Blow-Down, page 6
“What plans?”
“I understood that Mr. Stilton came to Puerto Musa to make a payment of some sort to our Government.”
Perry did not reply.
“Did he carry the money with him, Mr. Perry?” the Comandante asked.
“No. It’s in my safe.”
“Still?”
“It must be. Mr. Stilton doesn’t—didn’t have the combination.”
“You are sure the safe has not been tampered with?”
“It looks all right,” said Perry. “It’s locked.”
The Comandante removed the cigarette from his mouth and carelessly flicked off the ash with the end of his riding-crop. He said, “Suppose we open it and make sure the money is okay. I’d like to have all the facts before I start an official investigation.”
Perry hesitated a moment, then bent over the safe and spun the dials. When he turned around he looked like an old man. It was fully half a minute before he could say, “The money’s gone.”
“How much was it?” the Comandante asked with calm curiosity.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
The Comandante shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. He toyed idly with his riding-crop, flexing it and unflexing it, watching Perry across the jumping arc.
“I wonder,” he said, after a pause, “just what Mr. Stilton was grabbing for when he was killed?”
“Was he grabbing for something?”
Again Coronel Blanco shrugged. “Perhaps not,” he said. “But if he was grabbing for something, it was damp and purple. Didn’t you notice that the fingers of his right hand were purple?”
“I thought that was blood,” Perry said.
“Wrong color,” said the Comandante. In silence he stared at Perry with such insistence that the division manager finally flung out his hands in a gesture of exasperation.
“Damn it, Blanco!” he exclaimed. “Are you just going to sit there? Aren’t you going to do anything?”
“Keep your shirt on,” said the Comandante quietly. “Sure, I’m going to do something. I’m going to do plenty, since I represent police powers in Puerto Musa. For instance, if I knew exactly how much I was looking for, I’d make pretty sure that the stolen money didn’t leave the port. It would be easy. After all, one train a day and three boats a week aren’t—”
“Aren’t you going to Liberica? Aren’t you going after Graulitz?”
“Not tonight. There’s no hurry.”
“The hell there isn’t! If you don’t get over there right away, Graulitz will have the money stuffed into a dozen different German socks. And once it gets up into the coffee fincas, you’ll never find it.”
“I don’t think Graulitz has the money,” the Comandante said.
“No? And why not?”
“Because Graulitz had shoes on tonight,” said the Comandante. “The man who stabbed Stilton didn’t.”
With the end of his crop he pointed to the bloody prints of bare feet on the floor.
Lane rushed Muriel through the side door of the port office so rapidly that they were outside almost before she knew what was happening. When the door closed behind him, she rebelled.
“Now, wait,” she protested. “It occurs to me that maybe—”
“Objection overruled.”
“Walt, stop that! Put me down!”
Lane had scooped the girl up into his arms, started walking through the night with long, swinging strides.
“Put me down! Please, Walt. I—”
Lane put one hand over the girl’s mouth, quickened his pace. Forced to abandon words for action, Muriel translated her violent objections into equally violent movement. Lane had to remove his hand from her lips in order to anchor her shoulders.
“Quit kicking!” he ordered.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Home—your home—where you belong.”
The girl stopped struggling. He could feel her knees swinging relaxed in the crook of his elbow, knew that she was looking up at him.
“I do think we ought to go back, Walt,” she said, “to find out where that blood came from. If there was a machete fight, I’d like to know how those mozos got into the office.”
Lane stopped walking. He looked down at the girl.
“We’re not going back,” he said, “because I have a number of things to do in the next twenty-four hours, and I’d like to do as many of them as possible before they lock me up.”
“Lock you up? What for?”
“Murder. They’ll recognize my footprints soon enough. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Don’t talk nonsense. Nobody’s going to think you chopped a mozo.”
“And nobody’s going to think you took Mr. Gerald Stilton for a mozo.”
“Stilton!” Lane felt the girl stiffen in his arms. She said, “I don’t believe it.”
“You saw the corpse.”
“I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.”
“I did. He was propped against the wall behind Perry’s desk.”
Muriel made a queer little noise in her throat—half a sob, half an incredulous gasp.
“I still can’t believe it,” she said in a stunned, subdued voice. “You—you’re not joking, Walt?”
“No, I’m not joking. I was trying to spare you the gory details, but since you insist, I can tell you that Stilton was probably stabbed, because there was the handle of a knife or something sticking out of his chest; that he was sitting on the floor, staring at me with an expression of amused surprise; that his right hand was outstretched as though he had just grabbed for something—something purple.”
“Purple?”
“Well, his fingers were purple—at least his thumb and one or two fingers—”
“Walt, put me down. Now.”
“You’re not going back?”
“No. I’m going home.”
Lane let the girl slide to the ground, but kept a tentative grip on her arm. She remained standing very close to him, her small face tilted upward, searching his. The soft contours of her features, very white in the moonlight, appeared to flicker, then dissolve in shadow as a frantic platoon of rain clouds skirmished nervously across the moon. Only her eyes seemed to glow by their own luminosity, a warm, troubled light that burned deep inside her. When the moon shadow passed, the expression passed with it. Lane had the queer sensation of looking at two different persons. He said, thinking aloud, “I wish I knew which one is real.”
“Please let me go, Walt,” the girl said; but she made no attempt to pull free from his grasp.
“A moment ago,” Lane continued, “I could have sworn I was looking into the eyes of a meddlesome, conceited little female, very conscious of her power over men, very determined to make at least two hundred and twelve of them grovel, very happy at the prospect of putting her dainty little foot on a new neck, very enthusiastic at the chance to lead any one of them into disaster for the sheer fun of triumph. Then a cloud passed in front of the moon, and you didn’t seem a meddlesome, conceited little female at all; for an instant you were just a very friendly little girl who wanted terribly to be mother to the whole world and were suddenly very frightened and lonely to discover that you hadn’t quite grown up to your task. When the moon came out again—Well, I don’t know any more.”
“Walt, I thought you had so many important things to do tonight.”
“I have. But I’ve just decided that one of the most important is to find out what you’re all about, Muriel.”
“How, Walt?”
“Didn’t you come out to the farm yesterday for the express purpose of diverting my attention while someone took a shot at me?”
“Of course not! How can you say that?”
“Didn’t you deliberately lead me into Perry’s office tonight, so that I would leave footprints in blood on the floor near the corpse?”
“No, Walt, no! How could I know Stilton was dead inside there?”
“Didn’t Perry or someone else tell you to invite me down to your house tonight? Didn’t he say, ‘Lane is hiding something and I want you to find out what it is. Turn on all your charms and it will be easy. Send his pulse rate up high enough and he’ll tell you anything? Didn’t you expect me to make love to you tonight?”
“I might have,” the girl said softly.
She had not moved. She was still standing very close to him, so close that he was aware of the warmth of her body although she was not touching him. She was still looking up at him, her lips parted slightly.
“I wouldn’t want to disappoint you,” Lane said. “I wouldn’t want you to tell Perry that you failed in your duty.”
He wrapped her in his arms, kissed her. He had meant it to be a brutal embrace—brusque, overbearing, unsentimentally possessive—but somehow it was clumsily tender. She was so small and fragile against him! When he raised his head, a little bewildered, she was still looking at him.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you—for Mr. Perry.”
Then, abruptly, she stirred in his embrace.
“Let me go, Walt. I’ve just thought of something. Let me go.”
“I’m going with you. I’ve got to get my clothes.”
Whatever sudden purpose had come into the girl’s head, she was determined to accomplish it without delay. She slipped out from under Lane’s arms, started running. She was small, but she was agile. Lane had to stretch his legs to keep up with her. She went through the two screen doors of the Hen House veranda so fast that they shut with a single bang.
The survivors of the supper party were in the last stages of boredom. The other swimmers had not yet returned. Katherine was doing her best to entertain four overseers who didn’t know when to go home. Nita was stretched in a chaise longue, reading, smoking a cigarette through a long holder.
“Pursued by marine monsters?” asked Nita idly, looking over the top of her book at the breathless Muriel.
Muriel glanced swiftly around the room. “Where’s Cecil?” she demanded.
“Gone,” said Nita.
“Where did he go?”
“To the dogs, probably,” Nita drawled. “He left no forwarding address.”
“Save the cracks, Nita. When did he leave?”
“Right after you went swimming. What’s the matter, Muriel? Don’t look so tragic. I doubt if Death has taken your Holliday.”
Muriel sat down limply. Her wet bathing-suit made a dark mark on the cretonne settee cover. She said, “Nita, Stilton is dead.”
“Well, well!” said Nita casually. “What did he die of—softening of the heart?”
“Acute assassination,” Lane volunteered.
Nita raised herself on one elbow. She stared at Lane, seemed on the point of making another wisecrack; then she looked at Muriel and was instantly solemn. There was no bantering with the dread doubt, the nameless fear in Muriel’s blue eyes. Lane, too, saw it and sensed its meaning. It made him keenly aware of the present and his own predicament. He said:
“Would you ladies mind if I retired to reclaim my pants?”
No one said anything, so Lane went into the next room and started dressing hurriedly. This was Muriel’s room, he decided, as he buttoned his shirt. There was a photograph on the dresser, enlarged from a snapshot, of Muriel and Dave Perry, with fishing rods in their hands, grinning at each other over a ten-pound skip-jack between them. There was also a photograph of Cecil Holliday—alone—in a mahogany frame. In spite of his haste, Lane found his eyes lingering pleasurably on the array of feminine paraphernalia on Muriel’s dresser, as though he felt a sort of second-hand intimacy in regarding the crystal perfume bottles, the Venetian glass atomizer, the blue-enamel powder box, the ivory-backed brushes. With something of a start he noticed a single orchid in a slender silver vase, a purple orchid with golden-yellow wings. He was reaching for the flower when he heard the telephone ring in the adjoining room.
“Yes,” he heard Nita’s voice saying. “Lane? Yes, he’s here. Hang on for a minute.”
Lane finished pulling on his trousers, jumped into his shoes without stopping to tie them, snatched up his white-drill jacket. He heard a knock on the door from the drawing-room, and took two silent steps to the window. He unhooked the screen, opened it, straddled the window sill. He dropped to the ground, felt his feet sink into the soft, wet earth.
He heard Nita calling his name as he hurried off into the warm darkness.
Chapter Seven
“See You in Jail”
Bill Roland may not have been the tallest or the limpest U.S. Vice Consul in the service, but he was probably the most bored, and he certainly considered himself the most abused. He also considered himself a potential Secretary of Legation who had been refused his just appointment because somebody in Washington had discovered that his father was a Republican. He was indeed ornamental enough to be a Secretary of Legation, in a nice, refined, Harvard sort of way. And he was not too happy among the bedroom lizards, tarantulas, green roaches, and other tropical fauna which had resisted the reconditioning of the former Chinese tienda once purchased by the American Government—at a bargain—for its consular representative at Puerto Musa.
On this particular evening, Bill Roland had gone home directly from the shipboard banquet, because he had not yet read his official mail which the Bonaca had brought. Not that there would be anything important in the pouch; there never was. The sole function of the U.S. Vice Consul at Puerto Musa was to sign clearance papers for banana steamers three times a week, a work which could very easily have been performed by a small and not-too-complicated machine. For trade statistics, he had only to send north the quarterly report of the fruit company. He had never even been asked to get an American citizen out of jail. All Americans in Puerto Musa were banana men with the exception of the Vice Consul, and the fruit company looked after its own. If one of the boys got into a scrape, the company would form a flying wedge and the wayward son would suddenly be somewhere else. However, Bill Roland went home to examine his Departmental correspondence, which he proceeded to do, after he had performed his nightly ritual of washing with carbolized soap, gargling and spraying most of his natural orifices with strong antiseptic, looking under his mosquito bar for a stray stegomyia calopsus that might have got through the screen door, donning silk pajamas, and pouring himself a nightcap.
He had just started to read when he heard a clatter in the consular kitchen—as though a few pots and pans had been knocked off the wall. Snatching a revolver from the drawer of his desk, Roland advanced cautiously toward the kitchen, paused, listening. When he heard no further sound, he kicked open the door, retreated a few steps and peered into the darkness. He thought he heard the rhythmic whisper of rapid breathing.
“Put up your hands!” he ordered.
“Put up your gun!” came the reply in a confident voice. “Anybody with you, Roland?”
“Yes, of course. There are, three men in the outer office, and they’re all armed, so you needn’t try to—”
A laugh from the darkness stopped Roland. “This is Lane,” said the voice. “Is your front door locked?”
“Definitely. But what—”
“That’s all I wanted to know.” Lane came in from the kitchen. “I’m afraid I ruined the screen on your kitchen window.”
“You’re the man Perry’s been worried about,” said the Vice Consul. “What’s the idea of sneaking in the back way like this?”
“Has the Department sent you any word about me?” Lane asked.
“The Department never sends me word about anything,” said Roland plaintively. “I suppose they’ve sent you in place of Bossert?”
“Then you knew about Bossert?”
“Only when Perry brought me his extra passports. I had to query Washington, naturally, and I was informed to say they were forgeries. They weren’t, of course, but—”
“You know what Bossert was doing down here?”
“Something to do with counter-propaganda, wasn’t it? Running down interference with American shortwave radio programs?”
“Exactly.”
“Say, Lane, why does the Department have to send down you fellows dressed up like banana herders to snoop around? Why don’t they ask me to do this job? Lord knows I have nothing else to do. There’s golf, but I can beat all the fruit company men with a soup ladle for a putting iron. And I don’t like to play bridge with the fruit company wives because they give you a double raise if they hold the queen of your suit and an outside ace. There’s nothing so mysterious about this radio business. I sent the whole story to Washington six months ago. It’s this Graulitz and his German coffee people, that’s all.”
“It’s Graulitz, all right,” said Lane, “but that isn’t all. The Germans have a portable spark set that they move around from time to time to confuse the compass bearings for anybody trying to spot them. There’s one near Rio Sangre. But there’s more than that. A storage battery set might set up enough interference to blanket part of this country, but no more. And I’ve picked up interference waves in Costa Rica and Colombia that seem to come from this direction. Somebody has access to a powerful source of current in this vicinity, and since you can’t build a big generator in the jungle without somebody knowing it, Bossert and I decided that someone inside the fruit company is piping electricity to the Germans. That explains the undercover business, Roland.”
“Thanks for taking me into your confidence,” said the Vice Consul.
“I’m doing it on my own initiative and only because I have to,” Lane said, speaking rapidly. “My orders were to keep away from you completely. But something serious has come up. Listen hard, now, Roland, because I’m going to talk fast. I want to finish before they come for you. I don’t want to be found here.”
“Nobody’s going to come for me,” said Roland with a sigh. “Nobody ever comes for me—except to make a fourth at contract, and it’s too late for that tonight. Nobody ever needs—”
“The Vice Consul still certifies to the death of an American citizen, and takes charge of the deceased’s possessions, doesn’t he?”
