Shayne came back gradually, an inch at a time. He was straining against imaginary ropes, unable to move. Slowly the ropes turned into real ones. His mouth was plastered with tape. His head was bleeding.
Outside in the darkness, George was being sick again. Light glimmered in Shayne’s eyes. He tried for a moment to move his head to a less sticky spot, then gave up and rested.
The puzzle began to assume a kind of shape as more pieces fell into place. He heard voices, and after a time, they began speaking intelligible words.
“I thought Japanese were supposed to be karate experts.” That was Thompson. “She threw you about twelve feet, or was I seeing things?”
“It was aikido,” the Japanese replied. “I was never trained in aikido. And what do we do now? We have perhaps twenty minutes before the police arrive. The first thing to take care of-”
Shayne opened his eyes as a shadow came between him and the light. The shadow changed into an arm. The muzzle of a gun was pressed between his eyes.
Thompson said sharply, “Not yet.”
He knocked the gun away. The Japanese said mildly, “I can wait. So long as you understand that I am the one to do it. I have a debt to pay from Miami.”
“I think we can use him before we kill him. There is a way out of this, if we can think of it.”
“It will take much luck,” the Japanese said flatly. “None of us knows these mountains. We must go different directions and make our way to the coast. We have no chance together.”
Thompson hissed for silence. “I hear something.”
The Japanese was quiet for a moment. “Not the police. It’s too soon.”
“Tell George for God’s sake to be quiet. Let’s get Shayne-”
Shayne felt himself being pulled over on his back. Lights whirled around him. The two men dragged him into another room.
The floor here was unfinished. Thompson worked him onto a plank and pushed it across the floor joists.
“Can you hear me, Shayne? I hope so, for your sake. Don’t wriggle around or you’ll go through to the basement. That’s a ten-foot drop to a concrete floor.”
He returned to the other room and Shayne was left in darkness. Now a new sound was added to the others in his head. A car was laboring up from the main road. Headlights slid across the bare joists overhead, and he heard the familiar tapping valves of the old Checker taxi.
A car door opened.
Reverend Crane Ward’s voice called out cheerfully, “Anybody around? Hello. Hello. Is anybody home?”
Thompson answered, “Well, for the love of God, will you look who’s here? Are we glad to see you! I thought we’d be stuck up here all night. Come in, come in. Careful of that plank.”
Shayne heard footsteps crossing the crude bridge leading up to the front door.
Ward exclaimed, “Mr. Thompson! What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Thompson groaned. “It’s a long story. This is a friend of mine, Yami Koniusha. Reverend Ward.”
The two men exchanged greetings, and Thompson went on, “I didn’t think we had a chance of getting back in time to catch the plane. Friend of mine back in Kansas City is building this place. He’s had nothing but trouble-strikes, mistakes, late deliveries. His foreman walked off with a week’s payroll. Finally he closed down to dig up some refinancing. He asked me to come up and see how it looked. Did you pass a Pontiac convertible on your way up?”
“I think I did. Going about sixty-five.”
“That’s the one. We brought a girl with us, a real wack. She took it into her head that we enticed her up here to take part in some kind of an orgy, and off she went, leaving us stranded.”
He paused, and Ward put in, “I’m looking for Mike Shayne. You haven’t seen him, have you?”
“You mean the big redhead? The one with the blonde?”
Ward chuckled. “That’s a good description. It’s a funny thing-he went barreling off in a taxi about an hour ago, and the taxi came back without him. Should I be worrying about Mike Shayne? Crazy, isn’t it? But I’m worrying about him, just the same. The driver told me where he dropped him, but he refused to go back. So I thought I’d hire the taxi and wander up to see if Shayne could use a lift back. I wonder if he could have been following you people.”
“We haven’t seen anybody.”
“There must be some explanation. He told the driver some wild story about an unfaithful wife, and unless I took the wrong road somewhere-”
Shayne, on the other side of the plywood wall, was inching toward the open doorway. His progress was steady, but much too slow. The men in the other room were winding up their explanations and preparing to leave. Shayne hooked his heels against one of the joists, and pushed off hard. The plank skidded away.
“Did you hear that?” Ward said, alarmed.
Thompson brought the lantern to the door and directed the beam around the unfinished room.
“Must be an animal,” he said. “Well, let’s get out of here. It’s a little spooky. We can cruise around and see if we can find him.”
When the light left the doorway, Shayne pivoted on one hip. For an instant his body was parallel to the joists and he was in real danger of slipping through. He completed the pivot, twisting, came forward on his knees and toppled into the room. When he looked up he was surprised to see that Ward was holding a heavy forty-five automatic.
“Put your light on the floor, Thompson,” he said pleasantly.
Thompson bent down slowly. George Savage, for the second time that night, appeared in the window opening, directly behind the clergyman. He had Shayne’s thirty-eight revolver. He looked almost too weak to stand.
Shayne began making gobbling noises behind the tape, bobbing his head at Ward and willing him to turn around. George stepped, almost fell, into the room and pressed the pistol against the small of Ward’s back.
“Too bad,” Thompson said, straightening. “You’d better drop your gun, Ward. George isn’t feeling his best tonight, but it doesn’t take much strength to squeeze a trigger. Three seconds, George. One-”
Ward’s hand opened slowly. The forty-five fell to the floor. George’s face began working. He retched, crumpling forward. Ward looked around warily as the light blinked off.
There was a rapid change of positions in the darkness. Shayne, in a series of jackknife motions, hitched toward the forty-five.
“Kill the car lights!” Thompson yelled.
Shayne’s knee struck the automatic. He reversed and convulsed himself backward, groping along the floor with spread fingers. The lights outside went off. Somebody tripped over him as his fingers gripped the butt of the forty-five.
“Reverend,” Thompson said softly, almost whispering. “Where are you now, Reverend? You shouldn’t fool around with firearms. You’re in trouble. It’s three against one, and you know you’re going to get clobbered.”
It was actually three against two, but Shayne, tied hand and foot, was not yet a part of the count. A lighted book of matches flew in the window. Thompson and Shayne were alone in the room. Thompson now had the thirty-eight which George had dropped. He whirled and stamped out the flame.
For a moment after that there was silence. It was broken by a flurry of action as two figures collided.
Shayne strained downward against the cord around his wrists. It slipped slightly, allowing him to get the muzzle of the heavy automatic to within three or four inches of his ankles. He wanted to cut the ankle cord, but it would be a risky shot. If he missed by an eighth of an inch, he would shatter his heel.
There was a stealthy movement near him. Glass crunched underfoot. Shayne backed toward the sound. After a half dozen twitching movements, he began feeling behind him for the glass.
For an instant Thompson’s figure, the thirty-eight in his fist, was outlined against a window opening.
“Move in, Yami. He hasn’t got a gun.”
George retched somewhere outside in the darkness. Shayne’s fingers scraped up a few crumbs of glass, but not enough to give him a cutting edge. Swearing to himself, he pressed down hard with the forty-five, doubling his feet up behind him and fighting to bring the muzzle of the automatic into contact with the cord. He raked the gun forward and back, within the limits of his contorted posture.
He was running out of time. He forced his ankles as far apart as they would go, corrected the line of the gun, concentrating hard, and pulled the trigger.
His feet sprang apart.
Thompson fired at the flash. Shayne rolled twice, coming up into a crouch. A figure loomed in a window. Identifying the bull neck and bristling haircut of the Japanese, Shayne hurtled at him, knocking him backward into a pile of sand.
Shayne came down with his shoulder against the other man’s throat. The Japanese grabbed up at him, raking Shayne’s face with his fingernails. Shayne uncoiled, went up in the air, and came down hard with both knees. While the Japanese clutched at himself, groaning, Shayne floundered to his feet and kicked him in the head.
He still had a firm grip on the forty-five, but he was unable to bring it around. He skidded back into the shadow of the building.
His feet struck an overturned bucket. Reversing it, he kicked it into the open. It rolled to the unguarded edge of the cliff and went over with a clatter. Thompson, inside the house, fired blindly at the sound.
There was a slight movement overhead. Looking up, Shayne saw Ward, on his knees, on the staging over the doorway, holding a cinderblock.
“Back,” the Japanese yelled. “Thompson!”
Falling forward, he wrenched at the staging. Ward threw the cinderblock and the staging came down. One of the heavy boards caught Shayne across the knees. He kicked himself free. Thompson, in the doorway, had taken the full weight of the scaffold.
The Japanese threw himself at Ward and the two men grappled, rolling over and over in loose sand. Shayne went on hunting for something sharp enough to cut the remaining cord. He kicked against a shovel. Crouching, he felt for the cutting edge of the blade. It was blunt and useless.
George stumbled against him. Shayne took him out of action again with a hard body block and kicked him twice after coming erect, making sure this time that he placed the kicks exactly where he wanted them.
Ward cried, terrified, “Don’t! For God’s sake, no! Shayne!”
The struggle had moved to the edge of the steep drop. Thompson was still clawing at the planks, trying to free himself. Shayne ran to the two grappling men, in time to see the Japanese, on top, raise his knife. Shayne crouched backward against the Japanese, touched him with the forty-five, and fired.
The bullet’s impact tore the Japanese out of Ward’s grasp and flung him sideward. He clutched out, yelled something, and went over.
Shayne began to feel frantically for the dropped knife.
“Is that you, Mike?” Ward gasped. “What are you looking for? Are you hurt?”
Shayne made an urgent sound. Didn’t the damn fool realize there was no time for questions and answers?
“God, yes-the knife,” Ward said. “Here.”
An instant later Shayne’s wrists were free. He ran for the house, pulling at the tape across his mouth. Changing direction abruptly, he took cover behind the sand pile and considered the changed situation.
The weapons were now evenly distributed, and Shayne had the heavier gun. Thompson was only a hired hand, probably with little personal stake in the venture. As soon as he realized that the Japanese was dead and Shayne had the use of both hands, he would remember the taxi and try to use it to get away.
Shayne crawled out from the protection of the sand pile. Halfway to the taxi, he saw a figure dart out of a shadow, then veer away from the edge of the unfinished swimming pool. It was Thompson. For a few steps he was hidden from Shayne by the shadow of the bulldozer. When he came out into the open again, Shayne took careful aim and shot him in the leg.
With a muffled cry, Thompson fell backward into the excavation. Shayne ran to the Checker and, after starting the motor, wheeled the cab around until its headlights illuminated the edges of the rectangular hole.
“Thompson!” he called. “Say something if you can hear me.
There was no answer.
Leaving the taxi, Shayne circled toward the bulldozer. “Put up your head and I’ll blow it off, Thompson,” he called. “How can I miss? Throw your gun out. Then crawl out slowly.”
There was still no answer. Shayne waved Ward back with a peremptory movement of the forty-five and slid around the bulldozer. Its blade was raised a few feet above the ground. He eased forward and called again.
“Thompson, you’re through. You must know that by now. You’re all alone. Yami’s dead and George is out cold. I have the forty-five. I’m in no hurry. I can wait till you bleed to death or put your head up out of that hole.”
There was a flicker of flame. A bullet whanged against the bulldozer blade and whined off into the darkness.
Shayne swung up into the bulldozer’s high cab. He didn’t know this model, but all the controls seemed to be in the usual place. Thompson scrambled into view and snapped a shot up at him. Shayne switched on the ignition. As the powerful motor took hold, he pulled the blade lever, and the blade came up slowly to protect the cab. Thompson slid back, scratching at the loose dirt.
Shayne put the monster in gear. It lunged clumsily forward. As soon as it began to tip, he cut the switch and set the stabilizers, two long hydraulic props which served to anchor the machine when the backhoe was being used.
He called down, “Let’s do it this way, Thompson. You might not feel like answering questions after you get out. Two things I want to know. Throw your gun out first.”
Thompson screamed an obscenity and tried to come in under the blade. Shayne put a forty-five slug in the dirt a few inches from his hand.
Thompson scrambled back. He had lost his glasses. His clothes were torn and filthy. He lay on his back, breathing heavily and staring into the bulldozer’s single headlight.
“Two questions,” Shayne said. “Who are you working for? Where’s the gold going?”
Thompson stared up without answering.
As Shayne started the motor again, Thompson did a terrified scrabbling dance in the loose dirt.
“The Paladin!” he yelled. “Forced landing. That’s all she told me-Shayne, look out!”
The bulldozer lurched. The left stabilizer had gone down to solid ground, but the right one was beginning to slip. The cab swung. Shayne yanked at the hydraulic control. The stabilizer went in deeper, arresting the tilt for an instant. Then the edge of the hole caved in and the big machine started to go.
Thompson, below, twisted onto his hands and knees and scrambled desperately. “The Paladin!”
Shayne pulled himself to the door and jumped. Thompson looked up over his shoulder and screamed. Slowly and deliberately, the bulldozer leaned forward and came down on top of him.