Shayne moved fast.
He took the stairs to the mezzanine three at a time. Still moving quickly but without seeming to hurry, he descended the curving stairs to the lobby. Ward, the Negro clergyman, was in his path, talking to one of the older women from the tour. He nodded to Shayne and turned as though to stop him.
“Meeting a plane,” Shayne said, and brushed past.
As he approached the taxi stand to the right of the main entrance, an elderly Negro sprang to attention beside a battered Checker cab.
“Cab, sir?”
“Yeah, and I’m in a hurry.”
The driver slid behind the wheel. Shayne came into the front seat beside him. The driver wheeled the cab around, completing the turn just as the convertible shot out of the driveway leading into the parking area.
“There they are!” Shayne snapped. “My wife’s in that car.”
The driver, a small man with grizzled hair and gnarled hands, came down hard on the gas. “There won’t be any-altercation?”
“Nothing like that,” Shayne told him. “This is just to see where they go, to protect myself. She’s trying to hit me for heavy alimony. Don’t hang too close. Just don’t lose them.”
“Because,” the driver continued, shifting gears, “I wouldn’t want to become mixed up in somebody else’s domestic argument. I’m a peace-loving man.”
“So am I,” Shayne said, peering ahead.
The driver glanced across at him skeptically. “And that thing that’s dragging down the right-hand pocket of your coat could be a pipe, too, but I doubt it.”
Shayne sighed. “Why do I always pick a driver who notices things? I’m a detective. The lady’s not my wife. She’s my client’s wife.” He took out a twenty-dollar bill, held it up so the driver could see the denomination, and tucked it in his shirt pocket. “All right now?”
“Well-l-”
“How long’s this Checker been kicking around?”
“Nearly as long as I have. The difference is, everything’s been replaced a few times and I’m still running on the original parts. They made a good automobile. This about the interval you like?”
“Fine.”
The convertible they were following was a recent-model Pontiac. It twisted through the cobblestone streets of the Old Town. As it emerged into the countryside, Shayne told his driver to drop farther back. The road surface became rapidly worse. The Pontiac’s big double taillights danced crazily as the wheels went into potholes or over breaks in the asphalt. The high old Checker was less troubled by the road, but the motor labored as they began to climb. “You could use a valve job,” Shayne observed.
The driver chuckled. “Can’t the same be said for almost everybody? For another ten dollars I’d be willing to cut my lights through here. I know this road like a newspaper, and it’s easy with another vehicle to follow.”
Shayne paid him, and he slowed abruptly as the lights went off. Whenever the taillights ahead vanished from view, he put his own dims back on and speeded up till the road straightened and the taillights reappeared. They crossed an intersection and continued another few miles in silence.
“This is bad country around here,” he said nervously. “The people will pick the meat off your bones, if they catch you, and leave nothing of your automobile but the chassis. I can’t make out where this fellow is going.”
“Doesn’t the road go around the island?”
“Not this one.” He swung the wheel to avoid a bad hole. “He is driving too fast for conditions. He’ll lose the bottom out of his oilpan if he isn’t careful. No, the coast road is behind us. I can tell better in a few kilometers. There is a Y ahead. If he goes to the right, it is one thing.”
The road dipped and the taillights disappeared. When they came into view again, the driver murmured, “Now we see.” A moment later: “To the left. Now we can turn around and go back to town.”
“Where are we?”
“In a district known as La Esmerelda. The right fork comes down into a valley where there are cane plantations. The left fork goes nowhere. A ridge with a waterfall, a view of the ocean. A man from New York started to put up houses there, then he went away. That is how it is done, it seems. There is one house, only half finished. People say he will return when the banks give him more money.”
They reached the fork. He cut his wheels and began to turn.
“How far is the house?” Shayne said.
“A few minutes on foot. Also a few minutes by car-the road is bad. If you listen, you can hear the waterfall.”
“Pull over and wait for me.”
“No. As I told you, this is a bad part of the mountains, and so I think I will go back to the lights of the town. If you are getting out here, that will be five dollars.”
Shayne opened his wallet. “Fifty.”
The old man shook his head. “I do not interfere in anybody’s business. But when a man with a weapon in his pocket follows a woman in a modern automobile into the mountains, I know from history that shots will be fired. And the man with no connection with the affair is always the one struck by the bullets-that is the way it happens in St. Albans.”
“I’ll make it a hundred.”
“I am truly sorry, sir. Even a third-class funeral costs more than a hundred dollars.” The valves tapped loudly as the motor idled. “I am nervous to be standing here. Are you coming or staying?”
Shayne paid him and got out. “Come back in an hour.”
Again the driver apologized; this had to be his last fare of the night.
“There is a telephone at the inn at the foot of the mountain. And of course,” he added slyly, “there is always the Pontiac.”
“Yeah.”
“The road goes straight to the site. There is a big hole, where the man planned to build a swimming pool. A person might fall into it if he hadn’t been told it was there.”
He came down into low gear and roared away.
Shayne waited for his eyes to adjust to the change of light. The noise of the Checker’s motor dwindled away beneath him. There was no moon, but the sky was brilliantly sprinkled with stars.
He started up the road, which was rutted and unpaved. In places it had washed badly. There was dense foliage on either side. As he rounded a bend, the sound of the waterfall became suddenly louder. Seeing a light ahead, he went more carefully, stopping every few steps. Soon he was able to make out the white bulk of the Pontiac, parked just off the road. As the foliage fell away on either side, a building took shape against the stars.
The light he was following proved to come from a battery-powered lantern inside the building. He heard voices, and a figure crossed in front of the light. Standing absolutely still, he let his eyes range slowly along the front of the building. It was long and low, on a single level. The framework was finished and the roof had been closed in, but construction had been interrupted with the sheathing barely begun. There was only one room with walls. Space had been left for two large picture windows looking north. At that end of the house a still-unpaved terrace stretched almost to the edge of the waterfall.
The ground was open, dotted with piles of building material. Off to the right, Shayne saw the irregular outlines of a big piece of earth-moving equipment, a bulldozer-backhoe combination.
Crouching, he moved closer to the house, his gun in his hand.
A man’s voice said complainingly, “What a bunch of bushers. How much planning went into this, I’d like to know? Very damn little. I thought I was going to be working with pros.”
Another voice, with a trace of a Japanese accent, answered stiffly, “There is nothing to talk about. We have to kill her at once. Forget about Savage.”
“Chop chop,” the first voice said with a sneer. “That’s all you know.”
Mary Ocain said brightly, “Am I allowed to say something?”