“They held me - and she pulled out my fingernails.” She shuddered again, and Lorna Page laughed lightly. Manny cupped his hands around a gold Dunhill lighter for her while she lit a cigarette. “They kept asking me where the treasure was - and each time I couldn’t answer she pulled a nail with the pliers. They made a tearing sound as they came out.” Sherry “broke off and held her injured hand protectively against her stomach. I knew how near she was to breaking completely and I held her close, trying to transmit strength to her by physical contact.
“Gently, baby, gently now,” I whispered, and she pressed a little closer to me. I stroked her hair, and tried once again to control my anger, bearing down hard upon it before it clouded my wits.
The motorboat ran in and grounded on the beach. We climbed out and stood on the white sands while the guards ringed us with levelled weapons.
“Okay, Harry,” Manny pointed- “There’s your boat all ready for you.” The whaleboat was drawn up on the beach. “The tanks are full and when you’ve shown us the goods you can take off.”
He spoke easily, but the girl beside him looked at us with hot predatory eyes - the way a mongoose looks at a chicken. I wondered what way she had chosen for us. I guessed that Manny had promised us to her for her pleasure without reservations - just as soon as he was through with us.
“I hope we aren’t going to play games, Harry. I hope you’re going to be sensible - and not waste our time.”
I had noticed that Manny had surrounded himself with his own men.
Four of them, all armed with pistols, one of them my old acquaintance who had driven the Rover on our first meeting. To balance them there were ten black seamen under a petty officer, and already I sensed that the opposition was divided into two increasingly hostile parties. Manny farther reduced the number of seamen in the party by detailing two of them to stay with the motorboat. Then he turned to me, “If you are ready, Harry, you may lead the way.
I had to help Sherry, holding her elbow and guiding her up through the grove. She was so weak that she stumbled repeatedly and her breathing was distressed and ragged before we reached the caves.
With the mob of armed men following us closely, we went on along the edge of the slope. Surreptitiously I glanced at my watch. It was nine o’clock. One hour to go before the case of gelignite under the crash boat blew. The timing was still within the limits I had set.
I made a small show out of locating the precise spot where the chest was buried, and it was with difficulty that I refrained from glancing up the slope to where the fold of ground was screened by vegetation.
“Tell them to dig here,” I said to Manny, and stepped back. Four seamen handed their weapons to a comrade and assembled the small folding army-type shovels they had brought with them.
The soil was soft and freshly turned so they went down at an alarming speed. They would expose the chest within minutes.
“The girl’s hurt,” I said to Manny, “she must sit down.” He glanced at me, and I saw his mind work swiftly. He knew Sherry could not run far and I think he welcomed the opportunity to distract some of the seamen - for he spoke briefly to the petty officer and I led Sherry to the palm tree and sat her down against the stem.
She sighed with weary relief, and two of the seamen came to stand over us with cocked weapons.
I glanced up the slope, but there was no sign of anything suspicious there, although I knew Chubby must be watching us intently. Apart from the two guards, everyone else was gathered expectantly around the four men who were already knee-deep in the freshly dug hole.
Even out two guards were consumed with curiosity, their attention kept wandering and they glanced repeatedly at the group forty yards away.
I heard quite clearly the clang as a spade struck the metal of the chest - and there was a shout of excitement. They all crowded around the excavation with a babble of rising voices, beginning to pull and elbow each other for the opportunity to look down on to it. Our two guards turned their backs on us, and took a step or two in the same direction. It was more than I could have hoped for.
Manny Resnick-shoved two seamen aside roughly, and jumped down into the hole beside the diggers. I heard him shouting, “All right then, bring those ropes and let’s lift it out. Carefully, don’t damage anything.”
Lorna Page was leaning out over the hole also. It was perfect.
I lifted my right hand and wiped my forehead slowly in the signal I had arranged with Chubby, and as I dropped my hand again, I seized Sherry and rolled swiftly backwards into the shallow rain-washed runnel.
It caught Sherry by surprise, and I had handled her roughly in my anxiety to get under cover. She cried out as I hurt her already painful injuries.
The two guards whirled at the cry, lifting their machineguns and I knew that they were going to fire - and that the shallow trench provided no cover.
“Now, Chubby, now!” I prayed and threw myself on top of Sherry to shield her from the blast of machinegun fire and I clapped both hands over her ears to protect them.
At that instant Chubby switched the knob on the electric battery blaster, and the impulse ran down the insulated wire that we had concealed so carefully the night before. There was half a case of gelignite crammed into the iron pay chest - as much explosive as I dared use without destroying Sherry and myself in the blast.
I imagined Chubby’s fiendish glee as the case blew. It blew upwards, deflected by the sides of the excavation - but I had packed the sticks of gelignite with sand and handfuls of semi-precious stones to serve as primitive shrapnel and to contain the blast and make it even more vicious.
The group of men around the hole were lifted high in the air, spinning and somersaulting like a troupe of insane acrobats, and a column of sand and dust shot a hundred feet into the air.
The earth jarred under us, slamming into our prone bodies - then the shock wave tore across us. It knocked sprawling the two guards who had been about to fire down on us, ripping their clothing from their bodies.
I thought my eardrums had both burst, I was completely deafened but I knew that I had saved Sherry’s ears from damage. Deafened and half blinded by dust, I rolled off Sherry and scratched frantically in the sandy bottom of the trench. My fingers hit the machinegun buried there and I dragged it out, pulling off the protective rags and coming swiftly to my knees.
Both the guards nearest me were alive, one crawling to his knees and the other sitting up dazedly with blood from a burst eardrum trickling down his cheek.
I killed them with two short bursts that knocked them down in the sand. Then I looked towards the broken heap of humanity around the excavation.
There was small, convulsive movement there and soft moans and whimpering sounds. I stood up shakily from the trench - and I saw Chubby standing up on the slope. He was shouting, but I heard nothing for the ringing buzzing din in my ears.
I stood there, swaying slightly, peering stupidly around me and Sherry rose to her feet beside me. She touched my shoulder, saying something, and with relief I heard her voice as the ringing in my ears subsided slightly.
I looked again towards the area of the explosion and saw a snw*e and frightening sight. A half-human figure, stripped of clothing and most of its skin, a raw bleeding thing with one arm half torn loose at the shoulder socket and dangling at its side by a shred of flesh rose slowly from beside the excavation like some horrible phantom from the grave.
It stood like that for the long moment which it took me to recognize Manny Resnick. It seemed impossible that he should have survived that holocaust, but more than that he began walking towards me.
He tottered step after step, closer and closer, and I stood frozen, unable to move myself. I saw then that he was blinded, the flying sand had scorched his eyeballs and flayed the skin from his face.
“Oh God! Oh God!” Sherry whispered beside me, and it broke the spell. I lifted the machinegun and the stream of bullets that tore into Manny Resnick’s chest were a mercy.
I was still dazed, staring about me at the shambles we had created when Chubby reached me. He took my arm and I could hear his voice as he shouted, “Are you okay, Harry?” I nodded and he went on, The whaleboat! We have got to make sure of the whaleboat.”
“I turned to Sherry. “Go to the cave. Wait for me there,” and she turned away obediently.
“Make sure of these first,” I mumbled to Chubby, and we went to the heap of bodies about the shattered iron chest. All of them were dead or would soon be so.
Lorna Page lay upon her back. The blast had torn off her outer clothing and the slim pale body was clad only in lacy underwear, with shreds of the green slack suit hanging from her wrists and draped about her torn and still
