James Chase - Lay Her Among the Lilies

“Be careful.”

I gave her a little pat on her-arm, grinned at her and slid out on to the deck. I shot the bolt: began to move aft.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing up here?” a voice demanded out of the darkness.

I nearly jumped out of my skin.

A short, thickset man, wearing a yachting-cap, had appeared from nowhere. Neither of us could see the other’s face. We peered at each other.

“How many times do I have to tell you guys to keep clear of this deck?” he growled, and edged closer.

He nearly had me. I saw his arm flash up and I ducked. The sap glanced off my shoulder. I slammed a punch into his belly with everything I had. He caught his breath in a gasp of agony, bent forward, trying to breathe. I hung one on his jaw that nearly smashed my hand.

He went down on hands and knees and straightened out on his back. I leaned over him, grabbed his ears and cracked his skull on the deck.

All this happened in the matter of seconds. I ran back to Paula’s cabin, unbolted the door, threw it open, whipped around and dragged the unconscious man in and dropped him on the floor.

“I walked right into him,” I panted as I bent over him. I lifted an eyelid. He was out all right, and by the pulpy softness at the back of his head he would be out for some time.

“Put him in that cupboard,” Paula said. “I’ll watch him.” She was pale, but quite unruffled.

It took a lot to rattle her.

I dragged him across the cabin and into the cupboard. I had to squash him in, and I got the door shut only by leaning my weight against it.

“Phew!” I said, and wiped off my face. “He’ll be all right in there if he doesn’t suffocate. It’s like a furnace in here.”

“It’s worrying me. Even the floor’s hot. Do you think there’s a fire somewhere?”

I put my hand on the carpet. It was hot all right: too hot. I opened the cabin door and put my hand on the planks of the deck. They were so hot they nearly raised a blister.

“Good grief!” I exclaimed. “You’re right. The damned ship is on fire somewhere below.” I caught her arm and pulled her out on to the deck. “You’re not staying in there. Come on, kid, keep behind me. We’ll take a quick look and then get up on the top deck.” I checked my wrist-watch. It was five minutes to nine. “Jack’ll be out in five minutes.”

As we moved along the deck, Paula said, “Shouldn’t we raise the alarm? The ship’s full of people, Vic.”

“Not yet. Later,” I said.

At the far end of the deck was a door set in the bulkhead. I paused outside to listen, turned the handle and eased the door open.

It was hotter than an oven in full blast in there, and oil in the paint on the walls was beginning to run. It was a nice room : big, airy and well-furnished: half-office, half-lounge. Big windows on either side of the room commanded views of Orchid City beach and the Pacific. A solitary desk-light threw a pool of light on the desk and part of the carpet. The rest of the room was in darkness. Overhead came the sounds of dance music and the soft swish of moving feet.

I entered the room, my gun pushed forward. Paula came in after me and closed the door. There was a smell of burning and smoke, and as I moved to the desk I saw the carpet was smouldering and smoke was coming in little wisps from under the wainscoting.

“The fire’s right below us,” I said. “Keep by the door. The floor mightn’t be safe. This looks like Sherrill’s office.”

I went through the desk drawers, not knowing what I was looking for, but looking. In one of the bottom drawers I found a square-shaped envelope. One glance told me it was Anona Freedlander’s missing dossier. I folded it and shoved it into my hip pocket.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Paula said in a small voice, “Vic! What’s that—behind the desk?”

I peered over the back of the desk. Something was there: something white: something that could have been a man. I shifted the desk-lamp so the light fell directly on it.

I heard Paula gasp.

It was Sherrill. He lay flat on his back, his teeth bared in a mirthless grin. His clothes were smouldering, and his hands, lying on the burning carpet, had a burned-up, scorched look. He had been shot through the head at close range. One side of his skull had been smashed in.

Even as I leaned forward to stare at him, there was a sudden whoosing sound, and two long tongues of flame spurted out from the floor and licked across his dead face.

The little Wop stood in the doorway, grinning at us. The blunt-nosed automatic in his small, brown fist centred on my chest. The dark, ugly little face was shiny with sweat, and the dark little eyes were shiny with hate. He had come silently from nowhere.

“Give me that,” he said, and held out his hand. “What you put in your pocket—quick!”

I was holding my gun down by my side. I knew I couldn’t get it up and shoot at him before he got me. I pulled the dossier out of my hip pocket with my left hand. As I did so I saw the sudden change of expression in his eyes: hatred to viciousness. The trigger-finger turned white as he took up the slack. I saw all this in a split second, knowing he was going to shoot.

Paula threw a chair forward to crash on the floor between the Wop and me. His eyes shifted and so did his aim. The gun went off; the slug missed me by about two feet. I was firing at him before he had time to get his eyes off the chair and on to me again. The three bullets cut across his chest like sledge hammers. He was hurled back against the wall; the automatic falling from his hand; his face twisting hideously.

“Out!” I said to Paula.

She bent and snatched up the Wop’s automatic, and jumped for the door. As I ran across the floor I felt it give under me. There was a sudden loud cracking of breaking timber. Heat came up at me as if I were running across red-hot boiler plates. The floor sagged and gave. For one horrible moment I thought I was going down with the floor, but the fitted carpet held just long enough for me to reach the door and the deck.

There was a terrific crash inside Sherrill’s office. I caught one brief glimpse of the furniture sliding into a red, roaring furnace, then Paula caught hold of my arm, and together we raced down the deck.

Tar was oozing out of the hot planks, and smoke was mounting.

Out of the darkness, halfway down the deck, someone took a shot at us. The slug crashed through the wooden partition behind me and ruined a mirror in one of the cabins with a crash of breaking glass.

I shoved Paula behind me, conscious that my white clothes made me look like a phantom out for a night’s haunting.

More gunfire. I felt a slug zip past my face. The gun-flash came from around a lifeboat. I thought I could see a shadowy figure crouching against the rails. I fired twice. The second shot nailed him. He came staggering out from behind the boat and flattened out on the hot deck.

“Keep going,” I said.

We ran on. The deck was so hot now it burned through our shoes. Somehow we reached the ladder leading to the upper deck. Above the roar of the flames we could hear yells and screams and the crash of breaking glass.

We scrambled on to the upper deck. The deck-rail was packed with men and women in evening-dress, yelling their heads off. Smoke made a black pall over the ship, and it was almost as hot up there as on the lower deck.

I could see three or four of the ship’s officers trying to get the panic under control. They might just as well have tried to slam a revolving door.

“Jack must be somewhere around by now,” I shouted to Paula. “Keep near me, and let’s get to the rail.”

We fought our way through the struggling mob. A man grabbed Paula and swung her away from me. I don’t know what he thought he was doing. His face was twitching and his eyes wild. He clawed at me frantically, and I punched him in the jaw, sending him reeling, and then pushed and shoved my way to Paula again.