Two muscles in Shayne’s lean cheeks twitched while Mark tied a handkerchief tightly over his eyes. Then he relaxed and let his head loll against the cushioned seat when the car started again.
He said, “I hope you boys know what you’re getting into.”
“You’re the one who’d better be worried,” Gene snarled.
“Worried? Me? By you two punks?” Shayne chuckled. “You’ve already misfired twice today.”
The car made a turn to the left and presently swung to the right. “Third time’s the charm,” Gene remarked from the rear. “Your Irish luck has run out, Shamus.”
“Maybe.” Shayne was concentrating on the various turns Mark was making. He knew this south bayshore part of the city quite well, but all he could do was to keep a hazy sense of direction as the car wound around crazily through the twisting streets.
After a long time they stopped. Mark and Gene got out and the door on Shayne’s side was opened. A hand took hold of his arm and Gene said, “End of the line for you.”
Shayne got out and stood on loose dry sand. With a captor on each side he was led blindfolded across loose sand and up a short board walk. He heard a door being unlocked and he was thrust inside a room. He discerned through the handkerchief that the room was lighted. A hand fumbled with the knotted blindfold and pulled it from his face.
He blinked at a kerosene lamp on a wooden table, then turned with a slow grin to stare at the disheveled figure of Herbert Carlton who bounced up unhappily from a hard chair in the far corner of the roughly finished room.
“Shayne!” Carlson moaned. “So they got you, too. I had hoped they wouldn’t.” He sighed, wet his lips, and sank back into the chair.
Carlton was a sorry sight. His gray suit, so immaculate when Shayne had last seen him, was wrinkled and torn as though by a terrific struggle and his face was liberally patched with strips of adhesive tape that drew his features into a horrible grimace.
Shayne said, “Looks as if you’d been playing drop the handkerchief with a buzz saw.”
Carlton drew his shoulders up with dignity. “I resisted as best I could.”
“Damned if he didn’t fight like a wildcat,” Gene said with a hoarse laugh. “He ain’t got as much sense as you, Shamus.”
Shayne’s gray eyes roamed around the room slowly. There were two windows on one side, both securely closed with heavy wooden storm shutters. The rough pine floor was bare and scuffed, and cobwebs clung to the corners of the room. The walls were of roughly hewn pine boards, as was the ceiling, and there were two chairs and an unfinished pine table for furniture.
Gene and Mark stood together in the doorway. Beyond them he could see nothing but moonlight on white sand. He could hear the distant sound of waves lapping gently against a shore.
Gene’s right hand was bunched suggestively in his coat pocket, and Shayne’s. 38 dangled by the triggerguard from Mark’s right forefinger.
Shayne went across the room and turned the other chair around, and sat down facing its back. He rested his forearms on the highest rung and hooked his chin over them. He said, “All right. Now we’re here… all nice and cozy. What’s the payoff?”
“That’s up to you,” Gene told him. He brought his hand out of his pocket and handed an automatic to Mark, who disappeared outside with both weapons.
Gene closed the door. “Mark’s locking the door from the outside,” he explained. “I haven’t got a gun, so it wouldn’t be smart to jump me. This is the boss’s idea. If it was up to me I’d bump you both right now and be done with it.”
Shayne asked, “When is the boss coming?”
“He’s here now. He’s kind of bashful about showing his face.” Gene walked over and inserted his finger in a knothole about waist high in the plank wall. He tugged on it, and a short length of six-inch board came loose from the two-by-four uprights.
“The boss,” he went on, “is sitting right outside there listening, and after we’ve had our confab he’ll decide whether you and this guy keep on living or get turned into worm fodder.” He addressed Shayne, as though Carlton had already been apprised of the method of procedure.
“A very neat arrangement,” Shayne agreed. “It’s nice to know that the boss is listening in.” He turned to look at Carlton, who was huddled in his chair in a posture of utter hopelessness.
“How’d they get hold of you, Carlton? I thought you were too scared to stir a leg out of your house.”
Carlton answered miserably, “I thought it would be safe to go to my office. There were so many things demanding my attention. And I had a police escort.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I had gone a block before the police car suddenly stopped. I slowed and looked back, and another car rammed mine. Then… these… these men… piled out and grabbed me.” His body shivered. “I tried to fight them off but they overpowered me. They blindfolded me and brought me here.”
Shayne demanded, “Are these two men the ones who killed Wilson?”
“I… don’t know.” Carlton glanced at Gene, then went on strongly. “That is… no. I’m positive they are not. I’m ready to swear I don’t recognize either one of them.
“But for God’s sake, Shayne,” he went on in a sudden burst of fear, “I’m sure they intend to kill both of us if we refuse to deal with them.”
Shayne said sardonically, “That should please the listening boss. But why the hell,” he asked Gene, “are you fooling with Carlton at all? The safest way to make sure he doesn’t doublecross you is to kill him.”
“Sure. That’s what I told the boss. But I don’t know. He says there’s been too much killing already.” Gene’s hoarse voice sounded aggrieved. “I say we’re fools if we don’t feed both of you lead right here.”
“Not me,” Shayne told him. “My information will go straight to Gentry if I die. With what I’ve got the police will have all of you and a lot of others rounded up in an hour. But with Carlton it’s different,” Shayne pointed out wolfishly. “The only way he is a danger is as long as he lives.”
“Please, Shayne!” Carlton cried in alarm. “Are you turning on me, too?”
Shayne cocked a shaggy red eyebrow at Carlton and said, “I’m just trying to get things squared around. You’re done for,” he ended deliberately. “You haven’t got anything to bargain with. I have.”
Gene said, “Nuts, Shamus. You tried to pull that one this afternoon.”
“And you’re goddamned lucky Pat didn’t find my gun and I came out of it alive,” Shayne told him, emphasizing each word. “You’ve been lucky twice today. Your only chance to beat this rap is for me to keep on living. And you know it. You know goddamn well you can’t make a deal with Gentry.”
“Maybe it is that way,” Gene conceded in a surly tone. “Let the boss hear just what you’ve got to say and he’ll maybe make an offer.”
Shayne said, “No. I want you rats to keep on squirming. I want you to keep on thinking, ‘Hell, maybe Shayne don’t know anything. Maybe he’s just putting up a bluff, but your white livers won’t let you take a chance on it. You’re on the run and you know it.”
Gene’s black eyes glittered in his dark, pasty face. He drew in an excited breath and said, “That’s just what I’ve told the boss. I don’t believe Wilson had time to tell you a damned thing over the phone. If you know what you claim to know, why don’t you do something? That’s what I keep telling the boss,” he ended in a choked voice.
Shayne asked, “How do you know what Wilson had time to tell me?”
“It’s none of your goddamned business.”
“All right. Maybe I’ve got my own reasons for not doing anything.”
Carlton pulled himself up straight from a doubled position in his chair. “You mean you’ll listen to reason?” he asked eagerly. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Shayne? That’s the only thing we can do. If you’re so stubborn about it they’ll kill us both.”
“They’re not going to kill me,” Shayne said bluntly. “Anybody but a crazy punk would know they can’t afford to take a chance.” His eyes scorned Gene.
“The boss ain’t going to make a deal till he knows what you’ve got to trade,” Gene sneered, his eyes wavering.