Blow-Down, page 21
Perry did not look at her. He stared into space with hopeless, vacant eyes. Suddenly he began to laugh, quietly at first, then absurdly, at last loudly with great, ironic guffaws. But his face did not laugh. His face, haggard beneath its wildly erect brush of graying hair, was the face of a man at the end of his resources, cornered, beaten, exhausted, doomed.
Lane put the gun in his pocket, looked about for more weapons. Perry seemed not to be aware that Lane was searching him.
“Has he another gun, Muriel?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I want you to take care of him,” Lane said. “Take him home with you. Have you any bromides or anything to make him sleep?”
“I think so. But, Walt, what are you going to do?”
“Never mind what I’m going to do. You take care that he doesn’t do anything. Watch him like a—”
“But, Walt, darling. You heard Mr. Binsworth—at eight o’clock—”
“I’ll see you long before that,” Lane said. He hooked one arm in Perry’s, boosted him out of his chair. “Come on, Jefe,” he said. “We’re going to get some sleep.”
Perry responded in silence, meekly allowed himself to be led out into the storm, apparently unaware of where he was going, and not in the least concerned.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Blow-Down
The rain was pouring off the roof of the Alcott house in solid sheets, making strange, animal-like sounds as it boiled in and out of the drinking-water tank at the back. The wind had ripped the slatted blinds from their moorings on the veranda, and played havoc with Mrs. Alcott’s potted plants. The floor of the veranda was strewn with wreckage as Walter Lane made his dripping entrance.
“I’m going to try to wake Mrs. Alcott,” he told the motherly Mrs. Bannister, who was standing neighborly watch.
He tried, but without success. Mrs. Alcott whimpered in her sleep as Lane shook her, but did not open her eyes. There was nothing to be done, apparently, until the opiate lost its hold.
Lane went into the room in which Alcott had been killed. He spent some time with his penknife, digging the bullet out of the back wall, the bullet that had gone wild. There were tiny flecks of copper on the twisted lead mass; evidently it was true that the bullet had been fired through the screen.
He made another careful examination of the holes in the screen—the one with the bright edges and the one with the dull edges. They still didn’t make sense. But neither did the purple thumbs of two dead men. Or the one-way dispatcher’s orders for Motor No. 17 on the night that Stilton and Roland were killed. Or did they?
An idea flashed through Lane’s mind. It was such a simple idea that he was afraid to believe it, because it illuminated the whole train of events. It was so simple that he couldn’t see why it had not occurred to him before.
He rushed into the kitchen, found a flashlight, rummaged in drawers and closets for some digging instrument, finally found a small garden trowel. He went out into the driving rain, sloshed his way to the side of the house at which he had seen Nita’s footprints. The prints were gone, of course, drowned in muddy water; but he explored the ground between’ the window through which the shots had been fired and the hibiscus hedge that separated the Alcott house from Bannister’s bungalow. There was very little space there—just enough for a footpath, not much to spare for the stepladder. He prodded about in the mud with his trowel, then broke through the hedge into Bannister’s back yard.
He spent ten minutes circling the yard in a wide radius about the base of Bannister’s radio antenna, examining the spots at which the guy wires were anchored. Then, oblivious of the mud, oblivious of the rain beating down upon him, he dropped to his hands and knees and began to dig. He had dug completely around one of the guy anchors and was halfway around the second one when the trowel struck resistance. He dropped the trowel, sank his hands into the muck, afraid that he would find a stone. His heartbeat quickened when he pulled out a length of cable—a heavy cable, thickly insulated and waterproofed. He gave another yank, and the cable pulled out of the wet ground for a distance of several feet, like the root of a tree. It had been buried in a shallow trench less than six inches deep. After verifying the direction of the trench, Lane scrambled to his feet and ran—ran like mad for the Hen House.
When Muriel saw the rain-soaked, breathless young man in the doorway, black with mud from his shoes to his eyebrows, she gasped, clung to the back of a chair for support.
“Don’t faint!” Lane said. “It’s only mud, and nothing’s happened—nothing disastrous, I mean. Listen, darling. Who buys the prime fruit from this division—the nines in paper bags?”
“Dozens of jobbers and wholesalers,” the girl said. “They bid for them in New York and New Orleans. Why?”
“Doesn’t anybody ever buy them in advance—on the hoof, so to speak?”
“Once in a great while. Not often.”
“How about the last few shipments? Any bids by mail or radio?”
“I don’t recall any.”
“I’ve got to know,” Lane said. “I’ve got to see the file of mail, cables, and radiograms for the last few days.”
“I’ll go to the office with you.”
“No, you stay with Perry. How is he, by the way?”
“He’s asleep.”
“You stay here anyway. Send one of the girls with me—Fay, Della, anybody who can get at the files.”
“I’ll wake up Della. She can take my keys.”
Ten minutes later Lane was dripping muddy water all over the division office as he ran, eagerly through a sheaf of wires and radiograms. He whooped like a fruit-cutter on payday when he came across a message which read:
Caribfruit Puerto Musa—Offer two dollars sixty per hundredweight entire consignment prime nines paper bags SS Fonseca current trip stop take delivery New York dock—Westchester Fruit Distributors The message had come by radio and was dated the day previous. And $2.60 was slightly above the current market for nine-hand stems of bananas.
Lane compared the typewriting on the message with that of several other radiograms, then, leaving the astonished Della gaping after him, he ran out of the office.
Five minutes later he was at the company radio station on Manaca Point, talking to Bob Neptune, the operator on duty.
Twenty minutes later he routed the Comandante out of bed.
“Joe,” he said excitedly, “is there any way of locating Cecil Holliday’s motor boy at his ancestral home near San Ysidro?”
“I’ve beat you to it,” said the Comandante sleepily. “I already sent for him this afternoon.”
“You’ve talked to him, then?”
“Talked?” The Comandante yawned. “San Ysidro is fifteen miles from the nearest telephone. The mule is the only form of communication. He won’t be here until late this afternoon—if he’s there at all.”
“No way of getting to talk to him before that?”
“I might raise the Comandante at Piedra Grande, and have him phone me when they bring the boy to the railway.”
“Do that, Joe. And put me on when you get him. I’ll be at the Alcott house. And you be at the Alcott house by daybreak, too. There’ll be fireworks for breakfast.”
When Lane left the Comandancia, the wind was screaming with unbelievable fury, howling with destructive glee as it drove clouds of rain and spray through the little town, raced for the plantations. But Lane was scarcely aware of the piercing clamor in his ears or the stinging, drenching spume that whipped across his face. He did not notice that the hurricane had lashed the sea deep into the inlet until cascades of angry water broke over the back of the Comandancia. He paid no heed to the pale blurs in the rain to seaward, where the great dock lights watched the conveyors carry the last of the salvaged fruit into the holds of the Tío Juan. He was aware only of a great sense of calm and satisfaction, as he sloshed toward the Alcott house. He knew that he could stretch himself in a chair and sleep quite peacefully for an hour or two, because his mind was at rest. He had all the answers at last.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Showdown
The sun rose on a dazzling, serene morning. The hurricane had blown itself out in the last overpowering hour before dawn. The wind had dropped with a suddenness characteristic of the tropics, the storm clouds had dissipated, leaving the stark, calm clarity of bright daylight to reveal the complete ruthlessness of the night’s destruction. What had been the proud plantations of Puerto Musa division were a thousand square miles of ruin, a vast tangle of broken banana plants, twisted and beaten into the mud. But the interest of Puerto Musa was not upon this cataclysm of nature, which every banana planter had seen before. The interest of Puerto Musa this morning centered upon the veranda of the bungalow of the late Henry Alcott, company accountant.
They were all there—Perry, and the third vice-president, and Muriel, and the port superintendent; Bob Neptune from the wireless station and the company wives; the Comandante, of course, and Walter Lane. They were all waiting for Dr. Janvier to lead the widowed Mrs. Alcott from the room.
Mrs. Alcott was pale and haggard and more ratty-looking than ever as Dr. Janvier helped her into a chair. The Comandante nodded to Lane.
“Mrs. Alcott,” Lane began, “I know it’s an imposition to cross-examine you at a time like this, but unfortunately there are several questions that must be answered.”
“I’ll be glad to help with any information I have,” said Mrs. Alcott in a small voice.
“Thank you. Then tell me this: Where did you hide the gun?”
Mrs. Alcott gasped. A convulsion ran through her angular body. She asked weakly, “Gun? What gun?”
“The revolver that killed your husband,” said Lane bluntly.
Mrs. Alcott’s drooping exhaustion vanished at once. She sat erect, her eyes blazing, her sharp chin raised.
“You’re mad!” she declared defiantly. “I have no gun.”
“You’ve hidden it,” Lane insisted. “Where?”
“I tell you I don’t know what you’re talking about. How can you even intimate that I killed my husband, when we all know it was that horrible Fenwick woman. Her footprints were there, outside the window, for everybody to see.”
“Yes, I saw them,” said Lane quietly, “but Nita Fenwick didn’t make those footprints. You did, Mrs. Alcott.”
“How can you say such a thing? Look at my feet!”
“You made the prints with Nita Fenwick’s shoes. Don’t you remember, Mrs. Alcott, that night before last you surprised Nita in your husband’s study—en déshabillé? You told Mr. Perry that you had proof of Nita’s perfidy. And in view of the fact that Nita came home that night in stockinged feet and Alcott’s raincoat, it’s not difficult to deduce that your proof consisted of Nita’s shoes and dress which you seized in a fit of jealous anger. You used those shoes last night to make the Comandante think that Nita Fenwick murdered your husband—which she didn’t.”
Mrs. Alcott’s lips quivered. Then she burst into tears.
“Coronel, stop this man!” Mrs. Bannister pleaded with the Comandante. “Don’t let him torture Edith Alcott like this! I know she didn’t kill her husband.”
“So do I,” Lane agreed. “Henry Alcott killed himself.”
“No,” said Mrs. Alcott through her tears.
“Yes,” Lane contradicted. “Henry Alcott shot himself because his crimes had caught up with him. He knew what Mr. Binsworth was coming down for, and he knew that he couldn’t hope to hide his guilt after Mr. Binsworth’s arrival. So he took the quickest way out.
“I admire your loyalty, Mrs. Alcott, in wanting to hide the criminal activities of your dead husband, even though you knew he was a thief and a murderer in addition to being unfaithful. And I understand your wanting to injure a woman you hated, and with reason, by saddling her with your husband’s death. Nita Fenwick may have been indirectly responsible for your husband’s death, but she didn’t pull the trigger. For the purposes of the record, Mrs. Alcott, you’ll have to give us the gun.”
Mrs. Alcott had stopped sobbing. She stared at Lane in stony silence.
“Now wait a minute, Lane,” the Comandante said. “How do you know Alcott committed suicide?”
“Dr. Janvier will tell you that there is a flame burn around the bullet wound in Alcott’s forehead, caused by the shot being fired at close range.”
“But what about the bullet holes in the screen?”
“There’s only one bullet hole in the screen,” Lane said. “That hole in the corner is an old hole—I told you last night that the edges were oxidized—which Alcott probably used to bring in an insulated cable that connected with the guy wires of Mr. Bannister’s radio antenna. Alcott had been stealing from the fruit company—seven months, is it, Mr. Binsworth?—by padding the duplicate payrolls he sent North. But the device he used put him in the power of Adolf von Graulitz, who controlled lands that Alcott pretended were under development by the company. I can’t tell you how Graulitz found out about this, but I’m certain that Graulitz used threats of exposure to bludgeon Alcott into doing his dirty work—which consisted in setting up interference to short-wave radio reception from the States. Graulitz had to have someone in Puerto Musa, because there’s no adequate source of electric energy in Liberica. Alcott had access to the company power lines, of course, by merely plugging in at any light socket. He undoubtedly had his controls and what little apparatus was needed in his study.
“But I’m guessing too far back. About the suicide: Alcott shot himself at his desk, probably after writing either a farewell note or a confession, probably in purple ink, and probably with a leaky fountain pen that was used by Stilton the night he was killed—though heaven knows why Alcott kept the pen, after he went to the trouble of stealing it out of the desk of the U.S. Vice Consul. Mrs. Alcott, being in the house, heard the shot, although no one else did, because of the passing fruit train. She rushed in, saw what had happened, probably read what Alcott had written—which would confirm her in her desire to play a grim joke on Nita Fenwick. She took the gun, got Nita’s shoes, put the stepladder under the window, made the neat and unmistakable footprints, then climbed the ladder and fired through the screen to make the bullet hole that was needed to pin Alcott’s death on Nita. Then she hid the gun, the shoes, the farewell note, and the fountain pen.
“You must have hidden them, Mrs. Alcott, because you didn’t have time to destroy them. Mr. Bannister saw you running around the corner of the house, and a moment later found you with your husband’s body. You haven’t been alone since, Mrs. Alcott. Where did you hide them?”
Mrs. Alcott sobbed.
“In my room,” she faltered. “They—they’re under the mattress.”
Then she fell from her chair in a dead faint.
Dr. Janvier was beside her instantly. The crowd in the room was on its feet, overturning chairs in the excitement. The Comandante lost no time in heading for Mrs. Alcott’s room. Lane started to follow but Perry intercepted him. The division manager grasped Lane’s hand in both of his. His lips opened, but could not form the words. His expression, however, was eloquent. The deep furrows were almost gone from his forehead.
The third vice-president was not suffering from the same paralysis of the larynx. In a nasal trumpet blast that nearly drowned out the confusion of the other twenty voices, he said, “Nice work, young man. What’s his name, Perry?”
“Lane,” Perry managed to say. “Walter Lane.”
“Well, Lane, this is all very well. But where is the hundred thousand dollars?”
“I don’t know,” said Lane, “but I’d make a small wager that the money is aboard the Fonseca, tucked in one of those brown paper bags consigned to the Westchester Fruit Distributors—unless Nita Fenwick has already got into the hold to take it out.”
“Radio the ship, Perry!” Mr. Binsworth snapped. “Send a radiogram to the captain at once.”
“There’s no hurry,” Lane said. “As a matter of fact, that consignment to Westchester Fruit is a fake. The radiogram bidding for the prime nines didn’t clear through the wireless station at all, as Bob Neptune here will tell you. Nita wrote it on her own typewriter—after having wheedled some radiogram blanks out of Neptune.”
“You know, Perry, we should have got suspicious right away when Nita let herself be taken in flagrante delicto. She’d evidently been getting away with her affair so neatly and for so long that to have gone deliberately to Alcott’s room when she knew that Mrs. Alcott was in the house indicated that it was done with malice aforethought. She was getting ready to run out on Alcott, and apparently decided it would be less suspicious, as far as the money was concerned, if she was sent north against her will.”
“But how did she get the money inside the bags?” Perry asked.
“You’ll have to wait until the Comandante gets hold of Cecil Holliday’s motor boy to have the real answer to that,” Lane said. “But my guess is that she got the banknotes out of port just after Roland was killed. She bribed Holliday’s motor boy, I suppose, to take her a few miles up the line, and to take a long vacation so nobody could question him about it. She probably hid the currency somewhere near Kilometer 20, because she knew that Holliday had a section there that always produced plenty of nines—which would be packed in bags. And she went up early yesterday evening to do her own packing—on the pretext of saying good-by to Holliday, which was suspicious in itself, inasmuch as she hadn’t been particularly friendly with Holliday since her affair with Alcott started.”
“What gave you the hunch that Alcott was the culprit, Lane?” Bannister asked.
“The purple stain on his thumb and fingers,” said Lane. “If that stain was connected with the death of both Stilton and Alcott, how could it have been on Alcott’s fingers if his assailant was outside the window? The answer is, of course, that he couldn’t have been shot from outside. This was borne out by the flesh burns around the wound.
