Murder Takes No Holiday

9

Michael Shayne, twisting, grabbed at Sergeant Brannon’s holster. The flap was unfastened and his fingers slid across the cold hardness of the pistol grip. He tugged at it, but it resisted. Apparently the holster had a safety catch that would release the pistol only when it was pulled at the proper angle.

Only one of the cops had kept his two-handed grip on Shayne’s arm. The redhead bent his arm and drove the point of his elbow into the man’s midriff, with the full weight of his body behind it. The cop grunted but still managed to hold on until Shayne pivoted on one knee, straightening his arm suddenly and swinging it upward in a half arc. The cop’s grip broke. Shayne rolled and came to his feet, crouching.

Brannon was fumbling with the flap of his holster. Powys, drunk as a lord, lost his balance again and sprawled forward, arms and legs outflung, keeping the two cops out of action. So it was between Shayne and Brannon. The American threw a quick glance at the retaining wall, a dozen steps away. He could probably get over it before Brannon could draw and fire, but he didn’t like the idea of being hunted through loose sand by three men with flashlights and guns. He stepped quickly around the tangle of arms and legs, going into position to deliver a quick kick at Brannon’s head. But his foot struck the long object Powys had been carrying in his basket, and without any conscious thought he instantly switched gears.

It was one of the murderous three-pronged spears carried by skin-divers. He snatched it up, stepping backward. With a quick pass of his right hand, he cocked it, and in the same movement he released the safety. Now the broad rubber bands that gave the weapon its hitting power were at full stretch. He held it lightly in both hands, aimed just above the group on the ground.

“Let the gun alone, Brannon,” he said sharply.

The sergeant looked up at the vicious prongs, three feet from his head. Shayne grinned down at him wolfishly. The two cops ceased to struggle. Powys disentangled his long arms and legs; to Shayne’s surprise the pipe was still firmly clenched in his mouth.

“Surely want to apologize,” he said. “The confounded machine bolted on me. Anybody hurt except me?”

Shayne nudged the Englishman with his toe. “Get up. The rest of you stay where you are.”

Powys rose unsteadily. “Nothing strenuous, if you don’t mind, old chap. Perfectly sober and all that. I see you’ve got my spear. Quite right. Get it out of harm’s way.” Then he cried suddenly, peering owlishly at Shayne, “Great Scott, my dear chap! You’ve got it cocked!”

“Yeah, so I have,” Shayne said. “Now reach down and pull the sergeant’s gun out of its holster. Don’t make any sudden moves. Just be slow and careful.”

“Careful!” Powys said indignantly, suddenly sounding almost sober. “You’re the one who’d better be careful.”

Shayne made a small gesture with the spear, and the Englishman said hastily, “My God! Don’t point it. You don’t realize. That’s for barracuda. Those prongs can go through a two-inch plank.”

“Get the gun and give it to me,” Shayne said. “I’m a little nervous, but I’ll try not to pull the trigger.”

“Point it higher, please! You don’t aim the bloody thing like a rifle. It shoots low.”

Watching Shayne fearfully over his shoulder, he bent down and tugged at the gun in Brannon’s holster until he had worked it into position to come free. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, so Shayne would have no reason to think he was going to try to fire it, he handed it up to the redhead, who sent it spinning over the retaining wall into the sand.

“Now two more,” Shayne said.

The Englishman disarmed the two other cops and Shayne disposed of their guns in the same fashion. He backed toward the bike until he could touch it with one foot. Very little time had elapsed; the front wheel was still revolving slowly.

“What do you hope to accomplish, Shayne?” Brannon demanded, recovering the use of his tongue. “You don’t think you can get off the island before I catch up with you, do you?”

“I can try,” Shayne said grimly, reaching down.

“Perhaps we might come to some compromise,” Brannon said slowly. “I was a little hasty, I see that. Forget what I said about putting you in jail.”

Holding the spear in one hand, Shayne set the bicycle upright and ran it forward and back to be sure it could still be ridden. One of the pedals ticked against the frame as it came around, but otherwise it seemed to be undamaged.

“There’s probably a lot in some of the things you were saying,” Brannon went on. “I’m sure the inspector-”

“The inspector wouldn’t want to be disturbed,” Shayne said. “Nothing unusual has happened, after all, except that a man’s been murdered. You remind me more and more of that character I know in Miami Beach. He always begins to get reasonable when he realizes how dumb he’s going to look.”

He swung a long leg over the bike and settled down on the saddle. He hadn’t ridden one of these things in years, and he hoped he remembered how. He gave the group near the car a long, deadly look, ready to swing the spear around if they made any move. Then he dropped the spear into the basket and pedalled hard for the corner.

Before he was halfway there he heard someone running behind him. He glanced around. Sergeant Brannon had set out in pursuit, knees high, arms pumping. He called out something. Shayne bent low over the handlebars and drove forward. In that one rapid glance at Brannon’s straining face, he had seen that the sergeant was thinking of what his superiors would say when they found out that he had captured Shayne and let him get away. At that moment he was more afraid of ridicule than he was of being impaled on the spear.

For a moment, exerting himself to the utmost, Brannon gained on the American. Shayne knew there was a way to shift to a higher gear on these English bikes, but he couldn’t waste any time learning the technique. He spun around the corner, narrowly missing the curb. With a despairing burst of speed, Brannon narrowed the gap to five or six feet. It was downhill now, and as the grade increased, Shayne began to pull away. The sergeant kept it up for another fifty yards, falling farther and farther behind. In desperation he picked up a stone and hurled it at Shayne. The redhead heard it clatter on the road.

“I’ll get you-” Brannon shouted.

Shayne continued to pedal at top speed. When the grade levelled out he looked back, but the sergeant was no longer within sight. He switched on the headlamp, found the gearshift lever and changed sprockets. After that the pumping was easier.

He had already done all the thinking he had to do. It might have been an accident, that Powys, drunk, should wobble up on a bicycle at that precise moment, but it hadn’t been an accident that one of the tires on the cops’ car was flat. Someone had let out the air, and there was no doubt in Shayne’s mind that it was Powys. The redhead wanted to find out why; he needed all the help he could get.

When he came to a promising road on the outskirts of town he turned inland and began to climb. He shifted down into low again, and as the pitch increased he got off and pushed. Soon he was able to turn onto a dirt road parallelling the bay. He pedalled for five miles and turned back, taking the descent very fast. He came out on Bayview Road, only a few hundred yards from the Hibiscus Lodge. He approached carefully. Only one of the little cluster of cottages still had a light burning. Shayne switched off his headlamp.

As he glided to a stop at the gate, the front door opened and Powys looked out. “That you, Shayne?”

Shayne swung off the bike and propped it against the gate post. He was stiff and saddlesore.

“Make it a motorcycle next time. They’re noisier, but they go faster. Brannon damned near caught me.”

Powys laughed. Shayne limped up the path onto the porch. Powys was holding the door.

“You didn’t mislay my fish-sticker, I hope?”

“No, it’s out in the basket.”

“Right. They cost a goodish bit of money, actually. I’ll just put the bike undercover, in case we have a visitor in the shape of the good Sergeant Brannon. Make yourself a drink.”

“Thanks,” Shayne said. “I don’t know about you-you were pretty stoned the last time I saw you.”

“When I saw that spear pointed at my head I sobered up in a hurry.”

He went out. The furniture was arranged in much the same way as in Shayne’s own cottage. A bottle of Johnny Walker and several unopened splits of soda were set out on the coffee table beside the tape-recorder. Shayne poured some Scotch into a glass and sat down in an easy chair, stretching his legs.

When Powys came back Shayne said, “How about Brannon? Was it hard to persuade him the whole thing was a big mistake?”

“Damn hard.” The Englishman’s pipe had gone out. He tamped down the tobacco and lit a match. “But I’m well known to be somewhat eccentric. Balmy, you know, but harmless. He was too mad at you to be entirely rational. The tire, you know-I’m afraid that still sticks in his craw. That was a little too much. He’s not a complete fool, and on the off-chance that he may still pop around to ask me what I was doing in front of the Half Moon in the first place, I think we’d better sit in the dark.”

“All right with me,” Shayne said.

Powys turned off the lamps, and Shayne heard him sit down. Another match flared, lighting up the Englishman’s sad, bony face.

“And what were you doing in front of the Half Moon?” Shayne said.

“Ah, Mike. Mind if I call you Mike?”

“Go ahead.”

“Let’s put that question aside for the time being. What we have to determine, I take it, is where Alvarez has taken the Slaters.”

Shayne was no longer surprised by anything Powys said. He sat forward.

“You’ve been sticking pretty close to me all day. You didn’t just happen to go bonefishing this morning-or hell, yesterday morning by now. You went so you could keep an eye on me. You tailed me to the Camel’s nightclub. When the cops were about to put me out of circulation, you took care of it, and you did it very well. To a certain extent I have to trust you. But I’ll feel more comfortable if I know your angle.”

Even with the lights on, Shayne probably would have detected no change in the Englishman’s expression. His tone remained the same, casual and offhand.

“My-? Yes, I see what you mean. Why should a bloke like me care who smuggles what, or who murdered my insignificant compatriot Watts? Mike, I’m dreadfully afraid I’m not free to tell you. Can’t stop you from speculating, of course. I might be working for some kind of a hush-hush outfit. These illegal trade routes are used for other things besides goods, you know-agents, propaganda. I’m not the cloak-and-dagger type, actually, but you’d have no way of knowing that.”

He thought a moment, and suggested, “Or I might be working for the British diamond people. The London syndicate is deeply pained-where it hurts, you know, in the pocketbook-by the known fact that illegal stones somehow find their way from the South African black market to dealers in New York. Or it might be that I’m nothing but a student of human nature. Heaven knows I’m seeing quite a bit of it this evening. That last doesn’t sound too likely either, does it? My point is, does it matter?”

“Maybe not,” Shayne said, drinking. “How did you know you’d find me at the Half Moon?”

“It was really rather simple. As you surmised, my visit to the Pirate’s Rendezvous this evening wasn’t wholly anthropological in nature, although in point of fact I got some rather interesting material. I chiefly went to keep you company. You disappeared into the owner’s office. Various people walked in and out, including a party of police, but you didn’t appear again. When I investigated, I found that the office was empty. You had left by the window. That seemed to be that. I came back here, feeling disappointed and left out, and prepared to call it a night. Before long a car drove up and what did I see but Mike Shayne assisting the Camel himself into his cottage. The Camel seemed to be in a rather bad way. I nipped across to look in the window, and saw the Camel picking up the phone in your bedroom. Needless to say, I nipped right back. All our phones here are extensions of the one in the Lodge, so it was no trick at all to hear what he said. He mentioned the Half Moon as your destination, and as soon as you left, I set out after you on bicycle. I took the spear on the off-chance. Well, I saw two cars in front of the hotel and I pulled into the bushes to wait. I waited quite a time. Then there was a disturbance behind the hotel. Somebody whistled. The Camel and several others charged around the building. I heard what I thought was a shot.”

“It was a shot,” Shayne said grimly.

Powys went on, “The Camel and his men came out dragging Mrs. Slater. It was hard for me to see, but it didn’t seem that you were with them. After that there were some very peculiar noises, as though some poor damned soul was beating his head against an oil drum from inside. Before I could investigate, the police arrived. I’ve never been fond of officials, of whatever stripe, and it gave me considerable amusement to let the air out of one of their tires. Then they marched you out, and I thought I should take a hand. Help yourself to the whiskey.”

Shayne felt carefully along the top of the coffee table until his fingers fastened on the bottle. He uncapped it and poured by ear.

“You don’t have any idea where this place in the country is?”

“Not the foggiest,” Powys said cheerfully.

“You heard both ends of those phone calls. That was Slater’s girl he was talking to, as you probably gathered. She did a lot of the talking. Did she-?”

The Englishman interrupted. “The easiest thing would be to see what you think yourself. I was mulling it over before you came. I’d just about put together a tentative conclusion, but I’d like to see if you concur. The fact of the matter is, as soon as the Camel started talking I thought I’d turn on the tape so I’d have a record of it, if it came to that.”

Shayne’s eyebrows rose in the darkness. “I’m glad we’re working the same side of the street,” he said with a short laugh. “I’d hate to have you for an enemy. Let’s hear it.”

“Strike a match, that’s a good chap.”

Shayne felt for his matches. He lit one on his thumb-nail, and before it burned all the way down, the Englishman had found the spot on the tape where Alvarez, the phone in Shayne’s bedroom off the hook, was telling the detective to go to the other room and bring him some ice cubes in a towel.

Shayne blew out the match and settled back. He heard the Camel give the operator a number.

“That’s the nightclub, by the way,” Powys put in.

A voice said hello. Apparently recognizing the voice, Alvarez began speaking in Spanish.

“Do you understand what he’s saying?” Shayne asked.

Powys adjusted the volume and translated the quick flow of question and answer. “First of all, are the police still there? Yes, he is told. One, posted at the front entrance. How about the people who were taken in for questioning? Have they returned? Only Al, whoever he is. An American. The police didn’t want to take a chance on holding him longer. Then Alvarez says to bring Vivienne to the phone, and from now on it is in English.”

He turned up the volume again. Shayne waited. There was a faint whirring sound from the machine.

A girl’s voice came on, and before she had spoken a dozen words, he knew it was the French girl he had met at the Pirate’s Rendezvous. He quickly fitted her into place beside Paul Slater. Alvarez had undoubtedly pulled those strings, arranging the connection so he could keep an eye on his courier and make sure he would be in need of money. Shayne, who made few moral judgments in this field, knew from his brief talk with her that she would be an expensive hobby for a man without much legitimate income.

That was all the rearranging he had time for before the Camel’s voice was saying, “Are you alone? Is the door closed?”

“Yes, yes,” the girl answered sulkily. “You understand that they have started my music. I must begin singing in one moment.”

“Never mind that. When did you talk to Slater?”

“On the telephone, this afternoon for five minutes. His wife-”

“I know, I know. What did he tell you?”

“About what?”

The urgency in the Camel’s tone came through clearly. “You know very well about what. You know that I have a business arrangement with this man. I received a notice in the mail setting a date for delivery-eleven o’clock tonight. When you talked to him he had already mailed the notice. He must have referred to it in some way.”

“No,” the girl’s voice said, still sulky. “You do not tell me about times or deliveries or such stupid matters, and I wish to have nothing to do with that side of the affair. Nothing whatever, do you hear me? When you want me to ask him what he will be doing at eleven o’clock or something of the sort, tell me what I must ask and I will ask it.”

“Why did he call you, then?”

“Oh, to warn me not to phone him at the hotel. His wife, you understand, had discovered about me and our meetings when she was gone. They had a great quarrel about it. He felt great remorse.”

“Yes, yes,” the Camel said. “But yesterday. Yesterday. I want to know his exact words. Did he say he had not decided? Or precisely what?”

Shayne had heard this question as he brought in the ice cubes and handed them to the Camel. From this point on, he had heard the Camel’s end of the conversation. He leaned forward, intent on the girl’s answer.

“He said he had decided to give it up,” she said. “It is finished. What happened the last trip frightened him severely, so no more dealings with that devil Alvarez. I sighed and told him this was bad news, I must consider how I am to live. You told me to make it clear, and so I made it clear. It is connected, the business with you and the pleasure with me, although I think sometimes it is not such a great pleasure to him, after all. And it is only common sense. If he gives up making money, he must give up seeing me. I spoke to him of another American, who unhappily lives only in my imagination-fat, bald, with much money. This man Paul does not like. Nor do I, to speak the truth.”

“And in the end? How did you leave it? You persuaded him?”

“No, no. There wasn’t time. I did the best I could. In another hour’s time he would have promised anything, though whether he would keep this promise is yet another matter. He is not exactly the Rock of Gibraltar, Paul. But I have no chance to get even a promise. The phone rings. Erring! His wife has returned. She is downstairs in the lobby. I must dash about here and there, picking up clothes, shoes. It is like a comedy on the stage, though I am the only one of the two of us who thinks it is funny. For Paul it is most extremely serious. This wife of his must be truly formidable. I assure you, with my dress half on, in only one shoe, with the fearful Mrs. Slater entering the elevator, I did not ask him if he had changed his mind and would handle one more shipment for you. This would be much to expect, Luis.”

“All right, I understand that. Still, you had a feeling that he would go ahead with it as planned? This is important. I must know exactly.”

The reels revolved in silence for a moment. The girl’s voice said reluctantly, “I wish very much to have the commission you promise me. So of course I wish that Paul would not be such a great fool. Why he is so frightened, I do not see. But I must not seem to care too greatly, or I will lose him. He is a complicated one, our Paul. Before our tete-a-tete is brought to a sudden halt, I think he is convinced at last that if he must choose, he will choose Vivienne Larousse, lately of Paris, France. He knows this is possible only if he has money to spend, and he has no rich uncle who is likely to die in the future, I believe. As I hop out the door with zipper unzipped, one shoe off, one shoe on, I am giggling. Now I have him in my pocket, now he will do as Uncle Luis wants, he will make money, he will give it to me, not to that dried up stick of a wife. But then I think some more. He is in confusion, this young man. One can turn him easily. And Martha Slater had him all night, all morning. Perhaps she used different methods from me, but perhaps not, do you know? And now I think that perhaps you and I should both look for someone new.”

Alvarez made a noncommittal sound. “And today on the phone?”

“It was nothing. He babbled about his wife, she worked so hard, she stuck to him and he was worth nothing-all very boring. He said nothing about you or your affair. I am surprised, you know, that he had arranged to meet you.”

Shayne went on listening to the exchange between the Camel and the girl, but his mind was no longer on it. The Englishman’s pipe had gone out again; another match flared in the darkness. The Camel cut the conversation off abruptly when he learned that Slater was leaving St. Albans, and asked for another number.

“Need any more, Mike?” Powys said quietly.

“I guess not,” Shayne told him.

The Englishman sat forward and turned off the machine. For a moment they sat in silence.

Shayne said, “I think I’d better have a talk with that girl.”

“My idea exactly,” Powys said. “I was thinking it might be interesting to have a whack at her myself. I saw her performance-quite educational, actually. But you’re the logical man. Wasn’t she the one you were dancing with?”

“She was doing the dancing,” Shayne said. “I just gave her moral support. Too bad you don’t have a car. Brannon’s probably shown my picture to all the cab drivers who are still working.”

“More than likely. But we are going to need a car, Mike.” He struck a match. He seemed to be having a hard time getting his pipe to draw. “Stay where you are. I’ll run out and steal one.”