Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 4, April 1980

“Like an animal in a zoo I’m fed boiled fish and rice once a day in the evening. The priggish Mongol I’ve mentioned seems to be the chief cook and bottle washer around this lovely mountain retreat. At any rate he serves my food. I’d assume they won’t vary the routine for two additional guests. Why do you ask? You getting hungry? I hope you like fish and rice. I don’t.”

“For Mike to get us out of this mess he needs to know the routine they follow,” Mary Su Lin told the woman.

Dr. Stephanie Scott raised an eyebrow. “Is Miss Know-it-all your mistress, Shayne?”

“I am not!” Mary Su Lin said hotly. “I came along with Mike as a watchdog for the Seberg Foundation. It seems Joseph Seberg doesn’t trust you.”

“Well, now that’s nice!”

“What we don’t need is for you two to get into a hair-pulling contest,” Shayne said in a crisp voice, “so knock it off.”

Dr. Stephanie Scott took a deep breath. “So all right. You’ve made your point, Shayne.”

“I hope so. We hang together or be hanged separately, as the cliche goes. What happens while you’re eating, Stephanie?”

When Shayne used her first name, it seemed to touch a cord that dissolved the woman’s brash manner. She’d used it to cover the squirming worms of naked fear assailing her.

“They leave the door open.” Stephanie’s voice dropped to its normal husky register. “When I’ve finished eating the cook, or whatever he is, comes back to make sure I haven’t eaten the plate and chopsticks too. God knows I stay hungry enough to do that if I could!”

“What are you given to drink?” Shayne asked. “I’ve noticed we’re not left any water.”

“Green tea and that’s all. Water up here is either bad or scarce. It’s bitter stuff served in a glass.”

“Bitter?” Mary Su Lin asked.

“Yes. Very.”

“Green tea shouldn’t be,” Mary Su Lin told Stephanie. “Not if it’s made properly.”

“Or drugged,” Shayne said.

Stephanie’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t I think of that? I’ve been sleeping like a baby since they brought me up here. Usually I have to take a pill.”

“Drugging the victim is S.O.P. with kidnappers,” Shayne told the woman and the girl. “Where’s the guard while you eat with the door to this room open?”

“Out in the hallway.”

“All right,” Shayne said. “Here’s the way we make a break this evening.”

V

“Very well and good,” Stephanie said when Shayne had laid out their course of action, “but what then? We’re stranded on a mountain somewhere in Taiwan. What do we do, hitchhike?” She nodded to where Mary Su Lin was sitting quietly. “And what about her?”

“What about me?” Mary Su Lin spoke up.

“You’re blind. It’s going to be hard enough for Shayne and me to scramble off this mountain without having to play seeing-eye-dogs to you.”

Before Mary Su Lin could speak, Shayne said, “Just knock it off, both of you!” He turned to Stephanie. “Let me have that dagger.”

Without a word she handed it, in its soft leather sheath, to him. Shayne raised the left leg of his pants and tucked the sheathed dagger into his sock, but hot without first testing its edge with his thumb.

“Where in the world did you get the dagger?” he asked Stephanie.

“I found it in a shop in Tapei when I first came to the island,” she said. “I bought it for a friend back in the states who collects weapons, but decided I’d better carry it until you came.”

“Why?”

“My hotel room was rifled twice shortly after I arrived,” Stephanie explained. “And there have been some other suspicious things happening.”

“Such as?”

“I’ve been followed wherever I go. That’s why I asked Dr. Feldman to send someone like you out here.”

“Where is the Golden Buddha now?” Shayne asked.

“Aboard a ship named the oriental Trader with the rest of the exhibit. It’s docked at Kaosiung on the southern end of the island instead of Tapei’s port, Chilung. I checked out of my hotel to stay aboard ship until you arrived. I thought I’d be safer there.”

“How did Chung Lee grab you?” Shayne wanted to know.

“He offered to drive me down to Kaosiung,” Stephanie said. “Instead I wound up here.”

“Did you leave a message for me at your hotel?” Shayne asked.

Stephanie made a wry face. “Our dear Chinese friend said he’d take care of that.”

Chung Lee’s plotting was clever, Shayne realized. The American consul on Taiwan would have no reason to believe anything was wrong and institute a search for them.

The ship now in Kaosiung, if the Nationalists took Chung Lee’s bait, would be on the high seas for a southern mainland port before Americans on Taiwan knew three of their citizens were missing. And he suspected Mary Su Lin, Stephanie Scott and Mike Shayne, when they didn’t appear, would be implicated by Chung Lee in the plot. Shayne was certain the man was clever enough, and had the connections, to cover himself in that way.

The sun was down and darkness was coming quickly. The aroma of cooking fish and rice had invaded the room where they were held captive half an hour ago. Shayne had rehearsed both Mary Su Lin and Stephanie Scott in the roles they were to play.

“Don’t spare your lungs,” he’d warned the woman.