“And while you’re making your point,” Shayne said, “what happens to the murderer of Albert Watts? It doesn’t seem to me you were making much headway before I got here.”
Brannon’s flush deepened, if such a thing was possible. “We were making headway, in our slow, unspectacular, bumbling fashion. We will continue this process, without any help from American private detectives, eliminating one possibility at a time until only one is left and we are in a position to arrest and convict the killer.”
“Sure,” Shayne said sarcastically. “You’ll go on working from nine to five, with an hour off for lunch and another in the afternoon for tea. Meanwhile the killer will be working overtime. If one of the Slaters gets hurt, you’ll begin to feel a little more heat.”
“Ah, the appeal to the American eagle,” Brannon said. “I was waiting for that.”
“Goddamn it,” Shayne shouted, “can’t you break out of the tired old routine for once? If Alvarez can’t get Slater to talk, he’ll go to work on Slater’s wife. I had a small taste of the kid who’s going to be putting on the pressure. He’s a mental case. Nothing surprising about that—it’s another form of routine. Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”
“And after the various lies I’ve heard from you, why should I believe anything you tell me at this point, Shayne?”
“Why, you pompous little tinpot Napoleon! Just because something never happened to you before, you think it can’t happen. Open your eyes to what’s going on in the world! If you put me in jail I’m warning you—”
“That will be enough of that,” Brannon snapped.
He signed to his men, who closed in on the redhead. Shayne’s muscles were rigid. He stood rooted, staring into the British sergeant’s eyes. Brannon returned the look contemptuously, and flicked again at his mustache.
Suddenly Shayne laughed.
“Is anything funny?” Brannon snarled. “Share it with me.”
“I just remembered who you remind me of,” Shayne said. “You wouldn’t know him.”
For some obscure reason he felt much better. Physically there was no resemblance between the two men, but in every other respect, he had realized suddenly, this British sergeant was much like Peter Painter, chief of detectives in Miami Beach, and a longtime adversary of Shayne’s. After years of trial and error, Shayne had learned how to handle Painter. He had been in many tight squeezes, but Painter had never succeeded in besting him. And neither would Brannon, Shayne promised himself, in spite of the British accent, his immense assurance, his cops with their vehicles and their guns, not to speak of the fact that he was operating on his home ground among friends, while Shayne was a stranger, as solitary as he had ever been in his life.
Meanwhile, there was no point in tangling with Brannon’s men. He let them take him to the door. They walked him up the ramp and around the hotel, holding his arms in a professional grip, one hand above and one hand below the elbow, keeping the elbow locked. Brannon was a step or two behind, shining an electric torch on the path, his other hand resting on the butt of his revolver.
They had come in a four-door English Ford. Brannon passed the others to unlatch the rear door. This street, like most of those on St. Albans, had a high crown, but even so, Shayne thought, the car seemed to lean unnaturally far toward the sidewalk.
“Flat tire!” one of the native cops exclaimed.
Brannon muttered in annoyance. At that moment Shayne heard a man’s voice singing tipsily. Looking around, he saw a lanky figure wearing Bermuda shorts, a pipe clenched in the corner of his mouth, wobbling toward them on a bicycle which he seemed hardly able to control. As he passed under a street lamp, Shayne recognized him. It was the British anthropologist, Cecil Powys. He had some kind of long, clumsy object in the bicycle basket.
Shayne and the three policemen were a compact group, looking down at the flat tire. Powys’ bicycle came faster and faster, the front wheel swinging violently from one side of the sidewalk to the other.
“Watch out!” the Englishman cried, appalled at what was about to happen.
Leaning far backward, his balance more and more uncertain, he closed his eyes and squeezed the hand brakes on the handlebars. The front wheel turned at right angles to the street, but as the brakes took hold it whipped back around. The bike came abreast of Shayne and the three cops. Powys gave a drunken yell as the handlebars were wrenched out of his grip and the front wheel slammed headlong into Sergeant Brannon. The sergeant went down. His arms flailing, Powys pitched forward against one of the cops holding Shayne. The bike’s pedal caught the other cop in the knees and dropped him. As he fell he carried Shayne down with him. Powys himself landed on top of the heap.
The bike ended upside down, its front wheel still spinning.
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 Ha
lf 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.”
Murder Takes No Holiday Page 11
