Brett Halliday - Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

The detective felt the rough blanket of the bunk against his skin; having brought no pajamas, he was sleeping raw. Up on deck, he knew Tod Tolliver was crouching, probably peering into the darkness behind them, and listening.

After a few feet, past where a small doorway divided the tiny cabin into two sections, Sandra Ames was sleeping. At least, he assumed she was sleeping until he heard the door slide open.

“Mike?” Her voice was a husky, tentative whisper. “I just wondered if you were awake.” She came softly into his section of the cabin. In the darkness he could see her only as a blur of white, but her perfume filled the little space, subtle and provocative. “Why do you think Captain Tolliver has stopped?”

“To listen to see if we’re being followed,” Shayne said.

She sat down on the opposite bunk and he could almost see her now — not quite. “Who could follow us?”

“Who knows?” He made his tone casual. “Captain Tolliver doesn’t believe in taking any chances. For ten years he’s made it pay off.”

“Yes, of course. He’s smart — very smart. I like him.”

“So do I. He’s almost seventy, but he’s all man.”

“I know. He’s had a fabulous career. He started as a cabin boy in a whaling ship out of Salem, more than fifty years ago. But I didn’t come to talk about Captain Tolliver.”

The redhead’s “Oh?” was noncommittal. He didn’t think she had come to talk about the captain. Her voice held a tentative note, as if she were testing him as they talked. He wondered what she was leading up to.

“Have you a cigarette?”

“Sure.” He reached under the pillow, found the pack and some matches. He raised up on his elbow and leaned across the narrow aisle, holding out the pack. She took one, leaned forward, and he lit a match. The flare showed her face only a foot from his, showed also that she was wearing the filmiest kind of nightgown, with a scarf thrown over her bare shoulders.

“Thank you.” She sat back, while he lit a cigarette for himself. “Tell me, Mike, did you believe Hugo’s story about the Santa Cristina and the Spanish treasure?”

He took a reflective puff. “Should I have?”

Sandra Ames gave a sudden, appreciative laugh. “You should have been a diplomat. Why didn’t you believe it?”

“For one thing, any ship sunk in the year Hugo mentioned would be rotted away by now. It and any treasure would be hidden under a coating of coral, in these waters. You probably wouldn’t even know it was a ship unless you excavated under the coral.”

“I was pretty sure you hadn’t swallowed it.” She sounded pleased. “Hugo was positive you had. Of course it is a lie. Do you know what we’re really after?”

“No. But I know it’s something plenty big. Five million was the figure Shorty and Whitey were talking about.”

“Not five, no. Just one. A million dollars. In United States currency.”

“Oh?”

“You don’t sound a bit surprised!” Sandra Ames said accusingly. She puffed on her cigarette, and the glow lit her eyes so that they seemed a deep violet. She was breathing a little faster, her bosom rising and falling beneath the filmy nightgown.

“When you’ve been around as much as I have, you won’t be easy to surprise, either.”

“Well, it’s fabulous, Mike! There’s a sunken German submarine, somewhere off the Florida coast. It slipped out of Hamburg just before the war ended. It had all this cash aboard, and Hugo believes it was headed for South America where Hitler was going to try to escape and go into hiding. But Hitler never got away and the submarine sank.

“The money is packed in watertight containers. Every year Captain Tolliver has been bringing up ten thousand dollars. He makes a trip north every year, because he knows it would arouse suspicion if anyone locally knew he was banking so much money. He puts the ten thousand into a bank account in New York under another name. He never takes more because that’s all he needs, and for ten years nobody’s guessed a thing.”

“But you and Hugo and Pete found out.”

“Oh, that’s Hugo’s cleverness. Somehow he found out that these bills from Germany were turning up. I don’t know how, but he has connections. He knew the sub had gone down in Florida waters, so for three years he’s been living down here, poking around, trying to find a clue. He finally learned about Tolliver’s trips north every year, and this year he followed him and learned Tolliver was the man who’d found the sunken sub.

“Then he came to me and asked me to help finance an expedition to recover the money and buy Tolliver out. I said yes — it was like finding buried treasure. So it was I who went to Captain Tolliver and told him his secret was known and asked him if he wouldn’t sell out to us. He’s getting old, and he didn’t want to worry any more about being found out, so he said yes.”

“I can see his point of view,” Michael Shayne said. “Once his secret was known he wasn’t safe any more. He’s already just missed being killed by Whitey and Shorty. He’s playing it smart.”

“How can you be so calm!” Sandra Ames said. She stood up, and leaned toward him. Even though he could scarcely see her, he could feel the excitement emanating from her. She hesitated, as if waiting for him to say something. Then abruptly she turned and went back to her berth and closed the door.

The redhead stared reflectively at the glowing tip of his cigarette. So far, several people had told him several lies. The sunken Spanish treasure ship had become a sunken sub carrying a million dollars in less romantic, but more negotiable, U. S. currency. The first had been a lie. Was the second story the truth?

Suddenly the throb of the engine began to shake the little boat, and the slap of waves against her body recommenced. They were under way again.

Sandra Ames said in a strained voice, “Why doesn’t he come up?” She knelt on the splintery deck of the Golden Girl and stared out at the mirror-like blue surface into which Tolliver had vanished half an hour before. “Do you think anything happened to him?”

“He has air enough for an hour,” Shayne said. He looked around at the empty ocean which stretched away on all sides of them. There wasn’t even the smoke of a steamer in the distance. The Golden Girl was anchored, and there was too little swell even to move her. The sun was only half an hour above the eastern horizon.

Where they were — except that they were probably some place east of the Florida Keys — he had no idea. They had reached this spot in the first light of predawn, anchored, and Tod Tolliver had promptly donned his skin-diving gear, slipped into the water, and submerged.

How the old captain had known that this was the spot he wanted, Shayne had no idea. But Tolliver had come here somehow as unerringly as a pigeon finds its way to its home roost.

Sandra Ames relaxed and sat back cross-legged on the deck. This morning she wore white shorts and a white halter.

“I suppose I’m just being too impatient,” she said. “Cigarette?”

“Sure.” He lit two, and handed her one. She inhaled gratefully as, with a swirl of water, Captain Tod Tolliver broke the surface beside the anchored boat. Sandra Ames rushed to the tail. Tolliver kicked himself to the ladder hanging over the side and pulled himself up, looking grotesque in his face plate with the tank of oxygen on his back and the floppy green flippers on his feet.

The girl caught his hand and helped him aboard. The wiry, leathery little man carried a canvas bag that looped over his wrist, and a fish spear for a weapon. The canvas sack bulged awkwardly.

Tod Tolliver slid out of his skin-diving gear and the detective took it and put it down for him. Sandra handed him a waiting towel and a robe. Tolliver rubbed himself dry, then put the robe on over the red trunks he wore.