Paula led him behind the sheds and past the outjutting dock to the far end of the boardwalk. Boards creaked beneath their feet. Wilhelmina waited in Nick’s hand, ready to meet company. The shed at the farthest end of the walk leaned crazily sideways into the softly lapping water. They made their way toward it. Both its doors were closed. Paula stopped at the rear door and raised a key to the lock.
Nick placed a hand lightly on her arm. “Wait.” He took a quick look at the shed beside it. It was open to the night and in reasonably good condition. And it stood between their shed and whoever else might come along the boardwalk.
“In here,” he whispered. “Into the corner, away from the door. Ah!” His groping hands found what they sought. “Get under this tarpaulin and stay there until Duclos gets here.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort!” she hissed angrily. “We can wait in Henri’s shed—”
“You will keep your mouth shut for once and do as you’re told,” Nick grated, and his voice carried icy authority. “Get under there and keep quiet.” He shook the tarpaulin out in case of lurking rats, and thrust her under it. A muffled voice said “Damn you to hell!” and then the canvas subsided.
Nick peered out of the shed and padded along the boardwalk to the locked one where their boat should be waiting. He moved around it carefully, feeling rather than seeing the loose boards and the gaping holes of decay. The lock was a laugh, he thought. Anyone who wanted to could force his way in there inside of three minutes. He found a slanting gap almost a foot high and several inches wide. With the caution that had kept him alive through a good many years of hunting and being hunted he jabbed the nose of his pencil flash in through the gap, crouched down low, and flicked on the switch. He saw the tiny beam cut into the thick blackness inside. But there was no reaction from within. He was about to take a look inside when he heard the soft clipclop of a horse’s hooves on the road above the village. The sound stopped almost at once. It could be a villager. But he doubted it.
There were low reeds growing alongside the inside edge of the ancient boardwalk. Nick groped his way into them and found himself ankle-deep in slush but pretty well hidden.
Minutes passed. Then the boardwalk creaked. If it was the boatman, Henri Duclos, he was more than an hour early.
And Henri would not need to jab a flashlight on and off to inspect every beat-up boatshed.
The light swung into the shed where Paula lay hidden beneath the tarpaulin. It seemed to linger there. Nick stiffened, hoping to God that the intruder hadn’t spotted the sole of a shoe or a lock of hair protruding from under the canvas.
He hadn’t. He left the second last shed, and his light swung to the last shed in the line. The beam focused briefly on the door and then went out. The man glided toward the door and started fumbling with the lock with something that didn’t sound like a key.
Nick’s finger itched on Wilhelmina’s trigger. But the inky blackness made accurate shooting impossible, even at close range, and right now he would rather question than kill. Also he preferred to see a fellow’s face before he shot him.
He rose from the reeds in a slight rustle of sound and leapt at the shadowy back with one arm swinging into a Commando hook around the neck and Wilhelmina ready to jab into the ribs. But the man’s hearing must have been as acute as Nick’s own for he was turning even as Nick leapt and he squirmed like an eel when the muscular arm clamped around his throat. He slammed the flashlight against Nick’s head and kicked out with one sharp-toed foot. Both blows were light and glancing and would have meant nothing if the two men had been on solid ground, but they were not — the planking lurched beneath their combined weight and threw them both off-balance. Nick tightened his grip involuntarily and stepped back onto a board that tilted beneath his feet. Rotting wood suddenly splintered underneath him and he felt his right leg drop abruptly between the shattered planks and into an abyss of cold water. The other man, still in his grip, sprawled out heavily on top of him; Nick’s elbow struck the boardwalk and Wilhemina went flying. The flashlight clattered to a stop and cast a sidelight on their tangled forms.
Tom Kee twisted savagely and half-freed himself, sliding one hand inside his jacket as he tried to rise. Nick saw his slit-eyed face and his quick movement at the same time. He tightened his pressure on the throat with one hand and snaked the other out to clamp a vise-like, screwing grip around the Chinaman’s thin wrist. Tom Kee squealed shrilly.
“Fidelista traitor!” he panted, and tried to wrench away. Nick was in no mood to bandy compliments. His thigh was jammed tightly between the rotting boards and his weight was distributed in an uncomfortably awkward way. He held onto Tom Kee with all the strength that he could muster and screwed the arm around until the shoulder bent toward him. Then he jerked viciously. Something snapped with a sound like a pistol shot. The Chinaman screamed and chopped wildly at Nick’s temple. Nick rocked sideways and felt his fingers loose at the other man’s throat. Tom Kee clawed at them with desperate strength and tore himself away. He leapt to his feet and slammed a kick into Nick’s face. Nick ducked, caught a glancing blow on the side of his head, and dimly saw the Chinaman’s good hand reach again into its owner’s jacket.
Nick clawed at the planking and heaved himself upward. The sharp splinters of the boardwalk dug through his trouser leg and raked into his flesh like the prongs of an animal trap. Tom Kee’s arm reached out toward him, pointing. Nick wrenched himself free as a tiny tongue of flame spat in the darkness and bit into his arm. He leapt sideways and then dived forward, arms outstretched and reaching for the gunhand. There was another zap! of sound and he had Tom Kee by the arm and over his head before he felt the sting. The Chinaman slammed down headfirst onto the boardwalk and Nick went after him. He landed heavily with his knee in the other man’s back and his arm jerking under his chin. There was another crack, even sharper this time, and Tom Kee lay crumpled in the stillness of death. Nick got up and heaved a sigh. So much for the question-and-answer game. He knew the fellow was Chinese, but that was all he knew.
“Are you all right?” He started at the voice. For a moment he had forgotten all about Paula. Then he was glad of her voice in the darkness. “Yes. Grab that light and let’s have a quick look at him.” She shone the light down onto the prone form as Nick turned the body over.
“He’s one of them,” she said quietly. “I’ve seen him in Santo Domingo with Tsing-fu.”
But there was nothing on his body to tell them anything more about him.
Nick dragged Tom Kee to the edge of the boardwalk and thrust him between the rotten planks and the sighing reeds. Then he walked back to the borrowed boathouse with Paula by his side.
“I wanted to help you,” Paula said as they sat down together on the tarpaulin. “But I could see so little in the dark and I was afraid of hitting you.”
“ ‘Afraid’ is not the word for you, Paula,” Nick said quietly. “You did the right thing. Except,” he added, “that you were supposed to stay under the tarpaulin.”
She laughed softly. “Now you know that was impossible for me!” Her hand rested lightly on his arm and he tingled at her touch. “You are hurt,” she said gently. “Please let us go to the boat before Henri comes. I know there are medical supplies on board.”
“They’ll keep,” said Nick. “I’d rather stay where we are and keep an eye out for more visitors.”
She was silent for a moment. Nick stared out onto the boardwalk and wondered again about her friends Marie and Jacques. Jacques had known they were going to the castle, Jacques had known that they were coming here… He wondered if they could really trust Henri Duclos.