The Navy found us just before dark. Whatever kind of boat it was—it was larger than a yacht and smaller than an aircraft carrier—I was pleased to see it. It paced us for a few minutes, then winched down a motor launch. There were half a dozen men on board, two sailors, three machine-gun toting gendarmes, and the gargantuan figure of Commissaire Tama. Even though I’d been in radio communication with him for the last two hours I still heaved a sigh of relief. He, at least, wouldn’t shoot on sight. I hoped.
As he clambered aboard with his usual preternatural grace I held out my wrists and grinned. He scowled at me in exasperation, clearly of two minds. A gendarme stepped forward but Tama waved him back impatiently. “Monsieur LaRoche fancies himself what the Americans call a ‘wiseacre.’ I’m afraid that we shall just have to bear it.”
“Baudchon is still breathing,” I said, nodding toward the hatchway. I reached down to pick up a dark leather valise. “And this, my dear Commissaire, is $900,000 in cash.”
* * * *
Charles Wentworth Payton was waiting for us on the waterfront when the Navy steamed into Papeete at midnight, along with assorted ambulances and half the Gendarmerie. Colonel Schneider was not among them. A Capitaine Richecoeur seemed to be in charge. He supervised the loading of the stretcher bearing the inert form of Jérôme Baudchon into one ambulance and of a second carrying Yves-Louis Buisson into another. It’d been Yves-Louis’ lucky day after all: a naval helicopter had spotted his life jacket bobbing in the waves only forty minutes after I’d been picked up. His chances of survival and a lifetime in a French prison were in no doubt at all, unlike Baudchon, whose every breath was in the nature of a miracle.
Payton nodded distantly at me in greeting. “You’ve got it?” he asked harshly.
I sighed and smiled bleakly. I hadn’t expected gratitude but a man can always hope. “Commissaire Tama was kind enough to allow me to present it to you personally.” I handed Payton the valise. “You’ll probably have to turn it over to Tama, since it’s evidence, but in the meantime there it is: $900,000 in cash.”
“Nine hundred?” Payton’s eyebrows rose. “What happened to the rest?”
“You recall offering me one hundred large ones to save the ransom for you?” I said sardonically. “That’s what I’ve done. Along with getting myself shot at, bombed, driven at, pushed over cliffs, clubbed on the head, beaten up, and jailed along the way, all on your behalf. So I’ve deducted it in advance for investment in the LaRoche Retirement Fund.” I eyed him grimly. “That way there will be no misunderstandings.”
He stared at me for a long moment while gendarmes and sailors brushed past impatiently. “I see,” he said at last, and turned to Tama, who was bobbing up and down beside us. Three minutes later a studiously blank-faced Tama relieved me of my $100,000.
“Evidence,” he said dourly. “You’ll have to fight it out with Payton about what belongs to whom.”
Payton leered at me in triumph and turned away.
I nodded, unsurprised, but unable to keep myself from clenching my jaws in anger. “A receipt, please,” I said shortly.
Tama sighed noisily. “Grow up, LaRoche. A receipt for ransom money? Proving that you picked it up? Come on. I had enough trouble getting Schneider taken off this case before he could strafe your boat with napalm—now you want to talk yourself right back into jail again?”
I waggled my head in resignation. “Screw it,” I said. “Who wants to be rich, anyhow?”
* * * *
It was three in the morning by the time we finished listening to the tape I’d made. We were drinking coffee and eating ham sandwiches in an office of the Juge d’Instruction. Besides Tama and Payton, there was Captain Richecoeur from the Gendarmerie and a legal type named Duffieux fronting for the Juge d’Instruction, who was safely home in bed.
“It seems pretty clear,” said Tama, “that Baudchon and company were responsible for the murder of that gendarme. I think that under the circumstances we might be wise to overlook Monsieur LaRoche’s…precipitate behavior in leaving us so suddenly the other day.”
The legal beagle examined me sourly. “Highly irregular,” he pronounced. “There are still a number of ambiguities which need elucidation, as well as the matter of the Yamaha motor—”
Tama waved a hand in exasperation. “For God’s sake, man, he’d just been knocked over a cliff, blown up, and tortured by Schneider’s goons. The man belonged in a hospital. Clearly he was not responsible for his actions. Do you want a public hearing about all that?”
Captain Richecoeur scowled and Duffieux hesitated. “Furthermore,” Tama went on, “you recall that LaRoche had not yet formally been charged with anything—he was merely helping us in our inquiries. Technically it could be argued—”
“Oh very well,” conceded Duffieux irritably. “I’ll have to clear it with the Juge d’Instruction tomorrow, but we’ll assume for now that LaRoche is a free man.”
I sketched a salute of humble acknowledgment.
“But,” Duffieux cautioned, “there are still a number of questions which must first be cleared up to my satisfaction.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as his eyes closed in concentration. “For instance,” he said, “we have now recovered the ransom, and we have the killers of the unfortunate gendarme. Does this now mean that these three wretched paratroopers are, after all, also responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Mrs. Payton?”
At his name Charles Wentworth Payton looked up from where he had been nodding in a corner. He stared at us bleary-eyed.
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s just as I said: they were in jail when at least one of the ransom notes was sent; when the ten million francs was picked up by Hitler; and when the Wests were murdered. Unless we go back to the old accomplice theory, there’s no way they could have done all that.”
Duffieux removed his spectacles and began to massage his eyeballs. “Then it’s just as Baudchon says on that tape: the Wests were responsible for kidnapping and killing Mrs. Payton, and the paras merely took over the ransom demands?”
“Why would Baudchon lie about it?” I asked. “He’s already admitted to blowing up a gendarme. Is there any worse crime than that in France?” From the corner of my I eye I caught a glimpse of Captain Richecoeur of the Gendarmerie grimly shaking his head. “So what’s another murder or two? The paras simply lucked onto those frozen fingers and decided to see if they could cash in on them.”
“Not so very lucky,” contradicted Captain Richecoeur. “For them, that is.”
Tama leaned forward, his lips tight with exasperation, and tapped his finger rhythmically on his desk, to catch our attention. “In that case,” he said slowly, spacing his words to coincide with the taps, “who…killed…the…Wests?”
“That’s easy,” I said. “The person who originated the whole kidnapping scheme and who stood to gain the most from it.”
“You mean the Wests weren’t acting alone?” said Tama with a faint sigh and an expression of here-we-go-again.
“Of course not. It’s just as you thought when you arrested me for being their partner. You just had the wrong man.”
“Well, who’s the right one then,” demanded Tama, nearly beside himself. “And where is he?”
“Where?” I asked wonderingly. “Not far at all. In fact, right over there.” I turned in my chair and raised my arm to point at Charles Wentworth Payton.