Shayne’s eyes narrowed. He took a cigarette from his pack and lit it nonchalantly, tossed the match away, and strode to his car.
He opened the door and slid under the wheel without looking in the back seat.
As he pulled away from the curb, a voice from the rear seat said, “Take it easy and keep your hands on the wheel.”
Shayne recognized the curious hoarseness of the voice. It belonged to Gene, the gunman who had shot Pat at Tahiti Beach.
CHAPTER 14
Shayne took it easy and kept his hands on the wheel. A man climbed over the back seat and slid in beside him. Shayne glanced aside and was surprised to see that it was not Gene. This man had smooth, regular features and a tiny black mustache.
Shayne said, “Mr. B. Antrim, I presume?”
“It ain’t a bad monicker to sign on a hotel register,” he said.
“You’re a lousy shot with a rifle,” Shayne muttered.
Gene’s hoarse voice said from the rear seat, “Cut it out. Turn the corner here, Shamus… to the right. Cross the drawbridge and pull off to the side and park.”
Shayne punctiliously obeyed orders. He eased up to the curb on the other side of the drawbridge and stopped. A car passed with dimmed headlights, and there were no other cars in sight.
Gene said, “Get out and go around on the other side, Mark. Get under the wheel. You slide over, Shamus.”
“But what about going over him?” Mark protested. “After what happened today…”
“Yeh,” Gene agreed, “go over him. And for chrissake do a better job than Pat on it.”
Shayne sat stiffly erect and let Mark go over him inch by inch searching for a weapon. He clenched his teeth to keep from wincing when the man’s rough hands pounded against his sore ribs.
Mark, alias B. Antrim, exhaled happily when his pawing hands found the concealed. 38 which was holstered against the front of Shayne’s right thigh. “Here it is,” he announced. “He ain’t got no pocket in his pants and the gat’s right down here where it’ll tickle him between the legs.” He pulled the weapon out as he spoke.
Gene growled, “I’m damned. Go on over the rest of him,” he ordered thickly.
Mark went over the rest of Shayne, finally saying, “I’ll swaller whole any gun left on ’im.”
“All right, let’s get going,” Gene ordered.
Mark got out and went around the rear of the car to the left side. Shayne slid over and let him get under the wheel.
“Tie up his glims while I hold my gun on him,” Gene directed. “The boss don’t want him to see where we take him, though I’ll be damned if I know why. If I have my way he won’t be coming back to tell anybody.”
Two muscles in Shayne’s lean cheeks twitched while Mark tied a handkerchief tightly over his eyes. Then he relaxed and let his head loll against the cushioned seat when the car started again.
He said, “I hope you boys know what you’re getting into.”
“You’re the one who’d better be worried,” Gene snarled.
“Worried? Me? By you two punks?” Shayne chuckled. “You’ve already misfired twice today.”
The car made a turn to the left and presently swung to the right. “Third time’s the charm,” Gene remarked from the rear. “Your Irish luck has run out, Shamus.”
“Maybe.” Shayne was concentrating on the various turns Mark was making. He knew this south bayshore part of the city quite well, but all he could do was to keep a hazy sense of direction as the car wound around crazily through the twisting streets.
After a long time they stopped. Mark and Gene got out and the door on Shayne’s side was opened. A hand took hold of his arm and Gene said, “End of the line for you.”
Shayne got out and stood on loose dry sand. With a captor on each side he was led blindfolded across loose sand and up a short board walk. He heard a door being unlocked and he was thrust inside a room. He discerned through the handkerchief that the room was lighted. A hand fumbled with the knotted blindfold and pulled it from his face.
He blinked at a kerosene lamp on a wooden table, then turned with a slow grin to stare at the disheveled figure of Herbert Carlton who bounced up unhappily from a hard chair in the far corner of the roughly finished room.
“Shayne!” Carlson moaned. “So they got you, too. I had hoped they wouldn’t.” He sighed, wet his lips, and sank back into the chair.
Carlton was a sorry sight. His gray suit, so immaculate when Shayne had last seen him, was wrinkled and torn as though by a terrific struggle and his face was liberally patched with strips of adhesive tape that drew his features into a horrible grimace.
Shayne said, “Looks as if you’d been playing drop the handkerchief with a buzz saw.”
Carlton drew his shoulders up with dignity. “I resisted as best I could.”
“Damned if he didn’t fight like a wildcat,” Gene said with a hoarse laugh. “He ain’t got as much sense as you, Shamus.”
Shayne’s gray eyes roamed around the room slowly. There were two windows on one side, both securely closed with heavy wooden storm shutters. The rough pine floor was bare and scuffed, and cobwebs clung to the corners of the room. The walls were of roughly hewn pine boards, as was the ceiling, and there were two chairs and an unfinished pine table for furniture.
Gene and Mark stood together in the doorway. Beyond them he could see nothing but moonlight on white sand. He could hear the distant sound of waves lapping gently against a shore.
Gene’s right hand was bunched suggestively in his coat pocket, and Shayne’s. 38 dangled by the triggerguard from Mark’s right forefinger.
Shayne went across the room and turned the other chair around, and sat down facing its back. He rested his forearms on the highest rung and hooked his chin over them. He said, “All right. Now we’re here… all nice and cozy. What’s the payoff?”
“That’s up to you,” Gene told him. He brought his hand out of his pocket and handed an automatic to Mark, who disappeared outside with both weapons.
Gene closed the door. “Mark’s locking the door from the outside,” he explained. “I haven’t got a gun, so it wouldn’t be smart to jump me. This is the boss’s idea. If it was up to me I’d bump you both right now and be done with it.”
Shayne asked, “When is the boss coming?”
“He’s here now. He’s kind of bashful about showing his face.” Gene walked over and inserted his finger in a knothole about waist high in the plank wall. He tugged on it, and a short length of six-inch board came loose from the two-by-four uprights.
“The boss,” he went on, “is sitting right outside there listening, and after we’ve had our confab he’ll decide whether you and this guy keep on living or get turned into worm fodder.” He addressed Shayne, as though Carlton had already been apprised of the method of procedure.
“A very neat arrangement,” Shayne agreed. “It’s nice to know that the boss is listening in.” He turned to look at Carlton, who was huddled in his chair in a posture of utter hopelessness.
“How’d they get hold of you, Carlton? I thought you were too scared to stir a leg out of your house.”
Carlton answered miserably, “I thought it would be safe to go to my office. There were so many things demanding my attention. And I had a police escort.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I had gone a block before the police car suddenly stopped. I slowed and looked back, and another car rammed mine. Then… these… these men… piled out and grabbed me.” His body shivered. “I tried to fight them off but they overpowered me. They blindfolded me and brought me here.”
Shayne demanded, “Are these two men the ones who killed Wilson?”
