by Jerry eBooks
He opened the door, edged into the office. Gayner sat down behind the desk, pulled the telephone to him and called Barselou.
FROM her hiding place among the music racks on the bandstand, Sin watched Gayner come from the balcony and across to the kitchen doors. A moment later, she heard the slam of the back door.
A church hush lay over the Ship of the Desert. She was all alone in the restaurant. Sin began to feel more foolish than nervous. She’d have a hard time explaining what she was doing trespassing. She didn’t even know herself.
Sin slipped off the bandstand and tiptoed to the staircase that led to the balcony. Since she was trespassing anyway, she might as well make a good job of it. Sin climbed the stairs. At the top, she paused to listen. She heard nothing to keep her from opening the door to the office.
There was nothing interesting in sight, so Sin tried the desk. In the center drawer was a sheaf of papers, all maps apparently of the area surrounding Azure, the Salton Sea and Borego Valley. The first was labeled: “Flood of 1849.” Penciled under this was the handwritten notation, “Very rough reconstruction—prob. inaccurate.” A large area of the drawing had been shaded, most of it lying south of Azure.
The next map was no more explicit. The date was 1891. Again a portion of the map was shaded. The date on the third map was 1905-07 and it was titled: “Formation of S/S.” The darkened area was present, drawn in greater detail. Sin recognized Highway 99. At the southern tip of the Santa Rosa Mountains, another and smaller section had been shaded, its vertical lines superimposed on the horizontal stripes of the larger expanse. A cross had been drawn in pencil at a spot in this area and a notation made.
The rest of the papers were aerial photographs of desert country.
Light, torrents of it, flooded the office. Sin shrieked and jumped up.
“Bad for your eyes, Mrs. Conover—reading in the dark.” Vernon leaned sorrowfully in the doorway.
He moved toward the desk, and Sin saw that he was pointing a gun at her.
“Keep quiet,” he said, “and you might be all right.” He raised his voice. “All right.”
Gayner stepped through the open doorway and regarded their captive with chilly amusement. “I hope we didn’t give you too much of a shock, Mrs. Conover,” he said pleasantly. “Vernon, you may put away the gun. Mrs. Conover realizes that she’ll have to do as we say.”
“What do you want from me?” Sin quavered.
Gayner said heartily, “That’s exactly what I was going to ask you. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Barselou didn’t repeat the question.”
Gaynor motioned Sin toward the door and down the staircase. The bellboy threaded a path before them and pushed through the swinging doors into the kitchen.
No one had mentioned John Henry, Sin thought. Was that good or bad?
“Where’s the car?” asked Vernon.
“The usual place,” Gayner said quietly. “Now, Mrs. Conover, I needn’t warn you that any commotion at all will be utterly useless. And foolish on your part.” They went out into the alley.
“But I don’t know anything!” Sin cried desperately.
“Come on,” said Vernon. “I’m supposed to be on duty.”
They urged her out into the street. Down the block, a black sedan nuzzled the curb.
FROM behind them, a man’s high-pitched voice called, “Yoo-hoo! Mrs. Conover!”
“You don’t hear him,” Gayner muttered.
“Mrs. Conover!” Trim appeared alongside the trio, on a bicycle. Coming up behind him was Thelma Loomis, pedaling energetically. The Bry-Ter representative showed his teeth in a waggish grin. “Ah, Mrs. Conover—you were trying to run away from me!”
“Not from you!” Sin choked.
Gayner said hurriedly, “We’re in quite a rush, Mr. Trim, so if—”
Sin wriggled forward frantically. “Don’t wait for me, Mr. Gayner. I’ve been wanting to talk to Mr. Trim, anyway. It was nice of you to offer me the ride.”
Thelma Loomis got off her bicycle. “You take this machine, young lady—I’m not built for it.” She shoved the bike at Sin. “Here—or don’t you think these things are safe?”
“Oh, yes!” breathed Sin, grabbing the handle bars.
Gayner bowed slightly. “We’ll run along then, Mrs. Conover. Some other time.”
He and Vernon got into the Buick. It slid away from the curb. Thelma Loomis strode chuckling up the street toward the Las Dunas.
Mr. Trim asked, “What was it you had to say to me, Mrs. Conover?”
“This!” Sin cried, laughing brokenly. She threw her arms around the little man and kissed his bald spot.
* * * * *
“Whereabouts you want to go?” the truck driver growled.
“Any place in town,” John Henry said.
As the truck crept into the center of the city, the driver said, “You see some characters around this place. Take a gander at that creep on the bike—a black suit in this heat!” His calloused forefinger gestured in disgust toward a couple approaching.
“Stop the car!” John Henry yelled. Alarmed, the driver jammed on his brakes.
“What the hell!” he said.
John Henry had already opened the door and vaulted to the pavement.
“Thanks a lot for the ride,” he tossed over his shoulder and darted across the street.
“Sin!”
The red-haired girl on the bicycle looked up. Then she screamed. “Johnny!”
Her handle bars spun unguided into Trim’s bicycle. Cement and sky whirled crazily for a moment. When the sky was on top again, Sin was sitting on the cement. Both bicycles were heaped on Mr. Trim.
“Sin, Sin—are you all right?” John Henry’s voice said.
Sin reached her arms up for her husband. He hugged her.
“Johnny, darling, I was worried sick!”
“I’m sorry, Sin. I shouldn’t have—” Amid a jangling of metal, Mr. Trim arose from the street.
Sin began to get some presence of mind. “I’m awfully sorry, Mr. Trim.
I was so worried about Johnny and when I saw him—”
The Bry-Ter representative summoned up a brave smile. It faded as he discovered one serge trouser leg was ripped from the hip down, exposing a milk-white thigh and calf.
“I’ll insist on taking care of this,” John Henry said.
Trim shook his head. “Expense account.”
VI
ACROSS Date Street, at a sidewalk café table, John Henry related his adventures.
“I got dizzy all of a sudden,” he concluded. “When I woke up I was all by myself. Somebody had gone through my pockets. Faye was gone.”
“She drugged you and searched you!” Sin said accusingly.
“I guess so. Anyway, I climbed out a window and hitchhiked back here.” John Henry looked uncomfortable. “All right, I made a fool of myself. Next time I’ll keep my nose in my own business—like you, Sin.”
“Well,” she murmured, “as a matter of record—”
While she told of Sagmon Robottom and his mysterious warning, John Henry’s chin began to jut forward. As she continued with the story of following Gayner and finding the flood maps, his face turned red. And when Sin had ended the tale of near kidnaping, her husband slammed his fist down on the table hard.
“We came here on a vacation,” he stated. “Not to sun ourselves on a firing range. Not to be searched. Not to have my wife threatened. “We’re through with this munitions dump!”
Mr. Trim bade them good-by in front of the Las Dunas. Sin flatly refused to enter the lobby where Gayner or Vernon might be waiting.
So the Conovers sauntered innocently along the front of the south wing. Then, they turned the corner and plunged into the shrubbery.
“Do you think anybody saw us, Johnny?”
“Hope not,” muttered John Henry. “We’ll get the baggage and beat it.”
The grass they hurried across was lifeless in the hot afternoon sun. The flagstones gave off ripples of heat
.
Sin stopped in her tracks. “Johnny—look!”
Slouched on the porch of Cottage fourteen was Vernon. His mournful face split into a pitying grim at the sight of the Conovers.
John Henry grabbed Sin and whirled her around. “Back to the hotel,” he said under his breath.
Vernon was matching them stride for stride when they pounded up to the glass doors. They were halfway across the lobby when a thin length was framed in the opposite glass portal. Gayner was just entering.
Except for the clerk, the lobby was empty. Both exits were blocked. Conover swung his wife about and they headed for the elevator. Gayner and Vernon started in pursuit of the fleeing couple.
John Henry half-hurled Sin into the open elevator. “Up!” he snapped.
“Johnny,” Sin moaned, “there’s no operator!”
The elevator was designed to function for either the individual guest or an operator. Now, the determining lever was set in the drive-yourself slot.
John Henry threw the sliding doors together just in time to avoid Gayner’s clutching hands. Blindly, he pushed one of the black buttons on the panel. The elevator began to grind upward smoothly.
John Henry let out his breath in a long sigh. His legs felt weak. Sin was crouching in a corner.
“Buck up, honey,” John Henry said stoutly. “We’re doing all right.”
The elevator came to a stop at the fourth floor.
“It’s okay, honey,” John Henry said soothingly.
He reached out a hand to open the sliding doors. The elevator started down again. The light marked “1” glowed red. Gayner or Vernon had pushed the “down” button on the main floor. Since the doors had been closed, the elevator had responded automatically. Wildly, John Henry began punching at all the black buttons. Then he saw the red button. It angered him. He jabbed it.
The elevator jarred to an abrupt halt between floors.
Immediately, John Henry pushed one of the black buttons again. He shouted in exultation as the cage surged upward.
“We’re still winning, sweetheart!” he cried. “Get out the minute it stops!”
The elevator stopped at the third floor. John Henry forced the doors apart and they bounded out into the hallway. As the doors slid to behind them the elevator started down again.
“Where to now?” Sin asked tremulously.
HE seized his wife’s hand reassuringly and they hastened down the hallway, looking for a friendly door.
Sin said anxiously, “Maybe we should start knocking on doors.”
By the window at the end of the hall, the last door opened. Sin let out a yelp.
“Oh, Johnny—it’s him!”
The man who stepped into the hall was Sagmon Robottom. His dark face went astonished as he sighted the Conovers. Then he strode forward. His hand plunged into his coat pocket and stayed there, a grim bulge.
John Henry jerked Sin sideways and dashed down the stairs. Stumbling, gasping with terror, she followed him in his wild flight toward the second floor. Behind them, Robottom’s shout trailed off.
The second floor was like the third—a deserted carpeted gauntlet of reticent doors. John Henry took one heedless step down toward the lobby. Then Sin backed up so quickly that she sat down heavily.
In huge relief on the stucco wall of the landing was the shadow of a man climbing the stairs. The shadow wore a pillpox hat. It might be Vernon.
With a squeak, Sin was on her feet again. John Henry hustled her along the hallway. The window at the end was a curtained view of the free outdoors. John Henry’s face brightened.
“Out on the fire-escape, Sin. Hurry!”
She scrambled over the sill. Swearing tensely, her husband followed. He could hear Vernon’s yell of triumph as he spotted the fugitives.
Seizing his wife, Conover stepped out onto the swaying fire-escape. It creaked rustily and the far end began to float toward the ground. There was a clank and a slight bounce. The Conovers clattered down the iron steps and the staircase soared back to the second floor.
“The car—come on!” growled John Henry.
They trotted along the porch wing of the hotel between a hedge and the stucco wall, then burst suddenly into the Las Dunas parking lot to run for their car.
John Henry halted his glad reach for the door handle. He felt in his left-hand trousers pocket, then rummaged through all his other pockets.
“When Faye searched me, she stole the keys to our car!” he said bitterly.
Sin let out a wail of fresh panic. John Henry peered into the useless sedan. The car, like their baggage and himself had been thoroughly ransacked.
“Let’s look for one with the keys in it,” he snapped.
They had rounded the row and were starting back toward the other side when Gayner’s voice came from the opposite side of the automobiles.
“Vernon, get a move on! They must be around here somewhere!”
Sin sank toward the gravel as if her legs had melted. John Henry held her up with one hand, opened the car door nearest his hand—a convertible coupe with the top up—and thrust his trembling wife inside. He shut the door quietly behind him.
“See ’em?” Vernon’s question came from four or five cars away. Gayner replied something that John Henry couldn’t make out.
“Johnny—” Sin began.
John Henry jabbed her. “Quiet!” he breathed.
“But, Johnny, all I wanted to say was that the keys—”
“Will you keep quiet?”
Sin pointed a finger. From the dashboard, a chain with several keys trailed down from another key which was half-buried in the ignition switch. The feeling surged over John Henry that he had been here before. He craned his head at the registration slip. The name was Faye Jordan.
“I might have known,” he muttered.
Gravel ground against gravel as shoes crunched closer to them. Vernon spoke, so close that the Conovers nearly fell off the seat.
“I told you they went back to the cottage.”
Gayner’s severe denial came from almost directly behind the convertible. The trap was perfect now—the bellboy on one side and the assistant manager on the other.
JOHN Henry cautiously wormed under the steering wheel and turned on the ignition. The coupe jolted as a body leaned against it and a freckled hand trailed along the window ledge. John Henry went into motion before his reason had time to argue. His right foot kicked at the starter. He drove his left fist straight at Vernon’s startled face. Vernon’s profane surprise was just a squawk as he fell.
The engine exploded into life and the Mercury leaped forward. Behind them, they could hear Gayner yelling. The coupe cut around the parked cars and hurtled onto Coachella Street. John Henry gunned off toward Highway 99 and escape from Azure.
Sin pulled herself to the seat. “Damn my memory—damn my memory,” she mumbled. “I’ll never remember another thing as long as I live. I’ll never answer a question in public. I swear it.” She squirmed around for a look at the hotel. “Johnny! They’re following us!”
John Henry flicked his eyes at the rearview mirror and swore. A big black Buick sedan danced in the polished surface of the highway. It looked like Vernon behind the wheel.
John Henry glanced at the gas gauge and swore again. The tank was less than a quarter full. They’d never be able to outrun the Buick on that.
“Where the hell are the cops?” John Henry wanted to know, outraged. “Any other time they’d be swarming all over us.” His cheerless face went suddenly incandescent. “The ranch!” he shouted. “There’s a crowd at the ranch. Faye’s back at the hotel—we’ve got her car. And Lieutenant Lay’s at the ranch! It’s the safest place in the world right now!”
John Henry, keeping anxious watch in the rearview mirror, lost sight of the big black car for moments at a time as they raced up and down the rolling hillocks. They were nearly to the dirt road which led to the Bar C Ranch. Vernon and the Buick were hidden behind a rise of ground. Tires screamed as the convertibl
e checked its headlong rush and bounced off Highway 99 onto the dirt road. It skidded in the soft sand, swayed sickeningly for a moment, then righted itself. Conover brought the coupe to a stop behind a screen of trees.
He was watching what he could see of the main road through the back window. There was a furious rush of sound and the Buick sedan tore by them. Vernon was alone in the car.
When the black car disappeared John Henry grinned at his wife and let out the clutch again.
“I think we shook him for a while,” he said. “By the time he finds out we’re not in front of him, we’ll be safe.”
Sin dropped back against the leather cushions. By the time he raised a face that was white under its tan, the Bar C Ranch sprawled before the windshield.
They whisked under the log arch and came to a stop in the parking area. The automobiles had vanished.
“H’m,” mused John Henry, “I hope the place isn’t closed.”
They didn’t knock. John Henry had no admittance card and he didn’t want to summon Sidney. The door opened easily. The Conovers stepped in.
“I don’t hear anything,” Sin pressed nervously.
“It’s in a back wing. That’s where everybody is.”
They crept cautiously down the corridor and John Henry pulled aside the drape. Through the heavy arched door he could hear the juke box and the clang of the slot machine.
“We made it, honey!” he cried joyously, threw open the big door and plunged into the casino.
They stopped short on the threshold. The juke box blared, but the room was empty except for two men.
“Well, look who came,” said Barselou from where he stood before the one-armed bandit.
He had pulled down the lever and a flood of quarters began to pour from the metal mouth.
“Jack pot,” commented the other man.
He was the plump waiter from the Ship of the Desert, but dressed now in a brown suit. In one fat hand he held a revolver.
“I didn’t expect you so soon,” Barselou remarked.
The pseudo-waiter gestured with the gun. “Come the rest of the way in. And close the door.”