celery and about as much use in holding me up. Perigord came forward and put his hand under my elbow in support.
'Are you all right? Did he hit you?'
'I don't think so. I don't feel anything. He threw a bloody scare into me, though.'
Somewhere in the middle of all that I had heard a woman scream and now there was a babble of excited voices.
Perigord's uniformed men appeared from where he had hidden them, and he motioned them forward to break up the mob which was surrounding Carrasco's body. He raised his voice.
'All right, everybody; it's iiHl over. Please clear the lobby and go to your rooms. There's nothing more to see.'
I beckoned to the nearest bellboy.
'Get something to cover the body a tablecloth or a blanket.' I saw Walker standing in the doorway of the manager's office, and strode over to him.
'What the hell happened?' I was as mad as a hornet.
'How did he get here without warning?'
Walker was bewildered.
'I don't know, but I'll find out. There's Rodriguez.' He ran towards the entrance of the lobby where Rodriguez had just appeared.
Perigord was standing over the body and Tony Bosworth was on his knees beside it. Tony looked up and said something and Perigord nodded, then came over to me.
'He's dead,' he said.
'I didn't want to kill him but I had no option. There were too many innocent bystanders around to have bullets flying. Where can we put him?'
'In the office will be best.'
The policemen carried the body into the office and we followed.
'Where did his bullet go?' I asked.
'Anyone hurt?'
'You'll probably find a hole in the reception desk,' said Perigord.
'Well, thanks. That was good shooting.' Walker returned and I stuck my finger under his nose.
'What happened? He damn near killed me.'
Walker spread his hands.
'The damnedest thing. Rodriguez was in the bar watching Carrasco, and Palmer was in the car outside with the engine running. When Carrasco made his move to go, Rodriguez went to the public phone to make his call and found that some drunken joker had cut the cord. It had been working earlier because I'd talked to him about a possible boat. He didn't have much time because Carrasco was already outside, in his car, and on the move. So he made a judgement he went after Carrasco.'
Perigord said, 'Perhaps Carrasco knew he was being watched. Perhaps he cut the telephone cord.'
'No way,' said Walker.
'Rodriguez said that Carrasco never went near the public phone when he came back from his sea trip. It was just plain dumb luck.'
'There was no reason for Carrasco to cut the cord,' I said.
'He wasn't going anywhere mysterious; he was coming back here. And now he's dead, and we've lost our lead to Robinson.'
'Well, let's have a look at him,' said Perigord. He stripped away the tablecloth which covered the body, knelt beside it, and began going through the pockets, starting with the inner breast pocket.
'Passport – Venezuelan.' He opened it.
'Dr. Luis Carrasco.' He laid it aside.
'Wallet with visiting cards in the name of Dr. Luis Carrasco; address -Avenida Bolivar, 226, Caracas. And money, more than a man should decently carry; there must be 4000 dollars here.'
There were several other items: a billfold containing a few dollars in both American and Bahamian currency, coins, a pen knife, a cigar case containing three Havana cigars all the junk a man usually carries in his pockets.
From a side pocket of the jacket Perigord took a flat aluminium box.
He opened it and there, nestling in cotton wool, were three glass ampoules filled with a yellowish liquid. He held it up.
'Recognize them?'
'They're exactly like those I saw in Kayles's boat,' I said.
'And like the broken one I found on the roof of the Sea Gardens Hotel. My bet is that he picked them up tonight when he went on his little sea trip. He wouldn't want to carry those about too long, and they weren't in his room when we searched it.'
He closed the box and stood up. T think you're beginning to make your case. Commissioner Deane will definitely want to see you tomorrow morning. '
I glanced at the clock.
'This morning.' I was feeling depressed.
Later, when the body was removed on a stretcher I reflected gloomily that Carrasco had advanced his bloody cause as much in the manner of his death as in life. A shootout in the lobby of a hotel could scarcely be called an added attraction.
The morning brought news- bad and good.
When I got home I told Debbie what had happened because there was no way of keeping it from her; it was certain to be on the front page of the Freeport News and on the radio She said incredulously, 'Shot him!'
'That's right. Perigord shot him right there in the lobby of the Royal Palm. A hell of a way to impress the guests.'
'And after he shot at you. Tom, you could have been killed.'
'I haven't a scratch on me.' I said that lightly enough, but secretly I was pleased by Debbie's solicitude which was more than she had shown after my encounter with Kayles in the Jumentos.
She was pale.
'When will all this stop?' Her voice trembled.
'When we've caught up with Robinson. We'll get there.' I hoped I put enough conviction into my voice because right then I could not see a snowball's chance in hell of doing it.
So I slept on it, but did not dream up any good ideas. In the morning, while shaving, I switched on the radio to listen to the news. As might have been predicted the big news w as of the shooting of an unnamed man in the lobby of the Royal Palm by the gallant and heroic Deputy-Commissioner Perigord. It was intelligent of Perigord to keep Carrasco's name out of it, but also futile; if Robinson was around to hear the story he would be shrewd enough to know who had been killed.
The bad news came with the second item on the radio. An oil tanker had blown up in Exuma Sound; an air reconnaissance found an oil slick already twenty miles long, and the betting was even on whether the oil would foul the beaches of Eleuthera or the Exuma Cays, depending on which way it drifted.
The Bahamas do not have much going for them. We have no minerals, poor agriculture because of the thin soil, and little industry. But what we do have we have made the most of in building a great tourist industry. We have the sea and sun and beaches with sand as white as snow so we developed water sports; swimming, scuba-diving, sailing – and we needed oiled water and beaches as much as we needed Legionella pneumophila.
I could not understand what an oil tanker was doing in Exuma Sound, especially a 30,000 tonner. A ship that size could not possibly put into any port in any of the surrounding islands she would draw far too much water. I detected the hand of Robinson somewhere; an unfounded notion to be sure, but this was another hammer blow to tourism in the Bahamas.
I dressed and breakfasted, kissed Debbie goodbye, and checked into my office before going on to see Perigord. Walker, my constant companion, had not much to say, being conscious of the fiasco of the previous night, and so he was as morose as I was depressed. At the office I gave him a job to do in order to take his mind off his supposed shortcomings.
'Ring the Port Authority and find out all you can about the tanker that blew up last night. Say you're enquiring
