Blow-Down, page 9
“What does your feminine intuition have to say about Lane disappearing from the face of the earth?”
“Have you located him on some near-by planet, Coronel?”
“I’ve located him nowhere—that’s just the point. He’s not in Puerto Musa, or I should have had him here in ten minutes. He’s not at any of the fruit company farms. You told me yourself he made an unceremonious departure from your bungalow, once he had got his clothes. If he had nothing to do with the murder of Mr. Stilton, why has he gone into hiding?”
“I rather think, Coronel, that he will tell you that himself.”
“Once he has had time to cache the hundred thousand dollars, perhaps.” The Comandante reached for another cigarette, passed his alligator-skin case to Muriel. She shook her head.
“Let me ask a question, Coronel,” the girl said. “Why do you suspect Cecil Holliday?”
“I don’t suspect him—particularly,” the Comandante replied. “Of course I have to suspect everyone a little—even you, Señorita.”
“But you told Mr. Perry you were extremely anxious to question Mr. Holliday. You asked Mr. Perry to bring him here.”
“Yes, I did. I wanted him to confirm Alcott’s alibi.”
“Alibi?”
“Why not? After all, Alcott has ten minutes to account for—the ten minutes he waited on the club steps while Perry went down to the small-boat landing looking for Stilton. They happen to be very important minutes, because in all likelihood, Stilton was killed during that time.”
“Unless he was killed before Adolf von Graulitz went back to Liberica,” the girl amended. “Well, did Mr. Alcott sit on the club steps during the ten minutes?”
“That was his story. He said he sat there smoking, except for a minute or two when he strolled as far as the Plaza with Cecil Holliday. The bartender at the club confirms the story; says he saw Alcott walk away with some man, but in the dark he couldn’t recognize who it was. That’s why I wanted to talk to Holliday.”
“What did Cecil say?”
“He admits he stopped to talk to Alcott. He remembers trying to take Alcott with him to the Cantina de Mi Sueño. He’s a little vague about some of the evening—drew a blank for part of it, unfortunately for him—but at least he clears Alcott.”
A soldier came in, saluted, and announced that the North American Vice Consul wished to see the Comandante.
“Show him in,” ordered Coronel Blanco. “Send Señor Perry in also.”
An aura of antiseptics surrounded the lank, willowy figure of Bill Roland as he entered, followed by a trail of iodoform odors and Dave Perry. The door remained open. Alcott, Bannister, and Holliday leaned forward in their chairs so they could see into the Comandante’s office.
“I’ve come directly from the hospital, Coronel,” said Roland. “Or almost directly. I stopped for a moment at my house to scrub up a bit. One can’t be too careful. I also had to lock Stilton’s personal effects in my desk. And I’ve brought a message from Dr. Janvier. The doctor wants to know if you’ll need Stilton’s body for the inquest, or whether he should go ahead and have him embalmed.”
“I don’t believe the corpse will be of any further use in our inquiry,” said the Comandante. “The doctor’s testimony will be sufficient for my purposes.”
“I’ll tell Janvier to get a hermetically sealed casket ready,” Perry said. “We can ship the body North by the Bonaca tomorrow.”
“Pardon me,” said Roland, “but I’m afraid we’ll have to await word before we make definite disposition of the body. I’ve radioed Mrs. Stilton, asking for instructions.”
“You radioed Mrs. Stilton?” Dave Perry fairly shouted at Roland. He half arose from his chair.
“As U.S. Vice Consul, it is my duty to notify the next of kin of a deceased American citizen. I thought at first that Mrs. Stilton might want to come down and take possession of the body, but it seems she’s not in the Capital; she’s in the States on vacation.”
“Vacation! She’s always in the States!” declared Muriel scornfully. There was venom in her voice, a peculiar bitterness that women reserve for those women who have once been very close to them.
Dave Perry said nothing. He sank back in his chair with sudden limpness. His sun-tanned face had gone as gray as wet chalk. With his handkerchief he mopped the perspiration from his brow. He had some difficulty extracting a cigarette from its paper package. The Comandante watched him with narrowed eyes.
The telephone rang.
“Yes, he’s here,” said the Comandante, and passed the instrument to the Vice Consul. “It’s the radio station,” he added.
Bill Roland said “Yes” into the phone a few times, then hung up.
“Fast work,” he said. “It’s an answer to my radiogram already. Mrs. Stilton says to do nothing until her arrival.”
Muriel Monroe sprang up.
“She can’t come down here!” she cried.
“She’s flying down,” Bill Roland said.
“But she can’t! She won’t dare!”
“She will,” said Dave Perry listlessly. “You’ve forgotten Geraldine. She wouldn’t miss a chance like this.”
Muriel went over to him, put her arm around his shoulders. Her eyes shone with a soft light—pity, admiration, a desire to comfort.
“Am I—have I by any possible chance committed a faux pas?” Roland inquired.
“No, no—” Muriel began.
Perry interrupted her.
“I’m going to tell them, Muriel,” he said. “They’ll find out soon enough anyhow. They’re probably the only two people in the division who don’t know it—and that’s only because they haven’t been here long enough. Hadn’t you ever heard, Coronel, that Mrs. Stilton was at one time Mrs. Perry?”
“By George, I remember that!” exclaimed the Vice Consul. “Funny, I didn’t connect the names. Of course I was just a kid when the newspapers made such a fuss about it. She ran off with Stilton, didn’t she? And you chased them to New Orleans?”
“That was a long time ago,” said Muriel, her arm still around Perry, her gaze fixed on the Comandante.
“Eight years,” said Perry. “Nicaragua—”
“He’s forgotten all about it. Haven’t you, Dave?”
“I had no grudge against Stilton. When we happened to come together again in the Puerto Musa division, we were—our relationship was quite cordial. We never discussed the former Mrs. Perry. That was quite easy, because she was never in evidence. She detested the tropics. She only spent a few months a year with Stilton in the Capital—”
He paused. All eyes were on the Comandante. Coronel Blanco was stroking the pisote with the long, well-manicured forefinger of his right hand, and did not speak for a full minute. When he broke the silence, he spoke softly, but the firmness of his purpose was evident even in the friendly gentleness of his words;
“I think, Mr. Perry,” he said, “that you and I had perhaps better retrace the ten-minute walk you took on your—unsuccessful quest for Mr. Stilton this evening. It would be most helpful if we could find that fisherman you say spoke to you at the small-boat landing. Not that I don’t believe your story, please understand.”
“I quite understand,” said Perry wearily. He got up.
“You may as well clear out, too, Bannister,” the Comandante said. “Holliday and Alcott, too. I’d like to talk to you for a moment more, Mr. Consul.”
“You don’t need me, Coronel?” Muriel asked.
“No, Señorita. Good night.”
Muriel hurried out. Dave Perry was already out of sight. She supposed he had gone in the direction of the small-boat landing and started after him. She had not gone far when a white form materialized in front of her. She halted in sudden terror, her heart skipping several beats before she recognized the fluttering white cape of Adolf von Graulitz, who had stepped out from behind a palm tree.
“Sorry I frightened you, Miss Monroe,” said von Graulitz. He bowed his formal apology. She could see the gleam of his white teeth as he grinned in the darkness. “You appear to be making haste, Miss Monroe.”
“I am in a hurry.”
“Could I assist you, perhaps?”
“No, thanks.”
Von Graulitz did not move from in front of her.
“May I accompany you, perhaps?”
“I’m not in the mood for company tonight, if you don’t mind, Herr von Graulitz.”
“Always at your service.” Again von Graulitz bowed. “Good night, Miss Monroe.”
Muriel hurried on. When she reached the railroad tracks, she turned to look back. Von Graulitz was slowly circling the Plaza, his head turned so that he was constantly watching the lighted entrance to the Comandancia.
Chapter Eleven
“You Shot Him!”
The wan, half-strangled moon had at last sunk to extinction beyond the distant mountain wall. The wind, too, had given a final gasp and died, leaving the palm fronds hanging mournfully still in the night—a night that seemed particularly black and suffocating because the hand of murder was at its throat.
Muriel Monroe, when she came back from the Comandancia, found the Hen House dark except for a light in the hallway. She called out as she opened the door. Getting no response, she went from one room to the other; they were all empty. Nita and Katherine and Fay and Della, she guessed, had fled to other households, where the presence of a man in the house would give the illusion of protection against the air of brooding death, while the presence of his wife would insure an exhaustive discussion of all phases of the tragedy for the rest of the long, hot night.
Muriel didn’t mind being alone, she told herself. She went to her closet and hung away her dress with the eight other evening gowns she had brought down from her last vacation in the States—eight glittering creations she had been hoarding to make company wives green with envy whenever they ventured to some social function in their pathetic commissary finery. Funny how all that seemed trivial now, how the whole world had changed completely in five minutes. Because Gerald Stilton was dead, it didn’t matter that Mrs. Alcott should look tacky beside her, or that Mrs. Bannister should be sullenly silent with jealousy, or that Mrs. Somebody-else should be sweetly catty in her sarcastic compliments.
Muriel sat on the edge of her bed, rolled down her stockings, slipped the silken ribbons off her shoulders. She stood up, stepped out of the flutter of peachblow gossamer that settled about her slim ankles. She walked to her dresser, pulled on a bathing-cap, and looked in the mirror to make sure the last blond ringlet was tucked inside the blue rubber. Then she kicked off her slippers and bounded into the shower.
She closed her eyes, clasped her hands behind her head, and gave herself to the refreshing caress of the cool, tingling spray. She held her breath and lifted her chin to the thin fingers of water that brushed her face, her throat, her firm young breasts. After a while she turned her back, breathed deeply, and tried to absorb herself completely in the enjoyment of the cooling patter of water against her shoulders. It was no use. The silvery mist that splashed over her glistening body seemed not to touch her. Tonight, for once, hydrotherapy could not calm her jangled nerves, could only make her keenly aware that she was very much upset. And the fact that she should be upset by the death of Gerald Stilton, who meant less than nothing to her, puzzled and enraged her.
She turned off the shower and dried herself furiously—so furiously that before she was dry she was warmer than before. Even the comforting touch of silk on her skin had lost its palliative powers tonight; her nightgown was warm as she slipped it on.
She put out the light, lay down on the bed, pulled the thin sheet over her. She knew that probably she would not sleep, and for a moment thought of going into Nita’s room for a bromide—Nita, for all her torpidity and languor by day, often resorted to sedatives by night—then decided that in her present state even a sleeping powder would do no good. She lay for a long time, listening to the distant howls of the payday drunks and the occasional burst of music from the cantinas, before she realized with a shock that she was thinking of Walter Lane more than of the death of Gerald Stilton, and that it was the thought of Lane that upset her.
Although she knew instinctively that this was true, she tried to rationalize another explanation. Even though it was impossible to become wrought up over the death of a cold-blooded fish like Stilton, it was the effect of his death on Cecil Holliday and Dave Perry that had touched her. That was it! Dave and Cecil were in danger—two men who were very dear to her—two men who were probably in love with her, each in his own way—Cecil Holliday respectful, worshiping from afar—Dave Perry as dependent upon her as a small boy and trying to hide it by being possessive and gruff and fatherly. Either of them might have killed Stilton. The thought made her shudder.
Della’s cuckoo clock hooted twice in the next room.
In the next instant Muriel saw a shadow appear in the pale gray oblong that was the window near the foot of her bed. Before her fascinated gaze the shadow sank out of sight, then the screen swung out and upward from the bottom. Muriel was trying desperately to remember when and why she had left the screen unhooked, when the shadow again rose into the window frame—the head and shoulders of a man. The man swung himself lightly over the sill, let the screen carefully and silent into place, then moved quietly away from the window and dissolved in the darkness. She heard the floor creak once beneath his step, then, although she could not see him, sensed that he was standing over her. She listened for the sound of his breathing but could hear nothing but the violent thumping of her heart. She pressed her hands against her sides as though to stop the pounding, pressed hard until her nightgown, taut against the swelling roundness of her breasts, seemed to vibrate like a drum. She was sure he must hear it, too. She sat up suddenly, drew in her breath sharply, audibly.
“Take it easy,” the man murmured. “No cause for panic.”
“You!” Muriel gasped—and immediately felt better. Her heart was still pounding violently, but no longer in terror. She experienced an agreeable sense of recklessness the moment she recognized Walter Lane.
“You’re afraid,” Lane said. “Please don’t—”
“I’m not afraid!” the girl interrupted. “I’m trying to remember what I said that you might have construed as an invitation to come barging into my boudoir.”
“Maybe you’d better scream,” Lane said. “That’ll save racking your memory. Scream, and I’ll probably be locked in the calabozo before the echoes die away. Go on, scream.”
“I never scream,” the girl said. “I argue. Shall I begin appealing to your better nature, or will you go quietly?”
“I’m not going quietly,” Lane replied, “and I have no better nature.”
“And no sister?”
“No.”
“Well, I can always be a sister to you—”
“See here, I’m here on business, not pleasure.”
“I must say I’m relieved, although a little hurt. I—”
Lane seized the girl’s shoulders. She could feel his strong fingers sink deep into her flesh.
“Why do you have to shout?” he demanded, still in an undertone.
“Because I feel like it,” the girl said. “It does me good.”
“And because you’re hoping someone will come in and surprise me here?”
“No. Nobody’s coming in. We’re alone in the house.”
“Oh.” Lane sat down on the edge of the bed, but he did not take his hands from the girl’s shoulders. She had the impression that he was staring hard at her, trying to read her eyes in the darkness. He demanded, “Do you know why I’ve come sneaking into your room like a second-story man?”
“Well, I had an idea, but apparently I guessed wrong. I—” She stopped. The pressure of Lane’s grip increased until it hurt. She was suddenly ashamed of trying to be funny, because she realized she was in the presence of a man who was desperately serious. She was ashamed of being funny anyhow, after the tragedy of the evening. It was just that she felt suddenly buoyant and alive and inexplicably light-hearted to be talking to Lane. She said, “Yes, of course I know why you came, Walt. You’re in a jam. You think I got you there so you’ve come to insist that I get you out.”
“I’m in a jam, yes. But you didn’t get me there. At least I don’t think so now. That’s why I’ve come to you. Did I make a mistake?”
The girl reached out in the darkness and touched his cheek. It was cool and rough beneath her warm fingers. She said, “I hope not, Walt.”
“You were at the Comandancia tonight, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“They were looking for me?”
“Yes. The Comandante thought it was strange that you should disappear so completely if you didn’t have something on your conscience.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. I told him I was with you all the time except two or three minutes while I was opening the safe the first time. He seemed to think two or three minutes was ample time to stab a man.”
“Was anything taken from the safe?”
“Yes. The hundred thousand dollars the company sent down on the Bonaca for the Minister of the Inferior.”
Lane whistled softly. “Wasn’t that connected with the river-mouth leases at Liberica?” he asked. “The ones the Germans are so burned up about?”
“Yes, that’s the general opinion.”
“And the Comandante hasn’t thought of sending for Adolf yon Graulitz, to ask him what he knows?”
“He’s thought of it all right, I guess. But he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to send for Graulitz. Mr. Perry was furious about it at first, particularly as Mr. Stilton was stabbed with a German screwdriver. He very nearly accused the Comandante of deliberately giving Graulitz time to hide the money and cover up his guilt.”
