Blow-Down, page 3
“Well,” Perry began as they sat down on the veranda, “what did you find out?”
“Only what I told you by telephone,” Holliday replied.
“Have you seen Lane since then?”
“Yes. I rode the farm with him yesterday afternoon. We had quite a talk.”
“And—?”
“And I still think he is an intelligent young man with a comprehensive grasp of our methods of tropical agriculture. He knows his business and minds it very well. I think we might do the same.”
The harassed lines on Perry’s forehead drew closer together. He said, “Pinky Hind phoned me that Lane has the same marks tattooed on his left breast that Bill Bossert had—a blue swastika and the figures ‘28.’ ”
“What of it?” Holliday asked.
“He claims he doesn’t know Bossert. He’s lying.”
Holliday smiled tolerantly. “I didn’t know a man had to be a paragon of virtue to work for you, Perry,” he said. “Besides, Lane may not know Bossert under that name. You say he had several passports.”
“Damn it, Holliday!” Perry banged his fist on the table. “I’m not going to have my division blow up under me. You know what our position is down here. You know the ticklish situation that exists between the company and the Capital, and how little it would take to upset it. You know that confiscation of foreign interests is getting to be a popular government pastime in more than one country these days—and be damned to the company’s investment or our jobs. Suppose this man Lane is an agent provocateur? Or a gun-runner? Or a snooper for the coffee people across the river?”
“More likely he’s just a company spy,” Alcott suggested.
Holliday shrugged. “If that’s the way you feel, why hesitate? He’s not the first good man you’ve given the sack.”
“By God, I will! I’ll fire him today!”
“No, you won’t, Mr. Perry.” The girl spoke for the first time. “You promised you’d let me have a whack at him first.”
“Muriel says she can find out all of Lane’s history in a week,” Perry explained to Holliday. He shook his head. “Too much can happen in a week.”
“It won’t take me a week,” Muriel said. “Give me forty-eight hours. I’ll start now.” She held out her hand. “The keys to your car, Mr. Perry.”
Perry hesitated. He looked at the girl narrowly. “I don’t think you’re doing this for me,” he said. “You’re too interested in this big guy Lane. Have you gone and fallen for him, Muriel?”
“Don’t be a fool, Dave Perry,” the girl replied impatiently. “I’ve only seen the man once—for about half an hour.”
“You’ve talked to him by telephone every day since he arrived.”
“It’s not my fault, is it?—if he calls the division office once in a while. I thought it was part of my job to answer the phone.”
“You never sound particularly business-like when you talk to Lane. I—”
“You make me sick, Dave Perry,” the girl interrupted angrily. “Just because a man seems to have more than a glimmer of intelligence and talks with a trace of breeding, you think something’s wrong with him. You seem to forget that the company doesn’t insist on hiring semi-literate drunks like Pinky Hind any more. Give me the keys to your car. I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Well—” Reluctantly the division manager handed over the bunch of keys. “Take Alcott with you, Muriel. He’s got to see Pinky Hind about tomorrow’s pay sheets.”
Muriel didn’t say a word to Alcott as the car sped down the tracks toward Hind’s bungalow. She was seething inside—and she wasn’t sure why. She wondered if she had resented Perry’s intimations because there might be more than a grain of truth in them. It was true that she had shown more than casual interest in Lane, but it was not true that her interest was emotional. It was purely intellectual curiosity, she told herself. She was intrigued by the strapping young timekeeper, but not because he was big and clean-cut, with a pleasant smile and a self-reliant expression in his dark eyes. It was rather for the same reason that Perry was interested in him—because he was not exactly what he pretended to be.
Yes, that was it. There was something mysterious about Lane’s presence in the tropics, and it was only normal that her curiosity should be piqued to know what lay behind it. Very likely Dave Perry was right in suspecting that the youth was here because Bill Bossert had died, but somehow Muriel felt instinctively that there was nothing sinister about him. Of course she had seen him only once, and even she had been vaguely disturbed by Bill Bossert’s death. Dr. Janvier was such a competent physician, and men died so rarely from blackwater fever. Still—
“Whoa, Muriel. Where are you going? We’re here!”
Muriel jammed on the brakes. The steel-flanged wheels screeched as they slid along the rails.
At Hind’s bungalow the Jamaican foreman said that the mandador was at the labor camp.
“Damn!” said Alcott. “It’s too hot to go all the way down there. I’ll wait in the house. See if you can get Mr. Hind for me, Morgan.”
“Yes, sar.”
“And where’s Mr. Lane, Morgan?” Muriel asked.
“Mr. Lane, ’e gone down to Section Heighteen, down by the river. Want me to go fetch ’im, Miss?”
“Thanks, Morgan. I’ll ride down myself, if you’ll get me a saddle mule.”
Section 18 was separated from the river by a narrow strip of virgin jungle, the roots of which protected the plantation against undercutting by flood waters. The sluggish, coffee-colored stream was about three hundred yards wide here, divided by a sandbar on which gray-green alligators were basking. Walter Lane was standing on the edge of the thicket, with only a clump of bactris palm between him and the water. He was holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes, peering at the opposite bank between the feathery fronds and spiny stalks of the palm, when Muriel Monroe came up behind him. He was not aware of her presence until she tossed a sprig of platanilla at him. Then, as the missile struck him in the back of the neck, he jumped as if he had been shot.
“Am I intruding?” Muriel asked innocently.
Lane recovered himself with a laugh which was a little frayed on the edges. He let the binoculars dangle from the strap around his neck.
“Not at all. Come right in. The jungle’s yours.” He smiled with his eyes. “So the mountain has come to Mahomet!” he said.
“That’s a new one—Mount Muriel. I’m not sure I like it.” The girl came closer, lifted off the binocular strap, focused the glasses in the direction Lane had been looking. “I suppose you were watching the musa sapientum grow on the neighboring farms,” she said, with the glasses to her eyes. “Fascinating, isn’t it? The way the banana grows upside down. Or were you studying the love life of the alligators?”
“As a matter of fact,” Lane said, “I was studying the habits of the golden banana birds busy with their pendulous nests which hang in clusters from the ceiba across the river. I was reflecting on the curious fact that our own oriole should become bananivorous during its sojourn in the tropics.”
“Go on,” said Muriel, the glasses still at her eyes. “You fascinate me.”
“Of course the true banana bird does not frequent the Caribbean Fruit Company plantations,” said Lane, speaking automatically as he watched the girl intently. “The musophaga is rarely seen outside of tropical Africa.”
“Why are you so interested in him?” the girl asked.
“In the musophaga?”
“No, in the man who just pulled away from the opposite bank in a cayuca, downstream aways. It looks like Adolfo de Graulitz.”
“Like who?”
“Adolfo de Graulitz.”
“I thought his name was Adolf von Graulitz.”
“I suppose it is. He hasn’t been here long enough to Latinize it, like the rest of his countrymen do. You know him?”
“I met him on the river pick-up the other night. He seems very damned aristocratic.”
The girl lowered the glasses. The cayuca disappeared behind a nipa clump at the bend of the stream.
“Why do you suppose he’s crossing the river in that dugout?” the girl asked.
“Maybe he wants to get to the other side. Is that what I’m supposed to answer?”
“Not unless you want me to believe you don’t know that Herr von Graulitz and the fruit company are mortal enemies. Or hadn’t you heard?”
“No, I hadn’t heard.”
“You wouldn’t, of course. You’re so new to the region.”
The girl leaned back against the false trunk of a matapalo and looked at Lane sidewise. A curious, faintly incredulous smile trembled at the corners of her very red lips. She started forward to hand back the binoculars, when he said suddenly:
“Stop! Don’t move! For heaven’s sake, don’t move!”
“What’s the matter?”
“You’ll spoil the picture.” Lane cocked his head, held his arm out, closed one eye, and wagged his thumb like an artist appraising a painting. “Breathless lines,” he said, “perfect composition, and lovely color. No, don’t move yet. You don’t realize that about four feet above your head there is an orchid blooming in a crevice of the matapalo. It’s a yellow orchid with golden wings just the color of your hair. Too bad the center doesn’t quite match your eyes, but it’s a little too purple. Shall I get it for you anyhow?”
“What for?”
“As a reward for being as fair as the morning—and twice as inquisitive.”
“Inquisitive?”
Lane dropped his bantering tone. He demanded sharply, “Who sent you up here to cross-examine me?”
“Who sent me? Why the Gaypayoo, of course. Didn’t you know I am a Russian spy? No, seriously, I had to ride out here with Mr. Perry and Mr. Alcott, so I thought I’d ask you if you wouldn’t have supper with us tomorrow.”
“Who’s ‘us’?” Lane asked suspiciously.
“The bachelor girls’ mess—Fay and Nita, and Katherine and Della and I. Tomorrow’s payday and there won’t be any work once the pay train passes. We’re having a chafing-dish supper and I thought—”
“I thought I was No. 212,” Lane interrupted.
“You’ve been promoted. I think Nita likes you. She saw you in the office the day you arrived. She’s the dark girl—Mr. Bannister’s secretary. You should feel flattered; she usually goes in for married men. You can ride as far as the superintendency with the pay train, and Cecil Holliday will bring you to the port on his motor. I’ll speak to him about it. We’ll just whip up a Welsh rabbit and—”
“Wait a minute. What do you put in the cheese—milk or beer?”
“Beer.”
“I’ll come,” Lane said. “And now I’ll get you that orchid.”
He stepped on a rotting tree stump. His head and shoulders rose above the thicket as he reached upward. Then several things happened at once.
There was a whine and a swish and a shower of clipped leaves and splintered bark rained down on him. An instant later the steamy afternoon reverberated with the hollow, echoing impact of a shot. A flight of brilliant birds rose screaming from the thicket. The alligators slid from their sandbar into the brown current. Monkeys shrieked and jabbered in panic in the branches overhead.
Lane found himself standing on the ground, although he was not conscious of having stepped down off the stump. He glanced at the opposite bank, then back through the thicket at the banana plantation. He tried to analyze the report, but the humming echoes from the giant trees and the queer acoustics of the river bank made it impossible to tell from which direction the shot had come. All he could say definitely was that it appeared to be a rifle shot and that it was not terribly far away.
He looked at the girl. She was very pale, and was staring wide-eyed at the yellow-and-purple orchid which was lying on the ground at her feet, the stem neatly severed.
Lane stooped, picked up the orchid, presented it to her. She bowed with mock ceremony, but her vocal chords seemed unable to say the facetious words that she tried to force to her lips.
“It’s getting a little windy out here,” said Lane. “Perhaps we ought to go in and have a spot of tea.”
Muriel tucked the flower into the open neck of her white blouse. Lane took her arm. He started her gently toward the spot where he had left his mule. He heard a crackling in the thicket behind him, and turned. Adolf von Graulitz broke through into the clearing.
“Hello, Herr von Graulitz,” Muriel said.
“How do you do?” Herr von Graulitz bowed twice from the waist, once for Muriel, once for Lane.
Lane could almost hear his heels click. He nodded casually as he wondered how the man could have come through the undergrowth without marring his spotless attire with so much as a stray leaf or a drop of perspiration. Adolf von Graulitz looked ready to step out on the parade grounds to review the troops. There was nothing actually military in his dress except his cavalry boots and the polished leather revolver holster, yet something in his manner, perhaps the slight angle at which his elbows stood out from his slim waist, made Lane picture a gleaming metal spike atop his khaki sun helmet.
“How do you do?” von Graulitz repeated. “You are shooting alligators?”
“No,” said Lane. “Are you?”
“I thought I heard shooting,” said von Graulitz.
“So did I,” said Lane, eyeing the German’s holster.
“No doubt it is someone farther on,” said von Graulitz. “But I am disturbing a little romance, am I not? You will pardon me. I came only to see your overseer, Mr. Hind. I will go my way.”
“You could have saved yourself a walk,” said Lane, “by landing your dugout right behind Hind’s farmhouse.”
“Yes, I know,” said von Graulitz absently. “But I saw people on the bank. I thought perhaps it was Mr. Hind. I will go now.”
“I’ll go with you, Herr von Graulitz,” said Muriel, with an anxious side glance at Lane. “Will you come, Walter?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got to look at some new planting in the next section.”
“See you tomorrow, then, Walter.”
“I’ll be there.”
Lane watched the two go. He followed at a short distance, waiting until Muriel had got on her mule and started down a grassy tram line. Then he came back and retraced the trail he thought Adolf von Graulitz had taken in walking up from where he had beached his cayuca. He searched the undergrowth, thinking he might find an empty cartridge, but it was a hopeless quest. Anyhow, he rather thought the shot had been fired from a rifle.
When he got back to the farmhouse, nearly an hour later, Pinky Hind was sitting on the veranda in a pair of bright red trousers that had been given to him, he said, by an Indian lady in Campeche. Lane went directly to Hind’s room, opened a closet in which he knew the overseer kept his old .30 caliber single-shot rifle.
Lane opened the breech, looked through the barrel. The bore was bright, as though it had been cleaned very recently. And yet Pinky Hind had been in the tropics long enough to know the value of keeping sperm oil in the barrel and a plug of grease in the muzzle. There was no use asking him about it, however. The cantankerous little redhead would insist that the best way to keep rust out of a rifle barrel was to shoot it out.
Chapter Four
Stilton Disappears
The perpetual trident of worry that creased the forehead of Division Manager Dave Perry grew deeper on payday. Payday alone wasn’t responsible; that was a periodic worry one got used to after a while, like prickly heat. Nothing had ever happened to the armored pay car that went scooting along the fringes of the jungle with the brown soldiers flanking the paymaster on the rear platform, and the fortune in currency in the little safe inside. And as for the brown-skinned hordes of roaring, whooping fruit cutters who swept into the port on payday night, full of fight and guaro, singing Spanish songs and swinging Connecticut machetes, spoiling for a good chopping match with anyone, preferably a Jamaican or a Beliziano—well, a man could stay indoors until the monthly riot had subsided.
On this particular payday, Perry’s frown was deepened by three separate but connected events: A ship was due, Mr. Gerald Stilton was coming down from the Capital, and the trouble with the German coffee planters across the river in Liberica was coming to a head. The ship, the S.S. Bonaca, was not calling for bananas; cutting, stacking, and loading fruit was out of the question on payday; the Bonaca was merely making a special stop at Puerto Musa to deliver one hundred thousand dollars in currency from the New Orleans office of the Caribbean Fruit Company. The hundred thousand was bringing Mr. Stilton to the coast from his unofficial legation in the highlands, and Mr. Stilton’s visit would undoubtedly bring into the open the smoldering hostility of the coffee planters.
Officially, Gerald W. Stilton was the Caribbean Fruit Company agent in the Capital—a thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year man in an office that sold five thousand dollars’ worth of steamship tickets annually. Unofficially, he was an ambassador without portfolio. Suave, urbane, powerful, he was consulted by the American Minister and the local politicos alike. An infantry officer during the war, he was often called “Captain” to his face. Behind his back he was more frequently, and not too affectionately, called “The Big Cheese.” He was respected and admired more than he was loved. In striped trousers and top hat, with a flower in the lapel of his morning coat, he was persona grata at the President’s Palace. And when matters of fruit company concessions were discussed, taxes fixed, or new export duties (on bananas, naturally) proposed by a needy treasury, it was soft-spoken Gerald Stilton who arranged terms by private and personal treaty.
For years things had run smoothly. Export duties on bananas had never exceeded one cent a bunch, agricultural materials came to the fruit company free of tariff, and there were options for the asking on new land that the company might need for increased plantations or a new railway yard. Government officials were very friendly to Mr. Stilton because he was a gentleman and represented a rich and generous company which poured five million dollars a year into the country in wages and taxes, taking out nothing but a lot of bananas. Besides, there was an old legend current about how Mr. Stilton, single-handed, had once engineered a violent change in government in a neighboring republic which did not fully appreciate the benefits of allowing jungles to be converted into banana land. So Mr. Stilton had always had his own way—until a year ago.
