu was a great help to me. I had to tell him. What harm is done? I know you do not trust him, but he did not even want to come. He does not approve of what we are doing.”
“A fool for a client,” said Spade in apparent bitterness.
44
Chapter and Verse
Benny was in the wheelhouse flanked by Mai-lin and Henny, his broad, coarse face underlit by the binnacle light, his eyes probing the opaque gray blanket of fog. Spade was forward, checking the gear he’d be taking ashore.
From every direction came the warning cries of the ferries and tugs braving the fog. Underlying all of them was the periodic baying of the Alcatraz foghorn.
“The hound of the Baskervilles,” said Henny.
Mai-lin shivered, asked Benny, “How are you able to tell where you’re going when you can’t see?”
“The bells,” said Benny. “The whistles. The horns. I can tell them apart the same way that Henny can tell a ten-buck bill from a fifty. I started in on my old man’s fishing boat when I was twelve. I know this bay.” Off to their right a foghorn bellowed mournfully. “You can’t see it, but that’s Alcatraz.”
Spade looked in at them, his big hands gripped the frame on either side of the doorway. His face was beaded with moisture.
“All set,” he told them.
“Red Rock,” said Benny.
They could hear waves breaking almost gently against an invisible foreshore. The engine was already in neutraclass="underline" they were drifting with the tide. Henny, holding Mai-lin’s arm again, said in a low voice, “I think I can see the shape of the island.”
“You’d make a good bootlegger,” said Ruiz.
Spade’s muffled voice came from the prow. “Your romantic adventure. Next best thing to stowing away to the South Seas.”
“Better,” said Henny, pulling Mai-lin closer to him.
“Now that we’re here,” she said in a subdued voice, “I almost wish we weren’t.”
The craft turned toward the darker shadow of Red Rock, now visible through the fog. Spade lit the carbide lamp Benny had supplied. It was a compact model with folding handles and a seven-inch highly polished nickel-plated reflector, better out here in the fog than any flashlight or hand torch.
The prow grated gently on gravel. Spade swung his legs over the gunwale, dropped down onto sand hard packed by the waves. He reached back in for shovel and lamp, stepped free of the boat.
Then he put a boot against the prow and shoved, hard, swinging the boat at an angle to the shore. At the same time Benny put the engine in gear to an outraged shout from
Henny Barber. Spade turned the carbide lamp their way. Henny was dragging a bewildered Mai-lin forward, but it was too late. The fog closed in around their shadowy figures, and they were gone.
A half an hour later Spade was shining his light into a tunnel mouth when a sardonic voice spoke from behind him.
“We meet again, Spade.” He started to spin toward the voice. It warned, “Slowly. Very slowly.”
Spade obeyed, turning slowly, hands out well from his sides. His lamp showed him Sabbath Zhu. In Zhu’s hand was a Colt 1911 automatic, most of its bluing worn off by the years.
“I can’t believe she told you we were coming out here,” Spade said in a disgusted voice.
“She trusts me. I thought she would be with you; I could square accounts with everyone at once.” Already his slightly singsong Chinese accent was slipping, as if he knew it no longer mattered. His thick glasses glinted with his head jerk. “Put the shovel down. Carefully. Slowly.” Spade did. “Good. Now set the lamp on that rock... Good.”
He continued his instructions. “Lay the map on the ground with a small rock on it to hold it down... Move back ten feet... Shed the heavy coat, roll up the sleeves of your shirt, empty your pockets on top of the discarded coat...”
“No weapons of any sort, not even a pocketknife,” Sabbath Zhu marveled. “A sad mistake on your part.”
“I don’t like guns. They go off at the wrong time or not at all. All I thought I’d need was a shovel and the map.”
Zhu was studying the map while keeping an eye on Spade. He crinkled the paper, said almost abstractedly, “Boothe’s?”
“He’d hidden it between the front cover and the endpaper of Stevenson’s Treasure Island. It was found under his body.”
“And the police missed it?”
“Dundy, what d’ya expect? Why don’t you take off those specs? They’re just clear glass anyway.”
“You’re right.” Zhu tossed aside the eyeglasses, rubbed his delicately slanted eyes. “I won’t be needing them anymore after tonight. When did you first become suspicious of me?”
“The first time Mai-lin mentioned Sabbath Zhu, spiritual adviser. I wondered why you’d recommended me to her even though you thought I was of questionable honesty.”
“I knew too much about you for a man who’d never met you?”
“Or too little. At the Chinatown Methodist church you said you were assistant pastor but you didn’t take us into a meeting room. With Moon-fong Li and Yee-chum it became obvious you didn’t know more than a few words of Cantonese. They were members of your supposed church, yet they didn’t know you but were too polite to say so. I checked with the pastor of St. John’s. He’d never heard of you. You never came through the Angel Island Immigration Station, so you were American born.”
Zhu gave an airy shrug. “None of it matters anymore now. Reverend Pastor Sabbath Zhu will mysteriously disappear. Along with Sam Spade, of course. I’ll find a doctor to reverse the blepharoplasty and then—”