The Scarred Man (17 page)

    I had expected her to come up clawing like a wildcat, but she still lay under me. My whole left side felt blasted. The real pain had not yet begun. My arm and shoulder felt as if I had been hit with a sledgehammer.

    I rolled off her. She still did not move. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was rapid and shallow. I reached for one of the mooring lines I kept under the bunk and began to wrap it around her, working very clumsily with just the one arm but somehow getting it around her from head to foot like a cocoon, making up in quantity of rope what I lacked in skill. At the end, I had to use my teeth to tie the knots.

    By the time I had finished, her eyes were open, and she was beginning to struggle. I ignored her and ripped open my shirt and plastered a towel against my shoulder under the shirt. I didn't know if the bullet was still inside or had gone on through. The question seemed academic. If I didn't get help soon, I would be finished in any case.

    I flicked on the switch of the radio telephone and waited for the little warm-up light to come on. When the bulb was glowing, I pushed the transmit button and spoke into the hand mike.

    "Mayday! Mayday! This is the yacht
Corazon
anchored in the lee of Great Isaac. I am badly in need of assistance from any vessel in the vicinity. Come in, please. Over."

    It was no use. The bulb was not flickering the way it was supposed to when the set was putting out. It didn't take more than a second to spot the trouble. The mike wire had been torn out of the set. So she had thought of that too before she came up with the gun.

    The pain was beginning to grip me now. My head was spinning. I opened one of the galley drawers and pulled out a butcher knife. Mary Caldwell's eyes were open, and she was watching me as I stood with the knife in my hand. If there was any fear in her, it did not show. She said two words, both unprintable.

    I dragged myself up the companionway. The fresh air cleared my head slightly. I made my way forward with the knife in my hand and began to saw away at the anchor rope. The one-inch nylon was tough, but the tension on it helped, and after a few minutes I managed to get through enough of it so that the last strand parted by itself. As it did, my legs gave under me, and I pitched forward, very nearly falling overboard, but managing to save myself with one hand on the pulpit. I hung there for what seemed a long time before I had the strength to work my way back to the cockpit and turn the starter switch. The diesel went off almost at once, and I pushed the gear lever forward and headed south away from Great Isaac. As the light flicked by, I could just barely make out the shape of the Piper Cub moored close in to the shore, and then I remembered that Red's rubber boat was still tied alongside. I picked up the knife again and slashed the line and saw the black shape slide away in our wake.

    Mary Caldwell was cursing. I could hear her very clearly even above the roar of the engine. I have never, before or since, heard such venom in any voice.

    It seemed that she would never run out, but at last it stopped.

    I flicked on the compass light. In its soft red glow, I could just make out Red's face still wearing that twisted grin.

    Bimini would be the nearest inhabited place. Twenty-two nautical miles at a hull speed of seven knots. At the very least three hours. Maybe more if the weather continued to deteriorate. Could I remain conscious at the wheel for the next three hours? Perhaps if I did not move around too much, I could do it. But first there was something to be disposed of.

    I screwed in the knob that locked the wheel in place and then moved to cope with Red. Slumped against the cockpit seat as he was, the problem was to get his torso up to the level of the coaming. It was not only his weight; he was slippery with blood, and I had only the one hand. I heaved at him in that butcher shop of a cockpit while he grinned up at me. At last, I had his head and shoulders over the coaming, and after that, it was comparatively easy. I waited until we rolled broadside on a crest and then let his own weight take him. He went over in two hundred fathoms. The three knot current of the Stream would carry him north until the sharks finished with him. Someone would find the plane, of course, and the raft, but nothing more. I dropped the .45 in after him and slung a couple of bucketsful of sea water over the blood-stained deck. It was not perfect, but it was the best I could do. In any case it I did not seem likely that Red's friends would be apt to report his disappearance to the police. He was one more in a long list of pirates whose bones littered the ocean floor.

    I peered down at Mary Caldwell. At the sight of me, she began to spew forth more invective. Her eyes were wild, and her lips were flecked with foam. I went back to the wheel. Her curses died away.

    Time dragged on.
Corazon
plowed forward through the heavy swells. My shoulder was on fire. The bleeding had almost stopped, but the pain was getting worse. The stars were obscured by clouds, and the night was of such a blackness that it seemed to extend to the very edges of the universe. My world was the small red circle of light that illuminated the compass. Once, when we rose up on a rolling hill of black water, I saw the faintest flicker of swiftly moving light off to the southeast. Possibly it was the light on Gun Cay. My brain tried to cope with such matters as twenty-mile range and six-foot height above sea level, but it was too much for me. I slumped forward, eyes closed, held upright only by the wheel. A sprinkle of icy rain awakened me, and I brought her back on course.

    Red lights ahead, four of them in a vertical row. The radio tower on Bimini. Just the faintest touch of pink in the morning sky.

    "Shaw!"

    I did not answer.

    "Do you hear me, Shaw?" She sounded quite rational now. "Kill me, Shaw."

    I concentrated on the lights of the tower.

    "It's what you came for, isn't it?" she said, her voice beginning to rise again.

    "The killing is over," I managed to say.

    The obscenities flowed from the open sewer that was her pretty little mouth.

    The sky grew brighter. Now I could make out the black hump that was the island. The entrance to the channel still lay well to the south, another hour perhaps. I remembered the flask of brandy I kept under the seat for emergencies. I uncapped it and drank it in two big swallows. The coughing nearly tore my arm off at the shoulder, but when it had finished, I did feel a little stronger.

    I headed east through the channel into the first rays of the sun. The town was still asleep. Palm trees, white sand, scrubby hills, pink and white houses, some of them with lights still burning. A couple of amphibious planes were drawn up on the runway that led down to the water. The flag of Her Britannic Majesty lay still in the morning quiet.

    I steered for the dock. A small black boy in ragged shorts was fishing from the far end. His feet dangled over the water.

    I cut the motor. The ketch banged up against the pilings. The boy came running to take my lines.

    "Yes, Cap," he said. "You want to buy some nice fish, Cap?"

    "No," I said. "I want a policeman."

    His eyes seemed to grow as big as tennis balls as he stared down into the blood-spattered cockpit.

    When the policeman came, tall and black in his crisp white uniform, I was still holding on to consciousness.

    "We'd better take you straight to clinic," he said in his soft Bahamian voice.

    "Both of us."

    He looked down into the cabin.

    "Have you got a notebook?" I asked.

    "Certainly."

    "My name is Shaw. Hers is Caldwell. Get in touch with Miami Homicide."

    "Somebody's dead?"

    "You might say that," I answered in the weariest voice I have ever heard. "What with one thing and another, quite a few."