Blow-Down, page 16
Dave Perry was not there to speed his large and eccentric house guest on his way. He was at the Comandancia, answering questions.
The Comandante himself was doing the questioning, with Walter Lane at his elbow. Lane did plenty of listening, but no talking. He scarcely dared breathe. The Comandante had lent him a suit of white drills to replace his wet clothes, and they were several sizes too small for him. Every sudden move imperiled buttons and seams.
“Perry,” said the Comandante, “my sergeant said he followed you from the Plaza, where I left you, to Miguel Wong’s, where you met Adolf von Graulitz.”
“I didn’t meet Graulitz,” Perry protested. “I went there to see if Manzana was with him. Graulitz didn’t expect me and didn’t even seem pleased to see me.”
“But you left Wong’s with Graulitz, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I went as far as the waterfront with Graulitz His launch had come over from Liberica for him, and he said he was going home. I went with him to be sure he got in the boat. I don’t like the idea of him hanging around here.”
“And you got in the boat with him?”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t even stay until he left. His mechanic had some trouble starting the engine, so I went away.”
“As a matter of fact, you didn’t go directly to the waterfront, did you?” said the Comandante. “You went into a cantina to have a drink with your friend—pardon me, your arch-enemy—Herr von Graulitz?”
“I went into a cantina, yes, but not for a drink. I went in because there’s a back door to the place, and I wanted to shake that dumb sergeant you’d put on my trail.”
“Why did you want to shake the sergeant, Perry?”
“Because he annoyed me. I’d noticed him following me for some time, and I object to being followed like a common criminal. After all, I’m still manager of this division, damn it!”
“Yes, I know,” said the Comandante. “You succeeded in shaking the sergeant, all right. Where did you go after you left Graulitz?”
“I walked up the beach toward Manaca Point. I guess I walked as far as the wireless station, then came back.”
“You were looking for Manzana, of course.”
“Not entirely. I wanted to be alone, chiefly. I wanted to think. I’ve got plenty to worry about, Coronel, with one of our prize stuffed shirts coming down here within the next day or so.”
“How long did you walk—and think—on the beach?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t notice the time.”
“Then you don’t know where you were at ten o’clock?”
“I was on the beach, probably. I saw your launch go out, with its searchlight going full blast. Was that about ten o’clock?”
“It was—about. But you haven’t anyone who saw you on the beach?”
“No, I didn’t see anyone on the beach.”
“I guess that’s all, Perry,” the Comandante said.
“No, it’s not all,” Perry snorted. “What are you going to do about this man Lane?”
“Lane? I’m convinced tonight that he’s not the man I want, Perry.”
“That goes for me, too,” Perry said. “You’re fired, Lane.”
“You can’t fire me,” Lane said. “I resigned this morning. Didn’t Muriel tell you?”
“You stay away from Muriel. If you try to drag her into this business any further—”
“I’ll respect your priority rights there, Perry,” Lane interrupted. “You started dragging her into the present situation when you sent her after me as your own private investigator. As for having a dish of tea and a crumpet with me some afternoon if I have time between murders, I think she’s old enough to choose her own company.”
“You’ll stay off of fruit company property!”
“He may have to come on occasionally,” said the Comandante. “I’m making him a special deputy and honorary assistant to the Comandante of the port in charge of investigating the death of the American Vice Consul.”
“Besides, I have to get my clothes,” Lane added. “Mind if I run out to Rio Sangre for my kit, Perry?”
“You’ll go out on the early passenger in the morning,” Perry said.
“No,” corrected the Comandante. “He will go out with me when I go to interview Holliday again.”
“Are you still pestering Holliday?”
“Not still—again. I am anxious to find where he was at ten o’clock tonight. I was told he left the Cantina de Mi Sueño at nine-thirty o’clock. However, I have Just been talking to your chief dispatcher by phone, and he informs me that Holliday’s gasoline car didn’t get a via for Rio Sangre until ten-forty. Obviously he didn’t leave port until then, and I would like to know exactly where he was. He couldn’t have been walking on the beach with you, could he, Perry—looking at the sea and thinking?”
“I haven’t seen him tonight.”
“Well, buenas noches, then, Perry.”
“Good night.”
When Perry had stalked from the Comandancia, Lane said to Coronel Blanco, “Why don’t we talk to Holliday tonight?”
“I’m waiting for more information,” the Comandante said. “I’ve cabled the States for dope to supplement this radiogram I got from the widow of the late Mr. Stilton and the ex-wife of our Mr. Perry.”
He spread a telegraph blank on his desk, and Lane read:
Don’t fail question Cecil Holliday regarding murder my husband stop Holliday long held bitter grudge following unfortunate wartime accident—Mrs. Gerald Stilton.
“In that case,” Lane said, “I think I’ll go back to my original idea and start at the beginning—with Bill Bossert. Has Dr. Janvier told you anything about the information that the Vice Consul wanted from him?”
“I didn’t ask,” the Comandante said.
“Then I’ll ask tonight. I told Roland to get that information for me a few hours before he was killed. Bossert happened to be a colleague of mine—”
“Yes, I know,” said the Comandante.
“How do you know?”
“Our legation in Washington happens to have one rather acute and clear-witted young man on its staff—in a minor capacity, of course. The commercial attache was at Columbia with me. We still communicate with one another—”
“Then it must occur to you that the information the Vice Consul requested of Dr. Janvier might have an important bearing on the case. I’m going to call on Doc Janvier tonight if we have to get him out of bed. Come along, Joe?”
“Sure,” said the Comandante. “Con mucho gusto.”
Dr. Janvier was not at home. He had been recalled to the hospital by gangrenous developments in the case of a Jamaican checker who had been pretty thoroughly chopped in a payday argument. The doctor was in the second-class ward, a huge barrack-like room devoted to the ailments of native fruit-cutters, backers, mule boys, and other plantation and dock workers in the lower pay brackets. Only the reek of iodoform suggested the ward of a temperate-zone hospital. A single night-light threw eerie shadows down the long rows of cots in the barren, cement-floored hall. There were no blankets on the cots, and the patients lay on them in their day clothes. White swathes contrasted startlingly with the dark faces of a dozen victims of machete fights. At the far end of the ward a man groaned and cried plaintively in his sleep as Lane and the Comandante came in.
“I’ll join you in a moment, gentlemen,” said Dr. Janvier, dropping a handful of bandages into a basin and bending over the black shoulder of his Jamaican patient. “Wait for me in the office.”
Ten minutes later the doctor joined them, wiping his hands on a towel as he entered.
“No doubt,” he said, “you have come to ask about the case history of Mr. William Bossert. No?”
“What makes you say that, doctor?”
“Ever since last night I ask myself if there is perhaps some connection between the death of the Vice Consul and his last request to me for the Bossert case history.”
“Only since last night, doctor, has Bossert been on your mind?”
“Only,” said Dr. Janvier, opening a drawer of his desk. “Before I am not suspicious. Only since last night do I ask myself, why does the Vice Consul want to know where was Bossert when he first developed symptoms—before he was admitted to the hospital, I mean.”
“And did you have the information?”
“Part of it.” Dr. Janvier patted the point of his gray beard as he studied the card in his hand. “Bossert was admitted on a Saturday. The previous night he worked on the river pick-ups, spotting barges until daylight, then collecting fruit from the independent plantations on the left bank of the Rio Sangre. He felt drowsy and low in vitality, but thought this was due to lack of his sleep. He had two cups of black coffee laced with rum, with one of the independent planters—”
“Which planter?” Lane asked.
“I think he said it was at Adolf von Graulitz’s farmhouse.”
“Go on.”
“The coffee made him feel better for a while,” the doctor said, consulting his card, “but during the morning, before the pick-up was finished, he developed a painful headache, and was convinced he had a touch of sun. He had lunch at his own farm with the overseer, Hind, but was not hungry. Everything had a bizarre taste, he said. He had a nap after lunch and felt refreshed. Late in the afternoon he rode his mule to Rio Sangre district headquarters, had two highballs with Cecil Holliday, and rode to port on Holliday’s motor.”
“I can go on from there,” said the Comandante. “I remember the evening quite well. There were cocktails at the Alcotts’, a buffet supper at Perry’s, and there was to be bridge at the Bannisters’ afterward. Bossert didn’t play bridge, however. During the supper he got sick as a dog, and we rushed him to the hospital.”
“And the nurses who gave Bossert his quinine, doctor—you have their names, of course,” said Lane.
Dr. Janvier shook his head. “I did not prescribe quinine for the patient,” he said.
Lane sat forward tensely on the edge of his chair. “Then you knew, doctor, that Bossert was not suffering from blackwater fever?”
“No, no. But he was. That was the diagnosis, blackwater fever,” Janvier insisted, with a wave of the card.
“Isn’t blackwater fever a pernicious form of malaria, doctor?”
Janvier nodded. “Malarial hemoglobinuria,” he said.
“And you mean to tell me that you didn’t prescribe quinine for malaria?” Lane’s voice was challenging.
“You do not understand,” Dr. Janvier countered quietly. “In true blackwater fever, the red corpuscles of the blood are dissolved by some unknown hemolysin which seems not to be associated with the malarial parasite. Many authorities on tropical medicine believe that this hemolysin is produced by quinine. Therefore the treatment presents certain difficulties—”
“You performed no autopsy to confirm your diagnosis?”
“No.”
“You sealed the casket, in fact, to prevent an autopsy?”
“We always seal the caskets we ship north,” said Janvier.
“What would you say if I told you a post-mortem examination, weeks later, revealed decided traces of arsenic?”
“That is possible,” said Dr. Janvier absently. “Arsenic remains a long time in the body. I always remember Dr. Jeserich’s classic case of the schoolmaster who took arsenic and did not die. And a year later they still found traces of arsenic in his hair. There is— Nom d’un nom!” The doctor’s owlish eyes suddenly opened wide, as though he had realized belatedly the import of Lane’s statement. “You mean that Bossert died of arsenic poisoning?”
“Yes,” said Lane.
Dr. Janvier raised his hands, slowly turned them over, stared at his palms pensively. He seemed to expect some answer to his puzzled, questioning gaze to reveal itself, as to a palmist. Suddenly he clenched his fingers.
“No, no!” he declared. “My diagnosis was correct. Yet”—he hesitated—“it could have been correct for arsenic poisoning, too. There are many similar symptoms. Small, rapid pulse. Dry, hot skin and intense thirst. Vomiting. Painful and diminished micturation, with blood. Diarrhea and tenesmus. They are all symptoms of blackwater fever, and they are all symptoms of arsenic poisoning, too.”
“You counted on the similarity, didn’t you, doctor?”
“If there had been convulsions,” continued Dr. Janvier, ignoring Lane’s implied accusation, “I might have suspected. But there are not always convulsions. Or if I had noticed any photophobia—Still, the patient did not complain of his eyes—” He turned to the Comandante with an appealing gesture. “I perhaps made a colossal error of diagnosis, Coronel,” he said, “but it is comprehensible, is it not? We have frequent blackwater fever down here, and we have never had a case of arsenic poisoning before. So, when a given set of symptoms present themselves—”
He unclenched his hands, again stared at his palms.
Lane stood up. “I’d like to have a look at your X-ray equipment, if you don’t mind, doctor,” he said.
Chapter Twenty
Girl in a Jam
The moon had come out from behind the clouds, and its low-slanting beams were shining through a bread-fruit tree into Muriel’s bedroom. The big, many-fingered leaves stirred uneasily in the night wind, making shadows that pawed at the window screen, more shadows that crawled trembling across Muriel’s counterpane, like hands, reaching—
Reaching—for what? Wide awake, propped high on her pillow because it seemed useless even to try to sleep, Muriel lay staring at the shifting pattern of moonlight and shadow, closing her eyes only when parted branches flung the dazzling whiteness of the moon full upon her face. What was the legendary affliction that was supposed to be visited upon those who slept under the brilliance of a tropical moon? Moon-blink? That was it—moon-blink. You slept in the moonlight and you went blind. Well, she had been blind to a lot of things, lately. She wasn’t seeing her own friends very clearly. She was seeing them, yes, but they appeared distorted, queer; they were like strangers. And her own actions, too, were blurred. If only she could see herself locking the safe, the night Stilton was killed. But she couldn’t. An automatic action, one she had done so often that it was like second nature, almost like breathing, it had not photographed itself on her memory. Perhaps, she told herself, she could not see herself locking the safe because of what that recollection might entail. If she had locked it, perhaps Dave Perry had opened it. Perhaps—
She sat up very straight in bed, listening. She thought she had heard footsteps—light, rapid steps, that might be made by bare feet running along the path by the side of the house. She heard the crunch of gravel, then a faint step on the veranda stairs. She sprang out of bed, crossed quickly to the door to the living-room, stood for what seemed ages, listening to her heart thumping wildly in her throat. Her hand was on the knob, but she was without the strength to turn it. Then she heard the screen door to the veranda closing softly, and she hesitated no longer. In an instant she was across the threshold, her hand groping over the wall of the living-room for the light switch.
The sudden flood of light halted Nita Fenwick in the middle of the floor. Nita was clutching a man’s raincoat about her slim waist, and the empty sleeves dangled grotesquely from her shoulders. Her mop of dark hair was in mad disarray, and her narrow, languid eyes were open wider than Muriel had ever seen them. No longer world-weary, they stared with savage defiance from their deep, dark-ringed sockets. Her breath came in quick, labored gasps from between lips that were always sophisticated, but now were cruel.
“Nita! Where have you been?” Muriel exclaimed when she had recovered from the first shock of surprise.
“Since when are you night watchman around here?” snapped Nita. Her drawl, too, was gone. She took three long strides to the divan, sat down tensely, reached for a cigarette on the end-table. As she leaned over, the front of the raincoat gaped wide, and Muriel caught a flash of pink silk and the whiteness of bare skin. Muriel’s startled gaze traveled downward. Nita was in her stockinged feet.
“Nita, you’re practically naked!” Muriel gasped.
“So what?” Nita struck a match, inhaled greedily.
“That’s a man’s slicker, Nita. Whose is it?”
Nita leaned back, allowed the cigarette smoke to stream from her nostrils. Her face relaxed. She was herself again.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she drawled.
“That’s not Walter Lane’s coat?”
“Of course not.”
No, it wasn’t Walter’s slicker. She would recognize it if it were. But the thought of Walter’s coat started a new train of ideas in Muriel’s head. She began haltingly:
“Nita, last night—when I went out looking for Cecil Holliday—Walter left his raincoat here, and—Well, you were here too, and—Nita, you didn’t put two hundred-dollar bills in Walter’s pocket?”
“Where would I get a hundred-dollar bill, darling?”
“From Dave Perry’s safe.”
Nita snorted smoke.
“That’s one for the book!” she said. “Nita steals hundred grand. Nita nonchalantly brings hundred grand home in pocketbook. What would I do with it, ninny? Do you think I’d put it in my dresser drawer, with Blanco and his chocolate soldiers going through the town with a fine comb?”
“You could hide it outside some place, Nita. You’ve been out tonight—”
“You would say that. You couldn’t think of anything but money that might make a gal sneak out at night, could you? No, you couldn’t. Not you. Even if you were crazy about a man and he was crazy about you, you wouldn’t give. And if the poor crazy egg was a seventy-five-a-month timekeeper, or there was some other reason he couldn’t marry you, it wouldn’t make any difference. You’d hold out on him anyhow. You—Oh, what’s the use of talking. I’m going to bed.”
Nita’s drawl had vanished again. The new, wild glare had come back into her eyes. Fiercely she jabbed out her cigarette and stood up.
Muriel came over to her, put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.
“You’re a fool, Nita,” she said. “An awful fool—but I like you. And I don’t like seeing you in a jam. Can’t I help, Nita?”
