Blow-Down, page 20
“Alcott,” said Lane, grabbing his hat. “Alcott’s been shot dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
High Heels
The steel-flanged wheels rang against the shrieking rails as the sedan roared around the last curve, entering Puerto Musa. The Comandante was waiting, making signs with his flashlight. Muriel set the brakes.
“Glad you’re here, Lane,” said the Comandante, opening the door. “I’m afraid I muffed it again.”
“How, Joe?”
“It’s a long story—for later. First I want you to look at the corpus delicti. I haven’t let anybody touch anything.”
“You’d better go home, Muriel,” Lane said.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Let her come,” said the Comandante. “I think she can help. She doesn’t have to look at him.”
He led the way to the Alcott house. There were soldiers outside and more soldiers on the veranda. A crowd of fruit company people stood in the path and on the veranda steps, talking in awed undertones. Muriel stayed on the steps while the two men entered the house and went directly to the room that Alcott used as a study.
Just inside the door Lane noticed a day bed with the thin covers neatly folded back and a pillow in place. Then he saw the body of Henry Alcott seated at a small desk of unfinished mahogany in the center of the room, facing the window.
The corpse was erect in a chair, and only the chin had dropped to the chest. There was a neat hole in the center of Alcott’s forehead, with a brownish-gray ring around it. There was blood on his clothing, on the desk, and on the floor. The arms dangled at the sides of the chair.
Lane picked up one dead hand, then the other. There were purple stains on the inside of the right thumb and inside the last joint of the right forefinger.
“See that?” Lane asked.
The Comandante nodded. “Same marks Stilton had on his fingers,” he said. “Looks like ink. Doc Janvier said if it were logwood or gallotahnic ink, he could tell us in a minute, but he says he hasn’t the equipment to test for colored inks.”
“Looks like a burn around the bullet hole,” Lane said.
“Can’t be,” said the Comandante. “There’s no powder-tattooing.”
“Smokeless powder doesn’t usually leave any tattooing, even at pretty close range.”
“Alcott wasn’t shot at close range,” the Comandante said. “He was shot through the window.”
“You sure?”
“Couldn’t be otherwise,” the Comandante insisted. “First of all, there’s no gun. I’ve been over the room thoroughly. Second, there’s two bullet holes in the screen. Look.”
Lane looked. There was one hole low in one corner of the screen, and another near the center, about six inches from the bottom. The edges of the second hole were bright, where the bullet had punched through the copper mesh. The first hole was dull with oxidation.
“Only one shot fired?” Lane asked.
“Two,” said the Comandante. “The first went high. You can see it imbedded in the wall, back of Alcott. The second killed him.”
“They must have gone through the same hole,” Lane said. “The one in the corner looks old.”
“Maybe the flame oxidized it. Or maybe the gun was pressed right against the screen when she fired both shots.”
“She?” Lane looked up in surprise.
The Comandante nodded. “Come on outside,” he said.
Two soldiers were standing guard at the side of the house as the Comandante’s flashlight sent a luminous disk rippling over the ground. There was a small stepladder just underneath the window to Alcott’s study.
“Where’d that ladder come from?” Lane asked.
“From what I gather, it usually stands just outside the Alcott’s kitchen door. The servants use it to pick the yellow guavas growing back there.”
Lane took the flashlight from the Comandante, played it on the ladder. There was mud on the steps, but no clearly defined prints. Lane moved closer, but the Comandante held him back.
“Careful,” he said. “Don’t walk on what I’ve been saving for you.”
Lane swung the light beam downward. The soft, damp earth was well churned by confused marks of feet. But near the bottom of the ladder there were two well-defined prints—the deep impressions of small, pointed, high-heeled shoes—a woman’s shoes undoubtedly. He examined the ground for some distance around, but the rest of the prints were obliterated.
“Tell me more,” Lane said.
“Bannister saw her,” the Comandante explained. “But he couldn’t recognize her in the dark. He was walking up from the dock and was nearly in front of his house when he heard the shot.”
“Only one shot?”
“That’s all Bannister heard. A fruit train was coming in, he said, and had been whistling for the yard limits so that’s probably why he didn’t hear the other one. He heard the second one, though, and hurried to see what it was. He was still quite a way off, when he saw a woman running. About all he saw was a flutter of skirts disappearing around the back of the house. He ran after her, but she was gone. He came back to the front of the house and heard Mrs. Alcott screaming. He went in, and found Mrs. Alcott hysterical and Alcott dead or dying. She was holding Alcott’s head in her hands and trying to get him to talk to her. He was bleeding on the front of her dress. Bannister got Doc Janvier right away, but Alcott was already dead. J guess it was ten or fifteen minutes before they sent for me, damn it all.”
“Could it have been Mrs. Alcott that Bannister saw running?” Lane asked.
“Not a chance. Look at those footprints. Mrs. Alcott wears flat-heeled shoes. Will you come here a minute, Miss Monroe?”
Muriel, who had been waiting on the veranda steps, came quickly. She threw away her cigarette, but not before Lane noticed that her hand was trembling.
The Comandante took the flashlight and shone it down at the footprints. He asked:
“Whose shoes do you think made those prints, Miss Monroe?”
“There’s only one girl in the division wears heels that high,” Muriel said. “And that’s Nita Fenwick.”
The Comandante nodded vehemently, his teeth clenched.
“And that’s where I muffed it, Lane,” he said. “I let that Fenwick girl get away. I was waiting for her aboard the Fonseca. I’d already been through her luggage, and I’d brought Señora Blanco along to search the girl when she came up the gangplank. She arrived about one minute before sailing-time, running and out of breath. She was hiding nothing, so I left the ship. By the time I got the call from Janvier, heard Bannister’s story, and found the footprints, the ship had sailed. Luckily she calls at Santiago. I’m cabling the Cuban authorities to hold La Fenwick. I—”
“Now wait a minute, Joe,” Lane interrupted. “Let’s not go off half cocked. When does the Fonseca get to Santiago?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“Then we’ve got plenty of time. There’s a lot I’d like to find out first. Why would Nita want to kill Alcott, anyhow?”
“Because he let her down,” said the Comandante. “She wanted him to leave his wife and go north with her. He refused.”
“And did Bill Roland let her down, too? And Stilton.”
“Maybe this is just a grudge killing,” the Comandante said. “Maybe it hasn’t anything to do with Roland and Stilton.”
“It’s too easy that way, Joe. It works out too pat. It sounds like the explanation of Alcott’s jealous wife.”
“Mrs. Alcott is sure Nita did it, all right,” the Comandante admitted. “So am I, for that matter.”
“Did Mrs. Alcott see Nita around the house before or after the shooting?”
“No, she didn’t see anything. Mrs. Alcott says she was in her own room, getting ready for bed, when she heard the shots.”
“She heard two shots?”
“Yes, she heard both. They were a few seconds apart. She’s not surprised Bannister didn’t hear the first because there was a fruit train passing.”
“Where’s Mrs. Alcott now?” Lane asked.
“She’s in her room quietly going to pieces. Doc Janvier is with her. He had to give her something to calm her down.”
“And there were no shells,” said Lane, as though talking to himself.
“No, I couldn’t find any empty cartridges. That means they were fired from a revolver, not an automatic. I’ll dig that bullet out of the wall tonight, when Janvier moves Alcott to the hospital morgue, so we can get an idea of the caliber.”
Lane made no comment. He was deep in thought as he lit a cigarette.
There was a droning sound overhead. Lane looked up. The red-and-green running lights of an airplane soared past, wheeling across the high, dark ceiling of scudding clouds.
“That’s Mr. Binsworth’s plane,” Muriel cried. “He got here ahead of the storm.”
Lane watched the plane swing in a wide circle until only the red wing light was visible, dipping sharply as it maneuvered over the port.
“You know, Joe,”he said, “I can’t help thinking that Binsworth has a lot to do with this. His arrival, I mean. Look at the timing, Joe. Alcott is killed just before Binsworth gets here, as if someone didn’t want the accountant to talk to the vice-president.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” the Comandante said. “If Alcott had something on his mind, why couldn’t he have come to me, instead of waiting for Binsworth?”
“You know how fruit company people are, Joe. They like to settle their own troubles in their own way, without recourse to the law of the land.”
“Then why didn’t he speak his piece to Perry. The division manager is judge, jury, prosecutor, and counsel for the defense, as far as fruit company people are concerned.”
“There’s one very good reason why he may not have wanted to tell Perry what he knew,” Lane said.
“It still could have been Nita,” the Comandante insisted. “I don’t see how it could have been anyone else.”
“Maybe you’re right, Joe,” Lane said. “Wait just a minute.” He went up the veranda steps three at a time, entered the house. In two minutes he was back. “Mrs. Alcott is asleep,” he said. “Doc Janvier says she’ll be out for five or six hours. He gave her a man-size pill. I’m coming back and sleep across her threshold, but in the meantime—Is eavesdropping a misdemeanor in this country, Joe?”
“Not if you can get away with it,” the Comandante replied.
“Then come on, Muriel. You and I are going to do a very reprehensible thing. We’re going to listen in surreptitiously on the private conversation between Vice-President Binsworth and Dave Perry.”
He took the girl’s arm. A single drop of hot rain fell from the still black sky and splashed against his cheek. Another drop struck the corrugated iron roof of the Alcott bungalow with a sharp, metallic zing! A dozen more drops fell in deliberate succession, banging on the roof like a slow chromatic scale played on a tinny piano. At the first notes of the overture, the dark, somnolent trees stirred to life. A thin quaver of wind came from the sea in sighing crescendo. Branches and palm fronds bowed and scraped in complaining counterpoint.
“Here it comes!” Muriel exclaimed.
Lane put his arm around her shoulders and turned her to face the first quick gusts. Without a word they hurried into rising wind.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Man in Despair
The lights at the plaza made blurred halos on the thick curtains of splashing rain that swept up from the sea in frantic, never-ending succession. By their indistinct glow, Lane could make out the tall figure of Dave Perry coming up from the small-boat landing. Beside Perry was a shorter, stockier figure carrying two briefcases—Vice-President Binsworth, undoubtedly.
“Have you got your keys?” Lane asked Muriel.
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll hurry ahead to the office.”
“Maybe they’ll go straight to Dave’s house.”
“They’ll have to pass the office in any case. If they go on by, we’ll follow.”
“Darling, I feel like a worm, doing this.”
“It’s got to be done. We’ll go in by the side door to the port office—the one we used for an exit the night Stilton was killed. We ought to be able to hear from that little anteroom between Bannister’s office and Perry’s.”
They had been sitting in the dark only a few minutes before they heard steps and voices. The light went on in the adjoining office, and chairs scraped along the floor. The two men had been talking even before they switched on the light, and although Lane could not see Binsworth, he thought he had a complete picture of the third vice-president from his voice: Paunchy, red-faced, double-chinned, smug, a little pompous, a little sneering. Lane expected to smell expensive cigar smoke very shortly.
“Ye gods and little alligators, Mr. Binsworth!” Perry was saying. “Who’s responsible for this new policy of penny-pinching? A hundred thousand dollars is nothing to a company like ours. If Mr. Stilton asked for twice that amount, no strings attached and no questions asked, you’d send it down by the next boat.”
“Mr. Stilton,” said Binsworth, “is dead.”
“But his problem is still very much alive,” Perry countered. “Is the company going to sit quietly by and see us lose control of the situation down here, lose all command of the position Mr. Stilton built up—all for a measly hundred thousand dollars? Why, I saved the company more than that today, salvaging fruit from the blow-down.”
“The company sent you the hundred thousand, Mr. Perry,” said the third vice-president.
“Yes, but it hasn’t got into the proper hands.”
“Then why don’t you see that it does, Mr. Perry?”
“Damn it all, Binsworth, I know the money’s going to turn up some time, but we can’t wait. The time element is important. The Minister of the Interior isn’t going to hang around here indefinitely, and if the Germans get in their licks before—”
“You misunderstand me, Perry. I mean, why don’t you hand over the hundred thousand to the proper party?”
“Why don’t I—?”
“Let’s quit fencing and get down to sword points, Perry. You must have suspected that we’ve found you out at last. You’ve stolen that hundred thousand, just as you’ve been stealing smaller amounts from the company for the past seven months.”
“You’re crazy, Mr. Binsworth.”
“You’re crazy, Perry, if you expected to get away with this forever. Sooner or later someone at home was bound to look at a map and discover that you’ve been making us pay for purely imaginary development. And when you try to grab an extra hundred thousand as slush funds for options on the very lands you’ve been padding the payrolls with—Don’t say anything, Perry, because I’m going to save you the trouble of further lying. Look at this.”
There was a silence. Lane heard the rustle of papers, and guessed that Binsworth was opening his briefcases. Muriel reached for Lane’s hand, held it tightly. Outside the wind howled an obbligato to the pounding of the rain on the roof.
“Here are the duplicate paysheets for the past seven months,” Binsworth resumed. “On these sheets, the New Orleans office has sent you a total of $52,750 for developing new lands: clearing, blasting stumps, digging drainage ditches, and so forth. And the new lands consist of Sections 469 to 509 inclusive on the left bank of the Rio Sangre above Liberica; Sections—But read it yourself. Those are the lands that you now claim the company has no title to, and ask us to grease palms to safeguard our options.”
“But those entries are forgeries!” Perry declared after a pause. “We’ve never done any work on that side of the river. Those items don’t appear on our original paysheets.”
“Of course they wouldn’t,” said the third vice-president with evident satisfaction. “You collect from New Orleans on the basis of the padded payrolls, you pay only your actual workers, and you pocket the difference.”
“That’s a lie.”
“You received the money. I have your signature for it.”
“I signed for it, yes, as a matter of form, because I’m division manager. But I never touched the money. It went directly to the paymaster through the accountant’s office.”
“That’s what you say,” Binsworth laughed sarcastically. “And the accountant, being conveniently dead, can’t deny it. Pure coincidence, isn’t it, Perry, that Alcott should have been killed just before my arrival? Or have you a better explanation?”
“I—I can’t explain it, Mr. Binsworth.”
“Then don’t try.” There was more rustling of papers. “Perry, I’m giving you until eight o’clock tomorrow morning. At that time you’ll bring me the money you’ve stolen from the company: the last hundred thousand, of course, and as much of the fifty-two thousand as you have left. If you don’t bring the money, I shall be forced to let the local authorities prosecute for murder. If you make proper restitution by eight o’clock, I might be inclined to give you a few hours’ start for the border. If you want me before eight, you’ll find me at Bannister’s. Good night, Perry.”
A chair scraped the floor, the heavy footsteps of the third vice-president resounded through the dark offices, a door slammed. The wind had risen to higher pitch—a shrill, sustained monotone like a human cry of pain, endowed with unearthly powers of prolonged, incessant stridor. The palm trees thrashed the night with their streaming, tortured fronds.
From Perry’s office came no sound of movement. Muriel, still clinging to Walter Lane’s hand, tiptoed toward the open door. Lane heard a faint creak, like a drawer opening, saw the girl’s anxious expression change to horror. She dropped his hand, leaped into the room. Lane sprang after her.
Perry was sitting at his desk, staring at the long, blue-steel barrel of the revolver in his hand.
Muriel screamed, flung herself against him, seized the gun in both her hands.
“Dave! Don’t, Dave! Please! You mustn’t! You can’t do this!”
“What else is there to do?” asked Perry listlessly. But he let Lane twist the revolver from his unresisting fingers.
“Dave, you haven’t done all these terrible things! You couldn’t have. Tell me you didn’t kill these men!” Muriel pleaded.
