Her voice was thin and shaky, but she seemed in an odd way to be enjoying herself. Shayne reached the building line. There was a rough scaffolding still in place. Maneuvering around a low pile of cinder blocks, he moved cautiously toward the nearest opening in the plyscore sheathing.
The Japanese said sarcastically, “You don’t wish to be killed? Think of that.”
“Does anybody?” Mary said. “I don’t know what happens to murderers down here, but they’re probably executed, and I should think you’d be willing to talk about an alternative.”
The first man broke in. “Don’t let Yami scare you. He’s not going to kill anybody-we’ve got enough headaches as it is.”
“That’s good,” she said, “because I told Mike Shayne about those phony suitcases, and maybe I told other people. You can’t be sure, can you? I’ve been chattering away to various people all day. Don’t you want to avoid trouble?”
“The thing we absolutely want to avoid is trouble.”
The Japanese said, “Dead people don’t bother anybody.” A thin beam of light slanted through a hole drilled in the plyscore to admit an electrical cable. Shayne saw Mary Ocain, her ankles and her wrists bound, lying in the middle of the long room near the lantern. The Japanese, the same man who had tried to kill Shayne in the Orange Bowl, was wearing a short-sleeved pullover, flowered shorts, and sandals. His legs were knotted and muscular. The second man was sitting on a nail keg, smoking a cigar. His name on the passenger list had been given as Samuel Thompson. He was conservatively dressed and looked like a businessman.
“But why do you think we shouldn’t kill her?” the Japanese demanded. “It worries me, all this changing around. When I make up my mind to do a thing, I like to do it.”
“If we do it,” Thompson said, “if we do it, it has to be right. This is an island, don’t forget. The police here were trained by the British.”
The Japanese cut the air with his hand. “We have to decide fast and get away. We need more than just twelve hours. They can come after us in naval vessels and catch us at sea. She knows everything, about the helicopter, the name of the ship.”
Mary declared indignantly, “How can you say that? I know nothing of the kind.”
“You heard everything said in the cabana,” Thompson pointed out, “and you won’t gain anything by lying about it.”
“All I could hear was a lot of profanity. Haven’t you got any sense at all? If you’re so worried about what I heard, change your plans! Use some other ship or bury the darn gold. Dig it up when everybody’s forgotten about it.”
“How do you know it’s gold?” Thompson asked quietly.
“All right, maybe I did catch a few words!”
The Japanese swung around. “Thompson,” he pleaded, “we don’t have time. There was a car behind us coming out of St. Albans. I have a bad feeling. Something will happen unless we finish this up fast and go. No one will come up here for days or weeks. I can use a rock and we can throw her off the cliff. It will seem that she fell.”
Shayne, ready to move, saw a glitter of light against the black building-paper on the floor behind the woman-a sliver of broken glass. She had another piece of the broken pane in her hands and was working it back and forth across the cord binding her wrists.
She said hurriedly, “I have a wild idea. All this is my own fault! I have a bump of curiosity as big as a hen’s egg, and it’s been getting me in trouble all my life. I had to sneak behind that cabana. I don’t know why.”
The Japanese growled under his breath. Shayne slipped along the wall to the unglazed window.
Mary went on, “I can see you’re working yourself up to kill me. I’ll tell you what you ought to do first. You ought to rape me! Don’t laugh! Why on earth would anybody believe I fell down a mountain? What would I be doing wandering around out here in the middle of the night? Dozens of people saw me go up to bed.”
“I don’t get it,” Thompson said in a puzzled voice. “Rape you?”
“Don’t you want to make it look convincing? You don’t want the police to think it has any connection with this stupid smuggling. What happened-I decided to go out for a walk and a couple of drunken natives picked me up. They brought me up here, and after they-abused me, they were so scared I’d have them arrested-”
The Japanese gave a grating laugh.
“All right,” Mary said desperately, “so I’m not a sexpot like some people. I’m a woman! I have quite a nice-looking figure-”
Thompson said thickly, “Cut her ankles loose.’”
“Thompson-”
“It’s got to be the real thing,” Thompson insisted. “They’ll examine the body. There was a case like it last year, an American college girl.”
“All this is, she’s playing for time. Can’t you see that?”
“Maybe. But nobody followed us, Yami. You were seeing lights that weren’t there. You’re still skittery because of what happened in Miami.”
“You weren’t there,” the Japanese said sullenly. “You didn’t see it. That Shayne-”
“I am partly playing for time,” Mary put in eagerly, continuing to work away with the sliver of glass. “But there’s something else. I’m”-she hesitated-“well, it’s ridiculous, but I’m a virgin. I’ve read all the books, but I can’t imagine what the sensation is really like. You’d be giving me my last wish, don’t you see? Don’t think you have to be gentle with me just because it’s the first time.”
Shayne thumbed back the hammer of his thirty-eight and drifted slowly into the window opening. Both men were intent on the woman. Her wrists were still together, but Shayne could see that the cord had been severed.
The Japanese swore softly. A knife in his hand flicked open.
“But leave me out of it.”
He leaned down and sliced the cord around Mary’s ankles. Thompson folded his glasses and put them away, then went down on his knees.
Shayne swung into the room. Thompson looked around, blinking, and at that moment Mary brought both hands, fingers laced, down on the back of his neck.
There was a sound behind Shayne. Before the detective could turn he was hit very hard with a short length of two-by-four. He fired, but he was off balance and the bullet went into the wall. The two-by-four came back in a chopping arc and knocked the gun out of his hand.
The blow drove him out of the way of the Jap’s savage rush. Shayne caught his knife hand as it went past. George Savage, his face a peculiar greenish white, was swinging a leg over the low sill, the two-by-four ready. Shayne levered the Japanese around, trying to use him as a weapon. But his responses were slow, and there seemed to be a heavy curtain in front of his eyes, curling out gradually to wrap itself around him.
The Japanese slipped out of his grasp and sliced his hand at Shayne’s throat. Moving slowly, with the desperation of motion in a dream, Shayne caught the blow on his shoulder. Mary was gone. Thompson, he saw, was stretched out face down on the floor. The Japanese swung viciously again. Shayne went backward, blood in his eyes. He collided with George, grappled with him weakly, feeling little resistance, and subsided to the floor.
As he slipped the rest of the way into unconsciousness, he heard the roar of a car motor. Mary. The Pontiac had been parked some distance from the house, and all she had to do was keep the pedal all the way down for about thirty yards, and they couldn’t catch her.
CHAPTER 12
Shayne came back gradually, an inch at a time. He was straining against imaginary ropes, unable to move. Slowly the ropes turned into real ones. His mouth was plastered with tape. His head was bleeding.
Outside in the darkness, George was being sick again. Light glimmered in Shayne’s eyes. He tried for a moment to move his head to a less sticky spot, then gave up and rested.
The puzzle began to assume a kind of shape as more pieces fell into place. He heard voices, and after a time, they began speaking intelligible words.
“I thought Japanese were supposed to be karate experts.” That was Thompson. “She threw you about twelve feet, or was I seeing things?”