‘I don’t know.’ I jerked my thumb at the clock. ‘Five minutes overdue.’
‘Doesn’t look very healthy, does it?’
There’s nothing we can do except wait. I swung my legs up on the settee. ‘I like that girl. Maybe she is a little over-rich and probably spoilt, but she’s got a tender heart.’
Kerman grunted.
‘I like ’em hard and shiny,’ he said, and closed his eyes.
Minutes ticked by. We began to doze. We finally slept.
The first rays of the morning sun brought me upright with a start. I looked at the clock. It showed a quarter to seven. Kerman slept soundly. I heard no sound except the gentle beating of the surf on the low ridge of coral stone that made a natural harbour at the end of the garden.
I swung my legs off the settee and walked on to the terrace.
The two Chinese gardeners were at work, staring at the umbrella standard. The flamingoes were grouped around the lily pond, hunting up some breakfast On a balcony at the far end of the terrace, Serena Dedrick, still in her black slacks and her short fur coat, sat staring out to sea. There was a 1ost look on her white face: a look that told me no one had tele-phoned while we slept, and no one had sent him back.
I walked quietly into the lounge and left her alone with her misery.
CHAPTER THREE
I
THE next four days were a sustained and shattering bedlam that shook the usually placid, unruffled calm and quiet of Orchid City to its foundations.
When the news broke that five hundred thousand dollars had been paid to a gang of kidnappers and the kidnapped man had not been returned, the country as far north as San Francisco and as far south as Los Angeles sprang into action.
For the first few hours, Brandon had it all his own way, and revelled in the commotion. He began to organize what was to be the greatest man-hunt of the century, but he had scarcely begun to issue orders when a dozen sharp-eyed Federal agents descended on him from San Francisco and snatched away his command.
State troopers, regular Army units, aircraft, television and the radio were pressed into service.
Kerman and I spent hours at Police Headquarters being questioned and cross-questioned by a furious, purple-faced fist-pounding Brandon, and later by two quiet Federal agents who took us apart, laid us on the desk, poked us about with long inquisitive fingers, and weren’t over-fussy how they put is together again.
We were bullied and threatened and cursed. We had fists shaken in our faces. Necks swelled, eyes turned bloodshot and spittle flew in all directions with the intensity of trying to get a clue out of us. But we hadn’t a clue to give out.
I couldn’t move ten yards on the streets without some visiting Pressman letting off a camera in my face. Kerman, described as ‘the man who saw the ransom taken,’ was badgered from dusk to dawn for his autograph, his nail-pairings, locks of his hair and clippings from his suit by wild-eyed, sensation-hungry souvenir-seekers until he was scared to leave the safety of the office.
The massive gates of Ocean End were closed. The telephone was disconnected. A quiet, deathly hush hung over the place.
Rumour had it that Serena Dedrick had collapsed and was seriously ill.
All day long aircraft circled overhead, searching the sand dunes, the foothills and the approaches of the city. Every road was patrolled. A house-to-house inquiry was set on foot; sus-picious characters were rounded up and questioned; a squad of police went into Coral Gables, the east-end district of the city, and checked over the more disreputable inhabitants.
The activity was enormous, but for all the efforts made by the Federal agents, the police, state troopers, the Army and hundreds of amateur investigators, neither Lee Dedrick the kidnappers were found.
Then, on the fifth morning, Serena snapped out of her grief and took a hand in the hunt herself. It was announced through the Press and over the radio that she would pay a twentythousand-dollar reward to anyone giving information that would lead to the arrest of the kidnappers, and a thousand-dollar reward for any information remotely connected with kidnapping.
The result of this announcement turned practically every citizen, except the wealthy, into amateur detectives and made Orchid City a temporary hell on earth.
It was on the sixth night after the ransom had been paid that I let myself into my quiet little cabin, thankful to get away from the strident hubbub of the hunt, with the intension of locking the door and getting myself a little peace and an early night in bed.
My cabin is situated in the sand dunes, facing the sea, and is a quarter of a mile from the nearest house. It has a small weed-infested garden which I pay Toni, my good-for-nothing house-boy, to keep neat; a veranda with faded sun blinds, one big living-room, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen big enough to swing a cat in, providing it is a Manx cat.
The charm of the place to me is that it is lonely and quiet and you can’t hear anyone’s radio and you can sing in your bath without getting a brick through your window. But because it is so isolated it is also an ideal spot for anyone who wants to slit my throat. My yells for help would be as futile as a short-tempered man trying to slam a revolving door.
I was sinking the key in the lock when I heard a soft foot-fall behind me. Normally my nerves will pass in a crowd with a light behind them, but the excitement and strain of the past five days had made them a little edgy. I swung around with a quick intake of breath to find a shadowy figure right on top of me.
The right-hand punch that automatically started got no more than half-way when I saw that my visitor was a woman. I lowered my fist, gulped in a little of the hot night air and said as even as I could, ‘Must you sneak up like that and scare me out of my wits?’
‘Your name Malloy?’
I peered at the slim figure before me. It was too dark under the veranda roof to see much of her, but what I could see appeared to be worth looking at.
‘Yeah. Who are you?’
‘I want to talk to you. Let’s go in where we can park.’
As I led the way into the main room, I thought it was a pity she had a voice hard enough to crack a rock on. We stood in the darkness, close together while I groped for the light switch. I found it, thumbed it down and looked into a pair of wide brown eyes that knew all the answers and most of the questions too.
She was around twenty-four or five, and dark. Her thick glossy hair was parted in the middle and framed a face of standard prettiness that was a shade paler than it should have been and too hard and bitter for the number of years she had been using it. Her over-bright red lips, put on square, and the faint smudges under her eyes gave her a sexy look that would make men stare at her and wonder, but probably they’d get no farther than wondering. Her figure under the fawnand-green silk wind-breaker and the highwaisted slacks was good enough to advertise the best foundation garment in the business.
‘Hello,’ I said, staring at her. ‘Sure it’s me you want?’
‘If your name’s Malloy, I’m sure,’ she said, and moved past me to the fireplace. She faced me, her hands thrust deep into her trouser pockets, her eyes searching my face. ‘Nick Perelli told me to come to you.’
'Why, sure,’ I said, and looked sharply at her, wondering who she was. ‘Has he been sandbagging anyone recently?’
‘No, but he’s in trouble,’ the girl said. She took out a crumpled package of Lucky Strike, flicked one into her mouth, scratched a match alight with her thumbnail and set fire to the cigarette. ‘He’s been pinched for the Dedrick snatch.’
