Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

by editor Leo Margules

  “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.

  THE TOY-HEAD MAN

  by FRANKLIN GREGORY

  Murder that glorious April morning was farthest from Peter Ragland’s mind as he explored the miniature park outside the inn. Near the footpath, under a pink-white cloud of cherry bloom, stood a hewn stone bench. On this, a plaque proclaimed, the great Japanese Emperor Meiji in the year of his victory over the Czar had paused to rest the imperial bottom. The present occupant was neither royal nor Japanese.

  He was, the approaching Peter observed with dismay, a fellow countryman. He was plump. He was of middle age and conservative dress. And for all the festive scene about him, he presented a picture of woe as he stared bleakly across the valley at the distant splendor of Mt. Fuji. In his lap rested a small carton and its torn wrapping of bright paper.

  Not until Peter was nearly upon him did this dejected man glance up, and then with a start. If he seemed about to withdraw his gaze, he reconsidered; perhaps because of Peter’s manifest American look; perhaps because of inner need.

  “Oh,” he said uncertainly, “was that you singing in the bath this morning?”

  Peter’s frown was almost perceptible. At this remote inn, with its kimonoed maids and sliding doors of paper and wood, he’d hoped to enjoy just one holiday without tangling in the affairs of others.

  Still, he mustered the civility to assent. “If you’re kind enough to call it that.”

  “You carry a good tenor,” the man acknowledged. “But damn if I see what you had to sing about. Confounded Jap bath’s too all-fired hot. And privacy! Isn’t there any privacy in this wretched country?”

  Peter, who did not think Japan at all wretched, replied: “Not very much. It’s pretty crowded, you know.” He had the feeling the man was avoiding some more vexing problem.

  “Its worse than Times Square,” the stranger complained. “Hang it! Here I was soaking when this female traipsed in, dropped her kimono—stark naked, mind—and started soaping herself calm as you please. What are these people, immoral heathens?”

  There was perplexity as well as anger in the question. Peter suppressed a grin.

  “Oh, no. Amoral, perhaps. It’s just—well, to her you didn’t exist. And she imagined she didn’t exist for you.”

  The stranger’s gray eyes lost some of their bleakness. “What kind of make-believe is that?” he demanded. “Can’t they face up to reality?”

  Peter hesitated. It was always difficult to explain the Japanese character to Americans; especially to successful American businessmen who stood for no nonsense.

  “Not reality as we know it,” he said. “But they’re very good at seeing what isn’t there.” As the man frowned, Peter added: “Look at it this way. They’ve spent centuries under harsh, suspicious masters. So naturally they’ve built up defenses—with evasion, deceit, No masks, what have you—until now it’s second nature. They don’t expect anybody to tell the truth.”

  The man leaned forward, his veined hands gripping the edge of the bench.

  “Good God!” And half to himself, hoarsely: “I wonder—was that why John was killed?”

  Peter stared at him. But the story, front-paged in the Tokyo press the day he arrived from Taiwan, had carried the dateline of an obscure village he hadn’t recognized. He said quietly: “Then you’re John Porter’s father?”

  The other, still possessed by his thought, nodded abstractedly. “Henry Porter, yes.”

  When he spoke again, it was not to say anything remarkable; hardly more than the papers had printed. But in the jettisoned words, Pe
ter got an impression of man baffled and confused, fighting for self-control.

  “Toys,” he said. “But John—in the Occupation, y’know, Marine captain—liked Japan and wanted to open our own plant here.” His jaw set, reflecting original displeasure. “It’s over in the next village. Happy Delight, it’s called. Ha! But back home of course we’re Porter Play. Perhaps you’ve heard of us.”

  As who hadn’t, Peter thought. In the front rank of toymakers, Porter Play, along with Marx and Gilbert. Vaguely he recalled a mention in Life last Christmas—something to do with dolls.

  He ticked off what the stories had said: John Porter, 27, strangled, neck broken, found in a ravine not far from the factory. Last seen by his young wife, Minerva, leaving their home on an unannounced errand at nine the preceding evening. Mr. Porter had flown out right away; sent the body and the young wife home only last Sunday.

  “A man was arrested,” Peter said.

  “Tanizaki Hajime,” said Mr. Porter. “The superintendent. Of course he denied it, but he won’t say where he was. But he wasn’t home.” He added surprisingly: “A likable little cuss when John brought him to the States last year to learn our methods. And quite a lady’s man. Damn if I see him doing it. John was as big as you.”

  He appraised Peter’s six feet of elastic strength with approval. “Still,” he added, “I’m told they all learned judo in the Nip army. And if he took John by surprise—”

  Peter said nothing. He had his own views, gained from enough college boxing and battle combat, about a good big man being better than a good little one. But John Porter may not have been a good big one.

  “And I’d had such great hopes for him. I was retiring soon. Now, well, I guess I got to take over and save what I can.” He seemed tired, very tired.

  “I’ve been over there twice. Never saw such a mess. Production way off, which might be natural enough with one boss dead and the other in jail. But I think I know a calculated slowdown when I see one. And there was that strike last summer.” He added hastily: “Not over wages. We pay well enough.”

  “Who’s in charge now?”

  “The oyabun. I guess you know what an oyabun is. A union leader.”

  Peter glanced sharply at Mr. Porter. Was it possible he did not know, or John hadn’t reported, that an oyabun was so much more?

  “Big fellow named Morita Ton,” Mr. Porter was saying, and now a faint bell sounded in Peter’s memory. He was sure the name had not been connected with labor circles.

  He was still trying to place it when Mr. Porter, with a snort of savage disgust, said: “Then, just this morning, this came!”

  Lifting the carton from his lap, he removed the lid. Revealed was a plastic Danjuro doll—fat and egg-shaped, the sort with weighted bottom which, when tipped over, bobs up again. Some four inches high, its body was painted to represent an exotic costume of the popular Kabukiza theatre.

  Peter remembered a silly Japanese joke which labeled some geishas Danjuro because they were pushovers. Then he noticed that this doll was not of traditional type. Instead of being sealed at the stomach where the halves joined, the two half-eggs screwed together. Even more radical was the departure in the face. Instead of Danjuro’s, the famous actor, the expression was outrageously comic: squint-eyes, mouth drawn at one corner in a leer which, for all its grotesquerie, yielded a tender human appeal.

  “Porter Play’s Best-Seller.” That was how Life had described it.

  “Only damn thing in normal production,” Mr. Porter grunted. “But that’s not the point.” Lifting the doll from its box he touched the head. It had been twisted off, then taped back at a crooked angle to appear as a broken neck. In the box was an unsigned warning: Mr. Poter go hom.

  Peter whistled softly. Unconsciously, Mr. Porter was massaging his throat. At last he said: “I’m no coward. I was in war myself in ’seventeen. But when you come up against something you don’t understand, that’s when you worry. And you can’t do a blame thing. I’d already the queerest feeling I wasn’t welcome. In my own plant, mind! But until this came I thought it just could be my imagination. Strange land, and forced to depend on an interpreter who might or mightn’t be reliable.” He eyed Peter with speculation. “Say, didn’t I hear you talking Jap to the maids?”

  This, Peter recognized, was an oblique invitation. And far from resenting it, he smiled at his own self-deception in thinking that ever he could survive a quiet holiday. Truth was, he sensed a much more extraordinary story than had yet appeared in print.

  “Oh, yes,” he said comfortably, “I know Japanese. It’s a rather chameleon language, quite like the people and loaded with double meanings. If I could be of help—” He produced his card.

  Most strangers, on learning Peter Ragland’s identity as the famous foreign correspondent for the North newspapers, were properly impressed. It was possible Mr. Porter was, too, but sheer relief outweighed his curiosity.

  “Would you?” he said, the worry receding before a pathetically eager smile. “Would you really? You can’t know what it would mean—another American who knows the score back-stopping me.”

  They drove, in Mr. Porter’s company sedan and at Peter’s wish, to the National Rural Police jail where Tanizaki Hajime was held.

  “Though I don’t see what good it can do,” Mr. Porter objected, parking the car. “I was here myself, you know, and he wouldn’t even see me. Sent out word he hated our guts.”

  He switched off the ignition. “A fine thing, after all John did for him. The trip to America, good job, good pay, bonus at New Year’s, favors for his family. Dammit! How can a man be so thankless as that? And yet it’s just the reason the police think he killed John.”

  “The hate?” Peter had his hand on the door handle.

  “More what led up to the hate. Because he’d done so well with us. They said John was Tanizaki’s ‘on-man.’ Now what sort of stuff is that?”

  Peter relaxed in the seat. This would take some explaining. “Have you ever,” he asked, “heard of Lafcadio Hearn?”

  “Writer fellow who married a Nip? Oh, yes.”

  “It was his idea that to understand these people you have to learn to think all over again; backward, upside down, inside out.”

  “Hmph. I’ll buy that.”

  “But perhaps John didn’t,” Peter said. “Or he’d have been less likely to heap favors on Tanizaki. You see, they’re an abnormally sensitive lot. They think that when they’re born they inherit a stupendous debt from the past—to their ancestors, parents, the whole world. Then, as they go through life, these debts increase—to teachers, friends, employer, whoever helps them along. No such thing as a self-made man in Japan. Life’s a joint enterprise.”

  “Ha?” Mr. Porter, as a self-made man himself, scoffed at a concept so utterly alien.

  “These debts are on,” Peter continued. “And to be a really virtuous man, you have to spend your life sacrificing everything you’d rather do to pay back. So naturally when somebody comes along and does you a gratuitous favor, as John did, it’s that much more load to repay and you resent it.”

  “My stars! You don’t mean it could reach the point of murder?”

  “It’s a pretty terrible thing,” Peter said thoughtfully, “when a Japanese at last realizes he can never pay off. It’s loss of face, end of the line. On is their guiding force. Debt. Burden. Sacrifice. You owe. You owe it to your name, for instance, to keep it spotless. That’s why it’s a Japanese virtue to revenge insult. And one insult is to be given something you can’t pay back.

  “Tied in with that is the fact you’re not supposed to change stations in life. You owe it to your name to stay put. So it’s just possible that, besides feeling insulted, Tanizaki figured he was getting above himself and blamed John for it.”

  An austere old man in black kimono, with the thinning white beard and high black skull cap of a patriarch, appeared from the jail and walked slowly down the steps. On seeing the company car, he paused in recognition and, a fierce expression
darkened his face. Then, abruptly, he turned and moved off.

  “Tanizaki’s father,” Mr. Porter said. “Dammit! I can sure feel for him!”

  Peter watched the old man out of sight. He had seen the type often—hard-bitten traditionalists who ruled their families with an iron fist, picking wives for the sons and husbands for the daughters.

  “Tanizaki lives with him? Of course. It’s the on he owes. And because of it, he must always obey his father’s every wish.”

  Mr. Porter was incredulous. “A grown man like Tanizaki? It must drive these people nuts.”

  Peter was grinning as he stepped out of the car. “Yes, but like everywhere else, there are always backsliders.”

  He recalled his little lesson a few minutes later when Tanizaki, gravely accepting a cigarette, murmured, “Arigato.” One of the innumerable terms for “thank you,” but it also meant: “How difficult for me to become indebted to you for this; I am ashamed.”

  Peter knew that the solemn-faced Tanizaki also must be desperately ashamed of being under arrest. Haji, this shame was, a far greater punishment than death itself. For in death, there was nothing; finis, no hell, no heaven. But the shame was now and lay heavily on his honor.

  Which was why Tanizaki’s reaction surprised Peter when he urged: “But why not say where you were that night?”

  Six unaccounted hours, for from the factory Tanizaki had not reached home till midnight.

  “Odawara?” suggested Peter. “Maybe you have a geisha in Odawara?”

  After all, if a prosperous young Japanese wanted to keep a geisha, who cared? But Tanizaki merely stared at the cell wall.

  “Don’t you know,” Peter persisted, “that it would be so much easier if you explained where you were?”

  “Then I would be let free,” Tanizaki said.

  “Certainly, if you proved you were somewhere else.”

  “In such case, no, I stay here,” Tanizaki said flatly. Was there a glint of fear in those dark, slanted eyes? Fear of something on the outside so strong that it compelled him to accept the shame of arrest? Unable to penetrate the expressionless mask of this young Oriental face, Peter—quite in Japanese fashion—approached the problem sideways.