Blow-Down, page 18
It was Muriel who broke the spell. Slipping gently from his embrace, she reached her toes to the ground.
“It is very early in the morning, Walt darling,” she said with a breathless little laugh. “And we both have a big day ahead.”
“Have we?”
“There’s a blow-down coming—”
“Damn the blow-down!”
“You will help out at Rio Sangre?”
“All right, I’ll go up. I’ll go up with the Comandante later.”
“Dave said I was to take you.”
Lane passed the back of his hand across his face as though to rub a dream from his eyes. He looked about him slowly to collect his thoughts. “I can’t go now,” he said. “I’ve got a few things to look into down here first. I’ll meet you in an hour.”
“At the Comandancia?”
“Better come for me at the dispatcher’s office. I’ve got a little research to do there and it might take me some time.”
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Tell me, darling. That house just beyond those palms, the one with the fancy radio antenna in back, is that Perry’s?”
“No, that’s Mr. Bannister’s, the port superintendent’s. Dave Perry’s is next to it.”
“On the other side?”
“No, on this side. The house on the other side is Mr. Alcott’s.”
“I think I’ll walk over and have a look at that antenna,” Lane said. “I’ll see you in an hour, darling.”
Muriel was waiting outside the train dispatcher’s office when Lane came out. She had news for him—about Nita Fenwick. She told him that Mrs. Alcott had made Perry send Nita north, by the Fonseca, probably tonight. She also told the story of Nita’s strange nocturnal appearance in stockinged feet and a gentleman’s raincoat.
“In view of what happened,” she said, “I guess the coat was Henry Alcott’s.”
“I suppose so,” said Lane abstractedly. He had listened to Muriel with only a few preoccupied interruptions, as though he were thinking of something else. “Doesn’t the Comandante object to Nita’s going?”
“He’s going to make her open all her baggage before she takes it on the ship,” the girl said. “Do you think Nita has the hundred thousand?”
“I don’t know,” Lane replied. “What does the Comandante say?”
“You can ask him. He’s going to ride up with us. He wants to talk to Cecil Holliday.”
“Yes, of course.” Lane moved like a sleepwalker as he climbed into the car beside Muriel. The Comandante was already sitting in the rear seat.
A steam locomotive snorted impatiently on a siding, waiting for Muriel’s motor to pass before proceeding into the plantations with its long string of empty red fruit cars.
The steel wheels of the de-tired sedan screeched against the rails as Muriel stepped on the accelerator, rounded a curve, passed the last manaca huts of Puerto Musa, and headed down the long green cloister of arching banana fronds.
They had passed Kilometer 5 before Lane roused himself from his brown study and spoke. He half turned in his seat to address the Comandante.
“Joe,” he said, “just what time did you estimate that Bill Roland was killed the other night?”
“Between one and one-thirty,” the Comandante replied. “Probably between one-fifteen and one-twenty, the way I figure it. I talked to him on the phone about one-ten,”
“Muriel said he was at the Comandancia before that. How long before was it, Joe?”
“About half an hour, I’d say. Maybe only twenty minutes.”
“Who else was there at the time?”
“Well, Miss Monroe was there. And Perry and Bannister.”
“And Holliday?”
“Yes, Holliday was there, too.”
“What about Pinky Hind?”
“No, Hind left about twenty minutes before Roland came in. He was so tight there was no use trying to get anything out of him, so I let him go.”
“Did they all leave the Comandancia together—with Roland, I mean?”
“No,” said the Comandante. “The Vice Consul stayed for about five minutes after the others left. I think Perry was the first to leave. Do you remember, Miss Monroe?”
“Dave left first,” Muriel said. “Cecil Holliday followed him. Then Mr. Bannister and Mr. Alcott left together. At least they walked together as far as the Plaza. Then I left.”
“Did you go right home, Muriel?”
“Not right away. I started after Cecil, but Mr. Von Graulitz stopped me and talked for a minute.”
“Was Graulitz waiting outside the Comandancia?”
“Not waiting exactly. It wasn’t far from the Comandancia that he stopped me, but he seemed to be coming from the direction of the small-boat landing.”
“Joe, are you sure that was Roland you talked to when you phoned the Consulate afterward?” Lane asked.
“Pretty sure,” said the Comandante. “Of course I didn’t pay much attention at the time. I took it for granted it was his voice. He only said a few words. I think all he said was, ‘No, decidedly not. Never heard of him.’ Not much more than that, anyhow. His voice sounded a little sleepy, but then it usually did.”
Lane lapsed into silence again. At Kilometer 20 the girl stopped the car opposite the dispatcher’s phone booth.
“I’ll get the via for the Rio Sangre spur,” she said.
Lane took her arm as she was about to open the car door.
“Don’t bother,” he said. “We’ll roll the car off the tracks just below here. That looks like Holliday standing near the empties on the siding. I’d like to talk to him.”
“You, too?” the girl said a little reproachfully.
Lane did not reply. He looked uncomfortable. He was under obligations to Holliday for helping Muriel get the skiff for his escape from the juzgado last night, yet there was certain facts he had secured from the train dispatcher that needed clarifying.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Pinky’s Plans Are Changed
Holliday was standing on the loading-platform, which was already stacked with tall green stems of fruit, leaning against the leaf-padded railing. A train of mules, each carrying a load of two bunches of bananas in padded slings, was coming out of the plantation behind him. Farther along Lane could see a cutter at work jamming his pole-mounted crescent knife high into a banana tree, steadying the fruit as the half-severed tree bent under its own weight to lower the bunch to the waiting shoulders of a backer. Two quick strokes of a machete detached the bunch and the blossom end, and a third cut down the tree which had just fulfilled its natural quota of one bunch of bananas.
Holliday was watching a junior overseer tenderly fitting a man-high bag of strong brown paper over one of the larger bunches. A dozen other bunches, similarly packed, stood against the empty fruit car.
Holliday greeted Muriel, then Lane and the Comandante.
“I thought this was an emergency, Holliday,” Lane said. “I didn’t khow we were taking the time to pack any special shipments.”
“I’ve got one section here that grows practically nothing but nines,” Holliday replied. “We may just as well try to salvage the prime fruit, too, as long as we don’t have to spend time looking for it. Putting it in the bags isn’t a particularly complicated process, Lane.”
The Comandante coughed uneasily. “We’d like to speak to you in private, Holliday,” he said.
Holliday nodded. He walked down the track beyond the car, stopped, and looked at the ground. He seemed intent on a cloud of golden butterflies that whirled and danced above a blackened bunch of rejected fruit, as though drunk with the sweet, fermenting fragrance of overripe bananas.
“Holliday, you were an officer in the British Army in 1918, weren’t you?” the Comandante began.
Holliday looked up suddenly, his accusing eyes seeking Muriel Monroe.
“I haven’t told them, Cecil. Honestly,” the girl said.
“I’ve been making inquiries by wireless,” the Comandante explained. “You were attached to the American Expeditionary Forces in France as an instructor. Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.” Holliday was watching the butterflies again.
“You knew an American captain by the name of Gerald Stilton?”
“Why waste time, Coronel? You know the whole story, evidently.”
“I’d like to hear your version of it. Tell me about your—the accident in which Captain Stilton was involved.”
Holliday removed his white sun helmet and carefully wiped the perspiration from the inside of the sweatband.
“There isn’t much to tell, really,” he said after a pause. “We were giving intensive instruction to an American detachment that had landed at Saint-Nazaire only a few weeks previously. They were green troops and we were to teach them all we could before they moved up. We were having grenade instruction and Captain Stilton dropped a live grenade after he had pulled out the firing pin. That’s all.”
“And what happened?”
“The grenade rolled a few yards away from Captain Stilton. He started to pick it up, then decided he hadn’t time. Instructions for grenade defense, of course, were to drop to the ground and present as little surface for fragments as possible. Captain Stilton followed instructions.”
“And what did you do?”
“There was only one thing to do. There was a whole platoon of men watching the demonstration from rather close range. I decided to recover the grenade and throw it as far as possible before it exploded. I’m afraid I didn’t quite get it away.”
“And naturally you blamed Captain Stilton for what happened?”
“It was purely an accident,” Holliday said.
“But you did blame Stilton for destroying your career as a concert pianist?”
“I may have been a trifle bitter in the first years after the Armistice, when I realized I’d never touch a piano again.”
“And you swore you’d get even with Stilton, that you’d trail him to the ends of the earth to make him pay for what he did to you?”
“I may have said that while in my cups. I never meant it seriously, of course,” Holliday said.
“But you came to Central America for the express purpose of evening accounts with Stilton, didn’t you?”
“I did not.”
“Then I suppose it’s pure coincidence that two men who hadn’t seen each other since the war should suddenly find themselves working for the same fruit company, and in the same division.”
“No,” Holliday replied. “It’s not a coincidence. Stilton gave me my job with the Caribbean Fruit Company.”
“Stilton did?”
“Yes, he found me in a bar in Havana. Or rather I found him. I was rather a miserable specimen in those days. I was slowly drinking myself to death, and I’d come to the tropics to do it. I don’t know why the tropics have such an attraction to men intent on destroying themselves and who haven’t the courage to do it quickly. But they do. I’d been on the beach in a dozen countries I can’t even remember the names of. I was completely drunk as long as my money lasted. I was sober when I ran into Stilton, because my credit in Havana had given out. I—I was cadging drinks. It was a shock to both of us when I struck Stilton for a dram. I’d already started my speech before I recognized him. I had to tell him who I was. I’d changed.
“Well, he bought me the drink. He said, ‘Holliday, I wish to God I could give you back your hand and your career. I can’t, of course. But I can do the next best thing. I can give you back your self-respect. I’m going to give you a job. It won’t be much of a job for a while, but it will keep you busy and give you something to tie to, something, perhaps, to look ahead to. There’s no good in looking back, Holliday.’
“So I really had no reason to kill Stilton, Blanco. I was grateful to him. He’d squared his debt, practically. Without him, I might never have pulled myself together—”
There was another silence. Holliday was again wiping the sweatband of his sun helmet—with the hand that lacked two fingers and part of the thumb.
“Why haven’t we heard this story before?” the Comandante asked at last.
“Muriel’s heard it,” Holliday said. “She’s the only one.”
“Why?”
Holliday shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “There seemed to be a tacit understanding between Stilton and me. Perhaps he said nothing because he didn’t want to embarrass me into being grateful. Or perhaps because he didn’t want to remind himself that he was in a way responsible for making a banana herder out of a promising young pianist. And of course I was not very proud of those miserable rum-soaked years on the beach, so I said nothing.”
“In other words, you can’t prove a word of this,” said the Comandante.
“No, I have no proof.”
“But it’s true,” Muriel declared vehemently. “It must be true, Coronel. You believe it’s true, don’t you, Walter?”
Lane said nothing. There was another silence. Then Lane asked:
“Holliday, the night Stilton was killed, do you remember what time you left port to come back to Rio Sangre?”
“That was payday night,” Holliday said. “My memory is a little vague regarding much of what happened. I have an idea it must have been about three in the morning. Didn’t my motor boy get a via from the dispatcher?”
“That’s just the point,” Lane said. “There’s a record of two sets of orders for Motor Car 17—which is your motor. One shows you were given a ‘clear track ahead’ order at 1:24 a.m.”
“I could have sworn it was later than that.”
“And another via was given for No. 17 at 2:57 a.m.,” Lane said.
“That’s odd,” said Holliday.
“Not nearly as odd as the fact that there is no record of any orders for the car returning, yet it must have returned in the interim, as both calls came from the same box.”
“What do you make of it, then?” Holliday had gone suddenly pale.
“I don’t know,” Lane said. “One explanation might be that the car did not leave the port at all after getting the first orders. Do you remember asking for a via, then changing your mind and going back to the cantina for another drink or two?”
“No, I don’t remember doing that,” said Holliday.
“Could anyone else have taken your motor?”
“I—I don’t think so. I do remember finding my motor boy curled up under the canopy, fast asleep. He said he’d been there since midnight, but I can’t be sure he was telling the truth. I told him to be there at midnight, so naturally he wouldn’t admit that he was late reporting.”
“Where is your motor boy? I’d like to talk to him.”
“I say, that’s another strange thing. He’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, I gave him two weeks’ leave to go off and visit his people. He told me he had word his mother was seriously ill.”
“Where does his mother live?”
“Off in the monte somewhere. Near San Ysidro I think it is.”
“When did he leave?”
“Yesterday morning. I say, Lane, I’ve just thought of something. Suppose someone else deliberately gave the number of my motor to the dispatcher, so he could be sure of not running into a train somewhere along the line, and yet, in case of inquiry, this person could deny leaving port at 1:24, and there would be no record to contradict him. I’m assuming, of course, that there was someone with a reason to leave port, and even more reason to leave secretly.”
“Yes, I’ve thought of that, too,” Lane said. “Who do you suppose, Holliday, that person might be?” Holliday did not reply at once. He was watching a mule-drawn tram which had just emerged from the plantation to stop at the end of the narrow-gauge rail line. A procession of brown men, each with a seventy-pound stem of fruit on his shoulders, filed past on their way from the tram to the empty fruit car. A black Jamaican checker clicked off each bunch on a shiny mechanical counter.
“I haven’t the slightest idea who it might be,” said Holliday at last.
“One more question,” said Lane. “Didn’t I see you climbing over a hedge behind the division office the night Stilton was killed?”
“Did you?”
“I thought I did. I’m asking for confirmation.”
“Probably you did,” Holliday admitted. “I was taking a short-cut to the Cantina de Mi Sueño.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” the Comandante demanded.
“You didn’t ask me. There seemed no need of bringing purely circumstantial evidence which would not only incriminate me falsely, but would confuse the issue. By the way, Lane, aren’t you supposed to be working today? Perry intimated that you’d be taking over for Hind. There’s fruit to be cut on his farm.”
“I’m on my way now,” Lane said.
“I’ll go with you,” the Comandante announced. “I want to see Mr. Hind.”
“He’s not exactly an esthetic spectacle,” Holliday said. “And I doubt very much whether he’ll be able to talk coherently for weeks to come. He’s completely blotto, and has every intention of remaining that way.”
“I’ll sober him up in twenty-four hours,” said the Comandante. “I’ll take him to port and have Doc Janvier give him a shot of apomorphine. That’ll stop his drinking. Will you run us over, Señorita, or shall we borrow Holliday’s motor?”
“I’ll drive you,” said Muriel.
They found Barnaby Hind well squiffed, but not quite as squiffed as Holliday had led them to believe. He was bleary-eyed and thick-tongued, but he was by no means rolling in the tall grass. In fact, he was dressed in a new pongee suit with a bright green tie and a new Panama hat. And he was not in the least glad to see visitors.
“Why, Mr. Hind!” said Muriel, as the diminutive redhead came reeling out on the veranda to challenge whoever was arriving in the motor. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you wearing a necktie.”
“And the last time,” growled Hind. “I’m leavin’ this God-forsaken, mosquito-bitten neck o’ the woods. No more goddam bananas for me.”
