“Are you trying to maintain that this was all a trick?”
“It didn’t do any harm,” Shayne said. “All it did was cost you some sleep. I still don’t know much about this set-up, but I know a lot more than I did. For one thing, I know that Alvarez keeps his contraband in a locked wooden box in an airspace over the desk in his office. I was up there over your head when you were looking for me. I know how he makes contact with his couriers. I went along on a delivery. I couldn’t have done any of this by barging into his office and showing him a private detective’s license.”
The sergeant closed his mouth with a snap. “I don’t believe you.”
“Is your name Brannon?”
“What of it?”
“How did you find out I was at the Pirate’s Rendezvous? Somebody called you, right?” He quoted: “‘I’ve got some information for you, and you can have it free because I want to pay off this guy.’ Words to that effect.”
Sergeant Brannon’s face turned perceptibly redder. “That was you?”
“That was me,” Shayne told him, watching the slowly reddening face. “I can’t show you my credentials, because I don’t have them. But would somebody who was really wanted by the cops call them and tell them where they could find him? And if you still don’t believe me, put in a call to Miami. The head of the customs there is a man named Jack Malloy. Maybe you’ve heard of him. This is a big thing for Malloy, and he won’t mind if you get him out of bed.”
“And what is your real interest in this, Mr. Shayne?” Brannon said through stiff lips, apparently having difficulty pronouncing Shayne’s name.
“Money,” Shayne said promptly, because by this time any other answer would have been too complicated. “I’m shooting for the fifty thousand bucks.”
“And you think-” Brannon said thickly-“you think you can walk into the British Commonwealth and defy established authority, flout and trick and trample on individual liberty, break laws right and left, the way you undoubtedly do at home? You think you can hoodwink Her Majesty’s police, bring them out after midnight on a fool’s errand, and come out of it unscathed? You are mistaken! You-are-very-much-mistaken!”
“Make up your mind,” Shayne said. “Which would you rather do, yell at me, or catch a murderer?”
“I’ll do a great deal more than yell at you!” Brannon yelled. “I’ll put you in my most primitive cell and forget about you until somebody brings you officially to my attention! I think you have finally decided to tell me the truth. I think you are actually what you represent yourself to be-a cheap, money-grabbing, conscienceless private detective. I know all about your kind. But you may come to regret that it ever entered your mind to play ducks and drakes with our backward little provincial constabulary. What you need is time for reflection, and I’m the man who can give it to you!”
Shayne, too, was beginning to get angry. “Did you ever hear of a writ for habeas corpus?”
“Often. You Americans stole it from us, you know. But I don’t think it will apply in your case. We have arrested a notorious American fugitive, who is wanted for unlawful flight to evade prosecution, in the language of an apparently official circular we received through the usual channels. We will notify our American friends that we have captured you, and let them begin extradition proceedings. We will send off this notification the first thing tomorrow, as soon as the proper forms can be made out, by the slowest available boat. We will address it to the FBI, who won’t have heard of your harmless little deception, will they? Oh, I foresee many interesting delays. You will have a marvelous opportunity to study the cracks in the ceiling of that cell.”
“And while you’re making your point,” Shayne said, “what happens to the murderer of Albert Watts? It doesn’t seem to me you were making much headway before I got here.”
Brannon’s flush deepened, if such a thing was possible. “We were making headway, in our slow, unspectacular, bumbling fashion. We will continue this process, without any help from American private detectives, eliminating one possibility at a time until only one is left and we are in a position to arrest and convict the killer.”
“Sure,” Shayne said sarcastically. “You’ll go on working from nine to five, with an hour off for lunch and another in the afternoon for tea. Meanwhile the killer will be working overtime. If one of the Slaters gets hurt, you’ll begin to feel a little more heat.”
“Ah, the appeal to the American eagle,” Brannon said. “I was waiting for that.”
“Goddamn it,” Shayne shouted, “can’t you break out of the tired old routine for once? If Alvarez can’t get Slater to talk, he’ll go to work on Slater’s wife. I had a small taste of the kid who’s going to be putting on the pressure. He’s a mental case. Nothing surprising about that-it’s another form of routine. Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”
“And after the various lies I’ve heard from you, why should I believe anything you tell me at this point, Shayne?”
“Why, you pompous little tinpot Napoleon! Just because something never happened to you before, you think it can’t happen. Open your eyes to what’s going on in the world! If you put me in jail I’m warning you-”
“That will be enough of that,” Brannon snapped.
He signed to his men, who closed in on the redhead. Shayne’s muscles were rigid. He stood rooted, staring into the British sergeant’s eyes. Brannon returned the look contemptuously, and flicked again at his mustache.
Suddenly Shayne laughed.
“Is anything funny?” Brannon snarled. “Share it with me.”
“I just remembered who you remind me of,” Shayne said. “You wouldn’t know him.”
For some obscure reason he felt much better. Physically there was no resemblance between the two men, but in every other respect, he had realized suddenly, this British sergeant was much like Peter Painter, chief of detectives in Miami Beach, and a longtime adversary of Shayne’s. After years of trial and error, Shayne had learned how to handle Painter. He had been in many tight squeezes, but Painter had never succeeded in besting him. And neither would Brannon, Shayne promised himself, in spite of the British accent, his immense assurance, his cops with their vehicles and their guns, not to speak of the fact that he was operating on his home ground among friends, while Shayne was a stranger, as solitary as he had ever been in his life.
Meanwhile, there was no point in tangling with Brannon’s men. He let them take him to the door. They walked him up the ramp and around the hotel, holding his arms in a professional grip, one hand above and one hand below the elbow, keeping the elbow locked. Brannon was a step or two behind, shining an electric torch on the path, his other hand resting on the butt of his revolver.
They had come in a four-door English Ford. Brannon passed the others to unlatch the rear door. This street, like most of those on St. Albans, had a high crown, but even so, Shayne thought, the car seemed to lean unnaturally far toward the sidewalk.
“Flat tire!” one of the native cops exclaimed.
Brannon muttered in annoyance. At that moment Shayne heard a man’s voice singing tipsily. Looking around, he saw a lanky figure wearing Bermuda shorts, a pipe clenched in the corner of his mouth, wobbling toward them on a bicycle which he seemed hardly able to control. As he passed under a street lamp, Shayne recognized him. It was the British anthropologist, Cecil Powys. He had some kind of long, clumsy object in the bicycle basket.
Shayne and the three policemen were a compact group, looking down at the flat tire. Powys’ bicycle came faster and faster, the front wheel swinging violently from one side of the sidewalk to the other.
“Watch out!” the Englishman cried, appalled at what was about to happen.
Leaning far backward, his balance more and more uncertain, he closed his eyes and squeezed the hand brakes on the handlebars. The front wheel turned at right angles to the street, but as the brakes took hold it whipped back around. The bike came abreast of Shayne and the three cops. Powys gave a drunken yell as the handlebars were wrenched out of his grip and the front wheel slammed headlong into Sergeant Brannon. The sergeant went down. His arms flailing, Powys pitched forward against one of the cops holding Shayne. The bike’s pedal caught the other cop in the knees and dropped him. As he fell he carried Shayne down with him. Powys himself landed on top of the heap.
The bike ended upside down, its front wheel still spinning.
9
