Shayne stopped. He had wondered if she was real. She was real, all right.
The tiny scrap of cloth drifted away. What the fish would make of it, Shayne didn’t know. It seemed smaller off than on, but even in Shayne’s trancelike condition he was surprised to see what a difference it made. The girl beckoned. Perhaps in a moment he would follow. He wanted to think it over first.
That coral reef had been down there for centuries, and it was still growing. It would still be there, still growing, another weekend. The girl, on the contrary, might choose to vanish, as she had done so suddenly before. And yet, was it wise, was it prudent, to let her think that all she had to do-
A flutter of her long flippers took her away. She looked back over her shoulder to see if he was following. He remained nearly motionless in the water, his head rolling. She returned. He saw her white teeth.
She stripped off the bottom half of her bikini, revolved once before him completely, and with a meaningful flirt of the tail, shot away.
This time Shayne tried to follow. But it seemed to him that the weights he was dragging must have fouled on the bottom. He felt a terrible heaviness in both his arms and his legs. He fumbled at his weight belt. As it fell away he looked up dreamily at the lovely naked girl and saw that he was catching up to her.
He reached the surface. As he broke abruptly into blinding sunlight, he lost consciousness.
chapter 2
The next thing Shayne knew, he was being hauled over the side of a small power-boat by several pairs of hands. He commanded his muscles to help, but the command didn’t go anywhere.
His mouthpiece had been wrenched aside, and he was breathing ordinary uncontaminated air, quite a change from what he had been getting below the surface. There was a shattering pain above and between his eyes.
Tim Rourke’s voice grunted, “Heavy bastard, isn’t he?”
“All together,” a girl’s voice said. “One. Two. Three.”
Again Shayne tried to move his legs. Again he could get no response. He went on breathing, but it took all his strength.
At the second count of three, his rescuers heaved him in over the low freeboard. His head bounced on the hard deck of the after cockpit.
“Turn him over!” the girl ordered sharply. “Hurry.” Hands hauled at Shayne’s shoulders. Lying on his back with the sharp flanges of the air tanks cutting into his shoulders, he stared up at a pelican wheeling above the boat against the sharp blue of the sky.
The blue hurt his eyes. He closed them for an instant, opening them in alarm to find himself being attacked by the same naked blonde he had followed up from the depths. She kissed him passionately, forcing his mouth open with her tongue. Her breasts pressed against him. Her fingers were caressing his face.
Lifting one heavy hand from the deck, he prodded her shoulder. It was probably impolite to mention it, but he had a headache. He also wanted to get out of this cumbersome gear.
“He’s breathing,” Rourke said.
The girl sat back. The pain in Shayne’s forehead slackened slightly and he was able to remember her name.
She wasn’t a figment of his imagination after all. She was a real girl named Kitty Sims. She owned a simple, modern beach house on the Key, and Shayne, his friend Tim Rourke and a second girl named Natalie something had been invited down for the day. Kitty had loaned the detective her diving apparatus so he could go down and look at the coral.
“Boy!” she said fervently.
Shayne rolled his head and looked at the other girl, a pleasant brunette in a one-piece yellow bathing suit. She shook her head, smiling. Rourke, the lank, bony reporter who was Shayne’s closest friend, was standing above him, all knobs and angles in the skimpiest of bathing trunks. He raked angrily at his untidy hair.
“I thought you were supposed to know how to dive, for Christ’s sake. Unless that was all a dodge to get some mouth-to-mouth respiration? There are easier ways.”
Shayne tried to lift his head. His face contorted with pain and he let it fall back.
“Get this stuff off me,” he said hoarsely.
Kitty worked the face-plate over his forehead and unbuckled the straps. The other girl unfastened the long ungainly flippers.
“Mike Shayne,” Kitty said softly, “you’re a hard man to convince.”
Her long wet hair framed a face which, at the moment, was unnaturally pale. Her blonde bangs came down almost to her eyebrows. Her eyes were gray and direct, her cheekbones well marked. She shivered. Drops of water sparkled on her lashes.
All at once Shayne remembered how she had lured him to the surface when he had wanted to go on with his suicidal dive. His lips moved in the beginnings of a grin.
Realizing abruptly that he was conscious again and she was kneeling on the deck beside him with absolutely nothing on but flippers, her hand flew to her mouth. “Natalie, for heaven’s sake throw me that towel!” The other girl, smiling, whipped a large striped towel around her. Kitty worked herself into it and knotted it under her arms. A flood of color had rushed to her face.
“I thought there was something missing,” Rourke said. “I didn’t want to say anything.”
Kitty pushed back her wet hair defiantly. “Well, damn it, I tried wrestling with him. That didn’t work. He outweighs me.”
Rourke gave a hoot of laughter. “Don’t worry about it, baby. You’re a genius. That’s the one sure way to manage Shayne.”
“Shut up,” Kitty said, trying not to smile. “Mike, how do you feel?”
“I’ve felt better.”
Coming to his elbow, he looked for the cognac bottle. He knew there was one there, because he’d had several belts before deciding to try Kitty’s aqualung. He motioned impatiently to his friend, and Rourke poured him a slug of cognac in a paper cup. Shayne rolled the first mouthful around in his mouth to kill the taste of the bad air. Then he emptied the cup in one long pull.
He looked up at Kitty. “I couldn’t understand how you got down that deep in a free dive. I thought I was down to fifty. It couldn’t have been anywhere near that.”
“Goodness no. You were at about ten. I was fooling around with the snorkel, and I knew right away something was wrong when you swam away from the rope. And then that crazy somersault. You know better than that.”
“Euphoria of the deep,” Rourke said, reaching for his highball. “I wrote a Sunday piece about it once. Of course this is the first time I ever heard of a case at ten feet. Well, we had a happy ending. Drink up, friends.”
There was something evasive about his manner, but Shayne put it down to the fact that his own hold on reality was still somewhat shaky. He sat up, checking himself as another stab of pain struck him between the eyes. Kitty offered to help, but he wanted to see what he could do by himself. He made it to a canvas deck chair and settled into it with a sigh. Rourke poured him more cognac.
“That’s enough diving for one day,” Shayne said. “How long was I in the water?”
“Three or four minutes,” Rourke said.
“Three or four minutes!” The detective made a wry face. “Kitty, when we get in, let’s talk to the man who sold you that air.”
She was busy stacking brightly colored pillows against a stanchion. She leaned back against them and lit a cigarette. She and Rourke looked at each other. Rourke puffed out his breath and shrugged.
“We might as well tell him. At this rate he’ll figure it out himself in another minute.”
“Figure out what?” Shayne said.
Kitty frowned at her cigarette. “Mike, I’m always careful about where I fill my tanks. I know you’re thinking about carbon monoxide, but I go to a place in Marathon that makes a big point about being absolutely kosher. Their compressors are water-cooled. There’s no chance of oil vaporizing, which I’ve always heard is the big thing to worry about. And if it was monoxide, it wouldn’t take hold that soon, would it?”
