There were five men in the game, all Americans. Shayne took down a few pots, then lost modestly for a time, absorbing the differences in style of play. They were all drinking heavily. Diamond went substantially ahead at the start, then dropped three successive pots, in which he had invested heavily.
Shayne concluded, with some regret, that the game was honest, within the usual reasonable limits. He stopped paying close attention, rarely attempting to bluff or to read a bluff, playing the cards as they fell. The simple patterns, the ritualized betting language, the flow of money as the luck shifted, all contributed to bringing him back. He was beginning to feel nearly normal.
He had forgotten the girl until she walked into the game room with a determined, slightly frightened look. She came directly to Shayne’s place at the table. Reaching in, she turned over his two hole cards.
“Deal Mr. Shayne out. I’m a fan of his, and I want to tell him how much I dig him. He’ll be back, probably.”
The two cards she had revealed were an ace of spades and a wild deuce.
“That kind of fan I don’t need,” Shayne observed.
He downed the last of his cognac, racked the bills at his place and thrust them into a side pocket. The girl had backed off warily, but she turned quickly when he pushed back his chair.
On the enclosed promenade deck, she swung to face him and said hurriedly, “I know that was a terrible thing to do. I hope deuces weren’t wild?”
“Deuces and one-eyes on that deal,” Shayne said. “Now what the hell is this?”
“I couldn’t wait till you stopped playing. You look as though you’ll go on all night. I—”
He interrupted. “The reason poker games go on all night is that it gets to be too much trouble to break them up. After a point you relax. That’s one of the objects.”
“I’m sorry! This isn’t at all what you think. I’ve got mixed up in something, and my God, do I need some help. Sit down with me for a couple of minutes and listen. There may be some money in it for you.”
“Not tonight, Anne. But you’re a good-looking girl, especially in that bikini you had on this afternoon. If you’re going to be in Miami let me know where I can reach you and I’ll call you in a few days. But tonight, strange as it seems, what I want to do is play a little uncomplicated poker.”
“I’m willing to stay up and watch. If we could have breakfast together—”
“Stop trying so hard, baby. Like it or not, it’s a man’s world, and the rules say that this kind of move is made by the man. Otherwise we’d have a woman President and women astronauts.”
“Damn it, I’m not trying to get you to go to bed with me!”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Let’s knock it off for now, Anne. Hell, you must have known there’d be a shortage of men. There always is on these ships. If you really need some advice talk to the purser. Maybe they even carry a psychiatrist.”
She caught his arm as he turned. “Please—”
He said quietly but emphatically, “Drop it, Anne.”
“You’re a real bastard, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes.”
As he opened the door into the game room, she stepped close and kicked him hard in the ankle. He swore explosively and the poker players at the table turned toward them.
One of the men grinned when Shayne sat down, but neither he nor any of the others commented on the altercation in the doorway.
“Draw poker,” Diamond announced. “Jacks or better to open. Ante up, men.”
Several hours later, with the clocks pushing two A.M., Miami time, Diamond dropped out of the game, about even. One of the two major winners remarked that his wife was never able to get to sleep until he came to bed, so perhaps he, too—
Shayne tossed in the pack and yawned deeply. The evening had been very therapeutic. He thanked the others for their contributions to the fight against inflation, and said goodnight.
Finding a particular cabin on a ship this size was always a problem. Shayne went down three decks. He made a wrong turn, found himself facing a dead end and had to return to the companionway to start over.
The carpeted corridors were very quiet. The vibration of the ship’s engines, somewhere below, was steady and nearly imperceptible. He passed a short cul-de-sac in which another passenger, also retiring late, was attempting to fit a key into the lock of his cabin door.
As Shayne went on, turning into a side corridor, he felt a slight change in the atmosphere, as though a window in a stuffy room had been opened, admitting a flow of fresh air. He heard a rustling. His reactions were a tick slow. He flung himself forward, twisting, and caught the blow on his lifted shoulder.
It was savagely struck. For an instant, as Shayne started to come around, he thought the shoulder must be broken. Then a sheet was flung over him from behind and he took another blow. This was a glancing one — he had slipped away as he felt it coming.
He took two sideward steps, dug in and whirled, blinded by the sheet. His hands closed on some kind of fabric.
Pulling his assailant in hard, he sent him spinning against a wall. Following, he kept contact. He had an impression he was contending with someone very strong and quick.
Shayne’s movements were badly hampered. The sheet was huge, enveloping him completely. He knew the importance of keeping in motion. He took two quick steps, using his adversary as a pivot, and came about, bobbing like an epileptic. His grip shifted to the man’s forearm, then to his throat.
Only a second or two had elapsed. He heard muffled breathing from another direction, a grunt. He felt a blinding stab of pain. His skull seemed to burst outward.
He blacked out for an instant, but came back still on his feet, still squeezing the throat in both hands, still throwing himself violently and eccentrically from side to side.
The man he was strangling tried to kick him in the stomach. Shayne had been expecting the move. Letting go with one hand, he caught the foot as it came at him, and picked his assailant off the floor. Continuing the same motion, he swung the first man at where he judged the second to be.
He connected, but he lost both his hold and his footing. As he went down, deciding that he needed help, he yelled.
He hit the floor with one knee and rolled. Feeling somebody beneath him, he hit out, and felt his knuckles strike bone. He batted wildly at the sheet, but there seemed to be more than one of them, sewn together to make a kind of enormous sack.
Then he remembered that he was carrying a weapon — a utility knife, specially made in Switzerland, with lock-picking equipment recessed into the bone handle and a blade controlled by a hidden spring. His thumb found the button. The blade sprang open.
He faked one way and went the other, hitting the wall and using it to propel himself backward. He struck with the knife. The blade sliced through the sheet and he felt the point make contact with something soft at the outer end of the arcing swing.
He ripped the sheet aside and saw a moving arm holding a smooth club, like a nightstick. He struck and missed.
Then he was hit again, very hard, from his blind side. He could do nothing about this one. The floor came up.
Before the darkness closed in, he thought he heard a door open.
He snapped back into consciousness, not gradually but all at once, and rolled. The sheet tore, and his head and shoulders came free. He saw a stout man, wearing only pajama bottoms, a woman, equally stout, in a nightgown with her hair in a plastic bag. A door was open behind them. They looked angry and perturbed.
“What in the holy hell do you think you’re doing?” the man demanded. “What was all that yelling?”
Shayne moved his head slowly. The knife was still in his hand, concealed in the folds of the sheet. He snapped it shut and returned it to his pocket. Two other doors were open further along, and faces were looking out cautiously.