Murder on the Tropic

by Todd Downing

  “But you’re not sure, then, that it was Miss Fahn?”

  “Think so, boss. She looking for me, want to fire me. I tell her go to hell. Give me cigarette, please. Not marihuana, good United States cigarette. I be all light now.”

  Rennert gave him the cigarette and left him. His face had a preoccupied frown as he walked into the patio again and made his way to the bathroom

  He was familiar enough with the effects of marihuana to know how little credence one could put in the distorted images that played before the senses of the person under its influence. He knew too that these images, once they were brought into proper focus, might be revelatory of actual occurrences. Lee’s animosity toward Miss Fahn, for example, was real enough, coloring his emotions to an extraordinary degree. As he considered the inferences to be drawn from the wisps of memory in the Chinaman’s brain he felt his excitement mounting. He experienced an odd exhilaration as if a weight that had pressed down upon his head and the nape of his neck for hours had been removed. There was a tingling in his body like that which ran through his fingers when he passed them across his hair. As the atmosphere was being swept clean of stagnancy so was his mind racing swiftly toward a solution of the case

  As he ran the razor over the stubble on his face he was viewing again the puzzle-picture which he had completed during the long hours of the night, when he had sat in an uncomfortable chair in the anteroom of death. When the design had first taken shape before his steep-ridden eyes the sheer audacity which it represented had kept him at first from accepting it. Now in the gray light of morning he realized how utterly simple it had been from the first, once the relevant was separated from the irrelevant. He faced the bitter and inescapable fact that the agent of one of the murders which had taken place on the hacienda was innocent. He winced as the blade nicked his skin. Fatuously innocent, he told himself grimly.

  Mentally he scrambled the pieces and began to put them together again: the poisoned candy, whisky, and tablets which in quick succession had stricken Stahl, Miguel, and Falter; that other death which had put the instrument of killing into a potential murderer’s hand; the glass-domed upper floor of the building which existed as yet only on Stephen Tolman’s drawing-board. Each slipped neatly into its groove, leaving a surface so smoothly welded that it satisfied perfectly his passion for exactitude.

  And next? He rubbed his face hard with the towel. He didn’t know what to do next. Except wait.…

  As he left the room he met Esteban Flores making his way in that direction. In his hand he held a shaving-kit and a towel. He looked sleepy, tousled by the wind and stripped of the veneer of sleekness that had covered him.

  “Good morning, Mr. Rennert.”

  “Good morning.” Rennert had not realized before how young the fellow was.

  When he had disappeared into the bathroom Rennert crossed quickly to the room which he had vacated. He stood looking about him speculatively.

  The evidences of intended departure were apparent. The trunk was locked and evidently packed with the clothing which had hung in the now empty wardrobe. The grip lay open on the bed, half-filled with shirts and underwear. Between them was the black leather case.

  Rennert knelt beside this, took a thin steel instrument from his pocket and inserted it in the lock. A deft turn of the wrist and it flew open.

  He spent perhaps two minutes examining it then emitted a low whistle, half of surprise, half of satisfaction, and put the instrument back in its case. He locked this and left the room. Flores, he knew now, had caught a glimpse of the will-o’-the-wisp that dances eternally over the mountains of Mexico, tempting the sanest onto the trail of blood and disillusionment Young, indeed, and gullible.…

  Mark Arnhardt was standing by the fountain, gazing up at the sky. There was a solid statuesque effect of strength unconscious of itself about his body, outlined in all its impressive muscularity by the wind that tore at his clothing. He pushed hair back from his forehead and looked at Rennert with eyes that showed no early-morning sleepiness.

  “Looks as if we were in for a blow,” he commented.

  “Yes, the force of the wind is increasing steadily.”

  They remained without speaking for a moment, watching the torn fragments of clouds that raced toward the hacienda as if intent on its destruction. Valkyries, Rennert thought, choosing a spot to dip their lances again!

  “Been up long?” Arnhardt asked.

  “About an hour. How’s the arm?” Rennert eyed the bandage.

  “All right. By the way, I forgot to ask you last night if you had examined those fingerprints?”

  “I wondered,” Rennert smiled slightly, “if you were going to disregard those prints entirely.”

  Arnhardt’s eyes were hard and cold as they surveyed the sky. The wind robbed his voice of any inflection it may have had. “It’s not hard to guess whose prints you found on that caramel.”

  Rennert said: “You’re wrong, Mr. Arnhardt. I examined them very carefully last night. It is very hard indeed to guess whose prints I found there.”

  It seemed to take a moment for the significance of Rennert’s words to penetrate to Arnhardt’s mind. He was breathing deeply and regularly as if exulting silently in the wild pageantry of the skies. His eyes came slowly to Rennert’s face. There was a steel-hard stare in them.

  “You mean,” he said, “that they weren’t Tolman’s?”

  “Exactly, Mr. Arnhardt, they were not Tolman’s.”

  26

  The Presence of Murder

  Very deliberately Arnhardt reached down and pulled loose a leaf from a scarlet runner that had crept over the lip of the fountain. He took the tip between his teeth, bit it in two and spat out the fragment.

  “Whose prints were they then?” He spoke to the wind.

  “I can’t say at present, Mr. Arnhardt.”

  “What do you mean—you can’t say?”

  “Just that.”

  Arnhardt centered his attention on the leaf.

  “Were they George Stahl’s?”

  “No, they were not Stahl’s.”

  “See here, Rennert,” Arnhardt crushed the leaf between his fingers and flung it from him, “you’re being mighty secretive about this.”

  “Sorry,” Rennert shrugged, “I’m not being so purposely. I simply mean what I say. I cannot tell you at present whose prints they are.”

  Arnhardt regarded him steadily.

  “I see now,” he said slowly, “why you acted the way you did last night when I accused Tolman of shooting me. You knew his prints weren’t on that caramel.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well,” he heaved himself from his perch, “regardless of those prints we’ve got a case against Tolman now. That gun.”

  “It seems to me, Arnhardt, that you have no case at all against him.”

  “The hell I haven’t!”

  “You know that the person who shot you used an automatic. That’s all. It will be necessary to find the bullet and to prove that it was fired from the gun which Tolman had in his room. That will require the services of an expert.”

  “All right, I’ll get an expert then. I’ve stood this delay as long as I’m going to. I’m getting the authorities in from Victoria this morning, just like I said I would. Now, what about some breakfast?”

  “What I was going to suggest.”

  “Wonder if Lee’s up?”

  “Yes, the meal should be ready by now.”

  The first pellets of rain struck their faces, hard as buckshot. There was a drumming on the tiles.

  The dining room was bleak and cheerless in the gray half-light, filled with flying particles of dust, and the adobe walls exuded a dank chill.

  Arnhardt switched on the electric light and grimaced as he looked about him.

  “Did you ever see a Mexican dining room that didn’t take away your appetite?” he asked as he sat down.

  “Especially at breakfast time,” Rennert agreed. “And it’s a bad enough meal in any place.”
>
  “The Mexicans don’t seem to mind it.” Arnhardt tapped the bell.

  “No, their conversational pyrotechnics at breakfast always amaze me.”

  Arnhardt’s eyes rested for an unguarded instant on the empty chair at the head of the table and a frown darkened his face. He took them away quickly and stared straight down at the tablecloth in complete tight-lipped absorption.

  The screaming of the wind outside accented the long silence that stood between them.

  Arnhardt roused himself at last, with visible effort, and tapped at the bell again.

  Lee came in from the kitchen. With an unsteady hand he reached over to the center of the table for the glass jug of coffee, poured a little into the two cups and filled them brim full with luke-warm milk.

  “What in the hell were you so long about?” Arnhardt demanded irritably.

  “Don’t feel good this morning, boss. Head hurt like hell. Not work much today. Get some sleep. Eggs same way?”

  Arnhardt said with heavy sarcasm: “Yes, I’ll have eggs for a change. The same way.” He frowned at the man’s back and said to Rennert: “Always eggs down here! And to think I used to order’em out of choice! I’d give a ten-dollar bill right now for a few strips of crisp bacon and a cup of real honest-to-god coffee.” He eyed distastefully the pile of mangoes halfway between them. “Lee looks as if he’d had a bad night. Did you find out where he was when we went to his room?”

  “He spent the night on the bench under the yucca tree.”

  “He did?” Arnhardt frowned, started to say something and changed his mind as Flores entered.

  He was freshly shaven and his hair glistened like black patent leather. With pomade, face lotion and, unmistakably, perfume he had slipped on again his air of assurance. He stood with one hand on the back of his chair and bowed slightly in Arnhardt’s direction.

  “Good morning, Mr. Arnhardt.”

  Arnhardt made an indeterminate sound with his tongue.

  “How are you this morning, Mr. Rennert?” Another bow. He sat down and unfolded his napkin with a distinct flourish. He began delicately to finger the mangoes. Presently he found one to his satisfaction, removed it to his plate and, plunging a two-pronged fork into the end, began deftly to peel it.

  “How,” he asked without looking up, “is Mr. Falter this morning?”

  Rennert watched Lee emerging from the kitchen.

  “He died this morning.”

  Flores deposited a strip of peeling upon his plate and regarded it thoughtfully.

  “What a pity!” His eyes slowly detached themselves from the peeling and went to Rennert’s face, searched for something that they did not find.

  Lee placed fried eggs before Rennert and Arnhardt.

  “Blanquillos, Señor Flores?” he asked dully.

  “Sí.” Flores looked down at the mango speculatively, found a starting point and buried his teeth in the rich ripe fruit. He finished one side, laid the fork and its burden down and touched his lips with his napkin. “You do not like the mango, Mr. Rennert?”

  “Yes, ordinarily I like it very much. This morning its sweet taste doesn’t appeal to me. Coffee is my main craving.”

  “You are upset. Yes, that is it. When one’s stomach is not in order the mango does not appeal so much.” He began to slice the remainder into long yellow strips. “‘This is the mango de Manila. I much prefer the smaller variety. They are richer and sweeter, with a green tinge to their flesh. On the other hand the kernel is very large. There should be a cross between the two. Are you acquainted with our tropical fruits, Mr. Rennert? They offer an endless variety for breakfast. One could in the city have a different kind each morning for a month. Bananas alone, for instance. There is the big ‘male banana’ and the very sweet little bananas. Besides the bananas with yellow flesh, the kind you are accustomed to in the United States, there are those with pink, orang.…”

  He talked on to the accompaniment of the rising drone of the wind. Dust was everywhere—irritation in the eyes, grit against the teeth, a thin film of grayness on the tablecloth. The rain beat on the tiles might have been on their skulls.

  Rennert saw Arnhardt glance up at the door and quickly lower his gaze.

  Ann and Stephen Tolman came in. Her “good morning” collided with that of Rennert and of Flores with a cheerfulness that did nothing but heighten the tension of the room. Arnhardt said nothing but broke a roll with such emphasis that the fragments of crust flew over the cloth. Stephen Tolman looked at none of them but made his way to his chair in a lost fashion. Ann took a cup and saucer from the table and went into the kitchen.

  Flores made an attempt to sweep Tolman into the orbit of tropical fruits: “What is it that you call the aguacate in the United States, Mr. Tolman? Avocados sometimes but there is another name.”

  Tolman shook his head without replying.

  “Alligator pears,” Rennert contributed.

  “Yes, that is it. I could never understand why such a name was given to them. Perhaps a misunderstanding of the pronunciation. Is it a fruit or a vegetable? A vegetable, I believe you consider it, although it grows on a tre.…”

  Talking, Rennert thought, in a desperate attempt to keep from looking at that empty chair and thinking about the ugliness of murder. He watched Ann emerge from the kitchen, approach the table and pour coffee into the cup that she had half-filled with milk.

  “I’m taking this to Miss Fahn,” she explained to no one in particular. “She isn’t feeling well this morning.”

  Something about the way she said it, an odd nervous lightness, made Rennert glance at her sharply. As she put the cup and saucer upon a plate and laid a roll beside it her eyes met his for an instant. There was a clouded troubled look in them that he knew came from some deeper cause than sleeplessness.

  He got up and followed her into the patio. She stood waiting for him, braced against the wall and staring straight at the fountain.

  He came closer to her and said as low as he could in the screaming of the wind: “What’s the matter, Mrs. Tolman?”

  “It’s Miss Fahn.” The wind caught the words and whipped them away.

  “She isn’t seriously ill, is she?”

  The cup rattled against the plate. Rennert glanced at the swirling coffee and took it from her trembling hands.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think it’s mostly fright. She came to my room this morning and asked me if I would bring her this coffee.” She hesitated, and Rennert had to lean forward to understand her. “She was afraid to eat anything and I had to assure her that I would pour the coffee and the milk myself. After everyone else had, taken some first. It’s poison she’s afraid of.”

  “Lee?”

  “Yes, I think so. I really can’t blame her after last night.”

  “Tell her that there’s nothing to worry about on that score. She can drink that coffee and eat that roll without danger. I’ll explain to her later.” He studied her face. “You have something else on your mind.”

  “Yes,” her voice shook uncontrollably. “I’m not sure about Miss Fahn. That it is all fright. She has a headache. Her ears hurt, she says.”

  “She still feels the pressure on them?”

  “Yes.” She raised her hands and pressed the palms against her own ears. “And I feel it too—something’s wrong with them!”

  “It’s only the effects of the storm,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Her eyes were on his face.

  “You feel it yourself then?”

  He smiled reassuringly.

  “Yes, Mrs. Tolman, we all feel it.”

  “And you’re sure it’s nothing but the storm?”

  “Positive.”

  She put out a hand.

  “I can carry the plate then. You see, I was afraid it was—something else.” As she spoke her eyes went swiftly through the oblique swaying curtain of rain to the closed door of Falter’s room.

  27

  Challenge

  In
the dining room conversation was at a standstill. Arnhardt’s eggs, half-eaten, lay congealing on his plate. He had lit a cigarette and was staring down at them with a preoccupied air. Tolman was still eating his mango, half-heartedly, as his inexpert fingers tried to keep the fork fastened in the flesh. He seemed listless, drained of vitality, and there were dark violet pouches under his eyes. Flores, with a fragment of bread, was dexterously removing a last rivulet of yellow yolk from his plate.

  As Rennert came in and sat down he saw Tolman’s eyes seek his. He answered the unspoken question: “There’s nothing wrong with Miss Fahn. It is merely the disturbance in the atmosphere that is causing her headache and the feeling in her ears.”

  Tolman’s gaze rested for several seconds on Rennert’s face as if trying to force by its directness a further admission. He seemed satisfied at last and said very distinctly: “I was sure it was nothing serious but Ann was a bit worried.”

  Arnhardt rubbed out the stub of his cigarette and lit another.

  Rennert thought: When a habitual pipe smoker takes to cigarettes he is on a decided nervous strain. He drained his coffee cup and said to Arnhardt: “I wonder if you’d mind ringing for Lee? I think I could do with another cup of coffee.”

  Arnhardt raised his hand and let it fall on the bell. The sharp peal seemed to send vibrations humming through the tautened air of the room.

  Lee padded across the tiles to Arnhardt’s elbow. His eyes were blinking as if lighting off sleep. “Yes, boss?”

  “Bring Mr. Rennert a cup of hot milk, Lee. He wants another cup of coffee.”

  “I believe,” Rennert said, “that I’ll take hot water this time. A very little bit.” It was, he knew, an admission of his own uneasiness before this dead weight of uncertainty that hung over them. Waiting and drinking black coffee until the murderer should make another move.

  Lee nodded and went out.

  Tolman got up and ran a hand along the edge of the tablecloth. On the side facing the door it was moving in little ripples as the deflected wind struck it.

  “I don’t suppose,” he said, “that this storm is likely to be serious? That there’s any real danger?”