Edward S Aarons Come Back, My Love

The message was terse and to the point: Heroins-stop this frantic search for your wife, it is idiotic. It 1$ dangerous, sail away from Puerto cabaiio now-tonight-and forget this madness. Your bride of two nights is sick, sick enough to be easily driven to murder. And she would nate to nave to kin you. But Fleming would rather stay and take his chances.

COME BACK, MY LOVE

Edward S. Aarons

A FAWCETT GOLD MEDAL BOOK

Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Conn. Member of American Book Publishers Council. Inc.

All characters in this book are

fictional and any resemblance to

persons living or dead is purely

coincidental.

ONE

fleming heard Goucher's feet on the deck overhead and knew that Charley was coming to tell him they had reached Puerto Caballo, but he didn't move. He lay flat on his bunk, hands clasped under his head, feeling the heat that had been reaching out from the Yucatan coast ever since they dropped Isla de las Mujeres off the port quarter. The schooner had made the run from the Isle of Pines to Yucatan in twenty-two hours, using both sail and auxiliary, which was far from the record his father had made in the Porpoise back in '16, when he raced another interisland schooner hailing from Gloucester. But that had been in September, hurricane time, and now it was March and some fifty years later, and on the Strait there had been only a dead glassy calm.

Thinking of his father and Stone Harbor and that distant New England place he called home made Fleming feel that nothing really changed in the cycles of time, and he knew he had made no mistake by refitting the schooner and bringing her down to the Caribbean to trade as she once had done. Since the Gertrude L. Thebaud broke up on the breakwater off La Guaira five years ago, Fleming reckoned that the Porpoise was the last of the old-time topmast schooners from the Grand Banks days to carry interisland cargo down here.

Charley Goucher was at the ladder now, looking at the steaming, jungled shore of Yucatan. Still Fleming did not move. He was tall, too long for the bunk, with black hair and a face that was not gentle. At thirty he was only slightly heavier than he had been ten years before, and the extra weight was in the solid maturity of bone and muscle. His mouth was wide and uncompromising, but deep in his blue eyes there had once been laughter. He didn't laugh so much

these days. There was nothing to laugh about. There never had been.

Charley stood in the cabin doorway and said, "Mitch, we'll be in Puerto Caballo in an hour. Snap out of it."

"I'm all right."

"You promise we keep going if the cruise ship isn't there?"

"Yes."

"You sure, Mitch?"

"I said I promised, didn't I?"

Fleming sat up, aware of Charley's anxious eyes. He wished Goucher wouldn't worry about him. He felt fine. He was all right.

Goucher was a barrel of a man with a round head and a round belly and arms and legs like iron. Charley had been with him from the first moment Fleming had got the Porpoise off the ways and sailed her south, just the two of them, with Charley complaining every mile of the way until they got the topmasts up off Bermuda. Then Charley got that long and faraway look in his eyes when the Porpoise took the wind and he remembered how it used to be, in the days of dory fishing. They picked up the rest of the crew here and there, a man in Haiti, two more in Martinique, another from Grand Cayman.

He found that his hunch was right—the islands needed small coasters to bring them food and water and equipment. He picked up cargo here and there, not competing with the major freight lines, which couldn't be bothered with the lost and forgotten islands of the Antilles. It had been a good year until that last haul to Trinidad, where he laid over for carnival time. That was the mistake, letting his hair down just that once, swinging on the merry-go-round for a quick grab at the brass ring. Fleming told himself he regretted none of it except how it ended, and it wasn't over yet and he would find her and either kill her or learn why she had left him. It was as simple as that.

Charley Goucher said, "Mitch, are you listening?"

"No. I was thinking of something else."

"Well, I'm thinking of going home."

"Why, is all your money burning holes in your pocket? Do you have to go home to spend it?"

"Money is easy to spend, wherever you are. But I'm going home, anyway."

"All right," Fleming said. He knew Charley wasn't serious. "When do you want to go?"

"Right now."

"You want to swim home, Charley?"

"The sharks would be better company than you."

"That's the real trouble, isn't it?" Fleming asked. He drew a deep breath. "Well, maybe I'll find her here."

"You'd be better off if you never saw her again. Maybe better off if you'd never clapped eyes on her in the first place. You know what she is. You know she's just a little—"

"Be careful," Fleming said quickly.

"Well, it's true, Mitch."

Fleming didn't want to talk about it and he went past Goucher up on deck. The flat Yucatan mainland lay off to port, hazed by heat and distance. The sea was still dead calm, and the laboring diesel left a thick wake under the counter. Fleming looked at the Haitian in the bow, whose job was to search out the telltale lavender of coral reefs. The man at the wheel was Soldier Brown, a Cayman Islander who spoke a scarcely intelligible English. Fleming, who knew Creole French and did better with Spanish, got only a sullen response from Soldier Brown, a man of few words and fewer deeds when it came to hauling his share in the crew. He looked again at the Haitian, seeing how Valere's black muscular body stood out against the line of straggly palmettos and wild banana trees. Over the gasping of the diesel he heard the solid boom of surf on the wild shore and then the harbor opened up ahead and Puerto Caballo came into view as if through a corridor cut in the heat haze. Fleming walked aft and took the wheel, swinging the bow of the schooner into the channel. There were two islands farther west and he saw the black hull of a turtle schooner moored near the offshore pens, and he made a mental note not to anchor to windward of the other vessel. Then he saw the white hull of the cruise ship and his pulse jumped and pounded quickly.

She was here after all, he thought.

"Ai de mi," said Charley at his elbow. "Will you look for her?"

"Shut up," Fleming said.

The harbor was too shallow for the cruise ship, and she was anchored a half mile offshore, with lighters and water taxis for the passengers who wanted to see what a banana town looked like. There was- a big tin sign reading, "P. _Men6ndez, S.A.," over the tin-roofed warehouse, and several others in pastel colors over the lesser waterfront buildings. Beyond the small group of piers to the left were the beach and the shacks of the turtle fishermen, with their double-ended boats drawn up out of the water and the smells that Fleming knew would be like an additional miasmic blanket over that of the heat.

He turned the wheel over to Goucher and went below to shower in tepid water, soaking his dark hair and scrubbing his face. He put on a fresh pair of linen slacks and soft loafers over nylon socks and a white Cuban shirt with its complicated extra buttons. There was no point, he told himself, in letting this get him down. Elizabeth was his wife. The least she owed him was a reasonable explanation of why she had married him and left him two days later. In afterthought, remembering the ceremony in Curagao at the home of that round-faced, thick-tongued Dutch minister who offered them wine and cheese and beamed at Elizabeth, remembering the brief honeymoon at Will Wielle-meyer's airy beach house, filled with the shape of her laughter, he remembered, too, the darkness behind her shining eyes, like the sudden closing of a curtain deep inside her. She took love with a kind of frightened desperation, an Aphrodite filled with black secrets. You were blind, Fleming thought.

When he came up on deck he saw that Valere had lowered a boat and sat in it waiting to take him ashore. It would be night in another hour. He felt the heat of the land and smelled the town, the overripeness of vegetation and crowded people. He got into the boat and Charley Goucher leaned over the rail and called, "How long will you be, Mitch?"

"I'm not sure. Until I find her."

"We don't have any cargo for this town. Shall I let the rest of the crew go, too?"

"Use your own judgment," Fleming said, and to Valere he added, "Let's shove off."

Ten minutes later Fleming walked up the sandy street from the waterfront past the food market, and after two blocks he reached the main square. There was an old colonial Spanish cathedral to the left, with twin bell towers reaching into the hot sky, and opposite it was the tourist hotel, sleek and white-stuccoed, with a private terrace and a sidewalk cafe chained off from the passers-by on the sidewalk. Be-. yond it was the grim old Spanish watchtower that now served as the municipal seat of government.

Crossing the square, he circled the octagonal wooden bandstand and lifted the chain to the terrace of the Hotel Parque Central, and a white-jacketed Indian waiter hurried forward. When he saw Fleming's cap and clothing he smiled and said, "I have a table right here, sir, near the wall."

"Anywhere," Fleming said.

The waiter had a flat Indian face with high cheekbones and thick black hair brushed into carefully lacquered waves. He was much older than Fleming. He said, "You are not from the cruise ship, then. Sit where you please, sir. I will be happy to serve you."

Fleming chose a table with wire chairs and a striped canvas umbrella and looked at the tourists from the ship and the local businessmen in white suits. The tourists looked unhappy, hot and tired and disappointed in Puerto Caballo. Their voices were loud, rising above the murmurs of the Indians solemnly promenading the dusk of the square. Fleming looked for Elizabeth, but he didn't see anyone who remotely resembled her. The waiter hovered at his elbow.

"It is too early for dinner, sefior. You will have an aperitivo, perhaps?"

"A little fruit and rum," Fleming said. "Do you know a man named Peli Menendez?"

The waiter smiled genuinely for the first time. "Yes, sir."

"Does he still run his posada?"

"He will never die, that one. But it is not a first-class place, sir. The tourists do not patronize him."

"I am not a tourist," Fleming said.

"One can see that. Do you know Peli Menendez, sir?"

"My father knew him better." Then Fleming said in Span-

ish, "Are there many tourists registered at this hotel?"

"A dozen, perhaps. Most of them prefer to stay on the ship."

"I am looking for someone among them. A girl with dark red hair. Her name might be Elizabeth Wright, or it might be Elizabeth Fleming. I am not sure how she prefers it. Have you seen such a girl, or do you know of her?"

The waiter was pleased with Fleming's Spanish. "No, I am sorry. But I will inquire for you. My name is Alejandro. A moment, sir."

Fleming made himself sit quietly at the table while he waited. There were long shadows across the square now, and the sound of bells came distantly from the cathedral towers. The heat pressed down on the town like an angry hand. He wiped perspiration from his neck and told himself to take it easy. Then he found himself searching the passers-by for a glimpse of Elizabeth. He told himself to stop it, that he would find her without looking into every face that went by.

The waiter returned with a tall rum drink and a dish of fresh pineapple and some galletas. "She is not registered here, senor. Neither Elizabeth Wright nor Elizabeth Fleming."

"Thank you. You are kind to have taken the trouble."

"It was nothing. But a young American woman heard me make inquiries at the desk. She displayed much interest and wished me to point you out to her. I have heard her name is Catherine Palmer."

"Is she here now?" Fleming asked.

"At that far table," the waiter said.

Fleming got up and carried his drink toward the blonde the waiter pointed out. She saw him coming and smiled briefly and touched a hand to the wire chair beside her in an invitation for him to sit down. Her hair was very pale, drawn back sleekly from her tanned oval face and fixed in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her tan dress was of linen and she wore a thick mass of Mexican bracelets on her left wrist. She looked cool and untroubled by the oppressive heat. "Miss Palmer?" Fleming said.

"Please call me Cathy. This is the most amazing luck, you know." She smiled. "And yet I've been expecting to meet you for days now." She cocked her sleek head to one side. "So you are the bold Captain Fleming."

12"

"Mitch," Fleming said, seating himself.

"Yes, that's what Elizabeth calls you. She was afraid you might show up here."

"Afraid?"

The blonde woman laughed in mock amazement. "I think she is really insane to pass you up."

"Then you know her?"

"Naturally. I work for her brother. I joined the cruise at Willemstad in Curacao, knowing she was aboard. Elizabeth considers me her nearest and dearest friend."

"Where is she now?" Fleming asked, and then he regretted the urgency of his question and tried to smile. "I mean, if you know."

"Oh, I know where she is. But I'm not to tell you."

"Why not?"

"Obviously, because she doesn't wish to see you."

"Why not?" he asked again.

Cathy Palmer had a trick of tilting her handsomely groomed head to one side and looking at him from the tail of her pale green eyes. She was strikingly beautiful, about Elizabeth's age, he guessed. Elizabeth was just twenty-two. When she didn't reply, he said, "Miss Palmer, did Elizabeth tell you much about me?"

"Make it Cathy, please. We're going to be friends. She said she had married you in Curacao."

"And did she say she regretted it?"

Cathy smiled. "Are you in love with her, Mitch?"

"Yes."

"But how could you be? You really don't even know her."

"It was enough," Fleming said.

"Forgive me for probing into your emotional life, but I'm so curious, and I just don't understand what happened. She says she loves you, Mitch, but she's an emotional, spoiled child. And a very, very rich girl." Cathy looked at him sidewise. "Is anything wrong?"

"I didn't know she was wealthy. I thought she was just a secretary, on a cruise for which she had saved up her lunch money."

"Poor Mitch," Cathy Palmer said. "Do you resent her being the sister of a rich man?"

"I wish I had known about it before," Fleming said.

"Before you married her? Would you have acted differently?"

"I don't know," he said. He drank his rum collins quickly. "I want to talk to her. You can understand how I feel. Is she on the ship?"

"No. And I don't think you should see her."

"Where is she?"

"Let me tell her you're here, first. It might be better. Then, if she's willing to talk things over, I'll get in touch with you."

"I'll be at Peli Men6ndez' posada," Fleming said. He felt angry for some reason he couldn't identify. Perhaps it was because this woman seemed to be laughing at him in a detached way. He decided he didn't like Cathy Palmer very much. He felt as if he were begging when he said, "If you could just tell me why she left me the way she did. Just so I could understand it a little better."

"I told you, she's spoiled and used to having her own way."

"That's not enough. There was something else. Something she kept from me."

There was a wariness in Cathy Palmer's long green eyes. "Didn't she give you any hint at all?"

"No. I never asked her."

"Couldn't you guess?"

"No."

She arose gracefully. "I'll get in touch with you."

"I'll be waiting," Fleming said.

TWO

fleming didn't follow her. He thought about it, but then she went into the hotel and he knew she would be aware of it if he tried to follow. He caught Alejandro's eye and took the check and paid it. When he got up he walked around the chain encircling the terrace and let the tide of

•people carry him drifting around the square, past the shops and cantinas, until he saw the entrance to the narrow street that led to the Men6ndez posada.

The inn rambled around an inner court where a fountain played tiredly. There was a small sidewalk caf6 and a narrow lobby. The palm trees in the courtyard looked sere and brown, and two dark-faced fishermen sat at a table in the caf£, drinking Carta Blanca. From this point on the street Fleming could see the small harbor and the islands to the west, where the black-hulled Cayman turtle schooner was anchored. The cruise ship caught the lowering sun and blazed white on the placid sea. Closer inshore, the light hull of the Porpoise looked serene and graceful against the dark green palms on the eastern headland.

Fleming went inside to the worn and polished black mahogany desk and tapped a bell beside an oil lamp and watched a small brown-faced youngster intently practicing on a guitar as large as himself. Peli Mendndez came out of an inner room, carrying with him an aroma of cooking. In his seventies, Peli was built like a gnarled old oak. His thick hair was white, his face burned as dark as the mahogany desk. Peli's grin was delighted, his exclamation a shout of surprise, and then Fleming was hugged in a bear's grip and he heard shouting all through the posada. Only the two fishermen at their beer in the sidewalk caf6 seemed disinterested.

"I am not a superstitious man," Peli Mendndez said loudly. "Yet I see a ghost before me. Forty years ago, you were your father. Exactly like your father!"

"Perhaps." Fleming smiled. "It is good of you to say so."

"A fine man. And with the same boat. I tell myself when I see it that it is an illusion; it is many years since a trading schooner troubles to come to Puerto Caballo. We have made much progress here. We have a fine tourist hotel, regular passenger ships, even a fine highway with only a few holes in it that goes to Meiida. I tell myself my old eyes fail me, for is not that the Porpoise, from the New England of Captain Fleming?"

"It is," Fleming said.

"But you are not here to trade. You have other business?"

"It is a personal matter," Fleming said. "I came to ask your hospitality. I shall be here for a day or two and I

prefer to be ashore rather than stay on my boat."

"My house is your house," said the old man. He shouted for Mario, and the little boy with the guitar came shyly to be introduced as Peli's grandson. There were introductions to Peli's third wife, and to his daughter, and regrets were expressed that Peli's son, a man of science, an archaeologist, was at the ancient ruins explaining the mysteries of the Mayas to the tourists from the cruise ship. There was dinner with beer and wine, and Fleming went through it quietly, with a deep patience and the sense of having found a home here.

It was dark when he found himself alone in his room. He stripped and showered in the zinc-lined cabinet and stretched out on the cot in the close heat and listened to the pulsing of the town's generator, which provided light for the shops around the square.

At any moment he expected a message from Cathy Palmer.

He tried to think of other things. Of the cargo of sugar and oil for Port Heloise, due on the sixteenth of the month. He could pick it all up at Guantanamo and then make his regular run down the Lesser Antilles, stopping at all the tiny cays and islets that had no large boats of their own. Then somebody went by the shutter door and he heard the muted plinking of the guitar in the courtyard. There was no message from Elizabeth.

He told himself to think of something else. Of the house and boatyard back North, and his training as a marine architect and how he had dreamed of yachts and blue water racing sloops; but there had been nobody to ask him to build them when he got out of school.

He listened to the guitar. No message came from Elizabeth.

You've been had, he told himself. A rich man's spoiled brat had a fling with you and thought maybe it was all a very delightful interlude on a boring cruise ship and it would be amusing to tell her friends about it when she got home. Perhaps she thought the ceremony performed by the fat Dutch minister in Willemstad wasn't binding or legal. Then she had another think coming to her. Or maybe she thought she could get a quick and easy divorce. But you don't want a divorce, he told himself. You don't want the

whole thing to have been some kind of sophisticated joke. Fleming, you're either in love with her or not, he told himself.

It was eight o'clock and there was no message.

Maybe you ought to get up off this sweaty cot and look for her. This isn't dignified. You ought to see her just once, face to face, and try to find the shyness you thought was there, the passionate demand for the security of your arms, the tenderness of long hours on a lonely Caribbean beach; and afterward you went hand in hand, dripping wet, to the big house and the big bed where life and love were almost too much to bear.

Somebody knocked quickly and lightly on his door.

It was Mario. "A note for you, sir."

Fleming took the scrap of paper from the boy and read it. It asked him to meet Elizabeth in the Street of the Angels behind the cathedral immediately. The word "immediately" was underlined.

"Who gave you this note, Mario?"

"A lady. A yellow-haired American lady." Mario smiled. "She called me to the street and gave me the note. She was in a big automobile."

"Did she have a driver, or was she alone?"

"She had a driver, but I did not see his face."

Fleming gave the boy a coin and went down to the lobby. Chickens walked across the stone floor as he looked for Peli Menendez. The old man wasn't there. He crumpled the note in his pocket and left by way of the empty sidewalk cafe. He told himself not to hurry. There was plenty of time. But he walked faster.

At the garishly lighted square he turned left and followed the sidewalk under the awnings. The naked bulbs on their overhead wires lit up the sidewalk with a hot, dazzling fury. The cathedral doors were open. Fleming turned into a small alley where the houses were flush with the sidewalk and then came out into the street behind the cathedral.

A car was parked at the end of the street, taking up most of the right of way. The houses across the street were small and neat, their yellow and blue plaster walls flush with the sidewalk. He walked on toward the parked car. When he was halfway there a man stepped from a recessed gateway in

the stone wall and stood in front of him, blocking his way.

"One small moment, sir."

The music and voices from the square were muffled by the dark bulk of the church. The man was tall and lean as a slat, with dark hair and a narrow face and dark eyes. He wore a singlet faded from many washings in salt water and white duck pants and a wide leather belt. Fleming thought he was one of the two fishermen he had seen earlier in Peli's cantina. Then he caught the unmistakable smell of the man and knew he was a crewman from the turtle schooner at anchor up the coast.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You are prompt. You are anxious to see your wife, no?" The man spoke the twisted jargon of half Cockney and half African of the Cayman Islands. "We have a surprise for you."

"We?" Fleming said.

"My friend and I. He is standing behind you."

Fleming felt a movement at his back and glimpsed the other fisherman and saw the shine of a knife in his hand. There was no time for thought. He twisted and dropped and there was a quick tearing sound as the knife slashed through his sleeve and then he drove an angry fist into the other's belly. The second man was shorter than his friend and he wore a straw sombrero such as the local Indians made. The hat fell off when Fleming hit him and rolled in cartwheels across the sandy street. The man yelled and fell back and hit the wall, but he held onto the knife in his hand. Then the first man landed on Fleming's back and Fleming rolled forward with his weight on his hip and reached overhead for a grip on the other's neck. He flipped the man forward and beyond him and heard the thud as the body hit the street, but he didn't see it because he was already spinning back toward the man with the knife. He was rising from where he had sprawled against the stone wall, and Fleming kicked at the knife in his hand and sent it spinning away in glittering arcs. Then he heard a scrabbling sound behind him and something hit the back of his head and he stumbled forward, clawing the air as he fell.

He tried to get up, but he couldn't. A roaring blackness leaped up all around him. He felt a sudden pain in his ribs as one of the men kicked him and he fell over on his

side with his shoulders against the house wall and saw the twin towers of the cathedral swaying against the dark night sky. Nobody came to help him. The street remained quiet and deserted through the hot, noisy pain in his head. He knew what had happened. The first man had landed on the street and picked up a stone and thrown it hard and accurately. He told himself to get up or he would be killed. He couldn't get up. He saw the legs of the two men in front of him and he hoped they wouldn't kick him in the face. One of the men, the fatter of the two, had picked up his knife and his face was thick and dark with congested blood as he bent and lifted Fleming by the hair and forced him to sit up with his back against the wall.

"You are not dead, gringo?"

"I am not sure," Fleming said. The words came with thick reluctance from his tongue. The pain began to subside in the back of his head and he touched his scalp and felt the wet warmth of blood on his neck behind his ear. "What do you want?"

"Nothing."

"Do you want my money?" Fleming asked. "You need not kill me for it. I will give it to you willingly."

"We do not want your money, although if you insist, we shall take it."

"I do not insist."

"Can you hear me clearly, sefior?"

"Yes, I can hear you."

"Then listen carefully. You are to go back to your ship and go away. You are to go away tonight, at once, as speedily as you can. Do not stay here. You are not to come back. Do you understand?"

"No."

"Is it such a complicated thing? You are to go away or you will be killed."

"Why?" Fleming asked.

"Perhaps this is the way your wife wishes it to be."

"I don't believe that."

"Perhaps she does not wish to see you again. Perhaps she feels it would be a mistake to have anything more to do with you. It is certain she does not want you to follow her anymore. You are to forget her, as if she were one who is

dead and buried and never to be thought of again."

"Did she hire you to tell me this?"

"Perhaps."

His head was clear now. He drew a deep breath and saw that both men were standing relaxed, facing him and looking down at him as he sat with his back against the wall. He heard the music of the mariachis in the square beyond the cathedral and a woman laughed softly in one of the houses along the dark, quiet street, but no one had been alarmed by the brief scuffle and nobody was curious enough to see what had happened. The first breeze of the evening made the curving palms move with a dry, brittle sound. Fleming took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the blood behind his ear. He felt better and decided he had been more frightened than damaged. He forced down his anger and made his voice flat and discouraged.

"I do not see how I can go. I have business here."

"You have no business in Puerto Caballo."

"I would like to see my wife."

"She does not wish to see you. If you do not leave, the knife will strike, and it will not miss the second time."

Fleming said, "I won't go."

The stouter man kicked at him and Fleming caught his thick ankle and yanked hard, spilling him to the street so that he landed on his back. He was up before the other man could move. The one who had fallen was yelling in pain and Fleming swung hard at his companion, felt his knuckles crack on flesh and gristle, and there was a warm spurt of blood from the other's broken nose. A light bloomed somewhere nearby and a man's deep, annoyed voice shouted into the street, "Qu6 pasa?" Fleming turned instinctively toward the sound and the moment's inattention was almost fatal. The fatter of the two fishermen came off the ground in a rush and threw him back against the wall and his head slammed against the stone. He felt himself falling and threw out his hands to check himself and there was nothing to hold him and he knew he had made a mistake.

There was a smell of dust and stone in his nose and throat and he heard a man's shout and then he thought he heard the dull explosion of a gun somewhere. He started crawling along the edge of the wall toward the doorway, and then his

-s

aims no longer held him and he sprawled flat in the street. Footsteps ran away from him. There was more shouting and then the sound of a car starting up. Somebody came and leaned over him and said in English, "I think he's all right." The man went away. Fleming lay still and smelled the fragrance of a Havana cigar, and after a while somebody helped him up and he felt the quick bite of tequila on his tongue. He swallowed it and felt foolish and ashamed of himself for having caused all this trouble by his own stupidity.

When he looked around he saw half a dozen people staring at him, but he couldn't see the two fishermen who had attacked him. An American in a white Palm Beach suit was the one with the Havana cigar. He was a pudgy-faced man in his middle thirties, with a round face and a wide mouth that grinned and showed his teeth firmly clamped on the cigar.

"AH right, folks," the American was saying. "Break it up. It's all over. It wasn't anything and nobody's been hurt." The American hunkered down beside Fleming and added, "Do you feel good enough to get up and walk out of this with me before the cops come?"

"Yes," Fleming said. "It's a good idea."

"Then let's go."

THREE

the american leaned back in his wire chair and considered his bottle of beer. "I flew down from Miami, touched at Cuba, and changed to a plane that got me in at Merida. Landed four hours ago. I didn't know it would be so hot here."

"It's always hot here," Fleming said.

"You're from New England?"

"I was."

"Understand you have an interisland trader."

"Yes."

"Business good?"

"Yes."

"What made you leave Stone Harbor?"

Fleming said, "How do you know I come from Stone Harbor?"

"I know all about you," said the American. "Drink your beer, Mr. Fleming."

Fleming said, "Why do you know all about me? How did you happen to come along that street at just the right time?"

"I was looking for you. A waiter at this hotel said I'd find you at an inn run by an old fellow named Men6ndez, and a little boy there told me you'd gone to meet your wife behind the cathedral."

"I didn't know Mario could read English," Fleming said.

"The little boy?"

"He must have read the note," Fleming said.

He drank the Carta Blanca slowly and studiously. The American had helped him clean up and now he felt all right except for a throbbing headache that only aggravated the pulse of anger in him. They hadn't been bothered by the police. They hadn't even seen one. The two turtle fishermen had made good their escape. Fleming wasn't worried about that, because he knew where he could find them when he was ready for them.

The American looked soft, with a slack mouth and bloodshot gray eyes that considered Fleming with uncertainty behind his attempt to be hard and tough. His hands on the table were white, the nails manicured with a neutral polish. But there was a smell of wealth about him, in his expensive clothes and London shoes, his fine Panama hat on the empty chair between them. He took an Upmann from its aluminum tube while Fleming watched, and when the cigar was going, Fleming leaned forward and said, "Just who the hell are you?"

"John G. Wright. Most people call me Johnny G."

"The Wright Steamship Company?"

"Yes."

"Then you're Elizabeth's brother."

"Yes."

They studied each other. Three mariachis came by, play-

ing "Carta a Ufemia," and Fleming heard the murmur of voices from the cruise-ship passengers, their numbers doubled now that evening had come and the temperature was a little less baleful. Bells chimed in the cathedral across the square. Johnny Wright looked away first, down at his cigar. He spread his fingers on the table and looked at them, and then Alejandro came near after the mariachis had passed and said in English, "May I serve you gentlemen anything now?"

"No," said Johnny Wright.

"Another beer, please," said Fleming. In Spanish he said, "Have you seen anything more of the blonde lady you pointed out to me this afternoon?"

"No, sir. She has not been back."

When Alejandro went away, Johnny G. said, "What did you ask him?"

"About a woman named Cathy Palmer."

"Is she here?"

"Yes," Fleming said. "I understand she works for you."

"Look," said the other man. He was excited. "This is damned embarrassing. You're my brother-in-law and I don't mind admitting I didn't like it a hell of a bit when I heard Liza had married somebody down here. I looked you up and that only made me feel a little better."

"So you came down yourself to check on me?"

"And to find out what in hell is going on."

"I wish I knew," said Fleming. "Your precious sister ran out on me."

Johnny G. grinned. "Did you beat her or something?"

"No."

"Get drunk?"

"No."

"Get tired of her?"

"No."

"Maybe you just didn't love her."

"I do," Fleming said.

"Maybe you married her for my money," said Johnny.

Fleming pushed his chair back and stood up. He would

have walked away if Johnny Wright hadn't jumped up and

grabbed his arm and urged him back again. "Don't be a fool.

A man has a right to know, doesn't he?" Fleming sat down

.again and Johnny G. looked relieved. The beer came and

Fleming drank it as he had the first, slowly and deliberately. The terrace was quite noisy now. Out in the square, the evening promenade of young men and girls made their slow tours around and around the bandstand, the young men walking in one direction, the girls sauntering in twos and threes in the opposite direction. The night was filled with whispering and the twang of guitars and an occasional burst of high Latin laughter. Far off beyond the town a sudden flare of red flames stood out against the black tropic sky, growing larger and reaching higher for a long moment. Nobody paid any attention to it except Johnny G., who said, "What's that?"

"It's a show the Mexican authorities put on at the Mayan pyramids. Sort of a sacrificial fire, for the tourists. Reconstructing the ways of the ancestors of most of these people."

"It's weird. Have you been here before?"

"I just know about it," said Fleming.

The flames were gone from the sky, and the night seemed warmer and blacker for their absence. Fleming felt uncomfortable as he looked at Elizabeth's brother. There was only a slight resemblance between the girl and Johnny G. He drew a deep breath and said:

"I guess we won't get anywhere unless we level with each other. I'll tell you all I know about Elizabeth and how I came to marry her. It was in Trinidad. She was off the cruise ship and wandering around alone through the carnival crowds, and I thought she looked scared and lonely, so I spoke to her and showed her Port of Spain. I guess you can say it was just a pickup, but by the time we finished dinner I knew it was a lot more than a casual thing, and I wanted to see her again. She wanted to see me again, too. It was just something there between us, and it's difficult to talk about it or describe it to you."

"You're doing all right," Johnny Wright said.

"I'd never met anyone like her before. She said she'd gone on the cruise and I somehow got the impression she was just a stenographer with a New York shipping firm. And all the time I was with her she seemed haunted, somehow, but she wouldn't talk about it. I wanted to help her. I felt sorry for her. And then I was in love with her and I

knew it for sure when the cruise ship left Port of Spain and I thought I'd never see her again."

Johnny said, "What was she afraid of?" His voice was casual. "Did she tell you?"

"No."

"Then you didn't know anything about her when you married her?"

"That was in Curasao," Fleming said. "We met again by accident. She was still alone. She didn't seem to have any friends among the other passengers on the cruise. We didn't ask each other any questions. It was enough just to be together again. Enough just to get married as fast as we could and spend a two-day honeymoon at a friend's house near Willemstad. We didn't discuss the future. It was fine, just as it was, for those two days."

"Was she happy then?"

"I think so. She wasn't afraid anymore."

"Then what happened?"

"She went back to the ship to collect her luggage." Fleming's mouth twisted as he remembered it. "She never came back. The ship sailed and an hour later a man came with a note from her saying it was all a mistake and to please forget her and not look for her." . ''. "Nothing else?"

"No," said Fleming. "But there's this: I don't care how important you are, Johnny. I won't give her up. I want her for my wife and nothing can change the way I feel about her."

"Nobody's asking you to give her up. But Liza is a Strange girl. Maybe I didn't do all I should have done for her, being older than she is by fourteen years. I'm not making excuses, though. I had to bring her up and I was too busy having fun most of the time to do the job right. I wasn't much more than a kid when everything landed On my shoulders. I tried to give her everything money could buy, and I'm afraid I let it go at that. And she got away from me somewhere along the line."

You damned fool, Fleming thought. It was as if a kaleidoscope shifted inside himself and as he sat there he saw Elizabeth differently, a product of fashionable girls' schools and an indulgent older brother who paid little attention to

her development even though he was devoted to her. He saw her small face flaunting defiance to the world in petulant challenge to the lopsided standards her brother set for her. He tried to push away this image, but it persisted for a moment, and then he knew that Johnny had meant well, and if there was blame anywhere, it wasn't entirely on Johnny, because Johnny was as much a product of his small, tight, arrogant world as his sister.

"Liza was always a quiet girl until about two years ago," Johnny was saying. "Then she seemed to be trying to knock the whole world off balance. Me, I had troubles of my own, with my wife and everything—she's back in Westchester right now, stewing over me—and I couldn't pay much attention to Liza. I let her have everything she asked for, and maybe that was my mistake."

"You said she was quiet until two years ago," Fleming remarked. "What happened then?"

"I think it was Cathy Palmer."

"So?"

Johnny G. studied his cigar. "I was in love with Cathy then. Maybe I still am. I wish I could settle it in my own mind, once and for all. Cathy practically runs the company for me. My wife hates her, but Liza thinks Cathy is a tin goddess. Anything Cathy does can't be wrong. Well, I know Cathy's faults, but I can't help myself. I didn't think Cathy was doing Liza much good, though, and I sent her on this cruise to get her away from Cathy's influence. But it didn't work."

"Cathy joined the ship at Willemstad," Fleming said.

"Yes, I know."

"And that's where Liza left me."

"That's right."

Fleming stood up. "I think I know what I've got to do. Are you going to check in here at the hotel?"

"It's the best joint around, isn't it?"

Fleming nodded. "I'll find you here when I need you. I want to thank you for your attitude about all this."

"I think we'll get along. You feel all right now?"

"Yes. I'm fine."

"What about those two mugs who jumped you?"

"I feel better about them. I thought Elizabeth sent them."

"She wouldn't do a thing like that. Do you know where to find her?"

"I'm going to look," Fleming said. "I won't stop looking."

* * *

It was nine o'clock when he left the terrace caf£ and walked around the town square to the narrow street that led downhill to the waterfront. The breeze he had felt before was gone, and a dead stifling heat had settled over the town. He looked up at the stars and couldn't see them through the overcast that had come up from the northern horizon of the Gulf. The sultry air seemed to be charged with tension. As he went by a fruit stall he saw the sleepy proprietor come out in his bare feet and put up wooden shutters over the shelves of his stand. He walked a little faster.

In a waterfront bar he picked up Soldier Brown and beckoned him outside. The Cayman Islander seemed reluctant to leave the two girls with him, and he came along sullenly to the wharf where their dinghy was tied up. Soldier Brown was a squat, chunky man of about forty, and he still wore his British infantryman's uniform, although the khaki had been bleached white by the sun and salt spray since the years of his service.

"Captain," he said, "there's a club in this town where you get the damnedest show you ever saw. They say it's got Stuff you never heard of or imagined. They got girls from India and China, they say. I was hoping to take it in tonight." They passed through a shaft of yellow light from an open doorway and the seaman saw Fleming's battered face and said, "Something happen to you, Captain?"

"Not too much. Have you got any friends from Grand Cayman on that turtle schooner, Soldier?"

"No, Skipper, but I know them by name."

"Who is the captain?"

"Man named Hunsicker. He keeps apart from the crew. They say he runs 'em hard, but it's a mean and dirty lot aboard that boat."

Fleming got into the dinghy and Soldier Brown shoved away from the pier. An oily ground swell came out of the north and rolled uneasily into the partially sheltered harbor.

Fleming described the two turtle fishermen who had attacked him and Soldier Brown nodded. "I know those two. You have some trouble with them, Captain?"

"Some," Fleming said.

He let it drop and told Soldier Brown to wait in the dinghy as he climbed to the Porpoise's deck. The schooner was riding light, with only ballast and no cargo, and she rolled unevenly at the end of her anchor line. The heat offshore was just as oppressive as in the town. He changed clothes quickly, putting on a tan linen suit, and then he packed extra shirts in a dark blue canvas bag and threw in his shaving kit. From the drawer under his bunk he took out a Magnum .357 revolver and a handful of shells. He loaded the gun and wiped the surface oil from the barrel and put it in his coat pocket. When he straightened, Charley Goucher was in the cabin doorway. The mate wore only a pair of faded blue shorts stretched painfully tight over his hard barrel belly. His round face was flushed from drinking, but Fleming was not annoyed. Charley could drink three men under the table and still walk a chalk line.

"You find her?" Charley asked.

"Not yet."

"You look like you found some trouble, though."

"I'm all right," Fleming said.

"Going to stay ashore?"

"For a day or two. But I don't like the weather. And this harbor doesn't offer any protection from the north."

Goucher nodded. "I've seen the barometer falling."

"If it looks bad and I'm not aboard, you take the Porpoise out and give her plenty of sea room, Charley."

"Sure."

Fleming said, "Is anything wrong, Charley?"

"Like I said, I'm thinking of home. I'm tired of banana towns. I keep thinking that right now the maples are being tapped and the oaks got them little new red leaves just peeping out on them. Don't you ever think of those things, Mitch?"

"I try not to," Fleming said. "You're just homesick."

"And you're not?"

Fleming didn't reply. He felt the sweat trickle down the nape of his neck and soak the fresh shirt he had put on.

He looked at the barometer and the charts on the table and felt the uneasy lift and fall of the schooner in the ground swell. The sound of a good American orchestra came faintly from over the black water, from the cruise ship anchored offshore. Fleming picked up his canvas duffel bag and went to the rail and climbed down into the waiting dinghy. He called back to Goucher to keep watching the weather, and then told Soldier Brown, "Let's go."

A launch crowded with tourists put out from the landing and passed them before they were halfway to the cruise ship. It was ten minutes before Fleming climbed the ladder and walked across the ship's deck in company with a smart, handsomely tanned young third officer in immaculate whites. In the purser's office, cool and air-conditioned and streamlined for efficiency, he shook hands with Mr. Jackson, the purser, and asked about Elizabeth Wright and Cathy Palmer.

The purser's face closed against him for a moment, and then he shrugged. "The two ladies have left our ship, Captain. They won't be continuing with us from here on."

"You mean they're staying in Puerto Caballo?"

"I wouldn't know their plans, sir. They left with Mr. Sam Campbell, who seems to be a close friend of both young women. Where they expect to stay or what they plan to do here, they didn't say. We sail from here at midnight."

"You seem glad to get rid of them," Fleming said.

"There were some difficult moments," the purser admitted.

"What kind of difficult moments?"

"There were complaints about the noise in their staterooms. We didn't do anything officially. This is a holiday cruise, and people are expected to be less inhibited than at home."

"Who is Sam Campbell?"

"He is traveling with Miss Palmer."

"Adjoining staterooms?"

"Yes."

"He's definitely gone off the ship, too?"

"Yes."

"But you don't know where they plan to stay?"

"We were not advised."

Fleming said, "Could you tell me what this Campbell fellow looks like?"

A tall man, the purser said, collegiate type, but older and more mature. About Fleming's age, perhaps, but blond. Apparently well-to-do. Pleasant-spoken, much quieter than the two women. From New York. Apparently in Wall Street, junior member of a brokerage firm, or something like that.

None of it added up to anything in Fleming's mind. He thanked the purser and had Soldier Brown row him ashore.

FOUR

peli menendez was waiting in the lobby of his posada when Fleming returned. The power plant of the town had shut down promptly at nine-thirty, and now the square Fleming passed on his way here was lighted by spitting, garish gasoline lanterns and the softer, mellow glow of oil lamps. In the lobby the kerosene lamp made a yellow shine on the dark mahogany desk and on the high-backed old Spanish chairs that stood about on the smooth tile floor. The old man sat just inside the courtyard near the fountain, and with him was a tall, handsome young Mexican and a girl in a white cotton dress with dark hair and a smooth and lovely face. Peli Menendez turned in his chair and said, "Ah, it is the young Yankee man of the sea. He has returned at last."

His words were jocular, but Fleming had the feeling that they had been anxiously waiting for him. Peli introduced the young man as his son, Hector, Mario's father, and the girl was Inez, Hector's wife, whom Hector had met while studying in Mexico City. Fleming shook hands and the girl smiled briefly and retreated to stand close to her husband.

"The archaeologist," Peli said, nodding to his son. "These children have been bored many times by my stories of your father and the way it was here in the old days."

Fleming still sensed something wrong. He heard the fountain tinkling and he glanced up at the gallery to the

floor of his room, but it was dark up there and he returned his gaze to the old man.

"Were there any more messages for me, Peli?"

"No messages. But two visitors."

"You seem troubled," Fleming said.

"The first was a man who said his name was Sam Campbell. He came from the cruise ship, a very pleasant and polite man, but there was something about him that seemed dangerous. Do you know him?"

"No," said Fleming. "What did he want?"

"Only to talk to you, he said. He said he would return tomorrow morning."

"And the other visitor?"

Peli looked at his son, and Hector Menendez said quietly, "It was Lieutenant Amayo, of the police. He was here twenty minutes ago. He asked for you, sir, as the husband of Elizabeth Wright."

Fleming's mouth went dry. "What did he want?"

"Your wife has been arrested and is in the town jail."

"What for?"

"Amayo would not say. He requested that you come to his office at once. He would not tell why your wife was arrested."

"How did he know I was her husband?"

"Amayo is a good policeman," said Hector. His eyes regarded Fleming with compassion. "Alejandro, a waiter at the Parque Central, told him you had been making certain inquiries about your wife. Alejandro was in the police car when they came here, and I spoke to him while Amayo talked to my father. It is really simple enough."

"I'd better go," Fleming said.

"I would not be too worried, sir. Your wife is unharmed."

"Unharmed? Why shouldn't she be?"

Hector Menendez shrugged. His pretty wife murmured something and they walked around to the other side of the fountain in the dark courtyard and Fleming heard them whispering there. He looked at Peli, but the old man only said, "Go, Captain. The sooner, the better."

Fleming went out.

Thunder grumbled in the dark northern sky as he walked through the narrow streets to the looming bulk of the old Spanish watchtower. Lightning made quick, repeated flares

over the sea, and he looked for the riding lights of the Porpoise, still offshore. He hoped Charley Goucher was awake and aware of the impending weather. Another launch was making its way across the dark harbor, presumably with the last stragglers from the cruise ship. Fleming pushed the weather from his mind as he came to a long ramp lighted by two old-fashioned oil lanterns; beyond the ramp was the medieval, fortress-like entrance to the casrillo.

He was about to go up the ramp when someone called to him from a car parked in the deep shadows under a twisted banyan tree. "Captain Fleming!"

He turned that way, and in the darkness under the tree he caught the sleek shine of Cathy Palmer's golden head, her face turned toward him. A man sat with her behind the wheel of the open touring car. He looked big and powerful, with blond hair cut in a collegiate crew cut and a thin face and big hands that rested easily on the wheel. He wore a white suit with a dark bow tie and a matching handkerchief in his breast pocket. Cathy Palmer had a dark lace scarf around her neck. Fleming put his hand on the car door and Cathy laughed softly and said:

"We were waiting for you, Mitch. We almost gave you up. Have you met Sam Campbell? He's from New York. He's been with the cruise since Curasao, too. He flew down with me to join the ship."

Fleming shook hands. Campbell's grip was hard and firm.

"I've just learned that you left the cruise," he said.

"Yes," Cathy said. "I have a friend who owns a plantation on that big island in the harbor, and he's asked us to stay. Hans Ottmann. Do you know him?"

"No. Did Elizabeth leave the ship, too?"

"Of course. She'll stay with us. I suppose you know what happened tonight?"

"I don't know anything about it," Fleming said.

"Darling, don't look so serious. It's all a ridiculous mistake. Elizabeth won't let us get her out of this terrible little jail, so it looks as if you're going to have no trouble seeing her at last. She can't very well run away from you now."

"What was she arrested for?"

"It's just silly. There was a little trouble in one of the nightclubs here, and somehow they think Liza is to blame.

But I think you'd better let the policeman explain it."

.Fleming looked at Campbell. "Were you there, too?"

"There was a whole crowd of us from the ship," Campbell said. "Liza had a little too much to drink, that's all."

"The Mexican police don't arrest American women for anything like that. What was the real reason?"

"She got a little out of control, that's all."

"Couldn't you stop her?" Fleming asked.

"She wasn't—she was extremely excited."

Cathy Palmer interrupted. "I told her you were looking for her, Mitch. What she had to say about it wasn't very nice, and I suppose that's why she was so tense and excitable. I really think the police can explain it better than we."

"All right," Fleming said.

"We'll wait out here for you."

"Don't bother."

Turning, he walked up the ramp into the castillo. A guard in a sweat-stained khaki uniform with a holstered pistol in his belt was asleep in a tilted chair inside the doorway and Fleming woke him up and asked for Lieutenant Amayo. The man directed him to the first door on the left and Fleming thanked him and knocked on it. When a voice impatiently asked what he wanted, he opened the door and went inside.

Somewhere in the cells farther down the corridor a man was singing a plaintive love song in dialect Spanish and from the base of the old stone building came the restless wash and sigh of the sea. A single oil lamp hung from a chain over the desk in the barren stone room and made a bright yellow circle over the desk and the man who sat behind it. Lieutenant Amayo looked like a squat toad hunched in the swivel chair. He had thick hair and the high cheekbones and flat face of the local Indians. He wore a Sam Browne belt with his khaki uniform and there were dark sweat stains under his armpits. When he looked up at Fleming his eyes were as hard and dark as obsidian. The singer in the nearby cell stopped for a moment and then began his love song all over again. Somewhere on the beach a dog barked in a sudden sharp frenzy and then was quiet.

"Captain Fleming,"-said Amayo. "You can be no one else. I am happy you came so promptly."

"I understand my wife is here," Fleming said, and he was surprised by the way his voice sounded harshly in the stone room.

"There is no hurry. Please sit down. We have another chair here, one I bought myself, since this is a poor town and we cannot afford sumptuous equipment. It is one of the great difficulties of all Mexico. I am not paid for these extra hours I must spare from my family, either."

Fleming sat down. "If my wife is under arrest, I wish to know what steps I must take to obtain her release."

"You speak Spanish very well, Captain Fleming."

"Then you understand me," Fleming said.

"Perfectly. I shall be happy to release your wife into your custody. It is not a pleasant or comfortable thing to arrest an American tourist—especially one as important and wealthy as your wife."

"What are the charges against her?"

Amayo moved his hands on the desk and Fleming saw they were square and hard and very clean. He began to feel a little better, although the castillo depressed him, as if the ghosts of Spanish conquistadors and officers of the Inquisition still walked here. He took a pack of American cigarettes from his pocket and pushed them toward the Lieutenant, who nodded his thanks and helped himself to three cigarettes and returned the rest. Fleming left the cigarettes on the desk.

"You may keep them," he said.

"It is not necessary to bribe me," said Amayo.

"It is not a bribe. Only a gift."

"For what has happened tonight, I could expect much more. But I am an honest man. I forgive your insult because you are an American and perhaps this is your usual way of doing business with your public officials. If I wanted a bribe, I would not take one from you. I would go to the young lady's brother, who, I understand, is a millionaire."

"So you know he is here, too. I apologize."

"You need not apologize and I know Mr. Wright is in town. It is my business to know everything, or nearly everything, that takes place in Puerto Caballo. There was a time when I took examinations for the federal police force and hoped to live with my family in Mexico City, but that was

many years ago and I am still here, and a poor man. But I am an honest man, sir."

"I apologize again. I'll take back my cigarettes and I would like to see my wife. I am impatient to see her. Perhaps you understand and sympathize with my feelings."

"I understand and sympathize," Amayo said, nodding. In the light of the overhead lamp his face looked like a carving on one of the ancient stone images' in the depths of the jungle. His eyes were bright. "I also understand you are newly married, Captain."

"Yes," said Fleming.

"Then you do not know your wife very well, as yet."

"Perhaps not."

"You were not with her tonight?"

"I have not seen her for three weeks. She sailed from Curasao on the ship that is here now and I conducted my business with my schooner until I could come here to rejoin her."

"Does she wish to go with you, do you think?"

"I'll know better when I talk to her," Fleming said. "Why was she arrested?"

"She is not arrested. It is protective custody. For her own safety and welfare." Amayo's voice grew heavy. "There are one or two establishments in our little town that rival any cesspool of Marseilles, you understand. Most of the people of Puerto Caballo are honest and hard-working and obedient to the law, but there are some who feel they must offer extra attractions to the tourists who come here in increasing numbers each season. It is a difficult matter to control, and some of the entertainment is definitely not nice. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Fleming.

"Your wife went to one of these places in the company of Miss Palmer and Mr. Campbell. They drank heavily and were noisy. But your wife was especially disturbing. There was a show put on for the entertainment of the tourists who were there. Not a nice show. There were various acts designed to stimulate and excite the senses."

Fleming felt sick. "I think I understand."

"I wonder if you do," Amayo said quietly. "Your wife created a disturbance that required my interference. I had

to take her off the stage, from among the entertainers, and bring her here. She did not seem to know what she was doing."

Fleming stood up. He put his hands in his pockets to keep Amayo from seeing how they shook. "Shut up. Just let me see her."

"As you wish. I am sorry for you."

"Just bring her here," Fleming said.

He waited alone in the office for five minutes, after Amayo went out. The sea sighed softly around the stone base of the old Spanish tower, and now and then he heard the rumbling thunder from the width of the Gulf to the north. He walked to the window and looked out over the beach and tried to see the lights of his schooner in the harbor, but he couldn't see them and he couldn't tell if Goucher had taken the Porpoise to sea or not. Lightning flared nearby, and in the brilliant glare he saw the thunder-heads towering many thousands of feet into the night sky. But the air was still hot and oppressive with latent violence. Fleming leaned on the stone windowsill and squeezed the stone with all his strength, but the trembling in his hands went up his arms into his shoulders and made the rest of him tremble, too. He told himself to take it easy, to get a grip on himself. From the direction of the town he heard the barking of dogs and the crowing of roosters. The singer in the nearby cell was silent. Fleming wanted to look at the official printed records on Amayo's desk, but he didn't. He wanted to turn away and walk out of the jail and keep walking down to the waterfront to his vessel and get as far away from here as he could. But he knew he would always have himself along for company and that distance would never mean anything.

The door opened and when he turned he saw Elizabeth in the room. Amayo had tactfully kept out so they could be alone.

He looked at Elizabeth and tried to smile, but the smile wouldn't come and he felt the shock of seeing how she looked and he wanted to sit down. He said softly, "Hello, Liza."

She didn't answer. For a moment he thought some mistake had been made. She didn't look much like Elizabeth,

the girl he had married in Cura9ao. But there was no mistake. She looked like a tramp. She looked sullen and wanton and disheveled in a way he wouldn't have thought possible. She leaned back against the heavy brass-studded door and her hips were askew and her mouth was partly open and he saw the sullen pouting of her lips and the heavy droop of her eyelids. He felt a sudden surge of anger and he was shocked at his impulse to hit her. He forced himself to stand still.

"Don't you remember me?" he asked. "I'm your husband."

"Hello, Mitch," she whispered.

"I've come to take you with me," he said.

"I'm not going."

"I've followed you for a long time, for a couple of thousand miles. I want to talk to you. I want to know why you left me, and I want to keep you with me."

"You want too much," she whispered.

"I want only you," Fleming told her.

There was something in her voice and manner that he did not understand, something remote, far removed from the realities of the world. As if she were sleepwalking, lost in some deep darkness within herself. He saw the downward sag of her young mouth and the black brooding behind her blue eyes as thunder crashed and she looked up momentarily, and then she continued to study her stained satin slippers as if there were something fascinating in the shape of her small, delicate feet. One shoulder of her green frock was torn away and she held a hand there, her fingers looped in the strap of a small straw bag, holding the dress together; but he could see the creamy smoothness of her skin through the ripped cloth. The dress was torn in other places too. Fleming watched her swing the straw handbag from the loop on her little finger. Her dark red hair was twisted and disheveled.

"Elizabeth," he said.

"Don't come near me," she said quickly.

"I'm taking you out of here."

"No. I don't want to go. This is where I belong."

"That isn't so. You need help and I want to help you and I'm not going to let you run away from me again. I

don't know why you left me, but I know you need someone to help you, and now I know you're in some kind of trouble and I want to share it with you, Elizabeth."

She laughed softly. "No."

Fleming said, "Nothing has changed for me. I feel exactly the way I did in Willemstad."

"I know you do."

"And you don't?"

She did not answer.

He said, "Elizabeth, come with me. We can't talk here."

"We can't talk anywhere," she whispered. "There's nothing to talk about. I made a mistake and it wasn't fair to you and I'm sorry about everything, but I wish you would leave me alone and forget about me and try to think that I never met you."

"I can't do that," he said.

"You've got to."

"Why?" he asked. "Why must I?"

"I don't want to tell you."

"Don't you love me?" he asked.

She looked at her feet and he saw she was going to cry and suddenly he felt as if something were tearing apart inside himself. He came around the desk and took her arm and opened the hall door. She neither resisted his touch nor reacted to it in any way. It was as if she didn't care at all, as if she felt nothing whatever, as if she were still lost deep in her inner brooding darkness. There was nobody in the hall. He didn't see Amayo.

"Come along," he said.

She walked placidly beside him and the guard at the outer door looked at them and said good night pleasantly and then they were out on the ramp leading to the street. Lightning scratched the sky and in the intense blue glare Fleming looked for the car that had been parked nearby, but Cathy Palmer and Sam Campbell were gone and the space under the banyan tree was empty.

"Your brother is in town," he said. "Do you want me to take you to him?"

"I don't care," she said.

"Would you rather come with me?"

"It doesn't matter."

' "Are you ill?" he asked.

"Yes."

"What's the matter, Elizabeth?"

"I'm just sick," she said. "Sick of everything."

He took her hand and led her down a flight of stone steps to the dark beach. She was like a sleepwalker. There were lights to the left near the fishermen's huts, and the boom of the surf crashed loudly against the promontory on which the Castillo stood. There were lights moving out of the harbor, too, but Fleming couldn't tell if they belonged to his schooner or not. He couldn't see the cruise ship. Elizabeth's hand felt cold in his. He turned to the right, finding his way along the beach by the white lines of the noisy breakers that came racing up out of the northern darkness. After a little way the beach grew narrower and stonier and the dense, rank vegetation crowded them closer to the water's edge. Fleming stopped walking and took a deep breath of the hot, still air. Elizabeth sat down, still holding her straw handbag. He lit two cigarettes and offered her one, but she shook her head. He sat down beside her ancl flipped the extra cigarette away, watching the arc of the red coal vanish in the blackness. He couldn't see her face, but he felt her shiver.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

"Only inside of me. I know it isn't cold."

"Are you afraid of me?" he asked.

"No, Mitch. Not of you. Never. But I'm afraid of what I might do to you."

"You've always been afraid, haven't you? I mean, you were walking around afraid of something that first day we met."

"Yes. In Trinidad."

"What were you afraid of?"

"Myself," she whispered.

"Why? What's wrong with you?"

"I'm no good."

"I don't believe that."

She turned toward him with a sudden angry gesture. "I know you don't believe it. I know you love me, and I know it's for myself alone, because you didn't know who I was when we married, did you, Mitch?"

"No," he said.

"So you loved me and for a little while I wasn't afraid anymore and I began to think maybe there was a chance for me and maybe I could be happy like other people, and for those two days, Mitch, I really was happy because you made me feel safe and 1 loved you, too."

"Please tell me what's wrong, Elizabeth."

Her head hung down. "I can't."

"Are you ashamed of it?"

"Yes. And I don't want to hurt you. There's nothing you can do, Mitch. Nothing at all. It's something I must do for myself, and I don't think I can succeed. I haven't the strength, although when I was with you I tried so hard and I was truly happy with you. I didn't want it ever to end."

"Then why did you leave?"

"So you would be free of me. So you wouldn't be hurt."

"Then you cared that much about me?"

"You're the only person in the world I care anything about."

He felt as if a great weight had been suddenly lifted from his shoulders. In the sudden flare of lightning he glimpsed her face and saw her cheeks were wet with tears. He felt a quick desire for her, remembering how it had been in the beach house at Willemstad, and he put his arm around her. Immediately she clung to him and he heard her sobs over the thunder of the surf on the rocky beach. Her body felt soft and helpless as he held her and he ran his fingers through her thick hair and said her name over and over again. He never wanted to let her go. It didn't matter what kind of trouble she was in, he thought, as long as she loved him. He was sure of this. It was only a matter of getting her to trust him and to realize that all he wanted to do was to help her and take care of her and keep her from harm, now and always, as long as they lived.

"Don't cry," he whispered.

"I can't help it."

"Just tell me what I can do," he said.

"Nothing."

The beach around them still held the heat of the day. He watched the white surf come out of the darkness, with waving manes like those of wild stallions, and he felt as if

nothing else existed in the world then except this small space where they sat together on the beach.

"Who is Cathy Palmer?" he asked.

He heard Elizabeth draw a deep breath. "A friend."

"And Sam Campbell?"

"Another friend."

"Have you known them both for a long time?"

"Only Cathy."

"Was it because of Cathy that you left me?" he asked. "When you went back to the ship to pack your clothes, she was waiting for you there, wasn't she? It was a surprise to you, wasn't it? And something happened to make you leave me. It was something to do with Cathy Palmer."

"Don't ask me about it," she whispered.

"I've got to know."

"I can't tell you. Not now. Maybe sometime, if you leave me alone, I can tell you."

"Oh. Do you want me to go away and forget about you for a while? Is that it?"

"Yes."

"I won't do it," Fleming said. "Never. Tell me about Cathy Palmer. Are you afraid of her?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

She moved away from him and he sensed her resistance to his questions, but he had to go through with it. If he didn't learn the truth tonight he would never learn it, and if he left her now he would never see her again. He wanted her with a desire that was almost beyond control. Her body was slender, wide-shouldered, with full curving hips and breasts. In the intermittent glare of lightning on the empty beach he saw that her face was without expression, the pupils of her eyes small, her mouth slack. The surf crashed behind her and then the darkness returned.

"Mitch?" she whispered. "Do you want me? Right now?"

"No." He forced himself to the denial as she knelt suddenly before him. "Not the way you are."

A sudden wind blew in the sea grapes and palms up-thrust out of the dense jungle growth. The wind made a humming and keening sound in the tough, twisted vines and then the sand came blowing across the beach, stinging

them as if someone had picked up a giant handful and thrown it at them. Elizabeth whimpered and sheltered in his arms. Then the wind died and the night was electric with quiet waiting.

"If you don't want me," Elizabeth said, "why did you follow me?"

"I want you," he said, "but not like this. I want to know how I can help you." He felt a quick, angry impatience with her. "I think you're putting on a big act about being in trouble and not wanting me to be involved in it."

"Listen, Mitch, I love you. I've never loved anyone else. When I tell you that, do you believe me?"

"I want to," he said. "But you're keeping something from me." His anger sharpened. "What happened at that joint you went to tonight? Where were your good friends Cathy Palmer and Sam Campbell? Were you drunk or something?"

"Something," she said quietly.

"Didn't you know I was here, looking for you?"

"Cathy told me."

"Did you send those two men to scare me off?"

"What two men?"

"The two men who tried to kill me."

She looked up quickly. "I don't know anything about that."

He wished there was lightning in the sky so he could see her face and learn what kind of expression was there; but there was no lightning and he felt as if he were at the bottom of a black pit. Her voice came to him out of the dark, disembodied, belonging to no one, dead and flat.

"Mitch, go away. Don't follow me anymore. Maybe someday I'll come to you, when it's all over and I know myself better. If I stay with you, I'll only make you hate me. And I don't want you to hate me. I want you to love me. The way it is now, I need six months or a year. Then I'll come and find you. Then I'll know."

"What's wrong with right now?" he asked harshly.

When she didn't answer he stood up and his hand found her straw bag on the pebbly beach and he picked it up, intending to give it to her. But the catch came loose and when he lifted it the flap opened and the contents spilled with a small clatter to the beach. He heard Elizabeth's

breath hiss out and then she lunged toward him and tried to push him aside so she could pick up the objects herself, without his help. And just then there was lightning directly overhead and he saw the frantic terror in her eyes and the way she was desperate to shield whatever lay on the pebbles nearby and he drove into her and she fell away from her stooping position over the open bag. He picked up a compact and a small gold pencil and a silk change purse and a leather wallet and a passport folder.

And the hypodermic in its plastic case.

He stood up and faced her with the syringe in his hand.

"Throw it away!" she screamed. "Throw it away!"

He just looked at her.

"It's mine! Damn you, you knew it was there! You wanted me to know that you knew it!"

She came at him with the frenzy of a wild animal driven from normal timidity to an uncontrolled ferocity. Her charge drove him backward and he felt her snatch the hypodermic needle from his hand and then she tried to slash him with it and he caught her wrist and twisted her arm down and she screamed and fell away from him.

He wanted to question her softly and quietly but he suddenly knew there was nothing rational about her now, and when she came at him again, scratching and biting and kicking, he simply stood there, and after a moment her pummeling stopped and she stood before him and cursed him. He didn't say anything. He couldn't speak. And then she suddenly turned and started to run away up the beach. For a moment he hesitated, and then he thought it would be a terrible mistake to let her escape him this time, interpreting his dismay for abhorence.

He ran after her, calling her name, but she was gone.

The wind came suddenly from the north again and with

it there was a burst of lightning and a crackling, ripping

sound • of thunder, and then the rain came down as if a

dam had burst, a solid, stunning, crashing sheet of water

that pushed and pounded him and drove him toward the

steps that led up to the street. Elizabeth wasn't there. He

called her name again and only the howling wind answered

. him. He walked slowly along the ramp and he didn't know

what to do. He looked for Elizabeth and she was gone and

now he knew what was wrong with her and it was too late and he had lost her. She was gone. The rain plastered his clothes to his skin and pulled at his hair and blinded him. He ran through suddenly, running streams full of debris in the middle of the street, splashing ankle-deep across the intersections, calling her. The streets were empty. Then he was suddenly sick, feeling his stomach turn over, and he wondered at all the mistakes he had made in just these last thirty minutes. You love her and you let her get away from you, thinking you despised her, he thought. The rain felt cold and hard and stinging as it pounded his back.

FIVE

in the morning the storm was over. Fleming awoke on the narrow bed in his room at the posada, aware of the heat and the reflected blaze of sunlight on the tin roof under his window. He heard the crowing of roosters and the barking of dogs and the persistent plinking of the guitar in Mario's hands. Sweat drenched him. He watched a lizard chasing its tail in a corner of the room and he thought of Stone Harbor and suddenly he wished he were back there, in the white clapboard house on the knoll overlooking the anchorage, with the sound of the spring wind in the fresh green of the new maple leaves. Charley Goucher was right. It was time to go home.

He pushed aside the mosquito netting and looked at the harbor through the window, but the harbor was empty. The cruise ship was gone and so was the Porpoise, and he felt impatient to see her sails again. He looked for the black-hulled turtle boat and saw it at anchor off the islands to the west.

As he dressed, his urge to go home grew stronger. He told himself not to think about Elizabeth. It was over. She was spoiled and willful and far too gone in decadence for any hope to remain. She didn't love him. He remembered

her fury at his discovery of her secret, and he knew it was hopeless to chase that dream any further.

Someone knocked on the door and he opened it and saw Inez, Hector's wife, standing there with a breakfast tray. Her English was good, with only a trace of accent.

"Good morning, Captain. Are you all right now?"

"I'm fine, thanks." He took the tray from her and saw the slices of fresh pineapple and baked ham and fresh hot rolls and the pot of coffee. He didn't want to eat. He looked at the girl's passive beauty and smiled. "Were you awake when I came in?"

"Hector and I put you to bed," she said.

"I don't remember that."

"We didn't think you would."

"I wasn't drunk. But I apologize for the disturbance."

"We know you were not drunk." He saw she was waiting to tell him something, her large dark eyes liquid with concern for him. Then she said, "There is a man downstairs who wishes to see you. He has been waiting for fifteen minutes. A Mr. Sam Campbell."

"I have no business with him," Fleming said.

"He says it is urgent, Captain."

"All right. Thank you. Would you tell him to come up?"

She went out and Fleming pushed aside the breakfast bay and stripped off his clothes again and went into the zinc-lined shower cabinet and let the tepid water run over him for several minutes. It didn't make him feel any better. When he came out, dripping, with a towel around his waist, he saw Campbell sitting on the edge of his cot. The big blond man was holding his Magnum .357 revolver in his hand, examining it with objective curiosity.

Fleming looked at his blue sailcloth bag in the corner of tiie room and saw that Campbell had opened it and examined his clothes and taken the gun from it. _ The cathedral bells chimed and the dogs barked outside. He let out a long breath. Campbell was waiting. The big man wore a white seersucker suit and a nylon shirt and a dark blue bow tie. His blond hair looked dark where he had wet it to control its unruliness. His handsome face was blunt and hard.

"This is a pretty one," he said, raising the gun.

Fleming looked into the little black eye of the muzzle that stared at him. "It's mine," he said. "Put it back."

"I was just curious, Mitch."

"Put it back."

"I just wanted to see if my information about you is correct," Campbell said. He tossed the gun aside and it bounced on the hard springs of the cot. Fleming didn't move to retrieve it. He felt angry at himself for being frightened a moment ago and at Campbell for making himself at home like this. He said, "What information are you talking about?"

"I've just got word via Merida from the States about you. A clean bill of health." Campbell had a deep, easy voice. His eyes gave nothing away. "It was important to know as much about you as I could before I let my hair down."

"You're not making much sense," Fleming said.

"I will in a minute. Get your clothes on, Mitch."

"Are we going anywhere?"

"No, but you look uncomfortable in that towel."

Fleming said, "Quit horsing around and get it off your chest, whatever it is. You act like a cop."

Campbell smiled. "That's what I am. Here are my credentials." He flipped open his wallet and handed it to Fleming. Fleming took it and looked at the cards that identified Samuel T. Campbell, of East Eighty-fourth Street, New York City. A card in a plastic case had the seal of the U.S. Treasury embossed on it, and Campbell's picture was on it, too. Fleming handed back the wallet and picked up his gun and dropped it in his blue sailcloth bag, then started to get dressed.

Campbell waited for him to speak and then said, "No questions, Mitch?"

"You came here to do the talking."

"You're not even curious?"

"I imagine you'll tell me whatever I ought to know."

Campbell said, "Brother, I'm taking a chance on you. But I don't have any choice. You're the only man in town who knows who and what I am, and if you have a loose mouth, you'll find me dead in an alley by tomorrow morning."

"Aren't you being a little melodramatic?"

"The trouble with my business," Campbell said, "is that it is melodramatic. It's also full of dull routine and hard legwork that nobody ever considers. All the folks know about the big deals, the fancy windups that get glorified on radio and TV. A lot of hogwash, for the most part. We're just hard-working men like anybody else. Sometimes we get hurt, but so does the guy who delivers your morning milk. Most of the time we just get old and fat and retire on Civil Service pensions."

Fleming found himself liking the man a little better. "Who would kill you if I talked about you?"

'Tour friends, I think."

"What friends?"

"Cathy Palmer. Johnny Wright. Their hired hands. And maybe your wife."

"They're not my friends. I thought they were yours."

"So far, yes. They don't know about me. To them, I'm just a rich young bastard who makes- a good escort and has nothing better to do with his time than go on cruises and play around with as many women as I can, talk about horses and polo and Wall Street, and have fun."

"Cathy Palmer isn't a stupid woman," Fleming said.

"No, and that's why I'm forced to come to you. I need help. I think my little act is playing out fast, especially since I chose to stay here in this forsaken port when the cruise ship sailed last night. I've been asking for an extra man ever since Barney Eden was killed, but the budget in Washington is pretty thin."

"Who was Barney Eden?"

"He worked with me. He married my sister."

"And who killed him?"

"Your wife and her brother," Campbell said. "Back in New York, about two months ago."

Fleming was dressed now. He turned and stared at the blond man sitting so placidly on his bed. The soft plinking of Mario's guitar came through the closed shutter door. The roosters crowed. Voices passed under the window in -the street below. It was suddenly very hot in the narrow little room. The lizard in the corner had stopped chasing its tail. Fleming heard himself say calmly:

"Campbell, you're a liar."

"I wish I were."

"She never killed anybody."

"I can't prove it."

"Then how do you know?"

"I know," Campbell said.

"Was she drunk?"

"Worse than that."

"Look," Fleming said. "I found out last night about her. I found the hypo she uses. So she's a drug addict. Is that what you make it?"

"She takes drugs, yes."

"And for how long?" Fleming asked.

"Almost a year."

"Is it hopeless?"

"That depends on you, I think."

Fleming was surprised. "Maybe you'd better start from the beginning. It doesn't make sense now. I know what Elizabeth is—spoiled and too wealthy and maybe rotten in lots of ways. But I married her."

"What were you planning to do today?" Campbell asked suddenly.

"I was thinking of home."

"You were going to leave her?"

"That's what she wants," Fleming said.

"I wouldn't do it," Campbell said seriously. "If you leave her now, she'll go over the edge. No matter how she seemed last night, don't leave her. I know how you feel. You think you married a worthless tramp. But you didn't. And I need you here."

"You just said she's a murderer."

"She and her precious brother killed Barney Eden. He was like a brother to me. Do you understand?"

"I think so."

"No, you can't. And I hope you never feel about anything the way I do."

Fleming looked at the harbor from the window. There were a few Indian fishing boats moving out past the point, but nowhere on the glittering sea was there a sign of his own vessel. Campbell sat quietly watching him. His pale eyes were thoughtful. He looked big and competent and professional. He looked as if he were speaking the truth.

"You'd better tell it from the start," Fleming said.

Campbell nodded. "As I said, I need help. I have a nasty hunch my usefulness here is finished, and I can't get an assistant down from Washington. But you're here in the middle of it, so to speak, as Elizabeth's husband. They're all worried about you. They don't know where you fit. And if you stick around and insist on staying with your wife, it will seem perfectly natural."

"Are you asking me to help prove my wife is a murderer?"

"Before you go off the deep end," Campbell said, "let me explain. What we're working on is a smuggling deal. We're interested in how much the country is being defrauded by illegal imports. It's a business proposition with the government, nothing more—or it was, until Barney Eden was found dead on the Southern State Parkway on Long Island a couple of months ago. We were investigating the Wright Shipping Company, and there was nothing romantic or dangerous about it—or so we thought. It was a matter of bookkeeping and accounting, checking invoices, ships' manifests, bills of lading. A dull, routine job." Campbell paused suddenly. "Are you listening to me, Mitch?" "Yes," Fleming said. "Maybe you'd better drink your coffee." The coffee was already cool, but Fleming drank it while Campbell went on matter-of-factly. "We know a lot about the Wright Company. It was almost bankrupt five years ago. Johnny is a poor manager. Ever since the old man died, Johnny has taken a lot more out of it for his social escapades than it's earned. Elizabeth was no help, either. Maybe she didn't know which end of the business was up; maybe Johnny just didn't tell her. But you can't spend money like they did and expect any outfit to remain solvent. So five years ago they were ready to file for bankruptcy proceedings."

"What happened then?" Fleming asked.

"Cathy Palmer took over. And don't underestimate her. She's your real enemy, Mitch. She's clever and ruthless and greedy and cruel."

"Where did she fit in?"

"To start with, she was Johnny's secretary. Just another

employee, working in the warehouse offices in Brooklyn. But beautiful. And ambitious. She wrapped Johnny around her little finger, the way any beautiful woman can do with him, only she packaged the job better than any of the others. She became executive secretary and things improved immediately."

"I thought Johnny Wright was married," Fleming said.

"He is. But not to Cathy, and that's the rub. Maybe you've read about Johnny's attempts to divorce his wife. She's a tough-minded gal named Genevieve Carson Wright. Old Westchester family, only child, grimly social. No divorces for her. She doesn't enter the picture at all except that Cathy can't marry Johnny, as she'd like to. If Cathy could marry Johnny and have the Wright Company in her own name, she'd be very pleased. But the wife stands in the way. Imagine how Cathy feels about it. She's devoted all her energy to pulling the firm out of the hole, and she can't enjoy the fruits of her efforts because the wife won't let go. She's been working, so to speak, to make her worst enemy financially secure."

"I don't see how any of this fits—"

"Two years ago we got some of the answers to Cathy's wizardry," Campbell said. "Barney Eden had the case, and he figured the firm's shot in the arm came from smuggled goods carried in the company's ships. As executive secretary, Cathy was running a tight little racket right down through the company's organization. And the thing about it was, she plowed those illicit profits right back into the till. Maybe she figured she could marry Johnny somehow and enjoy those profits herself. But it blew up when Barney slipped and Johnny learned about the smuggling."

"You mean he didn't know about it until then?"

"We're pretty sure he didn't. And now I'm in the wild blue yonder of guesswork. We think Johnny is essentially a weak but honest guy. We think he laid the law down to Cathy and ordered her to conduct the business legitimately. We think the love affair ended then. And we think Cathy was scared at first, and agreed to Johnny's directives. Then, when she collected herself and saw she had lost Johnny and the racket, she figured the way to get a new hold on him was through Elizabeth."

"I don't figure it," Fleming said.

"You don't know them very well. Johnny is completely devoted to Elizabeth. He loves her more than Cathy. It's hard to know what makes a no-good wastrel like Johnny act with such devotion to his sister. But Cathy is the one who made Elizabeth what she is today. She got her gradually into all kinds of excesses, and finally on the drug habit. As I said, Cathy Palmer is your real enemy. Don't forget, Elizabeth was only an adolescent when Cathy started to shape her the way she wanted. It was done to get a new, solid hold on Johnny so he wouldn't object to anything she did with the company, lest Elizabeth be hurt."

Campbell paused. "And this is more guesswork. Barney told me the day before he died that Cathy had switched from relatively harmless industrial smuggling to narcotics. He didn't know where it was coming from or how the racket worked. But he thought Cathy and Johnny had had a terrific fight over it. And the next day, we found Barney Eden on the highway, a hit-run victim. And Cathy has been riding high ever since. She's running the company and Johnny and Elizabeth, too. And she's doing it through fear. She's doing it, we think, because Johnny and Elizabeth killed Barney Eden."

"I don't believe that," Fleming said.

"Well, maybe it was an accident; maybe Cathy planned it for them to take the blame. She knew Barney had the dope on her and she killed two birds with one stone. She could have rigged the thing so that the brother and sister, driving home from a party, thought they killed Eden. We know they went by the spot at about the time of the accident. And again, we can't prove anything. We figure Cathy blackmailed them both by rigging Barney's death so they'd take the rap for it. Johnny is weak and Elizabeth was confused. She took off on the cruise and that's where you met her and came into the picture."

"And Cathy followed her?" Fleming asked.

"Cathy must have been worried about Elizabeth's state of mind. If you can get Elizabeth to tell you just what happened the night of Eden's death, we can sew up the case. She knows the truth. That's why she ran away on this cruise. Then she met you and married you and maybe she

thought she could escape from everything with you. When Cathy showed up again, like a nemesis, she knew she was trapped and had to leave you, to save herself and her brother from whatever evidence Cathy holds over them. Do you see it now?"

"I think so," Fleming said. "I feel better."

"But as I said, I won't be of any more use in the case. I got acquainted with Cathy Palmer and stooged around and arranged things so that now I'm a pal. But I think she's checked back and knows Barney was my brother-in-law. So she knows who and what I am."

"What do you want me to do?" Fleming asked.

"Stay here. Don't run out on Elizabeth, no matter how she behaves or what she says. Get her to talk. And find out how they're shipping the Big H into the country."

"You think it's from here?"

"I'm sure of it. There's a German fellow, Hans Ottmann, who's been here since the end of the war. A tough hombre. He runs a plantation on an island off the coast that doesn't earn a dime. That's where Cathy and Elizabeth are supposed to be staying. Go there. Insist on being with your wife. And see what happens. I really need your help, Mitch."

"You're asking me to spy on my wife and possibly put her in jail."

"She's almost certain to go to jail if the case is closed and she isn't helped to clear herself. If you go away, taking her at face value, there's only one direction she can travel. If you think she's in bad shape now, wait until Cathy Palmer is through with her. Maybe she'll be lucky to wind up in one of the waterfront cribs here."

Fleming watched Campbell go to the window and felt the thud of blood in his ears and told himself not to be angry. It could all be lies. Campbell could be playing a game of his own. It isn't your job, he thought. He's asking you to do something indecent. You don't have to believe any of it. Get out of it, Mitch. When the Porpoise comes back, take Charley Goucher's advice and sail for home. You married the wrong girl, you're in a mess over your head. She left you, and you don't owe her a thing. This morning when you woke up, you thought of home, of your house

and your boatyard and your plans. That's where you belong. You can go home now. And forget Elizabeth.

He told himself to stop lying to himself.

Campbell turned back from the window and looked at him.

"I've taken a big chance to tell you all this. You don't have to decide right now about helping me. Think about it I'll see you tonight."

Fleming said, "You son-of-a-bitch."

Campbell laughed. "I don't blame you for getting sore."

"You and your damned confidences."

"I trust you, Mitch."

"Do your own dirty work," Fleming said.

"All I ask is that you think about it."

Campbell closed the door softly when he went out.

SIX

the shops and soft-drink stands around the square were just opening when Fleming crossed around the bandstand and headed for the hotel. He walked with a long and angry stride. A few scrawny chickens squawked and scattered over the scorched brown grass to get out of his way. An Indian woman was scrubbing something in the stone water trough in front of the cathedral and she didn't look up as he went by.

The chain was fastened along the sidewalk terrace of the hotel, but all the tables and chairs were empty now, some of them stacked to one side for safekeeping until the next cruise ship came in. Fleming didn't see Alejandro, the waiter who was a police spy for Amayo. In the lobby he paused at the long desk under the stir of air from a wooden ceiling fan. A girl of about twelve with a thin face and big limpid eyes was sweeping the stone floor. Fleming banged on the hand bell, and when the clerk came out, shrugging into his white coat, he asked if John Wright was still registered at the hotel.

"Yes, sir. I think so," the clerk said in English.

"You can speak Spanish to me," Fleming said. "Was Mr. Wright here all last night?"

"Not the whole evening, sir. He came back to the hotel at about one o'clock in the morning, in the hotel taxi. He had been to Mr. Ottmann's plantation up the coast, I believe."

"Thank you. What is his room number?"

"Twenty-four."

Fleming went up the broad stairway to the second floor. There was a musty smell of mildew and decay in the big stone building, which in colonial times had served as the local Spanish viceroy's mansion. He heard a radio playing behind the green shutter door to Room 24 and he knocked, and when there was no reply he turned the lever handle and stepped inside. The radio was very loud, blasting in the dim, heated shadows. The room was big, with a high ceiling and a vast mahogany bed with a faded tester over it and high-backed, intricately carved chairs. The shutters of the balcony door were tightly closed, and shafts of red and yellow and blue light came through the colored glass windows flanking the balcony entrance. He saw the small battery radio on a table beside the bed and crossed the room to snap it off. The silence seemed deafening.

Then he heard a sound from the bathroom and he turned toward the door that stood ajar. There was a quick movement in the hot shadows and he saw Johnny Wright standing in a corner of the shower stall, stark naked, with a gun in his hand. The gun was pointed at Johnny's temple. Fleming yelled something and jumped forward and slashed at the snubby revolver, and the edge of his palm cut the other man's wrist an instant before the gun went off. The explosion seemed to shatter the dim, narrow bathroom. Fleming saw Johnny's pale round face staring at him with mouth agape and wild eyes and he twisted the gun hard and forced the naked man's arm backward and down, and Johnny whimpered in sudden pain and relaxed his grip on the revolver. It clattered to the tile floor and Fleming stooped and picked it up and backed away. His ears were ringing from the blast of the single shot. He looked at the gun and saw his hand shaking and he put the gun away in his pocket.

Someone was pounding on the hall door, shouting in excited Spanish. Neither of them moved.

"Where did you come from?" Johnny gasped.

"I just walked in."

"Well, just walk out again."

"You damn fool," Fleming said.

He turned to the door just as it was opened with a passkey and saw the anxious face of the desk clerk and the gathering crowd of curious cleaning women behind him.

"It is nothing," he said in Spanish. "A little accident with a gun. No one is hurt."

"With a gun? Someone must be killed. The police—"

"It is not necessary to call the police," Fleming said quietly. "Nobody is killed. Nobody is even scratched."

"Then where is Sefior Wright?"

"In the bathroom. Come with me, but keep the women out."

Fleming led the clerk to the bathroom door. The sound of retching reached them and they saw Johnny bent over the washbowl, heaving with nausea. The clerk's mouth made a circle of surprise and sympathy, and Fleming put a hand on his shoulder and turned him back to the door.

"As you see, it was nothing serious," he said.

"And the gun, senor?"

"I have it," Fleming said.

"You are sure it was an accident?"

"You have my word for it. Please bring us a bottle of brandy. It need not be an imported brand."

"At once, senor."

The clerk went away reluctantly. The chattering women wanted to linger and Fleming closed the door against their faces and slipped the brass bolt home and then went back to the bathroom. Johnny Wright was sitting cross-legged on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor, his head hanging between his knees, his pudgy hands flat behind him. Fleming took a thin worn towel from the rack beside the washbowl and soaked it in tap water and pulled Johnny Wright's head back and rinsed the great beads of sweat from the fat man's face. The narrow room was filled with the echoing, labored sound of Johnny's breathing.

"Are you all right now?" Fleming asked.

"I hate your guts. I'd like to kill you."

"Later. After you get some fresh brandy in your belly."

"Where is my gun?"

Fleming took the revolver from his pocket and emptied the 32-caliber copper-jacketed slugs from the cylinder and put them in his coat pocket and then dropped the gun on the floor between Johnny's knees. The man's body was smooth and white and hairless, almost womanly with its excess of fat forming curves and bulges of pale flesh.

"There's your gun. If you've got any more slugs," Fleming said, "you can load it later, when I'm not around."

"Why did you stop me?"

"I don't know," Fleming said.

"You had no business interfering."

"Maybe it would have been inconvenient to be a witness to your suicide," Fleming said.

"You're pretty cool about it," Johnny Wright said.

"I'm just practical. Get up off the floor."

"I don't think I can make it."

"Get up or I'll kick you up," Fleming said.

Johnny looked shocked and then indignant. Fleming prodded him with his toe and then pretended to be ready to kick him and Johnny hastily scrambled to his feet. He seemed to be conscious of his nakedness for the first time. Fleming didn't want to touch him. He went to the other room and opened the closet and found some clothes and tossed them to Wright.

"Get dressed."

The room clerk knocked at the door and Fleming unbolted it and opened it wide enough to accept the bottle of brandy. Then he bolted the door again and took two tumblers from the bathroom and filled them halfway and handed one to Johnny Wright. The man's teeth were chattering and his pale body shuddered as reaction set in. When Fleming swallowed the brandy he felt it hit his stomach like a soft, flaming explosion. He looked at his watch and saw it was just a few minutes after eleven in the morning. Johnny gulped deeply of the liquor, gasped, drank again, and then put the glass down. Color slowly came back to his face. He sat down abruptly in one of the high-backed chairs

and for a moment or two Fleming thought he was going to cry.

"Take it easy," he said. "Nothing is that bad."

"You don't know," Johnny said, his voice muffled.

"Killing yourself won't make anything better, will it?"

"At least I'd be out of it."

"Out of what?" Fleming asked.

"That's none of your business."

"You're a pretty selfish bastard, aren't you?"

Johnny looked surprised. "Selfish?"

"You get out of it with the gun. But what about Elizabeth?"

"What?"

"What happens to Elizabeth if she's left alone?"

"I didn't think of that."

"I'll bet you didn't," Fleming said. "Where is she?"

"I don't know."

"Didn't you go to Ottmann's plantation, where Cathy Palmer is staying, last night?"

"Yes."

"Wasn't Elizabeth there?"

"No. We all waited, hoping she would show up."

"She was with me for a while," Fleming said. "After I got her out of jail."

"I know. Cathy told me."

"Nice girl, Cathy."

Johnny looked at him. "Shut up about her."

"Don't you want to talk about Cathy?"

"She doesn't concern you."

"I'm married to Elizabeth and I think it does concern me. I'd like to know where she went after she left me last night."

"The marriage was a mistake. Liza will divorce you."

"Is that what she said?"

"I didn't talk to her. I'm just telling you."

"All right. Tell me why you want to blow your brains Out. What are you afraid of, Johnny?"

; "Nothing."

"So you just want a hole in the head for ventilation?"

"It's not funny."

:"You bet it isn't." Fleming was suddenly angry. He stood

up and crossed the room, and when he was in front of Johnny he slapped him hard, with all his strength. Johnny cried out and fell from the chair and sprawled on the floor. Instead of trying to get up, he just sat there, holding his face where Fleming had hit him.

"What did you do that for?" he asked.

"Maybe I just don't like cowards."

"But I've thought of killing myself for a long time."

"Sure, and all the time you thought only about yourself. You didn't think of the trouble you've let your sister into, or how it will turn out for her if you duck out of it by killing yourself."

"What do you know about it?"

Fleming saw that he had talked too much and he was trying to make up his mind how to answer in order to allay the other's suspicions when there came another rap on the door. He turned quickly to open it and saw the desk clerk in the hallway again, and this time H6ctor Menendez was with him. Hector's face looked pale and there was a thin shine of sweat on his mustached features.

"Captain Fleming, I am glad we found you."

"What is it, Hector?"

"Will you come with me, please?"

Fleming felt sudden alarm. "Is it something more about my wife?"

"No. But please come with me."

"In one moment," Fleming said. He turned back to Johnny Wright, who was still sitting on the floor, and said to him, "You can do as you please about what you tried to finish just now. I guess every man has that choice in his own hands. But before you try it again, I wish you'd come to me. I want to help. Not because of you, but because of Elizabeth. Do you understand?"

Johnny Wright nodded. "Yes. I think so."

Hector murmured, "Please hurry, Captain."

"I'm coming now."

Fleming went downstairs with the two men, asking no questions. Then he saw the red sedan parked on the street beyond the terrace caf6 and there was a star painted on the side of the front door. Lieutenant Amayo stood staring at the chain on the sidewalk and there was no way of

what the cop was thinking. Amayo wore what might have been the same sweat-stained uniform of the night before. When Fleming came out of the hotel with Hector, Amayo looked up and nodded and said, "Good morning, sir. Will you come with us, please?"

Fleming stopped on the sidewalk. "What for?"

"It is a police matter."

"Am I involved?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Is it about my wife?"

"No. Get in the car. It is hot here on the sidewalk and people are staring at you."

"Am I being arrested?"

"Of course not."

Fleming got in the front seat and Hector and Amayo sat in the back. An anonymous chauffeur with a flat face and big hands drove them away from the hotel. There was a scattering of chickens and barking dogs and a cloud of dust behind them as they rocketed down the street behind the cathedral, and the chauffeur kept one hand constantly on the horn. In a short space of time they were on the graveled coastal road to MeVida, following the line of a low bluff over the beach and the sea. The wind blasting in through the open car windows felt hot and dry. Fleming watched the speedometer, and when he looked up it seemed as if they had only been driving a few minutes, but they were more than five miles out of town. The chauffeur slammed on the brakes and there was a great skidding sound from the tires and another dust cloud rolled up behind them as they came to a halt.

"Down there," said Amayo.

Fleming got out with the others and looked down the small bluff to the beach. A line of coco palms stretched to the far curve of the horizon, and just offshore was the island where Hans Ottmann's plantation was situated and about a half mile to the east of that were the turtle crawls tod the black-hulled turtle schooner like a blemish on the crystal blue of the sea. There were two double-pointed fishing canoes pulled up on the sand beyond the reach of the roaring breakers and perhaps half a dozen fishermen stood gathered about something that lay on the beach.

Hector said quietly, "I am sorry, my friend."

"What are you sorry about?" Fleming asked.

"Go down there and see."

Fleming started to climb down the low gravel bluff and then let himself slide all the way down and then he picked himself up and began to run across the soft, dragging sand toward the fishermen. They saw him coming and watched his approach with blank, impassive faces, and they moved aside as he came near so he could see what lay on the beach, cast up by the wind and the tide.

No, Fleming thought. God, no. All he had wanted was to go back to New England where he was born and raised and where he fished and had a wife and children and to die and be buried there.

He looked at the body for a long time and heard the thundering surf and under that the low murmuring of the Indian fishermen, and then the sound of Amayo and Hector and the police chauffeur.

It was Charley Goucher.

He lay face down on the sand and Fleming saw that he had been in the water since sometime last night. He also saw that Charley Goucher had not died by drowning. The brown wooden handle of a fish knife stood up through the soaked and stained white cotton of the shirt on his back.

SEVEN

fleming stood as if in a dream and watched the way two of the fishermen carried Charley Goucher's body across the beach to the police car. Down by the water's edge there was a great pile of cork floats and heavy netting that the turtle men had been trying to disentangle. Their narrow boats were half floated in the long, licking surges of foam that swept up the beach and then withdrew, hissing and sucking at the sand. Fleming shivered. H6ctor Menendez touched his arm and murmured something and he drew

away and stood apart, wanting to be alone and yet afraid of the thoughts that churned in his mind.

"Captain Fleming, are you all right?"

"Yes."

"He was one of your seamen?"

Fleming looked at Amayo's flat face. "He was my friend."

"A good friend?"

"Like a father to me. He wanted to go home."

Amayo said with surprising gentleness, "He has gone home now, to the place where we shall all meet again."

Fleming wanted to hit him. His legs felt weak and he wanted to sit down on the sand and he thought of Charley's wife and his two sons and of Charley's home. He thought of the oak trees that Charley wanted to see again and he couldn't believe that anyone would kill him, because nobody on earth had any reason to do such a thing. He shivered again. He heard the quick flat pulsing of blood in his ears and he heard the murmuring of the Indian fishermen and again Amayo plucked at his sleeve.

"You must answer me," Amayo told him.

"I didn't hear what you said."

"Where is your vessel?"

"I don't know. Offshore somewhere, riding out the storm."

"Mr. Goucher was left in charge?"

"Yes."

"Was he on friendly terms with the crew?"

"Nobody in my crew killed him," Fleming said.

"How do you know that?"

"I just know."

"He had no enemies among them?"

"None at all."

"Yet he was killed cruelly and with malice, with this knife in his back."

"Not by my crew," Fleming said.

"Do you know who else might have done it?"

"Nobody."

"Yet someone struck him down."

"Yes."

"And you do not know who?"

"No."

"You had some trouble in town last night, did you not?" 61

"It was nothing," Fleming said. "A mistake." "You do not know the men who attacked you?

"No."

"Captain Fleming," said Amayo, "believe me, 1 sympathize. But I must ask for your co-operation in this matter. Murder is a serious thing, and the death of an American citizen here in Puerto Caballo means that a great many questions will be asked of me from M6rida and from Mexico City. I must have something to say in answer to these questions." . .

"I don't have any of the answers," Fleming told him. "Why did you come here to Puerto Caballo?' "You know why. I was looking for my wife." "Did you know that this was dangerous?" "I didn't think so." "But you know it now?"

"I don't know that what happened to Charley had anything to do with my wife," said Fleming.

Amayo sighed. The fishermen who had carried Charleys body up the little bluff to the police car came back again and joined their companions at the water's edge, near the nets that had been tangled by last night's storm. Their murmuring voices sounded through the thunder of the surt. Fleming felt the spray on his face, and it was as if his body did not belong to him and he stood detached from the reality of the land and the sea. The sun glared harshly on the water and formed a bright lane that led straight to the dark hull of the moored turtle boat. He knew what he had to do, and he knew how it must be done. There was no other way. Any thought of home was finished now, and any chance he'd had to escape the position Campbell had put him in was lost by this thing that had happened to Charley.

Hector Menendez plodded across the sand to where he stood. "Come. We will go back to town. Perhaps we all need a drink."

"I'll stay here," Fleming decided. "But it is several miles back to town." "I'll walk back."

Amayo said, "I know what you are thinking of, Captain, and I do not approve of it."

"To hell with your approval," Fleming said.

"I will go with you."

"They're your pals."

"What makes you say so?"

"Because what's going on here couldn't go on without your knowing about it," Fleming said flatly. "You know who killed Goucher. I can't see any point in going through any farcical investigation you plan to rig."

Amayo's face darkened with anger. "I should resent your remarks, but I am conscious that you are upset by this matter."

"Yes, I'm upset," Fleming said. "Just mildly."

"I shall not take offense."

"Great."

"You think I am dishonest?"

"I don't know," Fleming said. "But you know what's 'going on around here, and you have a pretty good idea of who killed Charley Goucher, and why."

"I do not understand you."

"Just think about it," Fleming said. "I'll walk back to town."

Amayo turned angrily to his police chauffeur and said Something in a quick undertone. Hector Men6ndez looked distressed. Fleming turned away from them and walked across the beach to where Charley Goucher's body was sprawled. The Indians stood in a little group nearby, the nets in their hands but not working at the tangled cording. The sea came washing up over the sand and there was no mark or stain at all to show where the water had deposited Charley's body. Along the easy curve of the shore to the west were clumps of palmetto scrub and wild banana trees and sea grape and mangrove, with little dots of cays off the beach. The large island directly opposite was less than half a mile away, and the turtle schooner was moored close to a wooden dock thrust out from the island beach. Brass glittered from a launch tied to the dock, but there was no movement or sign of activity aboard either the schooner or the island behind it.

He heard He"ctor call his name, but he didn't turn around, and after a few more moments the motor of the police car started up and there was a squealing of tires

as the chauffeur wrenched the car in a tight turn and drove back to Puerto Caballo with Charley Goucher's body. Fleming looked at the dust that hung over the road above the beach and saw that they had all gone back to town. The fishermen were busy with their nets again. Dirty-brown pelicans- skimmed the water close inshore. Fleming walked over to the fishermen and one of them looked up from under his wide-brimmed straw hat and Fleming said, "I would like some help, if I may impose on you to ask for it."

"Si, senor."

"I would like to hire one of your boats to take me over there." He waved an arm toward the anchored turtle schooner. "I will pay you before we start."

"You are a man of sorrow. We would not like to take pay."

"I insist," Fleming said.

The tall, thin fisherman turned and spoke to his companions and another one shrugged and said, as if Fleming could not understand his Spanish, "He is a gringo and he was fond of the dead man. It is plain to see he does not think clearly in this moment. Will he cause us trouble with the Cayman men?"

The first one said to Fleming, "We do not wish trouble, senor. This is our livelihood, and what we take from the sea we must sell to feed our wives and children. Without the schooner, we would soon starve, since no one here eats the great green turtles we net, and we would have no market."

"I am merely hiring you," Fleming said. "I do not ask you to share my troubles. There will be no trouble for you, in any case."

"You promise this?"

"I promise."

He paid the thin fisherman five pesos, which was too much, and helped them run one of the boats into the surf and then jumped inside. They didn't bother with the sails. They used short stubby paddles and in a few minutes they had breasted beyond the breakers and were in the deep, quiet water between the mainland and the island. The crew of the second fishing boat remained on the beach, bending back to their work with the nets. Fleming felt for the cold hardness of his gun in his pocket under his armpit and

looked at the looming bulk of the turtle schooner. Midway to the other boat they passed the crawls with the stakes driven into the shallow sandbar at this point and the stout corded net that penned in the captured turtles. He watched one of the big ones rise lazily to the surface and slap with one flipper, its huge shell breaking water with a surge of foam. It weighed anywhere between four and five hundred pounds. As they drew near the turtle boat he smelled the stink that came from it and that would never leave it, from the cargoes of live turtles flipped on their backs and kept that way on the run to Miami or New Orleans, where they would be slaughtered and canned and sold as turtle steaks and green turtle soup.

A rope ladder dangled from the schooner amidships. Fleming looked at the two fishermen who had brought him here and did not trust him. "Will you wait here for me?"

Their reluctance was obvious. "You did not say that we would have to wait."

"I will not be long."

"Then we will wait, but for five more pesos, senor."

"I am not a wealthy man."

"All gringos are wealthy, senor."

"You are wrong. But I will pay five more pesos."

"Then we will wait all day, senor."

The decks were dirty and needed scrubbing. Two dark-faced seamen lounged up forward and looked at him, and One of them went past into the main cabin aft and Fleming turned after him. Neither of the seamen resembled those who had attacked him in town last night. The cook came up from the galley, a grizzled fat man with a face like scored ham. At the cabin door Fleming heard the deck hand talking to someone and then a heavy-set man came up on deck and looked at Fleming and nodded and said, "What is it, man?"

"Captain Hunsicker?"

"Yes," he said impatiently. "What is it?"

Fleming introduced himself. Hunsicker was thick-necked and meaty, and he wore a dirty white shirt and duck trousers and went barefooted on deck. He had grizzled reddish hair and a thick red mustache and his eyes were small and pale gray and suspicious as he looked up at Fleming's tall figure.

He looked next over the rail at the two Indians waiting in their narrow little boat, and then at the sloppily furled mainsail and then at the island shore nearby.

"What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for two of your crew. I met them last night, and I'm anxious to meet them again. And I would like to ask about my first mate, who, I think, came here last night before the storm broke."

"Man, I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do. Is all your crew aboard?"

"Hardly. Only the two slackers you see up forward, and the cook. The storm broke up the nets just as we were ready to load our cargo. Half the turtles got away and now I got the blasted Indians on double pay trying to fill my hold, or my trip here is wasted."

"Then the rest of your crew is in town?"

"Sure, man."

Fleming said, "My first mate was killed last night. His name was Charley Goucher. Somebody stuck a knife in his back."

"You have my sympathy."

Fleming looked at the turtle captain and read nothing in the man's seamed, hard face. There was a blandness in the other's pale eyes, which watched him from under thick and bushy red brows. From the galley came a clattering of pots and pans as the cook worked there. The two seamen still lounged up forward, and their Cayman Island intonations came as a murmur through the thick stench that clung to the dirty decks of the vessel. Fleming saw he had made a mistake in coming straight here with his anger so hot and blind in him.

"Do you know anything about this murder?" he asked.

"Why should I, man?"

"My mate wasn't here, then?"

"I think you are looking for trouble. I think you'd better get off my ship."

"I asked a simple question."

"I've got a simple answer. No."

"All right," Fleming said. He felt defeated.

"Get off my boat," said Hunsicker. "And don't come back. You understand me, man?" The Captain's eyes were bright

with rage. "I watched you on the beach with that cop and the others. It was I who sent to town to tell 'em about the body. You must be a fool to come here and say that I or one of my men killed your mate. You must be anxious to join him in the deep six, or out of your mind."

"My mate was an old friend."

"Old friends live and die."

"There was no reason for him to die," said Fleming.

"Maybe he just didn't take good care of himself."

"He was a careful man. He wanted to go home."

"He wasn't careful enough, was he?"

"No," Fleming said. "I can see that."

"So get off my ship and don't come talking murder around here again. You understand, man?"

"Yes," Fleming said. "But I'll be back."

EIGHT

the indian fishermen brought their boat in silence to the island dock and fended off from the pier just behind the sleek motor launch moored at the wooden steps. Fleming got out and stood on the dock and thanked them, and he saw that their eyes were expressionless, regarding him from masked faces that told him nothing except that they would not wait for him now, no matter how many pesos he promised. He knew they would be gone from the dock the moment he turned his back to them and walked out of sight along the path that led away from the cove into the palmetto scrub beyond. And he held no blame for them.

There was a shrill ululation of insects in the nearby brush 'and the smell of rotting vegetation and the scuttling of land crabs out of his way as he walked up the path. He did not look back. The path led upward through the palmettos and guinea grass and he saw it had once been quite broad and much used, but now it was scarcely wide enough to permit passage single file. No one challenged him, and

when he passed what had been a grove of cultivated banana trees he saw them desolate and untended, gone wild, with nobody in sight. The island, he judged, was not more than a mile wide and perhaps two miles long, humpbacked like a broached whale, and when he reached a rise he could survey the whole mainland shore and see the harbor or Puerto Caballo. Far off on the horizon were sails bending to a wind that did not reach here, and he had a sudden hope it was the Porpoise. Then he walked on around the next bend and saw the house.

It stood low and flat under the sullen heat and he saw that one wing had been flattened and torn half asunder by a long-forgotten storm and never repaired. He halted m the shade for a moment, wondering if he was mistaken to come here so soon. He knew nothing; he could prove nothing. The turtle-boat skipper was right. He was bulling ahead with nothing but a hunch and a gun in his pocket, and he was going to wind up like poor Charley, food for the fish. He stood looking at the house with its air of desolation and neglect. His anger made the back of his mouth taste harsh and metallic. He remembered he had eaten nothing since early in the day.

The path turned down through a cane brake and he lost sight of the house. Then he heard footsteps crunching on the shell path and a man came into view, blocking his way.

The man stopped and looked at him, scowling, and put his hands flat on his hips with his elbows thrust behind him. He wore a wide straw native hat and his torso was naked and bronzed by the sun, thick in the chest and covered with a fine mat of curly golden hair. He wore a pair of khaki shorts that were stained and dirty and a wide leather belt with a machete looped in it. His feet were naked and dusty. He carried a pair of German military field glasses in his left hand and Fleming saw there was something Prussian and inflexible about the man's bearing and also something unnatural in the bright blue glare of his eyes.

"So. You come here. First to the turtle boat, then here." "Were you watching?" "With much interest."

"You must be Hans Ottmann," Fleming said.

"You need not introduce yourself, Herr Fleming. I know who you are." He had a thick guttural voice and the manner of an officer.

"That makes it simpler," Fleming said. "I understand my wife is staying here."

"That is not so. She is not here."

Fleming said, "She can be nowhere else. I have come for her and I mean to take her with me when I leave. I don't know how she happened to accept your hospitality, but I have no intention of leaving her here."

"You are insulting." . "I mean to be," Fleming said.

The wall of wild canes made an alley of the pathway, closing them in. Only five feet separated them from each Other. A brightly colored parrot came squawking down the path and landed with a jolt on the big man's shoulder. He did not seem to notice. The bird screamed at Fleming in German and flapped its green wings and yet somehow it did not disturb the big straw hat that Ottmann wore.

Ottmann remained blocking his path. "Very well. You choose to be insulting. I have had many insults in my life, and sometimes I have made those who gave them pay for their words. With you, I do not care. Your wife is not here and I request you to leave my property."

"You won't let me look for myself?"

"No."

Fleming smiled. "Then she must be here."

The bird placed its screaming voice between them.

Ottmann said, "Was the dead man on the beach a good friend of yours?"

"Yes, a very good friend."

"Then you are a fool to mourn him because he is nothing but dirt and rotten meat for the land crabs and the vultures to feast upon. No man is truly a friend to another. Every man is for himself in this world, except for those few who talk to the gods and understand the nature of the universe."

Fleming said, "This is a strange place and time to talk of such things. Have you known such a man who spoke to the gods?"

"I had the fortune to serve him. You killed him."

"I?"

"You and others like you," said Ottmann. "And now I am an exile and I say that your friend is dead and he was a fool. You are all fools. You Americans are like children, understanding nothing when you reach out in your clumsiness and destroy what comes in your grasp. Your friend is dead, but he lived and died for himself, and it is doubtful if even the carrion birds will find him to their taste."

Fleming hit him. He did not know how he crossed the space between them, but he was there, and he saw Ott-mann's arms come up and then he felt the spurt of blood on his fist and Ottmann fell sprawling in the dust of the path through the cane brake. He saw Ottmann try to get the machete in his hand and he kicked at the long, wickedly shining knife and then when Ottmann scrambled to his feet he hit the man again and once more Ottmann. fell and sprawled in the dust and lay still. The parrot flew squawking and screaming in the air around Fleming's head and then flew away toward the house. Fleming stood there trembling. He wanted to kill Ottmann for the things he had said, and then the lust to kill the man frightened him and he watched the dust settle slowly around the other's big body.

Just a little more, he thought, and you're off the deep end for good. You didn't have to pay any attention to him, you could have kidded him along and got what you wanted. He picked up Ottmann's machete and threw it as far as he could into the cane brake. You should have gone back to town with Amayo and sat with old Peli Men6ndez and a bottle, and when you were drunk he would have put you to bed and tomorrow you could have pulled out of here and forgotten about it. You won't find out who killed Charley this way. You'll never find out because nobody wants you to know and there won't be any help from the cops and all you can do is go around being nasty to everybody who gets in your way.

He bent down and gripped Ottmann under his armpits and dragged his limp body to one side and hid him a few feet off the path in the tall cane. Then he went on toward the house. The cane brake continued for another thirty feet and then he came into a clearing that faced the knoll on which the house was built. The house looked a little better close up, but the sagging roof and twisted pillars of the wing

that had been destroyed by storms looked as if the jungle growth surrounding the place was pulling it down bit by bit to make it dissolve into the earth. He saw no one on the wide veranda when he went up the stone steps. When he opened the screen door the parrot came flying back and landed on the porch rail and screamed curses at him in German. It made him wonder about Ottmann, and then the thought of the man reminded him that he had better hurry.

The wide, shaded living room with its bamboo furniture and straw blinds was empty and shadowed and surprisingly cool. He walked with a long, stiff-legged stride into the hall, but he still saw no one and heard nothing except the parrot's invective from outside. He walked all the way down the hall and looked into the back kitchen shed and then returned and saw a door ajar and went into what seemed to be a den. He saw a desk and bookshelves and a green glass-shaded brass lamp covered with verdigris and windows that overlooked the turtle-boat anchorage. From far over the horizon he saw the sails he had noticed earlier and recognized them surely as those of his own schooner. He looked at the desk and pulled at his lip and wondered what he would find if he started to search it. But there wasn't time. He thought if he called Elizabeth's name he would surely rouse someone, but somehow he was reluctant to walk around the empty house calling for her, and he didn't do so.

Then he heard a woman laughing and there was something in the deep, scornful sound that made him stand very still. It was Cathy Palmer. He heard a man speaking quietly, his words broken by emotion. A chill went up his back. The man was begging for something with soft desperation, and Cathy Palmer replied with another laugh. Then the sounds were drowned out by the screams of the parrot outside.

He didn't intend to eavesdrop, but he couldn't help it. Footsteps clumped on the outer veranda and Fleming moved swiftly up the stairs to the shadowed second-floor hall. A bead curtain showed daylight glimmering through from an upper gallery behind the house and he plunged softly toward it, hearing the footsteps enter the house below with the parrot squawking and screaming its hateful frenzy. Then the foot-

steps and the parrot were still and he paused with his hand outstretched to part the beaded curtain to the outer gallery. Cathy Palmer and Johnny Wright were out there.

He could see them clearly, as if in a tableau, with the backdrop of coco palms gone back to wilderness stretching below the house across the small island. Cathy Palmer sat in a fan-backed wicker chair and she wore a garment that looked like a sarong. Johnny Wright stood before her, his pudgy hands clasped together. Cathy was smiling at him.

"Cathy, please. Please!" he was murmuring.

Fleming looked back along the upper corridor and didn't see anyone or hear any further sounds from below. He couldn't go forward or retreat. He had to stay where he was. Johnny Wright was saying:

"Cathy, listen to me. I've done everything you asked. I've given you everything I could."

"Not enough, darling," she said softly.

"Do you want me to kill her?"

"That would be one answer."

"Do you want me to kill for you, really?"

"You must decide for yourself, darling."

Fleming wondered who they were talking about and decided it must be Johnny's wife, the cold and formal West-chester woman. He didn't want to hear any more, but there was no place else to go. Cathy Palmer's face was cold and contemptuous as she regarded Johnny.

"Please. Don't be a fool," she said. "In a moment you'll be crying again, and you know I have no use for that."

"I can't help myself. I thought you loved me."

"Love? Who knows what love is? Is it this, Johnny?"

"I don't know," he groaned. "I don't know what you want me to do. I don't know why you insist on all this. We could have had everything we wanted, everything but this thing you're doing here."

"I must have something for myself. All for myself."

"Why?"

"Because you cheated me, that's why. Because everything I did was to have been for the two of us, and now I know it's all for her."

"She won't let me go. I've asked and asked."

"So I'm doing this," Cathy said. "And you can't stop me."

Johnny Wright lifted his head and Fleming saw the tears on his face and the frustration, and he didn't want to watch anymore.

"I must stop you, Cathy," Wright said. "For your own good."

"And Elizabeth?"

"You won't dare hurt her. I warn you."

Cathy laughed. "You warn me? You threaten me?"

"Yes."

"I'll do as I please with Elizabeth."

"You don't dare!"

"Then stop this foolish moralizing and worrying about what is lawful and right and help me. We'll be rich. Then I won't be jealous of your wife, darling. Don't you see? I need it to be so. I need to feel equal to her, in my own right."

"Do you have to use Elizabeth this way?" he whimpered.

"Only because you're so stubborn and boring."

Fleming saw the anguish on Johnny's round face and then as he was about to part the curtain and interrupt he saw Johnny stand up and turn away from the woman and come toward him. Fleming stood against the wall and Johnny Wright walked past him, blind and unseeing, within inches of where he stood and yet unaware of him. Fleming started to say something and then was silent and watched Johnny Wright go down the hall to the stairway and out of sight. Turning, he walked out on the gallery.

Cathy Palmer was standing by the rail, her face strangely troubled as she looked out over the ruined little island and the sea beyond. The afternoon sun made her blonde hair look a burnished lemon color. The sarong that she wore clung to her full, mature figure. She turned with a jerk toward the sound of his voice as he said, "Hello, Cathy." . She looked at him and said, "Well. Mitch Fleming." She laughed harshly. She said, "How much did you hear, Mitch?"

"Too much. I didn't want to hear any of it."

"How did you get past Hans?"

"It was easy," he said. "Hans is too wrapped up in his dead dreams of glory to see a left hook. He's a dangerous screwball, Cathy."

"But he's useful. Is Johnny gone?"

"Downstairs."

"It's just for a drink. He'll be back."

"I have a feeling I can't stay long," said Fleming. "Hans is downstairs looking for me. I just came to get Elizabeth."

Her eyebrows arched in surprise. "But I thought she was with you."

"She ran away from me last night after I got her. out of jail, and I lost her."

"Well, she certainly isn't here." Cathy frowned. "I can't ever imagine what's in that foolish girl's mind."

Fleming thought of all the things that lay in the darkness inside him, a part of the hatred he suddenly felt for this woman. He thought of Charley Goucher, and it seemed as if Charley had been dead for a long time. He was sure Cathy knew of Charley's death and how he had died, and he felt an anger that this had no effect on the woman. He watched her come toward him and then she touched his arm and smiled and he felt her body brush against him and it was as if a snake had slithered past, in contact with his skin.

"You have a gun," she said in quiet surprise. Her hand touched his coat over it. "Did you come here to use it, Mitch?"

"I'm carrying it because of your fishermen."

"My fishermen?"

"The two men you sent to frighten me away last night."

"Is that what you think?"

"Isn't it the truth?" he asked.

She laughed softly. "Poor Mitch, so confused. But I don't blame you. Still, if you came here for Elizabeth, you'll be disappointed. She isn't here. You can look, if you like. She never came back after you took her from the jail." Cathy cocked her head to one side, standing very close to him, and he saw the sliding green of her long eyes and the tip of her pink tongue between her lips. "I really don't see why you're so persistent about her. A little thing like her. She has no strength, no real character. I should think she couldn't keep you interested like this."

Cathy stood on tiptoe and pulled his head down and

kissed him on the mouth. He didn't move. She let him go and stepped back and looked at him and smiled.

"Poor Mitch."

"What was that for?"

"Just to show you."

"It just shows me that Elizabeth is worth a dozen of you."

Her green eyes darkened and he saw the abrupt downward quirk of her mouth and he knew it was better than if he had slapped her.

"You're a fool."

'"So I've been told."

"You're intruding in things that don't concern you."

"I'm making it my business to be concerned."

"You'll only be hurt."

"I'll take that chance."

She said, "It's not a chance. It's a certainty. Look behind you, Mitch. Look at Hans."

Fleming turned and saw Ottmann in the entrance to the gallery. The planter still wore his wide-brimmed hat and khaki shorts and he held the machete in his left hand, his head thrust forward on his meaty shoulders. His eyes were insane. He took a step toward Fleming and Fleming took his gun from his pocket and pointed it at the big man and said, "Easy does it."

Ottmann said something in German and Cathy shrank to one side and looked suddenly frightened. Fleming saw that Ottmann wasn't afraid of the gun and wasn't going to stop. He didn't know what to do. Then Johnny Wright suddenly appeared behind Ottmann and Johnny was carrying two tall glasses of liquor. Fleming shouted a warning and backed away and he saw Cathy smiling and then, all at once, he saw Johnny throw the liquor into Ottmann's face. Ottmann yelled and swung around with the machete and Johnny grabbed it and somehow wrenched it from the big man's hand. Ottmann pawed at his face and his eyes and Johnny suddenly looked frightened and sick.

Fleming went past Cathy and said, "Well, that makes us even."

"He was going to kill you," Johnny whispered.

"I think we'd better get out of here."

"Yes."

Cathy said sharply, "Johnny, wait a minute!"

Johnny didn't look at her. His round face was oddly firm in that moment and Fleming stepped around Ottmann and turned Johnny toward the door and they ran down the Steps to the first floor. Cathy's voice screamed after them. Outside, in the glare of the sun, they went quickly down the path through the cane brake and wild palmetto scrub to the dock. As Fleming had expected, his Indian fishermen were gone. He suddenly realized he still had the gun in his hand and he paused, looked at the launch, and then put the gun in his pocket.

Out of nowhere, a Mexican in a white suit appeared, smiling, and said, "Are the gentlemen ready to go back now?"

Fleming said, "Who are you?"

"Mr. Wright hired my water taxi to take him here. I was told to wait."

Fleming thought there was something familiar about him and then he recognized him as the cop he had seen in uniform outside Amayo's office last night. If the cop recognized him in turn, he gave no sign of it. From the house hidden beyond the palmettos behind them came the squawking of the parrot, and that was all. Fleming felt his legs tremble and he looked at Johnny Wright's calmness with amazement.

"Then let's go," he said.

He followed Johnny into the launch and the Mexican started the motor and they backed away from the dock. Nobody came down from the house to challenge them. Fleming looked at the beach where Charley Goucher's body had been found and saw that the fishermen were gone and he couldn't be sure of the right spot now. He looked at the back of the boatman's head and he wanted to laugh suddenly, realizing that he had underestimated Amayo's thoroughness, and then he saw it wasn't anything to laugh about.

Johnny was saying, "I need a drink. God, I need a drink."

"You did fine back there," Fleming told him. "I owe you a lot of thanks."

"You helped me this morning," said Johnny.

"But I didn't think you'd stand up against Ottmann, if you'll forgive my saying so."

Johnny Wright shivered. "I know what I am. But I went downstairs and thought about it and suddenly I got mad, that's all."

"I'm glad you did."

"I didn't do it for you. I did it for myself."

"Thanks, anyway," Fleming said.

He looked at the harbor of Puerto Caballo and saw that the Porpoise had come back to her mooring. He leaned forward and tapped the Mexican boatman's shoulder, and over the roar of the motor he told the man to take him back to his schooner.

NINE

valere drank his rum with Fleming in quiet dignity. The black man's face was inscrutable when Fleming told him about Charley. He stood with his back against the schooner's wheel, the sun on his glistening ebony torso. The two Martinique seamen had gone ashore. The Haitian said, "Mr. Goucher left the vessel just before the storm broke, Cap'n. Soldier Brown came back and told him a couple of the turtle men had beat up on you pretty bad. Anyway, he made it sound bad."

"Where did Charley go?"

"He said he was goin' to see the cap'n of the turtle boat."

"And he didn't come back?"

"The wind come up very bad and I figured I better take to sea. I figured that's what you'd want me to do, Cap'n, and I hope I surely didn't do wrong."

"No, you didn't. What took so long getting back?"

"We had to tow a small lugger in distress. Honduras vessel, Cap'n, got dismasted. We turned her over to another tow, 'cause I was worried about you and Mr. Goucher."

Fleming sighed. "All right, Valere."

"Charley Goucher was a good man," said the Haitian.

"Yes."

"Do you know who killed him, Cap'n?"

"I think so."

"Are you going to do anything about it?"

"Yes."

"You take me with you, Cap'n. You don't leave me behind."

"Yes," Fleming said.

He ate aboard the schooner and looked at the pastel blocks of houses in the town and watched the pelicans skimming the water near the beach. The food he ate felt cold and hard and indigestible in his stomach, but he knew he had to eat and it was foolish to keep thinking the thoughts he had. But the hatred was still in him and the anger, too, and he didn't know what to do about it. In a brief time he had made an enemy of Amayo and of Hans Ottmann and of Cathy Palmer by letting them know what he thought of them. The only thing he didn't regret was his actions toward Hans Ottmann. You should have killed him when you had the chance, Fleming told himself, because it's plain enough that he's not going to rest until he kills you. He wondered why he wasn't afraid and he knew his anger was giving him strength and yet his anger was a dangerous thing and he couldn't depend on what he might decide to do while he felt like this.

At three o'clock he took the dinghy and rowed ashore alone. At the Hotel Parque Central he asked Alejandro, the waiter, if Elizabeth had checked in, and the waiter said no, he had not seen her. There were two green buses parked near the terrace on the square and he saw they were from a guided-tour service in Merida. The tables on the terrace were filled again with sightseers. He had a drink there, but the sound of American voices made him feel strangely lonesome and he went away from there to Peli Menendez' place. He had another drink with Peli, who was wise enough to be brief with his words of consolation. He went back to the square and walked around it twice, looking at the people in the shops and the bars and the Americans whp had come here by bus and looked as if they already regretted it because of the smells and the heat. He told himself he was

walking around in circles and had better stop it. When the guide announced in twisted English that the bus would now leave for the interesting sight of the ancient Mayan ruins, Fleming bought a ticket without knowing why and got into the bus with the other Americans.

Elizabeth was not among the other passengers.

He found a seat beside a short, stout man who turned about constantly to talk to the two girls in the seat behind them. The bus lurched around the square in a cloud of gasoline fumes and then took a narrow road out of town, heading inland past the cornfields and the huts of farmers until the jungle closed in, hot and green, pressing around them like a living tide. The man next to him introduced himself as Humphrey Scott, of Houston, Texas. He introduced the two girls as Dale and Jenny. Fleming gathered that there was some arrangement between the fat little Texan and the two girls, and added little or nothing to the conversation.

The road grew progressively worse. Inside the bus the air was stifling and noisy with the chatter of the American tourists from MeVida. The driver talked of the ancient Mayas and their works and spoke with pride of the efforts of the Mexican government to unearth further wonders of the past. Fleming felt the heat and the bites of insects that found their way into the bus and listened to the talk of the loud Texan and the giggles of the two girls. He thought of Elizabeth and everything that had happened here and he wondered where to look for her and how he could find her.

Just before they arrived at the site of the ruins Scott took a flask from his pocket and offered it to the two girls behind them and then to Fleming. Fleming started to refuse and then took a deep drink and then another and when he lowered the flask he saw Scott's face bright with admiration.

"Hey, that's potent stuff, pardner. You drink it like it's water. These here local yokels sure know how to make home brew, hey?"

"Yes, they do," Fleming said.

"You a tourist, too?"

"No."

"No? Say, you're lucky. Boy, we've all been robbed on this deal. Ain't that right, Dale? Hey, Jenny? Me and the girls

met up in Judrez and got acquainted. The whole deal is my treat."

Fleming looked at the wedding ring on the mail's hand and said, "Where is your wife, Mr. Scott?"

"The little woman?" Scott laughed as if he had said something very funny. "Up north in Chicago, pal, visiting her sister. Ain't that the limit? Tell you what, pardner, you come along on the rest of this tour with us and you can team up with Jenny. How about that, Jenny? You like this hombre?"

"He's cute." Jenny giggled.

Fleming looked at her and it seemed as if she were faceless. "No, thanks," he said.

"No, thanks, what?" asked Scott.

"No tour."

"Don't you like Jenny?"

"She's beautiful," said Fleming.

"Hey, you trying to be funny?"

"How could I be funny?" asked Fleming.

"I think you're a Mex," said Scott suddenly. "I don't think you're an American at all. You don't talk right. You're nothing but a goddamn greaser, that's what you are, pretending to be an honest-to-God American citizen."

"Shut up," Fleming said.

"Hey, Pancho," said Jenny. "Hit him, Pancho."

Scott said, "Who, me?"

"No, I'm talkin' to the greaser, here. Ain't his name Pancho?"

Scott was amazed. "You want him to hit me, honey?"

"Just so you can show him how a real Texan fights, Humpy."

"Pardner," said Fleming, "thanks for the drink. Have a good time. I'm leaving now."

He got up and started to move forward in the bus toward a vacant seat behind the driver, conscious that the rest of the tourists were looking at him with cold hatred. Scott reached for his coat and clung to it for a moment and Fleming turned, ready to hit him, and just then the bus lurched to a halt and the driver stood up and quickly announced that this was the site of the ancient glories, preserved for the edification of the welcome American tourists, and would

they all step out of the bus, please, this way, don't crowd, but hurry.

Fleming got out first because he was on his feet when the bus stopped and he saw they were in a clearing hacked out of the jungle growth. A row of monolithic stone columns made an aisle across the clearing toward a small step pyramid farther off, and it was from the top of this pyramid that the nightly re-enactment of the sacrificial fires was done for the tourists when a cruise ship stood in the harbor. Fleming looked at the savage stone faces carved on the columns and walked between them, ahead of the guide and the wilted tourists, and saw that several tradesmen from town had set up booths to sell Coca-Cola and lemonade and violently colored ices and cheap souvenirs and postcards. There was a tin-roofed stone building that looked like a government office and a battered, dusty Ford parked beside it. He turned that way, thinking to find Hector Men6ndez, if he were here.

Humphrey Scott and the two girls caught up with him.

"Hey, Pancho."

Fleming saw that the two girls had put the fat Texan up to something, and he stopped, feeling tired and angry and trying to control the quick flare of his temper.

"My name is Fleming," he said carefully.

"O.K., Pancho Fleming. Let me buy you a drink."

"No, thanks."

"You were thirsty enough on the bus. Jenny likes you. She says it might be fun to get to know a Mex better. She says all four of us ought to go back to Mexico City and have ourselves a ball."

Fleming looked at her and he still couldn't see her face. He wondered if he were drunk from the drinks he had had at the hotel and at Peli's and from Scott's flask on the bus. He felt drunk. He felt ugly. He thought that if these three didn't leave him alone he would do something bad. He said, "Another time, pardner. I'm busy right now."

"Oh, so you're too proud?" Jenny shrilled.

"Go away," Fleming said. "You're out in left field."

He started to turn, and this time when Scott put a hand on him, Fleming grabbed the fat man's collar and bunched it up under his chin and shook him and then he suddenly turled the American from him and Scott went sprawling awk-

wardly in the dust in front of a lemonade stand. The girls screamed and Fleming turned away without waiting to see if Scott got up, and walked with a long, quick stride toward the administration building. The outer office was empty. He saw a desk with a picture of Inez Men6ndez on it and a typewriter and another door leading into a room in the back. Hector Menendez came out of the back room, hearing his footsteps, and the younger man's eyes lit up as he recognized Fleming.

"Ah. I was worried about you when you refused to come back from the beach with us. My father said I should not have left you."

"I wanted to be alone," Fleming said. It was cool in the stone house and he went back to the door and saw that Scott and the two girls had mingled with the other tourists following the bus driver toward the grim dark pyramid deeper in the jungle. He said, "I think I'm a little drunk."

Hector Menendez showed his even white teeth in a brief smile. "It is good for you. It is a terrible thing, what happened to your friend. I am happy to see that you are all right. And I am happy that I have other news for you, too."

"What news?"

"About your wife, Captain. I know you are searching, for her and I know where she spent last night. My friend saw her on the street during the storm and took care of her—he and his wife. They speak English—Emilio studied at Yale— and he is a doctor. He saw at once that she was not well •—that is, that she was in a state of great emotion—and Emilio and Nancy took her home and put her to bed."

"Nancy?"

"Emilio's wife is American."

"I see," Fleming said. He sat down on a corner of the desk, conscious of a sudden trembling in his legs. He wished now that he hadn't taken any drinks at all. "And where is Elizabeth now?"

"She is still there, with Emilio and Nancy."

"Is she all right?"

"Emilio was waiting at the posada when I returned to town with Lieutenant Amayo. He wishes to speak to you about Elizabeth."

"Is she all right?" Fleming repeated.

"Yes, yes. There is nothing urgent."

"I'll go back to town at once," Fleming said.

"No, wait. In an hour or so I shall return myself. I will take you to Emilio's house. There is no hurry. We will get back before the bus." H&tor Menendez smiled gently. "You should stay here for a time and rest."

"I'd rather go now."

"You would only have to walk. Please. Trust me."

It was more than seven miles back to town through the jungle. He would never make it before dark, but he hated to have to wait. The urgency to find Elizabeth again, to learn what had made her run away from him a second time last night, to tell her he loved her and wanted to help her, all seemed to boil up inside him and H6ctor saw his face and put a hand on his shoulder and shook him.

"It will be all right, amigo. Believe me."

"I'll wait for you," Fleming said.

When Hector went out to act as guide for the tourists, Fleming found a bench near one of the carved Mayan monoliths that had been disinterred from the jungle and sat in the shade, watching the tourists climb the pyramid at the far end of the clearing. The liquor he had taken on the bus churned sourly in his stomach. He thought of Elizabeth stumbling through the rain last night, to be helped by kind strangers. You let her see you were shocked by that damned hypodermic and now she thinks you hate her. But the way you feel about her and love her is a good and simple thing, the way you want to take her home with you to Stone Harbor.

- Thinking of Stone Harbor, he could see the gulls follow screaming in the wakes of the fishing draggers as they rounded the breakwater, and he could see the way the sun shone white on the little lighthouse against the deep blue of the North Atlantic. There was a great longing in him to go back now and start over again at the work he really wanted to do, which was to build boats of any kind, and he knew this feeling was in him because of Elizabeth, because with her there was nothing but good waiting for him back home.

He twisted on the bench and looked up at the ancient

stone image that frowned down on him, the face of hate and vengeance carved in strong and brutal lines. Long ago when things were simpler a man could defend his honor and his life by blunt and tangible rules. Why not now, he wondered, and what keeps us from the simple directness of those ancient peoples, when revenge and honor were easy to figure out? It seemed to him that the image was telling him to do something now, at once, about Charley Goucher, but when he looked for an answer, he found none. He thought of Sam Campbell, the federal agent who took all this as just a job and yet felt it was more than a job, who felt it was his duty to be implacable in his manhunt because a friend had been killed far away just as Charley Goucher had been killed here. You have a choice, he told himself. You've been avoiding it all day, since Campbell told you the truth about all this. And you have to give Campbell an answer tonight. Either you love Elizabeth so that you want to live with her cleanly and honestly, or you don't. Either you make a fugitive of her, running from all this, or you settle it here and now, no matter how it hurts. Make up your mind, Fleming. You don't have much time.

He saw that the tourists were gathering at the soft-drink stands near the bus, their visit over. H6ctor Mendndez stood beside the battered Ford parked in the shade by the tin-roofed administration building, beckoning him.

Fleming stood up from the bench and knew that he loved Elizabeth so much that he would have to hurt her in order to free her of this thing she was running from.

He walked quickly toward the car where Hector waited.

TEN

the house of Dr. Emilio Sanchez was new and modern, with a red-tiled roof and stucco walls of pastel blue, surrounding an inner patio aflame with bougainvillaea and hibiscus in the rays of the lowering sun. Fleming had not

seen this section of the town before. The house stood near the beach, overlooking the Gulf beyond the Castillo where he had found Elizabeth last night. Dr. Sanchez was a small rotund man with a black mustache and a bald head and a fanatical sense of cleanliness about himself. His wife, Nancy, was a tall girl with chestnut hair and a pleasant face that expressed deep concern for Fleming.

"I am so sorry. It was impossible to hold her here."

Fleming heard the doctor's words and listened to the quick rising whine of insects in the bushes against the patio wall. It was almost dark. He heard Hector Menendez sigh and then he said, "I don't believe I understand you. Elizabeth isn't here?"

"No. I am sorry."

"Where did she go?"

"We do not know. She was very distracted last night, as you must realize. I gave her a sedative but it did not work too well." The doctor's thick black brows lifted. "You understand about your wife, Captain Fleming?"

"I know she takes narcotics."

"Yes. It was difficult to control her with the limited facilities at my command. She was extremely fearful, almost desperate with terror when we found her. She seemed to be afraid of everything. She did not wish us to take her to her friends, or to locate you. Finally, we got her to sleep with Nancy. She seemed to be quite calm this morning, and then she asked us to get in touch with the police for her."

"Did she say why?" Fleming asked.

"No. But she implied she had something of importance to tell them."

"And did you call the police?"

"No. I thought it best to speak to you first. And then I had to go out on my rounds and Nancy took her siesta, and when I returned and Nancy awoke, we found that your wife had suddenly gone."

"When was this?"

"Less than an hour ago."

"Have you called the police about it?"

"Yes. She is not there."

It's such a small town, Fleming thought. She can't be far. But yesterday you thought it would be easy to find her, but

she wasn't at the hotel and she wasn't on the cruise ship. This morning you thought she was with Cathy Palmer, at Ottmann's plantation, and then you didn't know the danger there until Campbell told you about it. She wasn't there, anyway. And she wasn't at Peli's posada, or at the hotel again, or in the hands of the police. How long could she hide? And how long would it take for Cathy Palmer and her men to find her? He suddenly felt a great fear that Cathy had already discovered her and taken her to the island for some reason of her own, perhaps to control Johnny Wright; and the fear he felt made him tremble.

He looked at the bald little doctor.

"You said she was calm this morning."

"Yes. As if she had come to a serious decision and was settled in her mind about it."

"But she didn't say anything beyond asking you to get in touch with the police?"

"I am sorry. No."

She wanted the police in order to tell them the truth about Cathy, Fleming thought. That had to be it. There could be no other reason. Elizabeth was desperate. He suddenly could see the night she must have lived through, torn between a desire to protect her brother from a murder charge and a desire to rebel against Cathy's threats and domination. But she hadn't gone to the police, after all. She had disappeared again.

He couldn't stand here doing nothing. He had to get back to town, to look for her, to find her before Cathy's people found her and forced her into silence once and for all.

* * *

The sky was streaked with purple and gold and red in the west behind striated clouds when Fleming returned to the Posada Meneiidez. In the harbor, the lights of his schooner made blobs of yellow on the calm water. He went inside and saw Peli sitting near the fountain, teaching young Mario how to finger the strings. The white-haired old man looked up and saw Fleming standing there and said in English without any change in his face, "I do not wish to alarm the child, but you are in grave danger. The same tw6 men who attacked you last night were here again, asking for you once more."

"Are they here now?" Fleming asked.

"No. They are gone."

"I am not worried about them," Fleming said. "I am worried about my wife. Has she been here?"

"I do not know. I have only just returned from business at the warehouse. The women are gone, too. She may have been here, or not." Peli tuned the big guitar and handed it to Mario and said, "Now, boy, go out in the back and twang away to your heart's content. Only do not insult my ears by trying to play with the E string the way it was. And keep a sharp eye open for the two turtle fishermen." He smacked the boy's rump. "Now go. And do not tell your mother." When he looked up at Fleming again, his eyes were sober. "Have you eaten dinner?"

"No. I am not hungry."

"The police have done nothing about your friend."

"I hardly expect them to."

"You angered Lieutenant Amayo, there on the beach. He is not dishonest, you understand, only in difficulty because his pay is small and his wife is very fertile and the family is large." Peli Menendez shifted his big bulk in the chair and it creaked loudly. "I think you should go away from here, as soon as possible. A man can be brave only up to a certain point, and then he is simply foolish when he invites a knife in his back."

"You would have me desert my wife?" Fleming asked.

"Well, then, find her and then go away."

"I couldn't do that."

"You mean you are angry now about your friend and do not want to leave the business unfinished?"

"Yes, that's what I mean."

Peli sighed heavily. "I am sorry I had to go away this afternoon. It is possible your wife was here. The women ;Were told to stay at home, but they went to the market, the idiots."

"That's all right," Fleming said.

He turned to the steps that led up to the gallery and the second floor surrounding the courtyard. It was almost dark now. He heard Peli's chair creak again and he turned to Watch the old man vanish into the front part of the inn and for some reason he paused and stood there on the narrow

balcony, listening to the fountain and the uncertain notes of the guitar that came faintly from behind the building, and a sense of intolerable pressure grew inside him and all around him as if the gathering shadows held nothing but a portent of evil for him. He told himself he was lightheaded from too much liquor and not enough food, but still he went to the back stairway that was reached by an archway in the building and looked down at the narrow alley below. Mario was only a dim little shadow sitting in the darkening drifts of night on the sand lane. Lamps were being lighted in the house next door and he heard a man's deep voice and a woman's quick, chattering laughter. He turned back toward his room and opened the shutter door and went in.

He was conscious of a quick blur of movement against the wall and in the darkness he saw the darting figure and the thin gleam of metal from the gun and he acted without thinking, jumping forward and slashing at the weapon and driving the other person back to the cot. There came a gasp and a stifled scream and the one with the gun fell back onto the cot and the mosquito netting tore with a faint hissing sound. In the next moment Fleming was astraddle of the other, his fist raised to smash in fury at the pale blurred face upturned in terror under him.

"Mitch!"

He checked the blow just in time and let the momentum of his swing drop him sideways and he fell to his knees beside the cot.

"Liza!" he whispered. "Liza, did I hurt you?"

"No. No."

"Are you sure?"

Her whisper was cut by a quick sob in her throat. "Yes. I didn't know who it was. You came in so suddenly, and I didn't hear you. There's no lock on the door. I thought perhaps they had found me."

"Hush," he said.

He was still on his knees beside the cot and he caught her to him and saw her small face in the dimness and held her tight and never wanted to let her go. Her arms were around his neck and he felt the convulsive shudder that went through her.

"Help me," she whispered. "Please, please. Help me, Mitch."

"Yes."

"I don't know what to do!"

"I'll help you."

"I'm so afraid!"

"It's all right now."

"But it can't be. You don't know!"

"Hush," he said again, as if to a frightened child. He held her tight and felt a blind fury rise in him that she should be like this, through no fault of her own, because of someone else's greedy crime.

He started to rise and felt her arms tighten around him again and he reached back and loosened her fingers and made her sit up on the bed. He saw that she was wearing a gray cotton dress with a silver belt around her waist and he wondered where she had got it and decided she must have borrowed it from Nancy Sanchez. Then he felt around on the floor and found the gun he had knocked from her hand. It was a little .28-caliber pistol and he held it for a moment and then put it down again and listened. Above the sound of Elizabeth's quick breathing he could hear nothing of alarm. Apparently the slight noise they had made during their brief scuffle hadn't been heard down in the courtyard. He noticed that the shutter door was ajar and it made him uneasy and he said, "Wait a minute, Liza. Let me go."

Closing the door, he leaned back against it and looked at his wife's dim shape on the cot. "I'm glad you came here," he said.

"I didn't know what to do," she whispered.

"But you came here. To me."

"Yes, Mitch."

"Because you wanted to be with me?"

"Yes, Mitch. Always, darling."

"I'm sorry about last night," he said.

"I—I wasn't myself."

"I ran after you. I looked for you. I thought Cathy and Sam Campbell had picked you up and that you were all right. I didn't know about either of them, then."

"But you know now?"

"Campbell told me the whole story this morning," Flem-

ing said. "I didn't want to believe it, but it's true, isn't it?"

"Yes. Yes, I suppose so."

"He wants me to work for him and help him convict Cathy."

"Does he?"

"Yes," Fleming said. Then his ear caught the peculiar flatness of her voice, expressing a desolation that was frightening, and he said, "I won't do anything you don't want me to do. Do you understand that? I only want to help you, Elizabeth. Nothing else matters. If you think we should run from it, we can."

"It's too late to run," she said dully.

She looked small and helpless, her legs tucked under her as she sat on the cot. Her face was a pale mask floating as if disembodied against the darkness of the wall behind her.

"Why is it too late?" he asked.

He saw her shivering and came nearer.

"What is it, Liza?"

"Help me," she whispered.

"That's all I ever wanted to do. I know some of what's wrong now, and it doesn't matter. Believe me. I didn't want you to run away from me last night. I thought you didn't understand how I felt, and I've been looking for you all day."

"Your friend was killed," she said abruptly.

Fleming drew a deep breath. "You know about that?"

"Yes."

"Do you know who did it?"

"I think so."

"And why?"

"Yes."

"Tell me," he said. "Tell me now."

Instead, she said, "He's not the only one. I thought and thought about it last night, at that doctor's house. He was very good to me—he and his wife. They're very much in love. I want to protect Johnny, and I was frightened for myself, but I love you too much to keep running away from it, Mitch."

"I'm glad."

"After last night I knew I was doing wrong to keep you out of it and let all this go on, no matter what happened

to Johnny or me. I felt as if I was in a corner and had no place to go. It was like a nightmare, Mitch." He was silent, waiting.

"So I decided to go to the police with everything I knew and tell them everything that had happened," Elizabeth said. She shivered again. "And when I went out of the doctor's house, I saw two of Ottmann's fishermen waiting outside for me and I ran and somehow I got away from them in the crowd at the marketplace, but I was afraid to try for the police station because I thought they might cut me off. I hoped to find you somewhere at the hotel, but you weren't there, and then I came here and they were waiting for me." "Waiting here?" "In this room," she said. "But they didn't hurt you?" "I—I don't know what happened." "What do you mean?"

"One of them hit me with something. There was nobody in the building, everybody seemed to be away, and they weren't worried about raising an alarm. And when I came to, they were gone."

Fleming let out a long breath. "So long as you're all right." "But I had the gun in my hand," she said. He picked it up from the floor. "This one?" "Yes. It's been fired."

He sniffed at the barrel and smelled the acrid pungency of burned cordite and stared at her. "I don't understand." "I told you, your friend Charley Goucher isn't the only one they killed. Look in the shower stall, Mitch."

Fleming looked at her and felt something cold suddenly grow in him and the little gun seemed to have enormous weight in his hand. A man and a woman went by in the narrow street under the window, talking softly, and the woman laughed and said, "Querido mfo," and then they were gone and he heard the muted strings of Mario's guitai from behind the inn and everything up here suddenly seemed very dark and close and hot with the breath of hell. Elizabeth's face was turned to watch him and he saw the enormous fear in her eyes and he turned with the little gun in his hand and crossed the darkness of the room to open the door to the shower stall.

The darkness seemed to gather around him and then leap back as he struck a wax match that flared up like a tiny bomb and showed him the man who sat cramped in a corner of the zinc-lined cabinet. It was Sam Campbell. He had been shot in the face and what was left of him was only a caricature of the big, healthy, competent man who had been in here only a few hours ago.

The match burned Fleming's fingers and he dropped it and stood there looking into the darkness at the crumpled shape of the dead man, and he knew without asking that the gun Elizabeth had found in her hand was the gun that had fired the single bullet that had smashed Sam Campbell's brain into an ugly mess of blood. He felt the sweat start out on him and he put the gun down on the floor, very gently, and wiped his palms on his thighs and stood there, not wanting to turn around to Elizabeth again. Then he heard her voice whisper something and he straightened and said softly, to the dead man, "I'm sorry, Sam."

Elizabeth stood at the foot of the cot in an attitude of listening. "Somebody is coming," she said.

"What?"

"I heard a car stop outside."

He had heard nothing. He went past her and looked out through the window, leaning far out so he could see to the intersection of the narrow street in front of the posada. In the light coming from the sidewalk caf6 he saw the red sedan with the police star on it that he had ridden in to the beach earlier today.

ELEVEN

fleming reached for Elizabeth's hand in the darkness. His voice was low but tight and insistent. "Come along. Hurry. We haven't any time to spare."

"Who is it?" she whispered. "Who's out there?"

"The police."

"But how could they have known?"

"The murderer told them. Hurry."

He went to the door, still holding her hand, and opened it carefully to look out and down at the dimly lighted courtyard below. He heard the voice of Peli Menendez raised in argument: "I protest this intrusion, Lieutenant. I am a respected man in the community, a gentleman, and I expect courtesy from civil servants. I assure you that nothing has happened here. Nothing. I resent your manners and your charges. This house is nothing but the quietest, most respectable—"

Fleming stepped out on the dark gallery and felt Elizabeth move by his side. The archway into the front lobby was softly yellow with light from the oil lamps. Night had come fully, and the vast turning arch of the starry sky seemed to hold him in suspension between the empty reaches of the universe and the dark ground below. Elizabeth shivered beside him and he turned to face her and held her shoulders for a moment and looked deep into her features.

"Do you trust me?" he whispered.

"Yes, Mitch. You know I didn't kill—"

"Don't even talk about it. We have to run."

"But the police—"

"It's been arranged for them to catch us here."

There came a sudden eruption of angry voices from the lobby and Fleming turned and pushed Elizabeth ahead of him, toward the archway in the upper floor that led to the back stairs. She stumbled, then ran ahead, and as they reached the archway there was a loud shout from the court below and he heard Amayo cry out, "Alto.'" Then he heard the sudden slamming echo of a shot and he wanted to laugh at the way Amayo was so sure of something wrong here that he didn't even wait to look or ask questions. He didn't laugh. There was nothing funny about it. He saw the steps before them and Elizabeth started down and there was a second blasting shot and a piece of plaster flew from the wall just before he put a hand there to check his downward plunge. The alley below where Mario had been practicing on his guitar was black and impenetrable at the foot of the steps and he bumped into Elizabeth and heard her gasp. He reached out for her and said, "This way."

Together, they ran toward the end of the alley and the first street.

Two or three people were standing in the middle of the street, staring at the posada, their faces surprised and anxious. To the left was the intersection where the police car was parked. Fleming pushed Elizabeth the opposite way. The street sloped sharply down toward the waterfront and there were lights down that way and the sound of music from a cantina.

"Walk," Fleming said.

Elizabeth slowed her pace and one of the men in the street who had started their way turned back again. Elizabeth took his arm. Her hand was steady, although her face looked pinched and her eyes were clouded and dark with apprehension. He saw that her chin and mouth were firm and he suddenly felt sure that she would be all right and he was aware of something like happiness, almost, that she had come back to him like this.

Then Fleming looked back and heard a shout behind them and saw two policemen in their khaki uniforms running after them with drawn guns. A small crowd ran pell-mell at their heels. Instantly Fleming broke to the right, pulling Elizabeth with him down a small alley. They reached the other end of the alley as the police entered it from the opposite side, and found themselves on a stretch without lights, as dark as a pocket, with the rank smells of the fish market nearby almost solid in the air. He caught at Elizabeth's hand again and they ran to the left, toward the main square. Sweat soaked him. The air was hot and labored in his throat, and he wondered at Elizabeth's perseverance. The footsteps of the police pounded after them. A narrow slot appeared between two low houses and Fleming suddenly pulled Elizabeth after him and forced her to the ground and knelt there as if in the bottom of a black, airless well. He could see nothing. Then a flashlight made a sudden stabbing finger of yellow across the entrance to the slot, bobbing up and down, and the pounding footsteps of the police grew louder and nearer. He heard Elizabeth drag in a deep, shuddering breath and he put his hand over her mouth lightly, and didn't breathe himself. The flashlight glared on the wall above them and a man's querulous voice

jabbed at his companion and the two policemen ran on.

Fleming stood up, his legs trembling. Elizabeth didn't move. He helped her up and she leaned against him and she shook her head in a helpless, beaten way.

"What are we doing?" she gasped. "What's happening?"

"Listen," Fleming said. "I don't trust Amayo. I think he takes money from Ottmann to shut his eyes to the drug traffic that goes on here. I think that whoever killed Sam Campbell found him waiting for me in my room, and then you came in and they fixed it so Amayo would have a reasonable excuse to throw us in jail for as long as necessary."

"But I don't know what happened in your room," she said.

"I know you don't. That's exactly the way they want it to be. For some reason, Cathy is desperate. She wants you to think you might have killed Sam Campbell. She wants the police to think you're not responsible mentally. You know why."

"I was going to tell the police all about her."

"Yes," Fleming said. "She guessed that."

"Where is Johnny? Can we get to him? He could help."

Fleming thought about it. All he had hoped for was a chance to get to the waterfront and reach the schooner and get away from Amayo. He drew a deep breath and wiped the sweat from his face and neck with the palm of his hand and then felt for the Magnum under his coat. It was Still there. He hoped he wouldn't have to use it.

"Let's get Johnny," said Elizabeth. "We just can't leave him here."

Fleming remembered how Johnny Wright had been at Ottmann's and how he was earlier that morning, and it seemed as if a long, long time had gone by since he had awakened and talked to Sam Campbell. He nodded in agreement and stepped out between the two houses and saw that the lane was empty. To the left were the naked, glaring lights of the town square, and he hoped that Amayo would assume he would be heading for the beach and not for the busiest part of town. In a way, at the moment, doubling back like this might be the safest course, he thought.

The question was decided for him the next moment when

he heard shouting and the sounds of a search from among the shacks at the waterfront.

"Come on."

There was no sign of alarm when they reached the square. Under the garish electric lights, the lemonade vendors and beggars and promenaders went about their usual business. The cathedral doors were open and several people were gathered on the steps, and a group of uniformed musicians, their faces shiny and flushed with the heat, were collected on the bandstand. More music came from the mariachis on the terrace of the Parque Central.

Fleming let the crowd carry them in a clockwise movement around the square toward the hotel. He looked curiously at Elizabeth in the bright light. Her face was pale, but her eyes and chin were firm. She had her hand tucked possessively in his arm and the occasional trembling he felt was her only sign of terror. He saw no policemen here. At the terrace he lifted the chain and let Elizabeth precede him and he saw that the busload of tourists was still here, apparently due to stay for the night. The chairs and tables were crowded, and the white-jacketed Indian waiters moved with more speed than usual at their tasks. Fleming found an empty table near the wall and told Elizabeth to sit there and wait for him.

"I want to go with you," she said.

"Watch for the police. Come upstairs fast if you see them."

Her eyes questioned him. The gray dress she wore had a smudge on one shoulder and her dark red hair was disheveled, but there was really nothing about her to make her stand out from the other tourists who were making so much noise on the terrace. When she nodded and he turned away from her, he saw Alejandro, the waiter, watching him from the doorway to the hotel. The moment he turned, Alejandro turned, too, walking quickly into the lobby. Fleming had forgotten about the police spy. You fool, he thought, Amayo will be here in nothing flat. He walked quickly after the waiter and saw him cross the lobby, near the main flight of marble steps that swept upward to the guest rooms on the second floor. The bar to his left was crowded and noisy

and he thought he heard someone call to him, but all his attention was on Alejandro.

"One little moment, friend," Fleming said.

The waiter jumped as if stuck with a pin. His eyes swung from right to left. "Oh. Good evening, Captain Fleming."

"Are you in a hurry?"

"The patrons are impatient for their drinks."

"The kitchen is the other way. So is the bar."

"I have other duties," Alejandro said.

"Such as calling Lieutenant Amayo?"

"Why should I call Amayo, sir?"

Fleming said, "I think you'd better come upstairs with me."

"I am very busy."

"But you will come with me, nevertheless."

Alejandro hesitated, then shrugged. His thick black hair was in an immaculate pompadour, paradoxically youthful against his seamed, leathery face. His white jacket glistened with starch. He moved forward as Fleming waved and they circled around toward the foot of the main staircase leading to the guest rooms above. Then as they started up to Johnny Wright's room, Fleming heard a thick, drunken shout behind him and a heavy hand clapped his shoulder.

"Hey, it's Pancho!"

Fleming saw Humphrey Scott, the fat little Texan, and his two girl companions. They were all drunk. Scott's face was congested with anger and his eyes looked yellow and mean.

"Hey, Jenny, it's the Mex who's too proud to go with you!"

"Slug him, Humpy!" Jenny cried.

Fleming let go of Alejandro and said harshly, "Beat it."

"Don't talk to us like that, Pancho," said Scott.

He grabbed at Fleming's coat and pulled at the lapels before Fleming could slap his hand away and the big Magnum revolver slipped from its holster and clattered to the lobby floor. There was a moment's hush everywhere, while Fleming saw the startled faces ringing him around, shock and suspicion and fear regarding him.

Then Alejandro suddenly shouted, "Stop him! Stop him! This man is a criminal!"

Fleming straight-armed Humphrey Scott and ducked low

to scoop up the Magnum from the floor. Jenny kicked at him as he bent for it and the spiked heel of her shoe caught him in the throat and for an instant he sprawled, paralyzed, unable to draw a breath past the fiery pain. The other girl screamed for the police. He did not let go of the gun. Somehow he got to his feet and saw the people at the bar staring at him and he started to run for the terrace doors, the gun in his hand. Those who began to block his way faded to one side at a glimpse of the gun. Elizabeth was standing at the table, a hand to her throat, and when she saw him plunge out onto the terrace she ran toward him and took his hand and then they ran together out into the square, toward the cathedral. An uproar of voices followed them through the hot, dark night. The cobblestones underfoot were uneven and Elizabeth stumbled and almost went down, and Fleming caught her and held her up. When he looked back over his shoulder he saw a khaki-uniformed policeman running toward the hotel along the sidewalk and then a whistle blew shrilly. The massive cathedral doors loomed open before them.

"Inside," he gasped.

Together they stumbled up the broad steps, past the dim, skeletal forms of beggars crouched in the deep shadows. Their footsteps echoed hollowly, ringing back to them from the high, vaulted ceiling. Candles flickered and danced in a banked mass before the altar, and thousands of moths circled and darted and swooped in a multicolored cloud of brilliant, dying wings over the lights. Fleming halted and sucked a deep, ravaged breath past the pain in his throat. He suddenly realized he still held the gun in his hand and he put it in his pocket and saw Elizabeth staring at the carved images of the saints on either side of the nave, at the massive, ornate gilt and silver decorations that encrusted the walls. A black-robed priest moved solemnly in the deep shadows to their left, and two kneeling women bent before the banks of candles, their whispering voices faint echoes from the vast emptiness around them.

Elizabeth said quietly, "What happened back there?"

"I couldn't get to Johnny. The waiter is a police spy and recognized me," Fleming said. "The other people don't matter."

"What will we do now?"

"We can't stay here," he said.

As they started down the nave, Fleming looked back and saw Amayo in the main entranceway, twenty feet behind them. Amayo saw him at the same moment and started forward, not running, but walking quickly. Two uniformed men followed. Fleming felt trapped. The thought crossed his mind that he was running for nothing, since he had committed no crime and had done nothing wrong. Then he saw the panic in Elizabeth's eyes and he took her arm and walked rapidly down the aisle and then turned at the cross aisle and led her through a Gothic doorway into an arched corridor that led to the rear of the cathedral. The moment they were out of sight they broke into a run. The back door was bolted. As he shoved aside the heavy iron bar he heard a shout behind them and saw Amayo pounding down the corridor after them. The next moment he had the door open and they stumbled into the dark street behind the cathedral. A car nosed around the far comer as they started to run again, and the bright headlights swept down the narrow lane and pinned them against the pale walls of the nearby houses, making their shadows leap grotesquely far ahead of them. Elizabeth stumbled again in the rutted sand street and Fleming caught her up and held her against the wall as the car roared up beside them.

It was not the police car. It was Hector Men6ndez' Ford.

The door was thrown open and a voice yelled to them, "Get in. Quickly!"

The man behind the wheel was Hector Mendndez. No one else was in the car. Fleming pushed Elizabeth into the front seat and jumped in beside her, and Hector started the Ford with a lurch and a squeal of rubber scraping sand and gravel and the car started before Fleming could close the door. Behind them, above the roar of the motor, a man shouted and he thought he heard another car, and then headlights swept into the street as they reached the first corner. Fleming looked back and saw the police car stop to pick up Amayo and then Heetor spun the wheel and they took the corner at screaming speed.

"Thanks, friend," he gasped.

Hector showed his even teeth in a grin. "I will get you safely out of town. Do not worry."

"You will be in trouble for it."

"I do not think they know it is my car."

"Where are we going?"

"You will see."

Fleming held Elizabeth in the bend of his arm. She breathed deeply, trying to regain her wind after their dash through the cathedral. Her face was relatively calm. The Ford lurched and bounced and swayed and roared through the streets, scattering chickens and dogs in their path, and in only a moment they were out of town, following the same coastal road they had taken this morning to pick up Charley Goucher's body. Only two hundred yards behind them, the headlights of the police car bobbed and twisted on their trail. Fleming turned on the seat to watch, and it seemed to him that H6ctor was slowly drawing away from their pursuers.

He sat back and told himself that he could trust H6ctor Menendez, at any rate. But you're in for it now, he thought. Up to and over your neck. You didn't kill Sam Campbell, but the cops will claim you did, or claim Elizabeth did it, which is even worse, and what they want to do is toss you in the calabozo for a couple of months until everything here that Sam Campbell worked to expose is snugged down and hidden away, good and buried. By then nobody will worry why Charley was killed and probably it will be chalked up as a barroom brawl, and no matter what you say about Charley's avoiding brawls like that, the official story will be whatever they want it to be. And maybe the American diplomatic authorities will help you and maybe they won't, but by the time you get word to them, everything will be lost anyway and the evidence will have disappeared. If they catch you tonight, that is. If they get their hands on Elizabeth now. He looked at her and he suddenly knew that if she were charged with Campbell's murder it would be the finish of her, the end of any hope she had to pull out of this clean and whole and healthy again.

The road twisted past the place on the beach where Charley was found and then turned inland through dense jungle. The police car hung grimly onto their trail. Insects spat-

100

tered on the windshield, looming up like clouds in the bright swath of their headlights. The road twisted up a slope, took a sharp hairpin curve, and then the tires racketed on the loose planking of a bridge over a dark and muddy river.

Hector Menendez shook his head, worried. - "They are gaining on me now. Their car is more powerful."

"Where did you hope to take us?" Fleming asked.

"M6rida. It is three hours from here. But they will be up to us in another ten minutes."

"What can we do?"

Menendez grinned. "If we can get out of their sight long enough to stop, I can let you out. Down on the beach along here, about two miles west of the river we just crossed, there is a small house I know of where an Indian friend used to live. No one lives there now. It occurs to me that I could drop you off and keep going and let the police think you are still in the car with me for as long as it takes them to catch me."

"You will be in serious trouble then," Fleming said.

"Not if they find me alone in the car."

"Step on it, friend," Fleming said.

Somehow the Mexican squeezed an extra burst of power from the laboring engine. Here and there through the tangled sea grape and guinea grass and scrub palmettos Fleming glimpsed the sea, a dark shimmering expanse to his right. The road took another sharp dip downward and curved closer to the beach and the police headlights were gone, only a dim glow behind them. The Ford lurched and skidded as H&tor slammed on the brakes, and before the car was completely stopped Fleming had the door open. He jumped out and Elizabeth came after him.

H&tor shouted, "I will come back as soon as I can. Perhaps tomorrow!"

Then Fleming hit the slope and rolled over and came up again. He saw Elizabeth stumbling with the inertia of their forward momentum as they left the moving car and then the Ford roared on, gathering speed. Gravel stung Fleming's legs, thrown from the spinning tires, and the taillights winked at him and were gone. A huge rolling cloud of dust billowed up through the night. Fleming caught at Elizabeth's hand and dragged her down with him into the brush and

101

an instant later the police car topped the rise and came rushing down toward them. The headlights stabbed overhead where they hid in the tall, rank grass and then were gone.

Fleming lay still, dragging in deep gulps of air. The drumming motors of both cars faded into the distance, and gradually the sound of the surf and the slow revival of insect songs took the place of the motors as Hector led the police away from this place.

He sat up and looked at Elizabeth.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, Mitch."

The insects hummed in gathering clouds around them. The night was hot and still, with not a breath of breeze stirring. Fleming took Elizabeth's hand and together they started walking through the tall grass and the dark masses of cabbage palms, toward the beach.

TWELVE

the moon was just coming up over the horizon of the sea as they picked their way along the stony beach. Hector had chosen his spot well. The beach curved back beyond a long sandy point where coco palms grew wild, their long fronds starkly black against the brightening moonlight. Beyond the point was a deep cove, the entrance protected by a long sandbar on which the surf broke shallowly with a steady long roar and sigh and hiss. Long ago someone had made a clearing in the mangrove that crowded down to the water's edge, and the sagging tin roof of a small fisherman's shack glinted briefly in the light of the moon.

Sand crabs scuttled out of their way as they followed the hard sand close to the water and approached the shack. The door was closed, barred from the outside. Fleming paused and looked at the beach, but there were no traces of boats having been here recently and the whole place had an air of neglect and a sense of having been long forgotten.

102

Elizabeth paused as he took the bar down over the door. "Mitch, how long will we have to stay here?"

"Maybe just tonight."

He pushed open the door and looked into the dark interior of the shack and stepped in ahead of her. Something rustled on the floor and he stamped his heel quickly on the slithering form that crossed the moonlight. It was a snake. He looked at Elizabeth and her face had turned pale.

"I feel like a castaway," she said.

"We'll make out all right."

He found the stump of a candle on a table inside and struck a match to it, and in the flickering light he saw that the place was surprisingly clean. The snake had been the only occupant. Beside the table was a three-legged stool and a charcoal-burning fireplace and a little bin of charcoal and wood. Some canned food stood on the shelves, rust-spotted but sound. There was a steel bunk in one corner. Two crudely fashioned boat paddles leaned against the opposite wall. Under the bunk was a U.S. Army five-gallon fuel can, and Fleming unscrewed the cap and sniEed at the contents and smelled the brackishness of stale water.

"There must be a spring nearby. We'll find it," he said. Then he looked up and saw Elizabeth in the doorway and her face was strange. "What is it?"

"Nothing."

"You're shivering."

"It's just the reaction, I suppose." Then she said, "Mitch, thank you."

"For nothing," he said.

"You do love me, don't you?"

"Yes. You know I do."

"And you know I didn't kill Sam Campbell?"

"You don't have to convince me," he said.

"But I want to. I want you to believe me."

He put down the water can and crossed the cabin to her and kissed her. Her shoulders were rigid under his hands. Her mouth was cool, without reaction. Beyond her, he watched the moonlight brighten on the cove and saw a fish jump and splash just inside the sandbar. The surf made a quiet, lulling sound in the night. Quite suddenly he felt the weight of exhaustion from everything that had hap-

103

pened this day, and he let his hands fall to his sides. Insects fluttered and gathered in a growing cloud around the candle he had lighted, and he went back to it and snuffed it out. In the moonlight, Elizabeth's face looked drawn.

"We can talk tomorrow," he said. "Right now you need rest."

"Yes. I'm very tired."

"You can take the cot," he said.

"Where will you sleep?"

"On the beach. Just outside."

He thought she looked at him strangely and he felt a great wave of tenderness toward her. She's been pushed back and forth between Johnny and Cathy for years, he thought. She doesn't really know how either of them has used her. He wanted to kiss her again and tell her he loved her and would never leave her and if they got out of this safely there would be a new life for them somewhere far from here where they could begin again and perhaps recapture what they had found during those two days in Willemstad. He wanted to tell her that nothing else was important to him, but when he started to speak she turned away and sat on the cot and he saw that her eyes were closed when the moonlight touched her face.

He sat alone for a long time after she was asleep. The sand was cool and after a time a breeze came over the water and brushed the insects away and he stared at the liquid silver of the moonlight, and it seemed as if he could walk out on that path for miles and miles, into the past and the future. The breeze rustled softly in the palmettos behind the shack and he saw ripples on the water where a school of barracudas hunted their nightly feasts. Under the peaceful silver of the moonlight were the sharp teeth of the killers, he thought, the bloody savagery of those who ate and those who were eaten.

After another long time he heard a car on the road above the beach, less than a quarter of a mile aw.ay. He sat up straight, listening to the motor, and saw the glare of headlights through the night that covered the land. He couldn't tell if it was the police car or Men6ndez. It seemed for a moment as if it were slowing to a halt where he had jumped

104

from the Ford, but then it went on and gradually the sound of the motor faded away toward Puerto Caballo.

His eyes felt gritty and sandy. He thought there would be no harm in closing them. Even as he thought of it, he fell asleep.

* * *

He awoke to find it still dark, with the moon quartering down in the west. At first he did not know what had startled him, but there was sweat on his face and the sand stuck to the arm he had pillowed under his head. The breeze had freshened and was almost cool, making an irregular dry clacking sound in the palmettos behind the shack. His watch read four-thirty; it would soon be dawn. He stood up, uncertain, and then he heard Elizabeth cry out from inside the shack and he went quickly through the open doorway. There were two small windows in the place and now the moonlight slanted in from the opposite direction from where it had shone before, and he saw Elizabeth thrashing on the cot, her dress awry, her face shiny and twisted with panic. Fleming ran to her and shook her.

"Liza," he whispered. "Wake up. You've been dreaming."

"No," she mumbled. "No, I'm awake."

"What is it? A nightmare?"

Her eyes looked through him. He heard a rapid clicking sound and couldn't identify it for a moment and then he realized her teeth were chattering.

"No," she said. "No nightmare."

He put a hand on her forehead, alarmed. "Are you sick?"

"Yes. Help me, Mitch."

"Do you know what's wrong?"

"Yes. It's been a long time—several weeks—since I let Cathy help me."

His mouth felt dry. "You don't want that kind of help, do you?"

"No. But I'm sick, Mitch. Hold me."

He put his arm around her and made her sit up.

"Tighter, Mitch. Make me forget it."

"Liza?"

"Help me!"

It was the need in her for the drugs Cathy Palmer had taught her to use, he thought. He held her in his arms

105

and felt the shivering that tortured her and in him there welled up a deep, bitter hatred for those who had taken her at a time when she knew no better and introduced her to this evil. Insects sang in the brush behind the shack, and he heard the crash and thunder of the surf on the beach.

"Look," he said. "Do you want me to go back to town for a doctor? That Emilio Sanchez seemed to be all right."

"No."

"I could walk it easily enough, if you'd stay here."

She said fiercely, "No! Don't leave me!"

"All right," he said.

"And I don't want a doctor, anyway." Her mouth looked wet and she twisted in his arms to look at him. There was perfume in her long hair and he could feel its heavy strands against his; shoulder. "It's better now. I'm going to get better."

"When was the last time?"

"Two months ago."

"When Barney Eden was killed?"

Quickly she came out of his arms. "Who told you that?"

"Campbell."

"Then he was an agent?" she asked. When Fleming nodded, she sat hugging herself thoughtfully. "Then Cathy didn't lie. How did you know?"

"He told me about it this morning. And now he's dead. If you haven't touched the stuff since two months ago, why the hypo last night?"

"Cathy gave it to me," she said, and he was shocked at the cold anger behind her words. Her teeth chattered for a moment before she went on. "Temptation for poor little Liza."

"But you didn't use it."

"No."

"What happened in that nightclub to get you arrested?"

"I don't know. Cathy put something in my drink, I guess. She's been frightened ever since I suddenly went on that cruise ship. She doesn't know what to make of my new independence." Elizabeth paused. "I don't want to talk about it now."

"Do you feel better?"

106

"I want you to hold me, Mitch."

"Like this?"

"Like you did at first. When we—you know."

"I think you should sleep."

"I will. Later."

"Liza?"

"I'll sleep later, Mitch."

He lay, beside her on the narrow fisherman's pallet for a long time, until the moon was gone and the darkness of the night was absolute except for the polished silver of the stars. Through the open doorway he watched the quick, brilliant phosphorescence of the surf on the sandbar, seeing the combers crash brilliantly in the hot, dark night. Elizabeth was asleep. He listened to the soft rhythm of her breathing and didn't move for fear of disturbing her. There was a strength in her that filled him with pride, blending with his love for her. He understood now how the shock of violent death, of knowing Cathy had the power to ruin her brother's life, had worked in a reaction that boomeranged on Cathy Palmer. You've got'yourself something, he thought. You've got the cops after you and there's no guessing where this all will end, but if Elizabeth can take this, there's nothing you can't do for her. He thought of it, smiling, and .fell asleep.

He awoke with the first light of dawn and without moving he opened his eyes and saw the figure of an Indian sitting on the beach with his back turned carefully to the open door of the shack.

The Indian's body was a dark outline against the long streamers of orange and violet and deep rose that reached like fingers from below the horizon into the distant circle of puffy clouds floating high above the water. In this moment of dawn the jungle behind the shack awoke with the sound of birds and animals screaming to greet the new day. A small, cool breeze came over the lightening expanse of water and made a rustling and clacking in the tall grasses and the wide leaves of the wild banana trees and palmettos. Fleming didn't move. He saw that the Indian had arrived in one of the narrow double-pointed fishing canoes. It was drawn up on the beach out of reach of the small surf that lapped the shore of the cove. The sandbar was exposed now

107

at low tide, and the combers no longer crashed so heavily upon it.

He turned his head slightly and looked at Elizabeth, asleep beside him. Her dark hair was spread fanwise under her face, and while she slept her face looked pure and untroubled and innocent. He saw the small crescents of her dark lashes against her cheeks and the tiny uptilt of her mouth in a smile. She had taken off the borrowed gray dress, and in her slip, in the cool gray light, her body seemed full of contradictions, inexpressibly wanton and desirable, yet a delicate and unsullied treasure.

On the floor beside the bunk was his coat and the Magnum revolver, and he moved at last, his eyes on the Indian seated on the beach. When he had the gun in his hand he eased away from Elizabeth as she slept and stood up soundlessly. She stirred for a moment, but did not waken. He took the gun with him when he stepped from the shack and walked across the beach toward the motionless fisherman.

The Indian heard him coming and turned his head partially, taking care not to bring the door and Elizabeth's figure into his range of vision. He was an old man with a tough, brown, wiry body.

"Buenos dfas," Fleming greeted him.

"Buenos dfas, sefior."

Fleming held the gun loosely in his hand, pointed downward. The Indian had no weapons. A small package wrapped in rough burlap rested on the pebbly beach beside him. The old man wore a pair of cotton pants with striped vertical lines, rolled just below his bony knees, and a white cotton shirt and a straw sombrero. His dark eyes swung back toward the gaudy sunrise and then touched the gun in Fleming's hand.

"I am not armed," said the Indian.

"Good."

"I have been here for one hour, waiting for you to awaken."

"So if you were armed, you could have killed me?" Fleming said, making it both a question and a statement.

"I come with a message from Don Peli. My name is Salvador Ynuflez."

108

"You are most discreet to wait like this." """•

"I did not wish to intrude."

"I appreciate your tact," Fleming said.

The Indian smiled and looked down at his old hands and spindly legs and shrugged, his dark eyes amused. "I was young once. I have many fond memories of this place. It is a place of peace and quiet."

Fleming was surprised. "Then it is your house?"

"Yes. I lived here, many years ago. My two sons were born here. But it was a long time ago, and I am alone now, having buried my wife and my two sons, and it was painful for me to stay here."

"Your hospitality is appreciated."

The Indian shrugged. "I have brought some food. And word from Don Peli. He is a good friend to you, and to me, too. He advises you that Don Hector returned safely and you are not to move from here until he has a further message for you."

"I see. And when will the next message come?"

"I do not know. At present, there is much danger for you in the town."

"From the police?"

"And others," the Indian said.

"The turtle fishermen?"

"They are looking for you and your wife with much desperation."

Fleming weighed the gun in his hand. He looked out over the water and saw the sun was clear of the horizon, •enormous and blinding, and the first waves of heat began to sting and strike at him. The clamor of birds and animals in the jungle behind the shack began to subside.

Ynunez stood up, leaving the burlap bag on the sand. Fleming could see the shape of cans in it. The Indian said, "You will be safe here, Don Peli says. Nobody knows of this place. When it is safe, I will come back again with more news."

"I thank you," Fleming said.

For the first time, the old man looked directly at the tin-roofed shack under the scraping fronds of the banana trees.

"Be happy here," he said.

109

"Thank you," Fleming said again.

He helped the Indian push the boat into the water and stood in the surf above his knees, watching the old man raise the sail and guide the canoe into the great flaming orb of the sun. The light blinded him and he turned away, and when he looked again the fisherman and his boat were gone. Yet he did not feel alone. Picking up the small burlap bag, he carried it back to the shack and put it down in a corner and looked at Elizabeth. She was still asleep, and he did not awaken her.

He picked up the water can and went out again, circling behind the shack, and found a narrow path that led up the gentle rise of land from the beach. Following the path, he saw the bright splash of wild orchids and the streaks of color from the birds that screamed in protest against his presence. The path ended halfway up the rise to the spine of land where the M£rida road was, and here he found a small natural clearing and a bubbling spring that came up out of the earth and formed a tiny pond in which the clear water always had movement. He went flat on his stomach and tasted the water carefully, surprised at its coldness, and then filled the water can. Before he left he picked some"of the wild orchids and returned to the beach with them.

He found a large shell and used some of the drinking water to float the orchids in it and put the shell and flowers on the edge of the clay fireplace in such a way that Elizabeth would see them when she awoke. Hunger stirred in him, but he did not want to disturb her by cooking yet. He returned to the water's edge, studying the way the sandbar protected the little cove. The sun was hot now. He decided that the sandbar strongly minimized the danger of sharks, and with that thought he stripped off the clothes he had slept in and plunged into the surf.

He swam with strong strokes out to the sandbar and then halfway back, then rolled over and floated.

An unreasonable sense of happiness and well-being filled him, and although he knew it was foolhardy to analyze his good feeling, his mind picked at it as he floated quietly on the water with the sun on his face. You're happy because of Elizabeth, he thought, because you know the truth about her now. The situation was strange, though. If someone had

110

•said this could happen to him, he would have laughed at the idea, because in all his life the only violence he ever knew was the planned violence of war, and somehow, however insane the pattern of war might seem, it still made sense and there had never been any doubts about the right-ness of it.

Murder, he reflected, was different. And the smuggling of narcotics. Back home it was just something you read about. He tried to think of Sam Campbell and how he had belittled what he called the melodramatics of his job. But there were people in the world like Cathy Palmer, who found the crooked path seemingly easier to follow in their lust for money and power. People who were never concerned about who was hurt as they clawed their way up to where they wanted to go. Somebody had to cope with them, or the world, insecure as it was, would degenerate into a jungle existence again. To Campbell it had been just a job, and he could not have foreseen his ugly, degrading death in a small, hot, steaming coastal town of Yucatan. He thought: Campbell asked you for help, and you neither gave it nor withheld it. But what do you do about it now? Cut and run, shrug it off, forget it? You can't do that. Not just because Sam Campbell's death was arranged to involve and threaten Elizabeth. You owe Campbell something, just as you owe every man something to help preserve the order and decency of everyday life to keep it above the level of the savages. You can't run from it or evade it or duck it. It's been handed to you, because there's nobody else here to finish Campbell's job but you.

His thoughts ended as he heard a sudden splash in the water behind him. Elizabeth had awakened and was swimming toward him. Her clothes lay in a neat pile on the beach beside his own.

She was a good swimmer. In a moment she was beside him, and he saw that her eyes were clear and warm and happy. Her long dark hair lay wetly along her small head. He could see through the clear turquoise water to the wavering shape of her body and then she reached forward and laughed and held his face in her hands and kissed him and they both sank beneath the surface, holding each other as their mouths met; and when their heads came up into the

111

air again they were laughing, regarding each other with eyes that understood and needed no words.

"Good morning," she said. "Some good pixie left us coffee and canned bacon and bread and canned chicken. The coffee is boiling."

"We had a visitor," he told her, and as her eyes darkened he quickly told her of Salvador Ynunez. "So we stay here," he finished, "until Peli Menendez tells us the coast is clear."

"I'm glad," she said.

"To stay here?"

"I'd like to stay here forever."

He laughed. "Me, too."

"But we can't, can we?"

"I'm afraid not."

"And we've got to talk about it," she said.

"Must we talk?"

"Not right now," she said.

They swam side by side toward the shore and the little shack.

"You should have called me when you woke up," Elizabeth said.

"I enjoyed watching you. I have a lewd mind."

They stood up in the shallow water and she suddenly turned, moving close to him. "Mitch, let's not talk about anything serious just yet. Let's just talk about you and me."

"That's serious," he said.

"Yes, it is, isn't it?"

"I love you," he said.

Her hands touched his face, his shoulders. "Mitch?"

"Yes."

"You'll never know. I'll never be able to show you or tell you how much I love you, too." Her arms were tight around him. "But I'm going to try."

112

THIRTEEN

there were eight cigarettes left in the pack in Fleming's shirt. Much later they sat on the beach, smoking and looking at the sea from under the shade of a gnarled sea grape beside the shack. Breakfast was over. Fleming had put out the little charcoal fire and had taken care to conserve the fuel that was left in the bin beside the fireplace. In the burlap bag left by the fisherman he had found eggs and tortillas, and they had eaten the meal in the simple tin utensils found on the shelves above the cooking place. Now their cigarettes tasted sharp and sweet against the taste of food lingering on their palates.

Fleming was thinking of Elizabeth and her deep, almost frantic passion of only an hour ago. He watched some vultures high in the sky and the sight of them suddenly spoiled something for him and he stopped smiling to himself.

Elizabeth said, "What is it, Mitch?"

"Nothing."

"You looked so contented a moment ago. The male in surfeit, of food and woman. Then suddenly you looked so Stern."

"It wasn't anything." The vultures were gone, and he reached for her. "As for surfeit, I can never have enough of you, Liza."

"That's only an illusion. When we're old and gray—" She paused and looked at him and her eyes grew sober, too. "I see what you mean. Out of the mouths of fools. This is an illusion, isn't it? I mean, we may never grow old and gray."

"Yes, we will."

"But perhaps not together."

"It's got to be that way," he said.

"Mitch, am I such a coward to feel frightened now?" , "You're the bravest person I know," he said earnestly.

113

"I wasn't too brave last night. Did I give you a terrible time, darling?"

"It made me want to kill someone," he said.

"No, don't feel that way."

"You suffered so much," he said. "And it wasn't fair."

She laughed, but it ended on an odd note. "I'm paying for the sins of a wasted youth. You know I'm a spoiled brat, don't you?"

"Maybe you were, once. Not now."

"I hope you're right."

"I know I am," he said.

"Pooh. You don't know anything about me. Not really. For all we know about each other, we're really strangers."

He laughed.

"What's so funny?" she asked.

"I think we know each other very well," he said.

She said, "Haven't you ever wondered about it? How we met on that crooked little street in Port of Spain and I let you pick me up and we ate dinner at that Lion place—"

"King Tiger's. I remember."

"And we knew nothing about each other. Absolutely nothing."

"I knew I loved you."

"So soon?"

"Yes."

"Then and there?"

"Yes."

"I knew it, too. About you. I think we're both remarkable."

"Undoubtedly."

"But for all you knew, I could have been anything. And yet you asked me to marry you."

"You didn't know anything about me, either," Fleming pointed out. "And yet you didn't hesitate to say yes."

"I was shameless. I was mad about you."

"And now?"

She was sober. "Now I can't live without you, Mitch."

"You gave me a bad time," he said.

"Darling."

"I thought I'd never find you again."

She was silent, reaching into the sand and lifting a handful and letting it run through her fingers. The morning

114

breeze still persisted, rustling in the palms behind them. There was a ruffled sparkle to the surface of the sea. He looked at Elizabeth's small face and started to say something and then waited for her to begin. He thought, with a moment of indecision, that he ought to stop her because she was going to tell him about the thing they had both been avoiding, and then he knew that now was as good a time as any and it was best to get it over with.

She spoke quietly. "Mitch, for the first time in my life I'm not confused. Can you understand that? For the first time ever, I understand why I feel about things the way I do. I suppose it's because I'm in love for the first time, and more particularly, because I'm in love with you. I just keep thanking my lucky stars that you married me."

"I'm glad," he said simply.

She looked at the humble little shack. "Do you know, that's the first place I've ever felt like calling home? All I can remember, since my parents died, were the discreet boarding schools for girls that Johnny sent me to, and the cutthroat competition among us for the most desirable dates and the most expensive clothes. It was a vicious life and it could easily have become depraved and I sometimes wonder why more girls aren't ruined by it." She suddenly laughed. "I don't mean the way I sound. It's just that I was lonely all the time."

"Didn't Johnny keep the family home?"

"Johnny was so much older. I was just a kid in pigtails to him. He loves me and always tried to help, but he didn't have enough of my father in him. Dad knew how to take the world by the tail and twist it. He started out as a longshoreman on the Brooklyn waterfront and worked his way up with his brains and sometimes his fists and became the Wright Steamship Company, and he never deliberately hurt anybody or did a dishonest thing in all his life. But Johnny didn't turn out like him."

She looked at Fleming directly. "Johnny sold the big house and got married a year later. I think you know about his wife. I used to hate her, but now I'm just sorry for her. I was enthusiastic about Cathy. I thought Cathy was marvelous, when she first arrived on the scene. And I aided and abetted Johnny's affair with her. Does that shock you?"

115

"No. Only that you were precocious."

"Johnny set up an apartment for Cathy in Manhattan and that was the place I called home—not his house with his wife in Westchester. Cathy seemed so—so complete, in herself. She taught me so much. And they were good things, at first. I admired her, and maybe I even had a schoolgirl crush on her until I knew better. It seemed to me that Cathy was everything I wanted to be—self-assured, poised, knowing exactly what she wanted and how she was going to get it. You have no idea what that apartment meant to me, when I'd be at school, just knowing it was there and I was welcome in it and that Cathy was my friend."

"That was another illusion, wasn't it?" Fleming asked.

"Yes."

"When did it end?"

"When Johnny learned what she was doing with the company. It shocked and frightened me, when they quarreled about it. And yet I should have been proud of Johnny. He had Dad's honesty, if nothing else. He wouldn't permit her to do anything illegal, once he knew about it. Even though Cathy offered him the escape he needed from West-Chester, he gave her up rather than let her go on with it."

"Did he really stop loving her?"

"I think he made himself do it. And I was against him. I sided with Cathy. I didn't want to lose her, you see, and so it was easy for her to do what she wanted with me. I can look at it objectively now. I've had a lot of time to think about it. I know what it's all about now, but I couldn't see what she was doing to me, or why, at the time. I didn't know she was using me to control Johnny." Her mouth trembled. "I want to tell you how it was, Mitch. I want to tell you about Barney Eden."

She kept running sand through her fingers, smoothing it under her palm restlessly, until he caught her hand and held it in his; and as if he gave her strength, she went on.

"It was the night Johnny found out about Cathy's drug racket and about me. About what Cathy had taught me and made me need. I'm not sure what happened. I wasn't in any condition to know, and when I think of what Johnny must have seen that night, it seems so frightful that it's

116

difficult to live with. How it must have hurt him, I mean. And why he didn't kill her, then and there."

She drew a deep breath. "But Johnny didn't have the courage. Not even when that agent, Barney Eden, told him about Cathy. I remember him, you see. Somehow I remember his talking to Johnny. He was a small man, and he wore glasses, and he seemed nice, something like an accountant. There was a terrible quarrel in Cathy's apartment. I don't know why Barney Eden was there, and I thought afterward that maybe he wanted money. A bribe. Is that impossible?" she asked.

"Men will do anything sometimes," Fleming said.

"But he was a federal agent."

Fleming said, "Campbell thought he was honest. Let's say Eden was. Let's say he came there to get Johnny on his side, against Cathy, to get Johnny to give him information he needed for his case and to offer Johnny exoneration. What then?"

"I don't remember," Elizabeth whispered.

"Nothing at all?"

"Only little bits of it. Driving home, across the bridge. Across Long Island. I was in the back seat. Johnny was furious because of the condition I was in. I was afraid of him for the first time in my life. And ashamed. It was as if I'd never seen myself before or realized how Cathy had twisted me. It hurt Johnny. It must have all but killed him. And he drove like a crazy man."

"Were just the two of you in the car?"

"Cathy was with us. She was still pleading with Johnny not to do anything about the narcotics racket she'd set up. She was still insisting she loved him and did it for him. They were in the front seat, as I remember." Elizabeth paused. "When I woke up, it was because we had stopped suddenly. I don't know how she arranged it, but Barney Eden was dead on the road, and Johnny was unconscious. Cathy took complete charge. She told me Johnny had killed Eden with the car and she said she would take care of it and cover up for us, but I wasn't ever to say a word or she'd arrange to have Johnny prosecuted for murder."

"What did Johnny say about it when he came to?"

"He didn't remember what happened."

117

"He didn't know if he'd been driving when Eden was killed?"

"He didn't remember."

Fleming frowned at the bright sea. Elizabeth's fingers held his tightly, and they felt cold in his grip.

"How did Eden get there on the highway, anyway?"

"He was following us in his car. Apparently he cut ahead of us and stopped and made our car stop, too, and then he got out and started walking toward our car and Johnny stepped on the gas and ran him over. That's what Cathy said happened."

"But she was lying?"

"I don't know. And Johnny doesn't know, either."

"Why was he unconscious?"

"He thinks he fainted, afterward, knowing Eden was dead."

"Could Cathy have struck him, instead?"

"There was a mild concussion. He thought he had hit his head when he fell on the road."

"So she could have hit him?"

"Yes."

"And then struck Eden with Johnny's car?"

"Yes." Elizabeth looked at him. "Mitch, it must have been that way, but I couldn't take a chance about it. All I knew was that Cathy had the power of life and death over Johnny. I felt lost, forever and ever; I thought I'd never be able to get away from her. I saw her as she really is, and I saw myself, too, the way she had made me, and I hated her and myself and I ran away."

"On the cruise ship," Fleming said. "And she followed you to Curajao?"

"She was on the boat when I went back for my luggage. She told me not to go back to you, when I said I'd married you. At first she didn't believe any of it. Then she said if I didn't obey her she would arrange for evidence to get into police hands that would convict Johnny of Eden's murder. So I stayed on the boat. I didn't know what else to do." She drew a deep breath. "But I wouldn't let Cathy give me anything. It wasn't easy. I felt awful. I wanted drugs desperately. But I wouldn't take any. I haven't taken any since that night on the parkway. I've been trying to—to get better."

118

She took her hand from his and stood up suddenly, and then she started to walk away. Fleming caught up with her in three quick strides. His voice was sharp. "Where are you going? What's the matter?"

"Nothing. I can't talk about it anymore, but there's still so much more you have to know." "Tell me when you feel like it."

They walked down to the water's edge and she said, "How long do you really think we can stay here?"

"Only until Peli Menendez gets more information for us. Or I could go back to town and get in touch with Johnny and my crew, somehow."

"Is there any hurry?" she asked. "Aren't we safe here, for a time? I wish we could take up here where we left off—I mean, where we were in your friend's house in Willemstad."

"Why not?"

"Could we just forget everything, like that?"

"No," he said. "But we can try. I think there's plenty of time, Liza."

She stood watching her feet as she drew lines in the sand with her toe. The sun made her dark hair glint with deep tones of red. He wondered at the strength in her, and felt grateful for it. She wore the gray dress again, but not her shoes or nylons. When he looked at her he felt as if she were a miracle made just for him. He saw her smile suddenly and said, "What is it, Liza?"

"I was thinking of the flowers in the shell this morning. Such a lovely thing to do." Her hand tightened in his. "You're a lovely guy. Or is that the wrong word? I love you and I think you are lovely, and when I'm with you in the sun like this I'm ashamed for ever having been afraid of anything."

"I think," he told her, "that if we ever get out of this, I'm going to take you home with me to Stone Harbor."

"Nothing would be better," she said. Then her eyes sobered. "But do you honestly think we can get out, Mitch?"

He looked at the ocean and saw, beyond the curling breakers on the sandbar that protected their cove, the sudden sharp slash of a shark's dorsal fin against the blue water.

"I don't know," he said.

119

FOURTEEN

the indian fisherman did not return until the evening of the second day. In that time, Fleming did not question where the hours went. He felt he could trust Peli's judgment, and he was content with what each hour brought, in the slow discovery of himself and Elizabeth. They ate and swam and wandered on the beach and hunted shells. On the afternoon of the first day Fleming had mended the old fishing nets and waded out on the sandbar and cast the nets as he had seen the Indians do, with Elizabeth sitting on the beach behind him, hooting derisively. There was something primitive and idyllic about their existence, and by the first evening, when he proudly exhibited his catch and fried the fish in the skillet over the charcoal fire, he felt as if the dark threat that hovered just over the horizon was too remote to interfere with them. He felt a boyish pride in his success with the nets, and Elizabeth added to it as she licked her fingers.

"My hero." She grinned.

"It's a question of patience only," he told her. "Tomorrow we'll hunt for coconuts and wild bananas."

"I'll bet we could live like this forever. Like Robinson Crusoe."

"Would you like that?" he asked.

Her eyes met his. "Would you be bored with me?"

"Not ever."

"Like this, I mean."

"I'll show you," he said, and he reached for her.

There was still the same desperate abandon in her. She clung to him as if she never wanted to let him go, and he knew she was afraid of the night to come, of being alone with the darkness inside her. They slept locked in each other's arms, and he was surprised when he opened his eyes and saw the morning sunlight on the water and knew that

120

the night had passed and neither had stirred.

On the second morning they climbed the ridge to the graveled highway. It seemed remote and strange, emptily stretching through the dense green of the jungle, as if they were strangers to this planet discovering the artifacts of an unknown and mysterious people. Then, as they returned to the beach, they saw the dark hull of the turtle schooner.

It was moving about a half mile offshore, under mainsail and jib, and the sails were a dark brown stain against the blue of the sky. The dull beat of its diesel engine washed along the shore.

Fleming scanned the beach hastily to make sure they had left nothing in sight and then drew Elizabeth back along the path to the spring. He took the gun with him and held it in his hand as they watched the approaching schooner through the foliage that hid them. If they send a boat in, he thought, and look in the cabin, they'll know we're here. There won't be any escape then.

"Mitch?" Elizabeth said. She whispered, although there was no need for it. "Do you think they're searching for us?"

"I'm sure of it. I think the turtle boat is tied in somehow with Cathy and her ex-Nazi pal."

"That's right," Elizabeth said.

He turned to her, "Do you know that for a fact?"

"That's what I was going to the police about, day before yesterday." She caught her breath. "It seems such a long time ago."

"A lifetime ago."

She said, "The reason Cathy came here and brought me with her is because the narcotics are gathered at Ott-mann's place and brought to the United States in the turtle schooner. They were waiting for a big shipment—over a million dollars' worth, Cathy said—and it was delayed. That's why the schooner is still here."

"I still don't see how they get it into the country. Sam Campbell couldn't figure it out."

"In the turtles," Elizabeth said.

"The turtles?"

"Not in them, exactly. Under the shells. Ottmann inserts the packets of heroin in oilskin under the turtle shells. He does it surgically, and the turtles, still alive when they

121

get to Miami or the Gulf ports, are never examined for anything like that; and if they were, nobody would know how to find the stuff unless they practically did an autopsy on them. They're simply dumped into the crawls at their destination, and later, one of the men in the gang takes the stuff out before the turtles are killed."

Fleming whistled softly between his teeth. His eyes never left the slowly approaching schooner. "It's so damned simple."

"Yes. The turtles are always marked anyway, you know. Usually they just paint a big X on each shell and belly. They make the X just slightly different from those that are carrying heroin under their shells."

The schooner was almost abreast of the sandbar now.

"And that's what you were going to tell Amayo?" he asked.

"Yes."

"What made you decide to do that?"

"You did. That night on the beach, after you got me out of jail. The way you looked when you found that hypo in my purse. I didn't know what to do. If I hated myself before, when Eden was killed, I knew then that I couldn't live with myself if I let it go on."

"But I thought you were afraid to talk because of Johnny."

Her face was pale. "I know."

"You made the choice between Johnny and me?"

"Yes," she whispered.

He could see the crewmen aboard the schooner now, on her deck. His fingers cramped and he realized he was holding the Magnum too tightly and he deliberately made himself relax his grip on it. He knew that those on the schooner had seen the cove and the fisherman's shack on the beach. The sound of the mainsail slapping as the vessel veered into a new tack came clearly over the water. The schooner went past the sandbar, made a long reach out to sea, and slowly vanished the way it had come.

"Mitch, did they see us?"

"I don't think so," Fleming said. "I think they would have sent a boat ashore if they thought we were here."

They returned to the beach in silence, both of them sobered by the reminder of what waited for them just beyond

122

the horizon. Fleming thought about the information Elizabeth had given him. It would have been important to Sam Campbell. The federal agent would have known what to do with it. But Campbell was dead and Amayo couldn't be trusted. He sat on the beach alone, aware of Elizabeth moving restlessly about the shack, and he whistled softly, pondering his next move.

The Indian came back just as the light faded from the western sky and the stars came out in silvery brilliance. Fleming saw the red sail and the thin, lonely figure in the stern and stood up as the fishing boat bobbed through the racing current of the channel into the cove. He waded out into the surf to help the boat ashore. Salvador Ynunez looked no different than he had two days before. He had another burlap bag of provisions with him, and he put it down gravely on the beach and watched Elizabeth approach.

"Senora." He smiled. "Senor Fleming. Don Peli Mene"n-dez wishes to apologize for the length of time that has elapsed since my last visit."

"Has he word for me?" Fleming asked.

Ynunez nodded. "The news is not good. The police are searching desperately for you, because of the importance of the American detective who was killed in your room."

"Do they think I did it?"

"Such is the talk in the town."

"And it includes my wife?"

"It is mostly about your wife, sefior."

"And the turtle fishermen?"

"They search every alley for you."

Fleming said, "What does Peli suggest I do?"

"You must stay here. I do not know for how long."

"I would like to get back to my boat," Fleming said. "Is it still in the harbor?"

"A policeman is aboard all day and night."

Elizabeth said, "My brother—John Wright—is he still in town?"

"Yes, sefiora. At the hotel for tourists. I have seen him myself. He drinks heavily." The old man sat down on the sand and from his shirt pocket took out a pack of Mexican cigarettes and gave them to Fleming. Fleming took them

123

and said, "I would like to pay you for all this trouble you are going to, friend. If you will not be insulted."

"I will not be insulted. It is understood that you expect to pay. Americans try to buy everything," the old man said. "But you cannot buy my friendship for Don Peli Men£ndez."

"I understand. I regret mentioning the money. Will you eat with us, old friend?" Fleming asked.

"It would not be wise of me to stay."

Fleming lit a cigarette and dragged the heavy smoke deep into his lungs. The sea was empty, purpling rapidly. All that could be seen of the sandbar was the white lines of phosphorescent breakers on the shoals. He came to a decision and turned back to the old man.

"I am leaving here tonight. I wish you to tell Don Peli that I am leaving. Perhaps we could go back with you."

The Mexican shook his head. "I am watched. It would not be wise."

"But I must get back to my boat."

"The police are guarding it."

"Peli can manage to remove them. My crew is loyal. Have them come for us here, tonight. I do not think it is safe for us to stay here much longer. Will you tell Peli that?"

"You wish to be picked up by your schooner."

"Exactly. About midnight."

The Indian said, "It can be arranged."

"And one more thing. The other American, John Wright, must be taken with us, too."

"I understand."

When the Indian was gone, carrying Fleming's decision with him, he sat with Elizabeth on the beach for a silent hour, watching the night and hearing the endless hiss and sigh of the sea on the shore. It was as if the two days behind them had been only a dream. The time seemed compressed in his mind, swiftly fleeting, and now the hours stretched endlessly in waiting while his impatience for action grew. He wondered what chance he really had. He knew Elizabeth was watching him in troubled silence, and he did not know what to tell her. She was wanted by the police. If he took the Porpoise to Vera Cruz and the American consul there, would she be arrested, he wondered, and held for extradition?

124

And what of Johnny? They had to take Johnny with them. There was no chance of getting official help in Puerto Caballo, as long as Amayo was the law there.

"Mitch," Elizabeth said. "I know we have to leave here, but it was so nice. Like being born all over again. Fresh and clean."

"Yes."

"I keep thinking of your home. I've never seen it, but I want to. I want to go back there with you."

"We will."

She said, "You don't really believe that."

"I've got to believe it," he said. "So must you. If we don't believe we can get out of this, then we might as well swim out past that sandbar and wait for the sharks to get us."

"I've thought of that. Yesterday and today."

He was shocked. "Why?"

"Because I've got you into this- and they want to kill you, and even if you're allowed to go free, I can never get away from it. I can't run anymore, Mitch. It's as if I've been blown halfway around the world, like a-leaf in a storm, and I'm tired of it. I'm so terribly tired."

He kissed her. "You're just blue."

"Yes. I feel very sad."

"We'll get Johnny and my boat and get out of here all right."

"The wind will keep following us," she said. "How can anyone run from the wind?"

He had no answer for her. They sat watching the breakers burst on the sandbar in drops of fire against the dark night. After a while they got up and went into the shack and •cleaned and scrubbed and scoured it to leave it the way they had found it. The tension did not go out of him. The physical labor did not help. The night was hot, with no breeze off the Gulf, and the insects came down out of the jungle and the mosquitoes whined and bit and danced in carnivorous glee around them. -Fleming checked the cartridges in the Magnum and put the gun in his pocket. When they had done all they could, they walked out on the beach again and sat down to stare at the black ocean.

"You'd better try to sleep," he told Elizabeth.

125

"I can't sleep."

"It may be a long wait."

"I want to be awake with you."

The moon did not come up. A thin overcast gradually dimmed the stars, and by the time the moon was ready to rise, it was thick enough to reduce its light to only a faint glow. At midnight the sea was still empty.

Fleming began to wonder if these two days of hiding like beachcombers hadn't been a mistake. After all, what could Amayo do to them? Enough, he told himself. Not so much to you, but to Elizabeth, and that's why you're here with her. If you didn't love her you could have let matters take their course in town and finally sailed away. But you do love her and you'll never leave her. And because she's in this to get her brother out of a jam, you've got to finish the job Sam Campbell came down here to do.

He knew that in Puerto Caballo they were caught in the jaws of a vise, between the police and Cathy Palmer's crew. Both were anxious to get their hands on Elizabeth because of what she knew, and now they would be equally anxious to get hold of him, too. But the danger to himself did not trouble him. He would almost welcome an overt act on the part of Cathy or the police, just to break the tension inside him. He could count on Valere and the rest of the crew to do what they were told. The police guard on the schooner could be taken care of. Once they sailed beyond the reach of Mexican law, they could decide what to do. It was that simple. He felt relieved that he had made the decision to get away from here.

Elizabeth saw the schooner first.

It was not a definite shape against the black night, but rather a slow movement, together with the muted beat of an engine against the wall of vegetation crowding the shore. Fleming stood up and helped Elizabeth to her feet. He could see nothing on the dark water. The Porpoise was coming in without lights, and he imaged Valere at the helm, conning the schooner in close to the shoaling waters.

"They'll need a light," he said aloud.

Fleming ran back to the shack and groped inside for the oil lantern they had not used since their arrival. The first match sputtered and went out as the beat of the diesel

126

engine grew louder. With the second match the wick caught .and cast a quick yellow glow over the sparse simplicity of the fisherman's cabin. He picked up the lantern and went out on the beach with it, swinging it as a signal to the invisible vessel offshore.

The sound of the engine changed against the wash of the sea. A light winked briefly out there in the darkness.

"Do you think they've got Johnny aboard?" Elizabeth whispered.

"I hope so."

"Suppose he isn't with them?"

"Then we'll go into town to get him, somehow."

He put his arm around her while they waited for a boat to be lowered and come to the beach. He could see the schooner now, a dark smudge against the uncertainty of the black sea and the dark sky. He heard the splash of oars and saw the white shape of a boat gliding through the narrow channel past the sandbar, into the quiet little cove. Fleming started forward to meet them, then hesitated. Elizabeth's hand rested on his arm, her fingers tightening suddenly.

There were too many men in the rowboat.

Suddenly he knew something was wrong. It was a quick feeling of alarm, making him halt and draw in a deep, sharp breath. He checked Elizabeth a few feet from the water's edge. A man jumped out of the boat into waist-deep surf and another joined him in that frozen moment when he knew betrayal.

Elizabeth screamed.

The first two men were joined by two others, and in the instant that Fleming started to spin away, pulling Elizabeth with him, he heard the shout and deep curse in German and saw Hans Ottmann's figure briefly dim and white against the dark water behind him.

The schooner was not the Porpoise. It was the turtle boat.

He got his gun out as he ran across the beach, away from where the boat had landed. Elizabeth was beside him. He saw the dark shapes of the men fanning out across the shore and then a gun cracked and he raised the Magnum and suddenly spun around to face them, the revolver bucking twice in his hand as he fired. He didn't know if he hit

127

anyone or not. There was a rage in him at this treachery, at the unanswered question of how this had happened, and he wanted to stop and face them and let them know he was not afraid. But he had to keep running. He saw Elizabeth a step or two ahead and he sprinted up the slope of the beach. She stumbled and went down and he grabbed at her hand and pulled her up again. The dark wall of jungle vegetation seemed an impossible distance ahead. One of the turtle fishermen was streaking along the hard-packed sand close to the water's edge, seeking to cut them .off. Fleming snapped a shot at the man but aiming was difficult while he was running and he didn't dare stop again. The man's figure vanished against an upthrust of mangrove. He heard Ottmann shout and a bullet suddenly kicked up the sand just ahead of him. The soft beach dragged at his feet and he heard Elizabeth's labored breath and he knew they couldn't make it. Even if they got into the jungle, there was no place to go. The vegetation would only tie them up as if in a net. They had to stick to the beach.

A spotlight suddenly stabbed out from the schooner offshore. The brilliant beam probed like a finger, sweeping the beach, touching the turtle fishermen behind them. Then it flickered over the shack and swept over Fleming and Elizabeth, and returned. The light was dazzling. Fleming shouted to Elizabeth to get down and she dropped with a little groan behind the rotted trunk of a blown-down coconut palm. Fleming spun on his heel and crouched beside her.

Too late.

Their pursuers were on them, silently, their feet hissing in the sand as they ran and leaped and closed in from the dark expanse of the beach. The spotlight from the schooner suddenly went out, and the swift blackness was even more blinding than the previous brightness. Fleming rose up from behind the tree trunk, gun in hand. His anger was gone. He felt an immeasurable coldness inside him. He fired point-blank at the first man who came hurtling over the little barrier, swinging a machete, and the man twisted about in mid-air, his arms and legs pumping the hot, shallow darkness, and then he came down in a heap, his body throwing Fleming sidewise.

128

Elizabeth screamed again.

Instantly there were others—two, three, four more lithe, deadly shapes that sprang up out of the night. Fleming tried to recover his balance and stumbled over the man he had shot and slammed the gun at the nearest face that loomed before him. He shouted to Elizabeth to run, and heard the hiss of air as a machete sliced for his head. He ducked under the blade and hit a second man and then a weight crashed into his back and he was driven to his knees in the sand. He rolled over and fired upward at the man looking over him and without waiting to see the result he rolled again before attempting to regain his feet. He couldn't see Elizabeth. As he straightened something hit his gun wrist with stunning force and his hand went numb with pain and he lost the Magnum.

For the instant that he stood, panting and defenseless, in the semicircle of his attackers, he heard Elizabeth cry out from somewhere down near the water and he saw her in the dim, clouded starshine, struggling in the grip of two men who were forcing her back to the rowboat. At the same moment he recognized Ottmann among the men who surrounded him.

The big German stood bareheaded, thick legs spread on the sand, a machine pistol in his hand. The parrot flapped its wings from its perch on his meaty shoulder. The man's heavy body stood in black triumphant outline against the slightly lighter background of the sea behind him. He said something to the other men, who rested, breathing quickly, and Fleming suddenly lunged sidewise and one of the men tripped him and he stumbled, went down, and heard the quick screaming of the parrot as if in a nightmare. A weight crashed on his shoulders as he tried to get up and he felt the heavy, sodden blows that slammed into his body. A knee ground painfully into the small of his back and he grabbed at an ankle in front of him and pulled the man down and tried to get up, only to have his head forced into the sand again. Rage exploded in him and he heaved upward against the man who sought to keep him down. Someone kicked him in the side. A naked, callused foot caught the side of his face. He wondered why they didn't kill him outright. He felt a screaming impotence in him as he thought of Eliza-

129

beth, and through the chaos and pain in him he felt defeat like a cold weight. It all ends here, he thought, on a dismal, fetid little beach, and you've failed her, you've been betrayed by someone, somehow, and now it's finished and you'll join old Charley Goucher and—

He was on his hands and knees, fighting the weight of bodies trying to pin him down. There was a swirling rush of sound in his ears, the sharp keening of a whistle; but he knew it couldn't be a whistle and he fought to reach his feet again. Get up, he told himself. Get up or you die here. The whistling grew louder and he heard the sound of shouting voices and then something crashed into the back of his head and the dark, violent night exploded around him and he felt himself fall forward endlessly and he did not feel anything when he hit the sand.

Dimly he knew he was strangling with his face in the sand and he twisted his head and saw light in his eyes and heard a sharp command. Footsteps ran away from him, and others came nearer. He heard a shot, and then a whole volley of quick, rapid-fire stuttering shots, and he knew Ott-mann was firing his machine pistol, and he wondered why.

Get up, he told himself.

He couldn't get up.

A man stood before him in a khaki uniform, with the face of one of the ancient stone idols in the jungle ruins. It was Lieutenant Amayo. He took a step forward toward the cop, on his feet somehow, and tried to say something. But no sound came from him, and when he took another step the beach wasn't there, or the sea, and he walked down into a deep, dark emptiness where all sound and sight and feeling were gone.

FIFTEEN

the light bothered him. He twisted his head aside and felt strong fingers grip his jaw and cheek and deliberately

130

turn his face back toward the annoying glare. There was something professionally efficient in the touch of that hand on his face, he thought vaguely, and although his first intention was to keep his eyes stubbornly closed, he opened them and blinked into the sunlight that hit his face.

The shape of a man's head and shoulders bent over him, blotting out the direct glare of the sun, and Fleming frowned, trying to focus on the blurred outlines of the man. He was aware of dull, pulsing pains in various parts of his body and he closed his eyes again for a moment, wondering at the fact that he was alive.

"Senor Fleming, can you hear me?"

Fleming listened to the man's voice and said, "Yes, I hear you," but his own voice sounded harsh and frightening in his ears and he tried it again, repeating the words. "Look at me. Do you know me?" the man asked. Fleming looked up and saw the round, bald, coffee-colored features of Dr. Emilio Sanchez. "Yes, Doctor."

"Good. You have been unconscious for many hours. Part of it was a natural sleep that I did not wish to disturb. There is nothing seriously wrong with you. You have sustained a number of severe bruises, but no bones are broken and you will be all right. Do you understand?" "Yes."

Fleming looked beyond the doctor and became aware of his surroundings. He heard the thud and crash of surf against stone, and saw that the room he was in was a small, bare, stone-walled cell, with a white-enameled pitcher and basin of water on a table next to the cot he lay on. He turned his head one way and saw the heavy steel door with its small grilled peephole and he turned his head the other way, into the sunlight, and saw the small barred window over his head. "Yes," said Dr. Sanchez. "You are in prison. Are you hungry?" "What time is it?"

"Four o'clock. I can have some food sent in to you. You must have something to eat."

"I don't want anything to eat," Fleming said. "What am I in prison for?"

"Murder," said Dr. Sanchez. His face was bland. When

131

Fleming tried to sit up, his hand was firm against his chest, pushing him down again. "You must rest."

"Where is my wife?" Fleming asked.

"Gone. She is gone on the turtle schooner."

"Where?"

"We do not know. The federal authorities of the Mexican government are sending a cutter to find the vessel."

"Let me up," Fleming said.

"You must rest."

"Who am I supposed to have murdered?"

"The American agent Sam Campbell, who was found in your room at the Posada Menendez."

"That's nonsense."

"That is what Amayo thinks too."

"Then why is he holding me?"

"He has no choice."

"Can you tell me, please, how I got here?"

"Amayo will tell you himself. Please rest, Senor Fleming."

"I've got to get up."

Fleming swung his legs off the cot, pushing the doctor away, and then he stood up and his legs wouldn't hold him and he sat down again. He saw he was naked from the waist up and a heavy strip of court plaster ran under his right arm and across his chest, restricting his breathing. There was a humming in his ears and a pulse of pain all through him. He sank back on the hard cot and rested, aware of the heat and the cold sweat that had come out all over him from his effort to stand.

Dr. Sanchez lit a cigarette and said calmly, "I shall bring some food to you. You must eat. And you must rest. There is nothing you can do. I am sorry, friend. I understand how you must feel."

"You only think you understand."

"I have done all I can for you."

The doctor left, and for a time afterward, Fleming slept.

When he awoke the sun was gone from the barred window, although it was still daylight, and the heat had not abated. He lay still and listened to the rustling of rats in the coconut palms outside. He heard the crash of the surf and the distant crowing of a rooster and the dull, heavy thud of the blood in his ears. He sat up and put his feet

132

on the stone floor and something scuttled away out of sight in a corner of the cell, in the shadows. He did not bother to look for it. He stood up and wavered on his feet and sat down again. A moment later he tried once more, and this time he remained standing. He told himself he was better, that nothing serious had happened to him, that only by the grace of Amayo's sudden appearance on the beach was he still alive, and he ought to be thankful for it. He went to the window and looked out at the darkening sea, but there was nothing below the wall except a narrow path from the beach to the castillo, vanishing in the scrubby palms. When he turned back to the cell he noticed for the first time a tray of food on the little table beside the bunk, but he had no appetite for it and he didn't touch it.

The cell door opened and Lieutenant Amayo came in.

Amayo was alone. Fleming could read nothing in his heavy brown face. The man wore a fresh khaki shirt, but sweat made dark stains where his Sam Browne belt crossed his chest and was buckled to his gun belt and holster. Amayo left the cell door open behind him.

"I see you are feeling better."

"Yes, thanks. I want to get in touch with the American consular authorities, and I want a local lawyer, immediately."

"The consular authorities have already been notified."

"When will they be here?"

"A Mr. George Hennessey has already visited from Me"rida and gone back. He will return tomorrow to talk to you."

"Did you tell him I was being charged with murder?"

"I said you were being held for investigation in the matter."

"You son-of-a-bitch," Fleming said.

Amayo frowned. "Your attitude is uncalled for."

"You're a bribe-taking bastard."

"You know nothing about it."

"I know enough. Unless you kill me tonight, you'll be sharing this cell with me when I get a chance to talk to somebody."

"I doubt it."

"You doubt that I'll get a chance to talk?"

133

"There is no heed to feel as you do. I saved your life last night."

"Yes. I've been wondering why. I guess it's because you need a fall guy to cover up for the racket you've been running here, hand in glove with Ottmann and the Palmer woman."

Amayo took a pack of American cigarettes from his pocket and tossed them to the bunk. His face was expressionless. Fleming thought at first to refuse the cigarettes, then he shrugged and slit the pack with his fingernail. Amayo threw him some matches and he dragged the smoke deep into his lungs. "Thanks."

Amayo said, "I am your friend."

"I can't laugh," Fleming said.

"It is true. You will believe it. You think I am a petty grafting official in a dirty coastal town. It is true I have taken money from Hans Ottmann. I do not deny it."

"Fine."

"Every cent is in M6rida, in the hands of the police there."

Fleming looked at him, surprised. "Why?"

"I sent it there. We have been co-operating with Mr. Campbell in the matter of the illegal narcotics trade. We have been trying to gain evidence to convict Ottmann and Miss Palmer. The money is part of the evidence. But we were unable to learn how the drugs were shipped from here."

"Do you know now?"

"No. But I think you will tell me."

"What makes you think that I know?"

"Because they were not concerned about you at first, except as to how you might influence your wife. But for the two days you were hiding, much went on in this town. I was looking for you and I soon became aware of the fact that a desperate, thorough search was being made for you by Ott-mann's men, too. A search with the intention of killing you. If they wished to kill you, I thought, it was because of something more important than how you might influence your wife. It was because you and your wife both presented a grave danger to Ottmann's plans."

"Yes," Fleming said.

134

"Then you have learned how the narcotics are shipped from here."

"My wife learned."

"And she told you?"

"Yes."

"Why did you not come to me with what you knew? Was it because you did not trust me?"

"I still don't trust you," Fleming said.

"I wish you did. Everything would be simpler and easier."

"For you, perhaps. Not for me."

"Why are you saving your information?"

"I'll give it to the American authorities."

"And not to me?"

"I think not."

Amayo said heavily, "I have done all I could. It was a temptation to be dishonest in this matter. Ottmann was more than generous, and I am a disappointed man. My life is a series of failures. I have dreamed of being transferred back to Mexico City, to civilization, to a job where I could wear a white shirt and a necktie and be respected in my profession. I thought perhaps if I could succeed in just this one matter, I might be officially recognized, and my wife and children would be happy if I succeeded in being transferred to the capital."

"Your troubles are monumental," Fleming said. "Do you seriously believe that I killed Sam Campbell?"

"He was found in your room."

"And you got there conveniently fast, didn't you? You were meant to find my wife and me in that room with Campbell's body."

Amayo shrugged. "I received a note from the proprietor of a cantina, telling me to go to the Posada Menendez at once. I went there and you and your wife fled. It was a difficult thing to understand. It would have been better if you had waited for me to talk to you."

"You'd have thrown us in jail and buried the keys."

"You are here now, are you not?" Amayo leaned back against the edge of the heavy steel cell door. His dark eyes swung to the tray of food on the table beside the bunk. The light that came through the small window over Fleming's head was fading fast. "I know that Hector Menendez

135

helped you escape from me. I have done nothing about that. It was clever of him to let you out of his car. We chased him for more than an hour before he halted, and then when we discovered you were not with him, there was nothing we could do."

"Good for Hector."

"But you were betrayed, in the end. Do you know how that happened?"

"I hope to find out," said Fleming.

"I will tell you. One of your crew betrayed you. A seaman called Soldier Brown. He told the turtle fishermen where you were hiding, when the old man Ynunez brought word to your men to pick you up. When that was discovered, Peli came to me in desperation, afraid for your lives if the Cayman men reached you first. It was a close race. I am sorry we were not able to keep them from kidnaping your wife."

Fleming thought of this information without surprise. He should have been more wary of Soldier Brown, but it had not occurred to him, and it was too late for self-recriminations. He began to wonder if Amayo was telling the truth. The man's manner was sincere, and he felt less sure of his ground now, and then he dropped his cigarette to the stone floor and stubbed it out thoughtfully with his heel. He wondered if he should try for Amayo's gun, but he didn't think he could make it. He sat down on the edge of the crude bunk.

"I'll tell you how the narcotics are got out of here," Fleming said.

"I can promise you nothing in exchange."

"I'll tell you, anyway." He made it brief, repeating what Elizabeth had told him about the packets of heroin hidden under the shells of the giant green turtles that were kept alive on the turtle schooner and taken to various Gulf ports in the United States. Nothing changed in Amayo's face while he spoke.

"This is what my wife decided to tell you," Fleming said. "But she didn't get a chance to do it. The Palmer woman and Ottmann have a hold over her, or did have, because of something that happened with her brother. She was afraid to speak because of that. Then she decided to do so, despite the cost, and they must have guessed at her decision, and

136

also they must have known of Campbell's approaching me for help. So they killed Campbell and arranged it so that my wife would be held for the murder, and in this way they gained control over both brother and sister in using the shipping company they owned for future smuggling activities."

"Thank you," said Amayo. "You have helped me very much."

Fleming stood up. "Will you let me out of here now?"

"Where would you go?"

"I must find my wife."

"Do you think she is still alive?"

"If she isn't, then they'll pay for it."

"Revenge is a hollow achievement. It would cost you too much, Senor Fleming."

"I don't care," Fleming said. "Let me out of here."

"I must hold you for Mr. Hennessey, when he comes tomorrow." Amayo opened the door wider and stepped back across the threshold. "I will send you something fresh to eat."

"To hell with you."

"And some beer."

"Just let me out of here, that's all."

"I am sorry."

The door clanged shut, and Fleming was alone.

* * *

A large green moth fluttered over the single candle flame in the cell and finally plunged into the hypnotic illumination and incinerated itself. Fleming reached over and picked up the charred body and dropped it out of the cell window. There was a wind in the coconut palms now, and the sound of the surf against the base of the Castillo was heavy and angry. It was only nine o'clock in the evening. His food had arrived, served by one of Amayo's uniformed men, and he ate methodically, without any taste for it, simply out of a sense of duty toward keeping himself alive until he found out what happened to Elizabeth. The food made him feel better.

He heard the sound of voices arguing in Spanish down the corridor, but the words were muffled and he could not understand what was being said. From outside came the uncertain notes of a guitar. Fleming listened to the twang-

137

ing music without actually hearing it for a moment. Then he went to the little window, to look down at the little path that hugged the Castillo walls. In the darkness he could see nothing. The wind made the palmettos thrash restlessly.

"Mario?" he called softly.

The guitar faltered, but he wasn't sure if it was because of his call or whether the player was simply inept.

"Mario?"

He turned suddenly as a key grated in the cell door. The door swung open and Johnny Wright stood there, with a uniformed guard.

Fleming said, "Hello, Johnny." To the guard he said, "So Amayo is permitting me visitors?"

"Those were his instructions, senor."

"Is Amayo here now?"

"In the office. But he is not to be disturbed."

The guard shut the door and Fleming looked at Johnny Wright. Johnny said, "Hi, pal. If this was a Hollywood movie of a medieval dungeon, I might not believe it."

"It's real enough," Fleming said. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see you, killer."

"Do you know about Elizabeth?"

"I sure do, killer."

Fleming looked sharply at the fat man, but Johnny grinned, his mouth spreading tightly. He was a little drunk. Perhaps more than a little, Fleming decided. He said, "I didn't kill anybody, Johnny."

"I know you didn't. Would you like a drink?"

"No, thanks."

"Mind if I have one for myself?"

Johnny took a silver flask from his pocket and drank from it, tilting his head back. He wore a fine Panama hat and a white linen suit and woven leather-and-nylon shoes. His bow tie was dark blue and a matching handkerchief made a neat square in his breast pocket. Fleming watched him lower the flask with a contented sigh. Wright's round face was flushed and puffy in the flickering light of the candle. His eyes were red, and his mouth drooped and sagged in defeat. The sharp smell of brandy mingled with the heavy scent of rotting vegetation and beach decay that came through the small

138

cell window. Fleming turned his head and listened for the guitar he had heard a moment ago, but everything was silent out there except for the rattling of palm fronds in the wind.

Johnny Wright sank down on the bunk, his knees apart, his head sagging, his chin doubled on his chest. Fleming lit one of the cigarettes Amayo had given him and waited.

"Did she do it?" Johnny whispered.

"Do what?"

"Kill that agent—Sam Campbell."

"Do you think Elizabeth killed him?"

"That's what Cathy said."

"When did you see Cathy?"

"Last night. Just before she took off."

Fleming said, "Are you drunk, Johnny?"

"I'm trying to get plastered."

"Elizabeth never killed anybody. Neither did you."

The fat man's head came up. His eyes were pouched, with dark smudges under them, and he suddenly looked twenty years older. His voice was dull and blurred by the brandy he had been drinking.

"A lot you know about it, Mitch. You can't prove anything. Cathy's got me in the bag. And now Elizabeth. Liza tried to help me and Cathy threw a net over her head, too. And it's all my fault. I wish you hadn't stopped me when I wanted to finish myself the other day."

"Maybe you're right," Fleming said.

"You don't think much of me, do you?"

"Not a hell of a lot. I think you've been stupid and careless and yellow. You let Cathy tie you up first, and now she's got Elizabeth."

"I know. It's all my fault."

"If you're going to be maudlin," said Fleming, "you'd better get the hell out of here. I'm having my own troubles here. What made you come see me?"

"I just wanted to talk to you."

"Then talk," Fleming said. "And don't blubber."

"You won't get sore?"

"What's there to get sore about?"

"It's something I've done." Johnny Wright stood up and moved toward the table and looked at the moths dancing over the candle flame. The notes of the guitar came with

139

Sudden clarity through a lull in the wind outside. Fleming frowned. Johnny looked up and his pale eyes were suddenly bright and hard. "I've made a deal with Cathy."

Fleming let out his breath in a long sigh.

"She can have whatever she wants," Johnny said.

"So?"

"She came to me last night, like I said. She told me what had happened. Cathy said the police were holding you for Campbell's murder, but that she had got Elizabeth, because Elizabeth was about to tell the police about her million-dollar dope deal. Do you understand?"

"You're not telling me anything new."

"But you do understand how I felt about it? She said she would kill Elizabeth unless I kept my mouth shut."

"All right. So you said you wouldn't talk. Then what happens to Elizabeth?"

"They'll set her ashore in one of the Gulf ports in the States. If the police aren't tipped off."

"And you agreed?"

"I couldn't see any choice."

"Because you still love that blonde bitch?"

"I'm not in love with Cathy anymore. That was just a crazy thing. I haven't cared anything about Cathy since Barney Eden—"

He paused, and Fleming said, "Go on. I know about Eden."

"I killed him," Wright said, his voice hushed.

"No, you didn't," Fleming said. "Cathy killed him. And you don't have sense enough to realize that she slugged you and knocked you out and then reached over and pushed you out of the car from behind the wheel and then ran over Barney Eden herself."

Wright stared at him. "I wish I could believe that."

"It's simple," Fleming said.

"No, it isn't. Because there were witnesses."

"Her witnesses," Fleming said. "They have to be hers."

Wright looked up again. "I never thought of that."

"Of course not. But it could be easily proved. Instead, you just turned tail and did whatever Cathy told you to do, and you let her do anything she pleased with your sister. And because she had your sister under her thumb, you were

140

glad enough to let Cathy have her way. You were even relieved about it, weren't you? It took the need for a decision out of your hands. You told yourself you were letting Cathy get away with her crooked deals because you had to protect your sister. But the truth of it is that you just didn't have the strength or guts to stand up against her."

Johnny was alarmed. "Somebody might hear you, Mitch. Please."

"I'm right, though?"

"Yes. Yes, I guess so."

"There's no guessing about it," Fleming said. "And you sold out to Cathy again last night."

"Would you want Elizabeth killed?" Johnny asked angrily. "You would have done the same thing, in my place."

Fleming was silent. The guitar outside struck a sudden sour note. The wind came through the cell window and smelled of the sea and rain. He listened for the guitar again, but it was silent. Johnny Wright walked to the cell door and back again. He took out his flask and started to take another drink, his head tilted back and his throat working, and Fleming suddenly slapped the flask out of his hand. It hit the stone wall with a loud clatter and the brandy spilled in a dark puddle just beyond the light of the candle. Johnny Wright looked at him with his hand still raised to his mouth. The fumes of the brandy filled the cell.

Johnny's mouth was open. "You play pretty rough."

"We're in a rough game," Fleming said harshly. "Now snap out of it and tell me exactly the deal Cathy sold you."

"It's like I said. They'll put Liza ashore in Tampa or Mobile or New Orleans, if they aren't interfered with. Otherwise they'll kill her. The thing about it is that this is Cathy's big killing, her million-dollar deal, and she says if it's successful she'll go away and never bother me again. This is the deal she's been building up for all these years. I tell you, Mitch, she's a little crazy. Nothing is going to stop her. I don't dare tell the local cops the truth about it, or Cathy will kill Liza."

Fleming's voice was heavy. "It's too late for that, Johnny." -"What? What do you mean?"

"The cops know all about the narcotics racket. They know

141

the heroin shipment is on the turtle schooner. A government cutter is hunting for them right now."

Johnny Wright jumped to his feet. His face sagged like melting suet. His eyes were haunted. "Who told them?"

"I did. Just an hour ago."

"Knowing they had Liza with them?"

"Yes, knowing that," Fleming said.

Johnny Wright made an animal sound of terror in his throat. His eyes were wild. Fleming stood braced, not knowing what the man was likely to do, and then Johnny suddenly sat down and covered his face with his hands. Fleming stood in front of him. His voice was harsh.

"Did Cathy tell you where the turtle boat was going from here?"

Johnny's voice was muffled. "She didn't have to. I know."

"Where?"

"I won't tell you."

Fleming's voice shook. "Are they heading directly for the States?"

"No."

"Then they're going to hide out for a few days?"

Johnny nodded. "Until they're sure it's safe. I'm supposed to tell them."

"How will you get to them? Will you need a boat?"

"A boat?" Johnny Wright looked up and said loudly, "You cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch, do you want them to kill Liza?"

"They'll kill her anyway," Fleming said. "Don't you know that?"

"But Cathy promised—"

"What good is her promise?" Fleming asked.

"I have to believe her. I've got to."

Fleming said, "Johnny, stand up."

"What for?"

"Stand up!"

"I think I'd better go."

"I don't like to hit a man who's sitting down," said Fleming. "You'd better get on your feet. And don't call for the guard. I won't let you out of here until you tell me where that boat is hiding."

Johnny's breath made a raw and rasping sound in the

142

sudden stillness. Moths fluttered about the candle, and the wind came through the cell window and made the flames leap sidewise, casting their shadows in huge and distorted shapes on the stone walls. Johnny looked up and Fleming saw the white crescents under the other man's eyes.

"Tell me," Fleming said.

"No."

Fleming dragged the man to his feet and hit him open-handed across his wet, slack mouth. Johnny yelled in sudden pain and terror and crashed against the table and the candle slid to the floor and abruptly went out. The darkness was absolute. Fleming moved forward and stumbled over the man's legs and Johnny screamed again, calling for the guard. His cry was answered by another shout that came echoing down the outer corridor through the slots in the steel door. Fleming bent down and caught at the other man's coat and pulled him up again. And then, with his fist cocked, he felt the anger drain out of him and a sense of helpless despair made him drop his arms to his sides and let Johnny Wright go.

Footsteps came thudding down the corridor of the Castillo toward his cell door.

SIXTEEN

someone shouted and Fleming moved toward the cell door, leaving Johnny at the foot of the bunk. He stood on tiptoe, trying to look out through the small rectangular opening in the steel panel, but it was set too high above his head and he could see nothing. The footseps came up to the door and he heard a hurried whispering and then someone called to him, the voice muffled behind the thickness of metal.

"Captain?"

It was Valere, his Haitian seaman.

Fleming shouted, "In here. Hurry!"

143

The pattern of Mario's guitar outside and the thudding and shouting he had heard suddenly became clear to him. He stepped back from the cell door as keys jangled. He heard the sound of more than one man breathing outside in the corridor. Turning, he looked at Johnny Wright. Johnny's mouth was agape. Lights flickered through the barred window and he heard a muttered Creole curse and then the door swung open and Valere came in, a flashlight in one hand, a marlin spike in the other. The black man looked enormous in the doorway. Behind him was the fat figure of Peli Mendndez. It did not seem strange for the old man to have a gun in his hand.

"Are you well, Captain?" asked Valere.

"Yes. Let's get out of here," said Fleming.

"What about him?" Peli Mendndez asked'. The old man seemed to be enjoying himself. He jerked a thumb toward Johnny.

"We'll take him with us."

Johnny said, "No, sir! Not me!"

"Shut up," Fleming said. "Start moving."

Johnny hesitated, then came forward as Fleming started for him. In a moment they were all out in the corridor, trotting toward the front part of the castillo, where Amayo had his office. Fleming asked no questions. Oil lanterns hanging from chains in the vaulted ceilings lit their way. Their shadows fled angularly before them. From one of the cells they passed a man shouted something bawdy, cheering them on. Fleming felt the weakness in his legs, the uncertainty of his pace. He stayed behind Johnny Wright. They passed a guard unconscious on the stone floor, and Fleming paused to relieve the man of his heavy Army Colt. He felt better with the gun in his hand.

Then he halted suddenly outside the door to Amayo's office.

He looked inside and saw Amayo crawling across the floor toward his desk. There was a gun on the desk. A thin trickle of blood ran down the policeman's scalp and made a dark, wriggling line across his flat cheekbones. As Fleming paused, Amayo lifted his head and stared at him. There was nothing in the cop's eyes. Then Fleming thought Amayo

144

grinned, but he couldn't be sure. He turned and ran after the others.

Hector Men6ndez waited outside, sitting in^his Ford with the motor running. Little Mario was crowded beside him. Peli came to a halt, his vast bulk heaving as he struggled for breath.

"I am truly an old man," Peli gasped.

"Will you get in, Father?" Hector said.

"No, no. I have nothing to fear. I shall go back and help my old friend Lieutenant Amayo."

Fleming said, "Come with us."

"No, no. I have nothing to fear. I shall apologize to Amayo. You had better hurry."

They shook hands in the shadows of the banyan tree where the Ford was parked. A clamoring came from the grim bulk of the castiHo behind them. Fleming couldn't see the expression on the old man's face, but he felt the quick, hard grip of his fingers.

"Perhaps you will come back to us someday," said Peli.

"Perhaps."

"Now go with God."

"Thank you," said Fleming. "Thank you for everything."

The old man turned and walked back up the ramp into the castiJIo.

Hector said, "He will talk Amayo into looking the other way. It is part of the plan. Do not be concerned about him. Get in the car."

Fleming said, "Get in, Johnny."

"Where are we going?"

"Get in!"

Johnny climbed into the car and Valere followed and Fleming took a seat beside Hector up front. The car started with a lurch and turned in a tight circle with screaming tires. Fleming sat back and drew a deep, uncertain breath. He put the heavy Colt on his lap and kept his hand on it. The sudden turn in his fortune had taken him by surprise. He did not know how to thank these men who had planned his escape, and then he thought they did not expect thanks and would not know what to say in return if he tried to tell them how he felt.

The car raced through the silent town, down the nar-

145

row, twisted streets to the waterfront. There was no pursuit.

A boat was waiting for them at the end of the long pier from Peli Menendez' warehouse. The two Martinique seamen had their oars ready. Here at the waterfront the wind seemed stronger, and it made a low keening sound against the eaves of the corrugated tin roof on the warehouse. A sign rattled and banged, and there was a quick chop to the harbor water. Riding lights from a large vessel shone steadily against the dark horizon.

"What ship is that?"

"It is the government cutter," said H6ctor.

"I thought they were looking for the turtle schooner."

Hector shrugged. "They are in no hurry, I suppose."

At the head of the ladder, with the dinghy waiting below, Johnny balked. His voice was high and frightened against the sound of the wind. "I'm not going with you. What do you want me along for? I don't have any part in this."

"Get in the boat," Fleming said.

Valere was already down the ladder, waiting. From the direction of the sleeping town came the first sounds of alarm, the high keening of a siren. Without warning, Johnny started to run from the dock. Fleming caught up with him and swung him around and hit him hard. Johnny slammed against the tin side of the warehouse. He slid down to a seated position and then slumped over, out cold. Fleming dragged him back to the ladder and lowered his limp, clumsy body into the waiting boat.

Hector's thin face was sober as they shook hands.

"I wish you luck, Captain. Where will you be going?"

Fleming gestured toward Johnny's limp body. "He will tell us."

"Does he know?"

"He says he does."

"You will be careful?"

Fleming said, "I'll try."

The sirens sounded louder.

"Good-by, then," Hector said.

Fleming looked back toward the Ford parked at the other end of the pier. He thought he saw Mario's little brown face watching them, and he took some money from, his

146

wallet and said, "For your son. Let him buy a new guitar. He did his signaling very well."

Hector grinned. "It is not necessary."

"But it is something I want him to have."

"He will be most happy. Go with God."

Fleming climbed down the ladder into the crowded boat. The two Martinique men were grinning. Johnny Wright was a collapsed heap on the floorboards between the thwarts. The little boat lifted and fell against the push of the wind and the uncertain pitch of the water. Valere was in the stern. Ahead, moored near the point of land that sheltered the harbor, was the light, graceful hull of the Porpoise, her riding lights winking across the wind-swept darkness.

"Pull away," Fleming said.

* * *

The wind came quartering out of the northeast and blew in uncertain gusts over the wide reaches of the Gulf of Mexico. Fleming took the wheel as Valere and the Martinique seamen hoisted sail. He did not start the diesel, seeing no point in arousing interest on the Mexican cutter moored nearby. He listened to the squeal of block and tackle and the long rasp of the mainsail raising and then the quick surge as the canvas filled and the Porpoise trembled with sudden vitality. The jib slapped and filled with a sharp, taut snap. Valere raised the anchor as the schooner moved forward and slackened the line. His soft hail came back astern where Fleming stood at the helm. Fleming looked at the dark sky, lacking stars and moon. There was no way of knowing how seriously the weather was making up. They were short-handed without Soldier Brown and Charley Goucher, but unless the wind reached dangerous strength, they would be all right. He looked up at the graceful arc of the mainsail, dimly white against the black night, and felt the deck alive under his feet, the wheel taut in his hands. It was as if the Porpoise herself leaped through the water with joy in her freedom. When he looked back, only a few dim lights marked the town of Puerto Caballo, and in a few moments they were washed out astern and they were alone on the windy emptiness of the sea.

He missed Charley Goucher, the slap of his feet on deck, the sound of his booming voice. Charley was a part of the

147

ship, a part of the dark sea around them, a voice in the wind that cried for home.

Valere came back across the slanting deck. His black torso was darker than the whipping wind alongside the schooner. His teeth gleamed.

"Our passenger, sir. I put him in your cabin, and he is sick in the stomach. What will you do with him?"

"I'll take care of him."

"Where do we go, Cap'n?"

"Out of Mexican territorial waters, first," Fleming said. "I want to thank you, Valere. It was important to get out of that jail."

"You have had much trouble over your little wife, non?"

Fleming nodded. "And there will be more."

"There is one thing you must let me do," the Haitian said. "You must let me have Soldier Brown for myself. He is the one who betrayed us. I want to have him in my hands first."

"We'll find him. Hold our course as it is."

He gave Valere the wheel and went below. In his cabin he saw the lamp aslant in its gimbals and he glanced quickly at the barometer. It read 29.10 and dropping slowly. He was not worried. Johnny Wright was sprawled in the starboard bunk, one leg dangling and swinging to the movement of the vessel. His face looked green with seasickness. His eyes regarded Fleming from out of the depths of his torment.

"Mitch, I was never much of a sailor. I feel awful."

"That's too bad," Fleming said. He wanted to tell Johnny that he was in Charley Goucher's bunk and he wanted to tell all about Charley and his family and the home back in Stone Harbor that he would never see again. He said, "I'm sorry I had to hit you. It would have been better all around if you'd come with us willingly."

"Look, I can't help being what I am," Johnny said. "I'm a coward. I can't help it. I'm so scared I'm sick with it. But it's not so much for myself. It's because of Liza. You don't know Cathy Palmer the way I do. Cathy will kill her."

"Not if we have any luck."

"You can't stop her."

"I've got to try," Fleming said. "You're going to tell me where the turtle schooner is hiding."

148

Johnny licked his lips. "If I do, and things go wrong, they'll kill Liza."

"I told you before, they'll kill her anyway."

"But suppose I don't tell you?"

"You will," Fleming said.

He stretched out on the bunk and was grateful for Johnny's abrupt silence. He thought of Charley Goucher and wondered how he would ever lose the sense of pain and emptiness he felt.

* * *

There was no clearly defined dawn. There was just a grayness that spread out from the east over an angrily running sea. The wind was stronger than it had been the night before, blowing steadily under a thick overcast that came down so low over the horizon that there was no definition between the two elements of air and water. The schooner plunged on under reefed mainsail and jib. Now and then her spoon bow slammed heavily into a wave and great gusts of cold blue water sprayed her wet decks.

Fleming was at the wheel. He had left Johnny Wright sleeping restlessly in the bunk below, talking to himself as he dozed. The sharp, steady pressure of the wind against him made Fleming feel good. His eyes touched the running rigging, the curve of the mainsail, and he felt the vibration of the schooner as if she were a living thing, responsive to his touch, alive as a woman is alive.

In all the heaving wastes of the surrounding sea, there was no sign of land or another vessel or any other living thing.

When Jean, one of the Martinique men, relieved him, Fleming went below. Valere was in the galley, making breakfast. Fleming took a tray from him and loaded it with double the food he wanted and went down the narrow passageway balancing the tray in both hands.

Johnny Wright sat up when he came in.

Fleming sat on the edge of his bunk and drank some of the coffee from one of the thick mugs and then ate with surprising appetite, polishing off the ham and bacon and eggs on one of the plates.

"Feel hungry yet?" he asked Johnny.

"No, thanks."

149

"You might as well eat. We're going to be at sea for a long time."

"For how long?"

"Until you tell us where to go, Johnny."

Wright wet his lips. He looked ill and haggard from his sleepless night and his seasickness, but Fleming did not feel sorry for him. "I've been thinking about that," Johnny said.

"So?"

"I took your gun while you were on deck."

Fleming lifted the coffee mug halfway to his lips and then put it down carefully. "You did?"

"I've taken just about enough from you," Johnny said.

"You're a stupid fool."

"I don't want you to hit me again."

"I ought to heave you overHoard," Fleming said.

"But you can't now, because I've got your gun."

"Where is it?"

"Here."

The gun was on the bunk, behind Johnny's fat, uncomfortable body. Johnny hadn't washed or shaved. He looked like hell, Fleming thought. He looked like a man who couldn't live with himself much longer. Fleming had showered in salt water and found fresh clothes for himself in his locker long before dawn, when he took his turn at the wheel. He looked at the big gun Johnny took from behind him.

"Put it away," he said.

"So you can beat me up again?"

Fleming got to his feet. "Put it away, Johnny. I've had about enough of you, too."

"Stay where you are."

"You said you were thinking things over."

"Yes. And I've decided I must take Cathy's word for what she plans to do. There isn't any other way. She's waiting for me to tell her when it's safe to make the run to the States, because of all the trouble you raised back in Puerto Caballo. She's angry and she's dangerous. You don't know her, Mitch. I can't take a chance that she'll hurt Liza."

A sea crashed on the deck overhead and for a moment the cabin was filled with the gurgling of water that ran free from the scuppers. Fleming saw there was no chance

150

of arguing with Johnny. Johnny's mind was locked up tight in a frozen wasteland of fear. He looked at the gun in the other's hand and moved around the chart table in the center of the cabin. "Wait, Mitch."

"Give me the gun."

"Mitch?"

Fleming suddenly lunged and knocked the gun aside, and as Johnny yelled in fright, Fleming hit him, coldly and efficiently, without giving the other man a chance to speak. Blood ran from Johnny's nose, and Fleming's knuckles cracked on his teeth and Johnny fell sidewise out of the bunk and tried to rise from all fours and crawl out of the cabin. If the crew heard any sounds, they did not come to investigate. Fleming stood in front of the crawling man and then caught a handful of Johnny's sparse hair and yanked the man's head back painfully.

"Where is the schooner?" he asked.

«I_I _Won't tell."

"I'll beat you until I kill you," Fleming said.

"No. Please."

"Where is it?"

"Let me go. You'll get in trouble for this. You've kidnaped me, you know. That's a crime. You—"

Fleming laughed and hit him again and Johnny fell backward and tried to grab up the Colt that had slid across the tilted cabin floor to the cabinets under the bunk. Fleming kicked it away and Johnny suddenly stopped struggling and sat with his back against the bunk, rocking back and forth like a woman with a terrible grief, his face covered with his hands. Fleming stood wide-legged in front of him and waited, breathing hard.

"Well?"

"Isla Dolorosa," said Johnny, between his hands.

"Where?"

"Isla Dolorosa. On the other side of the peninsula."

"How long will they wait there for you to get word to them?"

"Three days."

"How were you to do it?"

151

"Ottmann had a launch. They left it for me at the island. One of their men was to take me."

Fleming said, "That leaves us less than thirty-six hours to get there. Are you lying to me, Johnny?"

"No, no."

"You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble by acting sensibly about this in the first place."

"I still think I'm right. I still think you ought to let Cathy have her way. She won't hurt Liza if she isn't interfered with."

"You're a fool."

"I don't care."

"If you're lying to me, I'll kill you," said Fleming.

Johnny Wright took his hands from his face and looked up at Fleming's tall figure before him.

"I believe you really would."

"You're damn right. But if you're telling the truth, I'm sorry I had to beat it out of you."

"I'll bet."

"It wasn't fun for me, either," Fleming said.

He turned away from the man and went back up on deck.

SEVENTEEN

the isla dolorosa looked drowned in the gray afternoon of the next day. At best the place was only a collection of fishing cabins, with a small beach and native boats working out of it, remote from roads or telegraphs or electric power. It lay in the submarginal coast made up of dense mangrove swamp, with here and there a clump of palmettos, crisscrossed with a maze of sluggish, malarial rivers and lagoons. A coast of fevers and disease, lost and unpopulated and unpopular with anyone wise enough to steer clear of it. Rain had followed them, drumming on the sea, as the Porpoise worked on a long reach upwind to clear the jutting end of the Yucatan Peninsula and turned south. The rain

152

beat with sullen force on the drowned land, lashing the palms and mangroves and the surf, making the vista one of steaming, wind-lashed, drowned desolation. To breathe the sodden air was like breathing water.

Twice during the run down here they had sighted the sleek hull of the Mexican government cutter, but the other vessel had neither challenged them nor given chase. In all the hours, too, Johnny Wright had not left the main cabin below decks. For a time the wind had seemed ready to abate, but now the violence of the storm was on the increase, and Fleming felt uneasy as he studied the rain-swept coast and noted the jagged lines of combers that marked the coral reefs and sunken cays. He was not too familiar with these waters. There were no regular shipping lanes along this southern coast of Yucatan, and since the last sighting of the cutter on the horizon at dawn, they had seen no other vessel except one storm-racked Indian fishing boat that showed a ragged tatter of sail one moment and was gone the next.

Valere, at the wheel, brought the schooner into the wind and let the diesel auxiliary idle at a signal from Fleming. He scanned the shore half a mile away. There was no sign of the turtle boat.

The schooner plunged, lifted, and fell as she took the seas bow on. There were only a dozen or so dilapidated Indian shacks huddled together. A wide channel ran between the island and the actual mainland, but Fleming did not think it was navigable and he doubted that the vessel he sought would be hidden back there in the waterlogged coastline. But he did not know that for certain, and he kept staring at the little village, deciding what to do. The turtle boat was not here and neither was Elizabeth, and maybe Johnny had lied to him or maybe Cathy Palmer had lied to Johnny. In any event, he was here and there was nothing to be seen.

Valere stood beside him, his round black head and tightly curled hair glistening with the rain, his muscular body bent forward slightly as if to help him study the shore better.

"I'm going to land there," Fleming said.

"You do not know these people, Captain."

"There is no harm in them."

153

"They could be savages. This is a wild land, Captain." Fleming smiled. "A lost land."

"It is not civilized."

"It's civilized enough," Fleming said.

He went below. Johnny sat on his bunk, holding a bottle in both hands. The bottle was almost empty. He must have broken into the liquor cabinet to get it, Fleming thought; and then Johnny looked up and his eyes were oddly clear and bright, not drunk at all.

"I stole your rum," he said.

"That's all right, Johnny. I want to ask you something."

"Are we there?"

"Yes. But the turtle boat isn't here." . Johnny laughed.

"Do you understand me?" Fleming asked.

"Sure. You think I'm drunk?"

"I don't know what you are," Fleming said. "I want to know if you lied to me."

"No."

"Then did Cathy lie to you?"

"No."

"Are you sure? How do you know she didn't?"

"I just don't think so, that's all."

Fleming paused. "Do you want to come ashore with me?"

"To hell with you, pal."

Fleming went back on deck. The rain and the wind slashed at his face, but there was no relief from the humid, suffocating heat. Valere had one of the small boats over the side and was fending it off as it rolled and slued in the heaving dark blue seas. The two Martinique men looked dubious, left in charge of the Porpoise. Fleming said, "Shove off."

It was a long pull over the rough water to the beach. The low gray clouds came scudding down from the north, over the land, which provided some sort of lee protection, and halfway there Fleming took the oars from Valere and brought the boat in with a long, slashing comber that swept it high up onto the beach.

An old man and two younger men who looked to be his sons came out of the nearest shack and walked across the windy, rainy beach toward them. All three Indians

154

wore rubberized ponchos. The old man glanced carefully at the row of fishing canoes drawn up on the shore, as if to check their safety, and Fleming saw Valere scowling .fiercely at the shapeless, streaming ponchos, and he knew the Haitian was wondering what weapons might be concealed under the clothing of the three Indians.

Fleming spoke in Spanish. "We do not mean to intrude, sirs, nor are we in trouble."

"You are welcome in any case," the old man said.

"We are looking for another boat, a Cayman Island schooner."

"The turtle men?"

"Yes," Fleming said. "I am pleased that you know of them."

The old man's face was a carved mask. "Please come into my house. We can give you food and drink. The norte is unpleasant."

"Many thanks," Fleming said. "But it would be dangerous to leave my vessel exposed to this wind for that long a time."

"What is the matter with your friend?" the old man asked.

Fleming looked at Valere. The big black man's scowl was ferocious.

"He thinks you are savages," Fleming said, smiling.

The old man looked at his two sons. "Yes, he looks angry, that one. Julio, here, has been to Mexico. He has studied at the university there and is home now to rest before taking up work as an engineer. My younger son, Pablo, prefers the life of a fisherman. It is because of his wife. She likes our simple life and discourages his desire to go to the city."

"You have fine sons," Fleming said.

"But they are savages," the old man said, smiling.

"Have you seen the turtle schooner?" Fleming asked.

"It was here this dawn. It is gone now."

"Perhaps you know where they are?"

"Perhaps. Are they your friends?"

"No," Fleming said. "But I have ah account to settle with them, and it would be most helpful if I could catch up with them."

Rain made a hissing sound on the dark brown sand of the 155

beach. The old man said, "If they are not your friends, you should not seek them."

"I must find them, sir," Fleming said. "It is a personal matter. Do you know where the boat has gone?"

"They sailed to the Rio Doloroso," the old man said. "They are in the river, hiding from the storm."

"Is it far from here?"

"Ten kilometers west." The old man wiped rain from his seamed, leathery face. His eyes were serious. "They are the true savages, senor. They are armed and desperate. They are criminals."

"How do you know that?"

"It was on the news program from M6rida, on my son's radio. The turtle men did not know we have a radio, and we did not speak of it to them."

"You were wise."

"We have been debating what to do about the law."

"There is no need for you to do anything," Fleming said. "We will go now."

"With God," said the old man.

Fleming led the way back to the dinghy. The two sons helped launch it against the thrust and push of the wild surf. When they were halfway back to the Porpoise Fleming began to laugh, and Valere, who still scowled because he had not understood a word of what was said, looked annoyed.

"What is so funny, Captain?"

"You and your savages," Fleming said.

* * *

It was growing dark when the Porpoise entered the mouth of the Rio Doloroso. Land and sea merged in the swift uncertainty of the rain. The shrieking of birds came clearly through the tangled masses of vegetation, and an occasional grunt and animal cry. The diesel engine throbbed softly, and Valere stood up forward, his body taut as he took soundings. The wind had died. The river mouth was wide and stagnant, little more than the entrance to a bayou, but the channel was deep enough to provide clearance for the schooner's keel. The open sea was shut out behind them with the first bend in the stream. The two Martinique men were furling the sails, and Fleming was at the wheel.

156

The turtle schooner was not here.

The water ahead was silvered by the rain. The river twisted to the right, to the left and to the right again. The channel narrowed, and the banks were choked with rotting debris. There was no sign of the other boat.

For five minutes they crept upstream. The darkness grew thicker, and here and there, when Fleming sought out the river banks, he was not certain where the water ended and the muddy land began. He slowed the diesel until the Porpoise scarcely had steerage way. The river made a long sweep to the left again and for an instant Fleming glimpsed in the waning light the wide shimmer of open water. He cut the engine entirely and the schooner surged forward on momentum only, the bow wave dying. Behind them, their wake washed softly among the gnarled and twisted mangrove roots.

A wide lagoon lay ahead. The shrill screams of monkeys and the higher calls of birds filled the dusky air. Flamingos stood in the tall reeds on either side and lifted their long, crooked necks to stare at the intruders. Rain drummed on the deck, coming straight down now. The fronds of the cabbage palms drooped.

Ahead, across the width of the lagoon, a light shone, twinkling through the silver-gray curtains of rain that fell on the flat, steaming water.

Fleming let out a deep breath and moved forward as the motion of the Porpoise died and with Valere's help lowered the anchor as silently as possible. When he looked across the lagoon, through the curtain of reeds, he thought he could make out the dark shape of the turtle schooner at a mooring there, and beyond it, on a rise of land, there was a long, low house, palm-thatched, with a wide veranda facing the water. The light came from the house.

Valere looked across the water, his nostrils distended as if he could smell out their enemies. When he spoke, it was in a whisper.

"Can they see us, Cap'n?"

"I think not," Fleming said. Even as he spoke, night came as if a curtain had been drawn over the jungle.

"Do you have a plan, Cap'n?"

"My wife is there, with them. I've got to find her and

157

bring her back, without alarming them, without giving them a chance to hurt her."

"I will go with you."

"It would be better if I went alone," Fleming said. "There are too many of them for us to win by force. This will have to be done quickly and by stealth."

"I still wish to go with you," Valere said stubbornly.

"As you wish."

"And Mr. Wright?"

"He stays here."

"I will speak to the other men," Valere said. "He must be kept quiet."

They chose the small dinghy, and five minutes later they were on their way across the dark lagoon, steering by the light from the house, which acted as a beacon in the night. Fleming sat in the stem while Valere rowed. The Haitian had taken a machete and one of the two Smith & Wesson .38 revolvers from the arms locker. Fleming kept the Colt he had picked up from the prison guard in Puerto Caballo, and he held it under his belt to keep the rain from wetting it. The rain beat heavily on his head and shoulders, but he did not feel it. All his senses were turned toward the slowly nearing turtle schooner. He could only dimly make out the shape of its dark hull against the fan of light from the house on shore. He thought of his chances to get Elizabeth away safely and he trembled with a quick fear that he might be too late already, since this was the night Johnny was to have got word to Cathy Palmer and Ottmann. He told himself not to think about this, but he couldn't help himself and his fear deepened and it seemed as if Valere would never get their little boat across the intervening water. Actually only a few minutes went by before the dark hull of the turtle schooner blotted out the direct light from the house on shore, and then Valere stopped rowing and they drifted soundlessly toward the moored vessel.

There were no lights aboard. Fleming reached out and put his hand flat against the side of the schooner and kept the dinghy from bumping against the planks. Valere shipped the oars and one of the rowlocks squealed faintly as it turned. Neither of them moved for long seconds. The rain came down sullenly, hissing on the water around them.

158

There was no alarm.

The reek of filth and excrement from the live turtles helpless on their backs on deck and in the holds was a strangling miasma enfolding the ship. Fleming stood up quietly, and found he was just able to reach the edge of the deck overhead. He looked back at Valere and then pulled himself upward with a swift, controlled effort, slid under the rail, and lay flat for a moment before raising his head to look around.

He could see no one on the rain-swept deck. Standing upright, he started aft, his sneakered feet soundless on the wet planks, the Colt in his hand now.

The shapes of the giant green turtles lashed on their backs were all around him, with huge crisscrosses painted on their undersides for identification. Fleming carefully hugged the rail going around them. There was no sound or movement anywhere on the vessel, and he began to wonder if the ship was deserted. From the deck he could see the shore clearly now, and the lighted windows of the palm-thatched house. The rain seemed to slacken a bit. The turtle schooner lay dead in the quiet water of the lagoon. Then as he approached the door to the aft cabin a shape rose up from the deck in front of him and a man's voice spoke querulously: "Here, where you go, mister?"

Fleming reversed the heavy gun in his hand with a quick flip and slammed it against the other's pale face in the darkness. There was a strangled cry and Fleming hit him again with the gun butt and the man sagged backward and thumped against the cabin wall. Fleming caught his limp figure and eased him to the deck. In the dim light coming from the house ashore, he saw it was the fatter of the two seamen who had attacked him behind the cathedral in Puerto Caballo.

There was still no alarm.

Either the crew was asleep, or they had been given shore liberty in one of the Indian villages nearby, Fleming thought. He hoped it was the latter situation. He looked down at the unconscious man for a moment, then cautiously opened the shutter door to the main cabin and drifted down the steep, narrow ladder. A dim light made a pattern of yellow slits through a second shutter door ahead, at the foot of

159

the ladder. He drew a deep breath and pushed it open and stepped into the cabin.

Hunsicker, the Cayman Island skipper, lifted his head from the chart he was studying. Under his heavy red brows his gray eyes looked small and strained, widening slowly with astonishment as he recognized Fleming. His thick neck stiffened. The last time Fleming had seen him, he had worn a dirty white shirt and duck trousers. His shirt was off now, revealing a thick mat of dark red hair on his meaty chest. His big hands flattened on the chart table and he started to rise and Fleming lifted the Colt.

"Don't try anything, Captain. Keep it quiet."

Hunsicker said hoarsely, "Where did you come from, man?"

"Out of jail," Fleming said. "Don't shout."

"How did you find us? Did that—"

"Shut up," Fleming said. "I'll ask the questions."

"Man, you must be crazy."

"Maybe I am," Fleming said.

The turtle-boat captain stared at the heavy Colt in Fleming's hand. He ran his tongue around his mouth and wiped the back of his hand across his bushy red mustache. His small eyes squinted up at Fleming, and Fleming said quietly, "I want two answers. If I don't get them easily, you'll give them to me the hard way. It doesn't matter."

"I think you mean that."

"I do. The first question is: Who killed my first mate?"

"Ottmann," said Hunsicker promptly. "The German did it."

"Why?"

"Your man came snooping around while we were loading the stuff into the turtles."

"The dope?"

"He saw too much and Ottmann killed him."

"All right. Now tell me where my wife is being kept. Is she aboard?"

"No, man."

"In that house ashore?"

"I don't rightly know."

It was hot and airless in the cabin. Hunsicker's face was shiny with sweat. His chest heaved with his tight breathing.

160

Fleming looked down at him, wondering what to do. He wanted to kill the man. It would be no loss at all, he thought. He had no doubt that Hunsicker would kill him if their situations were reversed. Then Hunsicker saw his face and said quickly, "Now, wait a minute, man. I'll tell you the truth. She's ashore, all right. Ottmann and the Palmer woman took her there." He grinned suddenly. "They didn't like the smell aboard the Daisy."

"Whose place is it, over there?"

"Ottmann's. He's got several of these broken-down plantations up and down the coast. Your wife was all right the last time I saw her."

"When was that?"

"Two hours ago, man. Take it easy."

Fleming said, "Stand up, Captain."

"Now, wait a minute."

Hunsicker came slowly to his feet. His eyes were wary. Then as he came up he suddenly swept up a heavy brass ashtray from the chart table and threw it at Fleming, and Fleming ducked and jumped forward and hit the man in the face with the gun. The ashtray struck the bulkhead with a loud thud and Hunsicker flopped back, his face gone bloody and distorted, his big hands spread out, fingers splayed. Fleming watched him fall to the deck. The man's meaty body twitched and then was still.

Fleming knelt beside him and felt for a pulse and listened to the man's breathing, then dragged him across the cabin and opened a small closet and pushed and hauled at the inert weight until Hunsicker was inside. As he locked the closet door he heard the thumping of footsteps on the deck overhead and then there came a sudden yell of alarm and another man's shout and then the shout changed to a scream that was abruptly cut off. Fleming turned and ran for the ladder to the deck.

Valere met him at the hatchway.

"Are you all right, Cap'n?"

"What was it?"

"Soldier Brown. I saw him moving aboard and climbed up after him."

"Is he dead?"

Valere's face was a blank mask in the darkness. "He

161

will wish he was, when he wakes up."

Fleming looked at the machete in the big Haitian's hand and asked no more questions about it. He saw that Valere had more to tell him, and waited.

"There is no one else aboard," Valere said. "But someone went by for the shore a minute ago, while you were with the captain. It was someone from down the river, from the Porpoise, I think, in our other small boat. But I am not sure. I heard engines, too."

"From another boat?"

"I think so, Cap'n. But they are quiet now."

Fleming listened, but nothing came to him out of the night except the ceaseless drumming of the rain. He wiped his face with the palm of his hand and looked at the house on the beach.

"Let's go."

EIGHTEEN

the bow of the dinghy hissed into the sand alongside the shape of another boat beached nearby, Fleming got out and looked at the other boat and saw it was from the Porpoise. Frowning, he stared at the house through the rain that flooded the dark night. He had the feeling that time was running out for him, that every moment was slipping helplessly away while, he still searched for Elizabeth. The gun felt cold and heavy in his hand. He did not try to figure out what the other boat from the Porpoise was doing here, or what the rest of Valere's information meant. There was a feeling of finality in him, the sense of having come to the end of a long, tortured road. He forced himself to stand there on the beach, feeling the pain pound on his head and shoulders, and he didn't move until his breathing came regularly and easily.

Valere touched his arm. "I am worried about the other boat behind us in the river."

162

"It would be better to worry about those in the house, Valere. If they see us first, they will kill my wife."

"Then they must not see us."

Fleming said, "When I go in by the back way, you must stay out and cover me. If I have to shoot, then come in. Otherwise, I must do this alone. Do you understand?"

"I would rather be with you, Cap'n."

"It is my quarrel," said Fleming. "It is something I must finish with my own hands."

He began walking along the edge of the beach toward the low house that spread long, rambling wings on either side of the main structure. He saw a path that led to the front of the house through an unkempt area that had once been cleared but which had since grown up in scrub and Spanish bayonet, and he followed it until he came to where the light from the window shone directly on the ground and then he stepped aside and went around to the back of the house. There were heaps of broken crates and broken bottles and other piles of unidentified rubbish near the back porch. He saw the shed roof of the cooking lean-to attached to the house and something moved in it. He stood very still, watching, but the movement did not come again. Valere waited, two steps behind him. The rain made a steady scrubbing noise on the thatched roof of the house and ran off the edges in quick, gurgling streams that splashed and tinkled and gushed in thick rivulets around Fleming's feet. He decided there was no one in the cook shed, after all, and said to Valere, "Wait here."

"Be careful, Cap'n."

Fleming stepped up on a small back porch, circled some wooden crates, and opened the screened door. The rusty hinges squealed loudly. Ahead was a dark, cavernous room and he could see nothing in it. He let the door close behind him and groped forward until he saw a glimmer of light from the front of the house that shone down a corridor opening. It was the main hallway that ran from the front to the back of the structure, and there was another hallway that ran across from one wing to the other, making the passages form a cross. At the intersection he paused and felt the water run down his face and neck from his soaked hair.

Voices were audible from the lighted room ahead and he

163

wondered whether to go in there at once or search for Elizabeth in the dark rooms of either wing. He was sure she was here. He was suddenly sure that Cathy Palmer would not have dared to harm her unless she had complete and absolute control over Johnny Wright, and the thought came to him that Cathy and Ottmann were only waiting for Johnny to get here so that Elizabeth could be killed and Johnny, too, and then there would be nothing to fear from what both of them knew. He decided this was the way Cathy Palmer had thought it out and he grinned tightly, thinking of what he had told Lieutenant Amayo, and decided to face Cathy Palmer first. It was her voice that he heard coming from the lighted room.

Just as he stepped forward he heard the sudden lurch and whine of a motor starting up and he stood still again until he identified the sound as that of an electric generator, in the dark back room he had just quit. The floor trembled, but he saw that the house was solidly built. The doors he faced were paneled in mahogany and richly carved in esoteric designs of tropical fruits. Cathy's voice came from behind them.

Fleming opened them and walked in.

He was in a large room with flooring of wide, polished planks, furnished with wicker and bamboo chairs and settees, with high French doors open to the veranda that faced the lagoon. He saw Cathy Palmer standing opposite him, her sleek golden head tilted a little to one side. She was smiling without surprise at his sudden intrusion. Her jade eyes were amused. She looked serene and beautiful, dressed in a nubby cream-colored cotton dress with a wide tight belt that accented her narrow waist and the wide, soft flare of her hips.

"Come in, Mitch," she said quietly. "We've been expecting you."

He turned to look for the others in the room and saw Liza, in the same dress she had worn before, standing in one corner with the back of her hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes terrified. He heard her scream at the same moment he sensed the blur of movement behind him, and as he turned, dropping with one knee flexed, he saw Hans Ottmann swinging something down at his head. He felt the impact over his ear and his head snapped to one side and the room

164

reeled before him, and the next thing he knew he was on his hands and knees in front of Cathy Palmer, shaking his head and watching bright drops of blood spatter from his scalp and form the pattern of an arc on the polished plank ioor.

Cathy laughed.

He heard the laugh through the roaring in his ears and then Ottmann put a knee in the small of his back before he could rise and drove him flat on his face on the floor. The pain was excruciating. He felt one of his wrists gripped in the other's hand and his left arm was yanked around and he saw his fingers empty, without the gun, and he had time to wonder once where and how he had lost it without at least firing one shot, and then a new pain jolted up through his shoulder and along the side of his neck as Ottmann tried to break his arm.

"Don't kill him yet," Cathy said.

There was a strange noise in Fleming's ears and he couldn't identify it, although it sounded familiar, and then there was a battering of wings on the floor and he saw the parrot that was Ottmann's pet. As he lay with his head turned sidewise and his arm pulled up behind him, the parrot walked around his head and screamed German curses at him.

"Let him up," Cathy said.

He felt the reluctance in Ottmann's fingers as the man let go of his grip. His hand felt numb when he pulled it back under him and forced himself erect. He heard Cathy's laughter again and a moan of anguish from Elizabeth. He stood on his feet, facing Cathy, then turned from her and looked at Elizabeth.

"Are you all right?" he whispered.

"Oh, Mitch!"

"Did they hurt you?"

"No," she said.

He turned to Cathy Palmer. "How did you know I was coming?"

"One of our men was at Isla Dolorosa when you landed to talk to the chief there," she said. "He came through the bayous a few minutes ago to warn us. I hope you haven't killed poor Captain Hunsicker."

"No. But maybe I should have."

She cocked her head to one side and surveyed him with her long greenish eyes full of secret amusement. "You're a very foolish young man, Mitch, to come here like this. To put your head in the lion's den, for instance."

"It's more like a den of hyenas," Fleming said.

"Really, now."

"But you're all through, you know," Fleming said. "Your million-dollar cargo of heroin will never get to the United States."

"Can you stop us?"

"You've already been stopped," he said.

He was beginning to feel better. Some of the numbness left his arm and his head was clearing. He took a wet handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the blood from the side of his face and wondered what Ottmann had hit him with. The big blond man was scowling heavily. The parrot had fluttered back to his shoulder and was silent for the moment, its bright red eyes regarding Fleming with pure malignance. Fleming looked at Elizabeth. She now sat in a wide wicker chair in the corner, and she looked small and helpless as she grasped the arms in her white hands. Her eyes were enormous, fixed on Fleming. He smiled at her and spoke across the room to her.

"It's all right, Liza. Don't worry."

"They're going to kill you," she whispered.

"No, they don't dare."

"And me, too."

"No, they won't," Fleming said.

Cathy stirred, her smile gone. "You seem very sure of yourself, Mitch."

The rain made a soft hissing sound on the thatched roof.

"You gambled and lost," Fleming said. "If it were only up to Johnny Wright, you might have succeeded in your big play. But Elizabeth learned how you planned to get the narcotics through to the United States, in the turtles, and she told me. You managed to snatch her off the beach, but you didn't get me."

"We have you now," Cathy said.

Fleming glanced at the glass-shaded brass lamp on the

166

bamboo table to his left. Something creaked on the veranda outside, beyond the open French doors.

"You've played a long and losing game, Cathy," he said. "In a way, I'm sorry for you. All your brilliance has been wasted, because you used it in the wrong direction. You framed Johnny Wright and Liza with the murder of Barney Eden, didn't you?"

"What do you know about that?"

"I know how it happened. I know all about that night on the Long Island parkway, how Eden gave chase to Johnny's car after he went to your apartment and accused you, point-blank, of rigging the dope-smuggling racket. What did he want, Cathy? Was it the company's books?"

"Johnny had them in the car," Cathy said.

"And Eden was afraid Johnny would give them to you?"

"I suppose so."

"So he followed you and in desperation cut ahead of Johnny's car, and when he got out on the road to approach Johnny you saw your chance. You slugged Johnny, while Elizabeth was out cold on the back seat, pushed Johnny out on the road, and used the car to kill Eden. When Johnny came to, he didn't know what had happened. All he knew was that the Treasury agent was dead and his car had killed Eden and you said he had done it. Isn't that the way it happened?"

"I don't mind satisfying your curiosity," Cathy said, nodding. "It doesn't matter now. Yes, that's the way it happened."

"And back in Puerto Caballo, when you tried to scare me off for fear I'd interfere with your plans to tie up Johnny and Liza with blackmail so they wouldn't interrupt your big and final deal, you killed Charley Goucher."

"Hans did that. Hans has a certain dexterity with the scalpel. He was working on the live turtles when your mate came to the boat to find out who had attacked you that night," Cathy said.

Fleming didn't look at Ottmann. From the corner of his eye he finally located his gun. It had spilled and skidded across the floor and rested against one of the legs of the table on which the lamp stood. He didn't look at it directly.

"And Sam Campbell?" he asked.

167

"I had to do that," Cathy said quietly. "It was necessary. He knew too much, and we knew he had talked to you. We had to quiet him before he told you too much, because we still felt you weren't really dangerous then. Not at that point. And it was useful because it tied you up and Elizabeth, while we finished loading our cargo on the schooner. We thought we could get back to the States before you cleared yourself with Amayo."

Fleming looked at the veranda doors again.

"And what will you do with Elizabeth?" he asked. "You told Johnny that if he kept quiet about it all, you would let her go free."

"Yes, I had to promise Johnny that."

"But you don't intend to keep that promise, do you?"

"Elizabeth is a great disappointment to me," Cathy said. She laughed softly. "She has suddenly become concerned with the morality and legality of what I've been doing. More concerned about that than about her brother. She's so stubborn she's going to die of it."

"Then you plan to kill her?"

"I have no choice. She insists she'll tell everything to the police at the first opportunity she gets."

"She doesn't have to," Fleming said. "The Mexican police know all about it by now. I told them."

Cathy stood up. "You?"

"The American authorities know of it, too. They're hunting for the schooner at this moment, and I think they've found it. A Mexican government cutter was shadowing me all the way here. I wondered at first why they didn't stop me, but then I figured that what they were hoping for was that I'd lead them to you. My new mate heard their engines in the river just before we came ashore, only a few minutes ago. By now they've been all over the Porpoise. They'll be here in a few moments more."

He was ready for Ottmann's angry, explosive move, but at the same moment Johnny Wright came through the doors from the veranda.

Everything seemed to happen at once, Fleming thought later. Ottmann's angry lunge for him coincided with Johnny's sudden appearance in the room. At the same moment that the little gun appeared in Cathy's hand, the parrot

168

flew squawking and screaming from Ottmann's shoulder. Cathy's gun cracked and the parrot seemed to disintegrate in the air between them in a shower of gaudy, bloody feathers, and Fleming dived for his own gun under the table. His shoulder hit the edge of the table and it overturned and the glass lamp went crashing to the floor and the room was plunged into darkness.

Johnny's voice was high and shrill, like that of a woman crying. "Damn you, Cathy! Damn you!"

A gun roared and the flame split the darkness and Fleming saw in that instant that Johnny Wright was armed, too. Then Ottmann closed with him and Fleming got his hand on the Colt and came up, feeling the other's powerful arms embracing him in a crushing grip. He couldn't get the gun up. His arms were pinned to his sides. Fleming felt the fury of the other man's warped hatred like a physical blow. He heard Elizabeth shout and all he could concentrate on was the effort to keep his feet and hold onto the gun as he swayed back and forth with Ottmann across the room. Furniture crashed underfoot and the room was filled with noise and he felt the breath slowly crushed out of him as Ottmann increased the pressure on his chest. He was going to drop the gun. The room was filled with swaying shadows, with crashing sounds, with Johnny's voice and Cathy's scream. He couldn't scream. He couldn't break Ottmann's grip. The thought came to him that Ottmann and Cathy were going to win after all, and then the thought was punctuated by the sharp crack of a gun and he was filled with a terrible fear for Elizabeth. The fear gave him a new access of strength and he suddenly burst through the encircling grip of Ottmann's arms and brought the gun up and squeezed the trigger as he pushed the gun into the big man's body.

In the darkness he felt Ottmann fall away from him and he turned to one side, swaying, and lowered the gun.

Silence filled the dark room. Through it came the sound of his own tortured, harsh breathing. Someone picked up the lamp and tinkered with it, and the bulb, somehow un-shattered, winked on again.

In the garish burst of light Fleming saw Johnny on his knees beside Cathy Palmer. Cathy's face was deathly white. He saw that Johnny had shot her high up in the shoulder

169

and the wound was not fatal. He turned all the way around and saw Ottmann sprawled on his face with a pool of blood widening under him and he knew Ottmann was dead and he was glad of it. Valere came through the doorway and paused. Fleming looked for Elizabeth, afraid of what he might see. She was beside Johnny, shaking her brother's shoulder to stop the flow of incoherent words that came from him, and Fleming walked across the room to her and it seemed as if each step were taken with the dragging weight of incredible torment.

"Liza?"

She looked up at him in horror. "Yes, Mitch."

"You weren't hurt?"

"I'm all right. Johnny shot Cathy."

They looked at each other as if they were strangers.

From outside came shouts in Spanish and Fleming went out on the veranda and saw the white uniforms of Mexican sailors and then the khaki uniforms of the police. The lagoon beyond seemed ablaze with light from the shallow-draft cutter that had nosed in there.

He walked forward to meet the other men. Halfway there he looked down at his leg and saw the dark quick-spreading stain of blood down his thigh and thought, with surprise, that he had been shot. The leg went out from under him as he realized it and he would have fallen if someone hadn't caught him then. He saw it was Valere and he turned toward the Haitian and let the black man hold him up, and Valere's arms were strong and careful and gentle. Very, very slowly, everything went away from him.

NINETEEN

fleming sat with his back to the tinkling fountain and listened to the cool sound of the water falling and turned his face up toward the sun. Mario was practicing on a new guitar. It did not sound any better than the old one, yet

170

the notes picked from the strings were as individually clear and limpid as the drops of water falling into the stone bowl of the fountain behind him.

By turning his head he could look through the shadowed archway in the back of the courtyard and see down the sloping street to the harbor of Puerto Caballo and watch the Porpoise at anchor close inshore, near Peli Menendez' wharf. She's still there, he thought, and you don't have to look for her every five minutes. She's there and she's yours and she's all you have except for the old house on the knoll a couple of thousand miles away from here, and the old house is your house and pretty soon you're going back to it.

Peli Men6ndez came out of the front lobby of his posada and sat down in a rush--bottomed chair beside Fleming and moved Fleming's cane a little to one side. The old man looked exactly the way he had the first day Fleming had come here.

"I see you are walking better today," Peli said.

"I'm all right now."

"Dr. Sanchez said you could leave us three days ago. I am happy to have you stay with us, but I do not understand it."

"How long have I been here?" Fleming asked.

"Two weeks, and it has been a joy to have you here. Mario is especially grateful for the new guitar."

"It is nothing."

"It is everything to him. He will be a great musician someday and he will always be grateful to you for helping him."

"I am glad," Fleming said. "I wish him success."

"And for yourself."

"I will go home soon."

"To your father's house, in New England?"

"Soon," Fleming said.

"You can go any time. The police have cleared you. The American authorities are arranging extradition papers for the Palmer woman, but I think our own police will insist on charging her with murder."

"I feel sorry for her," Fleming said. "She is a sick woman."

"Sick?"

"With greed. It is an illness of our times, or perhaps it

171

is a universal illness of all times, but in these days it seems especially epidemic, if you know what I mean. She wanted so much, and did not know how to get it, and she lost all her moral and social values in trying to gain the power and wealth she thought she needed."

"She killed your friend."

"Yes."

"And she would have killed you and your wife."

"Yes."

"And still you are sorry for her?"

"Yes," Fleming said.

Peli sighed. "You Americans are too sentimental. You are like children. You do not know what you want."

"I know what I want," Fleming said.

"And what is that, lucky man?"

"I want to go home and build boats for fishermen in my boatyard and live in the house my father lived in."

"Then what is stopping you?"

"I am waiting for my wife," Fleming said.

Peli stood up. "I think I will get drunk. I leave you to enjoy my grandson's serenade."

He went away.

Fleming leaned his head back and felt the hot, stinging rays of the sun on his face and saw under his partly closed eyelids the graceful shape of the Porpoise far out on the harbor, framed by the dark, cool archway that made a painting out of the scene of the waterfront and the shacks of the Indian fishermen. When he raised his eyes farther he saw the big white hull and superstructure of the cruise ship that had come into the harbor last night. Water taxis were plying back and forth across the blue water, carrying tourists to the hotel. He closed his eyes.

He thought, Liza, you're free of everything now. The police hold no terrors for you, your brother has no claim on you, it's all over and finished and now it's up to you, in your freedom, to make up your mind if you ever loved me or if you simply turned to me in your fear arid panic for someone to help you. One way or the other. Just come and tell me which it is. You've hardly spoken to me since the night when it all ended. I've hardly seen you. Either you love me or it was all an illusion, a dream that was a night-

172

mare to you, something you felt only in the fever of your illness. But now you can see everything clearly and it's up to you. Either it was real or it wasn't. Either you love me or you don't.

He heard her footsteps coming toward him and he opened his eyes and looked at her.

She took the chair that Peli had been sitting in and he saw that she was wearing a new white linen dress with gold embroidery on it. She was smiling. She looked at Mario and Mario stopped playing the guitar and went somewhere out of sight, and then his music began again.

"Mitch?"

"Hello, Liza."

"I've been in Merida. For days, it seems. Lieutenant Amayo told me there that there is nothing more to worry about. He's being promoted, incidentally. I have been cleared of all charges. The American consul in Merida told me the same thing."

"And Johnny?"

"The same, too. He's going home on the cruise ship."

"And you?"

"Mitch," she said.

"I've got to know," he said.

"Is that what you've been waiting here for?"

"Yes."

He thought she had never looked lovelier or more desirable and he loved everything about her, the way her dark hair caught deep auburn highlights from the sunshine that fell around her, the way her mouth smiled and her eyes shone when she looked at him, the softness of the curve of her cheek and the touch of her hand on his.

"The cruise ship sails tonight," Elizabeth said.

"Yes. I know that."

"We could be home in a week."

"The Porpoise will take much longer than that," Fleming said.

She smiled. "The longer, the better. Do you think you're going alone?"

"I haven't known what to think. I wanted you to make up your mind by yourself. I know how it's been with you," he

173

said. "Now it's all over, and I want you to be sure. I'm going back to Stone Harbor."

"You're such a lovely sensitive idiot," she said. Then she stood up and whirled around and said, "Do you like my new dress?"

"It's fine for the cruise ship."

"I bought a lot of other things, too. Dungarees and sneakers. Most of it is too big for me, but I'll try to be a good sailor on the way home, Mitch." Suddenly she knelt beside him and took his hand and pressed his palm against her mouth and kissed him, and he wasn't sure whether she was laughing or crying. "I love you, Mitch. You're my husband. Take me with you."

"Are you sure?"

"I was always sure," she said.

It was quiet in the courtyard when he stood up and took her in his arms and kissed her. The fountain tinkled and Mario struck a loud, successful chord on his new guitar and then turned and ran into the lobby of the posada to tell his grandfather what was happening.

THE END

174

Wyszukiwarka

Podobne podstrony:
Taking Back My Love Enrique Iglesias feat Ciara
103 Glenn Medeiros Nothings gonna change my love for you
04 Good Bye My Love
Glenn Medeiros Nothing's gonna change my love for you
You are my love, teksty piosenek z tłumaczeniem na polski, Tsubasa Chronicle
My Love, Slayers fanfiction, Oneshot
Good my love
good bay my love, good bye
Stephen King Sometimes They Come Back txt
Come back to me
Akon Come Back To Me
Nothings Gonna Change My Love For You
Garth Brooks To Make You Feel My Love
GOOD BY MY LOVE GOODBY
She is my love
Borys My love
Westlife My love
Westlife My Love
My love don Lopez

więcej podobnych podstron