“So now what?” Fletcher asked. “Don’t tell me you brought me here to sell me a worn tyre. I don’t run a car.”
They laughed again. They were in a really happy mood, and it could hardly have been the drink they had had in the Treasure Ship that was making them so cheerful; so maybe it was anticipation of enjoyment to come. The laughter stopped suddenly, as though they had both decided it was time to get down to the business.
The pistol-man said: “We got a bit of persuadin’ to do.”
“Persuading?” Fletcher said.
“That’s right. We aim to persuade you this here island don’t have the right kind of climate for a guy like you. Bad for the health, Mr. Fletcher; real bad.”
“I’ve never found it so.”
“But mebbe this is where you begin to.”
Fletcher saw that the other man had picked up a tyre lever and was hefting it in his right hand. The one with the pistol stowed it away and snatched an iron tommy-bar from the bench.
“You unnerstand, man? You get the message loud an’ clear?”
Fletcher got the message very loud and very clear. Other methods apparently having failed to make him leave the island, a different kind of persuasion was about to be tried. He wondered who had given the Leopards their orders. Colonel Vincent? The C.I.A. men? President Rodgers himself? It made no difference.
They began to move towards him.
“Wait,” he said. “There’s no need for this. I’m leaving the island anyway. I’ve already decided. You don’t have to persuade me.”
They stopped and looked at him, but he could read no belief in their faces.
“You reckon we goin’ to swaller that?” the one with the spanner said. “Man, you’re crazy. You think we’re that dumb?”
“It’s the truth,” Fletcher said. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“You got an airline ticket?”
“No, I haven’t got a ticket yet, but I’ll be getting one. If I don’t decide to go by sea.”
“Or if you don’t decide to stay on the island. Man, you ain’t even tryin’. We don’t buy that.”
He knew that the fact was, they did not wish to buy it. It was not simply that they had their orders to beat him up; they really wanted to do it; and whether they believed him or not, nothing was going to stop them now.
They began moving towards him again; the tommy-bar came swinging at him and he jumped aside and it missed him by an inch. He was close to the bench and he grabbed a spanner and threw it. The man who was holding the tyre lever took it in the chest, but it failed to stop him; he gave a grunt and came on like a tank. Fletcher tried to avoid the swing of the tyre lever, but it caught him on the left side just above the hip. He staggered away feeling hurt and sick, and he knew that it was not going to stop there but was going to be rough and brutal and sadistic.
Yet if they wanted him to leave the island they could not be intending to injure him too badly; they would not want to put him in hospital with broken bones or a cracked skull or a damaged kidney. But there was not much encouragement to be drawn from that reflection, because there was a hell of a lot of harm they could do without turning him into a stretcher-case; and maybe now that they had started they would not know where to draw the line; maybe they would even go the whole way, so that he ended up as an entrant not for the hospital but the mortuary stakes. That was a nice thought.
He had been getting away from them as fast as he could, but he suddenly ran out of space and found himself backed up against the pile of tyres, and they were still coming at him. He dragged the top tyre off the pile and used it as a shield, and the lever hit it and bounced off. But then the man with the tommy-bar made a jab at him through the tyre, and the end of the bar dug into his stomach and took his breath away. He began to fold and the tyre fell out of his hands; and the man with the lever took another swing at him and caught him on the right shoulder as he went down.
And then he was on the floor with the tyre under him, and there was no way of defending himself or getting away or retaliating or doing anything else except crouch there and take it.
Something hit him again in the side and he was not sure whether it was the tommy-bar or the lever, but Christ, it hurt; and he knew that if he took a blow like that on the head it could be curtains for one. But so far they had been keeping to the body, and that was bad enough.
He could hear the hissing of their breath and the scrape of their shoes on the concrete floor; and then suddenly they stopped hitting him and drew back a yard or two, and the one with the tommy-bar said:
“You gettin’ the message, whitey?”
Fletcher crouched on his hands and knees, looking up at them. The lantern was behind them and their faces were shadowed, but he could see the gold ear-rings swaying and glittering, and he really hated them then; hated them so much that he knew that if he had had a gun in his hands he would have shot them both without compunction. But he had no gun, no weapon of any kind, and he could only look at them and wait, knowing that it was not finished yet, that this was only a breather and that soon they would start again with their iron bludgeons, hammering away at his body and loving it, loving it, damn them.
“You bastards!” he said. “You bloody bastards!”
That seemed to amuse them, too; the laughter came spilling out of their broad mouths while the ear-rings danced a jig.
“You feelin’ sore, man? You got bruises mebbe?” the one with the tyre lever said. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Why, man, you stick aroun’ on this here island an’ I promise you get sumpin’ worse’n that. If I was you I’d get out just as quick’s I can.”
“I am getting out. I told you.”
“Sure, man, sure. We heard. But jus’ so’s you don’ go forgettin’ what you gotta do, reckon we better give you a bit more of the memory treatment. What you say, man?”
“Keep away from me.”
They laughed again and started moving towards him, swinging the iron clubs. But they were still a yard away from him when the door opened and Mr. Matthew King stepped into the hut.
King had a machete in his hand and the broad curving blade looked as though it had had a recent visit to the grindstone; the edge had the bright cold gleam of razor-sharp steel. King moved further into the hut and another man came in behind him. The other man also had a machete in his hand, and he was as tall as King and twice as wide; he looked as though he could have pushed his way through the wall of the hut if the door had not been open.
“Ha!” King said; and Fletcher could see no sign of nervousness in him now. A little anger perhaps, but that was all.
The Leopards swung round to face the door and for a moment seemed taken out of their stride. For a moment they hesitated; then, as though with a common impulse, they dropped the lever and the tommy-bar and went for their guns. But it was too late; King and the other man stepped briskly forward and the machetes gleamed in the lantern light. There was a vicious swishing sound and then there was blood spurting and two men sinking to the floor and dying. So quickly had it been done, and with such expert precision, that it was hard to believe it had really happened. But the bodies were there and the blood was spilling out on to the floor, and that was proof enough that it had been no illusion.
“Get their guns,” King said in a low, utterly unemotional voice. “Quickly.”
The other newcomer dropped his bloodstained machete, stooped and took the pistols from the dead men. Fletcher was struggling to his feet. King dropped his machete also and helped him up.
“Are you hurt?”
“They hit me a few times,” Fletcher said.
“Any bones broken?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You should have come with me,” King said.
Fletcher looked at the dead men and felt his stomach turn. “Would I have had better treatment?”