The Yellow Cat Mystery (13 page)

“Poof!” Pedro said, and he began to laugh.

“You prob’ly won’t even get the five hundred dollars,” Djuna said earnestly. “You’ll take him to Miami, and then he’ll prob’ly say he has to take the bag—the one Rilla is going to take to Cap’n Andy—and sell the counterfeit money in it, somewhere in Miami, before he can give you your share of what he gets for it, in
good
money. So he’ll go ashore and leave you waiting for him in your boat, and that’s the last time you’ll ever see him. He’ll
never
come back. You’ll never see him again, I tell you!”

“How you know all thees?” asked Pedro suspiciously. He smiled as if he didn’t believe anything Djuna had said, but Djuna could tell from the worried look in his eyes that he was beginning to wonder if Djuna might not be right about Dr. Hammer, “How you know thees?”

“How do you suppose?” Djuna retorted. “I found it out just by putting a lot of little things together—just the way I figured out that you used to be called the Yellow Cat.”

Pedro grunted. But he stood there in silence for a moment, thoughtfully rubbing his chin, and Djuna could see that he was beginning to believe that he had been foolish to trust in Dr. Hammer’s story. Finally he spoke.

“Where ees thees bank you theenk he ees goin’ to rob?” he asked, slowly.

Djuna managed to hide his relief at this sign that Pedro was impressed by what he had told him. “Oh, of course,” he said. “Dr. Hammer would never let you come near his office, would he? For fear people would think you were working with him! Well, his office is right over the bank in the Hamilton Block, and all he has to do is to cut through the floor, to get into the bank vault! And you prob’ly know those bowling alleys in that building—that’s another thing that makes it just right for Dr. Hammer, because if he makes any noise at all when he’s getting into the bank, the bowling noise will drown it out! That’s why he went back to his office yesterday, so he could start working on it just as soon as the bank closed. Don’t you see?”

“Maybe ees so,” said Pedro slowly, still not entirely convinced. “But maybe somebody stop heem on the street when he leave an’ say, ‘What you got een that bag, huh?’ Ees beeg reesk, no? What you feegure he do then, huh?”

“Why do you suppose Dr. Hammer paid Rilla Hamilton a dollar for a bunch of worthless shells and promised to fix her doll’s teeth?” Djuna demanded, and then went on to answer the question himself. “Because he wants
her
to come over to his office this afternoon and get the bag containing the money he will steal from the bank and take it over to the beach to Cap’n Andy! Who would suspect the daughter of the cashier of the bank of carrying a bag full of money away from her father’s bank?” Djuna pointed out. “And Rilla told Tommy and me that Dr. Hammer told her he has to get a train for Jacksonville at four-thirty this afternoon. He knows that Rilla will tell that to the police, after they find out the bank has been robbed, on Monday when it opens. And that’s where the police will start looking for him. But he is going to go with you to Miami in your boat and no one will look for him there at first. When he leaves your boat he’ll go to the big airport there and take a plane for Brazil or some place in South America and get clean away!”

“Thees how you feegure it out, eh?” Pedro said.

“Yes,” Djuna told him. “Don’t you remember what he said when you asked him what he wanted you to do with me?”

“Yes,” Pedro breathed and the suspicion in his eyes was now turning to conviction. “He say he ees not goin’ reesk having you upset theengs at the last moment. ‘Another day—’ he say, and then he stop!”

“And you asked him if he would have the money for the big, fast boat in another day,” Djuna supplied, “and he told you, No, you’d have to be patient a little longer. Then he made up the story about the counterfeit money and said he was going to give you five hundred dollars—because he knew you were suspicious of him. I was watching him. I could tell. But you’re a sucker if you help him get away with the bank money he is going to steal! You won’t even get the five hundred dollars he promised you!”

“Eet ees true!” Pedro cried, and he began to pace up and down the single room of the ramshackle hut, cursing while he paced. Suddenly he whirled in front of Djuna and knelt down and untied the ropes that bound his legs. “I tell you sometheeng!” he shouted at Djuna, his face enraged. “He cannot go to Brazeel or any place else weethout a passaport. He keepa th’ passaport in hees eenside coat pocket. He show it to me one time! You tell da cop and they get heem before he can go any place!”

“I’d tell them if I could get away from here,” Djuna said, and he tried to stand up. But there was no feeling in his feet. They were like two wooden blocks fastened to the ends of his legs. He tottered and would have fallen if Pedro hadn’t grabbed him and lowered him back on the chair on which he had been sitting.

“I’m awful tired,” he said. He knew he had won his battle with Pedro, but he felt as exhausted and confused as he had when Pedro was trying to awaken him.

The false dawn outside was a real dawn now and the first rays of the rising sun were casting their light across the little clearing in front of the hut.

“I—I—” Djuna said, and then the room began to rock and the world became a yawning black abyss. Djuna fought to keep from falling in it and then blackness folded around him and he lost consciousness.

When Djuna opened his eyes again and had by slow degrees brought back remembrance of the ramshackle hut and the things around him he found that he was lying on the dirty mattress of the old iron bed.

But it was not as it had been when Pedro had tried to awaken him early that morning. Although he had not eaten for twenty-four hours and he felt battered and weak, some of his strength had been restored. He knew that Pedro must have placed him on the bed. He called Pedro’s name but only the dull echo of his own voice came back to him and he sensed that Pedro had fled in panic.

It was then that he remembered the watch that he always wore on his left wrist. He couldn’t tell whether it was still there or whether Pedro had stolen it. He slowly lifted his arm and saw that the watch was there. He held it to his ear. It was running and the hands on the dial said that it was three o’clock.

Then a kaleidoscopic train of thoughts marched through his mind and he slowly swung his feet over the edge of the bed and sat upright. The effort brought a groan of pain to his lips but in the urgency of the things that came back to him he hardly noticed the pain. He had remembered, among other things, that the Dolphin Beach Bank closed at two o’clock each afternoon! If the ideas he had put together to tell Pedro to save his own life were true, Dr. Hammer would be down in the vault of the bank right now. He would be packing the little pigskin bag he had told about with all the currency he could get in it before he gave it to Rilla to take to the beach for him!

Djuna put his feet on the bare board floor and rose. He staggered sideways like a fiddler crab as he put his weight on his feet. The room began to dance and he grabbed the back of one of the kitchen chairs to steady himself. After a few moments, the dizziness passed and he staggered across the room and out to the porch.

The bright glare of the sun on the sand and the waters of the small lagoon half-blinded him as he leaned against the doorway. He saw that Pedro’s powerboat, and the rowboat, were both gone. He studied the impenetrable wall of jungle around the lagoon and tried to find an opening in it. He hobbled out on the sand and studied the jungle that closed in behind and on each side of the shack, and it seemed almost as impenetrable as the jungle around the lagoon.

Then the roar of one of the big four-motored passenger planes he had seen flying their regular course above the beach for the past two days came to his ears and he put his hand up to shade the sun from his eyes. The plane was almost directly overhead, flying a course due south to Miami. He knew as he watched it and got the position of the sun that the business section of Dolphin Beach and the police station and the Dolphin Beach Bank were all off to the right, through the wall of jungle.

He glanced at his watch again and saw that it was ten minutes after three. He went back in the shack and searched for something to eat. There was only a box of opened crackers on the table and a bottle half full of water. He deliberated about drinking the water and finally succumbed and put the mouth of the bottle to his dry, cracked lips and drank. He forced two of the crackers down his throat, drank some more of the water and put more crackers in his pocket.

He searched the room and found a small dull hatchet that had been used to split dead wood for the cooking stove. Armed with that, he again went out on the beach and picked the most penetrable-looking spot in the jungle to the right. He found when he started through it that it wasn’t nearly as formidable as it had looked. He threw away the hatchet when he found that he could slip between the scrub and the trees and that if he avoided the sharp saw-grass and the barbed fronds of one kind of palm tree he could avoid having his bare legs torn to ribbons.

After five minutes he came to a small stretch of water, much like the one in front of the shack where he had been imprisoned. It came out of a wall of jungle and disappeared into another one. There was no ceiling of foliage overhead. He plunged in and swam toward the sun. Then terror gripped him as he remembered what Tommy had said about water moccasins and alligators. But he continued a steady crawl until he scrambled out the other side and picked his way carefully through the shallow water and the gnarled roots of the mangrove trees that edged the still lagoon.

Again he plunged into the wall of jungle and he was covered with bleeding scratches when suddenly the jungle came to an end and he found himself fighting his way through palmetto scrub. Elation surged through him and gave him new strength as he saw that beyond the palmettos there was an immense field of green beans much like the ones he had seen west of the town. And half a mile away, at the end of the field, there was a highway upon which cars were speeding north and south.

Beyond the highway to the west he saw the enormous cylindrical tank, mounted on steel stilts, that contained the Dolphin Beach water supply. Tommy had pointed it out to him and had explained that it was the town’s reservoir, and Djuna knew that it was only a few blocks from the police station. When he came to the edge of the field he took a deep breath and began to run between two rows of beans toward the highway.

When he reached the end of the bean field he ran on across the weed-studded expanse of sand that bordered what he knew now was the Federal Highway. He darted across it and on the other side took a stance at the roadside and began to make the traditional sign of the hitchhiker with his thumb. No one paid the slightest attention to him. The drivers of the cars that sped by didn’t even look at him. The riders in the back of the cars that went by gazed at him with wonder-filled eyes as they turned their heads to stare. They were wondering how such a bedraggled, bloody and rumpled boy had escaped the attention of the police.

After only a few minutes he gave up in despair. He guessed correctly that the red light that hung in the center of the six-lane highway, about a mile away, was the one over the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and the Federal Highway. He started to trot toward it, his body now wet with perspiration and protesting with every step. But he kept doggedly on. When he was about a quarter of a mile from the light he came to a paved road that ran into the Federal Highway from the right, and looking down it he could see the freight station of the Florida East Coast Railroad. He cut to the right, down the paved road, without breaking his stride as he remembered that the freight station was next to the passenger station—and that the station was only around the corner from the bank.

He strained and tried to run a little faster as he saw that the hands of his watch were at four o’clock. But his body could not respond to his mind’s appeal. He knew now that he was on the verge of exhaustion again, and he only prayed that he would have the strength to get to the police station and gasp out his story in time for them to stop Dr. Hammer.

And then the horrible thought came to him that he might be wrong! Suppose Dr. Hammer
wasn’t
trying to rob the bank? Suppose the police rushed up to his office to find him innocently building shelves, instead of cutting down into the vault? He knew he didn’t have any proof unless they actually caught Dr. Hammer in the act, or
after
he had robbed it. Indecision, coupled with his physical weakness, caused Djuna’s stride to break, and he nearly slipped to his knees, but he kept on running. He told himself that his reasoning
couldn’t
be wrong …

As he swung around the corner of the street on which the bank in the Hamilton Block was, he saw Rilla Hamilton come out of the arcade with a pigskin bag swinging in her hand! She walked across the pavement and climbed into a car that was parked diagonally in front of the bank. Djuna gasped and almost stopped running as he saw that her father, Mr. Hamilton, the cashier of the bank, was driving the car as it pulled away! He tried to shout, but no sound came from his dry lips.

His breath was rasping in his throat as he glanced at his watch and saw that it was twenty minutes past four. There wasn’t time to go to the police now,
if
Dr. Hammer had cut through the vault and the money he had stolen was in the bag Rilla had been carrying. Even in his exhausted condition Djuna couldn’t help giggling a little hysterically at the idea that Mr. Hamilton unconsciously might be helping Dr. Hammer rob his own bank!

Uncertainty seized him again. The only thing that sustained his conviction that Dr. Hammer had robbed the bank was that Dr. Hammer had wanted
him
killed. Then he remembered the passport Pedro had told him about. Pedro had said that Dr. Hammer couldn’t get away without the passport. “If he
has
robbed the bank,” Djuna thought desperately, “he can’t get away if I can get his passport!”

But his mind was far from clear as he swung around the doorway and into the arcade of the Hamilton Block.