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

“I don’t quite understand this.” Shayne frowned. “She seems perfectly capable of taking care of herself. If she isn’t, flight attendants will be aboard. I have no idea how she got my name or knew I would be taking this flight.”

“The girl is blind, Mr. Shayne.”

“Oh. Well, in that case...”

The clerk was relieved. “Thank you, Mr. Shayne. Have a most pleasant flight.”

Shayne approached the seated Chinese girl. “Hello, Dr. Su Lin. I’m Michael Shayne.”

She turned her face in his direction and held out a slender hand. “Good of you to help me,” she said in a soft voice.

Shayne gently shook her hand. “They are about to call our flight and open the gates.”

When Mary Su Lin arose from her bench, Shayne discovered the top of her head didn’t quite reach his shoulder. She took the arm he offered.

“This is good of you, Mr. Shayne,” she said. “I suppose I could have managed alone, but since we have a common interest I decided you might not mind being burdened with a sightless person.”

As they walked, Shayne, matching his usually long strides to Mary’s short steps, said, “What is it we have in common?”

“The Golden Buddha.”

The long hours ahead crossing the Pacific would be time enough to find out her interest in the Golden Buddha of Hsinkao Shan, Shayne decided, and concentrated on leading Mary through the crowded air terminal to their boarding gate.

Aboard the plane Shayne helped Mary fasten her seatbelt. As the 747 moved out and down the blacktop alley for the head of the runway the pilot would use for take-off, Mary Su Lin seemed to shrink in her seat and Shayne noticed that her hands were trembling.

“Are you afraid to fly?” he asked.

“Always.” She managed a stiff smile, but her olive-skinned face was pale.

Shayne put an arm around the slender Chinese girl’s shoulders. “Satchel Paige had something to say about flying,” he told her, then decided against quoting Satchel to the frightened girl until they were safely airborne.

“Sat-chel? What an extraordinary, name. Who was he?” she asked.

“You’d have to be a baseball can to remember Satch,” Shayne told her. “He was a pitcher in the black leagues who finally made the majors at the end of his career.”

The pilots had been cleared for take-off. As the huge plane gathered speed the jet-engine whine rose to a banshee scream.

“What did he say?” Mary asked.

“Tell you when we’re in the air,” Shayne said.

The plane’s nose tilted and the 747 went into a 45 degree climb, the maze of criss-crossed runways-quickly dwindling until San Francisco International looked like some sort of board for a child’s game.

Finally the captain announced on the PA that they were at 33,000 feet, doing 500 knots with good weather-predicted between the west coast and Honolulu.

Shayne helped Mary unbuckle her seatbelt and tuck it away.

“Now tell me what it was this Satchel person said about air travel?” she insisted, no longer pale and trembling.

“Oh?” Shayne was wishing she’d forget what he’d started to tell her. “The airlines ain’t goin’ to hurt you” he quoted, “but they may kill you.”

To his surprise Mary laughed, and her laughter was as sweet as a tinkling temple bell. “Your Mr. Satchel could have been Chinese with that sort of philosophy,” she told him. “Fatalism is our defense against fear, but I’m too Americanized to be a good fatalist.”

San Francisco’s famous skyline rode on a pillow of clouds behind them, a toy city, and the blue Pacific below was dimpled and flecked with tiny crests of white foam.

“How do you feel now?” Shayne asked the girl.

“Much better.” She gave him a fleeting smile. “Forgive me for being such a coward.”

“On one condition.”

“And what is that?”

“Tell me two things; why we have a common interest in the Golden Buddha; and how did you know I was booked on this flight?”

A pert stewardess picked that moment to ask, “May I serve you something to drink, Miss Su Lin and Mr. Shayne? Luncheon will be served in half an hour.”

“What will you have?” Shayne asked Mary Su Lin.

“A gimlet please.”

“Make mine a double brandy, Martell’s if you have it aboard,” Shayne ordered. “Just ice.”

“I believe we have your brand,” the stewardess told Shayne, and disappeared into the dim after-reaches of the 747.

“The size of these double-deck birds always amazes me,” Shayne told the girl.

“Me too,” she said. “It’s as if we were a small airborne world.”

“It’s question and answer time,” Shayne reminded Mary.

“Dr. Feldman, when I called him yesterday, referred me to your secretary,” she told him, “so that answers your last question first.”

“You’re with the Seberg Foundation?”

The girl frowned slightly. “In an advisory capacity only. My field is Oriental art and philosophy.”

“My interest in the Hsinkao Shan Buddha is to see it reaches Miami safely,” Shayne said. “But Dr. Feldman must have told you that. Now tell me why you’re flying out to Taiwan?”

Mary laughed. “Don’t you enjoy a good puzzle, Mr. Shayne?”

“I’m Mike to my friends,” Shayne told her.

“Mike it is then.”

“I don’t like puzzles,” Shayne said. “Not when I have a job to do.”