I eased the car in between a number of others in a small parking lot and let him go inside first. Overhead, a red neon sign outlined the form of a large beer mug. Inside the place there was sawdust on the floor, booths at the sides and a number of round tables in the center of the floor. A bored pianist divided the music chores with a garish jukebox that stood at one side. A long bar took up one entire end of the place. It was large enough and crowded enough for me to stay out of sight while watching him at the same time. I slid into an empty booth and saw him make his way toward the bar and toward a girl, a hostess, at the end of it. She was pretty in an unpolished way, wearing a dress that was too blue, too tight and too shiny. But it was low-cut enough for the customers and her round, high breasts spilled out generously over the top.
I saw a good sprinkling of sailors and soldiers among the customers — mostly, as Mona had said, hard-working men. Dawsey waited as the girl went to show a couple to one of the booths. When she returned, he immediately started talking to her, his red face strained and agitated. The girl listened while she looked out across the tables, smiling at customers she knew, waving at others. A waiter appeared at my elbow, and I sent him off with an order for whiskey and water.
I could see the girl's lips moving guardedly, as she answered Dawsey. Suddenly finished, he turned abruptly and walked away from her, moving to the door through the crowded tables. My eyes swung back to the girl, but she had left the bar and I saw her against the wall, putting a coin into a wall telephone. She waited a moment, then spoke into the phone — hardly more than two or three sentences — and hung up. I leaned back and watched her move out to circle amid the customers.
It had been easy to understand what I'd just seen. The girl was some sort of contact or intermediary. Dawsey had told her he wanted to make a contact and she had relayed his message. Now, I had to fill in the details. She was starting to make her rounds of the booths and I waited till she neared mine. She was good at her job. She was both adept and firm at eluding and turning aside eager hands and overzealous fans. She was friendly, welcoming, yet distant without being standoffish — altogether a neat job. I heard a number of steady customers call her by the name "Judy." Her manufactured gaiety was less contrived than that of most girls in her job, and under the makeup was a face that might once have been sweet. Now it showed the hardness of life in a certain tightness around the jaw. Her eyes, smoke-gray, were the eyes of one who had seen too much too young. But they were eyes that smoldered. She reached the booth where I sat and gave me a big smile.
"Hello, digger" she said. "Welcome to The Ruddy Jug."
"Thanks, Judy," I grinned at her. "Got a minute to talk?"
"You're a Yank," she said, her eyes lighting with interest. "Sure. What do you want to talk about? What are you doing here in Queensland — vacation?"
"In a way," I said. "What do you know about John Dawsey?"
I saw astonishment leap into her smoke-gray eyes, but she made a quick recovery.
"I think you've made some kind of mistake, Yank," she frowned at me. "I don't know any John Dawsey."
"You always make phone calls for people you don't know?" I said casually.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she snapped. She started to get up but I shot a hand out and grabbed her wrist.
"Stop playing games, Judy," I said quietly. "Talk."
"You ruddy cop?" she asked, warily.
"I'm a friend of Dawsey's." I said.
"Hell you are," she said, yanking her wrist away. She was on her feet, signalling across the floor. I saw two long-armed, heavy-set characters detach themselves from a corner table and head toward me. Judy was looking at me as I stood up, her eyes apprehensive.
"He won't take no for an answer," she said to the two goons as they came up, and I smiled. She'd given me one of my answers without realizing it. She was strictly on her own insofar as Dawsey was concerned. If the two goons or the bar had been involved, she wouldn't have given them a phony story. They got on each side of me and I let them lead me off. I'd get back to little Judy.
"Stay out of here," one of the goons growled at me.
"I'll try and remember." I grinned at him. I saw him trying to decide whether he ought to give me something to help my memory. Maybe it was the fact that I towered over him, or maybe my complete acquiescence had thrown him off stride. Anyway, he decided against it and he and his buddy walked back into the bar.
I was already on my way to the car. Dawsey hadn't waited around for the results of Judy's phone call, which meant he expected to make contact somewhere else — home, probably. I turned the little Anglia back toward number 12 Chester Lane. I found myself frowning as I drove past the house. It was completely dark and I remembered Dawsey had left the living room light on as he dashed out.
Parking around the corner again, I walked back to the house. Moving carefully, I saw the door was ajar. I pushed it open slowly, listening. I heard nothing. Stepping into the doorway, I reached my hand around the door to grope for the light switch. My fingers had just touched the metal plate around it when the blow struck me, glancing but plenty hard. My head rang, but I twisted and dived to the floor, in the direction the blow had come from. I got my arms around a leg and pulled. A body came down, hard, on my back and a foot smashed into my ribs. I kicked out, fighting more by instinct than anything else, my head still spinning. It stopped as the second blow landed, this time full on the back of my skull. Groggy as I was, I knew a lead-weighted sap when I felt one. Then everything stopped and the blackness grew blacker until there was nothing.
I had no way of even estimating how much time had gone by before I started to come around. I only knew that I was alive by the sensation of heat against my cheeks. Dead men don't feel anything. I kept my eyes closed and let my mind start to work. Long ago I'd mastered the art of staying apparently unconscious while I came around. It was a matter of control, of holding back all the normal reactions of groaning, stretching, opening the eyes, moving. I was being dragged along a metal flooring by both my arms and I heard an occasional loud hiss of steam and the clank of metal. I was in some kind of factory or plant. My mouth felt funny — I realized I was gagged. My ankles were bound together, too. I opened my eyes, just slits, but enough to see through. Two pairs of legs were walking in front of me, dragging me along on my belly. Suddenly, they halted and I was dropped onto the floor. I heard voices call to a third man, who answered from a distance.
"Put the gun back in his pocket," I heard one of them say. "Nothing is to be left around. Hell just disappear and they'll spend time and effort hunting him down."
I felt myself being turned on my side and I let my body roll limply. One of them leaned down and put Wilhelmina into my pocket. Through slitted eyes I saw that my arms, still stretched over my head, were tied at the wrists with handkerchiefs. And I saw something else. I was on some sort of catwalk — beyond it I could see the orange glow of a huge, fiery smelting oven. I was inside one of Townsville's copper-smelting refineries. A foot turned me over on my stomach again, and I could see down over the edge of the catwalk. A long, wide conveyer belt paralleled the catwalk, about four feet below it, carrying ore to the mouth of the huge furnace. The plant was obviously on half-shift, perhaps even less, with maybe a few workmen on call through the night. Many of these plants were automated and ran by themselves. I suddenly knew what they intended to do. I heard one man call again to the third one, and I saw his figure at the far end of the conveyor belt. They were going to make me into a copper teapot.
"Now," the third man called. I was grabbed by rough hands and pushed off the edge of the catwalk. I twisted my body and managed to land on the rough, sharp ore on my side. My ribs felt as though a hundred spears had been plunged into them, and I lay there, fighting down the waves of pain. I rolled over and felt the speed with which the conveyer belt was moving. Glancing back over my shoulder, the furnace looked hotter and bigger with every passing second.