Brett Halliday - Mermaid on the Rocks

He poked one of the sheets in front of Barbara and jabbed it with his forefinger. “One time it was all night, anyway till the night man went off shift. All there in black and white. Do you know what you’re looking at, baby doll? You see words. I see dollar signs.”

Shayne, in the tree house, took out an envelope and a pencil and made a quick note.

Barbara snatched the affidavits and threw them at Sims. The corner of one of the stiff pieces hit him in the eye.

“You’re a dirty, crawling person.”

“Dirty?” he said, gathering his sheets and returning them to the envelope. “Crawling? And did I ever have any chance to be different?”

Barbara gave a sudden shriek of laughter which ended in a sob.

“Hell, Babs,” the bearded man said in embarrassment, “I didn’t know it would hit you that hard. I go on the theory that when I’m dying of cancer I want the doctor to tell me. What’s so surprising? You knew he’s a tomcat. He’s always been a tomcat. He’ll always be a tomcat, as long as he has the strength.”

“Shut up! Get out!”

“I’m on my way. I didn’t do this the way I rehearsed it, which is what generally happens. Hell, honey, I know you won’t agree with me now, but I’m doing you a favor. Why be a tackling dummy all your life? If you want somebody’s hairy chest to cry on, mine’s available.”

She threw a coffee cup at him.

“I’m better than nothing!” he shouted. “That’s all I’m saying!”

She went at him with both fists. He tripped on the bunched edge of the carpet and went down. Snatching up the cognac bottle, she hurled it at him. Shayne heard the crash, but she must have missed his head because he came to one knee a moment later and seized her around the waist.

Eda Lou, alarmed, was getting down from her stool to help. But the battle seemed to be over, or at least its nature had changed. Barbara was holding Hank’s shaggy head against her stomach.

“Hank?” she said faintly. “What are you doing?”

Eda Lou changed her mind and came back to the stool. She listened at the mouthpiece for a moment, then stepped up on the stool, reversed the amplifier and put the bell mouth against the screen.

“SIMS, YOU CRUD, QUIT THAT AND GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” she bellowed.

Shayne had the rheostat all the way up, straining to catch the strangled exchange of dialogue. The sudden roar of the bullhorn almost blew off the top of his head. Barbara and Hank froze.

Shayne’s hand shot toward the rheostat, and at that moment an alien noise, very close, penetrated the static in the earphones. He started to turn, but before he could bring his head all the way around he was hit, very hard, from behind.

The bullhorn went on roaring in his ears. He was trying hard to yell when he lost consciousness.

His first impression was that the Key had blown up around him. He was out of contact with the ground for a time, and then he was plunging down into the crater through a hail of flaming debris. He came to rest at last, and after an unknown period of time he began the long climb back.

When he opened his eyes, the brightness was so painful that he closed them again.

He tried to move. Nothing happened, and he thought at first that his nerve centers were still blocked. Then he discovered that his ankles were bound together and his wrists were lashed behind his back. He was gagged.

He told himself his name and profession. After making that effort he had to rest. Then he told himself where he was. He was on one of the Middle Keys, Key Gaspar. He had been slugged with something hard and jagged. He put his mind to that for a moment. It was unimportant, except that at this stage he had to clear up each confusion before moving on to the next. The nature of the pain suggested something long and narrow, like a spike. He opened his eyes again, and found himself looking directly into the sun. If the sun was up, he had to hurry.

He twitched forward. The earphones and binoculars were gone. The tin can full of cigarette stubs had been knocked over, and stale butts and ashes lay all about him. He twisted so he could look through the hole in the floor. The climbing spikes had been pulled out of their holes and lay scattered about in the long saw-grass at the foot of the tree. In the old days of the buccaneers, prisoners had been either killed or marooned. Though he had been left alive, Shayne had been marooned in a tree house twenty feet in the air.

Arching his back, he was able to see out through the broken wall. The Moorish house, unshaken by the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that had taken place in Shayne’s vicinity, stood where he had last seen it. The surface of the ocean beyond was flat and unoccupied. There was no sign of life anywhere.

He rested another moment before taking a fresh inventory. It still turned up the same objects-cigarettes, peanut can, a short flagstaff flying a torn bit of black cloth. His attention came back to the can.

It had been opened by peeling off a narrow strip of tin. Finding the top with his thumb, he tested the cutting edge. It was as dull as a butter knife. Working entirely by touch, he maneuvered the can until he was able to get a grip on it with one hand. He bit down hard on the gag and squeezed. The can crumpled slowly under the pressure. He bent it back with his thumb and crumpled it again, then again, trying to tear the edge. It got away from him. He groped after it blindly, looking for something that would give him more leverage.

Bending both knees, he kicked out a rotten plank from one of the side walls. When the plank splintered it left a rusty nailhead protruding from the two-by-four. He jackknifed around with a difficult backward contortion of his rangy body and brought the can and the nailhead together. Several minutes later he was able to open a small, jagged sawtooth in the lip of the can.

His wrists and ankles were bound with the same wire he had traced through the underbrush in the dark. He turned the can end over end and snagged the wire around his wrists in the little nick. Applying only minimum pressure, he began to work his wrists back and forth. The can shot away from him again.

This time it stopped at the edge of the hole in the floor, where the tiniest nudge would send it over. Shayne brought it back to safety with a quick movement of his feet.

He decided to work on his ankles first. By bringing his knees up hard against his chest and straining downward, he could just reach the wire. He worked one strand into his improvised sawtooth, alternately tightening and relaxing his leg muscles while holding the can steady in his numb fingers. He was able to generate a small friction. A moment later the wire snapped.

He freed his ankles quickly. But the quick success made him careless. The hard downward pressure had tightened the wire around his wrists and his fingers were now nearly dead. He wrestled himself into a sitting position, trapping the can against the wall. He leaned back slowly, feeling the sharp point of tin bite into his forearm. He brought it toward his wrists, using the pain as a guide to where it was. It touched the wire for only an instant, then slipped. When he looked for it, it was gone.

Somehow he forced himself to his feet and out on the nearest branch. No one knew where he was but his assailant. If he didn’t get down by himself, he wasn’t going to get down. And he had to do it fast. There was no longer any feeling in his hands at all.

He straddled the branch and began to inch slowly backward. Coming to a lesser branch, he rocked forward, swung one leg over the obstruction and worked slowly past.

Slowly the branch began to sag under his weight. Soon he would have to decide whether to stay with the branch till it broke, or drop off while he had some control over where he would land. The branch cracked while he was still trying to make up his mind.