Oblivious to all these happenings, the ship’s engine continued to throb away, pushing the boat through the dark air and sea at full speed, toward the east.
The pulse of the engine vibrating through the boat, the sound of the waves beating incessantly on the gunwales, and the crash of a whitecap hitting the boat when least expected.
The Black Lizard leaned on one arm of the sofa, staring at the rents in its fabric as if looking at something fearsome.
She was unable to shake one particular fear, try as she might. It was the only possibility left, wasn’t it? They had searched every other possible nook and cranny. All that was left, a blind spot none of them had thought to search, was inside the sofa…
As she calmed herself, she thought that she felt a tiny beat, quite different from the throb of the engine, against her skin, transmitted through the cushion.
It was a beating human heart: the pulse of whoever was hiding inside the sofa.
She grew pale, and gritted her teeth together, holding in check her instinct to flee.
Even as she sat, though, it seemed that the heartbeat from the sofa was growing steadily louder. She could no longer hear the sound of the waves or the engine – all she could hear was the heartbeat from under her seat, the unknown pulsation echoing eerily, amplified as a drum to her ears.
She could not stand it! But she would never run away, never! Even if that man was hiding inside the sofa, he was just a rat caught in a bag, was he not? Nothing to be scared of, nothing to be frightened of at all.
‘Akechi-san, Akechi-san!’ she called out in a loud determined voice, as she pounded on the cushions.
And a sombre voice sounded back from within the sofa!
‘Like a shadow, I just can’t be kept away from you. This trick sofa you built was enormously helpful.’
The melancholy voice, echoing as if from the depths of the earth, or from the wall itself, made the woman in black shiver in spite of herself.
‘Aren’t you a bit concerned, Akechi-san? These are all my people, here. You are on the open sea, far beyond the reach of the police. Aren’t you scared?’
‘It looks to me as if you are the one who’s frightened,’ he chuckled.
What a horrible laugh it was. He made no effort to emerge from the sofa, seemingly perfectly at ease. This man was unfathomable.
‘Frightened? No. But I am impressed. How did you know it was this boat?’
‘I didn’t, but by sticking so close to you, this is where I ended up, quite naturally.’
‘So close to me? I don’t understand…’
‘I’m confident there is only one man who could have followed you here from the top of the Tsutenkaku Tower.’
‘Oh, really? How wonderful! I’m so proud of you! So that shop owner was really Akechi Kogorō… How silly I was! It must have been so funny when I believed your story about an inner ear infection and that bandage.’
Driven by some strange emotion, she had the weird illusion that the man lying stretched out under her seat was not her enemy, but almost a lover.
‘Hmm, rather… I have to admit that it was enjoyable disguising myself to you, as you tried so hard to disguise yourself.’
Suddenly, in the midst of this bizarre conversation, the door abruptly swung open, and Amamiya Jun’ichi the ‘purser’ stepped in. Apparently he had heard the conversing voices and thought it suspicious.
Before he had a chance to say anything, the Black Lizard put her finger to her lips and commanded silence. She beckoned him closer, then took a pencil and memo pad from her handbag, which lay on the end table nearby. Her hand flew over the page, writing rapidly as she continued her innocuous-seeming conversation with Akechi.
‘AKECHI INSIDE SOFA,’ she wrote, even as she asked him ‘So that strange scream and the splash at the bridge were your doing, then?’
‘CALL EVERYONE. HURRY. BRING STRONG ROPE.’
‘As you have surmised. If you hadn’t looked out the oilpaper window, probably none of this would have happened.’
‘Ah, as I feared… And how did you follow us after that?’
As she spoke, Jun’ichi slipped silently out of the room.
‘I borrowed a bicycle, and just pedalled along from bank to bank, keeping your vessel in sight from land. I waited for dawn, and then asked a small boat to ferry me out here. In the twilight I managed to crawl up on your deck, although it took some acrobatics to accomplish.’
‘But there was a lookout on deck, wasn’t there?’
‘Yes. That’s why it took me so long to get into the cabins. It was quite difficult to discover which room Sanae was being held in. And, of course, by the time I did find her,’ he chuckled, ‘The boat had already set sail!’
‘Why didn’t you flee when you had the chance?,’ she asked. ‘You must have known you’d be found here.’
‘Brr! The water’s a bit too chilly for me, I’m afraid, and I can’t swim all that well. It was just so much easier to lie down here under these warm cushions!’
What a bizarre conversation! One party was lying inside the sofa in the blackness, while the other was sitting on top of those same cushions – they were almost close enough to feel each other’s body heat! And even stranger, they were mortal enemies! They would leap at each other’s throats like fierce tigers given the slightest opening. In spite of which, they conversed quietly, gently, almost like the bedtime talk of man and wife.
‘You know, I’ve been hidden away here since dinnertime, and I’m quite bored with it all. And I’d really love to see your beautiful face once again, too. Mind if I come out?’ Akechi was bolder than ever, no doubt with some clever plan in mind.
‘You mustn’t! You must not come out! If my men find you, you’re dead. Just be quiet a little longer.’
‘Really? So you’ll cover up for me, will you?’
Just then young Jun’ichi returned, accompanied by five crewmembers carrying a stout rope. They entered cautiously, silently.
‘LEAVE AKECHI IN SOFA, TIE ROPE AROUND OUTSIDE. THROW SOFA AND ALL OFF DECK.’
They followed her directions without making a sound, and began to wind the rope around the sofa starting from one end. Smiling evilly, the Black Lizard stood up to get out of their way.
‘Hey, what happened? Has someone come?’ asked Akechi, unaware of what was happening but sensing that something had changed in the room outside the sofa.
‘Yes. We’re tying the sofa up with rope.’
The sofa was almost completely bound up.
‘Rope!?’
‘That’s right,’ snarled the Black Lizard, revealing her true maliciousness. ‘We’re tying up the famous private detective right now! Ha, ha, ha!’
She drew herself up, confronting him as if a pitch-black demon, and spat out the words with venom that ill suited a woman.
‘Pick up the sofa! To the deck!’
The six men easily lifted the sofa and hurried it through the hallway to the deck. Like a pitiful fish caught in a net, the detective inside struggled to free himself.
Up above the deck, the night was black and starless, both sky and sea a featureless darkness. Stirred up by the ship’s screw, a single ribbon of phosphorescence stretched out, a long and eerily pale streamer.
The six stood at the gunwale, carrying the coffin-like sofa.
‘One… two… and three!’
With the shout a black shadow fell down over the gunwale, ending in a pale splash of phosphorescence. The famous private detective Akechi Kogorō had finally, without a fight, sunk deep into the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
The sofa holding Akechi twirled and jumped like something alive in the phosphorescent wake of the ship, and its black shape sank out of sight under the waves almost immediately.
‘I guess that’s what they call a burial at sea. And that takes care of the last obstacle in our path!
Still, it’s sad to think of the spirited Akechi Kogorō becoming mere fish food at the bottom of the sea, isn’t it?’
Amamiya Jun’ichi was staring into her eyes as he spoke with sugar-coated grief.
‘Who cares? All right, everyone. Back inside!’
She herded all the men back inside the ship, as if scolding them, then turned to lean on the deck railing, alone, gazing fixedly at the sea where the sofa had vanished.
The sound of the ship’s screw, the whitecaps marching past with identical shapes, the phosphorescence of the ship’s wake… Whether the ship was moving or the water flowing around it, around her was nought but the uncaring and unchanging rhythm.
The Black Lizard stood, immobile, for half an hour in the cold night wind. When she finally went below, her face was a horrible bluish tone in the bright ship’s lights. The traces of tears shone on her cheeks.
She went to her own cabin for a moment, and, seemingly unable to bear being there either, soon stepped into the corridor and walked unsteadily toward the room where Sanae was imprisoned.
She knocked, and the crewman named Kitamura opened the door, peering out.
‘Go for a little walk, Kitamura… I’ll look after Sanae for a bit,’ she ordered, and after Kitamura left she stepped inside.
Poor Sanae! Her hands were tied up behind her, and she was gagged, lying on her side in a corner of the room. The Black Lizard removed the gag and spoke to her.
‘I have something I must tell you, Sanae. It’s very bad news, I’m afraid, and I’m sure you’ll burst into tears.’
Sanae sat up, and, silently, stared back at the kidnapper with enmity in her eyes.
‘Do you know what I’m about to tell you?’
‘…’
‘Ha, ha, ha! Akechi Kogorō, your guardian angel, is dead! He was hiding in that sofa, and we tied it up with rope and sank him in the sea! We threw him into a watery grave just now from the deck! Ha, ha, ha!’
Sanae reeled, shocked, and stared up at the face of the Black Lizard, who continued to laugh like a madwoman.
‘Is that true?’
‘You think I’d be so happy at a mere lie, child? Look at me! I’m so happy I can’t bear it! But you must be very disappointed, mustn’t you? Your only friend, your only lifeline, has been cut. There is no-one in this whole wide world who can help you now. You’ll be locked in my art museum forever, never again to see the light of day!’
Staring at the face of her tormentor, Sanae realized that this dreadful news was not a lie. And she understood just what the death of the detective meant for her.
It was hopeless. The despair of her hopeless situation was as deep as her faith in Akechi had been strong. She was all too well aware that she was entirely by herself, trapped among her enemies.
She bit her lip and tried to be brave, but she was unable to withstand it any more. With her hands tied behind her, she bent over to hide her face against her legs, and began to weep. The hot tears dripped onto her legs.
‘Stop crying! How shameful! Have you no manners at all?’
Seeing her begin to cry, the Black Lizard scolded her in a curiously high voice. Suddenly she was kneeling at Sanae’s side and tears were streaming down the kidnapper’s face as well! Whether it was the loneliness of losing her ultimate enemy, or perhaps for some other reason, she was drowning in a strange, unfathomable sadness.
Somehow, without knowing how, the kidnapper and the kidnapped, the Black Lizard and her prey, these mortal enemies, were sitting, holding each other’s hands like close sisters and weeping! The causes of their sadness were different, but there was no difference in the depth and intensity of their sorrow.
The causes of their sadness were different,
but there was no difference in the depth
and intensity of their sorrow.
The Black Lizard was wailing like a child of five or six years and this led Sanae-san to weep in the same uncontrolled way. What an unexpected and unbelievable scene! They were nothing more than two young girls, or perhaps two innocent barbarians. With no trace of intellect or emotion, they exposed only the sheer passion of their sadness.
This strange paean of grief blended with the monotone of the engine, and continued on and on. They wept and wept until the natural evil awoke in the Black Lizard’s breast once again, and Sanae recalled her enmity.
In the evening of the following day the ship entered Tokyo Bay, dropping anchor along the coast of the former landfill known as Tsukishima Island.
They waited for it to grow dark, then lowered the ship’s launch, and several people boarded to row to a deserted point on the island.
Leaving the three oarsmen in the launch, the Black Lizard disembarked with Sanae and Amamiya Jun’ichi. With her hands still tied behind her back and her mouth gagged, Sanae also wore a thick blindfold. No doubt these precautions were designed to prevent her from discovering the way to the Black Lizard’s hideout. Jun’ichi no longer wore an officer’s dress, and he had donned a beard and moustache to hide his face. Wearing a khaki workman’s uniform, he looked like a factory machinist.
Tsukishima was a spacious island packed with factories, and had almost no residences. With the recent industrial slump almost none of them were operating at this time of night, and the only sources of light were the scattered white streetlamps. It looked like a deserted ruin.
The three of them crossed a wide grassy area running along the coast, and wove a complicated course amid the buildings, finally entering a ruined factory.
The walls were broken, the gate columns leaned, and the grounds were covered with weeds grown wild in what looked like a haunted factory. There was no light, of course, so the Black Lizard took out her flashlight and lit their steps through the weeds. Behind her came Jun’ichi in his workman’s garb, carrying blindfolded Sanae on his back.
Ten or twelve meters from the gate was a large wooden structure, and the light from the flashlight flowed caressingly over its surface. There were many glass windows, but the glass had broken and fallen from every single frame. She rattled the door open, and stepped into the cobweb-choked interior.
The flashlight beam danced over broken machinery, rusty shafts running above their heads, drive wheels and broken drive belts, finally stopping on a little room in one corner, that looked like it could have been the supervisor’s office.
The three of them stepped through the broken glass door, and up onto the wooden floor.
‘Tic tac tac… tic tic tac tic… tac.. tac… ’
The Black Lizard kicked the floor sharply with her shoe heel. Surely it could not be Morse code!? But it was a signal of some sort, because before the tapping of her heel had died away, a meter-wide section of the flooring in the circle of light slid open silently, exposing the concrete below. The very ground itself was built as a door, a thick block which dropped down to reveal a black underground passage.
‘M’lady?’
A low voice sounded from below.
‘Yes. And I’ve brought an important guest with me today.’
Remaining silent, Amamiya descended the steps to the passage, with Sanae still on his back, treading with care, one step at a time. After the Black Lizard herself followed him down the stairs, the concrete door and wooden floorboards closed up once again, leaving only a dark, ruined factory with no trace that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
Because her eyes were tightly bound when she was transferred from the main vessel to the launch, Sanae had no idea where they had landed, where she walked to afterward, or whether the place where she now found herself was above or below ground.
‘We’ve given you rather a hard time, haven’t we Sanae-san? Well, it’s over now. Jun-chan, set her free.’
After Sanae heard the Black Lizard’s kind-sounding voice, she felt the gag being removed and the ropes on both hands being untied. Then her eyes were flooded
with light. Because they had been bound tightly by the dark blindfold for so long, the brightness was dazzling.
She was in a long , curved corridor whose ceiling, floor, and walls were made of concrete. A splendid cut-glass chandelier hung from the ceiling and its bright flashing rays illuminated rows of glass display cases arrayed along both walls. Inside the cases, jewels of varying shapes caught the chandelier’s beams like countless flickering stars.
In the face of such beauty and magnificence, Sanae forgot she was a prisoner and inadvertently gasped. The daughter of a major jewel trader, she was accustomed to the point of boredom to seeing precious stones each day, but even so she raised her voice in surprise. We shall spare the reader a detailed explanation of the high quality and great number of the jewels gathered there.
‘Thank you for being impressed. You see, this is my art museum. Rather, the entrance to it. What do you think? I’m sure you’ll agree these display cases would not suffer in comparison with those at your showroom. It has taken me decades of risking my life, racking my wits, and daring all kinds of peril to collect these stones. I’m sure you wouldn’t find so many, even in the jewel vaults of the most exalted nobility in the world.’
As she delivered her boastful speech, the woman in black carefully opened the handbag she was carrying and took out a little silver box containing the Star of Egypt.
‘I feel a little sorry for your father, but I’ve desired this for a long time. Today, it has finally come to rest in my art museum.’
She clicked open the lid of the small box to reveal the giant stone, which flamed with colour in the chandelier’s rays. The Black Lizard regarded it with delight before pulling out a bunch of keys from her handbag. Unlocking the glass door of a display stand, she placed the massive diamond in the centre, still inside the open silver box.
‘Oh my, how beautiful it is! Compared to this, other jewels seem like mere pebbles. Now my art museum has one more treasure. Thank you, Sanae-san.’
There was no irony intended, but it was difficult for Sanae to know how to reply. She remained silent with her eyes cast down.
The Black Lizard and Beast In the Shadows Page 12
