As he stood there alone in the water with the bitter taste of defeat in his mouth, Sergeant Hyams hailed him jeeringly from the shore.
“You better call it a day, Shayne. We’re not hanging around all night while you pretend to look for a gun you know damned well will hang you if you find it.”
Shayne drew in a deep breath to reply, but stiffened as he did so. The moon was bright overhead, glistening welcomingly on the easy billows of the Atlantic sweeping in endlessly from that broad surface eastward. An off-shore oil tanker was passing on the horizon, her running lights showing dim in the distance against nothingness. Most of the shoreline was dark at this time of night, but northward about half a mile were the brightly colored lights of the Penguin Casino and Bathing Club.
Shayne’s decision was not made consciously. It was not the result of logical thought. It came with a sudden rush as his lungs swelled with air in answer to Hyams’ shout, and he acted just as swiftly and instinctively.
He slid sideways into the water beneath the surface and began swimming strongly outward toward the beckoning lights of the tanker on the horizon.
10
Shayne was a strong and competent swimmer, but now he was doubly hampered by the constricting weight of waterlogged clothing and the imperative need for staying beneath the surface of the water as long as was humanly possible while he swam outward to get distance between himself and the policemen on shore before coming up for air.
Because he knew they would have itching trigger fingers. This wasn’t a sporting proposition. Sergeant Hyams was a fair man and bore Shayne no particular ill-will, but the redhead was officially under arrest on suspicion of murder and the sergeant had no reason to treat him any differently from any other escaping prisoner.
That meant shoot-to-kill orders, and Shayne had no doubt about what the outcome would be if he gave them a target to shoot at within any reasonable distance.
On the other hand, they were armed only with pistols which did not have great accuracy at long range, and he knew that moonlight on the water made night-shooting a pretty deceptive proposition. With no lights beyond to silhouette him from the shore, he had better than a fair chance of coming out alive if he surfaced briefly for air and went under quickly again.
In the meantime he fought to hold his breath until the last possible moment, driving his body forward underwater with long, powerful strokes with nothing at all to indicate how much distance he was getting.
When his tortured lungs could stand it no longer, he let himself come to the surface. He wasn’t even sure he had remained headed in the right direction until his head broke the surface and he saw the lights of the tanker still directly in front of him. He didn’t make the mistake of turning his head to look back toward shore as he treaded water thankfully for a few moments, drawing in deep drafts of air and expelling them mightily. From the rear, his wet darkened hair just riding the surface would be almost indistinguishable, he thought, but if he turned his head to look back and judge the distance he had covered, he might well give them a target to shoot at.
So, he had made it, he knew, when he took a final deep breath and went below the surface again to swim just as strongly but with slower and more relaxed strokes toward the horizon.
If they hadn’t spotted him the first time out of water, he’d be fairly safe the next time he came up.
Safe from immediate gunfire! But for how long? What future was there in it? he asked himself grimly. He could stay afloat for a couple of hours, perhaps. As soon as he was far enough out to ease up and stay on the surface while he got rid of most of his clothing, he was a good enough swimmer to last a couple of hours. No more than that.
And then he’d simply have to go ashore or drown. So maybe it hadn’t been such a smart move after all. His one thought in attempting to escape had been to gain time for conducting a one-man search for Lydia Kane’s murderer.
A couple of hours of freedom which he spent keeping himself afloat off-shore wasn’t going to help much. He wasn’t going to find her murderer out here paddling around in the Atlantic, he told himself grimly.
He expelled the last bit of air from his lungs and came to the surface again, getting a deep breath and turning his head this time as he treaded water to look back to the shore.
Judging distances by moonlight is deceptive, but he was surprised and gratified to see how far away the shoreline appeared to be. A few hundred yards, he thought. Well beyond pistol range even if he could be seen bobbing around out there. He went to work at once to get out of his coat, shrugged it away from him into the water, and then turned on his side and half-floated, paddling gently with one hand while he got shoe-laces untied and kicked off his shoes.
Then he paused to take stock of the situation as best he could. So long as he remained at this distance from shore, and until they got a police boat to search him down, he knew he would be perfectly safe.
He could clearly see the floodlight on the back-stairs of the Kane house, and the lights of the house itself perched on the cliff to the west. To the left of the floodlight and directly below the house were two dim lights glaring at him that he knew must be flashlights of the sergeant’s men.
As he floated easily on the calm surface, he put himself in Peter Painter’s position and envisioned what steps the detective chief would be taking to recapture him.
In the first place, Painter would be jumping up and down with anger, but that wouldn’t prevent him from acting swiftly and efficiently.
Already a call would be out to concentrate every ounce of man-power of the Miami Beach police force on this particular section of ocean front. A good swimmer might, by conserving his strength and not getting panicky, swim along parallel to the shore a couple of miles in either direction. No more than that, certainly. So Painter would have to plan to cover four miles of oceanfront to prevent Shayne from swimming in unnoticed.
But that wasn’t as difficult as it sounded. This stretch of beach was mostly inhabited by large private estates and a few bath clubs, and it wouldn’t take much time or many men to cover every possible exit for two miles in each direction. In the meantime, certainly within fifteen or twenty minutes, there would be a Beach patrol boat on the scene with powerful searchlights to pinpoint a swimmer.
Southward along the beach from the Kane house, Shayne could see half a dozen lighted houses within swimming distance. The rest were dark.
Northward there was an interval of darkness of about five hundred yards, then the dim lights of one or two private homes, and beyond those were the bright lights marking the private beach of the Penguin Casino which Shayne had briefly noted just before he committed himself to the water.
He had to make up his mind, and he made it up with characteristic speed. The more time he wasted floating off-shore from the Kane house, the more time he was giving Painter to gather his forces together and establish an impregnable patrol along the beach.
Shayne turned onto his belly and began swimming smoothly northward, keeping the same approximate distance from shore, concentrating on covering the half mile that would bring him directly opposite the Penguin.
He didn’t know what he would do when he got there, but he did feel that the Bathing Club offered his only possible chance for getting ashore unobserved. He wasn’t a member, but he had visited the club with a friend a few weeks previously and they had stayed until it closed after midnight, so he had a good idea of the general layout.
There was a large casino, dancing pavilion and restaurant, with about a hundred yards of private beach backed by a double row of cabanas where swimmers could change from bathing suits and back. The central portion of the beach was brightly lit with colored spotlights, and up to midnight the time Shayne had been there the beach was fairly well populated with swimmers. There were unlighted strips of sand at either end where amorous couples could spread blankets apart from the others and enjoy unnoticed intimacies, and there was a canvas-covered diving raft anchored a couple of hundred feet off-shore out of range
of the bright lights.
There would be swimmers in the water between the raft and shore, and Shayne calculated he would have a good chance to swim in and join them without anyone noticing that he had arrived by water instead of by land. By mingling with them and taking care to keep all of his body except his head under water, he should be able to make it ashore on one of the darkened strips of beach.
But, what then? He would be instantly conspicuous in his shirt and slacks among all the other men wearing bathing trunks. And the Penguin was one of the places Painter would surely have well-covered from the first, looking for just such a manoeuvre on Shayne’s part.
It looked hopeless, and Shayne conceded that it probably was, but he swam on grimly, knowing it was impossible to plan ahead.
The gods had been kind to him in the past. Why shouldn’t they continue to be kind to him tonight? He didn’t ask much. Just an opportunity to get ashore and escape Painter’s patrols for long enough to turn up some concrete evidence on Lydia Kane’s killer. Shayne had an unshakable belief that if a man’s cause was right the gods of chance were always on his side.
And tonight his cause was right. Something would come up to aid him. It always had in the past, so why shouldn’t it tonight? A man needed only to have enough faith.
So Shayne swam on, staying well away from the shoreline, steadily approaching a position directly eastward of the blazing lights of the Penguin Club.
He didn’t ease up on his regular churning strokes until he sighted the flat surface of the club’s diving float directly in line between him and the lighted strip of beach.
Then he stopped to tread water easily and study the set-up. The scene was just what he had expected to see. From his point of vantage in the darkness beyond the float, it was like a well-lighted stage setting. Fifteen or twenty couples reclined on the sand under the lights, resting between dips, and half as many more were cavorting in the surf or bobbing about in the shallow water between the float and the shore.
The float was deserted at the moment, and hope gleamed in Shayne’s eyes as he began to swim carefully toward it. Although from this point it appeared that the shore lights reached the float, Shayne remembered that when you stood on the lighted shore looking outward it was impossible to tell whether anyone was on the float or not. If he could swim in quietly to the outer edge he could rest there unnoticed for as long as he wished, getting his strength back and getting rid of shirt and undershirt so at least his torso would be bare to conform with the appearance of all the other male swimmers. He still didn’t know how he would manage to stride ashore unnoticed wearing his pants—or just his shorts if he stripped down to those—but again all he could do was to put his trust in the gods of chance.
He hadn’t realized how weary he was until he neared the unoccupied diving float with its promise of surcease. His arms and legs began to feel leaden as he dog-paddled in cautiously to avoid any revealing splashes.
And then his gods deserted him and he stopped swimming abruptly not more than twenty feet out from the float, and treaded water angrily while he watched a boy and a girl, their slim figures clearly silhouetted against the beach lights, climb out of the water on the opposite edge of the float and stretch out side by side on the canvas surface as though they hoped to remain there comfortably alone for hours.
11
Standing just outside the closed door of a cabana fronting on the brightly lighted beach of the Penguin Club, Allen Garve drew in a deep lungful of smoke and expelled it slowly. Clad only in a pair of tight black trunks that showed off his youthful physique to perfection, Allen was thoroughly pleased with himself and in tune with the night and his surroundings as he waited for Florine to finish changing inside the cabana and join him for a dip.
Women were funny, he mused, looking at the tightly-closed door separating him from Florine and letting himself envision her beyond that door, stripping down to the tanned flesh he knew so well, pulling on the latex suit that molded itself lovingly to her feminine contours.
How silly can you get? There was plenty of room inside the cabana for the two of them to undress and get into their bathing suits together. Married couples did it all the time. And he and Florine were to be married in less than a month. What difference did a few weeks make?
A lot of difference to Florine, he conceded wryly. She had blushed beautifully when he suggested that she go in with him to change. It wouldn’t be proper, she insisted. And when he laughed at her maidenly blush and reminded her of the night two months ago which ended in their engagement, she had become almost angry. It wasn’t the same at all, she told him primly. What would people think? And when he reminded her that there wasn’t a single soul at the Penguin Club who knew whether they were married or gave a damn whether they were or not, she had bridled and told him she knew and she gave a damn.
So now he stood outside waiting for Florine to join him. Two before-dinner cocktails were pleasantly warm in his stomach and the night air was cool on his bare flesh. On the stretch of white sand between Allen and the water’s edge a dozen or more bronzed couples lolled indolently, and there were as many more in the water between the shore and the diving float. From this distance he couldn’t see whether the float was occupied or not. The last time he and Florine had spent an evening at the Penguin, they had had almost an hour together alone on the float. It was funny how most of the swimmers avoided it after dark. When you were on the float looking toward the lighted shore, you had a feeling that everyone could see you distinctly and knew exactly what you were doing. Which wasn’t true at all, though he had a difficult time convincing Florine of that fact.
But when he did manage to convince her, it had been a real nice interval. He looked forward eagerly to the same sort of time tonight, and his heart beat faster as he did so. The funny thing was, he told himself happily, he’d bet ten to one Florine was thinking exactly the same thing inside the cabana as she changed to her bathing suit. And he’d bet her heart was beating just as excitedly as his at the thought. But she’d never admit it out loud. Not Florine. She was a “nice” girl, by God and by jiminey. Well, she was a nice girl. He’d be the last person in the world to deny that. But they were going to be married in a few weeks and he didn’t see what difference there would be after a few words spoken by a preacher. But Florine did. He didn’t blame her, really. He supposed it was the way girls were.
The cabana door opened and Florine stepped out into the colored lights and he spun his final cigarette away while a funny thrill raced down his spine as it always did when he saw Florine in a bathing suit.
She was young and she wore a demure little smile of happiness, and her breasts stood out tight and virginal inside the latex suit. She pulled the door shut with one hand and extended the other toward him. “Here’s the key, Al.” She dropped the numbered cabana key in his hand and he put it in the small pocket of his trunks and buttoned the flap down securely and gripped her smooth upper arm firmly and muttered, “Let’s get out there into the water where the other guys can’t look at you.”
She laughed happily and let him guide her around the lounging couples into the water. “Looks can’t hurt me, Al.”
“A bunch of old goats,” he said gruffly, though none of them were beyond their twenties. “They just lie here waiting for a look at something like you.”
They stepped cautiously into the water which felt icy cold to their bare feet, and when Florine let out a little shriek and tried to hold back, Allen laughed aloud exultantly and splashed ahead, dragging her in with him until they were waist-deep and swimming and the bright lights were behind them.
“Good, isn’t it? Makes you feel alive and zingy all over.”
“C-c-cold,” she shivered beside him.
“Naw, just about perfect,” Allen assured her. “Ten degrees colder than the air so it’s wonderful when you get out. Remember last time on the raft?”
Florine remembered and she swam strongly beside him toward the raft. She wouldn’t admit that she remembere
d, or that she was as eager as he to get there. These last weeks had been difficult. Everyone knew they were engaged, and they spent every evening together, but it was so damned difficult to get away from friends and the family to have just a few minutes alone together. It had been much easier before their engagement was formally announced. Up to that point they had managed to be alone together just about as much as they wanted, and no one thought anything about it or paid them the slightest heed.
But the moment they were engaged, everyone’s attitude was different. Everyone conspired to preserve the proprieties. As though they couldn’t be trusted alone together now. Oh, it was all good-natured and friendly, but everyone noticed and commented on it openly if they tried to slip off alone together for just a little while. So tonight was sort of adventurous, and she hoped they would be alone on the raft together like last time, and she was resolved she wasn’t going to be prudish in the beginning as she had been before. They had wasted so darned much time because she had been afraid someone would swim out unexpectedly even while Allen pointed out over and over again that it was perfectly safe because they could clearly see any approaching swimmer outlined by the shorelights in plenty of time.
The balmy night air felt heavenly and warm when they did reach the deserted raft and climbed out of the water dripping wet onto the canvas surface. They lay back side by side with sighs of contentment, and Florine pillowed her head on Allen’s bare shoulder and let warmth seep into her body and a delicious languor creep over her.
Weep for a Blonde Page 9
