Brett Halliday

Count Backwards To Zero

CHAPTER 1

The first two days out of Southampton, rain was incessant. But gradually, as the Queen Elizabeth II swung south into warmer waters, the sea began to smooth out and the weather improved. This was the big ship’s final westward crossing of the year. For the next few months she would be cruising out of Miami, and that was her present destination.

Dr. Quentin Little, in a corner of the first-class bar, hadn’t noticed the changes in the weather. He had eaten nothing since leaving England. He was drinking vodka gimlets.

“Waiter,” he said, indicating his empty glass.

“Yes, sir.”

Little looked at his watch, staring at the figures until what they were telling him succeeded in penetrating through the vodka haze. With a ballpoint pen, he made a calculation on a soggy cocktail napkin.

He had seventy-one hours to live.

The waiter turned at the bar. A dark-haired girl spoke to him, picked the gimlet off his tray and brought it across to Little. Her name was Anne Blagden. She was amazingly pretty, with an enthusiastic style and the figure of a very good gymnast or ballet dancer. She was an American, in her mid-twenties, and in spite of her striking good looks, Little was beginning to find her a bit of a pest. He didn’t want or need conversation. All he wanted was to sit exactly where he was and blot out seventy-one hours. Drinking and going to the bathroom now and then—that was program enough.

“Dr. Little,” Anne said firmly, “we have crossed the fortieth parallel. The weather has broken at last. Come out in the sun and talk to me. It’s permitted to take our drinks.”

“I don’t like the glare on deck. I don’t feel like talking to anybody.”

He reached for his glass, but she moved it away.

“You don’t want to show up in Miami looking like a mushroom. Everybody there believes in the year-round tan. They’ll think you’re a security risk.”

“Anne, go away, please. Torment somebody else.”

“Look around. All you see is couples. Elderly couples. You and I are the only unattached people in the bar, so we have to torment each other.”

He sighed and stood up. “I wonder when you Americans are going to learn some manners.”

“Never, I hope.” She picked up the napkin on which he had worked out his limited life expectancy. “You don’t want to leave secret formulas lying around.”

He corrected her. “Formulae. In my specialty there are no longer any secrets. Only money.”

“Seriously.”

“I’m quite serious. Give the Eskimos money enough and a few high-school textbooks and they can make their own atomic explosion. They don’t need us.”

She frowned at the blurred marks on the napkin. “Seventy-one hours till what?”

“I was scribbling,” he said wearily.

He blinked like an owl as they came into the sunlight. The atmospheric pressure seemed to change, and for an instant he almost lost his balance. Anne steered him to an unoccupied deck chair and watched critically as he lowered himself.

“You’re in fantastically poor shape, Doctor. You’re no argument for the healthful properties of vodka.”

“As I’ve been telling you,” he said, “I oppose physical exercise. I don’t really like the way fresh air tastes.”

He put on a badly smeared pair of wraparound dark glasses, and settled back. Now the sky was a less intense and disturbing color.

“Did you remember my drink?”

She put it in his hand. By tilting the glass carefully, he managed to drink without sitting up. For a moment, feeling the sun’s warmth through his clothes, he was able to forget the minutes ticking away.

Anne had stretched out beside him with an erotic wriggle, tipped her face to the sun and closed her eyes. To do justice to the sudden cruiselike weather, she was wearing a sleeveless jersey and very abbreviated shorts. A narrow strip of flesh showed above the top of the shorts. Suddenly, for some inexplicable reason, Little felt like laying his hand palm down against her young and somehow vulnerable stomach. He hadn’t been stirred by this kind of impulse for a long time.

Her eyes opened. She smiled at him.

“Now let’s talk.”

“About what?”

“I’m not very good at mental arithmetic, but I just figured it out. In seventy-one hours we dock in Miami.”

She rolled on one hip and said in a rush, “You’re being so damn taciturn and British, it’s ridiculous! Didn’t you ever hear of Dr. Freud? He said it helps to talk about it. I know I’m being a bit of a menace—”

“Which is putting it mildly.”

“Quentin, maybe this isn’t an accident. I know you don’t believe in astrology—”

“My God.”

“A brainy scientist like you, of course not. You don’t believe in anything you can’t see with a microscope. That’s where we’re different. When I took science in high school I could never see anything under that damn thing. I couldn’t get it adjusted. If I hadn’t been on this boat you would have said just two words the whole trip. ‘Another gimlet.’”

“Another gimlet, please. Three words.”

“And what am I doing here, have you asked yourself? The only reason I didn’t fly is that the horoscope in one of the London papers said Gemini people should stay out of airplanes for a few weeks.”

“That astrologer gets a subsidy from the Cunard Line. They told him the Queen wasn’t fully booked.”

“I believe it. Regardless. I’ve had some bad luck with men lately, but that doesn’t mean I’ve sworn off completely. I dropped into the bar the first night to look the situation over, and what did I find? Ecch. There was only one halfway interesting-looking man, and he was very English and aloof, in addition to being smashed on vodka gimlets.”

Little finished his drink and summoned a hovering steward. “Another gimlet, please. Tell Harry it’s for Dr. Little, and to use a touch more lime juice in this one.”

“You won’t die of scurvy, that’s one thing,” Anne remarked. “Malnutrition, but not scurvy. Quentin, reticence is a fine character trait, but honestly. You’ve got a great new job, and let’s assume it’s the kind of work you like. They didn’t have to twist your arm to take it, did they? You ought to be striding up and down or challenging people to a spirited game of badminton. When an unaffiliated chick sits down beside you and indicates shyly that she’d like to make friends, you ought to respond. After the way you’ve been snapping at me, I think it’s heroic of me to persevere. You know you don’t drink this much normally—how could you hold a job? You’re worrying about something. Tell me. I’ll put my chin in my hand and make soothing suggestions.”

“I do think the human race is on the point of packing it in. I wouldn’t say I was exactly worrying about it.”

She touched his wrist. “The human race is going to make out OK. This isn’t generalized existentialist angst. It’s something specific. What’s going to happen in seventy-one hours? I mean, why should a British atomic physicist be carrying a gun in his pocket?”

“Anne, for the love of God,” Little said irritably, “if you keep nipping at my heels I’m going to fold you up in a deck chair and drop you in the Atlantic.” He looked around. “I’m thirsty. What’s keeping the steward?”

Anne plunged into the pool. She had changed into one of the skimpiest and most attractive bathing costumes Little had seen outside the pages of the popular picture magazines. She swam two lengths of the pool in a smooth, effortless crawl, came out dripping, adjusted the bottom portion of her bikini and plunged in again.

Little had already noticed that he wasn’t the only man at poolside who was being pleasantly agitated by the sight of Anne Blagden in her miniscule bathing suit. Most of the others, as Anne had observed, had their wives with them. Little, at 42, was the youngest man there, but he was also—to face facts—the ugliest, the least prepossessing. Nevertheless, when Anne came out of the pool again, Little was the man she would drop down beside. He found the prospect amazingly agreeable. Considering his predicament, the fact that he could be thinking along these lines was amazing enough.

She had persuaded him—browbeaten him, actually—into a pair of gaudy bathing trunks she had insisted on buying for him at the men’s shop on A deck. That he looked a clown, he well knew. He hadn’t been exaggerating his opposition to physical exercise; he loathed it. As a boy he had been skinny and undersized, marked with acne, nearsighted. He had sat down most of his life. He won prizes in school. At the University, he went into particle physics and took a First. Accepted instantly at the Camberwell Experimental Facility, he had remained there ever since, becoming, in due course, Deputy Director. He was still skinny, still small, still nearsighted, his face pocked with acne scars, his knees knobby. He was not, in short, and nobody knew it better than he, the kind of man an attractive young woman would ordinarily notice at the side of the pool on a luxurious ocean liner.

Not that he cared about all that, he reminded himself. Given a choice between the emotional and the intellectual life, he had long since chosen. The passionate side of his nature had atrophied, and he now knew that he was one of those occasional individuals who manage to go through life without feeling any real emotions at all.

Anne glided up through the water. She flicked a few drops up at him. The expression in her green-flecked eyes was unreadable.

“Coming out?” he asked.

She shook her head. Suddenly, reaching out, she took his foot in both hands and bit his big toe.

It was no playful nip, but a real bite. He yelled in surprise and pain. Heads came around. Somebody’s glass smashed on the tile.

Anne kept her teeth clamped together at the base of Little’s toe and tried to worry him into the water. He resisted the pull, unable to believe that anything as appalling as this could be happening. She seemed determined to get down to the bone. He felt a dreadful embarrassment—most of the others at poolside were English—and at the same time a queer kind of elation, a rush and prickling that was almost sexual. She had singled him out.

“For a variety of reasons,” Little said stiffly, gripping the rail very hard, “what you suggest is impossible. Pleasant, no doubt. But impossible.”

They were on the boat deck, looking out at the moon’s path trembling across the water. The air was warm and soft, almost tropical. It was after midnight, and it seemed to Little that his brain, which had brought him this far, had contracted to the width of a laser beam.

Anne touched her lips to his shoulder. “Impossible’s a big word. If everybody’d thought things were impossible, we’d still be riding in canoes, and here we are on the Queen Elizabeth.”

“The Queen Elizabeth is possible. I concede that. It’s what you suggest that’s impossible.”

She turned him, her arms inside his unbuttoned jacket. The touch of her fingers, against his first sunburn in twenty years, was pleasantly painful.

“What’s wrong with trying?” she whispered.

They were in bed together, in the narrow bunk in Little’s cabin. Anne’s finger ran down his breastbone and ticked along his ribs.

“Sweet Jesus, you’re thin. No muscles at all. How do you manage to twirl the knob of that microscope?”

“We don’t use microscopes. We guess.”

“Quentin, baby, what made you think you couldn’t?”

He drew away slightly. “Everyday occurrence and all that. It isn’t an everyday occurrence with me. It isn’t an every-month occurrence. The last time it happened—”

“A wife and two children. That argues a certain sexual normality.”

“A wife, true. Surely we don’t want to talk about my domestic sexual arrangements?”

“Why not?”

“I’ll give you one word on the subject of Delia. She’s beyond belief.”

“Then why did you marry her?”

“I’m a little hard to believe myself at times.”

Anne plumped up the pillows and rearranged herself. “If I didn’t know you think it’s weak-minded, I’d have a cigarette.”

“Have one. I’ll join you.”

She made a small ceremony out of lighting the two cigarettes. Little had given up smoking many years ago, when the statistics proved beyond any possible shadow of doubt that the innocent little things would kill you. But now, he told himself, it hardly mattered, did it? He looked at his watch. Fifty-eight hours.

“Now,” he said, breathing out smoke. “It’s time to settle accounts.”

She said quickly, turning, “Quentin, before you say anything. You know I promised myself I was going to find out what was eating you, if it was the last thing I did. And you dared me! I’ve never been able to turn down a dare. I used to break bones all the time. When I’m halfway through a mystery story I always turn to the last page to see who did the killing.”

“I fully intend to tell you. I know I’m obligated.”

“I said wait. I’m letting you off the hook.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I mean it. I know—I was willing to seduce you to get it out of you! But things have changed. I’m still curious about your wife. You’re really crazy if you think I’ll be satisfied to be told she’s beyond belief. You can get away with that kind of tight-lipped crap in jolly England. Not here. But as far as the rest of it goes, forget it.”

She smoked for a moment in silence. “I don’t know how to say it. You’re such a fascinating person. I’ve never met anybody remotely like you. I still don’t know why I bit your toe. There it was at the edge of the pool, big and homely, and it had nothing to do with your intelligence or anything else. Just a fact of life, and I bit it. What I’m trying to say—you aren’t a dare any more. You’re a living, breathing, copulating human being, and probably if I hit you over the head hard enough, you’ll become unconscious. If you don’t want to tell me, don’t tell me. Sigmund Freud didn’t know everything. Maybe it doesn’t help to talk about it. Anyway, do we want to waste our time talking?”

He felt a stab of irritation. “You’re muddying the waters, Anne. We didn’t put it in writing, but it was a perfectly clear-cut arrangement, and I have no intention of welshing. First sex. Then conversation.”

She kissed him hard. “Shut up. Keep your goddamn secrets.”

He pushed her away. “You asked for it. You’re going to get it, the whole thing from the first day. But I warn you, you won’t believe much of it.”

He hadn’t succeeded in holding onto his cigarette. He brushed it out of bed before the sheets could catch fire. His fumbling attempt at returning to cigarettes struck him as both symbolic and funny. He laughed. It was more of a cough than a laugh, but in an instant it took hold and he couldn’t stop laughing. Even to his own ears it sounded hysterical. Laughter, like sex, was something else he hadn’t done much of recently.

“And the comical thing,” he said, “is that if I’d known I was capable of this it might not have happened. But nobody can do a damn thing about it now.”

CHAPTER 2

The police sedan pulled into the dock area. Ian Cameron, a cop who was very tough, even brutal, but one of the few of the type who realized that criminals were people, reached into the back seat for a paper bag containing a bottle of cognac. He gave it to Michael Shayne.

“Souvenir of Bermuda. Sorry things worked out this way, Mike.”

“So am I.”

The big, ruggedly built private detective still wore the same clothes in which he had arrived on the island. He had passed the last five hours in police offices, answering questions. It sometimes seemed to Shayne that he spent most of his time in that setting, and it was always alike—the same cigar smoke, the same filing cabinets, the same meaty faces.

Two people were dead. One, a woman Shayne had known for ten years, had a habit of acting on impulse. This time she had agreed impulsively to come to Bermuda for a two-week vacation with a man she had just met. She didn’t know much about him, and one of the many things she didn’t know was that the reason he wanted to be in Bermuda was to take delivery of a consignment of heroin.

But she shouldn’t have been killed. Everybody involved in the incident agreed it had been a mistake.

“I didn’t want to say this with the commissioner listening,” Cameron said. “We should have let you handle it yourself.”

“My fault,” Shayne grunted.

“I don’t see that, Mike. Communications got fouled up. The commissioner is a little too prickly about protocol sometimes. And you didn’t have much of a choice, did you? I heard him tell you point-blank to stay out of his hair. It’s his island, after all.”

Shayne unlatched the door. “I always like to think I have a choice. Next time I won’t bother to check in.”

Two newspapermen had learned that instead of returning to the mainland by plane, Shayne had made last-minute plans to go by boat. His picture was taken as he came out of the car.

One of the reporters said politely, “Mr. Shayne, is it true that the woman who was killed this morning was a client of yours?”

“She was a client once,” Shayne said. “She was also a friend. Talk to the cops about it.”

“We’ve tried that. They’re refusing to make any statement about your connection with the case. Are you satisfied with the way the police handled it?”

“They blew it,” Shayne said briefly.

“Can we quote that, Mr. Shayne?”

“Put it in big type.”

He went up the boarding ramp, and as soon as he was aboard, two sailors drew in the ramp and the tugs began to nudge the big ship away from the dock.

Shayne asked for directions to the shopping arcade. On the way he was the object of more than one unfriendly look. His fellow passengers clearly believed that paying for first-class accommodations on the world’s most famous passenger liner should spare them the sight of somebody who hadn’t shaved for four days and who had obviously slept in the clothes he was wearing.

Shayne purchased the necessary replacements, as well as shaving things, bathing trunks, and other odds and ends. He took them to his cabin. Stripping off his blood-spattered lightweight suit, he told his cabin steward to take it to the valet, but not to worry too much about the spots.

He poured a stiff jolt of the cognac Cameron had given him. A minute or so later he was asleep.

The Queen Elizabeth had been waiting at the dock when Shayne finally finished with the police. Needing time to get organized before he faced the Miami press, he decided on the spur of the moment to see if they had a cabin available. He hadn’t traveled on a ship of this kind for years. The first thing he did after waking up was spend fifteen steamy minutes in the sauna. He ate a huge lunch, his first food in a day and a half. Then he plunged into the pool and swam a dozen fast laps. A pretty girl, the prettiest he had seen since coming aboard, caught his eye, but he wasn’t ready for that yet.

By the end of the afternoon his cognac bottle was empty, and he found the bar. The girl he had noticed at the pool came in a few minutes later and joined him, as though they had had an agreement to meet each other.

“You’re Michael Shayne, I’m told.”

“I guess I am.”

“The Miami private detective who almost invariably wins. I thought your hair would be redder—orange, in fact. In other respects you don’t disappoint. I’m Anne Blagden, and I think you look marvellous in a bathing suit. But how did you get all those scars?”

“The hard way,” he said.

He sipped at his cognac and chased it with a long drink of ice water. Turning, he gave her a closer look. Her long black hair fell loosely to her shoulders. Her arms and shoulders were deeply tanned, and there was a dusting of freckles across her forehead and the bridge of her nose. She was wearing a simple white dress and very high heels, which brought the top of her head to the level of his chin. She was more than merely adequate. She was spectacular.

She returned his look with a smile. “I’m drinking daiquiris.”

Shayne signaled the barman and dropped a bill on the bar. “A daiquiri for the lady, Harry. Use your good rum.” He nodded to the girl. “Keep out of trouble.”

He took his drink on deck. After finishing the cognac he dropped the glass over the side and watched it splash and sink.

He went in to dinner when the gong sounded.

He was seated by himself at a small table. He was drinking a coffee royal at the end of the meal, smoking an excellent Havana, when the dark-haired girl who had approached him in the bar appeared in the door of the dining room, looked around, and came over to his table.

“Mr. Shayne, I do know a put-down when I get one, but I need to talk to you about something.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“You might find it interesting. Give me till you finish your cigar.”

The cigar was only half smoked, but he stubbed it out and stood up. “Excuse me.”

“Can’t I buy you a drink? I know this is a bit, well, what’s the word, brash—”

He left her standing at the table.

A movie was getting underway in the main lounge. He watched the titles and part of the first scene. The actors were all fully clothed, but it was plain from the looks they were giving each other that they would be undressing presently. The leading actress had an interesting face, but that was as far as it went. Shayne returned to the bar.

He reconnoitered before entering. The persistent girl wasn’t there. After being given a drink, he questioned the barman idly about other ships he had worked, and time passed without strain.

Some time later, he was asked by one of his new bar acquaintances if he had any interest in poker. The question brought the man’s face into focus. He was wearing glasses with slightly tinted lenses. He was lean and fit, with a set of flashing teeth, undoubtedly his own. He wore two rings on his left hand. One was a diamond. That was also his name, he had told Shayne—Jerry Diamond. Being a theatrical agent, he made frequent trips between the United States and the Continent, but he hated and feared airplanes, and stayed out of them.

“Unless you’ve been told to be careful about playing cards with strangers?” Diamond asked.

Shayne laughed. “I’m careful about playing cards with friends. Where’s the game?”

“There isn’t any yet. Let me see if I can round one up. We’ve been playing bridge, and I’ve been losing. I can’t keep fifty-two cards in my head after a few drinks.”

He left the bar, returning ten minutes later to summon Shayne. As they crossed one of the big common rooms, he saw the girl who had been pushing herself at him. Anne something—Anne Blagden. She was on a sofa with another passenger, a small, bespectacled man who seemed older than she was. He was clearly drunk. He was very homely, very sunburned.

Anne saw Shayne. Breaking off, she pointed her index finger at him, the thumb raised to make it a gun. She curled her finger, as though pulling a trigger, and formed the words, “You’re dead,” with her lips.

There were five men in the game, all Americans. Shayne took down a few pots, then lost modestly for a time, absorbing the differences in style of play. They were all drinking heavily. Diamond went substantially ahead at the start, then dropped three successive pots, in which he had invested heavily.

Shayne concluded, with some regret, that the game was honest, within the usual reasonable limits. He stopped paying close attention, rarely attempting to bluff or to read a bluff, playing the cards as they fell. The simple patterns, the ritualized betting language, the flow of money as the luck shifted, all contributed to bringing him back. He was beginning to feel nearly normal.

He had forgotten the girl until she walked into the game room with a determined, slightly frightened look. She came directly to Shayne’s place at the table. Reaching in, she turned over his two hole cards.

“Deal Mr. Shayne out. I’m a fan of his, and I want to tell him how much I dig him. He’ll be back, probably.”

The two cards she had revealed were an ace of spades and a wild deuce.

“That kind of fan I don’t need,” Shayne observed.

He downed the last of his cognac, racked the bills at his place and thrust them into a side pocket. The girl had backed off warily, but she turned quickly when he pushed back his chair.

On the enclosed promenade deck, she swung to face him and said hurriedly, “I know that was a terrible thing to do. I hope deuces weren’t wild?”

“Deuces and one-eyes on that deal,” Shayne said. “Now what the hell is this?”

“I couldn’t wait till you stopped playing. You look as though you’ll go on all night. I—”

He interrupted. “The reason poker games go on all night is that it gets to be too much trouble to break them up. After a point you relax. That’s one of the objects.”

“I’m sorry! This isn’t at all what you think. I’ve got mixed up in something, and my God, do I need some help. Sit down with me for a couple of minutes and listen. There may be some money in it for you.”

“Not tonight, Anne. But you’re a good-looking girl, especially in that bikini you had on this afternoon. If you’re going to be in Miami let me know where I can reach you and I’ll call you in a few days. But tonight, strange as it seems, what I want to do is play a little uncomplicated poker.”

“I’m willing to stay up and watch. If we could have breakfast together—”

“Stop trying so hard, baby. Like it or not, it’s a man’s world, and the rules say that this kind of move is made by the man. Otherwise we’d have a woman President and women astronauts.”

“Damn it, I’m not trying to get you to go to bed with me!”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Let’s knock it off for now, Anne. Hell, you must have known there’d be a shortage of men. There always is on these ships. If you really need some advice talk to the purser. Maybe they even carry a psychiatrist.”

She caught his arm as he turned. “Please—”

He said quietly but emphatically, “Drop it, Anne.”

“You’re a real bastard, aren’t you?”

“Sometimes.”

As he opened the door into the game room, she stepped close and kicked him hard in the ankle. He swore explosively and the poker players at the table turned toward them.

One of the men grinned when Shayne sat down, but neither he nor any of the others commented on the altercation in the doorway.

“Draw poker,” Diamond announced. “Jacks or better to open. Ante up, men.”

Several hours later, with the clocks pushing two A.M., Miami time, Diamond dropped out of the game, about even. One of the two major winners remarked that his wife was never able to get to sleep until he came to bed, so perhaps he, too—

Shayne tossed in the pack and yawned deeply. The evening had been very therapeutic. He thanked the others for their contributions to the fight against inflation, and said goodnight.

Finding a particular cabin on a ship this size was always a problem. Shayne went down three decks. He made a wrong turn, found himself facing a dead end and had to return to the companionway to start over.

The carpeted corridors were very quiet. The vibration of the ship’s engines, somewhere below, was steady and nearly imperceptible. He passed a short cul-de-sac in which another passenger, also retiring late, was attempting to fit a key into the lock of his cabin door.

As Shayne went on, turning into a side corridor, he felt a slight change in the atmosphere, as though a window in a stuffy room had been opened, admitting a flow of fresh air. He heard a rustling. His reactions were a tick slow. He flung himself forward, twisting, and caught the blow on his lifted shoulder.

It was savagely struck. For an instant, as Shayne started to come around, he thought the shoulder must be broken. Then a sheet was flung over him from behind and he took another blow. This was a glancing one—he had slipped away as he felt it coming.

He took two sideward steps, dug in and whirled, blinded by the sheet. His hands closed on some kind of fabric.

Pulling his assailant in hard, he sent him spinning against a wall. Following, he kept contact. He had an impression he was contending with someone very strong and quick.

Shayne’s movements were badly hampered. The sheet was huge, enveloping him completely. He knew the importance of keeping in motion. He took two quick steps, using his adversary as a pivot, and came about, bobbing like an epileptic. His grip shifted to the man’s forearm, then to his throat.

Only a second or two had elapsed. He heard muffled breathing from another direction, a grunt. He felt a blinding stab of pain. His skull seemed to burst outward.

He blacked out for an instant, but came back still on his feet, still squeezing the throat in both hands, still throwing himself violently and eccentrically from side to side.

The man he was strangling tried to kick him in the stomach. Shayne had been expecting the move. Letting go with one hand, he caught the foot as it came at him, and picked his assailant off the floor. Continuing the same motion, he swung the first man at where he judged the second to be.

He connected, but he lost both his hold and his footing. As he went down, deciding that he needed help, he yelled.

He hit the floor with one knee and rolled. Feeling somebody beneath him, he hit out, and felt his knuckles strike bone. He batted wildly at the sheet, but there seemed to be more than one of them, sewn together to make a kind of enormous sack.

Then he remembered that he was carrying a weapon—a utility knife, specially made in Switzerland, with lock-picking equipment recessed into the bone handle and a blade controlled by a hidden spring. His thumb found the button. The blade sprang open.

He faked one way and went the other, hitting the wall and using it to propel himself backward. He struck with the knife. The blade sliced through the sheet and he felt the point make contact with something soft at the outer end of the arcing swing.

He ripped the sheet aside and saw a moving arm holding a smooth club, like a nightstick. He struck and missed.

Then he was hit again, very hard, from his blind side. He could do nothing about this one. The floor came up.

Before the darkness closed in, he thought he heard a door open.

He snapped back into consciousness, not gradually but all at once, and rolled. The sheet tore, and his head and shoulders came free. He saw a stout man, wearing only pajama bottoms, a woman, equally stout, in a nightgown with her hair in a plastic bag. A door was open behind them. They looked angry and perturbed.

“What in the holy hell do you think you’re doing?” the man demanded. “What was all that yelling?”

Shayne moved his head slowly. The knife was still in his hand, concealed in the folds of the sheet. He snapped it shut and returned it to his pocket. Two other doors were open further along, and faces were looking out cautiously.

He came erect and kicked out of the sheet. He looked for blood, and found some along one wall. It might have been his own.

He touched his face. “What did you just say? Did you say I was yelling?”

“You were yelling,” the man told him grimly. “Woke the both of us out of a sound sleep.”

Shayne moved his hand to the side of his head, which was only one of several places where he felt pain.

“Must have hit my head on the wall. What a dream I just had.” He looked around sheepishly. “Sorry, everybody,” he said, slurring his words. “I guess I fell asleep with my clothes on. Shouldn’t have had that last drink. Got tangled in the sheet. God knows how I got out in the corridor. I thought I was wrestling with somebody. Did any of you people see anybody? It seemed so goddamn real…”

He looked from one to another, but the prevailing reaction was suspicion. Only one face was remotely sympathetic.

The fat man blustered, “You ought to do something about yourself. You shouldn’t travel. Stay home with a nurse. I have half a mind—”

“Jasper, come to bed,” his wife told him. “So he walked in his sleep. Be nice.”

“I’m really sorry as hell,” Shayne said, rubbing his face. “I’ll lock myself in and hide the key.”

“And lay off the sauce,” the fat man advised him. “I still think I ought to—”

His wife pulled him into their cabin. Other doors closed, leaving only the one sympathetic woman, her face glistening with cold cream. She eyed Shayne speculatively.

“That’s a bad bruise. If you want to come in for a minute, I’ll put a cold washcloth on it.”

“Thanks, but my wife’s going to wonder what happened to me.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, good luck. I hope you sleep through.”

She retreated.

Shayne, left alone in the corridor, examined the sheets. There were two of them, as he had supposed, stapled together at the bottom and along the sides with an ordinary office stapler, to form a large, clumsy shroud. Shayne frowned. It didn’t make sense. The fold of paper money in his pocket was still there. He had taken about four hundred dollars out of the poker game, but a corridor in the first-class space on the Queen Elizabeth II seemed an unlikely spot for a mugging. The hand he had glimpsed briefly through the torn sheet, it seemed to him, had had a ring on it, and it could have been a diamond. Jerry Diamond, his fellow poker player, had been wearing such a ring, but he had seemed perfectly sane. They had parted friends. Why would an American theatrical agent want to throw a sheet over Shayne’s head and knock him unconscious? Shayne was absolutely sure he had never seen the man before that night.

He wadded up the sheets and dropped them into a laundry hamper.

The blows he had received had produced one side effect. His head was clear, and he had no trouble finding his cabin. After unlocking the door he paused for a moment, not wanting to be bushwhacked twice in an evening, and entered cautiously.

The overhead light didn’t come on when he threw the switch. He stepped back quickly and activated his knife.

After another moment he kicked the door open all the way and moved in. He groped for the desk lamp. Again, when he snapped it on, nothing happened.

Keeping close to the wall and moving carefully, he edged around the cabin to the bathroom. This light came on.

Turning, he strode to the bed and stripped back the cover. Anne Blagden lay there looking up at him.

She had decided, after all, to end the evening her way, not Shayne’s. She was naked.

CHAPTER 3

She was two shades of brown, much paler in the two narrow strips where her bikini shielded her from the sun. One hand was behind her head. Her look was cool, somewhat mocking.

“Do you always come into a room as carefully as that?” she said. “Private detectives—good grief. It must be a strain. And what do you think you’re going to do with that knife?”

Shayne snapped the blade shut and put it away. He looked around for clothes. Finding only a filmy negligee, he swept it up from the chair and held it out.

“Put this on and get the hell back to your own bed.”

“Mr. Shayne, you know you don’t mean that preposterous suggestion.”

“It’s not a suggestion. It’s what’s going to happen.”

“After all that cognac, I thought you wouldn’t know I was here till you got into bed. I wanted to surprise you.”

“You surprised me,” he said. “Now get the hell out.”

“I’ve been known to play poker too, Mr. Shayne. This isn’t a bluff. I have the high hand.”

“How do you make that out?”

“All I wore is that wrapper, and if you try to put it on me I’ll fold my arms and scream like a fire siren. People are going to hear me, I promise. It’s going to embarrass you.”

“I can stand it.”

“I heard what happened in Bermuda. You killed somebody, apparently. You want everybody to leave you alone so the calluses can form. OK! Now I understand why you’ve been behaving like a baboon all day. But I don’t know what to do! Unless you start being human I’ll definitely shatter your peace and quiet, and by God I mean that!”

Shayne swore under his breath. He tightened the bulbs she had loosened, and both lights came on. He closed the door to the corridor.

“You’re bleeding,” the girl said, surprised. “What happened, did you fall downstairs?”

“Something like that.”

He went to the bathroom. Leaving the door open, he put his head under the cold water faucet and turned the water on full. He checked his bumps and abrasions. They seemed to be minor.

He came out toweling himself.

“How many people knew you were here waiting for me?”

“No one. Why?”

He tossed the wet towel back in the bathroom and ran a comb through his hair. “You didn’t get a straight story about Bermuda. I didn’t kill anybody. A woman was killed because I made the mistake of following somebody else’s procedure. An American Foreign Service officer, a real jerk, told me if I wasn’t diplomatic he’d put in a report and have my license lifted. While we were arguing, it happened. Her name was Sally Marquand. We were on sleeping-together terms, and not only that, I liked her. She did a dumb thing, but she shouldn’t have been killed for it. All right, it’s over. Nobody followed me aboard. Nobody knew I’d be taking this ship, because I only made up my mind about ten minutes before we sailed.”

“I don’t see what connection—”

“A couple of people jumped me coming down from the poker game. I’m not carrying enough money to make that worthwhile. But there are only two choices. If they weren’t trying to roll me they didn’t want me to hear what you have to say.”

Alarmed, she swung her legs off the bed. “Who were they?” He sat down.

“I don’t know. They threw a sheet over my face. Either you put some more clothes on or I take some of mine off. Which will it be?”

“Be patient.” She thrust her arms into her negligee and pulled it together.

“A sheet over your head. Were they trying to—you know, just knock you out?”

“I don’t know a damn thing about it,” he said impatiently.

“I suppose by now everybody in first class saw me trying to get you to talk to me, but who in heaven’s name—well, I already knew it was serious. They could have picked on me just as easily, couldn’t they—except no, if they did that, Quentin would—”

She stopped, thinking.

“Let’s start straightening it out,” Shayne said. “Who’s Quentin?”

“You saw me with him in the lounge. He’s a little strange-looking, but what a brain. And he’s in trouble to the tops of his ears. Dr. Quentin Little. He’s just been hired by an American aerospace company, with one of those names made up of initials. Is it Amco? Something like that.”

“That’s one of the big ones. They have a plant in Georgia.”

“Yes—that’s where he’s supposed to work. But the way it looks now, he doesn’t expect to make it.”

She shook back her hair. “I didn’t believe it at first, and it’s so incredible I still don’t believe it all—I think he’s being tricked in some way. He’s going to have to explain part of this, and I just hope he hasn’t had anything more to drink.”

“In a nutshell, Anne.”

She drew a deep breath. “All right. He’s brought an old Bentley with him. He’s using it to smuggle in seventeen pounds of plutonium.”

Shayne snorted. “The hell he is.”

She gave him an angry look. “He’s been working with atomic reactors since he got out of grammar school. Plutonium to him is just—I don’t know, flour or something. And it’s not just the plutonium. It’s the whole damn thing, including the part that sets it off, the detonator. It’s a real functioning atom bomb.”

“Nobody imports atom bombs into the United States. That’s an export item.”

“I know it sounds insane! Let him explain it. He’s awake. I told him I’d call him as soon as you agreed to help.”

“I haven’t agreed to help.”

“But you know you have to,” she said reasonably. “Those men, whoever they are—if they wanted to keep you from talking to me, they didn’t succeed, did they? You’re part of it now, as far as they’re concerned.”

“What’s he planning to do with this bomb after he gets it in, blow up Washington?”

She blazed out at him. “It’s not so damn funny! Will you keep quiet and listen for a minute? He says it’s not big enough to blow up a whole city, but it would take out Capitol Hill and the White House and the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, as well as a big piece of the black ghetto, if you know Washington. But of course he’s not going to do anything like that. He’s planning to be caught coming through Customs.”

About to strike a match, Shayne looked at her. “Explain that.”

“It’s not so easy. We went through the whole question-and-answer business, and I think I finally understand it, but that doesn’t mean I can boil it down. He wants to get himself shot, you see. It’s a form of suicide. His life is insured for a hundred thousand dollars, and he can show you the policy. I admit at first I thought he was putting me on, to make himself interesting. But damn it, something’s going on, isn’t it, or why would anybody bother to attack you?”

Shayne thought for a moment, becoming interested against his will. He lit his cigarette.

“Did you meet him on the ship?”

She nodded. “I’ll tell you how that happened, to get it in perspective. I don’t usually go drinking with eccentric 42-year-old atomic scientists. What I don’t know about atoms! But I’m coming off—well, a sort of unpleasant couple of months. I was in Europe with a man. He’s married, but he’s not married to me. The idea was—it doesn’t have any connection, but I might as well lay it all out—the idea was that if everything worked he’d go home and talk to a divorce lawyer. Everything didn’t work. We said goodbye in London, with tears. I was feeling lousy, and I thought an ocean voyage might help. Looking around the ship, you probably noticed a number of middle-aged widows, right? They set the tone. I was in the bar the first night, and when Quentin got up to go to the men’s room a revolver fell out of his pocket! Naturally I asked him why he was carrying a gun. He said I was an impertinent American, and a tactless bore. That kind of conversation went on for a couple of days. He kept trying to hide from me, poor man. I kept after him and he finally told me. The suicide plan, the insurance policy—the works. In one way it’s perfectly irrational. If you take out insurance and kill yourself, they won’t pay off. There has to be a year or so in between, isn’t that right?”

“Usually two.”

“And he couldn’t wait. Now that I know how his mind works, I can see it’s the kind of scheme that would appeal to him. Any moron can jump off a bridge. Can I tell him to come in now? He can explain all this better than I can.”

“Not yet. He convinced you there’s actually an atom bomb concealed on this ship?”

“I keep telling you, that’s the business he’s in. It sounds wild to us, but he’s very matter of fact about it. You know the way people tell you they’re smuggling in an extra bottle of perfume. He says this the same way. ‘I’ve got this little homemade atom bomb in the gas tank of my car.’ Petrol tank, excuse me.”

Shayne said thoughtfully, “He took the tank apart and built it in?”

“That’s the idea. And if you want to know if I’ve seen it, I haven’t. It’s down in the hold, wherever the hold is. That’s why we’ve absolutely got to get somebody like you. He doesn’t think we can stop it, it’s too far along, but I don’t agree. We could drop it overboard, if we could get it out of the car.”

Shayne scraped his thumbnail across his chin. “A Bentley’s a conspicuous car for a smuggler.”

“That’s why he picked it. That’s why he’s crossing to Miami, instead of New York. The Miami customs doesn’t get a trans-Atlantic ship more than once or twice a year, and would any sensible smuggler use a Bentley? He’s very smug about the job he did on the tank. It only holds a couple of gallons, but the needle registers full.”

That small detail convinced Shayne that Anne, at least, believed the improbable story.

“It’s pretty fancy.”

“Of course it is. And as soon as you talk to him, you’ll see that it’s in character. He started playing chess when he was four. Chess! Mr. Shayne, you realize we don’t have all the time in the world?”

“We’d better go to his cabin. I don’t think we ought to let this genius wander up and down the corridors alone.”

She jumped up. “I convinced you! I thought it might take a little longer.”

“I wouldn’t say you’ve convinced me,” Shayne said dryly. “An atom bomb in a Bentley.”

CHAPTER 4

At the door of Quentin Little’s cabin, Anne crossed her fingers and said under her breath, “Quentin, if you know what’s good for you, be awake. Be sober.”

She tapped on the door. A voice said cautiously from within, “Anne, is that you?”

“Yes, open the door.”

The lock turned and the door opened. The man who stood in the doorway in oversize pajamas sent a quick look at Shayne. Behind large horn-rimmed glasses, his eyes seemed alert and intelligent.

“This is Michael Shayne,” she said. “He’s interested, I think, but he doesn’t really believe it yet.”

Little put out a hand and gave Shayne’s a quick, dry shake. “I think this is a waste of your time, but come in.”

“I hear we’re carrying an atom bomb,” Shayne said.

“Oh, there’s nothing to be alarmed about, it’s quite safe.”

He moved a suitcase off a chair and invited Shayne to sit down. His diction was a shade too careful, but otherwise he gave no sign of having been drinking. He was badly sunburned, and his nose and cheekbones were smeared with some kind of ointment. Shayne studied him. His face was deeply scored, particularly about the mouth, and there were hollows beneath his eyes. His eyes kept moving. He was controlling himself well, but behind the surface politeness, Shayne saw that he was very close to the edge.

“I can’t offer you anything to drink, I’m afraid,” Little said apologetically. “I’ve emptied every bottle, and yet I feel astonishingly clear-headed. My dear lovely Anne has communicated to me some of her own attachment to life. I find that a commitment of this kind has an extraordinary effect on the central nervous system. It neutralizes the alcohol.”

He filled and lighted a pipe while Shayne watched him.

“Ask him something,” Anne said nervously. “You feel the engine vibration. We’re not standing still, you know.”

“Do you have a contract with Amco?” Shayne said.

“A letter agreement. Would you like to see it?”

“Yeah. And get out the insurance policy while you’re at it.”

The Englishman flipped back the lid of the unlatched suitcase and drew out a manila envelope. The insurance policy, written by a London firm, contained a double-indemnity clause for accidental death and a two-year suicide exclusion. There were two beneficiaries, a wife and a daughter. The agreement with Amco, one of the big electronic and space conglomerates, was for eighteen months, with an option to renew for three years. It included a stock option arrangement that seemed very generous to Shayne, and an annual salary figure that made him raise his eyebrows.

“Anne tells me that you’re carrying a gun.”

Little sent a quizzical look at the girl. “Unloaded, actually. I’m not much of a gun man. It’s a sort of stage prop.”

“Let me see it.”

Little went to the bureau and returned with a Belgian .38 automatic, a Walther, the best of the small hand guns. The clip was empty.

“I have bullets,” Little said, “but I refrained from loading it, not wanting to run the risk of using it prematurely, in a moment of disgust.”

“Anne said it fell out of your pocket.”

“I’ve wondered about that,” Little said thoughtfully. “Did I do it deliberately, to attract her attention to a desperate, doomed figure? Perhaps subconsciously. With the conscious part of my mind, I was frightened of her from the beginning. I was afraid she would reawaken something, would make me regret—”

Anne moved impatiently. “All he wants is facts, Quentin. Tell him about the money.”

Little gave a sardonic chuckle. “Half a million American dollars. A substantial sum.”

Shayne’s eyes narrowed. “For what?”

“It’s a reward, you see, for information leading to the apprehension and conviction of any un-American scoundrel who commits the folly of attempting to bring a nuclear weapon into the United States.”

Shayne’s internal Geiger counter, which woke up whenever it heard a con artist go into his pitch, went into sudden action. He broke out his cigarettes.

“How official is it?”

“Very. Authorized by a special act of the United States Congress. Few people will remember. It was an obscure action, taken at a time that now seems a part of some long-ago geologic period. The date was 1949, May 17.”

“Go on.”

“The United States was then the only atomic power. I understand there was considerable xenophobia in your country. The nature of the fission process was imperfectly understood, a spy fever was raging. People were preoccupied with two aspects of the atomic weapon—first, its enormous power; second, its relatively small size. The explosive portion, even now, as you probably know, is really astonishingly small. Am I giving him too much detail?” he asked Anne.

“He needs the background, I guess. But talk a little faster.”

“When I talk fast I stutter. The question of bulk, of size, Mr. Shayne—to a nervous country that was the crux of the matter. The United States had a 100-percent monopoly on production, with a system of strategic bases and great fleets of aircraft that could reach every inhabited point on the globe. I can’t imagine why Americans should have been so frightened, but they were, they definitely were. It was known, of course, that the secret of the bomb was not really that much of a secret. Sooner or later you would no longer have your monopoly. And then some miserable fifth-rate power, or even an individual or a mad committee, would put together an elementary nuclear device and carry it to its target in America in an ordinary suitcase. The suitcase bomb—from all accounts I have read—was one of the scares of the period. No one seems to talk about it now, and I am at a loss to know why.”

“It’s still possible?” Shayne said.

“More so than ever. As the yield has gone up, the bulk has gone down. So you spend your fifty-odd billions a year on aircraft and missiles and antimissiles and anti-antimissiles, but how do you protect against the single madman with his suitcase? Back in 1949 some clever civil servant had an idea, and persuaded your Congress to post this reward of half a million dollars. Money was worth more then than it is now. It must have seemed to your lawmakers that such a munificent sum would set up an intolerable pressure inside even the tiniest conspiracy. Given a choice between a half million dollars and loyalty to a country or an ideal, there would always be one weak and pragmatic person who would choose the half million. A typically American notion. Free of taxes—that was part of the arrangement.”

“Have you seen a copy of this act?” Shayne said.

“I have seen a newspaper cutting, taken from The Washington Star. Yellow and crumbling, undoubtedly genuine. Do you doubt that such a reward was posted?”

“I doubt the whole goddamn thing,” Shayne said roughly. “Somebody’s giving somebody a fast-shuffle here.”

“Did you bring the clipping?” Anne said. “That would prove part of it.”

“No, certainly not. If they found it in my pocket, it would give away the whole scheme. I assure you it happened. Public Law No. 1063. Passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the President. That can be checked, surely.”

“But not from here,” Shayne said. “Who’s planning to collect the reward?”

Little sucked at his pipe, which had gone out. He put it down and began cracking his knuckles.

“This skeptical spirit is contagious. I suddenly wonder… he could have set the type for the newspaper article, but how could he age the paper convincingly? No,” he decided, “the cutting was genuine; the reward is genuine. It’s inherently probable. It fits the historical facts. It demands to be believed.”

He leaned forward. “Pierre Dessau, an Englishman in spite of the French name. The scheme is his. He is a man with quite a good untrained intelligence and a quick tongue. I have caught him out in three or four unimportant lies or exaggerations, but it never occurred to me to doubt the veracity of his newspaper cutting. If that was bogus in any way I am really in need of your services.”

“Quent, for God’s sake,” Anne said, “will you tell him how it happened? You met him in a pub. He said, you said. When we get that out of the way we can move on.”

“Yes, the pub would be a logical place to start. The Three Heads of the Well. I’ve been in fairly regular attendance for the past several years. The conception of conviviality draws me. After a certain few gins, we find out small facts about one another: that so-and-so had enjoyed unnatural connection with so-and-so’s wife, that Dr. Quentin Little, from the Facility, who is at ease among subatomic particles, has no hope for animate matter and doesn’t give two farthings if the sun comes up tomorrow morning or not. I’ve made a substantial mess of things, Shayne. I have a wife who despises me. The feeling is mutual. I have two children who consider me a traitor to humanity for doing weapons research. I have been working on the definitive bomb, the really definitive bomb, and the work, I must say, is well advanced. I am also seriously in the hole financially, to the tune of upward of ten thousand quid. My wife’s family, her brother, her father, are disaster-prone, and each new catastrophe seems to cost me money. Sexually I have been impotent, really bang-out impotent. Nothing, regardless of with whom.”

His knuckles cracked.

Anne put in quietly, “As of twelve hours ago, that is no longer any problem.”

She met Shayne’s look squarely. “You have to understand the situation, and that seems to be quite a large part of it. It wasn’t that much of a miracle, really. It happened the way such things are supposed to happen.”

“Don’t explain,” Little said gently. “I’m grateful to you, my dear. It was enjoyable, as well as surprising. That doesn’t mean I intend to drape myself about your neck like an albatross the rest of my life. It was the sort of incident that takes place on ocean liners, and it demonstrated to me that I might look forward to other such incidents with other people, if this luck stays with me. You have a strong grip on life. That is what turned me around, not the love making.”

He looked back at Shayne. “I have felt myself caught in a spiral, you see, and this has broken the spiral. Why do I need to go on living with my wife? I don’t. I have no real obligation to assume the debts of my father-in-law and my brother-in-law. I can get out of weapons work. It has all turned out to be easy. Anne has wrenched me through a forty-five-degree arc, and now I see myself from a different angle. Not that my problems are over, they’re beginning.”

“Let’s get back to Dessau. When did that start?”

“In the spring. At first we only saw him over the weekends—he came down from London. He described himself as a commission man who could procure anything—pornographic film, drugs, girls, boys. Not a bad sort to have a drink with. There are always four or five chaps from the Facility at the Three Heads, and Pierre cultivated us, rather. We tabbed him as one of those romantics who have seen too many James Bond films, who imagine if they can get to be pals with a genuine real-life atomic physicist he will let slip some secret tidbit they can sell to the Russians. It’s all a great joke. He plied us with drinks, hinting at the availability of other delights. He actually did introduce one of the chaps to a girl who didn’t turn out to be so bad. It wasn’t secret intelligence he was after, it developed. It was the actual bomb.”

“How did you find that out?”

“I put myself in his hands.”

Little looked into the bowl of his dead pipe. The lines around his mouth had deepened.

“I had undergone a—humiliation, of the personal type we have been discussing, and this one seemed final to me. I heard my sixteen-year-old son talking about me to a friend, in unflattering terms. Unflattering, my eye—abusive. I was passed over by the Academy of Sciences. I decided there was no use in continuing. It was a Saturday night. I stupefied myself with gin and hooked a rubber hose to the exhaust of my Humber. Pierre had followed me home and observed these preparations.”

He stood up and started to move about the cabin. His tone became more agitated.

“He waited till I got into the car and turned on the engine, and then tore open the door and dragged me out. We had more to drink, a great deal more, and at last he broached his fantastic proposal. He had no objection to suicide per se. Every man, he believed, should be allowed to make that decision for himself. But to do it in such a silly way, with carbon monoxide. Why not arrange the thing so as to make a point? He wanted to know exactly what was bothering me, and I told him—money, the scorn of my children, sex—the lot. He could promise me nothing about sex, but he promised money; he promised to show me a way to redeem myself politically and morally in my children’s eyes, and how to pull a thundering swindle on the United States Treasury. Because I found life meaningless, did death have to be meaningless? He was offering a way to break into history.”

“Was this off the top of his head,” Shayne said, “or did he seem to know what he was talking about?”

Little was puzzled. “I think he had carried that cutting around a long time.”

“He doesn’t have a chance in hell of collecting the reward. Does he realize that? It could make a difference.”

Little stared at him. He took off his glasses and began polishing them on his shirttail. Without the glasses, he looked younger and more helpless.

“You don’t believe in the reward.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. Congress may have passed Such an act and maybe it’s still on the books. That doesn’t mean payment is automatic. No government gives away half a million dollars to a noncitizen, with no political muscle, unless it has to. He’ll have to sue. All kinds of loopholes are going to turn up. If there’s any hint of collusion—it wouldn’t have to be proved; all I’d have to do is go in and testify to what you’ve just told me—he wouldn’t collect a cent. With lots of luck, he might end up in a couple of years with twenty-five thousand. Fifty would be tops.”

“Shayne, you understand this thing has been an obsession with him. He researched it thoroughly. He’s positive the reward has never been withdrawn—it’s still the law of the land. I was under the impression that paying informers in smuggling cases is common practice.”

“A judge can award an informer as much as fifty percent of any smuggling fine,” Shayne explained. “He can. That doesn’t mean he has to. If they hope to use the same informer again, they’ll want to keep him happy. But this is a one-shot. It’s always hard to collect any one-shot reward. That’s a well-known fact of life, and what I want to find out is whether you think he knows it.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t! Can you seriously maintain that the Congress of the United States can post a half-million-dollar reward, and only pay twenty-five thousand?”

“Hardly seems fair, does it?”

Little fitted his face into his glasses. “Pierre will be very, very disillusioned with American democracy if that proves to be true. In fantasy, I’m quite sure he has invested the entire half million in consoles and conservative bank stocks, and is financially secure for life. As for collusion—of course he didn’t anticipate that I would give the scheme away to a stranger, a private detective, whose testimony would be accepted by a jury. He was planning the story along the following lines: he overheard me making anti-American statements, which were more than a little odd, coming from a man in my position. I said something about what a political success it would be to blow up Capitol Hill. He inquired about my off-job activities. I had purchased an expensive second-hand motorcar. It was in excellent running condition, but nonetheless, he noticed, I was doing some mysterious tinkering on it in my garage workshop very late at night. When I accepted an American job and decided to go by boat, taking my tinkered-with Bentley, everything coalesced. He flew to Miami and alerted the authorities. ‘Look closely at this Left-wing scientist. Examine his car.’ I thought myself it was an excellent plan.”

“How powerful a bomb is it?”

“You dignify it by calling it a bomb. Plutonium in the usual form of tiny metallic balls, plus a crude triggering device with a three-switch arming mechanism. You couldn’t explode it by dropping it from an airplane, but use an ordinary fulminating cap and you might get a rather impressive bang. Ridiculously low yield. Stated in commonly understood terms, it would have a force of twenty kilotons, twenty thousand tons of TNT. And of course very dirty—radioactivity would be a continuing problem. You understand that the object is not actually to blow up anything, but to frighten people.”

“How did you get it out of the laboratory?”

Little shrugged. “I happened to be in charge of security. At one time we were very meticulous, but as the decades have passed with nothing out of the way happening, we have become lax. The inventory figures on fissionable material can be played with. There is a battery of counters at each exit. One of my routine duties has been to check daily to make sure each counter is operational. You know the principle of the Geiger counter—a simple electrode in a cylinder filled with gas, which will set up a current in an electric field when ionized by radiation. An electrical source is necessary. I simply interrupted the circuits at one of the lesser-used exits. For years and years those counters have never clicked except when being tested. They didn’t click when I walked past with the vials of plutonium in my raincoat pockets.”

“Would a counter get a reading from the Bentley’s gas tank?” Shayne asked.

“No, no. The material’s enclosed in a lead sheath.”

Anne burst out, “All right, that’s the situation. Now what are we going to do about it?”

“Just a minute,” Shayne said. “Who paid the insurance premium?”

“I did. It wasn’t that much. We thought forty thousand pounds would be a reasonable figure. More might seem suspicious. The policy contains a clause obliging the assurance company to pay double for accidental death. Will being shot by Customs agents qualify as an accident? The lawyers will have to argue about that.”

“Quentin, it’s not going to happen!” Anne said.

Little repeated his one-shoulder shrug.

Shayne said, “Dessau has turned in his tip by this time. The Customs people will give your car a close inspection and find the bomb. Then what?”

“I will be a bit nervy, understandably. When they start unscrewing the cap of the petrol tank I will snatch out my gun and attempt to bolt. And they will shoot me. Dessau will be standing by, to administer the coup de grace, if need be. The punishment for the crime I will ostensibly be committing is, I suppose, death. I intend to avoid a long-drawn-out-show trial at any cost. A quick burst of gunfire—a much less banal way to die than running a hose from an exhaust pipe.”

“Quent—” Anne said helplessly.

“As I’ve been telling you, you worked your miracle too late. Granted that Mike Shayne is as resourceful as you say. What can he do?” He spread his hands. “There is no hope of emerging from this unscathed, and as soon as Shayne understands the dimensions of the problem, I know he will agree.”

“I don’t understand it yet,” Shayne said. “What else do you know about Dessau?”

“Very little. A difficult man to take seriously. More of a talker than anything, it would seem, but let me drop in an anecdote. At one point I wavered. It all struck me as much too elaborate for such a simple end. Pierre didn’t try to debate, he simply punched up my daughter Cecily. She lost a front tooth and spent some days in hospital. It was effective. I agreed to continue.”

“What’s he look like?”

“He’s tall, some inches taller than you. Six feet four, I’d say. Pale skin—definitely a nighttime look. Modish clothes.”

“He’s definitely not aboard?”

“He’s flying. Why?”

“Anne’s been seen with you. When people have just had sex, there are sometimes little things that give it away. She pulled me out of a poker game tonight and kicked me on the ankle. All very much in public. OK. Two guys tried to club me on my way to bed, obviously to keep me from hearing this.”

Little had listened in amazement. “There can’t be a connection. Pierre kept repeating that the really beautiful thing about his plan was that we two could do it alone, with no fellow conspirators to weaken and give it away. Only the two of us.”

Anne said urgently, “There’s only one thing to do. Take the tank out and throw it in the ocean.”

“Leaving aside the question of how we do that,” Little said, “without a forklift, without access to a machine shop, what happens then? The Customs inspector will look for a place where seventeen pounds of sheathed plutonium can be hidden. Aha, no petrol tank. ‘How do you explain this, Dr. Little?’ Inquiries will be made at Camberwell, the theft will be discovered. I have recently become a member of some notoriously Left-wing committees. Obviously I stole the plutonium to give to my country’s enemies. I see myself coming out of prison twenty years later. No.”

Shayne’s mind was running. The story was fantastic, and at the same time, in a real-life context, too plausible. Pierre Dessau had needed precisely the collaborator Little had turned out to be—an atomic physicist who could steal the raw materials for an atom bomb, who had a chessplayer’s temperament, a wife he hated, a financial problem, a pair of heckling children, a disposition toward suicide. It was far too pat. All con games fall into a few basic categories, but most of them can be modified to fit the mark’s requirements. The first thing to establish was where to place Little—was he the swindler, or the swindler’s victim?

“Is there any chance the gas tank you put in the car isn’t the one that’s in it now?”

“I delivered the car to the dock myself.”

Shayne flicked his dead cigarette into a wastebasket. “What would be your idea of a happy ending?”

“I find happy endings depressing,” Little said. “And under these circumstances, is a happy ending possible? Of course if you could persuade the captain to turn around and go back to England, so I can return the plutonium before anyone realizes it’s missing—”

“Could you do that?” Anne said quickly.

“I still have my security clearance. A way could be found. But what will Dessau be doing in the meantime? How about the Customs inspection?”

“Look,” Anne said excitedly, “let’s say Mike can take care of that. Don’t ask me how—for the sake of argument. You could report for work, complain about the office they give you and break your contract. Can you get the old job back?”

“Easily. There’s a shortage of Englishmen with my qualifications.”

“Mike, I know you’d have to be some kind of magician to work it, but can you think of any possible way—”

“Not if the story he’s told me is true. On the other hand, I think there’s a chance that not all of it is.” He studied Little. “How much cash do you have with you?”

“For a retainer, you mean? In your terms of reference, not enough, probably. I could give you a note.”

“I don’t do this kind of favor for people I don’t know unless I’m paid in advance. That insurance policy seems to be your only negotiable asset. Cut me in for a third and I’ll see what I can do.”

Little was startled. “Which would mean,” he said slowly, “that you collect only if I die.”

“On the facts you’ve given me, you’re a long shot to get through twenty-four hours. If you live, pay me five thousand dollars over the next two years.”

“Very well, I accept,” Little said after a moment.

The necessary paperwork took several more minutes. He entered Shayne’s name on the back of the policy, in the space provided for beneficiary changes, and Anne witnessed his signature. Then, on ship’s stationery, he prepared two copies of a letter to the London company, and gave one of these to Shayne. The preparations had the surprising effect of making him more cheerful.

“We have ourselves a bet. If you win, Shayne, never mind shipping my body back. I want to be burned. I want my ashes to be disposed of through the Miami municipal sewerage system.”

“You’re such ghouls!” Anne exclaimed.

“No, there’s something to be said for professionalism,” Little declared. “If Shayne can do anything about it, he will, and I intend to put the whole thing out of my mind. Will you stay with me, dear? I would like to receive what under the circumstances may be my last rites.”

“Yes,” she said uncertainly. “Mike, can I talk to you alone for a minute? I don’t mean anything elaborate, but I hope you don’t think I can put it out of my mind. I have to know what you think is possible.”

“Will you promise to come back?” Little said quietly as she stood up.

She came over and kissed him. “In one minute or less.” She followed Shayne to the corridor. To his surprise, he saw that she had started crying.

He let her come in against him, although there were other things he should have been doing. Her words were muffled against his chest.

“I didn’t know I was getting involved in anything like this. I was just—oh, looking for entertainment. There was something patronizing about it.” She pushed away and looked up at him defiantly. “The cheerleader being nice to the school creep, to score an easy win and show everybody what an open mind she has.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

“I’m explaining to myself. I’ve never—well, taken sex as seriously as some people do. And we got to the point where I would have cut him to ribbons if I’d turned him off. I thought I had to go on.”

She hammered her fist against his shoulder. “It was curiosity! I wanted to find out what was bothering him. Now I know. I have to go back in and stay with him, Mike. He claims that last night made a difference, but it didn’t, really. He’s still intending to get himself shot.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I can tell. Sex isn’t medicine. He was still the same person after it was over. Big deal, you know? But he thinks he has to convince me he’s a changed man. It’s his way of being polite. He’s willing to talk about squeezing through and going back to the old job, but he knows it can’t happen. And of course he’s scared.”

“You believe him, then.”

“I always believe what people tell me after an orgasm. It’s one of my rules. My mind’s going around in circles, around and around and around. He’s spent the last six months establishing himself as a red-hot radical, and he’s such a total political innocent, Mike! He’s been down inside that atom all these years. Whatever happens, there’s trouble ahead, isn’t there?”

CHAPTER 5

Shayne returned to his cabin.

He seldom carried a gun, but when Sally Marquand had called from Bermuda to tell him that she found herself in what was turning into a rather bad jam, he had taken a .38 with him. He hadn’t used it. Coming aboard the Queen Elizabeth, he had tossed it into a drawer. Now he pulled out his shirt so it hung loosely over his slacks, and stuck the gun in the belt.

He hesitated, about to leave the cabin, and took out the gun again to check the clip. It was empty.

He weighed the gun thoughtfully, and returned it to the drawer. He had left his passport beside it. Taking it out, he flipped it open. The passport photograph, in which Shayne looked like one of the FBI’s ten most wanted criminals, had been sliced out.

He swore briefly. It had been adroitly done. Only someone with Shayne’s highly developed sense of smell would have discovered the mutilation before disembarking. Presenting his passport to the Immigration officials, he would have been delayed until he could prove his identity.

He went back to A deck, consulted a cutaway diagram of the ship hanging outside the purser’s office, and went forward to the captain’s cabin. He gave the door a few hard knocks and went in.

“Captain?”

There were two rooms. When Shayne switched on a light, another light came on in the bedroom and a voice called, “What is it?”

When Shayne reached the doorway, the captain, a big beak-nosed man named Stackpole, was sitting up looking at him. Shayne held out his Florida private detective’s license.

“I’m Michael Shayne. I need some major cooperation, and before you give it to me you’ll need more to go on. Do you know the Bermuda Police Commissioner? Or the Deputy Commissioner, Ian Cameron?”

Captain Stackpole put in his teeth and made a quick pass at his graying hair before taking Shayne’s leather folder. He glanced at it and gave it back.

“I know Cameron. He’s the son of an old schoolmate of mine.”

“He can vouch for me if you call him. I know it’s late, but they owe me something.”

Captain Stackpole, like Shayne himself, was a man doing a job. Without requiring any more information, he picked up the telephone and gave a few quiet instructions.

“This is a police matter, I take it,” he said to Shayne.

“Smuggling. It seems to be something fairly big.”

“We’ve come to expect it on the southern run. They think the Miami Customs will be softer than New York, but it seldom turns out that way. Are any of the ship’s people involved?”

“I don’t think so. But there’s still a lot I don’t know.”

“We have a high personnel turnover these days. We take what we can get, and that includes some pretty doubtful people. If you find any crew connection, Mr. Shayne, I’d appreciate a little advance notice so we can have a company representative standing by. It may take a few minutes to get Cameron. Coffee? Whiskey?”

Shayne asked for whiskey. The Captain made the drink without ice and opened a soft drink for himself. Until the phone rang at the bedside, he talked easily about earlier smuggling attempts on the Southampton-Miami crossing. It was true, he admitted, that he only knew about those that had been frustrated.

The phone rang.

“Cameron, it’s John Stackpole here. Sorry about the lateness of the hour and so on. I have a person called Michael Shayne in my cabin. He says the name is familiar to you.”

He listened for a moment. “He appears to be moderately sober. I’ve given him a small whiskey. Should I trust him, and if so, to what extent?”

He listened another moment, thanked Cameron, and said goodnight.

“You have your clearance, Mr. Shayne. He seems to feel I should hand the ship over to you, but I won’t quite do that. What did you have in mind?”

Half an hour later, pushing a low-wheeled dolly, Shayne entered the Queen Elizabeth’s afterhold.

The big cavernous space was weakly lit up by unshaded bulbs on each exposed steel rafter. After relocking the door, he began the hunt for Little’s doctored Bentley.

He had brought a powerful four-cell flashlight. The cars were as crowded as they would have been in a busy downtown parking lot. Each was chocked to the deck and fixed to an adjustable axle clamp. He had to move sideways between rows, and step on bumpers to get from one row to the next.

He checked a Bentley in an outermost row, and found Dr. Quentin Little’s name on the red tag wired to the steering wheel. It seemed to be riding very low on its rear wheels. Shayne stooped to look at the gas tank.

The bright beam of his flashlight shot all the way across beneath the cars. A moving shadow caught his eye. He swung the flashlight instinctively, but nothing that shouldn’t have been there showed in the light. He pointed the beam another way, keeping his eyes on the spot where he thought he had detected movement.

The shadows changed slightly. He stabbed with the light, and picked up a man’s feet and legs.

They were in the opposite aisle, at the far side of the massed formation, scissoring rapidly. Straightening, Shayne saw a blurred, crouching figure.

He hurled the flashlight. It revolved end over end, and was still burning when it crashed against a bulkhead and went out. Shayne was already running. He was parallel with the figure, separated by the densely massed cars.

A light winked at him. The sound of a pistol shot hammered back and forth across the metal enclosure.

The shot had been snapped off at random, to let Shayne know that he was stalking an armed man. Shayne jumped into a pool of shadow.

There was a dimly lighted doorway ahead of the other man, and he was dearly trying to reach it without disclosing his identity. Bent low, Shayne ran to the door on his side of the hold, where he had left the dolly. He tipped the tools and equipment onto the floor. The clatter drew another shot.

Shayne grabbed a heavy long-handled pipe wrench. Throwing himself down on the dolly, he launched himself from the wall with a powerful kick.

He shot along the top aisle, surprised by his own speed. Low enough not to be seen, he careened across the hold and was still moving very fast when he collided with the wall. Wrestling the dolly around, he kicked off from a bulkhead and rolled at the figure running toward him.

He saw a white shirt, a pale face, a mop of hair. The figure leaped straight up, picking up his feet like a second baseman making a double play, and Shayne shot beneath him.

Twisting off the rapidly moving dolly, Shayne hit the wall and came around. In the same motion he threw the wrench.

The heavy-jawed wrench struck the man between the shoulder blades. He staggered, nearly losing his footing. An instant later he was out the door.

By the time Shayne reached the doorway, the dimly lighted corridor was empty.

He waited, listening. Then he closed the door and pushed an empty drum against it, where it would be knocked aside if the door opened.

He retrieved the dolly. One of the casters was bent but it was still serviceable. Reloading it with his welding and cutting equipment, he rolled it to the Bentley.

Captain Stackpole had given Shayne authority to draw on the ship’s machine shop for any tools he needed, and he had brought a wide assortment, including a working light with a long heavy-duty cord. He found an outlet and plugged in.

He opened the Bentley’s luggage hatch, removed the spare wheel and turned back the floor carpeting. It was beginning to seem more and more likely to Shayne that at least some of Little’s story was true. A quick glance told him that the bolts attaching the gas tank to the chassis had been recently replaced.

He had to jack up the rear end and crawl underneath to reach the nuts. He found them easy to turn.

He could see from the tension on the rear springs that the tank must be unusually heavy. Bracing himself, he pushed upward with both hands. It gave perceptibly, but it was obviously going to give him trouble.

He drew jacks from nearby cars and began jacking it out, using one at each corner. At intervals, he slid out to see how it was coming. The tank cover was a half inch longer and wider than the tank itself, providing a flange that could be bolted to the body. The entire cover had been sliced off and later rewelded. The new weld was daubed with dirty grease, but under the bright 150-watt bulb, Shayne could see the faint scar where it joined the natural accumulation on the underside of the car.

He had three hours till daylight. He needed it all.

He disconnected the hose and opened the gas line, draining the tank into an oil pan. After measuring the tank carefully, he reconnoitered the neighboring cars and picked a late-model Oldsmobile. The steering wheel tag gave the owner’s name and an address in Coral Gables, adjoining Miami to the south. The two tanks were nearly the same shape and size, though the flange on the Bentley’s tank was wider and the bolt holes were spaced differently. On the American car, the bolts were rusted in place, and Shayne had to burn them off.

Because of the lack of space to maneuver, the transfer was difficult. The Oldsmobile’s tank lifted out easily after being drained and disconnected, but putting the Bentley’s tank in its place took an hour’s straining and prying. To bring the tank clear of the floor of the Bentley’s luggage space, he had to block up the jacks. It got away from him briefly as he was levering it over, and it left a bad scar in the front fender of a Jaguar.

Now, shining his flashlight into the tank’s open neck, he saw that it was, in fact, extremely shallow. The false bottom was slick and black. Before rolling it to the Olds, he inserted a small rectangular object wrapped in heavy plastic. This was a homing device, part of the standard survival equipment in the Queen Elizabeth lifeboats. The switch had been taped open, and for the last hour or so it had been transmitting a tiny pulsing buzz at thirty-second intervals. The batteries had a 36-hour life. The effective range of the device, Shayne understood, was a little over ten miles.

It was attached to a long wire. Leaving this dangling, Shayne began the difficult task of raising the heavy tank high enough so he could work it into the open trunk of the Olds. He found it a fraction of an inch too long. Firing up the cutting torch he had brought from the machine shop, he burned off a narrow strip of Detroit steel, allowing the heavy tank to drop into place. And then it was necessary to drill new holes for the bolts. He used only two. Before attaching the hose he ran the wire through the hose opening and beneath the car, and tied it into the Oldsmobile’s antenna.

After that, he installed the Olds tank in the Bentley, connected the gas lines and filled both tanks.

Back in his cabin as dawn was breaking, he showered and changed clothes and settled down to wait for the phone to ring.

CHAPTER 6

It rang just as he decided to make the call himself.

Anne spoke in a hushed voice. “I called you before, Mike—no answer. I’ve been worrying.”

“How is he?”

“Asleep, but it’s not doing him much good.” She lowered her voice further. “I found a couple of capsules in his suitcase. I don’t know what they are—”

“Get rid of them.”

“We have to talk. Can I come to your cabin?”

“No, stay with him. We’ll have to start being careful. I ran into somebody else who believes Little’s story, and this time a couple of shots were fired. I didn’t fire back. Somebody broke into my cabin earlier and took the bullets out of my gun. Those are the late developments. Stay under cover and don’t open the door to anybody.”

“Mike, if you’re trying to scare me,” she said accusingly, “you’re succeeding.”

“Fine. I’ve got something underway, and I think there’s a faint chance it will work. He’ll need some luck, but he already knows that.”

“Can you tell me about it? I could use a little reassurance.”

“Too many people know about parts of this already. He’s going to be closely watched when he comes off the ship. I don’t want to be seen with him, and the less he knows about it the better. I want him to look very jittery when he goes through Customs.”

“I can guarantee that! Mike, one of the things I wanted to tell you—I won’t be available to hold anybody’s hand. My brother and sister-in-law are meeting me, damn it. He heard about my great romantic disappointment in England—dear God, how long ago it seems now—so he’s taking a week off to cheer me up. I have to keep George Blagden and Dr. Quentin Little in two absolutely separate compartments.”

“That’s all right with me, but why?”

“George works for a Washington think-tank that’s always being accused of being too liberal. You see the implications. I’ve told Quentin, and he understands. Mike, are you really telling me that we shouldn’t talk about this at all?”

“I don’t even like this phone call. I’ll send down a bottle of vodka to help him through the day.”

“There’s a delicate line there, Mike, if you want him to walk down the gangplank under his own power. He can drink for hours without showing it, and then all of a sudden he comes apart. Well, that’s a minor problem. I’ll use my judgment. I don’t know where we’re going to be staying, but can I call you?”

“Call Mobile Operator Three. She’ll know how to reach me. If anything goes wrong, you’ll see it on television.”

“God! And I wanted some reassurance. Goodbye, Mike. He’s waking up.”

After a large breakfast, Shayne went to the communications center amidship and was assigned a booth. He placed a call to his friend Timothy Rourke, a crime and political reporter on the Miami News. The shoreside operator found him at the paper, working on a follow-up to the Bermuda story.

“Been thinking about you, man,” Rourke said. “That was a cryptic press conference on the Hamilton dock. ‘The cops blew it.’ Needless to say, we used the line, but would you mind expanding on it a little?”

“That’s yesterday’s news, Tim. Today I’m working on something else.”

“I’m listening.”

“So are other people, possibly. I’ll need my car. I left it at the airport—keys under the floormat. Will you send somebody out for it? And I want you to make one phone call for me. There’s a legislative research bureau in Washington I’ve used a couple of times. I don’t remember its name but you can look it up. I want to know about Public Law 1063, passed in May 1949. But I don’t want to start anybody thinking, so ask about three or four other acts at the same time. Pick some numbers at random. The title is all I need, never mind the details. Leave it in the glove compartment.”

“May 1949, 1063. You don’t want to give me a small hint about what’s happening out there in the Atlantic?”

“Not now. I hope you can arrange your social schedule so you can meet the boat. One other thing, Tim. Have a full tank of gas.”

“That’s the Mike Shayne I’ve come to know. Curt. Concise. Uninformative. Have a nice day. I wish I was out on the water instead of having to sit inside staring at this goddamn electric typewriter. It doesn’t want to perform for me today.”

After paying for the call, Shayne went up to the bridge, where Captain Stackpole greeted him cordially, making no reference to their middle-of-the-night conversation. Shayne wanted to know about the procedures for unloading passengers’ cars. This was a lengthy process, he was told. No one who had brought a car with him could hope to be free in much less than an hour.

Shayne had another piece of unfinished business. He checked the passenger list for Jerry Diamond’s cabin number. Finding the door he wanted after some searching, he knocked.

No one answered. He picked the lock and went in.

Diamond was already partially packed. He traveled simply, with a single two-suiter suitcase. Apparently he had left England in a hurry; he had brought no underwear except whatever he was wearing at the moment. There were drops of dried blood in the bathroom, and several blood-stained tissues in the wastebasket.

Shayne sat down to wait. Two cigarettes later, Diamond came in.

He seemed tired. Seeing Shayne, he stopped short in the doorway, his eyes widening. That look fled instantly and he flashed a smile.

“Mike! Hey! What did I do, leave the door unlocked? That was a great poker game, I seem to remember. I’m ashamed to say I had a few too many drinks.”

He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs buttoned. The edge of a bandage protruded below the left cuff.

“What happened to your arm?” Shayne asked. “You haven’t been getting into knife fights, have you?”

“That,” Diamond said. “Too many boozies, I guess. I thought I’d have a nightcap and take a shower, but I shouldn’t have tried to do both at the same time. I slipped and the glass broke. It’s an easy trick. Anybody who tries hard enough can do it.”

“Let me see your passport, Jerry.”

Diamond frowned and said in a suddenly ugly voice, “What’s this private-detective business all of a sudden, Shayne?”

“I want to see what countries you’ve been in lately. Just passing time.”

“Do you know what you can do, detective? You can beat your meat somewhere else.”

Shayne exploded upward and stood towering over the smaller man. Diamond checked himself after an involuntary step backward. After a moment’s hesitation he snaked out his passport and gave it to Shayne, who checked the visas. Before coming to England, Diamond had been in Egypt and Syria.

Tossing the passport onto the bureau, Shayne took the front of Diamond’s shirt and walked him back against the wall. Diamond’s breath came out in a warm puff. Shayne went over him for weapons and then checked his wallet. He was carrying three $1,000 bills, but nothing else of interest except a credit card in another name.

“Somebody tried to beat me up last night,” he said. “I don’t know why. Maybe they got the wrong man. That doesn’t make me like it any better.”

His knife came out. The blade snicked open and Diamond cringed away, raising an arm.

“Shayne, for God’s sake, will you think about what you’re doing?”

Shayne flipped open Diamond’s passport and began cutting out the picture.

“The same thing happened to mine last night, and it’s a cute idea. Unless you’re carrying a spare, you’ll have trouble getting through Immigration. I’ll shoot this up to Washington and see if you’re wanted for anything important. If the answer is yes, I’d advise you to move fast and stay out of everybody’s way.”

“I’ll stay out of your way, believe me,” Diamond said fervently. “I never like to tangle with psychopaths. Believe me, Shayne, you’re the one who’s making a mistake. I’ve never beaten up anybody in my life. It’s one of the things I don’t happen to do.”

“In that case I’m wrong,” Shayne said, “but I’ll hold the apology for now.”

The Queen Elizabeth moved regally up the Cut as the sun was setting behind the Miami skyline. To the north, Miami Beach was beginning to light up for the night. The fire ships were out, spouting a welcome. Tugs warped the big ship into place with special care. A large welcoming crowd waved from the dock.

Captain Stackpole had assigned an officer to sponsor Shayne, and in spite of his damaged passport, the detective was one of the first to leave the ship. He was wearing his freshly cleaned suit and carrying his shipboard purchases in a shopping bag.

He immediately became the center of a swarm of reporters and television people. In the back of this crowd, Shayne saw his friend Tim Rourke, his usual half-smoked cigarette stuck to his lower lip. His fists were buried in his hip pockets. He was a thin, disjointed, carelessly dressed man, whose offhand style concealed a stubbornness and a probing mind that had made him one of the best investigative reporters in a fiercely competitive business. He didn’t approach Shayne, or indicate that they had talked by radio-telephone earlier. Shayne had loosened his necktie and unfastened the top button of his shirt, a signal he had adopted long ago to inform Rourke that they were being watched or monitored.

The reporters followed Shayne to Biscayne Boulevard, pressing him for further information on the Bermuda affair. Rourke had left Shayne’s Buick in a no-parking slot with a police card stuck in the wiper. Shayne removed the card, found the keys under the corner of the floor mat, and gunned the motor getting away, almost clipping one of the persistent TV people.

He made a quick U-turn at the corner of 13th and came back with the southbound traffic. He swung into 11th Street and double-parked, parallel to a Ford sedan occupying a curbside space from which he would be able to watch the disembarking passengers. In a quick series of actions, he fished for the Ford’s front-door latch and forced it open, unlatched the hood, used a wire bridge to jump the ignition, and moved the Ford around the corner where he parked it illegally in front of a hydrant.

Returning to the Buick, he moved into the space the Ford had vacated and cut his lights.

He found a note in the glove compartment in Rourke’s handwriting: “No. 1063 of Public Laws of 1949, To Establish a Cash Award for Information Relating to Smuggling of Atomic Material into U.S. Now what the hell did you want to know that for?”

Shayne unlocked an equipment box and took out a pair of high-powered binoculars. He had an unobstructed view of the lighted pier. He used the squirter to clean the windshield, and settled down with the glasses to his eyes, his elbows on the steering wheel.

His car phone rang. Rourke’s newspaper had recently installed a phone in the reporter’s car so he could phone in on the move. He and Shayne shared the same operator. He was two blocks away, on 11th Terrace.

“For Christ’s sake, man,” Rourke said. “Somebody’s trying to smuggle in an atom bomb and you think you can handle it by yourself?”

“Hang on. I’ll explain in a minute.”

He had picked up Anne Blagden in the glasses and was following her down the gangplank. Quentin Little was a step behind, and he seemed in poor shape. His nose was peeling. His long hair was blowing, and under the sunburn his skin had a greenish tinge. He looked sick and unhappy. Arriving at the bottom, he swayed and nearly lost his balance.

Drawing him aside, Anne spoke to him urgently. He nodded. While she talked, his head kept swiveling around. Coming in against him, she kissed him hard.

She left him standing alone, his hands going. Shayne followed her as she made her way through the crowd.

Suddenly she began waving. Shayne lost her for a moment. When he picked her up again she was being greeted by a man and a woman. She hugged them both, laughing excitedly. The man was dark, tall, hatless, with thick, tightly curled hair. The woman was a head shorter, and Shayne caught only fragmentary glimpses of her as the crowd shifted. She was plain-faced, with a grudging smile. He switched back to Anne, who was chattering happily, her face showing her relief at being back with normal, well-dressed, self-assured people, after the strains and odd excitements of the voyage.

Shayne lost them. He picked up the phone.

“OK, Tim. Do you want to pull around on the boulevard and double-park? Keep the phone open.”

He saw Rourke’s battered Chevy emerge a moment or two later. It crossed on a green light and stopped pointing south.

“I’ve got my hands full,” Shayne said. “If you’ll do a simple little follow-job for me I think I may be able to repay you with a major story. A green Olds is going to be coming off in a minute. It’s a four-door, two years old, Florida plates with a GB tag. It’s registered to a man who lives in Coral Gables, and I want to be sure that’s where he goes. We absolutely can’t lose track of that car. Keep on his tail, and if he tries anything tricky, ram him. I mean that, Tim.”

“Ram him, I see,” Rourke said. “That’s not the way I make my living, though, is it? Why don’t you ram him? You do that sort of thing so well.”

“There’s another car I’m more interested in. It’s going in a different direction.”

“Then here’s another suggestion. Let’s get a couple of police cars with a two-way radio, and do it right.”

“There’s no time to set that up. Nothing’s going to happen. If he doesn’t go straight home he’ll stop off for dinner somewhere.”

“Isn’t there a small explanation that goes with this?” Rourke said. “The name of that 1949 public law gave me a jolt. There’s an old saying. You’ll live longer if you don’t fool around with dynamite. And I understand these atomic things are even stronger.”

“I’ll believe it’s actually a bomb when I see it go off. It smells like a con to me, an old-fashioned gypsy handkerchief switch. My guess is narcotics.”

“So why did you ask for that Washington information?”

“That’s the cover,” Shayne said impatiently. “The mark is a British physicist, and he thinks he’s bringing in a bomb. That doesn’t mean he actually is. The cash award in that 1949 bill was half a million bucks, which was a lot of money in those days. But with a heroin shipment today you can clear a couple of million, and you don’t run the same kind of risk.”

“I can see where a British physicist might pick up an atom bomb. Where would he get a couple of million bucks worth of heroin?”

“He didn’t organize it. From the description I’ve been given of the other guy, he’d go where the money is. He wouldn’t have a chance in a thousand of collecting the full reward, and I think he must know it.”

“Mike, there’s got to be more. You haven’t convinced me.”

“We’ll have to break this off any minute, Tim, so be ready. The big trouble with the bomb story is that it was supposed to be a two-man conspiracy. The scientist and the crook. It turns out there are others involved. I’ll know better in five or ten minutes. I think there’s a hijacking in the works.”

“Great. Mike, I don’t know if I’ve told you, but I’m not brave. I don’t ever feel called upon to prove my manhood by breaking up the Mafia. I believe the legend. Those Sicilians are mean.”

“The man in the Olds,” Shayne said patiently, “is going to be named Daniel Slattery, which isn’t a Sicilian name. As soon as I see what happens to my physicist and the Bentley he’s driving, we’ll bring in the cops and make some arrests. Whatever the shipment is, it’s safe in Slattery’s car. You’ll have another copyrighted story about still another victory in the fight against organized crime.”

“Mike, your instinct is telling you narcotics,” Rourke said stubbornly. “You’ve doled out very little information, but my instinct tells me that whether it’s narcotics or not, to go home and let other people carry on the fight against crime. I’m basically a voyeur.”

“There it is! The green sedan, coming out now. Keep in touch.”

Swinging his field glasses as the Oldsmobile passed, he caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man in glasses, a much younger woman beside him. Rourke’s lights came up, and he fell in line two cars behind the Olds.

CHAPTER 7

The owner of a black Jaguar, the car that had been in the way when the Bentley’s gas tank slipped out of Shayne’s hands the night before, was complaining angrily about his damaged fender. A low red sports car moved out, and Shayne saw Quentin Little standing beside the Bentley.

Shayne, two hundred yards away with field glasses, tightened the focus. The Englishman seemed close to collapse. He clawed at his collar, his homely face shining with sweat. He looked around furtively, then ducked into the front seat and strengthened himself with a pull from a pint bottle.

The Customs inspector was approaching, holding a clipboard. Standing beside the open door of his car, Little tried to quiet his hands by filling a pipe. The tobacco scattered. The official came up, reached into the Bentley, and snipped off the red tag on the steering wheel. He checked Little’s customs declaration, stamped another paper of some kind and held it out.

Little had taken a backward step. His hand was inside his coat pocket. He looked at the Customs man with something approaching horror, and for an instant it seemed that he was about to refuse the paper, and turn and run. He tried to speak.

The Customs man gestured impatiently. Little accepted the paper, and the official went on to the next car. Little gasped, looked desperately around once more, and slid behind the wheel.

Shayne lowered the binoculars to watch the traffic on the boulevard. It seemed to be moving normally.

Little let out his clutch too fast and the Bentley stalled. He restarted it, but before he could swing into the northbound traffic, a Negro boy leaped out at him and began polishing his windshield.

Shayne raised the glasses again quickly. Little was attempting to flag the boy off. The symbolic windshield washing continued until Little knocked on the glass with a coin.

The boy desisted at once. He appeared at the lowered window. As he reached out, Shayne saw his hand open and a scrap of paper drop into Little’s lap.

Shayne started his own motor. A big trailer-truck passed, blocking his view for a moment. When he saw the Bentley again, it was in motion.

Shayne inched ahead, jockeying for an opening. After turning onto the boulevard, the Bentley stopped almost at once. Little got out and entered a free-standing phone booth.

Keeping his binoculars fixed on the booth, Shayne signaled his operator. He gave her a number and a man’s name.

“Tell him you’re calling for me, and you want the number of a sidewalk phone booth on Biscayne at the northeast corner of Eleventh. Ask him to hurry. Dial the number he gives you and call me back.”

Little, inside the booth, turned the slip of paper so he could read what it said, and dialed.

Shayne watched from the other side of the double stream of traffic, tapping his steering wheel. As usual, he was improvising. The fact that Little had passed through the Customs without difficulty hadn’t surprised him. It fitted every alternative theory he had devised to explain the discrepancies in Little’s story. His only plan now was to stay as close as possible and go with the action.

Little began talking volubly, gesturing with his free hand. He listened, scowling, and shook his head. He listened again. He was hearing something he didn’t like. He objected, shaking both his head and his finger.

Shayne had the Buick in gear, ready to force an opening in the flow of cars.

Little drew a deep breath, nodded, and started to hang up, then thought of something else.

Shayne’s phone rang.

“I’m getting a busy signal,” Shayne’s operator said. “No, wait a minute. I’m through.”

Shayne heard the pulse of the ringing phone. He saw Little, in the booth on the opposite sidewalk, turn back angrily and pick up the phone again.

“Now what? Did you forget some unimportant detail?”

“This is Shayne. Who’ve you been talking to? Dessau?”

“Shayne!”

Little sagged and ran his hand through his hair. For a moment Shayne heard nothing but shallow breathing.

“Yes,” Little said heavily. “Dessau. I’m cracking up. I can’t go on with this one more minute.”

“Sure you can,” Shayne said calmly. “You’re doing fine. If it’ll make you feel better, there’s nothing in your gas tank at the moment except gas.”

“What do you mean? What did you do with it?”

“I switched tanks with another car.”

“Damn you, damn you, Shayne, why didn’t you tell me? Do you know what I’ve been going through?”

“I have a faint idea. I’ve been watching you. I wanted you to put on a convincing performance in case Dessau was also watching. Laurence Olivier couldn’t have done it any better.”

“Another car? What do you mean, another car? Shayne, I beseech you, don’t be too debonair about this. If I had a weak heart I wouldn’t be talking to you now. I’d be dead. What other car? Where is it?”

“We’ll get to that later. Dessau’s the immediate problem. We can’t do anything while he’s around. How did he explain the fact that Customs people didn’t give you their full treatment?”

“He says they want to follow me and see who else is involved. And that’s not so marvelous, is it?”

Shayne said slowly, “For the original plan to work, you needed something clear-cut. A definite moment when they’d move in on you so you’d panic and the shooting would start. This way, if they pick the time and the place, they ought to be able to grab you before you can react. You can’t afford to wait. You have to provoke something.”

“That’s what Dessau told me, in almost those words. And I agree with him! My skull is about to explode. You’re in for a third of the assurance, damn you. Suggest something.”

“I don’t want to drag this out any more than you do. We want them to check your gas tank and find out there’s nothing in it. They get crackpot tips all the time, and I doubt if they ever had much faith in this one. Tell me what he told you to do. Maybe we can shift it around.”

“To continue to the first intersection and turn left. To drive three blocks and turn left again, on North Miami Avenue. At the first traffic light, I will see him standing on the corner. There will be a large building on the left, the post office. If he isn’t there yet, I am to wait. As soon as I see him, I will lose control of the car and collide with somebody. Police will be following me. As the first man in uniform approaches, I will become hysterical and wave my gun. Shots will follow. Pierre, an excellent shot, he assures me, will be there to make sure I don’t survive.”

Shayne thought for a moment.

“An accident’s a good idea, but make sure it’s a minor one, just bad enough so you’ll need a wrecker. When the cops check the car at the garage they’ll find out there’s nothing in it. I’ll need a little time to get Dessau off the scene. I’ll make a citizen’s arrest. Give me ten minutes. Wait right where you are now. And cheer up. We’re going to pull this out.”

“You know I doubt that, somehow. Money’s the key to most things, I firmly believe, and you stand to lose money by keeping me alive. That may be why I assented so readily to your unorthodox fee. I’m so sick of this life, Shayne!”

His mind jumped. “I don’t suppose Anne is with you. We spent a strange day, talking and talking. And at the end of that time, she was as much of an enigma as ever. I am without illusions. Why should a stylish person like Anne take me under her wing? I’m no prince in disguise.”

“Sooner or later we’ll find out. Look at the time now. Give me the full ten minutes.”

The phone rang while Shayne was maneuvering into a parking space on North Miami. It was Tim Rourke.

“No sense of direction, this guy in the Oldsmobile,” Rourke said. “We’re on the expressway going north, and that’s a roundabout way to get to Coral Gables.”

“Hang in there, Tim, and keep calling.”

He clicked for the operator, and told her to find Will Gentry, Miami’s Chief of Police. Gentry, one of Shayne’s oldest friends, rarely asked unnecessary questions, accepting the fact that Shayne, as a private detective, had a professional obligation that sometimes forced him to tell the regular police to go to hell. Like most city police departments, Miami’s was badly understaffed, and Gentry was still in his office.

“I hear you just gave the press a very informative statement about that business in Bermuda,” Gentry said. “Four words—three grunts and goodbye.”

“Those guys are beginning to irritate me,” Shayne said. “Will, I’ve got something going. I thought I could handle it myself, but maybe not. I hope you didn’t have any plans for the evening.”

“No plans, but I had hopes,” Gentry said. “Along the lines of a quiet dinner at home and a couple of beers. I’m supposed to glaze a broken window. I’ve had the pane for two weeks, and I haven’t got around to it yet. Doris is beginning to wish she’d married that other fellow.”

Shayne grinned. “You know the fight against crime comes first. I’ll let you know definitely, one way or the other, in twenty minutes. Meanwhile, will you send a patrol car to the corner of Fifth and North Miami? I’m about to make a collar, a foreigner carrying a concealed weapon.”

Gentry sighed. “That can be arranged, unless there’s a riot somewhere I haven’t been told about. I don’t know why you didn’t stay in Bermuda, Mike. Miami’s more peaceful when you’re out of town.”

Shayne had been watching people go by as he talked. Now, after ringing off, he walked to the intersection and stopped for a cigarette. He still saw no one who came close to fitting the description of Pierre Dessau, a pale man, six feet four, wearing British clothes. Shayne walked on, glancing into store windows. In the middle of the next block he entered a cigar store and found a place near the phone booths, from which he could watch the corner.

Ten minutes passed.

The Bentley should be traveling south, but on the chance that Little hadn’t followed directions exactly, Shayne was watching all the cars going both ways and entering the avenue from the side streets. He checked the time again, his jaw muscles tightening, and left the cigar store to return to the intersection. A police car had arrived some minutes before, but there was still no sign of either the tall man or the Bentley.

Shayne threw away his cigarette and strode back to the Buick. “Ring Tim Rourke’s car for me,” he told his operator.

Rourke answered promptly. “Mike, you may not like this, and then again you may. They just turned in at the Holiday Inn, off the North Miami interchange. The lady’s still in the car. The guy went in to register.”

“What the hell?” Shayne said softly. “Tim, don’t let that Oldsmobile out of your sight. I’ll get back to you.”

He brought in the operator and asked her to dial the home phone of Daniel Slattery, in Coral Gables. In a moment a woman’s voice said hello.

“Is Dan in?” Shayne asked.

“He’s not, I’m sorry. He won’t be back for another week.”

“This is Mike Shayne. I’m a friend of his. Is he still in England?”

“As a matter of fact, I think it’s Paris at the moment. It’s one of those hectic trips. Is there a message, Mr. Shayne?”

“I’ll have to talk to him personally. Maybe I could meet his plane.”

“He left his car in New York and he’ll be driving down. Next Monday, I believe.”

Shayne untangled himself from the conversation and the operator put him through to Gentry again.

“You said twenty minutes,” Gentry said. “I just called Doris to put the steaks in the broiler.”

“Call her back. I’ll hang on.”

“Damn it, Mike—all right, all right! I can tell from your tone of voice that this isn’t a simple little breaking and entering.”

He clicked off.

“Doris didn’t like it,” he said, coming back a moment later. “I don’t like it either. Why don’t you ever need help between nine and five, like ordinary people?”

“I’m sorry,” Shayne said grimly. “I thought I had this under control, but it got away from me. You’re right, it’s not breaking and entering. It’s a smuggling operation. Don’t say anything to anybody, but it’s possible it may involve—” He hesitated. “Hell, I don’t buy it myself completely, but now I’m talking about possibilities. I think it’s possible that what came in on the Queen was an atom bomb.”

“Now, Mike.”

“I know it sounds insane. It may be true just the same.”

“I’m a cop, Mike. You’re a private detective. This isn’t for us. This is the sort of thing we kick upstairs.”

“Not this time. It’s us or nobody, and we’ve got to move fast. We can’t call time to convince some Washington pipsqueaks that we haven’t been blowing dope. Forget I said anything about a bomb. Assume it’s narcotics, and go on from there. We’ll need an all-precinct call on a Bentley. You know the make—it’s a Rolls with a different radiator, and it ought to be easy to spot. It had GB plates when I saw it last.”

After describing the Bentley he told Gentry that he also wanted a call on a green Oldsmobile, registered in the name of Daniel Slattery, last reported parked outside the Holiday Inn in North Miami.

“And make it urgent,” Shayne said.

Without giving Gentry time to object, he cut the call short. The traffic signal at the corner had gone through another half dozen red-green cycles, and Pierre Dessau and Little’s Bentley had still not appeared. Now he had to find out which one of the two had faked him away from the pier.

Returning, he used his siren to bull his way through two blocked intersections. He left his Buick in a forbidden zone and hunted up the Customs inspector in charge of the five-man detail working the arrival of the big passenger liner. A plump, good-natured man named Ben Wainright, he was perspiring freely.

Shayne jerked his head to one side. “Let’s talk, Ben.”

“One of the things I like to do best. I’ll just clear these last cars. The public’s getting restless.”

“It can’t wait,” Shayne said brusquely. “Over here.”

Wainright hesitated, then followed him to the other side of the cluttered pier. Shayne stopped beside a loaded baggage wagon.

“Did you get tipped that anything unusual was coming in?”

The good humor drained out of Wainright’s face. “You know we don’t answer that kind of question.”

“Yeah, yeah, to protect your sources. I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important. To pin it down, the tipster would be a big pasty-faced guy named Pierre Dessau. Six-four, English. The stuff was due to come in in a five-year-old Bentley, owned by another Englishman, Quentin Little.”

Wainright’s eyes were alert and probing. “No cigar, Mike. I remember the Bentley. Ugly little guy, pretty well gassed. We didn’t shake the car all the way down, but it looked OK structurally. Wait a minute. What name did you say—Little?”

“Dr. Quentin Little.”

“That’s the one. His daughter has been trying to find him.”

CHAPTER 8

Cecily Little, at seventeen, was a serious, slightly built girl with dun-colored hair and oversize glasses. She was wearing bright lipstick that was closer to orange than red, but no other makeup, tight slacks and sandals. Wainright pointed her out. She was standing outside the barrier at the end of the pier, clutching a handbag. She looked scared and at the same time a little defiant.

Shayne went up to her.

“Are you the girl who’s looking for Dr. Little?”

Her face lit up. “Do you know where he is?”

Her voice was high and reedy, and made her seem even younger. There was a slight redness about her eyes and nose.

“I’m hunting for him myself,” Shayne said. “What happened, did you miss him?”

“I must have done!” she said. “They kept giving me the wrong directions, and everything’s so crowded and mixed up. Why aren’t there any signs?” she sniffed hard. “Jesus, it wasn’t my fault.”

“Was he expecting you to meet him?”

“Oh, who knows about Dad? He’s the original mad scientist. It was all arranged, but unless somebody’s right there to remind him—”

“I have to move my car,” Shayne said. “I had a date to meet him and he didn’t show up, so you and I seem to be in the same situation. We can park down the block in case he comes back.”

“I don’t know what hotel he’s going to, or anything. It’s so aggravating! He might even decide not to stay in Miami.”

She took several steps with him and then checked herself. “Are you some kind of police officer?”

“I’m a private detective. I came in on the same boat with your father. I don’t know any more about his plans than you do, but I’m in the phone book. He may call me.” He opened the door of his Buick for her.

“I don’t want to sound suspicious or anything,” she said, “but if you’ve got some identification I’d like to see it.”

He showed her the license signed by the Florida Secretary of State. She examined it carefully.

“I know a lot you read about America is exaggerated, but just the same—”

After getting into the car she sat quietly, her knees pressed together, clutching her handbag so hard that her knuckles had whitened. Shayne slid behind the wheel.

“He’s in trouble then, isn’t he?” she said without looking at him.

“I think so, Cecily, but I’m not sure what kind.”

“It’s the booze! He used to be so—well, predictable.” The curbside jam had begun to break. Shayne moved the Buick forward to the nearest opening.

“Did you fly over?”

“I got in this morning. He doesn’t like planes and I couldn’t see killing all that time on that dumb ship. Mr. Shayne, would you mind not being too tricky with me? Tell me right away what’s wrong.”

Shayne answered carefully. “He told me a long story on the ship. I don’t know how much of it to believe.”

“Was he drinking gin at the time?”

“Vodka.”

“That’s pretty much the same, isn’t it? He’ll spin the wildest tales sometimes, and they sound so real—Do you smoke? Because if you don’t you’ll have to go somewhere and buy me some. I’m so jangly.”

Shayne produced cigarettes and lit them with the dashboard lighter. She took a deep drag, her cheeks hollowing.

“Of course he had to bring that stupid Bentley. Our Dad. They say a man can get the Change at a certain age, just like a woman, and that’s the only way you can explain it. He was out in the garage till one o’clock half the nights in the week, fixing it up, and that’s a giggle, because he doesn’t know how to drive, practically. I’m supposed to drive him to the factory. I thought he was looking forward to it!” Her mood shifted abruptly. “And if he sneaked past me deliberately, he’s going to be sorry. He can’t even read a road map, so how’s he going to know which way he’s going? And I’ll bet inside of five minutes he starts driving on the left of the road. Crrash!”

“You make him sound pretty helpless.”

“He can’t even tie his own bootlaces. He got on the wrong train one day last year and ended up in Scotland.”

“Are you planning to live here with him?”

“In Georgia? Thank you very much. I’ve read Erskine Caldwell and Tennessee Williams. No, he said he wouldn’t set foot out of England unless somebody went with him for a bit so he wouldn’t have to look at all those strange faces. Mum wouldn’t. I don’t say she won’t come over if it works out, but she doesn’t think he’ll have the job long because of all the drinking. So I was elected. I’ll settle him in, get somebody to char for him, and then I’ll kiss him goodbye and get on the bus. I’ll make a little tour of the United States while I’m here. Las Vegas. Hollywood.”

She waved at the smoke. “But where is he? What if he started right off—”

“The Highway Patrol is looking for his car. He was in bad shape when I saw him. How long has he been drinking like this?”

“Oh, it sneaked up on him. He and our Mum—the less said about that the better. He reads his scientific journals or goes to the pub and she watches the telly or goes to the pub.”

“He says you’ve been riding him about his job.”

“He said that?” she asked indignantly. “Dad told you that? It’s been Stan, mainly, my brother. Not that I don’t agree with a lot of it. Dad went into science because he wanted to, quote, penetrate the mysteries of matter, unquote, and what did it amount to, after all? Looking for gruesome ways to murder people. Stan’s a wild Maoist, much wilder than me. I’ve tried to save Dad from the worst of it, and frankly I’ve told Stan to shut up more times than once. I’m going to try to make it up to him. Maybe he’ll meet somebody over here, some brainy bird who likes to talk about neutrons and protons and electrons. Aren’t there more females in America than males? I read that somewhere. Of course he’s a little—funny-looking?”

She corrected herself. “Which is not for me to say. People that age are always getting married again, and it could happen, couldn’t it?”

“Do you know somebody named Pierre Dessau?”

“I should guess I do!” She jerked around. “Is he here? Does he have anything to do with this?”

“According to the story your father told me. Can you imagine any circumstances in which your father would agree to smuggle something into the United States?”

The cigarette flew out of her fingers. She retrieved it from the floor and stubbed it out in the dashboard ashtray.

“I knew that lunatic was mixed up in something. Sure, it’s a possibility. It’s also possible he swam the Atlantic towing the Queen Elizabeth. You must have something to go on or you wouldn’t say that, but why would he? We’ve always been pretty stony, but this American company is paying him a fortune, isn’t it? All I know is what he told me.” She added. “Unless it’s political?”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh—pamphlets. Guns and ammunition. I don’t know. The way Stan kept nackering at him got under his skin, finally, and he went slightly bonkers. He’s been going to marches and demonstrations and joining committees. He put his name on every manifesto that came in the mail—sign one of those things and you get on all the lists. I thought it was a leg-pull at first, to get a bit of his own back with Stan. Because it’s ridiculous! He’s too old for it. He’d show up for a picketing or a deputation three sheets to the wind. Everybody was delighted to start with—top-drawer government scientist and all—but he overstayed. It did him good, in my opinion. He’d never read a word of Marx or Lenin—he hardly looked at the newspaper—and it opened his eyes to what’s going on in the world.”

“Does Dessau have radical connections?”

“Pierre, my God, no. I’m sure he votes Conservative if he votes, and I doubt if he takes the trouble. Now can I ask a question? How did you and Dad—I mean, how did you get together?”

“He hired me to get him into the country without being arrested or shot. I don’t have time to tell you about it. I’m expecting a phone call, and when it comes in I’ll have to move. It won’t be from your father—he doesn’t know I use a car phone. If he calls the number in the book he can leave a message on the recorder. I think it’s possible that he forgot you were supposed to meet him—he’s had other things on his mind. When the phone rings, I want you to get out and wait for another fifteen or twenty minutes. Then if he hasn’t showed up, take a cab to the Flamingo Springs Motel. It’s a couple of miles north on Biscayne. I want to know where I can reach you. Tell the desk Michael Shayne sent you, and I’ll be calling. Stay in your room. Read the Bible or try to find something on television.”

“That’s not my idea of a grand evening. But if you say so.”

“The Flamingo Springs, on Biscayne. Now tell me what you know about Dessau.”

“Well, not all that much, really—one of those doughy blokes who trip over their own shoes all the time. A real pain in the arse, forgive the expression. A tongue like a clapper, always going. You have people over here like that, too, I’m sure.”

“What’s he do for a living?”

“Nothing strenuous, I know that. He knows what a prison looks like from the inside, I shouldn’t wonder. He’s always talking about business arrangements with this one or that one, but my feeling is that it’s about ninety percent air.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“He helped Dad home a few times when he had a drop too many. He arranged for the Bentley. It was supposed to be such a wonderful buy, but when you consider all the work Dad put in on it—”

“Did Dessau give the impression there was money coming in?”

“He gave the impression. But he lives in this awful hole with no inside plumbing and no springs on the bed, just a mattress on a piece of plywood. Ghastly.” She picked another cigarette out of the pack between them. “He’s definitely kinky, that one. I had one date with him. That was more than enough. He put on a pair of cloth gloves and bashed me a good one. Just like that. Then he had the gall to ask me to have sex with him—disgusting. I got out of there so fast. I lost a tooth out of it and I had a gorgeous eye for a few days.”

“I heard another version of that from your father.”

The phone rang. She jumped again, her hands flying, and lost another cigarette.

“That’s loud. All right—the Flamingo Springs. But don’t forget me. I’ll be dying out there. When I think of my poor old Dad on the loose in a strange town—”

She sniffed sharply twice, and got out of the car.

CHAPTER 9

Gentry’s voice said, “I just got a call from the Patrol. No Oldsmobile answering that description at the Holiday Inn in North Miami, and there’s no Daniel Slattery registered at the motel.”

Shayne swore. He told Gentry to hold on, brought in his operator and asked her to put through a call to Tim Rourke’s Chevrolet.

“No answer, Mike,” she reported.

Shayne’s grip on the phone tightened. For a moment he said nothing, thinking.

“Try again every few minutes. Now let me have Gentry.”

When the police chief was on the line: “That makes one more car we’re looking for, Tim Rourke’s Chevy. He’s been following the Olds. Something screwy is going on, Will. I planted a homing device in the Olds, and we’d better get a helicopter up right away. It’s standard lifeboat gear, a beep every thirty seconds. The Coast Guard choppers can pick it up.”

Gentry groaned. “They’ll want an explanation. I don’t want to give them any.”

“If Joe Nye’s still in command of the Dinner Key Air Station he won’t ask you to put it in writing. He’ll get his planes in the air and let you fill him in later. Just tell him it’s a security matter.”

“A security matter,” Gentry said sarcastically. “Don’t tell me you still think somebody’s been smuggling in atom bombs.”

“Will, the main guy is an English physicist who up to a week or so ago was a top official in an atomic laboratory. He’s been reading Lenin and going to Left-wing demonstrations. He brought in a Bentley. The gas tank on that car weighed about three hundred pounds with no gas in it. I know, because I wrestled it out of the Bentley into that green Olds, where I hope to hell it still is.”

“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?” Gentry said slowly.

Shayne said grimly, “You know it. Make the Coast Guard call—they wouldn’t do it for me. Keep this line open.”

Shayne’s operator, coming back at his signal, held the connection to Police Headquarters, and put Shayne through to the desk of the North Miami Holiday Inn. Identifying himself, he asked them to look at their list of license numbers, on cars belonging to their guests, and see if the Oldsmobile’s was among them.

“Yes, here it is, Mr. Shayne. That’s Mr. and Mrs. William Robinson, of St. Petersburg.”

Shayne thanked them and waited for Gentry.

“Let’s go, Will, what’s holding you up?” he said impatiently to the dead phone.

He took a cognac bottle from the glove compartment, and drank. Then Gentry was back.

“Seems to be OK, Mike. They’ll run a series of five-mile circles, moving north and south, and he was nice enough not to ask me what a Cunard Line lifeboat transmitter was doing at a Holiday Inn in North Miami. I’ve got the Highway Patrol looking for Rourke. Now are you going to spoon out some more information, or do you want me to sit here and sweat?”

“I can explain one thing, at least,” Shayne said. “Slattery’s wife isn’t expecting him for another week. He brought somebody back with him—I saw a woman in the front seat when he drove the Olds out of Customs—and apparently he plans to get in a little illicit sex before he shows up in Coral Gables. The reason there’s no Daniel Slattery registered is that he signed in under the name William Robinson. If he’s there and the car is gone, it must mean somebody else found out about the gas tank switch and hijacked the Olds. And that’s bad news.”

“Wait a minute, Mike. Something’s coming in now.”

Shayne heard scratchy voices in Gentry’s office, too far from the phone to come across as words. When Gentry returned his attention to Shayne, his voice had quickened.

“Here’s a break. I’ll be guided by you as to how we play it. The Bentley’s been spotted.”

“Where?”

“In Brownsville. We’ve got good lines of communication on that block. I think I told you about him once—Grady Ramsay.”

“A numbers banker?”

“That’s what he used to be. He broke his back in a car crash. Now he’s paralyzed and he spends most of his time at the front window. If we had somebody like him in every neighborhood we’d really know what happens in town. He called in to report a stolen car. The description fits your Bentley.”

“What the hell is my Bentley doing in Brownsville?”

“Call Ramsay, Mike. Otherwise you’ll be getting it third hand. It sounds like a queer deal.”

He gave Shayne a number, and Shayne passed it on to his operator. In a moment a voice said briskly, “Grady Ramsay speaking, what can I do for you?”

“This is Michael Shayne. I’m calling about the car you just reported stolen.”

“Mike Shayne? Well, well. I had a hunch this was something, from the way they pricked up their ears.”

“It sounds like a car I’m interested in. I know you’ve been through this once, but would you mind doing it again?”

“I’m not going anyplace. You don’t see that kind of a car pass through here more than a couple of times a year, and I sharpened right up when it cruised past. Imported, you know—didn’t have that Detroit look at all. Those big swishy front fenders. The lines of a two-minute trotting horse. How much of a hurry are you in? I can condense it for you, or put in all the curlicues.”

“Don’t leave out anything. Did you see who was driving?”

“Only the elbow. I was dozing away, and he was past before I had the use of all my apparatus. Rolling along at ten miles an hour. He stopped all of a sudden, jammed on his brakes. That car raised up and then it settled back, a good three feet out from the gutter. I had my head poked out the window for a clearer view. I said to myself, ‘Uh-oh, that cat is inviting trouble.’ Because you know the younger element around here will strip that kind of automobile down to its bones if they’re given the opportunity, so the smart thing to do, the sensible thing, is don’t give them the opportunity. If you have to stop, don’t get out. He got out, both him and the person with him.”

“Slow down. That’s important.”

“I can’t help you with much of a description of either one of them. The street lamp service is a shame and a disgrace. There’s a chinaberry tree at that spot, which didn’t help matters any. The driver had the sense to lock up, I’ll say that for him, and he walked around past the headlights. Not a very large fellow. A white person, incidentally, and from little things about him I’d say he was more than somewhat polluted. As for whoever was with him, I couldn’t tell if he was old or young, or black or white, or anything about him at all.”

He paused a moment.

“Excuse me, just wetting my whistle here. Now you understand my heart was hammering and I was expecting some action. That automobile set somebody back over ten thousand dollars new, and the house they went into—I won’t say it’s run down because that wouldn’t convey the flavor. It’s been abandoned three weeks, and the landlord’s letting it go to the city. That car and that building, they don’t go together. And all at once I heard the beating of another automobile. This one I believe was a Dodge, and it could use a valve job and new plugs and points. It stopped behind the other car and a big guy jumped out with what I honestly believe was a pistol in his hand. He whipped out some keys, got in the first car, the imported car, and drove off, leaving some rubber on the pavement. The Dodge was right behind him, but here’s the point, and I didn’t tell the lieutenant this because it just happened this minute. The Dodge is back, and it’s parked out there with the lights off. I tried to get the license number but all I can see is the letter T and a nine.”

“What happened to the people who went in the building?”

“They could still be there, or they could walk through to the alley in back and I wouldn’t see them from here.”

“Who used to live there?”

“Just ordinary hard-luck black people, on welfare and so on.”

“The guy who owns the Bentley is mixed up in some kind of radical politics. Would that fit any of the tenants?”

Ramsay sounded careful for the first time. “I’d say nobody around here is any more militant than the next man. Just trying to slide along.”

Shayne took him through the scene again, but it remained as baffling on the second telling as on the first. After thanking Ramsay for his help, Shayne broke back to Gentry.

“I see what you mean, Will. He’s a good witness. But I’d better take a run out and see for myself. I ought to have a back-up man standing by. Who’s available? I need somebody who can work close without kicking over any garbage cans. Considering the part of town we’ll be in, somebody who’s not too pale.”

“Max Wilson?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. Tell him not to offer me any help unless I yell for it. And I’ve got a passport picture I want you to check out. This has got to start unraveling somewhere, and maybe that will do it. If you send somebody down to wait on the corner I’ll drop it off as I go by. Speed-photo it to Washington. The name that goes with it is Jerry Diamond, and he also carries a credit card in the name of Mason Smith. He’s connected with this in some way, but don’t ask me how.”

Shayne hadn’t been in Brownsville since the last outburst of mass looting. Most of the burned-out stores were still boarded up with plywood panels. A few that had reopened for business looked like fortresses.

Shayne found the building he had just discussed with Grady Ramsay. It had been left for the wreckers, but a quick glance as he drove past told Shayne that it might not be still standing when they arrived. The street lamp directly outside had been smashed. He watched the windows along the opposite side, but if Ramsay was still posted at one of them, he didn’t show himself.

There were several derelict cars along the curb, wheelless and gutted. Only one car on the block was still intact, a black Dodge sedan. Shayne’s headlights picked up the T9 at the start of the license number, and he saw the red glow of a cigarette inside.

He parked on a well-lighted main street, locked up carefully and returned on foot. There were few pedestrians. A hulking youth in his undershirt came out of a parked car and fell in behind Shayne.

“Man, got a light?” he called.

Shayne swung around, produced his powerful flashlight and switched it on. The beam struck the youth’s eyes and brought him to an abrupt standstill. He batted at the light, swore at Shayne, and faded out of sight.

Shayne entered the alley running between the lines of houses. It was littered with obstacles. He moved forward carefully, using the flashlight only when necessary.

There was a noisy party in one of the houses. All the rooms in that building were ablaze with light; loud, heavily accented dance music poured through the open windows. A man and a woman were embracing closely against a broken fence.

“Nice night for it,” Shayne observed, and went past.

The gate behind the building he wanted had been torn off, and most of the fence was down. It was a dog-run building, with two apartments on each of the two floors, separated by a central hall. Both main-floor doors were missing, and Shayne could look straight through to the street.

He entered quietly. A cat leaped past him with an angry squall and disappeared.

He covered his flashlight with one hand and snapped it on. In the dim glow he saw an accumulation of debris, cans, and broken plaster. He checked the rooms on each side, scaring a rat out of one. He picked his way to the stairs. Part of the banister was gone, and the bottom step had splintered through. Much of the plaster in the stairwell had fallen.

Hearing a sudden sound in a room behind him, he stopped and turned. That door hung by a single hinge, and creaked protestingly as he moved it aside and stepped in, shielding the light so it wouldn’t be seen from the street.

“If there’s anybody in here,” he said in an ordinary tone, “say something so we won’t surprise each other.”

There was no answer. He crossed the rubble-strewn door to an open doorway. As he uncovered his light a woman’s voice said thickly, “What do you want?”

He shone the light in her direction. She was middle-aged and shapeless, with stringy gray hair, lying on a bare mattress. She sat up, blinking crossly, and brought a hand up to tidy her hair.

“Taking a little nap. You could knock, you know, would it hurt you?”

Shayne swung the flashlight away. “How long have you been here, all evening?”

“Shh,” she said in disgust, dropping her hand. “Cops. You can’t get away from them.”

Shayne squatted beside the mattress and held out his cigarettes. “Smoke?”

She picked a cigarette out of the pack, crumbled it, and tucked the loose tobacco inside her cheek. “I’ve got a right to be here.”

“I’m not rousting you out. I’m looking for a couple of people who came in earlier. They left a car outside with the lights on and somebody drove it away.” He took a bill out of his wallet and passed it through the flashlight beam. “If you can tell me what happened to them, it’s worth five dollars.”

“I don’t live here,” the woman said vaguely. “My daughter’s entertaining, the bitch, and she put me out.” Shayne’s hand shot out and caught her forearm. She was wearing a man’s watch. He unfastened the strap and looked at it. Along with the usual information, it gave the day of the month and the year.

“That’s my husband’s,” she said. “He left it to me in his will.”

Shayne pointed the flashlight around the dirty mattress, and saw a discarded pint bottle of vodka and a pair of man’s shoes, placed neatly against the wall.

She had fallen back onto her elbows, her eyes little red points of light.

“All right, on your feet,” Shayne said harshly.

“I don’t take things don’t belong to me. I found them. They were here when I came in.”

“When was that?”

“After supper. I don’t know when.”

“Why not? You’re wearing a watch.”

She shook her head and said with scorn, “You white people. You think we don’t have watches. Only you.”

“Get up. If you don’t want to walk by yourself, you’re going to be dragged.”

“I been dragged before. I feel sick.”

Shayne changed tactics abruptly. “All right, let’s try something different. I’m a private detective. My client’s run out on me. That’s his vodka bottle, his watch, and his shoes. I don’t know why he came into this building, or who was with him. I need to find out.”

“Look around, I’m not stopping you.”

“He’s important. If anything bad happened to him it won’t be a small neighborhood stink, it’ll be a big story in every paper in the country. You’ll get the full treatment. I may be able to get you out of some of it if you can tell me anything that helps.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Is he dead?”

“Do I get to keep the watch?”

“You know better than that. I’ll buy it from you for ten bucks, and that’s more than a fence would give you. You can have the shoes.”

She sat up and said more alertly, “Twenty.”

“Ten’s my top price.” He took out another bill and added it to the one already in his hand. “Where were you when the car stopped?”

She patted the mattress. “Lying down. I’ve got a bad back and bad kidneys, but all my daughter cares about is her own pleasure.” She took the end of the folded bills and teased them out of Shayne’s hand. “You know how Jamaicans talk, he talked that way.”

“He’s English. What did he say?”

“Oh, about this country, how bad we do with the black people, and Americans claim they stand for justice. He was juiced, it sounded like. I thought one of the sisters brought him in for a little jazz, and maybe she was planning to roll him, you know, but I don’t believe in that kind of thing. I don’t believe in going out of my way either, so I played possum and kept my opinions to myself.”

“Did you hear the other person say anything?”

“It was only a mumble-jumble. They went upstairs and he kept going on and on about the race question. Then he sort of grunted and somebody fell down. I dodged back inside. When I see that kind of trouble coming toward me I want no part of it. I heard some footsteps, but whether they were coming or going I couldn’t tell you.”

“Did you go up to see what had happened?”

“Climb those stairs? They’re too rickety. But a little spell later, a young sprout came skinning down with some things in his hand. I got the bottle and the watch and he dropped the shoes when I chased him. Now that’s God’s own truth, every last bit of it.”

“What’s your name?”

“Mrs. Minnie Fish, and I can prove that because I’ve got some government mail right here.”

“All right, Mrs. Fish. You’ll hear sirens, probably, but don’t let them bother you.”

He returned to the hall. Letting a little light escape from his covered flashlight, he inspected the stairs and started up, keeping close to the sweating wall.

As he turned at the top of the stairs, he saw a shadowy bundle flung down across the nearest doorway. It was a man’s body, shoeless, with only one arm in a sleeve. Shayne turned it over.

Some of the tension lines in Little’s face had been smoothed out by death, and he seemed almost peaceful. His skin was the color of dead ashes under the faded sunburn. One of his hands still grasped the handle of a knife that had been driven into his abdomen at a steep upward angle.

CHAPTER 10

All the pockets had been rifled. A few British coins were scattered about on the floor. Little’s glasses had been partially dislodged. Shayne fitted them back, and straightened.

After a moment he went to the front window, where only a few jagged slivers of glass still adhered to the dried putty. Flattening himself against the wall, he saw the black Dodge still waiting. Somewhere overhead, he heard the beat of a helicopter.

He lit a cigarette, careful to keep the flare of the match from showing.

Clearly the tall man who had taken the Bentley had been Dessau, Little’s fellow conspirator. The keystone of the plan, as Little had described it, had called for a denunciation from Dessau, which would have permitted the Customs to seize the Bentley and Dessau to file for the $500,000 reward. Nothing of the kind had happened, and that had already caused Shayne to conclude that Dessau was hoping to raise more than $500,000. The Bentley, of course, was now very hot. He would want to pull out the gas tank as quickly as possible, so he could jettison the car. And as soon as he found that he had the right car but the wrong gas tank, he would believe that the naive scientist who had seemed so easy to fool had actually been a step ahead of him all the time.

So he would be back.

A boy and a girl, their arms around each other, came along the sidewalk and stopped in front of the building, their linked figures partially concealed by the chinaberry tree. The boy was trying to persuade the girl to come inside. When she consented finally, Shayne moved to the top of the stairs.

They came in laughing. Shayne chunked a hard piece of plaster down the stairs and growled, “Get out of here, fast.”

The couple jumped outside and hurried away.

Shayne finished his cigarette, beginning to feel the pressures. An alternative to waiting would be to look for Max Wilson, the black detective who was somewhere nearby, and arrest the men in the parked Dodge. He snapped his fingers silently. There was still too much he didn’t know; he couldn’t be sure of his reasoning.

Another car, a Mustang, pulled up ahead of the Dodge. Two men came out. One was ordinary height, and he seemed familiar to Shayne. The other was very tall, with a mincing, pigeon-toed walk. The shorter man spoke to the driver of the Dodge, and he and his tall companion came toward Shayne’s building.

As soon as they committed themselves to enter, Shayne moved back to the top of the stairs.

A lighter flared in the downstairs hall and was carried toward the missing rear door.

“That’s what the bugger did,” a voice said. “Walked right out the back.”

Shayne leaned forward, peering into the darkness. It was Jerry Diamond’s voice.

The other man swore viciously and kicked at a broken board. “I’ll kill him when I catch him, and I promise I’ll catch him. He had it all planned, the street lamp, empty building. We should have twigged.”

The unsteady flame returned to where Shayne could see it.

“Never mind that,” Diamond said. “It’s the next step we’ve got to talk about.”

“I wanted to crowd him over right away, you remember, as soon as I saw there was somebody with him. That wasn’t in the program. As soon as he went straight through the light instead of taking the left—But I was outvoted, remember. I want it on record.”

“It’s on record.”

“Now think, Jerry. You had one glimpse of the other guy. This Mike Shayne from the ship. Was there anything about the silhouette so we could rule him in or out.”

“I told you, it was as dark as the inside of a pocket. Little was in the way.”

“That’s it, then.”

“It’s still somewhere in Miami. What we have to do is make a connection, and work backward, work sideward. They have to be ad-libbing with some of this.”

“I don’t see it,” Dessau objected. “They switched tanks on the ship, right? That was the hard part. From then on it was downhill.”

“Do you think Little was acting when the Customs inspector passed him? That wasn’t acting. But wait just a minute now, maybe you’ve got something. Shayne could have worked it.”

“I thought you said the girl, Anne whatever her name is—”

“Not by herself. Shayne’s known in this town. We can find him.”

They were leaving. Shayne groaned heavily. The sound stopped them.

Groping in the darkness, he located Little’s body and loosened the knife, feeling a warm gush of blood over his hand. He worked the knife free, slid it in through the nearest door, and drew his own knife, the one he had used to cut up Diamond’s passport. He found the stomach wound with the point of the blade and rammed it home. He smeared his bloody hand over his forehead.

The men below were conferring cautiously.

“We’d better find out.”

Diamond disagreed. “Leave it alone. It can’t be Little. He’s gone.”

“Unless—you know, they wanted to get off without paying him. This would be a good place to do it, the best.”

“No, they wouldn’t leave him half conscious,” Diamond said.

“I’m going up and find out.”

A stair creaked.

“Pierre,” Diamond said softly but firmly. “I said leave it alone. Let’s not get ourselves sandbagged. This has to be something else.”

“I still say—”

Shayne tipped Little’s body to the top of the stairs and nudged it over. It somersaulted down, end over end, like a loose-jointed stunt man.

Dessau was on the second step from the bottom, peering past the flame of his cigarette lighter. The tumbling body struck him across the thighs and bowled him backward. The lighter flew out of his hand and went out. He landed on his back with a crash that shook a chunk of plaster off the ceiling above Shayne, narrowly missing him as it came down.

“Jesus Christ,” Diamond said fervently.

“Get him off me!” Dessau cried.

There were confused sounds. Another flame sprang up in the darkness. Shayne heard a sharply indrawn breath. “It’s Little!” Dessau said. “Knifed.”

“Dead?”

“You aren’t just whistling he’s dead. He sold us out and got a knife in the gut instead of pay. And you know I actually liked the bastard? Crazy as a bedbug.”

There was a long moment of uneasy silence.

“You didn’t organize this, did you, Pierre?” Diamond said in his softest voice. “By any chance?”

“What’s that?” Dessau exclaimed. “What did you say?”

“Just thinking out loud. I don’t know what you told him on the phone, do I? I can’t read lips. Maybe you didn’t say go over to the post office and bump into a car. Maybe you said somebody’d get in the car with him and tell him what to do next.”

“Now why would I do that, for the love of God? You mean sell to the highest bidder, that kind of idea? I’m running risks enough as it is. And speaking of risks, let’s get the hell out of this, do you mind?”

“Wait a minute,” Diamond said sharply. “I’ll be goddamned if I haven’t seen that knife. I think it’s Shayne’s.”

Shayne groaned again, and dislodged a beer can. Lowering himself into a sitting position, he breathed out heavily and heard cautious movements beneath him.

Diamond’s voice said evenly, “I’m holding a gun. It’s cocked. I’m coming up.”

Shayne made a half sound and took his head in his hands. He was now very bloody.

Diamond’s attention was divided, and a broken step gave way beneath him. Recovering, he came on, extending a heavy automatic at arm’s length to be sure it would be seen. Shayne grinned behind his hands and let another low sound pass his lips.

Diamond, approaching, warned him not to move. He summoned Pierre curtly.

“See what he’s carrying.”

Pierre edged past and stooped over Shayne to pat his pockets. Shayne slapped feebly at his hand, then sat back and let the tall man take his gun and flashlight. When the flashlight came on, Diamond put away his lighter.

“Diamond?” Shayne said blurrily, peering up. He looked at the other man. “Who are you?”

Diamond snapped, “Come on, Shayne. Stand up. We’re leaving.”

“Leaving?”

He moved to get up, winced with pain and touched the hair above his temple. It was sticky with blood. He looked at Diamond craftily.

“We’ve had a little mix-up here, but I can explain it. Nothing serious. I’m a private detective.”

“I know that,” Diamond told him. “And I know from personal experience that you’re a hard man to subdue. This time I don’t intend to try. I’ll shoot you out of hand if you give us any trouble. We can talk about it somewhere else.”

Pierre prodded him in the ribs with his toe. “Something the matter with your hearing? Get the hell up.”

Shayne snarled and came to his feet in one swift, fluid motion. As Pierre reached for him clumsily, Shayne went beneath his arm. Catching the taller man by the belt, he spun him around to face his colleague, putting Pierre’s bulk between Shayne and the drawn gun. Diamond pulled back a step.

“I could push him at you,” Shayne said, “and we’d all end up at the bottom in a nice tangle. I don’t like to have guns pointed at me. I don’t like to be kicked. I’ve got a headache and I’m in a lousy mood. Put the goddamn thing away and let’s see what kind of deal we can make.”

After a moment Diamond dropped the automatic into an inside holster. “You’re a tough man,” he observed.

“Usually I’m easy to get along with.” He released Pierre, who loosened his collar and sucked in air. “Would it make you feel better if I told you that I’ve taken a shafting here? I’m open to any reasonable offer. Give me that light for a minute. I want to show you something.”

He took the flashlight out of Pierre’s hand and stabbed it at the floor behind him, where he had found Little.

“What happened to him?” he said in surprise.

“If you’re looking for Dr. Quentin Little,” Diamond said, “you’ll find him downstairs.”

Shayne shot him a suspicious look from under lowered brows, and started past Pierre. He checked himself at once, touching his temple, and continued more slowly, keeping his balance by running his fingertips along the inner wall. The others followed. When Shayne reached the bottom he bent over the dead man and touched his eyelid. He grunted, straightening.

“I always hate to lose a client, even when I do it myself. The son of a bitch was trying to shortchange me.” He looked down at the body, brushing his fingertips. “All right, if we’re leaving, let’s leave before they start talking about us on the police band. But do me a favor first, Diamond. I get dizzy when I lean over. Wipe off the prints.”

They exchanged a look. Diamond took out a handkerchief, spat into it, and carefully smeared the handle of the knife.

There was a sound in one of the rooms. Pierre, grabbing the flashlight, took a quick stride forward, and pushed open the crazily hanging door. The flashlight caught Minnie Fish as she started back.

“Look here, will you?” he said. “An audience.”

She stared past him at Shayne, her eyes widening as she saw the blood on his face. Then she looked down at the dead man on the floor.

“You didn’t—” she began, but Pierre caught her by the arm and spun her around.

“I’m the one who’s got to take care of this,” Shayne told him. “Let’s see the gun.”

Pierre looked at Diamond, who nodded slightly, and gave Shayne his .38.

“I didn’t hear anything!” Minnie Fish cried as Shayne stepped through the doorway. “I’m not interested!”

Shayne struck her viciously across the face with his open hand. She whirled and ran. He overtook her in the bedroom. She stumbled and went down on one knee.

Catching her from behind, he clapped his hand over her mouth and whispered, “When I take my hand away, I want you to yell. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

His tone calmed her down and she stopped struggling. He felt her nod.

“All right. Now.”

He uncovered her mouth and she screamed. “I won’t say anything! It’s white business!”

Reversing the .38, he brought its butt down hard on the mattress. She understood, and stopped screaming.

He gave the mattress another hard blow, put the gun away and returned to the hall. Pierre and Diamond carefully avoided looking at him.

“Let’s go,” Shayne snapped.

CHAPTER 11

“Which one of you is top man?” Shayne said on the sidewalk. “I’m dealing with just one.”

A glance was exchanged.

Dessau said anxiously, “I think I ought to be in on this, Jerry. I’ve got an investment to protect.”

“I’ll look after your investment,” Diamond said. “Shayne’s calling the shots.”

“That’s just it, I’ve been hearing about him. He’s about as twisty as they come.”

“That’s no news to me; I’ve played poker with him. Thanks for the advice, Pierre. I’ll try to remember not to trust him. Follow us in the Dodge.”

Pierre said stubbornly, “He keeps using the word deal. Deals are at somebody else’s expense, in my experience. I don’t want to end up on the outside.”

Shayne, who was to his right and a step behind him, moved in close and took him by the elbows from the rear. “I’ve known you five minutes and I’m already tired of that voice. All right, Diamond. Whatever you do for discipline, do it and let’s get out of his part of town.”

Diamond punched Pierre lightly in the stomach, a token blow. “You know I wouldn’t cut you out at this stage, Pierre. The trouble with you is, you’re thinking about money. That’s not the main problem. There’s plenty of money.”

“I do hope so, for all of us.”

Pierre turned and hurried to the parked Dodge. Shayne checked Diamond’s Mustang, without concealing what he was doing. It carried dealer’s plates.

“We borrowed it,” Diamond said.

Shayne got in, and the Mustang took them out of the neighborhood very fast.

“Well?” Diamond demanded.

“Not yet,” Shayne said. “I need to make one phone call, and then let’s go someplace where the light’s good. I want to see your expression change.”

Diamond’s expression changed for the worse, becoming cold and still. “Call the turns.”

“Straight ahead. Turn right on North Miami.”

Shayne caught the glint of the Dodge’s headlights in the mirror. They rode in silence until Shayne pointed to a dairy cafeteria, not far from where he had left his Buick.

“There are phones in there. Lend me your handkerchief.”

While Diamond parked, Shayne wiped some of Little’s blood off his face. Before getting out, Diamond said earnestly, “I warn you, I’m going to be listening in on that phone call.”

Shayne laughed. “Like hell you are. I have to check up on something. If I let you listen I wouldn’t have anything to sell. Don’t worry, as far as I know you’re the only market, and I’m in a selling mood.”

“I’m going to insist on this. I don’t have to hear both sides of the conversation, just yours.”

“No,” Shayne said. “I have a couple of choices. You don’t. I can go the law-and-order route if I have to. Little’s a problem, but without witnesses I think I can ride it out. You and Dessau won’t want to come forward. Or I can sit tight and see if anybody makes me an offer.”

Diamond took it with a tight mouth. They entered the cafeteria, and Shayne said, “Get me a cup of coffee and some pie. Be with you in a minute.”

He descended to the men’s room. Max Wilson, the black cop Gentry had assigned to help him, came in while Shayne was drying his face on a paper towel. One of the booths was occupied. Their eyes met briefly in the mirror. Wilson was wearing a faded porter’s uniform. He had been a middleweight fighter once, and his face showed signs of having been hit too often. His eyebrows were slashed with scars.

Back upstairs, Shayne shut himself in a phone booth and dialed Police Headquarters.

“Will,” he said without preliminaries when Gentry was on the line. “I’ve got a murder for you, and you’d better get up there fast while the corpse is still wearing a suit.”

He gave the details quickly, and Gentry repeated them to somebody in his office.

“There are some nasty angles to this,” Shayne said, “and I hope you’ll agree to sit on it until I can find out more about it. He won’t have any identification on him, and let’s leave it at that for now. You may want to connect it with that stolen car report from Grady Ramsay, but don’t leak it to anybody. You remember? Two people drove up and went into the building together. If you can find somebody who took a Polaroid flash, fine. Otherwise I’ll just have to go on groping. I heard a helicopter. Any news?”

“Not yet. But Mike, we found Tim, and he’s not in such great shape. He’s right here if you want to talk to him.”

“Hell, yes. Put him on.”

Rourke’s voice said, “I don’t like these slurs on my appearance. The chicks don’t like me because I’m handsome, but because I’m amusing. A few bruises, Mike, you know how it is. They look worse than they are.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I might as well. You’ll remember I didn’t want to do this? I had a feeling I might be overmatched. And that’s the way it turned out. One-on-one I can play, but they were too many for me.”

“Tim.”

“Yeah. I forget where we were the last time we were in touch. I followed the Olds to the Holiday Inn. Fine so far. The guy went in and registered and then he moved his car down the line and they went in a room. The door barely closed. A man and a woman got in the Olds—a different couple, do I make myself clear?—and they were off and away.”

“Take this a little slower. Did they have the car keys?”

“They seemed to. I can’t tell you what they looked like, because the whole thing took me by surprise. I should have stopped to think. I was following the Olds and they were following the Olds. I’ve never had the knack of making myself invisible. So there had to be another car, right? It’s obvious now. The Olds turned off the expressway, I turned off the expressway, a third car turned off the expressway. And there we were on a one-lane exit ramp with me in the middle. The car ahead of me stopped. I stopped. The car behind me stopped. I was so fussed I forgot to lock the doors—it would have taken a little longer. And lately I’ve started fastening my seatbelt. That cut down my mobility. I hate to admit this, but it was a girl who slugged me. And she had muscles, Mike.”

“What did she look like?”

“Dark. Jewish, I think, if you don’t mind the ethnic note. I was trying to unsnap the damn belt and I didn’t see what she used, maybe only her fist, I don’t know. Whatever it was, it did the job.”

“How many people do you think there were?”

“In the two cars? Mike, don’t ask me. I wasn’t conscious enough to count. They could have killed me and they didn’t and I’m grateful to them for that.”

“It’s interesting,” Shayne said thoughtfully.

“I’m interested in it, too, as a matter of fact.”

“One person had already been killed. You’re a potential witness, but that didn’t seem to bother them. It must mean they didn’t think they needed a major delay. How did they leave you?”

“Bleeding from the mouth, man. They drove me off onto a side road and locked the doors. When I woke up I was too weak to fight my way out of the seat belt. The Highway Patrol found me. I was gone like twenty minutes, unless I skipped a whole day. I suppose I ought to apologize, except I did warn you this wasn’t my specialty, didn’t I? Who the hell were those people, do you know?”

“No, but I think I may be about to find out. Give me Gentry again… Will, any word from Washington on that picture of Jerry Diamond?”

“Nothing yet. They’re working on it.”

“I’m with him now, and I hope to get fingerprints. You might tell the Bureau to get a copy of the picture over to the CIA.”

“We’re getting up in the world. What makes you think the CIA would be interested?”

“I begin to get that feeling. The passport he’s carrying has recent visas for a couple of Middle Eastern countries. If you hear anything you think I ought to know, call this number.”

He read off the number of the pay phone and hung up. He met Diamond coming away from the counter with a tray.

“I didn’t know what kind of pie you wanted,” Diamond said. “I got lemon meringue.”

“I’m expecting a call,” Shayne said, sitting down near the booths. “Before you say anything I might as well tell you that I’m going to want some cash up front. Twenty-five thousand now, fifty more if I make delivery.”

Diamond, about to put sugar in his coffee, stared at him. “Aren’t you exaggerating your importance slightly?”

Shayne thought about it. “Maybe I am. Make that twenty and forty. If you can’t get hold of twenty thousand in currency tonight, forget it.”

Diamond put down his spoon and said carefully, watching Shayne, “It would be possible. Not so easy, but possible. I’d better find out if we’re talking about the same thing. Tell me what happened when we got the Bentley into a garage.”

“You opened the trunk and started to take out the gas tank. You probably began to worry when you saw that the bolts weren’t tightened all the way down.”

The muscles around Diamond’s mouth stretched in an involuntary grimace. “Do you have it?”

“You know I don’t,” Shayne said irritably. “And I can’t tell you where to look for it. I’ll contribute a few facts and you contribute a few, and maybe we can put something together.”

“The word is maybe. That’s not worth twenty thousand.”

“Diamond, tear a dollar bill in half, and you’ve got two pieces of paper. Scotch-tape it together, and you can spend it.”

Diamond hesitated for a moment, rattling his fingers on the formica, and nodded. “All right. I’ll make the call. This time you’re the one who won’t listen.”

He went off to the booth. Looking around, Shayne spotted Max Wilson a few tables away, moodily drinking coffee. Shayne nodded toward the phone booths, and Wilson drifted over to look for a number in the book. But from the way Diamond was crowding the phone, Shayne could tell that Wilson wouldn’t be able to overhear anything.

While he waited, Shayne wiped the silverware carefully with a paper napkin. Wilson, glancing up, saw what he was doing, and a slight movement of his scarred eyebrows told Shayne that he understood the message.

Diamond came back and sat down. Picking up the freshly wiped spoon, he helped himself to sugar and stirred it into his coffee.

“It’s on the way. And the weird thing about this is, I still don’t know what I’m buying. I still don’t know what Little did to get himself knifed.”

“I’ll go back,” Shayne said. “Here’s the story he told me. Did you notice a girl named Anne Blagden who was hanging around with him on the ship?”

“Sleeping with him was something else she was doing.”

“OK, she was sleeping with him. She works in the London office of the steamship line—this is the story, you understand. Her boyfriend asked her to get him the names of all the passengers who were taking cars along on this crossing, and he sold them to somebody. All clear, a smuggling operation. Somebody was going to pick a respectable name off the list, borrow his car for a few hours the night before sailing, and stash the shipment in the spare tire or under a seat. It didn’t bother Anne too much. These things happen, and smuggling isn’t that much of a crime. This time her boyfriend decided to pull a switch and make a little more money. He found out whose car was being used—Little’s—and tipped the American Customs to shake it down.”

“And you didn’t believe this?”

“All I did was listen. Anne had a vacation coming, and she went along for the ride. Out of curiosity, she picked up with Little. She began to worry about what was going to happen to him. Here was a classic case of an innocent bystander. Even if he managed to beat it, the publicity might kill his new job.”

Diamond said casually, “What were they smuggling, did she know, or say?”

“What could it be but narcotics? They built it into the gas tank, and that means it’s a high-profit item. Little was a known user at one time, and that would be sure to come out—bad scene all around. They hired me to handle it for them. I did the one thing that was possible, spent a couple of hours in the hold and shifted tanks. You wanted to know what you’re buying. You’re buying the make and the license number of the car I put it into, and the name and address of the owner.

“That information,” Diamond admitted grudgingly, “would almost be worth the money.”

He refused the cigarette Shayne offered him, and began playing nervously with his coffee spoon. Shayne swung an elbow and upset his coffee. By the time they had mopped up, with the help of a busboy, Shayne had the spoon with Diamond’s thumbprint on the handle.

He went on, “I checked with a guy in the Customs. No tip on the Bentley was ever turned in. So Little knew that somebody had to be lying to him, probably Anne. He’d been pouring down drinks all day, and he was coming unglued. He told me he’d found a Miami address in Anne’s purse, and he wanted me to go along and bodyguard him while he checked it out. That was the Brownsville house. I fell for it. Somebody was waiting for us inside. I’m supposed to be able to take care of myself, but this time it was close. I was slugged as I went in the door. I managed to get out the knife as Little and somebody else were hauling me upstairs. I put it in Little. Then the building fell in on me.”

“I don’t get that. Why do you think they wanted you killed?”

Shayne shrugged. “They didn’t kill me. Maybe they just wanted to put me in the clinic for a few hours. All I can do is guess. The stuff got ashore. I know which car I put it in. So do they, obviously, and without me around to ask them questions, such as why the Customs people didn’t shake down the Bentley, they could pick it up and cash in. The first thing I’ve got to do is find out who slugged me. Otherwise I’m in a serious jam.”

He paused, and continued soberly, “If I can lay some cash on the right people I may be able to squeeze through. Twenty thousand bucks at the right time in the right place can work wonders. The knife can’t be traced to me. Until I find out different I’m going to assume there aren’t any more witnesses. It’s the drug angle that makes it bad. There’s no question that I’m the one who switched tanks, and nobody’s going to believe I fell for an obvious con. It’s going to look like a straight two-man import deal, and then a fight about the split. I’m sorry to say the county attorney is a little prejudiced on the subject of Mike Shayne. He’s been looking for something like this for years.”

“It was self-defense.”

“I know that, but if I walk in with the story I just told you, I’m dead. I need money for grease. I need a few more facts, to have something to trade. Names and affiliations.”

“Such as my name and affiliation?”

“Use your head, Diamond! I don’t want the county attorney to know you exist. You can identify that knife, and trade it for permission to cop a plea. Murder’s the big thing around here. If you end up with the H, that’s fine with me. I don’t want that coming into court to haunt me.”

“It isn’t narcotics.”

Shayne waved that away, but Diamond insisted, “Drugs are too heavy right now. I don’t touch them. People have funny emotional reactions when the subject comes up.” He was speaking too emphatically, looking at Shayne with the sincere expression of a life insurance salesman who wants desperately to be believed. “Like even with you. Something like money is noncontroversial. But start thinking about it in terms of junkies nodding on street corners, and you’re likely to do something against your own best interests. I want it back. That’s all you need to know… There he is, he made pretty good time.”

A nondescript, gray-haired man came in from the street carrying a parcel wrapped in brown paper. Seeing Diamond, he picked up a cup of coffee and brought it to their table.

“Hard to find a bank open at this time of night,” he observed, speaking with a slight accent. “Hard? Impossible.”

“The coffee stinks in here,” Diamond said. “I don’t recommend it.”

The man spread his hands. “Not for the coffee, for the sake of appearances.”

“We’re in executive session.”

“Good enough. Any messages?”

“No.”

The man hadn’t looked directly at Shayne, but Shayne had the feeling that he wouldn’t be quickly forgotten. In spite of the shabby clothes and self-effacing manner, he didn’t look like someone who was accustomed to running errands.

He sauntered away. Shayne touched the package he had left on the table, and felt the edges of the crisp bills.

“Let’s not count it. I’ll trust you. I moved the gas tank from Little’s Bentley to an Oldsmobile, registered to a man named Daniel Slattery, at a Coral Gables address.” He sipped his coffee. “But don’t hurry off. You won’t find it in Coral Gables.”

“Shayne,” Diamond said, his voice soft and menacing, “I wouldn’t try any sharpshooting here if I was you.”

“I don’t want any more enemies than I’ve already got,” Shayne assured him. “After I’m finished, if you don’t think I deserve the twenty thousand, wrestle me for it. I realize I’m outnumbered—you’ll probably win. I picked Slattery’s car because I thought he’d drive straight home. He didn’t. He had a girl with him. He headed north and holed up at a motel.”

Diamond’s head came forward. “Then?”

“Then the opposition moved in and snapped up the Olds. I want to start dividing people up. Let’s call your group Team A. That’s you, Dessau, the guy who brought the package, the two guys in the Dodge. You set Little up. I don’t know how or why. You led him to expect a search at Customs. It didn’t take place. You wouldn’t have gone after the Bentley if you’d known the tanks had been transferred. You planned to grab him as soon as you got him away from the dock. Maybe he would have lived through that, but I doubt it. He wanted to die, and you could have arranged it for him. He was full of booze. Drunks are always wandering out into the traffic in that part of town and being hit.”

“You’re drawing too many conclusions, but go on.”

“That’s Team A. Team B is Anne Blagden and at least two others, and anything you tell me about them will be more than I know now. Switching tanks was a logical move, but to execute it she needed somebody like me, with credentials. I had to get the captain’s permission, and access to the right kind of tools. Afterward, it wouldn’t be hard to get into the hold and find out which cars I’d been working on. I didn’t know I had to be careful. So instead of following the Bentley, they followed the Olds. And somehow they persuaded Little to take me to Brownsville on a very thin pretext. I don’t know how that was worked, but for a man with a doctor’s degree, Little was easy to fool. As you and Dessau found out in England.”

Diamond was listening intently. “You had somebody following the Olds? What happened to him?”

“He’s still alive. A few bruises.”

Diamond frowned. “Merely bruises?”

“Yeah, the same thought crossed my mind,” Shayne said. “Whatever the hell you people put in that gas tank, I know damn well it wasn’t watch movements. You’re right—don’t tell me, I don’t really want to know. I asked for twenty G’s and you hardly whimpered. Whatever it is, it’s either damn valuable or damn important. So why didn’t they hit the guy a little harder, and make sure? It must mean that they thought they only needed a few minutes.”

Diamond was sitting at the extreme front edge of his chair, ready to jump. “How long ago was this?”

“Three quarters of an hour. Too long.”

“And you still think you have something to sell?”

“I think so. I didn’t expect this kind of trouble, but I try not to take unnecessary chances. So I put a homing device in the Olds.”

“A what?”

“One of those miniaturized transmitters they carry in lifeboats, so the search planes can find them before the survivors start eating each other. It puts out a very good signal, up to a range of ten miles. Did you hear a helicopter a while ago? That was the Coast Guard.”

“We don’t want the Coast Guard!” Diamond said, appalled.

“All I asked them to do was pinpoint it for me. That’s the phone call I’m waiting for. As soon as we find it I’ll let you overpower me and take it away.”

“What if they turned the damn thing off so it wouldn’t transmit?”

“They’d have to cut the tank open to do that, and how would they know it was there? I didn’t tell anybody. But maybe the reason the choppers aren’t getting a signal is because the tank didn’t stay in the Olds.”

“You just said—”

“There’s still a lot I don’t know,” Shayne pointed out. “And you haven’t been too communicative so far. Last night when I went into the Queen Elizabeth’s hold somebody was already there. He popped a couple of shots at me and ducked out. Which team was he on? I don’t know, but there’s no rule that says there have to be only two teams.”

Diamond’s eyes were jumping. “I had nothing to do with that. Anne Blagden wouldn’t want to shoot you before you made the switch.”

He raised his coffee cup, stared into it for a moment and put it down without drinking.

“Somebody may be trying to milk this for more than his fair share,” he said finally. “I think you’re right. For the time being our interests are parallel. Now let me get it straight about this transmitter. If somebody pulled the tank, would it stop sending?”

“Not altogether. But I had it tied in to the car antenna, and the wire would break as it came out. There would still be a signal, but a weak one.”

Diamond nodded. “And if they pick up anything, they’ll call you here?”

Shayne grinned at him. “There’s that, and then the FBI is running your passport photo through the files. We hope to come out with an identification.”

Diamond looked startled. “The cops are involved?”

“We need all the help we can get. The Highway Patrol is looking for the Olds.”

Diamond seemed more and more unsettled. “How do you handle that if they find it?”

“Easily. They won’t look in the gas tank. Why should they?”

“Well, you’ve got a lot of plates in the air, Shayne, and let’s hope you don’t miss. Now you want to hear my side, right?”

“Any time.”

“I keep thinking there must be something else I ought to be doing, but OK. This was my idea to start with. They were my connections. I put up the financing, and it wasn’t cheap.”

“I believe it.”

“That’s how I make my living, I broker international deals. Most of them are legit. It’s one-of-a-kind stuff. When I go illegal, I get in fast and get out the same way. I don’t usually get involved in the day-to-day, but this time I went along to make sure nothing happened. And I like the Queen, you know? It’s a relaxing way to travel. All I thought I had to do was keep one eye on Little and see that he kept sucking down gimlets. And then this Blagden chick.”

“Was she new to you?”

“Brand new, Shayne. And she’s good at her job, very good. I wish I had her working for me. I tried to move in on her, but she liked Dr. Little better, and not that I want to sound conceited but that told me something. He was easy for her. This was movie stuff—in real life that kind of combination doesn’t happen. Inside of two days I’m sure he was telling her his secrets.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t do something about her.”

“I’ll come to that in a minute. First I went through her cabin. Everything in order there except for one tiny thing.” He brought out an oversize European wallet and produced from it a folded photograph, a glossy 2½-by-4 contact print showing an envelope addressed to Anne Blagden at the Hotel Carleton in London. It was postmarked Nice. Shayne squinted at the sender’s name in the left corner.

“Sam something.”

“Sam Geller,” Diamond said.

“It sounds familiar.”

“Sam wouldn’t like to hear you say that, because in his business if you stop being anonymous you stop making money. He sells surplus weapons, all the way from .22 sporting rifles to M-9 tanks. A kind of junkman, really, and he’s like me—if somebody brings him a proposition that means a five-hundred-percent profit in one turnover of capital, with no complications, he’s never too busy to listen. There’s a personal thing between Sam and me. I spoiled a deal for him once. I was within my rights, but Sam didn’t think so, and he’s been laying for me since. To find out about Dessau and Little he must have had detectives on me, and that gives me a chilly feeling.”

Shayne handed back the photograph. “Was there a letter in the envelope?”

“A note about theater tickets. I phoned a contact of mine in Nice and asked him to look into it, and I got the answer in Bermuda. Anne Blagden has been Sam’s girl for the last year.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Sam? Very relaxed. Nice tan, about six feet one. A good build, black hair, an up-and-down wrinkle on his forehead between his eyebrows.”

“Is this important enough to him so he might be here in Miami?”

Diamond reflected. “Ordinarily I’d say no. But I really stung him that time, and if he could lever me out of this, and make money on a zero investment, I’d say yeah, he might come over. He has the Hemingway virus. Flies his own plane, shoots lions in Kenya—that kind of schtick. Tell me why you ask.”

“He sounds like the guy who met Anne at the ship.”

“Then damn it, Shayne,” Diamond said excitedly, “why don’t we take him? There’s eighteen thousand in that package. I know you said twenty, but eighteen was all we could come up with. Get the tank back for me and I’ll multiply that by three. That’s a promise.”

“Let’s talk some more about Geller. Does he kill people, or only lions?”

“You mean was he the third man in that fight—you, Little, and whoever? I doubt if Sam Geller in person, all by himself, would go into that building at that time of night. Not when you can buy the service for a thousand bucks.”

“And while we’re on that subject,” Shayne said, “how did Anne Blagden make it as far as Miami?”

“It does seem strange, doesn’t it? We knew who she was from Bermuda on. But I only had one man with me. You remember we made a half-hearted attempt to mug you after that poker game. Mug you, Shayne—we weren’t trying to bury you at sea. We wanted to stow you away in a safe place for twenty-four hours. And when that fell through, my guy sat in Anne’s cabin waiting for her to come in.”

“She must have come in to pack.”

“I suppose she did,” Diamond said dryly. “I can’t say for sure, because my man hasn’t turned up yet.”

“Quite a girl,” Shayne commented.

“So it seems. She stayed close to Little all day, and he was already shaky enough. If she hadn’t been around to give him that big kiss when we got in, God knows what would have happened. I wanted him to drive that Bentley onto American soil with his own hands and feet.”

“How many people do you have now?”

“Just the four. I can get more.”

“That ought to be enough. Do you trust Dessau?”

Diamond’s expression congealed. “I don’t trust anybody all the way. Why?”

“I’m thinking of something Little told me. It doesn’t fit his other story about being an innocent victim of evil smugglers who borrowed his car, but by that time he’d stopped trying to be consistent. Dessau may have been the only real criminal Little ever met, and Little was puzzled by him. He seemed so ordinary in many ways. Finally, Little thought, he found the key. Dessau wanted to be number one. He wouldn’t take orders or suggestions. I’m not trying to make trouble, you understand—I just want to be sure where I am.”

“Shayne—” Diamond began, his eyebrows lowering.

The phone clanged. Shayne slid the paper-wrapped parcel out from under Diamond’s hand and stood up.

Diamond said, “I assume you’re going to let me listen in on this one.”

“Absolutely. We’re partners, aren’t we?”

CHAPTER 12

The phone clanged again, and Shayne picked it off the hook. He saw Max Wilson get up without hurrying and move toward the table Shayne and Diamond had left, to beat the busboy to Diamond’s coffee spoon. Diamond squeezed into the doorway of the booth, looking tense.

“Mike?” Gentry’s voice boomed. “Just heard from the Coast Guard. They haven’t picked up a thing, and they want to know if it’s all right to come in. They’ve covered a lot of territory, all the way up to Pompano.”

“I guess we can knock that off,” Shayne said with regret. He glanced up at Diamond in the doorway. “Do you have anything on the passport picture?”

“No, and unless you can supply us with fingerprints to go with it, I don’t expect we will. Mike, I want to talk about something else. We’ve got a corpse. And we’ve got a witness named Minnie Fish. The corpse has a letter in his pocket from the president of an American aerospace firm that even I have heard of. The witness gives us a description of somebody who sounds like you—the hair, the shoulders, the same striped suit I saw you wearing on TV earlier this evening. There was blood on this man’s face, according to the witness. There’s going to be a certain amount of attention paid, Mike.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me,” Shayne said.

“And add that to a couple of things Tim Rourke has passed along, and I think it’s time for the police to start playing this by the book. I need the answers to a few questions.”

“I’ll stop by as soon as I have time,” Shayne said. “Right now I’m tied up.”

“Mike,” Gentry said patiently, “I want you to rearrange your schedule and spare the time. Usually I let you play by your own rules, and by and large I think it’s worked out well. You’ve done various things I’m glad I didn’t know about in advance. Ordinarily I’m glad to sit in my office reading Playboy while you’re out on the streets taking your lumps. My big ambition is to get through another dozen years with my skin intact, and start collecting the pension.”

“I’ve got to hang up now, Will. Go home and relax. I’ll call you if I get a chance, but don’t wait up for it.”

Gentry’s tone sharpened. “Mike, listen. When a British scientist who’s just been hired by a big defense contractor ends up knifed in a black neighborhood, that’s news, by any definition. The FBI has a sneaky habit of going back over the early hours and seeing what the local people were doing in a big case. If I have to tell them that a certain private detective, who also happens to be a duck-shooting friend of mine, told me to go home and he might call me, I’m going to be given some funny looks. And it could be more than looks. I’ve got to know what’s going on. I happen to mean that.”

“Then find out for yourself,” Shayne said angrily. “And I happen to mean that. I’m getting tired of doing your work for you.”

Gentry was slow-moving and slow-speaking, but there was nothing slow about his mind. He had a long-standing working relationship with Shayne, and Shayne had never before used that tone. After only a second’s pause, Gentry picked up the cue.

“Goddamn it, Mike! That publicity you’ve been getting has gone to your head. You don’t own this town!”

Shayne said evenly, “Don’t push me, Will. I’ll come in and see you when I’ve got something to bargain with. Meanwhile, why don’t you get off your fat ass and come out where the action is? You might even enjoy it.”

“This is the only warning you’re going to get from me—”

“Will, you begin to worry me. Why not retire now and make room for somebody who can do your job?”

He broke the connection. “Look up the number of the Opa-Locka Airport,” he told Diamond.

“The—”

“Opa-Locka Airport,” Shayne repeated with a peremptory gesture.

He dialed a random digit, to block incoming calls. Max Wilson strolled up to the cashier’s counter, paid his check, and went out with a toothpick between his teeth. When Diamond read a number from the book, Shayne closed down the phone to get a dial tone, and dialed.

A girl’s voice answered.

“Is Buzz Yale still working out there?” Shayne asked.

“In security, yes, sir. I think he has this shift. One moment, I’ll see if I can locate him.”

It took more than a moment. Shayne waited, hammering his knuckles impatiently against his knee.

“Who’s Buzz Yale?” Diamond asked.

“An old friend of mine. Pay the check. I want to be ready to move out.”

Diamond threw a bill on the counter. As Shayne spoke into the phone Diamond scrambled back, not wanting to miss anything.

“Buzz,” Shayne said. “This is Mike Shayne. I’ve got a funny one. I can’t take time to explain, but I’m looking for a green Olds, a four-door sedan, and I think it may be in one of your parking lots. I’m on my way now. If you can find it by the time I get there, it’s worth two hundred bucks.”

“Right, Mike. A license number?”

Shayne concentrated for an instant, his eyes closed, and the Oldsmobile’s number came back to him. He gave it to Yale and hung up.

“Let’s go.”

Outside, one of Diamond’s men pushed off from a storefront and crossed the sidewalk to the Dodge.

“You drive,” Shayne told Diamond. “There’s something I want to figure out.”

Diamond slid in and snapped his seat belt. Shayne, one hand on the package of money in his lap, directed him to the North-South Expressway and asked for more speed.

“Do I get an explanation of this?” Diamond said after a time, “or am I just supposed to follow orders?”

Shayne didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “I’m trying to work out approximate times. Too much of it has to be guesswork. Assume it was Sam Geller who hijacked the Olds. He’s had a couple of days to get organized. He’d want to be miles away with the gas tank when you found out it was missing. What would he use, a car, a boat or a plane?”

“More than likely a plane.”

“I think so. After stealing the Olds they headed for the expressway. Tim Rourke, who was behind them, was on an exit ramp when they clamped down on him. He didn’t tell me which one, but none of those exits is more than ten minutes from Opa-Locka. They don’t handle the really big jets out there, but they’re more relaxed about everything than Miami International. And the location’s right. A couple of other possibilities have occurred to me, but if the Olds has been abandoned out there somewhere, we can rule them out. Now is there anything else you wanted to tell me about Geller and Anne Blagden?”

Diamond kept his eyes on the road. “I think I covered everything important.”

“I don’t agree with you, but if that’s the way you want to play it—” He turned to look at the Dodge hanging behind them. “Slow down to sixty and wave them alongside.”

Diamond gave him a suspicious look, but did as he was instructed. He signaled for a right-hand stop, and waved. The Dodge pulled into the left-hand lane and overtook them. For a moment the two cars ran side by side.

“I thought somebody was missing in that car,” Shayne said. “Dessau’s not there.”

The Mustang slowed abruptly. Diamond’s head swung.

“We leave at the next exit,” Shayne told him.

Diamond looked back at Shayne, his eyes small and deadly. “You’ve been dropping hints about Dessau for the last half hour. If there’s something I ought to know, say it in English.”

“All I know is what people have told me. Maybe I’m trying to split you into smaller groups so you’ll be easier to handle. We’re partners temporarily, but how long can it last? Use your brakes, Diamond, or you’ll overshoot.”

Diamond braked sharply. The Dodge dropped back and followed them into the ramp, which discharged them onto Opa-Locka Boulevard. They entered Opa-Locka a few moments later, and began working north toward the airfield.

A red light was flashing on a vehicle parked on the shoulder just short of the turnoff to the hangar area.

“Slow down,” Shayne said. “I think that’s my man.” There were two cars, one a black official sedan and the second a green Oldsmobile, with only one wheel on the highway. Diamond pulled past and stopped. As Shayne stepped out, Buzz Yale, a big man with a belly that overflowed his ornamental belt buckle, came out on the road to meet him.

“Since when have you been traveling in Mustangs, Mike? Is this the Olds you wanted? I really shouldn’t take any of your money, because it turned out I had a report on my desk when you called. All I had to do was check the tags.”

“Thanks, Buzz. This saves us some time.”

He snapped up the trunk hatch at the rear of the Olds. The rubber mat had been thrown out of the way. Through the opening in the floor he looked down at the gravel and tarred weeds along the shoulder.

Diamond, beside him, said, “For Christ’s sake, look at the way it’s rigged.”

An ordinary two-gallon can had been wired to three flat metal straps that were welded across the opening where the gas tank had been. The welds were sloppy and unprofessional; one had already worked open. The gas line was stuck into the can’s spigot, entering through a hole punched in the screw top. That joint had been wrapped with overlapping layers of white adhesive tape, but the whole crude installation was shiny with spilled gas.

“Never saw anything like it,” Yale said. “What kind of mechanic—”

“It’s a wonder they got this far,” Shayne said. “Buzz, I’m going to need something else. Sometime during the last hour a plane that was about to take off developed some kind of mechanical trouble. It was in a holding area, probably close to a service road. I’m guessing a private jet or a small cargo job. They were fueled up and ready. Ground clearance hadn’t been asked for yet. They were waiting for something or somebody. Then a message came in to shut down the engines. They may have pulled the plane back into a hangar, but I think it’s probably still out there, with a power car standing by. If you can find it for me, it’s worth another two hundred.”

“I’ll try, Mike,” Yale said doubtfully, “but it’ll take scratching. You know what we’re like out here—scattered.”

“Nose around. Don’t be conspicuous about it. I’ll call you.”

He returned to the Mustang, broke open the package on the front seat and gave Yale two hundred dollar bills. Summoning Diamond with a brusque head movement, he reentered the Mustang.

When Diamond was back behind the wheel: “I need a phone, Diamond. There’s one in the gas station half a mile down the road. And be thinking about whether it’s time to change your mind about telling me who we’re up against.”

Diamond picked out one phrase and repeated it. “Change my mind,” he said, wheeling around and accelerating. “You’re damn right this changes my mind. It’s a whole new ballgame. You had it figured, didn’t you?”

He waited till he was out of sight of the rotating beacon, and swung off the road, signaling.

“That’s right,” Shayne said. “We have lots of time.”

The Dodge slid to a stop and the two men ran up, one on each side of the car.

“He has a gun,” Diamond called. “Watch it.”

A cocked revolver appeared at the window beside Shayne. Diamond reached out warily, found Shayne’s .38 and pulled it into view. He rapped out a command and the armed man outside opened the door.

“Get out, Shayne,” Diamond ordered. “Stand against the side of the car. I’ve had enough of this crap.”

Shayne dropped his hand to the latch holding his seat belt. “Use your head.”

“Get him out of there,” Diamond said.

The man outside reached in and tapped Shayne lightly with the flat of his gun. Expecting the move, Shayne reached upward quickly. He grabbed the extended arm and yanked it forward with his full strength.

The man’s chin struck the top of the car and the point of his weapon came forward to jam itself into Diamond’s side. The man tried to wrestle himself loose, but Shayne had a good two-handed grip, one hand in the armpit, the other below the elbow.

Diamond pulled away, but he was held in place by the belt.

“Don’t jerk your hand, for God’s sake!”

The second man, on Diamond’s side of the car, was shuffling and weaving, trying to see in, blocked off from Shayne by Diamond on one side and by the man Shayne was holding on the other. Shayne kept the cocked revolver pressed against Diamond’s side.

“If you don’t stop wriggling the hammer’s coming down,” Shayne observed. “Don’t you care?”

Diamond shrank back. “Shayne—”

“Hold still. Things are moving. The reason the helicopters didn’t pick up any signal was that the Olds wasn’t carrying the tank. When the people in the Olds ran out of gas they were just as surprised as we are now. They’re less than a mile from the airfield. Don’t forget the guy who fired at me in the Queen Elizabeth’s hold. He didn’t belong to either you or Geller. It’s beginning to seem that this shipment wasn’t such a tight secret, after all.”

“Where is it?”

“If I knew that, why would I be fooling around out here with you? This might make a certain amount of sense if you knew where Dessau is. Relax for a minute. Let the blood drain out of your brain so you can use it to think with. Tell these guys to cool off and we’ll talk.”

After a moment Diamond called, “All right, when he lets you go, go back to the other car.”

Some of the tension went out of the arm Shayne was grasping. He eased up, but when the man outside had withdrawn a few inches, Shayne yanked again. The man’s chin banged the top of the car harder than before. Then Shayne twisted with both hands, causing a contorted face to appear framed in the window.

“Don’t hit people with pistols when you don’t know who they are,” Shayne said. “Find out something about them first. What happened to Dessau?”

“He went for cigarettes. You came out of the cafeteria before he got back. That hurts.”

Shayne let him go and the man disappeared.

“For cigarettes,” Shayne said. “Most places that sell cigarettes also have phones. But maybe we’ll have a perfectly good explanation when he turns up.”

He reached for his gun, which Diamond was holding, and then waved.

“If you think it gives you an edge, keep it. What’s your current theory? I hope you don’t think I rigged that gas tank in the Olds. I would have put in a neater weld.”

“You and Little had some kind of deal. You didn’t walk in that building on the basis of the explanation you’ve given me.”

“I told you what he told me. I didn’t say I believed it. I know he was lying. So was Anne Blagden. So are you, for Christ’s sake. I’m used to that. But every time I get hit by somebody I find out something new. We’re ruling out possibilities all the time.”

“What possibilities?”

“I don’t know why you feel this is a time to panic. From your point of view the situation has improved. If the tank had stayed where I put it, in the Olds, it’d be out of the country by now. Or else the Coast Guard would have picked up the signals, followed them to the airport, and grabbed them while they were loading it in the plane. This way it’s still available. If I stashed it away somewhere, you have to deal with me. If I didn’t—and believe me, I didn’t—I’m your link.”

“I don’t see that.”

Shayne said patiently, “Anne and Geller don’t know how to get in touch with you. You don’t know how to get in touch with them. Whoever actually has the goddamn thing can’t put it up for auction because he doesn’t know how to get in touch with either of you. But everybody knows how to get in touch with me. I’m in the book.”

Diamond began to look interested.

Shayne went on, “Anne—if it really was Anne and Geller who hijacked the Olds—is going to have the same reaction you did. I was in the hold of the Queen with welding and burning equipment, and a whole night to work out a three-way switch. She’s probably been trying to get through to me for the last twenty minutes.”

“And what happens after she gets through to you?”

“We go on playing it by ear. Seriously, Diamond, I’m the one fixed point. As soon as everybody gets that through their heads, we can start winding it up.”

“All right, but I’m going to keep you right under my eye.”

“I don’t object to that. Stick as close as you want, but keep out of sight. Right now we’re both stymied. I’m worse off than you because I’ve got a murder charge hanging over me. Anne doesn’t know that, unless Dessau told her. As far as she knows, I’m still open to a money offer.”

“I hope you’re not thinking of asking her if she wants to outbid me.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Shayne said wearily. “She must understand by now that there’s a good chance she’ll come out with nothing unless she levels with me. She’ll have to make some kind of offer. If it’s high enough I might be tempted to take it and sell you out. God, I’m tired of explaining the simplest things. Don’t you realize yet? The cops are going to want somebody for Little’s murder. It has to be me or one of Anne’s people. That’s something I can’t deal away, as much as I like large sums of money.”

“I think I see your point,” Diamond said, still uncertain. “But if you try anything—”

“Yeah, yeah. Stay within pistol range.”

CHAPTER 13

Using the phone in the next gas station, Shayne phoned his mobile operator and asked if anyone named Anne Blagden had called him. Someone named Anne Blagden had been calling regularly, he was told. She had left a number.

Shayne instructed the operator to call the number and tell Miss Blagden that he wanted a meeting very much indeed. If she could arrange to be at the corner of 54th Street and North Miami Avenue in fifteen minutes, he would pick her up.

Diamond drove him to the block where he had left his Buick. Diamond wanted to continue talking about their various options, but every time he started to speak Shayne cut him short.

“I have to think about the best way to do this. Shut up and keep moving.”

When Shayne changed cars, Diamond warned him again that he would be kept under close watch, and any attempt at treachery would be followed by instant retribution.

“Diamond, it’s lucky we need each other, because you’re beginning to bug me.”

Shayne locked the package of money in the strongbox welded to the floor beneath his front seat. Diamond preceded him in the Mustang. The two others in Diamond’s party followed in the Dodge.

The phone rang before Shayne turned the first corner.

“I gave Miss Blagden your message,” his operator said. “She promised to be there. Now here’s Chief Gentry.”

“Mike,” Gentry’s voice said.

“Yeah. I was probably rude to you the last time we talked. I take it all back.”

“I stand by every word I said. I’ve got the district FBI director and two of the Highway Patrol brass in my office. I need some factual information for a change, and I’m beginning to think I won’t get it unless you’re physically apprehended and brought in.”

“Is there a call out for me?”

“Not yet. I wanted to ask you nicely one more time. Will you please come in and enlighten me about how a knife I gave you for Christmas came to end up in a British scientist’s stomach?”

“Look for another knife in a room upstairs. Ivory handle. That’s the one that killed him. Have the medical examiner measure the depth of the wound. My knife won’t go that deep.”

“Mike, will you please come in and dictate a statement on that? Now there’s the second time I said please, and it’s the last time. But I’ll bait the request. We have something from Washington about Diamond.”

Shayne said quickly, “Tell me, Will. I had a gun at my head ten minutes ago, and right now I’m sandwiched between two cars with three men in them. They wouldn’t let me come in even if I wanted to. I’d be shot coming up the steps. I’ve got a minute and a half at the most. I’m picking up new bits all the time. There are two groups of people, and all I know about them is that they’re out for blood. Diamond thinks I committed that murder, and also killed a witness. He thinks it gives him a handle. That same pitch won’t work with the other side. I have to think up something entirely different. I need everything you’ve got, Will, believe me. Come on, come on!”

A faint crackling came from the phone.

Then Gentry said decisively, “All right, the hell with everybody. What can they do, after all, put me in jail? The fingerprints did it. Diamond’s only one of his names. He’s in demand. Washington wanted to know where I got those prints, and I had to tell them.”

“Forty-five seconds or less.”

“He’s in free-lance intelligence. Gets hold of something and peddles it around. He’s had a couple of big hits. On retainer for one of the American oil companies. A month ago he was seen in a Cairo bank that handles Egyptian intelligence payments. There’s a tip that he’s working for the Arab side in the Arab-Israeli hassle, another tip that he was in England putting together an organization. That’s all.”

Without saying goodbye, Shayne dropped the phone and pulled up at the corner where he had arranged to meet Anne. The Mustang continued through the light to the other side of the intersection. Shayne didn’t look for the Dodge. It was behind him, he knew.

Leaving his motor running, he took the cognac bottle from his glove compartment and drank.

After another long moment, Anne stepped out of a doorway and crossed the sidewalk. She looked exactly as good as she had on the Queen Elizabeth, as elegant, as self-assured, as unruffled.

“Mike Shayne,” she said, getting in beside him. “We’re back together. I love you.”

“No car? What’s happening?”

She put her hand in her open purse and raised it between them. “I’ve got a gun, Mike, and it shoots very hard. So stand at ease.”

“Everybody has guns but me. I gave mine away.”

“Don’t go anywhere,” she said as Shayne went into gear. “There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

Shayne remained with his forearms resting on the steering wheel, as the rear door opened and a man came into the car. Shayne glanced at him casually. It was the same man who had met Anne at the pier.

“You must be Sam Geller.”

“That’s right,” the man said. “And if you know that much you know what we want, and you know you’ll be killed if you give us any trouble.”

Keeping the clutch depressed, Shayne gave Geller a more searching look. At this range, it could be seen that he combed his black hair forward to cover a receding hairline. He had good skin and a pleasant expression.

“I didn’t know people at your level got involved in anything this messy, Geller. And where you get the goddamn gall to come into Miami and tell me I’ll be killed if I give you any trouble—You know it can still go either way. The cops had to be told some of it. I’m sorry about that, but I kept it to a minimum.”

“We’ll be all right if we go on being careful.”

Shayne snorted. “Careful? You people have been behaving like madmen. The elusive Sam Geller wouldn’t be here in person unless it was really big. My price is going up by the minute.”

“Does that mean you have it?” Geller said quickly.

“No, but I think I know where it is. You’ve broken every rule in the goddamn—”

Geller was leaning forward tensely. Without completing his sentence or looking back toward the street, Shayne released the clutch and came down hard on the gas. He was braced for the sudden acceleration, but Geller was hurled backward, arms out and feet off the floor.

At the same instant Shayne hit a dashboard button releasing a spurt of pepper gas from a nozzle set in the back of the front seat. The incapacitating spray fanned out on a flat plane and caught Geller squarely. He screamed and clutched his eyes.

Shayne swung the wheel, taking an abrupt left into 54th Street. He shifted smoothly, moving up to the extreme limit of the gear, passed a slow-moving pickup truck, and as he came back he whipped around against the pressure of the seat belt and slashed the helpless man across the face with his closed fist. The blow stunned Geller, anesthetizing him against the pain he was surely feeling.

Through the rear window, at the same moment, Shayne saw the Dodge jump the light and come after him. Diamond, in the Mustang, would have to make a U-turn to follow.

Anne had her gun out, steadying her right hand with her left. “Pull over, Mike! I’m going to shoot.”

Shayne sawed at the wheel. “Diamond’s right behind us. Two cars. Baby, there’s just one way.” He reached around with his left hand and unlatched the rear door. “Dump him. Get rid of him.”

“Pull over this minute!”

“Diamond has three men. They’re all armed. If you want to shoot it out with that little automatic, fine. You’ll do it alone. Geller can’t see. Don’t count on me for anything.”

She looked away from him, out the rear window.

“If I pull over,” Shayne snarled, “you’d better start running. Give them Geller! We don’t need him. You and I can swing this alone. Move, damn it! Get over and dump him.”

The gas supply, blown by the same kind of gadget that sprayed window-cleaning fluid onto the windshield, was used up. All the windows were open, but Shayne’s eyes were tearing. Geller, dazed and whimpering, had his face in his hands. He was swaying, about to fall.

Shayne yelled at Anne again. She made up her mind in an instant as the Mustang came out of a screaming turn. Swinging all the way around on her knees, she reached over and gave Geller a hard sideward push.

He toppled against the unlatched door, knocking it out of Shayne’s hand. He grabbed out desperately and caught the door. She chopped at his fingers with the gun barrel while Shayne swerved from side to side, swinging the blinded man out of the car. Fenders clashed, and Geller spilled out on the street with a scream.

A horn blared behind them. Tires squealed.

Shayne accelerated. Responding, the door slammed shut. He watched the mirror. The pickup truck behind him slewed across two lanes to avoid striking the fallen man. The Dodge skidded to a stop and Diamond’s men erupted from it. Shayne thought he caught the wink of a gun, but he couldn’t be sure; too much else was happening.

In high gear, the Buick slid through the Second Avenue cross-traffic like a fish. At the next corner Shayne signaled for a right, and swung left abruptly between the oncoming cars. In this maze of courts and terraces, he could lose anything but a bumper-to-bumper pursuit, and both the Dodge and the Mustang were caught in the tangle created by Geller’s fall from the car.

“God,” Anne said. “You startled me into that. I hope it was right.”

“It wasn’t the right thing, it was the only thing, sweetheart. He wouldn’t have been any good in a fight. That’s the first time I used that pepper gas gimmick. I wasn’t sure it would work.”

She glanced at him, her eyes watering. “It worked.”

He was taking turns on the outside of his tires. At 62nd Street he began to ease up, turned east and picked up Biscayne Boulevard.

“Sorry I didn’t have more time to chat with him,” Shayne said. “I understand he’s had an interesting career. How have things been since I saw you?”

“Hectic,” she said briefly. “Mike—”

“Let me do this my way. It has to be done exactly right. I’ve just been told that Diamond’s working for the Arabs. That clears up a few things about you. What we’ve been arguing about really is a bomb, isn’t it?”

“Of course. I thought you realized that.”

“Well, it’s a change for me. Usually the client comes in with a plausible story, and I gradually find out he’s lying. You’d be surprised how often that happens. This time it’s the exact opposite. I didn’t believe it to begin with, and now I have to.”

“Mike, I can’t help being nervous. Shouldn’t we talk about what to do next?”

“Ordinarily. But this isn’t an ordinary situation.”

He had continued to drive north on Biscayne, moving with the traffic. Now he turned in under a blinking neon arrow pointing to a large illuminated sign, Flamingo Springs Motel.

The Vacancy light was on. He parked in an open slot in front of the office. Anne watched him, puzzled but saying nothing.

“I’ll have to explain,” he said. “It may take me a minute, because it’s such a damned uncharacteristic thing for me to be doing.”

“Mike—”

“No, wait. I don’t know how much a bomb like that is worth in terms of money. It isn’t something you pick up in the A & P. With Geller and Diamond bidding against each other, it could be a fantastic deal for the man in the middle. Look at it that way, and every minute counts. Something can happen to one of the bidders. He can die, for example. If all I cared about was money—and that’s an incredible remark coming from me—I would have held onto Geller. I’d ask him to give me a price, then I’d find out how Diamond reacted, and let it go to the side that could produce the most cash. But it’s not that simple.”

She relaxed slightly. He touched her knee.

“I want us to do this together, Anne. Between Israel and the Arabs, you must know which side I’m on. But that’s not the important thing.” His hand moved along her leg. “Is it?”

She forced herself to respond, but he could feel her tension.

“It’s the important thing to me, the only important thing. It’s my life. I see what you mean—dimly—and you realize how much I’m attracted to you. But right now we have to—I feel—”

She made a distracted gesture.

“It’s time to stop rushing,” Shayne said. “Everybody’s been doing too much of that. I want to stop and start over. We should have been working together all along. I want to get a room. All right?”

The hand that a few moments ago had been pointing a gun at him reached up to touch the harsh stubble at the edge of his jaw.

“Mike, tomorrow and the next day and the week after that. But not now. You can come out with us on the plane, or tell me where you want me to meet you.” She shivered. “But God, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could?”

“We can,” he assured her. “Let’s invest a few minutes and establish that we’re really on the same side. Then we can talk about it.”

She hesitated. “I think I’m too wound up. I wish I could.”

“Let’s try,” he said gently. “If we sit here firing questions we’ll never get anywhere. We don’t have to press too hard. See what happens.”

After a moment she nodded. “It doesn’t feel right to me, but if you think it would help—”

Touching the back of her neck, he guided her in against him. They kissed. At the same time, with his left hand, he reached along the steering column and pulled the ignition fuse.

“Darling,” he said.

He went into the office. The woman on duty was the wife of an old friend.

“Mike Shayne, in the flesh,” she exclaimed. “I put your girl in Room 22, on the balcony. But isn’t she a little young for you?”

“Patsy, you’ve been reading too many dirty novels,” Shayne said. “I want another room. Keep looking at me. There’s a girl outside in my car. If she slides over into the driver’s seat, tell me. Let me have a registration card.” Shayne scribbled his name and paid for the room. “Is the other girl still here?”

“Miss Cecily Little, of Camberwell, England. She came in a few minutes ago for ice cubes. Before that she was phoning like crazy.”

“Who to?” Shayne said quickly.

“I didn’t write them down—all Miami calls.”

Shayne thought briefly. “Do something for me, Patsy. If she phones again, ring me and cut me in on the call. Can you do that?”

“I can, but would it be ethical?”

“Absolutely, especially if nobody knows about it. And can you watch the stairway for me? I want to know right away if she goes out. Some fairly important things are riding on this, including my health and well being. How many rooms do you still have vacant?”

“Two, Mike. Business has been slow all week.”

He added two more twenties to the bills on the counter. “Put up your No Vacancy sign so you can concentrate. Give me two quick rings if she goes out.”

“Don’t worry, Mike,” she said, impressed. “If I have to go to the bathroom or anything, I’ll get Pete to stand in for me.”

She gave him the key to a ground-floor room. He took it back to the car, with a plastic container of ice cubes, dropped the key on the floor, and while he was retrieving it, replaced the fuse.

“Can you drink cognac? It’s all I have.”

“Mike, do we have time for a drink? It seems more and more impossible that this can really be happening.”

He moved the Buick into the slanted opening in front of their room, and took the cognac out of the glove compartment before locking the car. Inside, they saw the usual motel furniture, the principal item, of course, being beds.

Anne stood nervously at the side of one bed, holding her purse in both hands, while Shayne made the drinks.

“Mike, this is ridiculous. I’ve never felt less sexually inclined in my life.”

“People say it’s relaxing. We need to relax.”

He held out a glass. She took it, and came in against him to hug him with her free arm.

“Mike, I’m a dedicated girl. I’ve been doing this work for two and a half years, and nothing remotely like this has ever happened. Most of the time it’s been paperwork, going through technical journals, not the way the novelists describe it at all. And now all at once—”

She gestured with her glass, and drank some cognac. She coughed.

“I’m not that much of a drinker,” she explained.

Setting the drink on the bedside table, she unbuttoned her blouse. A sensible girl, she was wearing nothing underneath. She killed the light and continued undressing in the dark.

“I’m also a little shy, you’ll find,” she said. “Of course you’ve already seen me undressed. In your cabin on the Queen?”

“I remember it well. If I hadn’t just been jumped by those two guys, I would have been more polite.”

“My feelings weren’t hurt. Mike, don’t dawdle. I think I see what you’re driving at, but try to understand how I feel, too. I hear clocks ticking all around me.”

He had poured three fingers of cognac into one of the drinking glasses the motel provided inside a paper envelope. He drank it in one pull, waited till he could feel it begin to course through his body, and began deliberately to undress.

Unable to wait, she came to help. Their fingers became tangled. As his clothes came off she kissed him impatiently. But when he came down on the bed beside her the tempo changed.

Presently they were moving easily together, everything synchronizing nicely. He heard a phone ringing in his Buick, outside the window, but whoever that was would have to wait. At the end, completely at ease with him, Anne was laughing softly against his face.

CHAPTER 14

“You were right,” she said as they separated. “So incredibly right, Michael. I’m in a different time zone.”

“Do you mind if I turn on a light?”

“No, dear.”

He snapped on the bedside light and found his cigarettes, which had spilled out of the package onto the floor. He poured more cognac for himself before joining her against the pillows.

“Even so, we rushed it a bit, didn’t we? Next time will be better. God, I love the way you feel.” She smiled and touched him.

They lit cigarettes.

“Now,” he said, breathing out smoke. “About Geller. How long you’ve been with him, how you found out about all this.”

“I wish we didn’t have to talk about anybody but us, but I’m not that carried away, I guess. Did you hear your car phone a few minutes ago, or did I imagine it?”

“I’ll get it the next time it rings.”

“Then about Sam. He was one of the people who helped arm Israel in the early days. I was his secretary before—well, before we moved on from there. It was an assignment, you see. I’m a lieutenant in the Israeli army, all right? To get that out of the way. I turned in reports on the various things Sam was doing. He keeps a dozen irons in the fire, sometimes working for us, sometimes for himself. And then somebody in the organization picked up on what was happening with Quentin. Dessau and Diamond were seen together, and we knew Diamond was working for the Arabs. When they separated, our person followed Dessau to Camberwell, where we found him having nightly meetings with an important British physicist.”

“What level was Dessau on?”

“He’s rather small time. If he ever did this sort of work before, it didn’t pay much. We assumed—I shouldn’t say we, because I hadn’t been brought in on it then—my people assumed that what was at issue was information, first about the British atomic capability, then later about the American. Quentin, of course, is cleared to visit any American facility, even the most secret. Then we learned that Diamond would be traveling to America with him on the same boat. At that point, that was all we knew. Sam was in France and I was free. I was sent along. The assignment was to strike up a friendship with Quentin and see if I could find out what was happening.”

“With how many others?”

“I was alone. That’s why I needed your help so badly. When Quentin—”

Shayne interrupted. “Not that I have any reason to believe Diamond, but he told me you were having such a bad influence on Little that they decided to put you over the side. A routine cloak-and-dagger murder.”

Then a surprising thing happened. Anne blushed. She had drawn the sheet to her waist, but a definite blush began spreading over the entire visible part of her body. She pulled the sheet to her chin, concealing as much of it as she could.

“My God, it was terrible,” she said in a small voice. “I’ve never done anything like that, but only one of us was going to reach land, and as you see, here I am. Mike,” she said, turning toward him earnestly, “we’re at war. You realize that. That man was as much an enemy soldier as if he’d been wearing Egyptian uniform. I had to do it. I couldn’t stop to wonder whether or not I could. But it was awful.” She put her hand to her face. “And that’s my quota, for a full lifetime. He was as heavy as lead.”

“Nobody helped?”

“Who else was there? Quentin, of course. He was drunk. I thought about you—but no, clearly no. So that left me, and I did it. A grisly little man. He needed a shave.”

“They’ll give you a medal,” Shayne said without sympathy.

“They won’t know about it! I don’t intend to tell them. Somebody might order me to do the same thing again.”

“Did it occur to you at any point that Little might be lying?”

“Mike, I didn’t really believe it till that little man tried to kill me. I phoned Sam from Bermuda, and naturally he was excited. For someone in his business to get hold of that kind of bomb would be a tremendous coup. A figure of ten million dollars has been mentioned. I didn’t want to involve my organization directly, in case anything went wrong. Sam flew over and hired the necessary people. We didn’t want a gun battle on the streets of Miami, but we would have done it that way if we had had to. And then you walked aboard, my dear Mike, looking as though you’d eat the first person who asked you a simple question.” She kissed his shoulder. “One thing I’ve worried about. What did Quentin do when they let him through Customs without searching his car?”

“Dessau convinced him it was deliberate, so they could find out who else was in on the plot, and round up everybody at the same time. Little’s the one person we don’t need to talk about. He’s dead.”

She took a long breath and her eyes closed and opened. “The damn fool. I knew he hadn’t really changed his mind about dying. How did he do it?”

“I didn’t say he did it himself. He was found knifed in an abandoned building.”

She drew back from him slightly. “I see. That’s the reason for this. You think we did it.”

“I know Diamond didn’t, because of the way it happened. You and Geller wouldn’t want to leave any loose ends. Quentin Little, alive, would be a very loose end. He couldn’t just report for work next Monday and forget about it. Sooner or later somebody in England would tally up their plutonium and find that seventeen pounds were missing. Your name would be mentioned. Now don’t get excited. I’m just checking out a possibility. You’ve already told me about another killing of exactly the same kind.”

“I had no choice about that one!” She gave him an unfriendly look. “I’m beginning to understand. First sex. Then conversation, in the course of which I make an admission, which gives you something to use against me.”

Shayne said gently, “You’re a professional, Lieutenant. So am I, and right now we’re both working. You told me about the guy on the boat so I’d think you trusted me. Little’s dead, but he’s still my client, and I want to know who killed him. Diamond thinks I did. That’s been helpful. He’s sure that if I get my hands on that gas tank I’ll have to turn it over to him. You know that won’t happen.”

“What will?”

“Anne, what would any patriotic American do with an atom bomb if he happened to find one in the street? I’ll turn it in and get my picture in the paper.”

“I had a feeling you might sell it to us.”

“If I’d sell it to you, I’d sell it to Diamond if he could come up with more money in a hurry. He raised eighteen thousand tonight without blinking.”

“Mike, are you saying you don’t know where it is?”

Shayne gave her a bleak look without replying, and reached for the cognac bottle.

The phone gave a warning tinkle. It was at Anne’s side of the bed. He rolled quickly and reached past her to get it. He picked it up with both hands, one hand covering the mouthpiece.

He heard Cecily Little’s voice.

“Love, it’s fabulous! Money, money, money. I finally got to him. He practically creamed on the phone. You’re all right there?”

A male voice answered with an assenting murmur.

The girl went on, “What do we ask them for then, a hundred thousand? He’s good for more, but do we want to stand around twiddling thumbs while he raises it? Take it and fade, chum. That’s the policy. Get too greedy and you get caught. Twenty minutes, half an hour at the outside. Have everything ready. Bye-bye.”

Hearing her hang up, Shayne threw the phone back and snapped, “Get dressed.”

She scrambled away and felt for her clothes. “I didn’t hear much of that. Who was it?”

Shayne drained his cognac. “Little’s daughter. Did he tell you about her?”

“He talked about her all the time! Cecily?”

“That’s the name she gave me. Did you know she was meeting him?”

Her fingers, working on the buttons of her blouse, didn’t pause.

“You caught him in one of his clear moments. Most of the time he rambled and mumbled. He was worrying about how the cars would be handled, would it be in an enclosed building or out in the open where everybody could see? I remember he said, ‘I don’t want Cecily—’”

She thrust her feet into shoes. “What else? She was more on his mind than his son, certainly than his wife. How mature she was for her age, how much she’d appreciate the insurance money, how excited she was by his new job—”

“He never said in so many words that she was going to be here to meet him?”

“If he did, it didn’t make any impression. His conversation was out of Finnegan’s Wake most of the time.”

Shayne, having dressed quickly, was waiting. She snatched up her bag and stuffed her stockings inside it. “Mike, we still haven’t come to terms.”

“We’ll have to talk about it in the car. Relax. Walk slowly.”

He didn’t open the door for her until she forced a smile. “All right, I’m relaxed. But confused.”

He left the key in the door. Getting into the Buick without haste, he waited till she was beside him, then backed out of the slot and returned to the street. At the Shell station on the corner, he backed behind two parked cars and turned off the lights.

Taking the bag out of her lap, he examined her pistol. It was a short-barreled Smith and Wesson .38, fully loaded. He replaced it without comment.

“About terms,” she said.

“There aren’t going to be any. If the only way you can get hold of this tank is by shooting me, I know you’ll do it. But not yet. You still need me. And you need everything to break the right way. If that doesn’t happen, you’ll settle for keeping it away from Diamond. That gives us both room to maneuver—not much, but some. The FBI’s are beginning to gather. They always complicate things. I don’t mind explaining it to them later, but not while it’s going on. What about Sam Geller? Can we count him out?”

“For now,” she said quietly. “He and Diamond really hate each other.”

“How many others do you have available?”

“Just three, really. I don’t understand why you’re letting me keep the gun. You don’t really trust me that much.”

“I’ll explain it to you sometime.”

“I think you want us to cut each other down to where you can handle us. That’s why you dumped Sam out of the car.”

“You’re the one who did that. All I did was open the door.”

“Mike!” she burst out. “I don’t know what this is for you! A contest, a way to make some money? You’ve been made to look like a fool, and so somebody else has to suffer. It isn’t a game for me, Mike. If our enemies get hold of this bomb, we’re finished. It’s such a tiny blob on the map, Israel! Sixteen miles across at the narrowest point. A bomb dropped on Tel Aviv would knock out the country. Whereas if we have it, if they know we have it, they may give up their crazy dreams about driving us into the sea, and come to the bargaining table.”

Shayne’s attention shifted.

A black Ford sedan, with plates identifying it as a rented car, had drawn up in front of the Flamingo Springs. The driver tapped his horn twice.

“This could be Pierre Dessau,” Shayne said. “He went for cigarettes an hour ago and didn’t come back.”

“Was that who she was talking to?”

“No, no. Dessau’s the buyer. She’s a bright, observant girl. She noticed that her father was making some major repairs on his Bentley before he left, and I think she figured out the whole thing. If that car turns around, get ready to duck.”

He was watching the stairs to the second floor of the two-level motel. A girl’s slight figure came out of one of the rooms, ran down the stairs and across to the Ford. As soon as she jumped in, the Ford backed out and reversed.

“Down,” Shayne said.

Anne dropped out of sight. Shayne lowered his head so it wouldn’t show in silhouette. The rented Ford came past. The man leaning forward over the wheel was unmistakably the six-foot-four-inch Dessau.

Shayne cramped the Buick’s wheels sharply as the light changed. He left the gas station by the side entrance and made the left turn onto Biscayne through the green light. Dessau, ahead, was driving carefully with the moving traffic, and he was easy to follow.

“Better start rounding up your people,” Shayne said. “You must have a number you can call.”

“I do, but I’ll use a pay phone, if you don’t mind. You already know far too much about us.”

He was separated from Dessau’s Ford by two cars, and the lights on this section of the boulevard were unprogrammed, changing at random. He gave the girl a quiet instruction and she reached over in back for a battered fishing hat. With the brim pulled low over his eyes, he passed the intervening cars and closed with the Ford.

“I thought that was where they were probably going,” he said after a moment as the Ford slowed. “Good old Queen Elizabeth II.”

“Mike, tell me what she’s doing! She’s going to sell it to Dessau? How did she get it out of the Oldsmobile?”

“She has a friend aboard. I think we may see him in a minute.”

The Ford parked. Shayne, half a block away, pulled into a crosswalk and quickly produced a small camera with a high-definition telephoto lens. A youth with long browning hair parted in the middle crossed from the pier. Shayne broke the camera open and loaded it with fast film.

“There’s a phone on the other side of the street,” he said. “Don’t cross here. Go back a block. Their asking price is a hundred thousand. Not pounds, probably, but dollars. If you can double that you’ll be safe.”

“You know I can’t get hold of that much money without Sam,” she said sharply. “We’ll have to take it away from them.”

“Take your time. I won’t leave without you.”

“I wish I could be sure of that. In fact, I think I’ll make sure.”

She picked the key out of the ignition and walked away briskly. The youth, his hands in his pockets, was leaning down to talk to Dessau. When he straightened, his face caught the light from a streetlamp and Shayne took his picture.

Shayne picked up his phone, and when the operator came on he said, “You were ringing me.”

“Yes—a man at the Opa-Locka Airport, Mr. Buzz Yale. Can you talk to him?”

“Yeah, get him for me.”

Dessau came out of the Ford and Shayne made a picture of the two men walking together to the pier.

“Mike, that airplane you wanted?” Buzz Yale said in another moment.

“Give it to me.”

“It’s a Lear Jet-Star on private charter. The times check. They filed a flight plan to Bogota, and then the client was called away at the last minute. It’s still on call.”

“That’s the one. How many in the crew?”

“Pilot and co-pilot. The client’s a woman—I thought you might be asking. I can get her name, but probably not without calling some attention to myself.”

“I already know it. Where’s the plane now? I want exact directions.”

“Outside Hangar Two. That’s in the General Aviation area inside the canal at the north edge of the field. Coming along the service road, it’s the second building on the right—the service road paralleling the main east-west runway.”

“All this is fine, Buzz. Can you stay near the phone? I think there may be some activity out there soon.”

“I won’t mind. It’s been a dull evening.”

“Not for me,” Shayne said.

Anne rejoined him, having taken the same roundabout route back.

“Their car’s still there,” she said anxiously. “Did anything happen?”

“Dessau and the boy went on board. Cecily’s waiting.”

She looked at her watch. “Mike, that tank is heavy, isn’t it? Too heavy for one man?”

“I’d say three or four hundred pounds. I had to jack it out.”

She sat forward suddenly. A large rubbish container was being hoisted over the Queen Elizabeth’s side. While it was being lowered into a five-ton haulaway truck, Shayne used his telescopic view finder to watch the crew gangway aft.

Presently Dessau and the youth appeared. The youth climbed into the truck cab beside the driver, and Dessau came out to the Ford.

Anne was looking around nervously, watching approaching cars.

“They couldn’t possibly be here this soon. Mike, you’ll have to help me.”

“Don’t count on me,” Shayne said. “I’m planning to umpire.” He held out his hand. “The key, Lieutenant.”

“Oh, God.”

She found it in her bag and gave it to him.

CHAPTER 15

They had scouted the spot in advance.

They were still a half mile from the incinerator, with the Florida East Coast tracks on one side, a line of warehouses on the other. Suddenly Dessau, in the black rented Ford, pulled past the truck and cut in too sharply, his directional signals going. The legend on the back of the truck said: “Stay alert, stay alive.” Its brake lights flared.

The truck cut its speed sharply to avert a collision. Dessau slowed gradually, keeping to the middle of the road and giving the truck behind him no room to pass.

The sudden move had caught Shayne in the same block. When the truck bounced to a stop, its way blocked, Shayne did the only thing possible: he honked angrily, swung across the tracks on a warehouse crossing, and passed the blockade on a cinder road on the opposite side of the tracks.

“Don’t look too interested,” he told Anne. “People hijack garbage trucks all the time in Miami.”

Dessau had dismounted and was starting back. The truck driver came out on the step of his cab, a dark burly man in a T-shirt. The youth’s face shone palely through the windshield, and that brief glimpse gave Shayne the identification he needed. It was definitely the boy he had surprised in the hold of the Queen Elizabeth.

Shayne returned to the paved road at the next crossing, and continued south. Anne was all the way around, peering out the rear window.

“You’re torturing me, Mike,” she said desperately. “Turn around and go back.”

“I keep telling you there’s no hurry. Let them dig out the tank first. That’ll take time.”

The road curved to the right, following the angle of the shore. As soon as his taillights could no longer be seen from the vehicles behind him, Shayne cut back sharply onto a parallel road and began working back toward the warehouses.

A locked gate, opening inward, barred his way. He backed off, came forward hard against the gate and burst it open.

“Now that’s more like it,” Anne commented. “Mike, look. The odds aren’t bad at all. Forget the driver. He’s not part of this. Forget Cecily. That leaves two. If we surprise them we can do it without shooting.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want shooting. I’m just not planning to do any myself.”

She made an exasperated sound and hit him. “Will you stop treating it like a game?”

The phone rang as he was about to leave the car. He picked it up and snapped, “I’ll call you back in a minute.” He added after returning the phone to its clamp, “If everybody’s very lucky.”

“We’re going to be lucky,” Anne assured him. “I have that feeling. If I have to do it without you, I’ll do it without you.”

He cut his lights, hearing a vague rumbling noise from the street as the bed of the big dump truck came up.

There were no midblock street lights in this part of town, but the scene was well lighted by the two pairs of headlights. The open ground between the warehouses was weedy and rubble-strewn. Anne, in her heels, stumbled and clutched Shayne’s shoulder. She continued to hold him.

“Mike, please help,” she whispered. “We’ll pay you very well. Please. What will you do if I’m killed?”

“Call the FBI and let them mop it up.”

“I hate you. I hate you.”

Reaching the corner of the building, she stopped and looked out carefully. The truck bed was all the way up, and the rubbish container was beginning to slide. The end of the container broke open, and trash spilled out on the street. The truck driver was facing his vehicle, his hands against the cab door. Dessau stood a few feet behind him, holding a long-barreled Luger.

“Find some rope somewhere,” Dessau called. “We’ve got to tie this chap up.”

“Now,” Anne whispered. “Mike?”

He shook his head. “As I’ve been telling you, it isn’t my war.”

“You’ll feel sorry if it doesn’t work out.”

“Why should I?” he said softly.

She jerked away from him and walked into the open. Dessau didn’t notice her till she was ten feet from him, and then all he saw was an exceptionally attractive darkhaired girl in a blouse and skirt, the blouse unbuttoned part of the way down.

Following Shayne’s advice, she didn’t hurry. She held her open bag lightly in one hand.

“Something wrong?” she asked pleasantly. “Can I help?” The boy in the upraised truck bed called suddenly, “Watch out, I know her, it’s—”

Dessau’s gun started to come around. Anne fired through the bottom of her bag and the bullet struck him in the chest. She fired again after another step. Dessau fell. She continued up to him and twisted the Luger out of his hand.

The driver looked back over his shoulder, his mouth wide.

“Keep your hands where they are,” Anne said coolly. “Everybody go on with what you were doing. Now, isn’t there a girl around here somewhere?”

Cecily, who had been crouching on the far side of the Ford, broke for the shadows between the warehouses, where she collided with Shayne.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay at that motel?” Shayne said.

“Mr. Shayne,” she said stupidly. “What are you doing here?”

“Mike, you’ll help me, won’t you,” Anne said, “now that the shooting’s over?”

“I’ll watch, thanks. You’re doing OK.” Bringing Cecily out into the light, he looked at the boy in the truck. “Do what she says, kid. She’s got all the guns and she’s a soldier.”

Taking Cecily with him, he walked up to Dessau. As the wounded man looked up from the curb, a bright red bubble broke from his mouth and dripped into the gutter.

“Can you talk?” Shayne said.

“If you say one word, Dessau,” Anne said calmly, “I’ll put a bullet in your head, but with the Luger this time, and blow it apart.”

She had taken a backward step so she could watch them all. With both guns, she looked very formidable. She gestured to the boy, but before he could respond the container resumed its slide, breaking apart as it hit the street.

“Driver,” she said curtly. “I need you. Do precisely what I say and don’t make any quick movements because I seem to be getting more and more tense. I’m working a very tricky equation. Mike, what I want you to do—and I’m not asking any more, I’m telling you—is get some of those rags from the trash and tie up the girl. Do a good job of it, hands and feet. I’ll check in a minute, and if the knot isn’t tight I’ll shoot you.”

She told the driver to join the boy and hunt for a discarded gas tank. Shayne found a rag and started tearing it into strips. Cecily, very meek, put her hands behind her and let Shayne tie her wrists.

“I don’t know what this is all about,” she complained.

“Gag her,” Anne added. “I don’t like that whine.”

The boy and the truck driver found the tank and worked it into view.

“This mother’s heavy,” the driver said, surprised.

“Put it in the Ford,” Anne said, and repeated, “in the Ford.”

They began to lift it. The boy’s grip slipped and it clanked heavily to the pavement.

Cecily squealed, “For Christ’s sake, be careful! You know what’s in it.”

They staggered past Shayne carrying the tank. He was inserting a gag in Cecily’s mouth.

Anne took two quick steps one way and then another.

“I won’t ask for advice,” she said, biting her lip. “I ought to be able to work this by myself. Nobody else will be shot,” she said as the others came back, panting, “if you all do what I tell you. Dessau is an intelligence agent, and he knew what he was letting himself in for. None of the rest of you are that involved, but you realize that I won’t hesitate to kill you if you force me to. Mike Shayne will tell you I mean what I say.”

“She means what she says,” he agreed.

She told Shayne to bind and gag the driver, then the boy, and to drag them between the warehouses. Cecily and Dessau were next. Then Shayne himself lay down and let her truss him up, using the stockings from her purse.

“Mike’s car,” Shayne heard her say under her breath.

She swung up into the cab of the truck and cut the lights. Coming down, she put a bullet into the two front tires and the radiator.

Before she left she stooped beside Shayne. “I liked what happened at the motel, Mike, but I truly hate you.”

Her lips brushed his cheek.

The next thing he heard was the roar of the Ford’s motor. She turned at the next corner, heading for the unloading area at the rear of the warehouses, where Shayne had left his car.

Shayne rolled, kicking a weight off his legs. Hearing Dessau’s harsh breathing, he wriggled in that direction.

Light glowed suddenly as Anne, in the Ford, turned in through the broken gate. Shayne saw Dessau lying on his side. The big man’s neck was unnaturally twisted and his teeth were bloody.

Shayne rolled again, twisting, and jack-knifed himself over Dessau’s feet and back along his body until their hands touched. Shayne was making half-sounds through his gag. He thought he felt Dessau’s hand pull away slightly. Groping, he worked the knot in the stocking against Dessau’s fingers.

There were three more shots from the rear of the warehouse, then the sound of the Ford leaving. A moment later it passed on the street, moving fast. A horn tooted twice, derisively.

Dessau, of them all, had the most to gain by getting loose. Shayne willed his fingers to move. They were flaccid and unresponsive. Dessau’s breath was whistling feebly in his throat.

Shayne shifted position, aware that he had very little time. Now he thought he felt a faint answering pressure. He tightened his shoulders and began working his wrists back and forth. He had two of Dessau’s fingers in one hand, the thumb in the other, and for a moment he was able to work them almost as extensions of his own. He felt the stocking around his wrists begin to loosen.

Now he was able to pull at the knot in the cloth strip around Dessau’s wrists. Shayne had tied the knot himself, and in the end Anne had neglected to check it. After a moment’s tense fumbling he succeeded in picking it apart. Dessau rolled. Shayne felt hands at his wrists.

He held still and counted backwards from twenty-five. His hands were free before the count reached zero.

After that it was only a moment, and Shayne was up and running, tearing at the gag. He tripped on something and went sprawling, and felt a jagged piece of metal bite into his hand.

The Buick’s two front tires had been shot out. Fluid was leaking from a hole in the radiator. The phone had been ripped out by the roots and thrown away.

Nevertheless, when Shayne hit the switch, the motor caught instantly.

He came back fast through the open gate, running well enough on the rims as long as he moved in a straight line. But he barely cleared the side of the warehouse as he came about, heeling over, fighting the wheel.

He knew this part of town well. Plotting the straightest, shortest line to the nearest phone, he bounced over the railroad tracks and continued inland.

The red warning lights on the dashboard were on. The motor was hammering. Shayne kept the gas pedal all the way down even as he felt the car beginning to lose power. Steam swirled up across the windshield and up around his feet.

He was in a neighborhood of unoccupied buildings and vacant lots. Each new bump flattened the rims further and the ride became increasingly rough. The steering wheel seemed to be trying to tear itself out of his hands.

He saw lights ahead.

Waves of heat rolled back into the car. He saw an outside phone booth, and the Buick nearly reached it before the head gasket blew. Even then he kept going, bucking to a stop, smoking a few yards short of the booth.

He leaped out, feeling in his pockets for change. They were empty.

He uttered one single explosive epithet, swerved without breaking stride, and ran onto the porch of the nearest house. He kicked out a glass panel. Reaching in, he opened the front door. Before he could find a light switch, he had kicked over an umbrella stand and a chair. The phone was all the way through in the kitchen.

The Miami Police Headquarters had recently installed separate numbers for each extension. Shayne dialed Will Gentry’s number, and the police chief picked up the phone promptly.

“It’s Shayne. This has to be fast. Listen carefully. There’s a Lear Jet-Star at Opa-Locka, in front of the second hangar to the right in General Aviation. Buzz Yale can point it out to you. It absolutely can’t be allowed to take off. Call the tower. Tell them to hold up air clearance, and block the runway. Fake a collision—yeah. But I don’t want the people in that airplane to know they’ve been spotted. I’ll hold.”

There was a rustle in the doorway. A woman stepped into view, holding a shotgun in a businesslike manner. She was tall, wearing rumpled yellow pajamas, her dark hair in curlers, large horn-rimmed glasses halfway down her nose.

“What is—” she demanded hoarsely, then cleared her throat and started over. “Who are you and just what do you think you’re doing?”

Shayne held up his hand, palm out. “I’ll show you my credentials, but to do that I have to put this hand in my pocket. Don’t pull the trigger.”

He brought out his wallet and shook it open to show his detective’s license. She didn’t look away from his face.

“I’ve seen your picture,” she said. “You’re Michael Shayne. And I’d like to know how being a private detective entitles you to break into strange houses in the middle of the night.”

“I had to use your phone, and I didn’t have time to ring the doorbell and go through a long song and dance. I’ll see that everything’s fixed.”

She lowered the shotgun muzzle and pushed her glasses further up her nose. “All right, since you ask me so charmingly, feel free to use the phone.”

“Thanks.”

Gentry came back on. “That’s taken care of. They didn’t ask for an explanation, but I’m going to. That is, if you have a moment.”

“There’s one other thing we have to get out of the way, Will. Is the FBI still hanging over you?”

“Breathing heavily.”

“We’ve got some picking up to do, and I think we can let them help.”

He told Gentry where he could find Cecily Little and the three others. One of the three would be needing an ambulance.

“Now I have one more call while that’s getting underway,” Shayne said. “Keep this line open. I’ll get back to you.”

“Mike, make it a promise.”

Shayne sighed. “Unless the lady here decides to let me have it with a twenty-gauge shotgun, I promise I’ll call you.”

The shotgun, in fact, was leaning in a corner, and the lady had turned on the heat under a kettle on the stove and was casually taking out her curlers.

Shayne dialed the number of his mobile operator and identified himself.

“Has anybody named Jerry Diamond called me?”

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Shayne.”

Shayne’s grip tightened. He had been on first-name terms with this girl for months. Unknown to the telephone company, she worked for him as a kind of combined secretary and answering service. He took her to dinner occasionally, and had loaned her father money to open a liquor store.

He said carefully, “If I can’t get in touch with the guy I’ll have to let the cops have him. He won’t like that.”

Diamond’s voice broke in. “I’m on, bastard,” he said roughly. “That was quite a trick there, dumping Sam Geller to slow us down. Like throwing the baby to the wolves. I’ve been waiting for your number to light up. You know what’s going to happen if you don’t stop trying to finagle me? You’re going to end up dead.”

“I told you I have to do this my own way. If you want to waste time trading threats, go ahead. It’s supposed to be good to get things off your chest. What else is bothering you?”

Diamond hesitated. “You had something to tell me.”

“Do you want me to apologize for dumping Geller? That was a spur-of-the-moment idea. Those cars of yours stood out like fire engines, and I don’t like to be that conspicuous. You probably know that your man Dessau has been dealing for the gas tank with Little’s daughter. Has he asked you for your bid yet?”

“No,” Diamond said tightly. “Does he have it?”

“He did have it, but Anne Blagden took it away, all by herself. A neat little guerrilla operation.”

“If you’re crapping me, Shayne—Where is she?”

“On the way to the airport by now. She’s in a rented black Ford. She has to pick up two of her people at the Queen Elizabeth, and then she has a few traffic lights before she hits the expressway. If you hurry, maybe you can get there first.”

“Which airport, Opa-Locka?”

“I think so. The arrangements have all been made there. Would you like me to describe the plane for you and tell you where to find it?”

“Yes!”

“And if you take it away from her, you won’t forget you owe me another thirty-six thousand?”

“Of course not. We’ll be leaving from Miami International. Hubble Oil Company, executive jet. Meet me there.”

“That sounds believable, and I think I’ll believe it.”

He repeated the directions he had already given Gentry, and wished Diamond luck.

A moment later the operator was back on the line.

“He flew out of here so fast, Mike! He’s been pacing up and down behind me for fifteen minutes. My hands are so slippery I can hardly hold the phone.”

“Baby, you’re always a great help,” Shayne said. “Everybody’s offering me money today, and I’ll steer some of it your way.”

“Oh, well. He did have a wild look, but I knew he wouldn’t shoot me. It was the idea of it more than anything. I’m glad you’re all right.”

“We aren’t home yet. Get me Will Gentry. No, wait a minute. I forgot I’m not in the car. I can dial it myself.”

Across the kitchen, his involuntary hostess was setting out cups. “Do you want some coffee?”

He looked at her in surprise. Without the curlers, her hair fell softly to her shoulders. Her face shone with some kind of oil. She had laid her glasses aside, and all at once she was an amazingly handsome woman.

“I’m not going anyplace right away,” Shayne said. “My car’s got two flat wheels and a blown engine. What’s your name?”

“Sarah. Cream and sugar?”

“Just black, Sarah.”

He watched her, still astonished by the sudden transformation. Shaking his head, he dialed Gentry’s number.

“While we’re rounding up people,” Shayne said, “we might as well include everybody. I wouldn’t want Jerry Diamond to feel left out. He and two others are going to try to take over the Jet-Star. Now be careful, Will. Don’t move till they start shooting. Depending on what happened to a guy named Sam Geller, that may be the only charge against Diamond we can make stick.”

“Sam Geller?”

“Yeah, did you find him?”

“We pulled him out of a smashed-up car. He’s got a broken neck, but he’s expected to live.”

“Hold on a minute.” Shayne covered the phone and spoke to the woman at the stove. “How’s it happen you’re the one who comes downstairs with the shotgun? No man in the house?”

“No man in the house,” she said without looking toward him, “unfortunately.”

When he lifted the phone again, it was apparent at once that something new was happening in Gentry’s office. He heard an excited babble. His own name came through clearly. Other phones were ringing.

An authoritative voice, close to the open phone, told Gentry, “Enough is enough, Chief. Start talking or you’re under arrest.”

“In my own headquarters,” Gentry said mildly. “I’d never live it down.”

The other voice snapped, “Where’s Mike Shayne?”

“Somewhere around town. He keeps calling in. Now if you don’t mind, this call’s confidential!”

“Confidential!” the other man roared.

Gentry spoke into the phone. “Give me your number. I’ll call back as soon as some of the dust settles here.” Shayne read the number from the dial and hung up.

The woman held out the coffee. “Airplanes. FBI men. Shooting. What’s going on, is the public permitted to know?”

Shayne took the cup and kicked a stool over within reach of the phone.

“I don’t know how much will get in the papers. There’s going to be quite a bit of pressure to keep it quiet. How long have you lived around here?”

“Three months. I work at the university. Now don’t be alarmed, please, men sometimes are, but I’m a professor of romance languages. Recently divorced. It’s healing nicely.”

“Very nicely,” Shayne agreed.

She laughed. “I made a vow once. Nobody would ever see me in curlers except my husband. What can I do if somebody kicks down the front door?”

The phone stirred. Shayne caught it in midring.

Gentry said quietly, “Mike, there’s a little more trouble. We’ve got a bomb threat on the Queen Elizabeth, and you know what kind of a bomb. I’m telling people it’s a fake. Right? In the light of this Opa-Locka business—”

“Tell me about it,” Shayne snapped.

“Somebody phoned the mayor. Male voice, British accent. Atom bomb on the Queen. Said if the mayor didn’t believe in atom bombs, to check with Mike Shayne. He wants two hundred thousand in cash.”

“Delivered where?” Shayne said grimly.

“On the front steps of the Municipal Auditorium. And after that he wants an hour. He’ll call from wherever he is then and let us know how to find the bomb and how to disconnect. Mike, you aren’t taking this seriously, by any chance?”

“Damn right I’m taking it seriously. It’s another switch; I hope the last one. Get that money ready, and hurry.”

CHAPTER 16

Shayne thanked his hostess for the sip of coffee, and borrowed her car.

Less than ten minutes later, after a fast ride, he stalked into Police Headquarters on Northwest 11th Street. The downstairs rooms, the stairs, the hall outside Gentry’s office, and the office itself were crowded with people, most of them strangers to Shayne. Pat Crowley, the heavy, coldfaced Director of the FBI’s Southern District, was perched on the corner of Gentry’s desk. The police chief leaned back comfortably in his swivel chair, hands behind his head, an unlighted cigar in his mouth.

Crowley exploded off the desk at the sight of Shayne. “By God, Shayne! If I have anything to say about it, and I think I do, you’ll never be in a position to pull anything as raw as this again.”

Shayne said evenly, “Don’t distract me, Crowley. I’ve always wanted to see how you’d look with a broken jaw, but it has to wait. What happened at the airport, Will?”

“According to your scenario,” Gentry replied cheerfully. “Three shots fired, nobody hit. Then the floodlights came on and both sides were asked to drop their guns. Crowley’s lads managed to hold their fire. Six prisoners.”

“Did you find an automobile gas tank on the plane?”

“Heavy as lead—is that the one you’ve been looking for?”

“It ought to be heavy as lead. That’s what it’s lined with. Have somebody open it up—but carefully, Will. Let’s see what’s inside it. How about the other end of town?”

“Only three. A tall man with a bad gunshot wound, in the middle of the road, unconscious. The word is that he may not make it.”

“Anne Blagden better hope he does, because if he dies it’s second-degree murder. Only two others?”

“Tied up, a girl and a city sanitation driver. The girl’s in the next room if you want to talk to her.”

“Have you got the blackmail money?”

“Two hundred thousand even. They opened up a bank for us. The ship’s been evacuated. Crowley brought in an Atomic Energy Commission man—where is he?” He peered around the crowded room. “Manship?”

A rumpled gray-haired civilian came forward. “I’m Dr. Manship,” he said. “Can you tell us anything about the size of this purported bomb, Mr. Shayne?”

“Seventeen pounds of plutonium.”

“Seventeen pounds,” the man repeated.

“With a force of—what was it—twenty-five kilotons. Very dirty—I think that was the way he put it. And he said something about a three-switch triggering device. Do you go to conferences? Would you recognize the name Quentin Little?”

“Of Camberwell, of course.” He took off his glasses and polished them carefully. “And he wasn’t the strangest of the English, by any means. Not that all of the Americans are altogether normal. Droll sense of humor, Little.”

“Sense of humor!” Crowley cried. “We’re talking about an atomic alert, and that ain’t funny! Let’s get cracking. The man said one hour.”

“From the time he picks up the money,” Shayne said. “And he knows you won’t lay out two hundred grand unless I can persuade you there really is a bomb. We can take a couple of minutes to talk to the girl. Crowley, I think you’d better sit in on this. You too, Will.”

At the door Shayne stopped the FBI man and said quietly, “We’re going to do this my way, Crowley. Low key. She’s jumpy.”

Crowley shrugged angrily and followed him to the next room. Gentry told the matron to leave them alone. Shayne sat down across from Cecily, who was playing with a pack of cigarettes.

“Hello, Cecily. That didn’t work out too well, did it?”

“Hi, Mr. Shayne. Thanks to you, it didn’t work out too well.” She gestured around the bleak room. “The land of the free.”

“What’s the boy’s name?”

“Jack Lightfoot.”

“Did Dessau untie him?”

“That bastard Dessau was thinking of nobody but himself.” She jumped the cigarettes over a book of matches. “Jack cut himself loose on a can or something. He was bleeding, and he didn’t untie me, you’ll notice.”

“He’s got everybody on edge. He says he hid the bomb somewhere on the Queen, and he’ll set it off unless we pay him two hundred thousand dollars.”

That surprised her. She looked around at the others. Shayne told her who they were, and he repeated the message Jack Lightfoot had given the mayor.

“He’s got money on the brain,” she said.

“How well do you know him, Cecily?”

“Old Jack? Too well.”

“Do you think he’ll do it if we don’t pay him?”

She sniffed nervously and shook out a cigarette. “I guess so. How much is that in English money?”

Shayne told her. She lit her cigarette.

“Which wouldn’t go too far the way prices are today, would it?”

“Did you collect anything from Dessau?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Say, what did you do, Mr. Shayne, follow us from the motel?”

“Right behind you, all the way. I didn’t see any money passed. I don’t think you ended up with a cent.”

“Too true, too true.” She looked at the other faces again and sat up straighter. “Mr. Shayne, I’d better give you my side of it, I guess. When Dessau called me up—and that’s another rat, incidentally, a real rat—and told me my Dad had smuggled in an atom bomb, I nearly swallowed my tongue. I was so surprised. It just isn’t Dad’s style.” Her face clouded. “I mean wasn’t, don’t I?”

“Who told you he was dead?”

“Pierre. He said you stabbed him in a fight, but why would you do that?”

“So you didn’t know a bomb was involved until today?”

“I certainly did not. I wouldn’t have let Dad do it. And then that Jack. I don’t know all the ins and outs, but he got his hands on it, somehow, took it out of Dad’s Bentley,”

She checked the effect of her story on the three men around her, but they had all listened to too many stories. Their faces were equally cold, equally impassive.

She continued, “And Dessau wanted to know what I thought we should do about it. I told him, and I told Jack the same, that the first thing to do was get it off the ship, and then either turn it in or bury it. And the solution we came up with, finally, was to put it in the garbage and let it get burned. I know you can’t burn plutonium, but whatever was left would be dumped at sea.”

“You didn’t think of selling it?” Shayne said.

Her eyes were wide. “You can’t put an advert in the paper—‘One used atom bomb, good condition, best offer accepted’—can you? And I wouldn’t, anyway. Dessau did suggest it, and I told him flatly, ‘What do you think I am, Pierre, a reactionary?’”

“Where does Jack stand politically, does he agree with you?”

“Even more so! He’s against everything! On top of that, he has about as much loyalty as a stick of wood.”

There was a light knock on the door and Dr. Manship stepped in. “You wanted to know what was inside that gas tank.”

“Yeah,” Shayne said.

“The lid has been cut off twice. The second time it was stuck on with a few spot welds. It won’t hold gasoline. There are two inches of lead sheathing inside, but that’s all.”

“The rat,” Cecily said. “Typical.”

“Meaning that that definitely is an atom bomb on the Queen Elizabeth,” Crowley snapped. “So what are we waiting for?”

“What’s the effective range of a bomb that size?” Shayne asked.

“A quarter of a mile, perhaps, if it’s exploded on deck. In the interior of the ship, much less.”

“Can I ask a question?” Cecily said, half rising. “I didn’t pay any attention. How far away are we from there?”

“About an eighth of a mile,” Shayne said. The distance was actually a mile and a half, but he was counting on her unfamiliarity with Miami. “Don’t get excited. We haven’t paid him the money yet.”

“Yes, but listen—”

Crowley made a decisive movement. “Shayne, there’s something wrong with your sense of priorities. An hour doesn’t give us much time to evacuate everybody inside a quarter-mile radius. We’ll need every available man and vehicle. Gentry! I want you to make the radio announcement. Calmness. Firmness. Our real enemy here is panic.”

Gentry was watching Shayne. “What do you think, Mike?”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Shayne said carelessly. “But Cecily and I are going to stay here and talk.”

“Let’s go a quarter of a mile away and talk,” she said. One of Gentry’s division chiefs appeared in the doorway. “There’s another call coming in to the mayor, Chief. We’ve got it on the amplifier.”

Gentry and Crowley went to the other office to listen, leaving the door open.

Cecily said in a scared voice, “What do you want to talk about?”

“What it was like at home. Your father gave me one version, but I don’t know how much of it to believe.”

“What difference does it make?”

In the other room, an amplified voice said, “For the sake of your pretty little city, Mr. Mayor, I hope you have the money ready.”

A voice answered, “It’s almost all counted. Give us another five minutes.”

“Five more minutes, okey-do. I’ll start timing it now. Check. While we’re waiting, I’ll tell you the way this is going to be. I promised I’d do that.”

“I’m listening.”

“Pass it on to the interested parties. The bomb has been booby-trapped. One small misstep, and boom. But not to worry. I have a gun. I’ll repeat that. I have a gun. If anybody at all approaches me while I’m picking up the money I will shoot myself between the eyes. I hope that’s clear. I’m not too enchanted with this world. It will be the easiest thing I’ve done in weeks.”

“That’s clear.”

“And after I blow out what we laughingly call my brains, you will have to fumble around the ship searching for the bomb, hoping you can make it harmless before it goes off. On the other hand, if you act intelligently, if no one takes a shot at me or follows my car, I will place that telephone call in exactly one hour, and tell you how to proceed. Two hundred thousand is cheap! The ship alone is worth fifty times that. The Cunard Line will reimburse you. Shall I go over any of this again, or do you have it?”

“No one will shoot at you,” the mayor said. “Just pick up the money and get going.”

There was an outbreak of excited voices in the other room as the conversation ended.

“Then why don’t we—” Cecily said, beginning to get up.

“Not yet,” Shayne told her.

He continued to question her while she became more and more agitated. Sirens were sounding all over the city. “Mr. Shayne, I can’t keep my mind on this. Please?” Standing up, Shayne told her to come with him. Downstairs, he took her thin arm and they went out through the same section of the revolving door.

He put her into the front seat of his borrowed car and got in beside her. Buildings were emptying all around them. Loud-speaker cars cruised slowly along the street warning all occupants to leave their homes immediately and move back from the bayfront.

Shayne’s was the only car attempting to drive east. At one point he had to detour through Lummus Park, around the courthouse and back to 5th Street. Cecily shivered beside him, hugging herself. Her generation had never known any other age than the atomic, and she knew what had happened to the Japanese cities.

The streets were emptier the further they went. The official party had gathered around several parked cars at the corner of 5th and Biscayne. They were now the only people in sight. The MacArthur Causeway had been closed. Power boats from the yacht basin were hurrying down the bay.

Shayne joined the others, still holding Cecily’s elbow. On the steps of the auditorium, across the boulevard, he saw a conspicuous suitcase, standing alone.

“Another thirty seconds and his five minutes are up,” Gentry said.

Crowley, at his elbow, growled, “The son of a bitch is bluffing. I know it. But we can’t take a chance. All right, he wins this trick. But we’ll get him, I promise you that. We’ll nail his hide to the door.” He looked at Cecily. “What do we need her here for?”

“She knows Lightfoot. We may want to ask her some questions.”

“In one way I know him,” she said.

A solitary car appeared on the boulevard, traveling south. It passed them, came about in a wide turn and drew up at the foot of the auditorium steps. The boy came into the light, seeming even paler than when Shayne had last seen him. He had a pistol in one hand, a bullhorn in the other.

He raised the bullhorn.

“To everybody within range of my voice,” he said slowly and distinctly. “I will shoot myself if approached. Do not attempt to follow me. Wait one hour. A small price to pay to avoid enormous destruction and loss of life.”

“I’d like to pick the bastard off where he stands,” Crowley said. “I could do it, too.”

“Does that sound like the sort of thing Jack would say?” Shayne asked Cecily. “‘Enormous destruction and loss of life’?”

“I guess so, but it’s a bit phoney.”

One of the FBI men was watching the youth through field glasses. Shayne took the glasses out of his hands, tightened the knob and focussed on Jack as he approached the suitcase. The boy walked slowly, scuffing his heels. The wrist of the hand holding the gun was clumsily bandaged. The bandage was red.

Jack lifted the suitcase and went back to his car, one shoulder dragged down by the weight of all the paper money. His car didn’t start at once. A long moment passed before it moved off with a jerk.

Shayne looked at the sidewalk where he had stopped to deliver his warning through the bullhorn.

“Let’s take a look, Will.”

He pulled Cecily across with him, feeling her resistance increase as they came closer to the great passenger ship, looming up over the piers to the left. There was a small pool of new blood on the sidewalk where the boy had stood, and a double trail of drops leading to the steps.

“At this rate he won’t have much left in an hour,” Shayne said.

Cecily said in a voice that she tried to keep from breaking, “Mr. Shayne, why don’t we join everybody somewhere else?”

“It’s less noisy here. What do you think of Jack’s credentials as a booby-trap artist?”

“To tell you the truth, I never thought of him that way. He can change a light bulb, and that’s about it.”

“I’ve seen a sample of his work with a welding torch. I doubt if the kid ever took a shop course. I don’t think he could put together a booby-trap that would really go off. I’m tempted to go aboard and find out.”

“You go aboard,” she said. “I’ll join the others.”

He looked at his watch. “Fifty-eight more minutes. Plenty of time.”

She kept pulling at him. “See, he’s kind of demented, Mr. Shayne. He’d like to be famous. What a thing if you could blow up the Queen Elizabeth! You know what it stands for. The monarchy! Money and luxury! And if you included Miami Beach at the same time—it’s a bomber’s dream! Everybody’d hear the name Jack Lightfoot.”

“I take it you’ve talked to him about this.”

“All right! We did have this sneaking suspicion that Dad might be bringing out a bomb, and we kicked the subject around—but it was just talk! I didn’t give him a bit of encouragement. Once he got that notion in his mind, you couldn’t buy it out with a million pounds. You think he’s going to telephone anybody in an hour? You don’t know Jack Lightfoot. He’ll be off somewhere looking at the telly, chuckling like a damn ghoul. If he hasn’t bled to death by that time!”

“You’ve talked me into it,” Shayne said. “The safest and best thing would be to go aboard now. Manship, you’d better come with us.”

“I expect you’re right,” Manship said calmly. “I’ve got some protective suits in the car.”

“Bring three,” Shayne told him.

Manship crossed the boulevard to his car, returning a moment later with several bulky coveralls and two portable Geiger counters. Shayne held out one of the suits to Cecily. She shrank back.

“No!”

“If it goes off, it won’t make any difference if you’re there or out here.”

In the end he needed the help of two cops to get her dressed and zipped up.

Shayne borrowed a pair of handcuffs and chained their wrists together. She had to be dragged all the way. The noises she was making were muffled by the tightly sealed hood, but through the plastic face mask he saw a face contorted with terror. She shrieked, reaching the bottom of the gangplank, and fainted. He carried her up, unlocked the handcuffs on his own wrist and cuffed her to the rail.

They found the bomb within minutes of coming aboard.

It was on the bridge, in the most obvious place, lying at the foot of the great wheel. Wires were strewn about. The bomb was in a rectangular metal box about eighteen inches long and four inches high. A separate box, much smaller, was wired to the main one, and also attached to an ordinary drugstore alarm clock. The alarm was set for the half hour, well in advance of Jack’s announced sixty-minute deadline.

Manship’s Geiger counters had so far given no sign of alarm. He put them down and studied the setup. Looking at Shayne, he shrugged and took out a pair of needlenosed pliers and an ordinary screwdriver. He waved Shayne off the bridge.

From the glassed-in deck, Shayne could see the knot of officials around the cars on the other side of the boulevard. Cecily, at the rail two decks down, was thrashing around trying to free herself.

Five minutes went by. Shayne began to itch inside the protective clothes.

There was a sound behind him and Dr. Manship came out. He had unzipped his hood and thrown it back. Shayne pulled his own zipper.

“I always did think Little was a bit of a nut,” Manship said. “There’s nothing inside but dirt.”

“Dirt?”

“Not plutonium. Ordinary garden dirt.”

Shayne unlocked Cecily’s cuffs and took her down the gangplank. The others ran toward them.

The two groups met at the mouth of the pier. Shayne stepped out of his spaceman’s costume and left it on the sidewalk, reaching for a cigarette.

Everybody wanted to talk at once. Manship’s news passed quickly to those in the rear.

Crowley was scowling. “By God, there better be some good explanation of this. We evacuated half the city of Miami!”

Shayne had released Cecily, but she stayed where she was, shaking. One of the cops peeled off her bulky uniform. She emerged gasping for breath and looked around. As soon as she understood where she was she screamed wordlessly, clutching her forehead with both hands.

“You really did think there was a bomb,” Shayne said. “I wasn’t sure. I thought the reason you killed your father was to keep him from giving the trick away before you could make some money out of it.”

She shuddered helplessly, pulling her hair.

Gentry said quietly, “Explain that for me, Mike.”

“Everybody else was busy somewhere else when Little was killed. Cecily was the only one who could have squeezed it in. But it had nothing to do with the bomb, apparently. It was strictly a family matter.”

He took a small sheaf of papers out of his inside pocket and sorted out Little’s letter to his insurance company, cutting Shayne in for a third of the death benefit. He made the shuddering girl look at it. When she realized what it was she screamed again.

“Are you sure about this, Mike?” Gentry said.

“She was the big thing in Little’s life. Drunk or not, if he’d expected her to be meeting him, he would have said something about it. It was a big surprise when she got in his car after he came through the Customs. She told him she’d run away from England and he had to take care of her. He’d arranged with me to crack up the Bentley to get the search out of the way, but he couldn’t do that while Cecily was with him. He drove her to a room she said she’d rented. He didn’t know Miami, but even so, he wouldn’t have gone in that Brownsville building with anybody but his daughter. She put a knife in him and went out the back way. I think she had a rented car waiting. Then she came back to the pier and pretended to be looking for him. She could say anything she liked about the arrangements. He was dead, and couldn’t contradict her.”

“What’s this about a family matter?” Gentry pursued.

“She knew about the insurance—she and her brother were down for fifty thousand apiece. But she couldn’t know he’d set that up expecting to be killed. I think she saw Anne Blagden kissing him when they separated on the pier. Or she thought he’d be arrested for smuggling and the insurance would be canceled. Or he’d be fired for drinking and couldn’t keep up with the premiums. Too many things could go wrong. And Cecily’s a girl who doesn’t like to wait.”

She looked at him wonderingly. “I think I’m going out of my mind. Something bad’s going to happen.”

“I agree with you,” Shayne said, “but you can use your share of the insurance to pay the lawyers.”

Gentry ground a cigarette under his heel. “An insurance murder, quite a comedown. Don’t answer this if you don’t feel like it. When you put on that fancy suit did you know it wasn’t a real bomb?”

Shayne grinned ruefully. “The odds were against it, but I would have looked pretty stupid if I’d been wrong.”

“Along with looking pretty dead.”

“I spent three or four hours with Little,” Shayne said. “They were concentrated hours. I’ve been talking to people about him ever since. He had a sense of humor, everybody tells me, and I saw signs of it when he could hardly stand up, and fully expected to be shot to death the next day. Very bright—everybody agrees on that point. Look at the deal from his point of view. He’d attempted suicide once. Dessau and Diamond offered to arrange it for him on a higher political level, so his death would mean something, and threw in a big insurance settlement for his loving daughter. For Little’s purposes, dirt was as good as plutonium, so why take a chance on smuggling the real stuff out of the laboratory? And what a joke on Dessau, a man I’m sure he couldn’t have liked. But two hard-headed intelligence agents, Diamond and Anne Blagden, were sure it was a real bomb, so the rest of us acted accordingly. And it was just too big. Too much money seemed to be involved. People began going off on tangents, first Dessau, then Lightfoot.”

Crowley had been prowling around behind Gentry trying to keep from interrupting.

“What’s this about intelligence agents?” he demanded. “You’ll have to start at the beginning, Shayne, and take me through it step by step.”

Shayne looked at him wearily.

“That’s the way it usually happens. Call off the emergency. I’ll meet you at Gentry’s office in two hours. Right now I’ve got to return a borrowed car.”

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16