Kelly, outraged, cried, “What’s the meaning of this?”
“The meaning,” the Major told him, with a smile of crocodile, sadness, “is that our partnership is most regrettably at an end.”
Jigger didn’t believe it at first, when she saw the guns come out. She was watching from the third-floor window of the radio room, and her plan had been to make another attempt to talk to Kelly as soon as he was away from the others, but now she didn’t know what to do. She watched the Major and Miss Rushby march Kelly and Robby away at gunpoint — come to think of it, Frank and Sassi didn’t seem to be around any more either — and for just a minute everything seemed hopelessly lost.
But then she saw the package in the dinghy. The Major had left it there, obviously intending to come right back with Miss Rushby after Kelly and Robby had been locked away, when he and Miss Rushby would get into the dinghy, row out to their own boat, and be long gone with the boodle when the fuzz got here.
Oh, yeah?
Jigger got moving.
There were stairs and there were stairs, and it seemed to Jigger she could count on characters like the Major and Miss Rushby being too snooty to use the servants’ stairs at the back of the house. And she was right. She flew down the back stairs like the slender ghost of a wronged scullery maid, hit the beach running, made a U-turn at the dinghy with only enough slackening of pace to grab the plastic-covered package up in both arms, and tore back into the house at a dead run.
She slid to a stop in the deserted main entrance hall. The primary staircase led up from here, and most of the house connected to this hall one way or another. Jigger put her head and bellowed, “I called the cops from the radio room!” She had good projection, she’d worked on that during her one season as an apprentice in a summer stock theater in Pennsylvania. Wherever they were in the house, the Major and Miss Rushby had heard her.
Jigger listened to the echoes die away, nodded in satisfaction, and took off for the cellars.
The Major had just locked the door behind Robby and Kelly — he’d put them next door to the other two — when he heard the shout. He stopped where he was, listening, heard nothing more, and turned to Adelaide. “That girl?”
Adelaide was wide-eyed, as so he supposed was he. “Could she have?” she asked.
“We must find out,” said the Major.
He was faster than Adelaide, of course, and she hadn’t finished climbing the stairs to the third floor when he was already at the broken door of the radio room, looking in and seeing the rig still on and lit. “Turn around, my dear,” he called. “It’s all true.”
He caught up with her as she made the turn at the second floor. They were both a bit out of breath, but they kept going. “Do you think,” Adelaide said, hurrying as best she could, “we can make it?”
“We can only try, my dear.” The Major held her elbow on the descent, not to hurry but to help.
“At least,” she said, as they reached the first floor at last and headed for the door, “we have the money.”
“Thank heaven,” said the Major.
Then they got to the dinghy, and they didn’t have the money after all. “And to think,” Adelaide said angrily, “I was actually feeling sorry for that girl!”
“A nasty little baggage,” the Major said. “I never liked her, never.”
Adelaide wrung her hands. “What shall we do?”
The Major turned to glare at the house. Faces looked back from second-story windows, but none of them was Jigger. Twenty-seven rooms. Three basements. Plus an entire jungle out back.
“We’ll never find her,” the Major said. “Not in time.”
“We’ll have to go without?”
“I’m afraid so, my dear.”
He helped her into the dinghy, pushed it into the water, wetting his shoes and trouser legs, then climbed in himself and began to row.
“Poor Percy,” said Adelaide.
(6)
Love
Kelly stood at the window watching Redoubtable sail out of the tiny cove and away. Evening was lengthening toward the night, the beach looked deserted, Nothing Ventured IV looked abandoned as it bobbed down there in the water, the future looked grim. The Major and Miss Rushby had gotten away with the money, Jigger had called the police, and the whole plan had gone up the flue.
Kelly heard somebody kick the door open behind him, but he didn’t turn around till he heard Frank call his name: “Kelly? Time for us to get out of here, buddy.”
Kelly nodded, turned away from the disappearing Redoubtable, and walked wearily across the room. “I know.”
Robby said, “Next time,” but then let it go at that.
Kelly just shrugged. Later on, he knew, he’d go talk things over with Starnap and maybe they’d think of something else to do, but at the moment it all seemed hopeless. They’d exposed their faces and their real names, they’d used up their cash reserve, and now they had nothing to show for it and no way to organize themselves to start all over again.
Sassi came to the doorway, looking in at them, seeming almost as troubled as they were, saying, “You boys better get going.”
Robby said, “I hate it that the Major got the money.”
Frank said, “He didn’t. We watched Jigger go out and grab it while you guys were being marched up here.”
Kelly lifted his head, feeling sudden hope. “They didn’t get the money? It’s still on the island?”
“Forget it,” Frank told him. “You’d never find it before the cops got here.”
“But... Jigger...”
Frank shook his head in disgust. “Not Jigger,” he said. “She wasn’t saving that dough for us. Don’t you know what she’s up to?”
It was a question Kelly had already been gnawing on for quite a while without finding any satisfactory answer. “No,” he said.
“A movie contract,” Frank told him. “She figures to parlay this caper into an in at the studio. Isn’t that right, Sassi?”
“It’ll work, too,” Sassi said. “The publicity alone would help a lot, but besides that, she’s saved the studio’s money. And if I put in a word for her too—” She shrugged.
Frank said, “You? Why?”
“She’ll make a deal with me,” Sassi said. “We’ll both get your descriptions wrong.”
“It’s almost isn’t worth it,” Frank said.
“It’s worth it to me,” said Robby. “What about you, Kelly?”
Kelly shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s just get out of here.”
“Right.”
They left the room and started for the stairs and Jigger popped into sight at the end of the hall. Coming briskly toward them, she said, “Kelly, I want to talk to you.”
“Hello, sweetheart,” said Frank.
Jigger stopped in front of them, looking at Kelly. “Kelly? Will you listen to me?”
Kelly didn’t want to. All he wanted was to get back on his ship and go away from here somewhere and let this day come to an end and maybe play some kalah with Starnap and then tomorrow possibly start thinking again. He said, wearily, “We don’t have the time,” and kept walking toward the stairs.
Jigger folded her arms and stepped to one side, letting him by. “If that’s the way you want it,” she said.
They all walked by her, but Kelly got only as far as the head of the stairs. He stopped there and looked back at Jigger, the others all stopping, too, and looking at him in confusion. Jigger was still standing there, arms folded, a tough expression on her face. What did she want to talk to him about? He said, “Where’s the money?”