Blow-Down, page 19
“So I was about to guess,” said the Comandante, eyeing a shiny new leather suitcase that lay just inside the door. “Then I’m just in time to give you a lift to Puerto Musa.”
“I don’t need no help from you,” Hind declared. “I don’t need no help from nobody. What are you birds doin’ up here anyway?”
“We came to congratulate you,” said the Comandante. “We heard you hit the jackpot in the Lotería Nacional.”
Barnaby Hind grunted.
“How much did you win, Pinky?” Lane asked.
“What’s it to you?” Hind snapped. “I don’t owe you no money. I don’t owe nobody.”
“We heard it was a hundred thousand,” said the Comandante.
“So that’s it. Well, it ain’t a hunnerd thousand. It’s only twenny.”
“You’ve been spending it as though it were a hundred,” the Comandante said. “I’ve been following your trail. And I was rather interested in the fact that you’ve been spending American greenbacks. I thought the lottery always paid off in local currency, Mr. Hind.”
“They did,” said Hind. “But I got Wong to give me U.S. bills for the cigar coupons. The Chink’ll always give you nine for ten.”
“That’s quite a percentage to give up, Mr. Hind,” said the Comandante. “Why did you do it?”
“I’m leavin’ the country, I tell ya.”
The black face of Morgan, the Jamaican foreman, appeared at the screen door.
“Motor boat just now harriving, Mister ’Ind, sar,” said the Jamaican.
The Comandante sprang quickly between Hind and the door.
“So that’s why you didn’t want to come to Puerto Musa with me,” he said. “You’re leaving by the river. I had an idea you might do that when I heard there was a German boat due off Liberica to load coffee tomorrow.”
“I can go any way I want, can’t I? I’m my own boss now.”
“You’re coming to Puerto Musa first,” said the Comandante calmly.
“I ain’t goin’ to Puerto Musa!” Hind declared, backing away. “I ain’t—Ow! Quit that! You’ll bust my arm!”
Hind reached for his hip. Lane saw the movement and lunged to catch Hind’s wrist. He twisted the forearm sharply until the heavy .45 revolver dropped to the floor.
The Comandante picked up the revolver, pocketed it, then tapped Hind’s hips and armpits for further weapons. There were none.
“I guess you’ll come with me, all right,” he said.
“Hadn’t I better go along, Joe?” suggested Lane looking anxiously at Muriel.
“I can take care of Mr. Hind, thanks,” said the Comandante. “He and I will sit quietly in the back seat. Miss Monroe will be quite safe driving.”
“Don’t worry about me, darling,” Muriel said. “I’ll see you when you’ve got your aviso cut.”
“You can’t take me to Puerto Musa,” the redhead whined. “You got no right—”
“I’ve got every right, Mr. Hind,” the Comandante said. “Because I’m putting you under arrest—on suspicion of murder.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Third Murder
Eighty thousand stems of fruit had been cut in Puerto Musa division before the quick tropical dusk smothered the day. Wireless alarms continued to predict that the storm would hit the coast before dawn, but the hot night was without violent signs of the havoc to come. With ominous serenity, a brassy, misshapen moon burned sullenly through a smoky haze. The wind had died with the daylight, leaving the sultry darkness to bear down on the breathless land with a moist, suffocating hand. An uncanny stillness lay upon the plantations, as though half the world drowsed between life and death, while the other half was numb with the dread of waiting—waiting for some doom which it knew was inevitable yet could not believe. Even the myriad frogs seemed to be waiting, breaking their loud nocturnal chorus by long stretches of silence—a thick, almost tangible silence through which the hooting of the loaded fruit trains, crawling toward port, came like the shrieks of madmen.
Muriel Monroe waited on a siding, watching the headlight of an approaching locomotive slash through the night, then pass with a roar of steam. Her own headlights raked the dull-red length of the endless train. Tattered banana leaves, padding for the fruit, waved restlessly through the slatted sides as the crate-like cars rumbled by. Muriel got out, threw the switch, then continued her way to Rio Sangre.
Muriel was alone. She had been alone all day, even in the mad bustle of the division office. She knew she would always feel alone now, except when she was with Walter Lane. And the fact that she might not always be with him had tortured her ever since she had left him that morning. She felt instinctively that he loved her, that he was speaking from his heart when he told her so. But she felt more than ever that to love and be loved meant everything—and nothing! The things that Nita had said last night and the fate that had overtaken Nita this morning were poignant reminders that life was a complex and unreasonable pattern into which love did not always fit. After the storm had swept Puerto Musa, after the grimly insane puzzle of Stilton’s death had been solved, she knew that Walter Lane would go away again. The plantations of tropical America were only a small part of his career, and he would soon put them behind him. Suppose she could not go north with him? Suppose he couldn’t take her with him—or didn’t want to? Whenever she dared put the question to herself, she had an overwhelming feeling of emptiness. And yet she had to know the answer. She had to see Walter tonight.
A dozen times during the day she had tried to reach him by telephone, although she knew he would be on the farm and at the loading platforms. She finally caught him at the labor camp, just before sunset.
“I’ve got to see you tonight, Walt,” she said. “I’m coming out to Rio Sangre.”
“Don’t,” he had replied—and her heart sank. “I don’t know when I’ll finish. I’ll be out along the line until late. We’ll probably be loading by torchlight.”
“Then I’ll wait for you at the superintendency,” she had said. “I’ll meet you at Cecil Holliday’s.”
She had taken Dave Perry’s car—without asking him. He had never refused to let her use it, but she was afraid he might have refused tonight. She had never seen him act as he had today, all day—fits of furious activity and shouting, followed by long, brooding spells of empty-eyed silence, during which he did not answer when she spoke, and stared at her as though he did not recognize her. She had worked until long after dark, until she was satisfied that her own task was done. The two ships were in port, the loaded fruit trains were already rolling toward the docks, the crop reports were in and tabulated. The rest was in the hands of the railway men and the port office. So she had taken Dave’s car.
It took her a long time to get to Kilometer 20—forever, it seemed. The dispatcher would give her a via only from one phone box to another, and she had to wait at nearly every siding or Y to let a fruit train pass. She had no idea what time it was when she reached Holliday’s bungalow, but she knew it was late.
She heard music as she went up the veranda steps, and she knew she would find Cecil Holliday stretched in a big chair, smoking a pipe, and listening to his phonograph. The music was soft and ingratiating. She thought she recognized a Beethoven quartet.
Holliday got up to greet her as she opened the door. Before he could say anything, she blurted, “Is Walt here yet, Cecil?”
Holliday chuckled. “Not yet,” he said. “But he’ll be along shortly. His job’s finished, I know. We’ve cut every last stem of fruit in the district, and it’s all loaded. There’s a shunting engine out there now, picking up the Rio Sangre cars. Sit down, Miss Goldilocks, and relax. We have music.”
Muriel dropped into a chair. She sniffed. She caught a whiff of some spicy scent—musk, perhaps.
“Are you burning incense, Cecil?” she asked.
“Incense? Of course not. Why?”
“I thought perhaps you were preparing a big seduction scene,” the girl said. “I thought you might be giving me a build-up with a hint of myrrh and music.”
“Not with Beethoven,” said Holliday.
“Why not? When I was nineteen I had a musical boy friend who wooed me with Beethoven. The Pastorale nearly caused my undoing.”
“Almost,” chuckled Holliday. “You see, I was right.”
“But Beethoven does something to me—even now. He’s exciting.”
“Yes,” mused Holliday, “Beethoven is exciting, but he is satisfying at the same time. He’s too complete, too perfect. Now if I had designs on you, my dear, I should play something more provocative, something which stirs you, but leaves you vaguely hungry for something more—something you might find in me. I think I should try Debussy to begin with, then Wagner in his more sensual moods—”
“Or Chopin?” suggested the girl.
“No,” said Holliday pensively. “Chopin is for later—years later. Chopin is for remembering—”
“That’s right,” said a woman’s voice behind Muriel. “Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.”
Muriel turned, uttered a startled, “Nita!”
Nita Fenwick, a lipstick poised between her long fingers, sauntered from a back room. “I’ve been repairing the ravages of a journey under difficulties,” she said. “I thumbed a ride up on a fruit train.”
“But you knew I was coming up tonight, Nita,” Muriel objected. “Why didn’t you come with me?”
“Fat chance,” said Nita, “with the Coronel José Blanco’s barefoot sleuths trailing me around all day, I’d never have got anywhere. The Coronel has a brilliant idea that maybe I’m going to spirit the missing hundred thousand out of the country tonight, so he told me I wasn’t to leave port until my ship sailed—unless I took a military escort with me. And since I couldn’t picture myself on a sentimental pilgrimage accompanied by a squad of brown sergeants with their chevrons fastened to their sleeves with safety pins, I took advantage of a friendly hoghead on the Rio Sangre fruit train—and here I am.”
“Nita is making the rounds,” said Holliday. “She’s been very busy saying good-by to all her old flames.”
“I simply couldn’t leave without saying good-by to Cecil,” Nita drawled. “I’ll probably never see him again. I had to kiss him just once more—for auld lang syne.”
Muriel glanced quickly at Holliday. “I didn’t know that you two—”
“There’s such a lot that you don’t know, my dear,” Nita interrupted, “that it’s really quite refreshing. And I suppose you’re quite happy the way you are.”
“Shall we have another spat?” suggested Muriel sweetly. “A good-by fight—for auld lang syne?”
Nita gave a throaty laugh. She threw her arms around Muriel.
“I don’t know why I should fight with you, darling,” she said. “After all, you haven’t a husband to reproach me with. You’re probably my only female friend in the tropics—if you are my friend.”
“You know I’ve liked you, Nita—even if I do think you’re a fool sometimes.”
“Most of the time,” said Nita. “And I enjoy every minute of it. Well, good-by, Muriel, I’m on my way. That hoghead of mine won’t wait for me.”
“He won’t have to,” said Holliday. “I’ll run you down to port ahead of him.”
“I’ve a few more calls to make—”
“I’ll take you,” Holliday insisted. “Muriel won’t mind waiting here alone.”. He chuckled. “You’ll find some Debussy disks in that cabinet,” he added.
“Good-by, Nita. Good luck.”
“Good-by, darling.”
Muriel watched them go. She listened to Holliday tolling the big bell on his lawn to call his motor boy. She heard the put-put of the motor growing fainter as it sped down the tracks. Then she came back and turned on the phonograph again. She lit a cigarette and stretched out in a chair to hear the rest of the Beethoven quartet.
In another room, as a background to the music, she could hear the frequent ringing of the telephone. There were twenty phones on the district line, and the overseers were doubtless reporting the last of their day’s work finished. She had no idea how long she had been listening subconsciously before she recognized Cecil Holliday’s ring—two long and one short. She turned off the phonograph and ran to the phone. It was Walter Lane.
“I’ve just had a shower, darling,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”
“I’ll come for you.”
“You cap’t. There’s a train on the line, and I’m riding it as far as the superintendency. I’ll be right there.”
In ten minutes she was in his arms and he was kissing her.
“It’s seemed years since I saw you,” he said. “I’m always afraid you might turn out to be just a figment of my imagination. But you’re very real and very lovely—almost too lovely to be real.”
He kissed her again.
“I would have died if I couldn’t see you tonight,” she said.
“Did you bring me any news?”
Muriel hesitated. All her doubts and fears seemed foolish now that she was near him. There was such a sense of permanence, of happy confidence, when she was in his arms that it seemed almost a sacrilege to suggest that her felicity might ever end. She couldn’t say what she had come for.
“Yes, there’s news,” she said. “The Comandante turned Pinky Hind loose. It seems that Wong backed up his story of changing the lottery money into dollars. And the number of the lottery ticket checked all right.”
“Where’s Hind now?”
“When last seen he was getting up blood-pressure at the Bar of the Two Owls. And the Comandante told me to tell you that one of his men fished a box of radio apparatus out of the mud this afternoon.”
“Out of the mud? Where?”
“In the mangroves along the inlet, back of the Comandancia. They were looking for traces of that boat that got away last night, and incidentally digging around for a metal box that might hold a hundred thousand dollars. The Comandante said he thinks the electric paraphernalia is what you were looking for. It doesn’t make any sense to him, but there were German names stamped into the metal parts.”
“I thought we’d find it sunk in the bay somewhere,” Lane said. “But I think I know where it was a week ago.”
“Where, darling?”
“Either in or near Bannister’s house,” Lane said. “This morning I practically decided that the guy wires of Bannister’s antenna were the sources of the shortwave interference I’ve been looking for. There were metal clamps and binding posts at the bottom of the guy wires, just above the insulators, and there were bright marks on the metal—screwdriver scratches, maybe—that looked to me as though someone had jerked the connections recently. So—But it’s probably all Greek to you. Has Nita left yet?”
“Nita was here half an hour ago,” said Muriel. She told him of the visit in detail.
“That’s strange, isn’t it?” Lane said. “Was she that friendly with Holliday?”
“It must have been when she first came down,” the girl replied. “The last six months or so I think Henry Alcott has had pretty much the inside track. I didn’t think there was anything wrong at the time, but when I look back, I can remember a lot of things that all point in that direction, now that I know the direction.”
“I noticed Perry’s car outside as I came in,” Lane said. “Where’s the boss tonight?”
“He’s in pretty much of an uproar, getting ready to receive the third vice-president.”
“When’s Binsworth due?”
“About midnight or one o’clock,” Muriel said. “He sent a wireless from Belize, saying he was coming on as soon as they got a seaplane ready for him. He wants to beat the storm. So Dave is rushing around with Bannister, getting floodlights and landing flares on the dock, so the plane will have a chance of coming in right side up.”
“That’s all the news?”
“That’s all, darling.”
“No, it isn’t. There’s more.”
“What, darling?”
“I’m terribly in love with you. Or have I told you that before?”
“Tell me again—and again—”
Her small blond head bent slowly back. He kissed her. He kissed her until her head swam and there was singing in her ears, until delightfully terrifying waves of cold and tingling warmth swept over her. She clung to him from sheer necessity because she knew when he released her she would drop—or soar, with her fleeing senses. And then, desperately, she turned her head quickly, pushed him away, struggled back to reason.
“Oh, darling, darling! Don’t! I—”
“What’s the matter, love?”
“I shouldn’t have come here tonight, Walter.”
“Of course you should.”
“I shouldn’t. I ought to begin forgetting all about you, forgetting I ever knew you.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“But I must. Sooner or later, I’ll have to. You’re not staying in Puerto Musa the rest of your life, darling.”
“No, and neither are you.”
“But you’ll be going north—soon.”
“Probably, yes.”
“Darling, you say that so casually. Don’t you know what it will mean to me, to have you go away, now?”
“I hope I do, sweetheart.”
“But, Walt, darling. I—” She paused, turning her head. “Listen. The telephone. Two long and one short. That’s Cecil’s ring.”
“Let it ring,” Lane said.
“It might be for me, darling.”
The phone was still ringing—two long and one short.
“I’ll get it,” said Lane with a sigh.
She sat down limply as he went into the next room. She heard his voice say, “Yes,” a few times, curtly. Then, “Right away.”
When he came back he was walking with quick, determined strides. His face was set in hard, tense lines, and she knew something had happened. When she tried to ask him, the words caught in her throat.
“That was the Comandante,” he said tersely. “We’ve got to get down to Puerto Musa right away.”
“What—what’s happened, darling?”
