Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

1

Her name was Sandra — Sandra Ames. She was young, and she was beautiful. Black hair dropped to her shoulders, and unplucked black eyebrows arched above dark eyes that stared at Michael Shayne with calm speculation.

The redhead approved of unplucked eyebrows. He liked the rest of Sandra Ames too. Only her mouth disturbed him. It was an attractive mouth, not too heavily lipsticked. But it was also a hungry mouth, and he wondered what the hunger was that twisted it so subtly as she spoke. She was young, she was beautiful, her clothes showed she had money and knew how to use it to enhance her loveliness. But she wanted something, wanted it fiercely, desperately.

“Then you’ve no particular prejudice against accepting such a job?” Sandra Ames leaned forward a little in the chair beside Shayne’s desk. “A job where you have two employers, and must keep an eye on both, to see that one doesn’t try to double-cross the other?”

The redhead leaned back, crossed his legs, and grinned at her. “No prejudice at all,” he said. “Umpires do it every day of the baseball season.”

“Yes, that’s it.” She nodded. “You’d be a sort of umpire. But you’d have to be prepared to — well, perhaps to take action if one of the two parties did try to cheat the other.”

“Okay, if the possibility is recognized and made absolutely clear from the beginning,” Michael Shayne told her. “Would you be one of my employers?”

Sandra said without hesitation, “Yes, I am. You’ll hear from the other in about — let’s see, it’s five now. In about an hour.”

The redhead put his hands behind his head. “Would the other party be named Captain Tod Tolliver by any chance?” he asked.

Surprise flared in Sandra Ames’s eyes for an instant. “I’d rather not say yes or no,” she answered. But it was obvious that she had recognized the name. “You’ll still be here at six — maybe a little after?”

“I’ll be here,” he assured her. He stood up as she rose, and held the door for her. It was just as well, he thought, that Lucy Hamilton was taking a week’s vacation, visiting a friend in New Orleans. Lucy would have misinterpreted the hunger that unconsciously expressed itself in the set of Sandra Ames’s lips. He himself had no romantic illusions on that score.

She gave him a smile, not at all impersonal and for the barest instant he told himself she just possibly might be a little hungry that way too.

“I feel sure I’ll be seeing you again soon, Mr. Shayne,” she said. “After the other person has had a chance to talk to you. Until then, good-by.”

When she had gone, the redheaded detective went slowly back to his desk. He opened a drawer and took out a bottle of Coronet and a glass. He filled the glass to the brim. Then, after putting away the bottle, he took out of the same drawer a small cardboard box which had come in the afternoon mail, unregistered.

From the cardboard box he took a Spanish gold piece, somewhat worn and tarnished, but still clearly showing the mint date, 1670. It had a satisfying weight in his hand and it was obviously genuine. With it there was a crudely penciled note.

Holding the Spanish gold piece, Shayne felt his pulse beat slightly faster. He knew that beneath the waters of Florida were many fortunes in pirate gold, but most of that submerged treasure was so deeply buried in sand and coral at unmarked spots along the coast that no one would ever find it. Simple deduction suggested that Captain Tod Tolliver — whoever he was — and Sandra Ames were engaged in a treasure hunt.

But which of them was afraid of being double-crossed by the other?

An hour later, and ten miles further up the Miami waterfront, two men waited in a dingy room above a waterfront restaurant. The smell of frying shrimps, strong and greasy, filled the room with an invisible fog.

“By grab, I’m gettin’ fed up with this waiting,” the tall, blond man said, and yawned, lying back on an old Army cot.

The short, plump man with black hair shuddered. “After three days of smelling nothing but fried shrimps, I can’t stand to look at the ocean,” he said. “Stand by your rig. The girl is just leaving. The old coot is going in his shack. He may make a call.”

“Three days he ain’t made no call,” the other said. “Why should he make a call now?”

“Who knows, Whitey?” The short man lifted binoculars to his eyes. Sitting in an old rocker just back from the window, he was invisible but could clearly see the old shack on a point of sand across the dirty water of the little cove.

In the cove itself half a dozen boats were tied up at rotting wharves, and a lone fisherman in a rowboat with an outboard was put-putting in toward the wharf of the restaurant underneath them. This was a dingy backwash of the Miami waterfront life, where dimes were as important as dollars were a couple of miles away.

“We found out about this New York dame and her syndicate from putting a tap on his wire, didn’t we?” Shorty argued after a moment.

Through the glasses he watched the sleek convertible pull away from the old shack, sand spinning under its tires. Driving it was a girl, tall and slender, with raven black hair that came to her shoulders. She was wearing dark glasses. The car had a New York license plate.

“Describe her to me again,” Whitey said, his eyes shining. “Big black eyes that got that burnin’ look in them, like she wants something real bad but ain’t ever been able to find it. Long black hair a man could twist in his fingers and—”

“Knock it off,” Shorty grunted. “Pretty soon you can get back to that Ireneabelle cutie in the beauty shop you keep talking about. And when we get what we’re after you can take your pick of any dame in Miami. They’ll be stacked three deep, waiting for you.”

“That’s for sure,” Whitey murmured, nodding in agreement. He sat up abruptly. “Listen, Shorty,” he said. “Where do we stand, anyway? I’m not so easy in my mind about this business of a New York syndicate approachin’ the old coot. We’ll be cut out yet. What I say is, let’s just grab him and get on my boat. We’ll go us a mile to sea and he’ll tell us what we want to know.”

“Maybe. And maybe not. He’s a tough old rooster. He won’t crack easy. Besides, just his telling us won’t be enough. He’ll have to show us.”

“He could draw us a map.”

“And maybe fake it? Anyway, you miss a thing like that by a couple hundred feet and you may never find it if you live to be a hundred. We’ll grab him if we have to, but first I’m hoping we’ll get a break that will make grabbing him unnecessary.”

Whitey rolled his eyes upward. “Treasure!” he sighed. “Sunken Spanish treasure! That’s what it’s gotta be, if it’s worth five million dollars! Old Cap’n Tolliver has sure as hell found the wreck of an old Spanish treasure ship—”

“Shh!” Shorty leaned forward with the glasses. “He’s in the living room, picking up the phone. Maybe this is it, Whitey.”

The box on the floor beside the cot gave a buzz. Whitey already had earphones on, and Shorty came over to stand beside him. Shorty turned one earphone outward and, heads pressed together like a pair of vultures, they listened. They heard the click of a phone lifted, then a voice. “Michael Shayne speaking.”

“Mike Shayne, the detective?”

“Right. Just who is this?”

“You don’t know me, Mr. Shayne. I’m Captain Tod Tolliver. Did you receive something in the mail today?”

“If you’re referring to a sample of antique Spanish metallurgy, yes.”

Tolliver’s laugh was like a string of firecrackers going off. “That’s a cute way to describe it. I sent it. To get you interested.”

“I’m interested, Captain Tolliver.”

“There’s more where that sample came from, Mr. Shayne. If you want to know the details, I’ll come to see you — ten o’clock tonight. I want to hire you to help me on a little job.”

“We’ll talk about that when I see you. I’ll be waiting for you at ten o’clock.” Shayne’s voice was crisp.

With a double click, the line went dead. Whitey took off the earphones.

“Now what does that get us?” he grumbled. “Now he’s ringing in this Mike Shayne, the private eye. From what I’ve heard he’s tough as raw leather, not afraid of cops or crooks.”

“Luckily I’ve got brains enough for both of us,” Shorty said. “This is the break we’ve been waiting for. Come on, we’ll see Ireneabelle, that beauty-parlor cutie of yours. We’ve got a little business with her.”

2

Michael Shayne lounged in his worn leather armchair, occasionally sipping brandy, and flipping the Spanish gold piece in the air, catching it as it came down. It was nine-thirty, not yet time for Captain Tod Tolliver to arrive. In the intervening hours he had learned a little about the captain, but not much. Tolliver was a retired shrimp fisherman who lived on a small income left him ten years before by an uncle in New England. He’d never been mixed up in anything unsavory. That was all.

Abruptly the redhead’s apartment buzzer whirred. Shayne put the gold piece away and stood up. Tolliver was early.

With long strides the redhead crossed to the door. A small, plump man with thinning black hair stood there. He wore a pair of shiny blue pants, an old blue jacket with brass buttons, and held a battered yachting cap marked Captain in his hand.

“Captain Tolliver?”

“Coming aboard, Mr. Shayne,” the little man said heartily. His voice sounded younger than it had on the phone. “I figgered maybe ten o’clock would be a bit late, so I caught the first tide and came early.”

He stepped in and looked around as Shayne closed the door.

“Drink?” the redhead asked.

“Don’t mind if I do,” the small man agreed.

Shayne was reaching for the bottle and glasses when the buzzer sounded again. “I’ll see who it is,” he said, and opened the door.

Standing framed in the doorway was a tall man with red hair — a man who might, at a distance, be mistaken for Michael Shayne by someone who didn’t know the detective well.

He had a gun in his hand. “All right, Shayne,” he said. “Put ’em up and keep quiet.”

Slowly Shayne raised his hands. The tall man’s eyes followed them. Shayne brought up his knee sharply, and caught the other’s gun hand. The hand flew up and the gun flew out of it. The visitor gave a grunt of pain. Shayne was reaching for him when the top five floors of the building fell on his head.

“Damn it, Whitey,” Shorty grumbled, putting the blackjack back into his pocket and looking down at the crumpled figure on the floor. “He almost took you, and you with a gun on him! I told you this shamus lad was tough. Lucky I was right in back of him. Now come on, get out that adhesive tape. We got half an hour to get set before Tolliver gets here.”

Michael Shayne opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the electric clock on his bureau. It said nine fifty-five. He turned his head painfully, knowing he’d been sapped from behind by the short man posing as Captain Tod Tolliver. They’d taped his ankles together, taped his wrists behind his back, slapped tape over his mouth, and dumped him on his bed.

Now they were standing in front of the mirrored bathroom door. The tall man had shucked the nondescript clothes he’d been wearing and was attired in one of the private detective’s Palm Beach suits. He was admiring himself while his short companion fussed with the open-necked shirt they had taken from Shayne’s wardrobe. “That’s it, Whitey!” he said. “Why, hell, you’re a regular man of distinction now.”

The levity went out of his voice. “Now listen carefully. Tolliver’ll be here in a minute. If he wants a bodyguard, you’re it. If he doesn’t, you suggest it.”

“You just leave it to me,” the other grinned. “You got brains, all right, putting a tap on th’ captain’s phone like you did. Now he’ll take us right where we want to go. Hey!” He whirled. Shayne closed his eyes fast, but Whitey had seen him in the mirror. “Big Boy is awake!”

“He is, is he?” Shorty strode over and slapped the detective hard with his open hand. “Quit faking, shamus. We know you’re awake.”

Shayne opened his eyes and looked up at Shorty. Shorty nodded with satisfaction.

“You ain’t hurt bad,” he said. “Whether you get hurt worse depends on how you behave.”

Whitey slipped a five-inch switchblade knife from his pocket and snapped it open suggestively. “Why should we fool around? Lemme slip him Little Joe here and he won’t bother us none — now or ever.”

“I said wait! No use killing if we don’t have to. We’ll see how things go. Now get out there. I’ll wait in here with the door open, so I can listen. And you’d better lemme have the knife — just in case.”

Whitey handed over the knife and went out into the other room. Shorty pulled up a chair beside the bed, snapped out the light, closed the door except for a crack, and sat down beside Shayne.

“All right, shamus,” he said. “Play it smart and nothing worse will happen to you. All we want is a little information from Tolliver. You can’t make any noise — but when he comes, don’t even try.”

He touched the redhead’s throat with the point of the knife and chuckled.

There was nothing to say, and Shayne said it. In the other room he could hear Whitey pouring a drink. Beside him Shorty’s breathing was slow and deep.

A minute passed. Two. Then the buzzer shrilled. They heard Whitey open the door.

“Mr. Shayne?” a voice asked. “I’m Captain Tod Tolliver.”

“Come in, Cap’n, I’ve been expectin’ you.” The door shut. A chair scuffed. Springs squeaked. “Drink, Cap’n?”

“Not for me, thanks. I don’t drink when I got navigatin’ to do. And I reckon I’ve got some important navigatin’ ahead of me tonight.”

“Goin’ after th’ treasure, Cap’n?”

Tolliver chuckled. “Well, mebbe I’m going after treasure tonight. I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no.”

“That’s right, Cap’n, play it safe,” Whitey agreed. “I’m not meanin’ to be inquisitive. But what was it you wanted to see me about?”

“I need some help from an honest detective,” Captain Tod Tolliver said bluntly. “Judgin’ from everything I heard about you, you’re tough and you’re honest.”

“Thank you, Cap’n, I take that right kindly.”

“Now it’s like this,” Captain Tolliver said. “I got a big deal in hand and I need somebody to help look after my interest, so—” He paused, as if his attention had been diverted. “Say,” he continued after a moment, “Mr. Shayne, that’s a mighty nice shirt you got on.”

“Kind of like it myself,” Whitey said.

“Yes, sir, a nice shirt.” And suddenly Captain Tolliver’s voice seemed a shade too hearty. “Mind if I touch it? Looks like mighty good material.”

“The best, Cap’n.”

Michael Shayne waited, alert. What was the unseen Tolliver getting at? He couldn’t believe the caller was interested in a linen sport shirt. He strained to catch every word.

“Yes sir,” Tolliver was saying, “I wish I had a shirt like that. But I tell you what, Mr. Shayne. To make my story clear, I got to go get the map. Left it in my car, just in case I decided not to hire you. But I’m convinced now you’re the right man for the job, so I’m going to run down to get it. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Suppose I come with you.” There was undisguised eagerness in Whitey’s tone.

“No, we’d just have to come back here anyway. Won’t be but a minute. Don’t need two to fetch a map.”

The apartment door opened and closed. Beside Shayne, Shorty leaped up so abruptly that the knife he’d been holding on his lap skittered to the floor.

“God damn it!” Shorty cursed in the darkness. Letting the knife lie where it fell, he dashed into the living room. “Whitey!” his voice was thick with rage. “You let him get away, you knuckleheaded cracker!”

“Calm down, will you? He’s just goin’ for th’ map. Th’ treasure map. Once we have that—”

“Map hell! He got wise somehow. He came over and looked at your shirt, didn’t he? What did he see, now? Why would that — Oh, for God’s sake! It was all on account of that bird-brained beauty-shop tramp of yours, Ireneabelle. She didn’t do a complete job. Come on! We can catch him before he gets very far.”

The apartment door opened and slammed shut. Before their footsteps were gone down the hall, Shayne rolled off the bed. Contorting himself on the floor, he slid his taped hands down past his hips until he could draw his taped ankles through the circle of his arms. Now his fingers were in front of him.

He slid head first under the bed, scrabbling on the dusty boards with his fingertips for the switchblade knife Shorty had dropped. He hit it with his knuckles, knocked it away, found it again, and wriggled back out with the knife clasped between his fingertips.

He got to his knees, rose to a standing position, and hopped to the bureau. The top drawer was open a crack. He slid the handle of the knife inside the opening and wedged it in place by leaning against the drawer so that his weight held the weapon in place, caught between drawer and dresser.

Now he could saw the edge of the tape which bound his wrists against the sharp blade. It cut easily. The drawer held the knife firm. When he had half cut through the tape he twisted his wrists and broke the rest. Swiftly he pulled the sticky stuff free, wincing a little as it pulled off the red hairs on his forearm. Then he stooped, cut his ankles free. Taking time only to rip the tape from his mouth, he went after Captain Tolliver and the two thugs.

The elevator was in use. He went down the emergency stairs three at a time. They had at least four minutes’ start on him. But if they caught Tolliver they might decide to bring him back to the apartment.

Six strides took Shayne through the empty lobby. At this time of night there was no one on duty. The street outside was empty.

Around a corner garbage cans banged. The detective raced to the service alley. Old Sam, the night maintenance man, was manhandling garbage cans to the street for the morning pickup.

“Sam,” Shayne rapped. “Did you see anything just now? Two men chasing another man, maybe?”

“I sure did.” Sam paused and mopped his face. “He was a-runnin’ like a scared little rabbit. They caught him, too, up by the end of the block. Dragged him into a parked car and lit out. Maybe they was just funnin’.”

“They weren’t funning,” the redhead said grimly. Whoever Captain Tod Tolliver was, and whatever he knew, he was gone now. Whitey and Shorty had him, and by now they were miles away, lost in the maze of Greater Miami.

A bitter rage burned in him. He didn’t like to be sapped in his own room. He didn’t like having a client kidnaped from his place, either.

Shayne swung about on his heel and went back to his apartment.

3

Michael Shayne sloshed brandy into a glass, gulped it, and scowled. Something about Whitey had tipped off Captain Tolliver that he was a phony. There had been that business about the shirt, and Tolliver had obviously gone over to get a closer look at it. Then he’d caught on and fled. What had tipped him? Not the shirt — it had to be something to do with Whitey.

But the single look Shayne had had of him before he’d been sapped hadn’t revealed anything that should make a stranger immediately suspicious. Unless it was something that didn’t become obvious until he had put on an open-necked sport shirt and—

“Well, by God!” Shayne said aloud. Tolliver was a smart old bird. Whoever heard of a redhead being nicknamed “Whitey” anyway? Whitey had had his hair dyed especially for this job. But the hair on his chest had still been blond, and Tolliver had spotted it because of the open sport shirt. That was why Shorty had been sore at somebody in a beauty shop. For not doing a complete job of turning Whitey into a redhead. Deena — no, Ireneabelle.

Hell, already he was learning something about the two thugs who had sapped him and tried to take his place. One of them was named Shorty, the other was called Whitey. Whitey had a girl friend named Ireneabelle — an unusual name — who worked in a beauty shop and had done a hurried dye job on him.

The redhead scooped up the phone and dialed. A rich, throaty, woman’s voice answered.

“Hello, Mabel,” he said. “Michael Shayne.”

“Mike!” the voice gurgled. Mabel was forty-five, with bright orange hair. She weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and owned one of the larger Miami beauty shops.

“Sweetheart! I was just sitting here waiting for you to call!”

Shayne chuckled. Two months before a New York woman had died suddenly in Mabel’s shop, under a dryer. He had proved it was because of a dose of poison her husband had slipped into her coffee, and not because of anything Mabel’s operator had done. Mabel had sworn undying gratitude.

“Mabel, I need a favor.”

“Ask me anything, honey.” Mabel’s voice was languorous. “And I do mean anything.”

“Did you ever hear of a beauty parlor girl named Ireneabelle?”

“That’s a new handle to me, Mike. I have Clara Sue and Betty-Lee, and a dozen more, but no Ireneabelle.”

“She probably works in some little, cheap shop. But I want to find her and get her home address and I want it fast. Will you call all your friends in the business and ask them? And if they don’t know, have them each call five friends, and keep the ball rolling until we locate Ireneabelle?”

“Just let me get started. In ten minutes the phone company will wonder what hit them. Believe me, they will!”

He chuckled again and hung up. He poured himself a stiff drink, to help ease the ache in his head, then went into the bedroom and found the clothes Whitey had discarded. They were cheap, Army-Navy store stuff, smelling of fish. The shirt didn’t even have a laundry mark.

He threw them into his closet and went on into the bathroom. He ran cold water over his head, and the tenderness where Shorty had sapped him eased off. He was putting his shirt back on when the phone rang.

It was a woman who spoke when he lifted the receiver. But it wasn’t Mabel.

“This is Sandra Ames, Mr. Shayne. May I speak to Captain Tolliver, please?”

“Sorry, Captain Tolliver isn’t here,” Shayne said, keeping his tone noncommittal.

“He’s left already?”

“Some time ago.”

“But he said that he’d — Did he say where he was going?”

“He didn’t say.”

“The captain was supposed to call me as soon as he talked to you. Did you accept his offer?”

“I didn’t accept anything. We didn’t have time to talk. The captain was kidnaped before I could speak to him.”

“Kidnaped!” The word was a gasp. There was a long silence. Then a new voice spoke, a man’s voice, high-pitched, excited, touched with an English accent.

“Mr. Shayne! Did you say Captain Tolliver was kidnaped?”

“I said kidnaped. From my apartment. By two armed men.”

“Good Lord! He said he was being watched and followed but — Have you any idea who they were or where they took him?”

“If I did I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you. Who are you, anyway?”

“Excuse me. I’m — I’m very upset by what you’ve told me. My name is Mollison, Hugo Mollison, and I — that is, Miss Ames and I — were about to become Captain Tolliver’s partners in a business venture. But if he’s been kidnaped — I’m afraid I’m a little incoherent.”

“A little.”

“What I’m trying to say is, you must do your best to find him. I’ll guarantee any fee you name. Will you please take down this phone number and address, and if you find him, call us or come here with him at once?”

Hugo Mollison gave the phone number and address — a very expensive motel where the individual houses were miniature bungalows, affording both space and privacy. “Please keep in touch with me, Mr. Shayne. I’m dreadfully upset.”

Michael Shayne promised to keep in touch, and hung up. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Captain Tod Tolliver knew something that a lot of other people were suddenly very anxious to know. But unless Mable phoned soon—

The phone rang. This time it was Mabel.

“Mike, honey,” she gurgled, “the girl you’re looking for lives at three hundred and three Vista. Bedroom at the top of the stairs. Door’s unlocked. Just hurry over and go right up. She’ll be waiting for you.”

He grinned at the phone. “Mabel, baby,” he said, “three hundred and three Vista is your address. I’ll take you up on that sometime, but tonight I have to find Ireneabelle.”

“What’s she got that I didn’t have twenty years ago?” Mabel sighed. “Okay, I tried. Her name is Ireneabelle Smith and she lives at seven thirty-one Morton Street.”

“Thanks, gorgeous.” He hung up before Mabel could turn coy again. From his desk he took his.38 and slid it into his coat pocket. Then he went downstairs, got his car out, and headed for Morton Street.

4

It was a drab street and 731 was an old two-story stucco apartment house. He let himself into the vestibule. An almost new card in a slot under a mail box said Ireneabelle Smith was in Apartment 7. The locked door opened for one of the special keys on his chain and the redhead let himself in and went up the scuffed stairs quietly, inhaling the smell of old buildings — sweat and cooking and ammonia and decay, all blended into an essence of poverty. Silently he moved down the dim hall and by the light of a dusty bulb found No. 7. He thumbed the doorbell with urgent pressure.

There was the creak of bedsprings inside. A guarded, feminine voice whispered, “Who is it?”

He put his mouth close to the door. “I’m from Whitey. Open up.”

“Just a second.”

The springs squeaked again. Light footsteps crossed the floor. The door opened. The dim light showed a small, dark-haired girl clutching a cheap wrapper around herself.

“What about Whitey?” she asked.

“I can’t talk out here.” Shayne deliberately pushed into the room and closed the door. Ireneabelle fell back, doubt and suspicion on her sullenly pretty features. Her eyes were cold.

“That’s better,” he said, abruptly. “Whitey is in a jam. He wants to get his hair back again the right color. He wants to know what stuff to use on it.”

“I already told him,” the girl said. “The dumb cracker, if he can’t remember—” She broke off, with a sudden look of cunning. “You don’t come from Whitey. Get out of here or I’ll start screaming.”

“Scream away, baby.”

“You’re a dick!” Ireneabelle shrilled. “But I ain’t done a thing! You can’t say I have.”

“You’ve just been an accomplice to a kidnaping, that’s all.”

“No such thing. Whatever he’s done, I don’t know anything about it!” Panic edged her voice.

“Maybe yes and maybe no,” the detective said noncommittally. “Give me a little information and I’ll forget that dye job on him.”

“What do you want to know?” Her tone was sullen, her gaze wary.

“His address first.”

“I don’t know it.”

He sighed. “Okay, baby, come on down to Headquarters. Maybe your memory will be better there.”

“No,” she whimpered. “He lives at nine twelve Bayard. It’s a shack he owns. He takes out fishing parties when he can get them.”

“You know a guy named Shorty?”

“I only saw him twice. Whitey hasn’t known him long.”

“He live with Whitey?”

“Whitey said he was bunking with him.”

“That’s all, then. We won’t bother you again unless you’ve given me a bum steer.”

“It’s a straight steer. But he’s going to be sore at me.” Ireneabelle’s voice was a self-pitying whisper. “He doesn’t like cops.”

“He’s got a reason not to.”

The redhead let himself out. Bayard Street was near the waterfront. It was a rundown district where a man’s business was his own private affair. The smell of garbage and dead fish was in the air. The houses were shacks and at night they leaked light through the cracks between the boards. No. 912 was back from the rest, with a marine junkyard on one side and an old garage on the other. From the front no light was visible.

Shayne left his car parked half a block away and walked to 912. He waited, saw no one watching, and melted into the shadows along the board fence of the junkyard. Whitey’s shack was one story, probably four rooms. Toward the rear he saw light seeping out under a drawn shade. He moved quietly back, found a rear porch, saw the shade of the window facing it up a couple of inches. Then he ducked back just in time as the rear door opened.

It was Whitey, who dredged into the old icebox on the porch, took out two bottles of beer and went back inside, slamming the door. If they were drinking beer there was no hurry. Shayne eased back onto the porch and squatted down beside the window that overlooked the grimy little kitchen.

Shorty, in shirt sleeves, sat in a kitchen chair holding the glass Whitey had just poured. Whitey was pouring a drink for himself.

“We got him here safe,” Shorty was arguing. “Now we ain’t going to hurry things. It’s still only eleven. We’ll wait until midnight to let things get good and quiet. Then we’ll sneak him on your boat and head out to sea. We’ll make him take us there and we’ll mark the spot. You’re a good diver, you can go down and check.”

“How do I know how deep it is?” Whitey grumbled, gulping beer noisily. “What about them sharks and barracuda? I need me a real outfit.”

“For five million bucks you can take a chance. Anyway, I read sharks and barracuda don’t attack unless they smell blood. This is how we got to do it. Mark the spot, then raise dough for equipment. And keep our mouths shut!”

“You don’t think I’d gab, do you?”

“You like to talk when you’re around girls. Make out you’re a big shot. Well, you’ll be one — if you keep your mouth shut.”

Sullenly Whitey drained his beer, his thin features ugly. Shayne could see that the two were keyed up. He had an idea Whitey would keep his mouth shut because as soon as Shorty knew Captain Tolliver’s secret, he’d shut Whitey’s mouth for him.

“All right.” Whitey wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll just go in, and make sure the old coot is tied tight.”

He put down his glass and opened the door which led toward the front of the shack. The room beyond, a bedroom probably, was pitch dark. He disappeared into it — and Shayne saw a finger of scarlet flame slice the darkness.

The shot boomed like a cannon in the little shack. Whitey gave a gurgling scream and somewhere in the darkness pitched to the floor. The detective could hear him flopping there like a dying fish.

Shorty jumped up. For an instant he stood in the doorway, staring into the dark room, befuddled. A second shot rattled the boards of the shack. Shorty took the bullet in his chest, slammed backward across the little kitchen, hit the window sill with his hips, and the upper half of his body went through the glass. Then he lay there, bent backward in the middle, balanced on the window sill like a broken teeter-totter, blood coming down under his collar and pouring over his face.

Even before Shorty hit the window Michael Shayne was at the back door. He swept it open, stepped inside, reached for the string and pulled out the overhead light in one fluid motion. Then he took a stride toward the doorway into the bedroom and waited, his gun ready.

The shack was completely dark now. The tinkle of broken glass had stopped, and Whitey had quit his fish-flopping. In the bedroom Shayne could hear heavy breathing. Then footsteps broke in the opposite direction. The front door slammed open and a figure darted out and away into the shadows. The redhead followed as far as the front door and stopped. His first job was to rescue Tolliver. He turned back and swept the beam of a pencil flashlight around the room.

It picked out a figure sprawled on an old daybed, bound and gagged. The light reflected from bright blue eyes in a lined, leathery face. Shayne put the light out and got out a knife. “I’m Shayne,” he said, as he slashed the ropes binding Tolliver’s hands and feet. “The real one this time.”

He untied the gag and helped the little man sit up. Beside him Tolliver tentatively stretched his arms and legs. “That feels good,” he said. “I guess you came in what they call the nick of time. Wasn’t you who killed them fellers, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t me. How do you feel? Can you walk?”

“Always been able to since I was a year old.” Tolliver struggled to his feet. “Didn’t think it was. This other feller was in here anyway five minutes, waiting, before the shooting. He whispered something to me. Sounded like he said, ‘Don’t worry, old man, I’m not interested in you. Just those back there.’ Couldn’t hear his voice real clear but it didn’t sound like yours.”

“It wasn’t. Take my arm if you want, but let’s go. We’ll talk some place else.”

“Always done my own navigating,” Captain Tolliver said stubbornly. “Just lead the way.”

“Come on.”

Shayne led the way to the back door. They passed Whitey lying jammed up in a corner of the room. Shorty was still balanced on the window sill. The redhead led Tolliver through the shadows to the front of the house and paused for a look.

All up and down the street the shacks had an air of tense expectancy, as if a hundred eyes were watching. Radios and TV sets had suddenly become quiet. But nobody had come out to investigate. Nobody would, until someone surreptitiously called the police.

Michael Shayne led the way to his car, and they left Bayard Street with its dead men behind them.

5

“Good Lord!” Hugo Mollison said helplessly. He pattered across the room to stub out a cigarillo in an ash tray, and came back mopping his high pink forehead with an imported linen handkerchief. “This — this killer just slipped into the house while you were lying there, Captain, waited until one of your kidnapers came into the room, then shot him, shot the other one, and ran?”

“That’s it.” Tod Tolliver nodded. He sat upright on the edge of an easy chair, as erect as a bantam rooster, his seamed, leathery features serious.

Shayne sat back in an arm chair, watching them all, while Tolliver and Hugo Mollison, a softly plump man with large, mournful brown eyes, talked. From time to time his gaze went to Sandra Ames. She sat in a straight-backed chair with her fingers interlaced tensely in her lap. She was tall and full-bosomed, a fact which the light silk shantung dress emphasized. In her dark eyes, as she watched Tod Tolliver, banked fires burned.

The fifth member of the little group gathered in the living room of one of the Flying Pelican’s most deluxe units had been introduced as Pete Ruggles. Pete, with the fresh, ingenuous features and crewcut of a college boy, had straddled a chair backward and was listening with rapt attention to Tod Tolliver’s account of his kidnaping and rescue.

So far Michael Shayne had said as little as possible. He preferred to listen and try to appraise the setup. No one had said exactly what the deal was that these three were making with Captain Tod Tolliver. But the idea of treasure — sunken Spanish treasure — still hung in the air.

Shorty and Whitey had believed it was Spanish treasure they were after. But they were cheap thugs who had apparently stumbled onto something without knowing what it was. And now they were dead for their pains.

The killer who had removed them from the scene gave Shayne a lot more to think about. He had shot them down deliberately, as if his only intention was to rescue Tod Tolliver. But then he had tried to take no advantage of the fact. Or had the redhead simply surprised him too quickly?

On the other hand, was he merely a random factor in the equation — some thug settling an underworld argument? So far, there weren’t enough clues to tell. Hugo Mollison turned to Pete Ruggles. “What do you make of it, Peter?” he asked. Hugo was about fifty, a pouter pigeon type of man, with his pink face, high forehead, and the nervous manner of a suburbanite who finds himself mixed up in a neighborhood quarrel.

“Gosh, Hugo, I don’t know,” Pete said goodnaturedly. He had a deep, pleasant voice. “I mean this is, well, out of my depth. I’m along just to lend a strong back to this enterprise. Sandra is supplying the money and you the brains and me — well, thinking isn’t my strong point. Maybe Mr. Shayne has some ideas.”

“Of course.” Hugo Mollison mopped his forehead again. “Mr. Shayne, what do you think this murderous attack signifies?”

Shayne put down his cigarette. “Ordinarily,” he said, “I’d have said somebody was interested in the captain and was keeping an eye on him, saw him snatched, followed Shorty and Whitey, and blasted them to rescue the captain. Maybe to ask him questions. But since the killer told Tolliver he wasn’t interested in him, I’m assuming it was a quarrel between crooks.

“Shorty was from up north, by his accent. Whitey was a local boy, probably just on the fringe of the underworld. Maybe he did a little smuggling, something like that. My guess is, somebody had a grievance against Shorty, wanted to rub him out, and took Whitey along.”

Sandra Ames let out her breath. “I hope so,” she said huskily. “I couldn’t bear to think there was still a third group who knew about the captain’s secret. How did these two learn about it?” She looked at Tolliver. The little man seemed sheepish.

“I expect it was my fault,” he said apologetically. “Last month I got a little tipsy and was having fun telling some tourists how easy it is to find lost Spanish treasure in these waters — just stringing them along, you know. Then I had to have some help navigatin’ back to my shack. This Shorty fellow was the one who helped me. All these years I never let my tongue run free, but I remember he pestered me with questions until I told him some fool story and chased him out. Guess what I said told him too much, because it was right after that I got the feeling I was being watched and followed.

“Then you folks came along and proved to me you knowed what my secret was, and I figured I’d pushed my luck too long. Too many folks all of a sudden knew too much. That’s why I was willing to do business. This feller tonight who killed them two — maybe he wasn’t interested in me, like he said. But I got a feeling we should do our business and get it done with, fast as possible. I just don’t feel easy in my mind any more.”

“Then you’re ready to go ahead with our arrangements?” Hugo Mollison asked. “I was afraid — but that’s wonderful. Is there still time to leave tonight?”

“There’s time.” Tolliver eyed the clock over the mantel. “Providin’ Mr. Shayne is willing to come with me.”

“Are you willing, Mr. Shayne?” Mollison asked anxiously. “There shouldn’t be any danger, really. And it will be well worth your while.”

“Hell,” the redhead said, “I don’t even know what you’re asking me to do. So far no one has told me what this is all about. I can make a guess, but I don’t care for guessing games. Tell me what you have in mind and I’ll see how I feel about it.”

“He’s right,” Pete Ruggles said. “Why hasn’t anyone told him?”

“I guess things moved too fast this evening,” Sandra Ames said. She gave Michael Shayne the full benefit of a dazzling smile. “Please accept our apologies. We forgot that you never had your interview with Captain Tolliver.”

“Everybody else seemed to know my business, I sort of figured you did too,” Tolliver chuckled. He seemed to be enjoying himself, like a schoolboy on a lark. “Will you tell him, Mr. Mollison?”

“By all means,” the plump man said. “It’s a story I enjoy telling. On September fifteenth, sixteen ninety-two, Mr. Shayne,” he said, “a fleet of five Spanish galleons set sail from Havana. One of them, the flagship, the Santa Cristina, had aboard it a strong room full of treasure, collected from all over South America. There were gold and silver bars. There were loose gems and gems in the form of necklaces, bracelets, fans, hair combs and many other ornaments. There were coins minted under Spanish supervision in Mexico, Peru, and elsewhere. Accounts of the time say it was more treasure than twenty men could carry.

“Well, only a day out of Havana, the little fleet was overtaken by a Caribbean hurricane. It ran before the storm, northward toward the coast of Florida. The storm struck, the fleet was dispersed. A week later three survivors of the fleet put back into Havana, badly battered. The Santa Cristina was not one of them. It had gone down somewhere off the Florida coast, carrying to the bottom enough treasure to pay the debts of the Spanish monarchy. In present-day figures, the value of the treasure is estimated at between ten and twenty million dollars.

“And Captain Tolliver—” Hugo Mollison paused to draw a deep breath—“Captain Tolliver knows where the Santa Cristina lies today. He’s actually brought up some of that treasure. In fact, for ten years he has known the whereabouts of the Santa Cristina and he’s been mining it of treasure as if it were a private safe-deposit box.”

He shook his head, looking with admiration at Captain Tolliver. The little man seemed to enjoy being the center of attention.

“That’s right,” Tolliver said. “Once a year I go, dive down, and bring up what I need. Up till now, nobody’s suspected me. But now Miss Ames and Mr. Mollison and Mr. Ruggles, well, somehow they found me out. They’ve made me a proposition. I’m going to show them where the wreck lies, and they’ll mark it. Miss Ames is going along with me to verify I ain’t faking and that the wreck and treasure are there. I’m not taking either Mr. Mollison or Mr. Ruggles because Miss Ames can verify the wreck and I don’t think she’ll get a sudden temptation to put old Captain Tolliver out of the picture.

“When she reports back to Mr. Mollison, I get a certified check for one hundred thousand dollars, which he’s already got in his pocket. Only when I got that check in the bank do I let them chart the wreck. After that it’s all theirs and my interest is over.

“I’m talking frank talk, Mr. Shayne, because we all understand each other. These look like honest folks, but in a deal like this it don’t pay to take chances and I want somebody on my side. I asked around among some folks for a man who was tough but could be trusted and I got your name. That’s why I called you. I want to hire you to see to it I get to bank my check and then spend it later. Your fee will be a flat ten per cent. That’s the deal. What do you say?”

“Please say yes, Mr. Shayne.” Sandra Ames leaned toward him. “Captain Tolliver wants to sail tonight. I think he’s right. The sooner we do this, the less the chance of interference. So I hope you will accept.” She smiled at him. “I’m sure you haven’t a thing to fear from me,” she smiled.

Shayne finished his cigarette and stubbed it out. They were all looking at him, waiting. Sandra Ames’s gaze seemed to be willing him to say yes. He let the wait stretch out just long enough. Then he nodded decisively.

“I’m with you, Captain,” he said.

6

Michael Shayne lay back in the narrow bunk of the old charter boat, Golden Girl, and listened. The engines were quiet. Outside there was a small lap-lap of water against the sides. For the last hour, up until five minutes ago, the Golden Girl had been pushing hard through the Atlantic south from Biscayne Bay — at least, they had started south.

They had left Miami fast. Five minutes from the time they stopped talking, they were driving to the marina where the Golden Girl was moored. Sandra Ames had brought two suitcases with her, one of them containing skin-diving equipment. Neither Shayne nor Tod Tolliver had returned to their rooms to pick up anything. Tolliver wanted to move fast and they had moved fast.

The detective felt the rough blanket of the bunk against his skin; having brought no pajamas, he was sleeping raw. Up on deck, he knew Tod Tolliver was crouching, probably peering into the darkness behind them, and listening.

After a few feet, past where a small doorway divided the tiny cabin into two sections, Sandra Ames was sleeping. At least, he assumed she was sleeping until he heard the door slide open.

“Mike?” Her voice was a husky, tentative whisper. “I just wondered if you were awake.” She came softly into his section of the cabin. In the darkness he could see her only as a blur of white, but her perfume filled the little space, subtle and provocative. “Why do you think Captain Tolliver has stopped?”

“To listen to see if we’re being followed,” Shayne said.

She sat down on the opposite bunk and he could almost see her now — not quite. “Who could follow us?”

“Who knows?” He made his tone casual. “Captain Tolliver doesn’t believe in taking any chances. For ten years he’s made it pay off.”

“Yes, of course. He’s smart — very smart. I like him.”

“So do I. He’s almost seventy, but he’s all man.”

“I know. He’s had a fabulous career. He started as a cabin boy in a whaling ship out of Salem, more than fifty years ago. But I didn’t come to talk about Captain Tolliver.”

The redhead’s “Oh?” was noncommittal. He didn’t think she had come to talk about the captain. Her voice held a tentative note, as if she were testing him as they talked. He wondered what she was leading up to.

“Have you a cigarette?”

“Sure.” He reached under the pillow, found the pack and some matches. He raised up on his elbow and leaned across the narrow aisle, holding out the pack. She took one, leaned forward, and he lit a match. The flare showed her face only a foot from his, showed also that she was wearing the filmiest kind of nightgown, with a scarf thrown over her bare shoulders.

“Thank you.” She sat back, while he lit a cigarette for himself. “Tell me, Mike, did you believe Hugo’s story about the Santa Cristina and the Spanish treasure?”

He took a reflective puff. “Should I have?”

Sandra Ames gave a sudden, appreciative laugh. “You should have been a diplomat. Why didn’t you believe it?”

“For one thing, any ship sunk in the year Hugo mentioned would be rotted away by now. It and any treasure would be hidden under a coating of coral, in these waters. You probably wouldn’t even know it was a ship unless you excavated under the coral.”

“I was pretty sure you hadn’t swallowed it.” She sounded pleased. “Hugo was positive you had. Of course it is a lie. Do you know what we’re really after?”

“No. But I know it’s something plenty big. Five million was the figure Shorty and Whitey were talking about.”

“Not five, no. Just one. A million dollars. In United States currency.”

“Oh?”

“You don’t sound a bit surprised!” Sandra Ames said accusingly. She puffed on her cigarette, and the glow lit her eyes so that they seemed a deep violet. She was breathing a little faster, her bosom rising and falling beneath the filmy nightgown.

“When you’ve been around as much as I have, you won’t be easy to surprise, either.”

“Well, it’s fabulous, Mike! There’s a sunken German submarine, somewhere off the Florida coast. It slipped out of Hamburg just before the war ended. It had all this cash aboard, and Hugo believes it was headed for South America where Hitler was going to try to escape and go into hiding. But Hitler never got away and the submarine sank.

“The money is packed in watertight containers. Every year Captain Tolliver has been bringing up ten thousand dollars. He makes a trip north every year, because he knows it would arouse suspicion if anyone locally knew he was banking so much money. He puts the ten thousand into a bank account in New York under another name. He never takes more because that’s all he needs, and for ten years nobody’s guessed a thing.”

“But you and Hugo and Pete found out.”

“Oh, that’s Hugo’s cleverness. Somehow he found out that these bills from Germany were turning up. I don’t know how, but he has connections. He knew the sub had gone down in Florida waters, so for three years he’s been living down here, poking around, trying to find a clue. He finally learned about Tolliver’s trips north every year, and this year he followed him and learned Tolliver was the man who’d found the sunken sub.

“Then he came to me and asked me to help finance an expedition to recover the money and buy Tolliver out. I said yes — it was like finding buried treasure. So it was I who went to Captain Tolliver and told him his secret was known and asked him if he wouldn’t sell out to us. He’s getting old, and he didn’t want to worry any more about being found out, so he said yes.”

“I can see his point of view,” Michael Shayne said. “Once his secret was known he wasn’t safe any more. He’s already just missed being killed by Whitey and Shorty. He’s playing it smart.”

“How can you be so calm!” Sandra Ames said. She stood up, and leaned toward him. Even though he could scarcely see her, he could feel the excitement emanating from her. She hesitated, as if waiting for him to say something. Then abruptly she turned and went back to her berth and closed the door.

The redhead stared reflectively at the glowing tip of his cigarette. So far, several people had told him several lies. The sunken Spanish treasure ship had become a sunken sub carrying a million dollars in less romantic, but more negotiable, U. S. currency. The first had been a lie. Was the second story the truth?

Suddenly the throb of the engine began to shake the little boat, and the slap of waves against her body recommenced. They were under way again.

7

Sandra Ames said in a strained voice, “Why doesn’t he come up?” She knelt on the splintery deck of the Golden Girl and stared out at the mirror-like blue surface into which Tolliver had vanished half an hour before. “Do you think anything happened to him?”

“He has air enough for an hour,” Shayne said. He looked around at the empty ocean which stretched away on all sides of them. There wasn’t even the smoke of a steamer in the distance. The Golden Girl was anchored, and there was too little swell even to move her. The sun was only half an hour above the eastern horizon.

Where they were — except that they were probably some place east of the Florida Keys — he had no idea. They had reached this spot in the first light of predawn, anchored, and Tod Tolliver had promptly donned his skin-diving gear, slipped into the water, and submerged.

How the old captain had known that this was the spot he wanted, Shayne had no idea. But Tolliver had come here somehow as unerringly as a pigeon finds its way to its home roost.

Sandra Ames relaxed and sat back cross-legged on the deck. This morning she wore white shorts and a white halter.

“I suppose I’m just being too impatient,” she said. “Cigarette?”

“Sure.” He lit two, and handed her one. She inhaled gratefully as, with a swirl of water, Captain Tod Tolliver broke the surface beside the anchored boat. Sandra Ames rushed to the tail. Tolliver kicked himself to the ladder hanging over the side and pulled himself up, looking grotesque in his face plate with the tank of oxygen on his back and the floppy green flippers on his feet.

The girl caught his hand and helped him aboard. The wiry, leathery little man carried a canvas bag that looped over his wrist, and a fish spear for a weapon. The canvas sack bulged awkwardly.

Tod Tolliver slid out of his skin-diving gear and the detective took it and put it down for him. Sandra handed him a waiting towel and a robe. Tolliver rubbed himself dry, then put the robe on over the red trunks he wore.

“Mite chilly,” he said, grinning at them. “Been waiting long?”

“Don’t tease us, Captain,” Sandra said. “Did you find the submarine? Is it down there?”

“Here.” The captain swung her the wet canvas sack. “Open this up, gal, and see what you see.”

With a sharp intake of breath, Sandra Ames grabbed the sack and wrenched at the drawstrings to open it. The wet canvas resisted, but presently the bag gaped open and she tumbled out a rectangular metal box onto the deck. It was a discolored gray, but did not look corroded.

“Pure aluminum,” Tod Tolliver said laconically. “Keep the water out for a long time to come yet. I rigged up a tool to open it easy.”

He rummaged in a long chest bolted to the deck near the companionway, and brought out something like an oversized can opener.

“I’ll open it,” Shayne said, and took the metal box from Sandra Ames. He turned it over and studied it for a moment. Stamped into the top were German letters and numerals.

“Just jab her in and go around the edges,” Tolliver said. “She’ll open like a can of sardines that way.”

He jabbed the point of the opener into the metal at a corner. The aluminum cut without difficulty. In less than a minute he had cut around three sides and bent back the loose flap of metal. Inside were tightly packed bundles of green. He spilled these out onto the deck and Sandra, hovering over him, scooped one up and ripped off the paper band that encircled it.

“Ten-dollar bills,” she whispered. “Look at them, Mike! And down underneath us there’s a million dollars’ worth of them. Maybe more!” She jumped to her feet and looked inquiringly at Tolliver. “The K-Three Forty-One is down beneath us?”

The captain nodded. “’Bout a hundred yards off our bow,” he said. “Seventy foot of water. That’s the bow, it’s on a coral reef. Stern is in a hundred twenty feet. Lying on her side. Big hole amidships. Looks like she either took a direct hit from a torpedo underwater or was bumped by a free floating mine. Went down fast.”

“I’m going down to see!” Sandra cried. “I’ve got to make sure.”

She ran down the companionway to the cabin. In hardly a minute she came out, wearing a brief bathing suit and lugging a skin-diving outfit, almost new. She slid into it with practiced speed, and Tolliver helped her get the air tanks adjusted on her back.

“Don’t try going inside,” he warned. “There’s some moray eels made a home in that submarine. You got to know just where to go or you might get trapped.”

The girl nodded impatiently. “I’ll take your spear,” she said. “I’m a good skin-diver.”

She went down the ladder at the stern, waved, then pushed off. For an instant she floated, then threw her legs in the air and dived straight down. A moment later she was gone.

“That girl’s got it bad,” the captain said. “Treasure fever.” He cocked a blue eye beneath a bushy brow. “Sorry about lying to you, Mike. But Mollison wanted to stick to the Spanish treasure story until we actually got everything signed, sealed and delivered. If it leaked out, or if you said no, it wouldn’t be took too serious. Somebody’s always looking for Spanish treasure.”

“No hard feelings, Captain,” Shayne said easily. “I’d have played it cagy too.”

“You want to dive down too?” Tolliver asked. “You can use my outfit. Plenty of air left in the tanks.”

Shayne shook his head. “I’ve never tried skin-diving,” he said. “But I know it isn’t something you can pick up in five minutes. Anyway, I don’t need to see it if both you and Sandra say it’s down there.”

“It’s down there, all right,” Captain Tolliver chuckled. He stripped off his trunks and began to pull on faded khaki trousers and a khaki shirt. “One day right after the war ended I was anchored off here trying to fix a bent propeller blade. Had to get in the water and take it off the shaft and like a ninny let it drop. I sounded and found it was only seventy feet. Had a skin-diving rig on board because I used to try diving to find some of these Spanish wrecks that really are in these waters. So I went down and there was my propeller right beside this submarine.

“She lay there like a dead whale, slanting down from the coral reef, and she hadn’t been there long — seaweed and barnacles had hardly started in on her. I swam around and found the hole in her side, and was just crazy enough to go in. Almost the first thing I found was a whole mess of these aluminum boxes, spilled all over — like they’d been stored right where she was blowed open.

“Further in, there were dead men lying around, and they didn’t look nice — water and the fish had been working on them. Now they’re just bones, of course. But that’s gruesome enough.

“I backed out and just took one of them aluminum boxes along for curiosity. When I finally got around to opening it, my eyes damn near popped out of my head. I went down for a couple more, but I didn’t want to take too many, because right away I could see what would happen if I started showing around too much money.

“Fact, I stowed the stuff under my shack and decided to forget about it. No use asking for trouble, and I had enough to get by on. But a spell later”—Tod Tolliver looked sheepish—“a young fellow I knew and his wife were drowned and their kids had to go to the St. Francis Foundling Home. I went to see them and I found this Home needed money bad.

“So then I got the idea I could help ’em out. Even if this cash I’d found wasn’t any good to me, it would be a godsend to the Home. So I passed around the story of coming into an inheritance from a dead brother back up north, and I went to New York and I banked ten thousand under a phony name, and I sent the St. Francis Home the cash anonymously.

“Every year since then I’ve made a trip north, saying it’s to collect my annual inheritance. Every year I dive down to pick up just ten thousand, and that’s what I deposit in New York. I figger any more might cause questions — maybe the Treasury would get on my trail or something. I had all the trouble I wanted in my life, Mike.”

Michael Shayne nodded. “Then Sandra and Hugo turned up, telling you they knew what you were up to.”

Tolliver passed a leathery hand over his chin. “That’s right,” he said. “It was right upsetting. They made me a proposition. I knew there wasn’t any more peace for me unless I took it; they’d be watching me all the time to find where the sub lay. I figger to pass on to the St. Francis Home most of what I get and keep my mouth shut. ’Bout all I can do, under the circumstances.”

He shook his head in perplexity. “Still can’t figure how they got on my track,” he muttered. “Well, I guess it don’t matter how. They just did, that’s all.”

“Did you ever do much exploring inside the submarine, Captain?” Shayne asked. “Find any papers, anything interesting?”

“Never tried to go too far in,” Tod Tolliver said. “Lot of the compartment doors are shut and I wasn’t going to fool around trying to open them and maybe get caught on the wrong side of one, if it swung shut. Of course, if it had still been war, I’d have let the Navy know where she lay, but bein’ the war was over, I just figured it was my private secret. Say, what about some grub? I’m hungry, and you probably are too.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Captain Tolliver started for the tiny galley, then stopped. “Want to show you something,” he said. “Look here.” He flung open the lid of the chest from which he had taken the oversize can opener. “This is my war chest. In case anybody ever followed me and I had to repel boarders.”

Shayne looked in. There, neatly mounted on brackets, was an automatic rifle with a clip already in it. The chest also held an emergency food kit, and a two-man raft with short paddles. The raft was a Navy surplus item that inflated itself when a cartridge of compressed gas was pierced.

“Never had to use them,” Tolliver said. “But I was ready. Now let’s see about that grub.”

8

Captain Tolliver had coffee, eggs, ham and toast ready and still Sandra Ames had not come up.

“Might as well eat,” he said. “No telling how long she’ll stay down there. Kind of a strange world, under the ocean is. You ought to take up skin-diving. You’d like it.”

“I will, one of these days,” Shayne said. He took the plate and steaming coffee cup Tolliver handed him and sat down on deck. The grizzled little man sat opposite him. The sun was still not much more than an hour high in the sky, the ocean was calm, a few gulls soared in the distance. It might have been a morning at the dawn of time.

“Looks like a quiet trip,” Tolliver said thoughtfully as they ate. “I been thinking some about that fellow last night who killed Shorty and Whitey. If he was just settling a feud with them, it was mighty providential for me. But if he was really interested in me, I reckon we shook him off. If nobody’s followed us up to now, they ain’t a-going to.”

“Looks that way, Captain,” Shayne agreed. He’d been giving some thought also to last night’s killer. But so far it did look as if he’d just been settling some personal quarrel with Whitey and Shorty.

With a small splash, Sandra Ames surfaced close beside them. She waved, swam to the ladder, and pulled herself aboard. The redhead helped her over the rail. She came aboard dripping, a lovely mermaid encumbered by rubber flippers, oxygen tanks, face plate and rubber tubing.

She pushed the face plate up and looked at him with eyes that glowed with the fire of excitement.

“It’s there, Mike!” she cried. “That enormous submarine lying there on the coral reefs, with seaweed growing over it now, and fish swimming around it. It’s a wonderful, fantastic world down there and in the middle of it the submarine just waiting for us to take all that money from it.”

She drew a deep breath. “I’ll go dress,” she said, slipping out of her skin-diving outfit and letting Captain Tolliver take it. “Now I’m hungry.”

She ran down the companionway, and the leathery old captain shrugged.

“There’s plenty of headaches ahead,” he said. “I’m kind of glad they ain’t my headaches any more. Let someone else take the risks. Me, I’m suited to be out of it.”

The detective started to answer, and stopped. They both stiffened and turned their heads to look up. Winging toward them from the north at an elevation of a thousand feet was a helicopter, moving sedately through the sky.

“Coast Guard!” Tolliver exclaimed. “Looking us over to make sure we’re in no trouble. Come on, start fishing.”

He grabbed a couple of old rods, stuck one in Shayne’s hands, and they both sat back, letting the rods project over the side of the boat while they watched the oncoming whirly-bird.

It was definitely interested in them, for it dropped swiftly to an altitude of three hundred feet and circled them.

“That’s no Coast Guard plane,” Michael Shayne said tersely. “No markings.”

“Nope, it’s a private plane,” Tolliver grunted. “Looks like one of them sightseeing planes the news service has. Sit tight, they may be just curious about us.”

But the helicopter, after circling them, paused, hanging in the air like a monster humming-bird. They saw a door in the side open and something came tumbling out. It hit the water with a splash, vanished, then bobbed to the surface again. It was an iron buoy, painted bright yellow and red, seeming anchored by a long length of chain.

“By grab, they’re marking this spot!” Tolliver yelled, his blue eyes blazing. “They know what we’re here for. But they don’t know they’re tangling with Tod Tolliver now.”

He threw down the fishing rod and scrambled to his chest of special supplies. He came out with the automatic rifle, checked it, and while the helicopter still hovered let go a burst at the bobbing buoy. The shots ripped the mooring open; the buoy began to sink.

“That’ll show ’em!” Tolliver said with satisfaction. He stood looking upward. The hovering helicopter turned, and the door in the cabin opened again. Shayne guessed what was coming — too late.

“Captain! Duck!” he yelled, but the sound of a machine gun chattering three hundred feet above them drowned him out. Bullets splashed in the water astern of them and then stitched a seam up the middle of the Golden Girl. Tod Tolliver was in the middle of the seam.

He grunted and crumpled to the deck, dropping the automatic rifle.

The lines of bullets came back and methodically crisscrossed the old cruiser. Shayne scrambled to Tolliver’s side and grabbed up the rifle. Kneeling, he put it to his shoulder, aimed upward at the hovering helicopter, and let go a burst directly into the cabin.

The firing stopped. The automatic rifle ran out its clip and while he was looking in the chest for another the helicopter soared abruptly upward. As Sandra Ames came stumbling out on deck, breathless, it began to wing northward at a thousand feet or more.

“What—” she began, and saw Tolliver. “He’s hurt!” she cried in alarm. “What happened?”

The detective jerked his head toward the disappearing helicopter.

“Friends dropped in for tea and games,” he growled, stooping over the old man. Painfully, Tod Tolliver opened his eyes as Shayne found a spot on his neck and pressed against the artery there. The blood spurting from his shoulder close to the neck, eased but did not stop.

“Thanks, Mike,” Tolliver whispered. “Guess I talked too soon. They followed me. Dunno how, but they did.”

“Mike, look!” the girl cried. The redhead looked up. Five miles or more away, the helicopter was just a dot in the sky. The dot became an exclamation mark as a long plume of smoke poured from it. The aircraft began to tumble like a falling leaf. It went down, out of their sight, leaving a trail of smoke that quickly thinned and vanished.

Captain Tolliver was trying to speak. Shayne turned back to him. The old man’s lips worked for a moment before the words came.

“Leave me here, Mike,” he said. “Get yourself and the girl back safe. Swing the deal — see those orphans get theirs.”

“I’ll do my damndest,” Shayne promised.

Tolliver’s breathing grew more difficult. With every breath a bubbling sound came from his throat.

He opened his mouth to say something — but the words were never uttered. His mouth stayed open and his head lolled sideways. Tod Tolliver wasn’t there any more.

9

The Golden Girl was going down swiftly, but on an even keel. For a moment Sandra Ames seemed unable to grasp their danger.

“They killed him!” she said. “They tried to kill all of us!”

“They tried. They didn’t do it. I think we finished them off, instead. Now come on. There’s a rubber life raft here. We’ve got to get it into the water.”

But without answering the girl ducked back down into the cabin. Michael Shayne jerked out the carefully packed rubber raft and punctured the inflator cartridge. The raft uncoiled like something living as it filled out, and he tossed it over the side, holding it with a rope. Sandra came back, wearing her light coat and carrying an overnight bag.

“Here, hold this rope!” Shayne said. She took it. He scooped up Captain Tolliver’s light body and ducked down into the cabin. The water was knee deep. He put Tolliver into a bunk and left him. Only when he was back on deck did he remember that he’d left his jacket, with his gun and wallet, back in the cabin. It was too late now to get them.

In the galley he found a loaf of bread and some bacon. He snatched up a jug of water, tumbled the supplies into a dish towel, and dropped them onto the raft.

“Now climb down,” he said. “Here, give me that bag.” Shayne took the small overnight bag Sandra was clutching and held it while she lowered herself down onto the rubber raft. Then he passed it down to her. It was heavy, and she grabbed it swiftly.

He stayed only long enough to grab the paddles from the chest, and the canvas sack into which he had put the money Tolliver had brought up from the sunken K-341. The deck of the Golden Girl was now almost awash. He simply stepped on the rubber raft, sat down and pushed them away. Behind them the old cruiser went down with hardly a ripple.

Mike picked up the paddles and handed one to Sandra. “We’ll paddle due west,” he said. “That should bring us to land eventually, though I don’t know where. Maybe a fishing boat will see us before that.”

“But we can’t go without marking this spot!” Sandra protested. “We have to, so we can find it again! We can’t lose everything, just when we’ve found it!”

“I’m open to suggestions. But right at the moment, I don’t see how we can do it.”

“That box!” She pointed to the emergency kit which came attached to the raft. “What’s in it? Maybe there’s something we can use.”

“We’ll see.” He got the lid off the small box after a struggle, and they both peered in. The contents were some packages of a special silver salt that precipitated salt water to make it drinkable, a couple of nylon fish lines with lures, and a small handbook, How To Survive at Sea.

“The fish lines!” Sandra exclaimed. “We can mark this spot with a float attached to a fish line. Look — over there. A life preserver from the Golden Girl. We can tie it to the fish line.”

“Better than nothing,” the redhead agreed. Unwinding one fish line, a hundred and fifty feet long, he attached all the sinkers in the kit, and all the hooks to one end of the nylon. “The hooks may catch in the coral,” he said. “Otherwise, the life preserver will just drag the sinkers away if any wind comes up.”

Then they paddled over to the life belt, floating in the oily stain that marked the Golden Girl’s sinking. Shayne fastened the free end of the fish line to the cork preserver, and dropped the sinkers into the water. They rushed down to a depth of a hundred feet and the improvised marker floated there, tugging gently at its anchorage.

“It’s a big ocean,” he said. “And if we ever can find this thing again it’ll be just luck.”

“We’ll find it,” Sandra Ames assured him confidently. “Hugo will be able to. I know he will.”

Shayne let it go at that. There was no use telling her that if an offshore wind came up, they might never see Hugo Mollison again to tell him about the marker.

They began paddling the clumsy rubber raft as nearly straight west as they could. An hour went by, and Sandra’s hands were painfully blistered. Grimly she kept on paddling, but after two hours had to give up, tears of frustration in her eyes. Shayne continued to paddle, and a light breeze, setting shoreward came up. But even with the breeze he estimated they were making no more than two miles an hour, and by noon, there was still no sign of the Florida coast on the horizon.

He shipped his paddle and rested. His own hands were blistered now, and he examined them tenderly. The salt water that dripped down the paddle made each paddle stroke a torture.

“We seem to be making progress no place fast,” he said. “But don’t worry. Men have survived for weeks on a raft like this. And a fishing boat is bound to come past sooner or later.”

“I’m not worrying about that,” Sandra said, her voice strained. She sat huddled close to him in her light coat — not for warmth, because with the sun overhead the day had become sweltering, but to avoid sunburn. “I’ve been thinking — those men in the helicopter who tried to kill us. They must be part of a gang who knows about the submarine too. That man last night — the one who rescued Captain Tolliver — he must be part of the gang. The two men in the helicopter couldn’t be the only ones. There must be others. They’ll be wondering what happened to the helicopter. Maybe they’ll come looking for it. And if they find us while they’re searching—”

She shivered slightly, and her eyes were big as she stared at Michael Shayne. He had been thinking along the same lines, but saw no point in mentioning the possibilities.

“The chances are a hundred to one we’ll be picked up by a fishing boat,” he said with false heartiness. “No need to worry. Let’s have a bit of lunch.”

He sliced the loaf of bread they had brought along, and put strips of raw bacon between the slices. They each ate a raw bacon sandwich, and washed it down with a careful swallow of water. Then Sandra Ames stretched and yawned.

“I’m sleepy,” she said. “I think I’ll take a nap.”

She curled up, her head cushioned on the side of the life raft, and fell asleep. Shayne estimated the situation. The breeze was still moving them shoreward slowly. The sea was calm and empty. His hands were too sore for more paddling. Between one thing and another, he hadn’t had much sleep the night before. Presently he curled up in the remaining space, put his arm over his eyes, and fell asleep too.

How long he slept he didn’t know, but when he abruptly opened his eyes, the sun had descended in the sky quite a distance. The voice that had awakened him yelled again.

“Ahoy, the raft!”

Shayne turned, even as Sandra Ames stirred and sat up. A very fancy cabin cruiser was easing up to them. In the bow stood a short, plump figure holding a coiled rope.

“Get ready to catch a line!” the plump man called.

The redhead stared, and behind him the girl gave an excited gasp.

“It’s Hugo!” she cried. “Hugo and Pete! They’ve found us!”

Michael Shayne rubbed his jaw absentmindedly. “Well, by God!” he said. “Damned if they haven’t!”

10

The sleek cruiser knifed its way northward toward Biscayne Bay. It was full dark now and the wind had freshened. They rolled a bit as they cut through the long swells.

Shayne, wearing a sweater borrowed from Pete Ruggles, stood and smoked and watched Pete at the helm. The young man handled the helm as easily as if he hadn’t spent half the afternoon in the water, skin-diving down to the sunken K-341 again and again to bring up more packages of bills in watertight aluminum casings.

Up forward, Sandra was sound asleep in one of the two tiny cabins. She too had spent more hours in the water, diving down to the submerged submarine after they had been rescued. For after picking them up and hearing their story, Hugo Mollison had swung the cruiser eastward, made a quick estimate of tide and wind, and then, either by superhuman good luck or uncanny navigation, found the life belt they had left to mark the spot where the Golden Girl had gone down and the K-341 lay. He himself did not put it all down to luck.

Aboard the chartered cruiser he had two skin-diving outfits, and using these, Sandra and Pete went over the side immediately. The life belt had shifted a little, but inside half an hour they found the sunken sub and brought up the first aluminum box of bills. They kept on diving until dark, and now forward there were twenty of the unopened, watertight containers. Shayne estimated they each held $5,000—a hundred thousand in all.

Hugo Mollison had stayed aboard directing operations, and making a chart of the spot. At dusk he had sighted on the sun on the horizon, and then on three different stars as soon as it was dark enough, making elaborate calculations. Then they had put back the life-belt marker, replacing the fish line with an anchor rope tied to a spare anchor, and headed back for Miami. Hugo was in the cabin now, putting down the results of his observations on a chart with great care and precision.

While Pete and Sandra were diving, he had questioned Shayne about the helicopter which had sunk the Golden Girl, gnawing his lip uneasily as he listened.

“The attack was tied in with the killing of Whitey and Shorty last night,” he said. “No doubt about it. The killer was keeping an eye on Captain Tolliver. Whoever he was working with wanted Tolliver free to lead them to the submarine. That helicopter was a smart idea. Taking off before dawn, it could cover an immense area in a few hours. Knowing what the Golden Girl looked like, as soon as it spotted you at anchor the pilot could feel sure you were over the U-boat. Of course, the men aboard — there must have been at least two — didn’t count on the captain having an automatic rifle aboard. That was good work, Mike — I’m glad you brought them down.”

“So am I,” Shayne said grimly.

“Actually,” Hugo Mollison went on, “that’s how we came to find you. Pete and I were too keyed up just to wait for you to get back. We had this chartered cruiser and decided to head south, hoping we might meet the Golden Girl on the way back. We saw a plane fall into the sea, burning, and headed toward the spot. But it must have sunk because we couldn’t find any traces. But we kept on, thinking we might find survivors, and when we sighted the raft we thought at first it was from the helicopter.”

“I see. Lucky for us.”

“Yes, finding you two was luck, and so was locating the marker you left over the U-boat. I’m sorry as the devil Captain Tolliver is dead, but I’m going to carry out my part of the deal, and pay the money to his estate.”

“He asked me to handle it for him, and turn it over to the St. Francis Foundling Home,” Shayne said. “Said you’d have a certified check. If you have it with you I can take it now.”

Hugo Mollison did not hesitate. He reached at once for his wallet and carefully brought out a crisp green check imprinted in red with the figures $100,000. It was made out to bearer.

“That’s how he wanted it,” he said, as Shayne folded it and put it into his pocket. “And because of the risk you took, I’m going to compensate you with an extra ten thousand. Does that seem a fair figure?”

“It sounds like a nice round figure,” the redhead said. Hugo Mollison seemed satisfied with the answer.

“We’re going to need your help,” he said. “I don’t know who was behind the attack on the Golden Girl, but we have to anticipate trouble. If you’ll work with us until we’ve finished with the K-Three Forty-One I’ll double that ten thousand.”

“I’ll see the job through,” the detective said, and Mollison nodded.

“Good man!” he said, heartily.

Now they were no more than three hours out of Miami, and Pete Ruggles, at the helm, showed no sign of tiring. In the cabin, he could see Hugo Mollison stir. Hugo stood up, putting some folded papers in his pocket. Then he stretched, put on a jacket, and came out on deck. He stopped to speak to Pete Ruggles, then came forward to where Shayne was smoking, sheltered from the breeze.

“Well, that’s that,” he said with satisfaction. He put his hand into his coat pocket. “I have the U-boat pinpointed on my chart now. I could go back there blindfolded. All’s well that ends well.”

“It hasn’t ended well for Captain Tolliver,” Shayne said.

“No, of course not.” Hugo Mollison shook his head regretfully. “But somehow we will avenge him. For our own safety we have to find out who was behind the attack on him. I was thinking that might be in your line.”

“I think I’ve already got it figured, Hugo,” Shayne said. “You were behind it.”

Hugo Mollison’s round, plump features altered. The softness seemed to vanish like a mask being taken off.

“So!” he said. “You are a better detective than I thought.” His hand remained in his pocket. “And how did you come to that conclusion?”

“I was a little slow,” Michael Shayne said harshly. “I’m not proud of myself. The truth is, I was pretty puzzled myself. Until this afternoon. Then when you rescued us so promptly, and found your way back to the K-Three Forty-One as if you were riding down a concrete road, I knew there was funny stuff going on. It wasn’t too tough to figure out what.”

“Indeed?” Even Hugo Mollison’s faintly English accent seemed to have changed, hardened, become more guttural. “What kind of funny stuff?”

Shayne took a deep drag on his cigarette, and the tip glowed scarlet in the darkness.

“You weren’t taking any chances from the beginning. You obviously gave Sandra a couple of little gadgets to take along with her last night. I can guess what they were. One of them was a miniature directional radio signaling device. She carried that in her overnight case. In fact, I found it while you were busy helping them bring up the stuff from the K-Three Forty-One. She started it broadcasting as soon as she got aboard the Golden Girl. It gave you a line on the boat at all times. All you needed was a directional radio, tuned to the right band. You have one on this cruiser which led you to our life raft, since Sandra was smart enough to bring the device along in her bag.

“The helicopter was also equipped with a directional radio that enabled it to home on the Golden Girl. After all, it came straight for us, and it wasn’t on any search pattern at the time. It knew where it was going. You planned for the helicopter to mark the spot and to eliminate us, because we were now superfluous and would make too many people knowing the secret. As for Sandra, she’d done her job and could be dispensed with. Being a German, you have no great sentiment about a woman you are making use of.”

“Ach!” Hugo Mollison’s eyes narrowed. “You are clever, Mr. Shayne. Did you guess that Sandra also had with her an ingenious little device that emits sounds under water? She took it down and left it in the K-Three Forty-One. We have sonic detectors which led us directly to it. That life preserver — it was just a red herring so you wouldn’t wonder when we found the spot again.”

Shayne shrugged. “That figures,” he said. “You’d naturally take double precautions. And now you have the spot well charted. So you can get rid of me and Sandra and go back to get the rest of the counterfeit when it’s convenient and no one is paying any attention to you any more.”

“Ach!” Mollison said again, a little grunt of surprise. “You knew it was counterfeit?”

“That didn’t take much figuring,” Michael Shayne told him easily. “Hell, the Germans were printing counterfeit money long before the war ended — British and American both. Played the devil with the Bank of England for a while. It stood to reason the Nazis wouldn’t have any million dollars in clean new bills by the time the war ended. They had to be counterfeit. That explained a lot of things — one of them being Tolliver’s trips north.

“The captain was no fool. He took only as much of the phony as he could pass at one time. Then he sold what he bought with it, and gave the cash he collected to the St. Francis Foundling Home. If the money had been good he could have found ways to get it to them with less trouble. And knowing it was probably counterfeit told me what you were really after. The plates. Are the plates aboard the K-Three Forty-One too, Hugo? Was that part of some cute Nazi scheme to set up headquarters in South America and flood the world with fake United States money? What do you figure those plates are worth to you now, if you can get them? Twenty million? Fifty?”

“A hundred million, perhaps. Who knows?” The plump man shrugged. “My friend, you are smart enough to be a German.”

“I suppose that’s meant to be a compliment,” Shayne grunted. “Tell me, Hugo, were you in German Intelligence?”

“German Naval Intelligence,” Mollison said. “Yes, I’ve been hunting for a clue to the whereabouts of the Three Forty-One ever since the war ended. I knew the counterfeit was turning up, and I knew the submarine went down somewhere off Florida. I finally became attracted to the curious pattern of Captain Tolliver’s life, and realized my search was ended.

“I hired Sandra, for a pretty girl can often persuade a man, even an old man, to do something he might not do for another man. Naturally, I was gratified to have Tolliver co-operate with me willingly, but equally naturally, I had him watched at all times. It was Pete Ruggles’s brother who was watching the captain last night, and who rescued him from Whitey and Shorty, not knowing you were also on the same errand.

“Pete’s brother was one of the two who died in the helicopter this morning. I promised Pete he could have the pleasure of killing you, but I see I must break my promise — you are too dangerous to take chances with. So, my friend—”

Deliberately Hugo Mollison withdrew a snubnosed automatic from his coat pocket and leveled it at Shayne’s stomach. The detective took another drag on his cigarette — and flipped the flaming tip straight at Hugo Mollison’s eyes.

Instinctively the plump man ducked and Shayne’s hand came down jarringly on Hugo’s right wrist. The gun fell to the deck. Mollison brought his head up with a butting motion and caught Shayne’s chin with it. Jarred by the impact, the detective fell backward against the cabin wall, dragging the smaller man with him.

“Pete!” Hugo Mollison shouted hoarsely, then Shayne’s hands went around his throat. He squeezed, and felt Hugo going limp in his grasp like a mechanical doll running down.

But Pete, abandoning the wheel, was charging for him, a glitter of steel in his hands. The smooth, schoolboy face was contorted with hatred, and the way Pete held the knife proved he knew how to use it.

Michael Shayne picked up the struggling Hugo and threw him at Pete. Pete put up his hands to ward off the hurtling figure, dropped the knife, and managed to break the force of the blow by deflecting Hugo to the side. Hugo wasn’t so lucky. His body crashed to the rail, he screamed once as if his back had broken, then he whipped over the side and disappeared into the dark, foaming water.

Pete hesitated an instant as his horrified gaze followed the disappearing figure of Hugo Mollison. Shayne charged him. Pete, holding the rail for support, brought up his foot and drove it into Shayne’s chest. The redhead grunted as his breath was violently expelled, and went backward onto the deck as the cruiser, with no one at the wheel, swung broadside and heeled violently to a wave.

The same movement of the deck that made Shayne lose his balance, caught Pete as he tried to follow up the kick. With the deck slanting away behind him, Pete began running backward to keep his balance. Shayne found himself rolled against the rail. By the time he untangled himself and got to his feet, hanging onto the rail as the craft still rolled wildly, Pete was gone. Shayne guessed that he had just kept running until he brought up against the after rail, and momentum had carried him on over it into the ocean.

He pulled himself to the wheel, grabbed it, and got the boat’s bow into the wind. Then he swung her around in a great circle. He made two more circles without spotting anyone in the water. Then he straightened out and turned north again.

In one of the cabins, Sandra Ames was still asleep.

11

Michael Shayne eased the boat into the ranks of craft moored in the basin of some private yacht club. He didn’t know which one it was and didn’t care. He spotted an empty mooring buoy, managed to catch it and secure the boat. Then he went to wake up the girl.

Sandra stumbled on deck, rubbing her eyes. “Why, we’re back,” she said sleepily. “Where’s Hugo?”

“He got off at the last stop,” Shayne said. “He had urgent business with some fish.”

“What?” She gazed at him blankly. “I don’t understand.”

Shayne jerked his thumb. “Back there,” he said. “Hugo is showing the barracuda how tough he is.”

Her eyes mirrored shock. “Hugo dead!” she whispered. “And Pete? Where’s Pete?”

“Pete couldn’t bear to leave Hugo. No, I didn’t kill them. They just abandoned ship. After trying to kill me.”

“They tried to kill you?”

“They tried. It didn’t work. You should be glad. Because after they killed me they were going to kill you.”

“No!” Her voice was taut. “No, Hugo wouldn’t have killed me! I was working with him!”

“Hugo had Whitey and Shorty killed last night. He had Captain Tolliver killed this morning, and the idea was to kill you and me at the same time and wipe the slate clean. A very efficient fellow, Hugo. That’s what comes of being in the Engineers and Intelligence, both.”

She shook her head, dazedly. “He was some kind of crook,” she said unsteadily. “I knew he was a confidence man of some kind. But I didn’t know he was a killer.”

“He was a pretty good killer. For a hundred million dollars he’d have killed everyone in Miami if he needed to, and could manage it.”

She took a deep breath. She adjusted fast. “You — knew he wasn’t what he pretended?”

“Not at first. I knew some fancy lying was going on, but I didn’t guess the truth until we abandoned ship this morning, and Hugo picked us up.”

“I–I don’t understand.”

“Convenient little miracles Hugo worked — first finding us, then finding the spot where the sub lay. You made that possible with the signaling devices Hugo gave you. I figured your overnight case was awfully heavy when we took to the raft.”

“Hugo told me it was just a precaution,” Sandra Ames said desperately. “Believe me, Mike! He said it would help in case Captain Tolliver changed his mind. There were two settings. I switched to the second setting when the captain brought up the money. That meant we’d located the wreck.”

“And also meant our little party could be dispensed with,” the redhead told her. “You gave the signal to get yourself killed, baby.”

She shook her head from side to side. “Mike,” she said, “Mike, believe me, I didn’t know any of this. That Hugo wasn’t what he seemed, yes. It was he who stumbled onto the captain’s trail, and hired me to help out. I haven’t any money. I never have had. I’m just a pretty girl with no talents. But I thought he really was going to pay the captain, and everything would be legitimate. I swear I did.”

Michael Shayne shrugged and started to turn. She caught his arm.

“Mike, wait! What about us?”

“What do you mean, what about us?”

“Don’t you see!” She spoke urgently, the words came tumbling out, and her eyes were fever bright. “You and I still know where the Three Forty-One is! The money can be ours! We can recover it! Hugo charted the location.’”

“The chart was in Hugo’s pocket when he went overboard. Whether the sonic device you planted down by the sub is still working I don’t know. If it isn’t, the sub may never be found again.”

“But we can find it again, somehow. Mike, we have to try! All that money, waiting there for us! Mike, you can’t say no!”

She slipped up close to him, so close he could feel the warmth of her body against his.

“Mike,” she said, in a low, caressing voice, “all my life I’ve been looking for something. Now I’ve found it. Two things. The money on the submarine. Oh, Mike, I’ve wanted money so much! And you, Mike — you’re the other. I’ve never felt anything for a man before. But I’ve never met a man like you. Last night, in the cabin on the Golden Girl, I wanted you, Mike, I wanted you to — be my lover. But I was too proud to throw myself at you. I’m not too proud now. Mike, we can find the money and together — Mike, what happiness we can have!”

Her arm crept around his neck, her lips were parted, eager, her breathing uneven. She pulled his head down, her lips found his, clung to them for a long minute. Then Michael Shayne reached up, pulled her hand from around his neck, and freed himself.

“You’re a lousy actress,” he said. “You’ve never felt anything for a man in your life. That kiss was as counterfeit as the money back on the K-Three Forty-One.”

“Counterfeit!” she cried, looking at him dazed. “The money is counterfeit?”

“Just a lot of paper with green ink on it. That was something else Hugo didn’t feel was worth telling you, I guess. I’m going ashore and contact the Treasury and the Coast Guard. After that it’s in their laps. I have Hugo’s certified check. That’s going to the St. Francis Foundling Home, the way Cap Tolliver wanted. A monument doesn’t have to be in stone.”

“But what about me?” she screamed at him. “What about me?”

“That’s up to you. If you aren’t around when the Treasury men show up, I won’t go out of my way to send them after you. But you may have a lot of questions to answer if they grab you.”

“Damn you!” she screeched. “Damn Hugo! Damn all men, everywhere, forever and ever!”

She crumpled to the deck and began to sob, deep, bitter, dry sobs that racked her whole body. Shayne shrugged, found the aluminum tins of counterfeit that had come from the U-boat, and had cost the lives of seven men in the last twenty-four hours. He let himself down into the dinghy. As he rowed toward the lights of the club dock, he could hear the girl with the hungry lips — a hunger that would never be appeased — on the deck of the cruiser. She was still sobbing.