by Jerry eBooks
The stupefied Conovers obeyed. Barselou jerked his head at the fat man.
“Better check, Odell.”
ODELL patted John Henry’s pockets and armpits and thighs with a questing hand. Then he looked at the girl. Sin shrank behind her husband and Conover clenched his fists.
“We won’t cause bad feeling,” Barselou told his henchman.
John Henry recovered his voice, though it was scarcely better than a croak. “Lieutenant Lay?” he asked.
“Oh, were you expecting to meet him here?” Barselou asked. “He’s been gone a good hour. His bright idea was we close down until the Anglin killing blows over. I didn’t argue. Sidney and the boys deserve a couple days off.” John Henry cursed himself for not heeding the warning of the empty parking lot.
Barselou said, “You see, the Bar C is more than a place of business to me. This is my home.”
John Henry couldn’t suppress a groan.
Barselou sat in a chair opposite them. Odell leaned against the slot machine, carefully inattentive.
“All right,” said the big man. “Now suppose we talk business.”
“Okay,” said John Henry. “We’re willing to listen to a proposition.” Barselou looked as if he were not smiling on purpose. “You’re in no position to bargain. We hold the cards, Conover.”
“But not the Queen,” Sin said. Barselou said, “You’re right. I don’t hold the big Queen. But I do hold you.”
“I’m still listening,” said John Henry. “Then listen to this—I want to know everything that went on between you and Anglin.”
“And if we don’t feel like telling?” Odell moved forward, his hand falling into his coat pocket.
Sin said quickly, “Wait! Please wait a minute! Mr. Barselou, we have a confession to make.”
“You came to the right church,” said Odell.
“We don’t know what all this is about.”
Barselou laughed incredulously. “That’s right, Barselou,” said John Henry with angry deliberation. “And we don’t want to know. All we want to do is get out of here and forget all about it. We were going home when we got sidetracked here.”
Barselou shook his heavy head slowly. “That won’t do. Not at all.”
“Please, Mr. Barselou,” Sin pleaded. “We’re telling you the truth. We don’t have anything you want. We don’t know anything. P-Please believe us!” A vision of a pencil in a desk drawer suddenly rose in John Henry’s mind. But, either Sin had forgotten the pencil or she was using her feminine guile to throw Barselou off-balance.
“So you don’t know what it’s all about,” mocked Barselou, considering them with narrowed eyes. He reached a conclusion. “Maybe,” he said, “Anglin didn’t sell you everything he knew. Maybe he didn’t think you’d believe the actual facts about the Queen. Or maybe you’re lying. I want you to know what an unbelievable amount of money is at stake.
“The story of the Queen is quite a story, Mrs. Conover. If you’ve read any California history at all, you should know it.”
VII
CONOVER kept silent. He had something to bargain with—the all-important pencil—but how to use it?
“In the year seventeen-hundred and forty-four,” Barselou began to relate, “a Spanish galleon left Manila, headed for Mexico. This ship was loaded with jewels, silks, gold and other precious metals. The wealth of the Philippines, intended for Philip the Fifth. This ship was one of the Manila galleons that had been crossing the Pacific every year for almost two centuries. They came south along the coast of California and eventually arrived in Mexico—with luck. It was a hard trip. It took several months and usually half the crew died of scurvy before they got to Acapulco.
“On top of this, there were other hazards. Pirates flocked from all over the world to get a crack at the Manila galleon. Sir Frances Drake, Woodes Rogers, Shelvocke, Clipperton—all of them had their try. They’d wait for the galleon along the California coast. In seventeen-hundred-and-forty-four, this section of the country was unexplored. Then when the galleon came along the pirates would jump her. The battle was usually one-sided.”
Barselou let his gaze encompass John Henry. “So the first point, Conover, is that the particular ship that left Manila in seventeen-hundred-and-forty-four was named La Reina—the Queen. The Queen was commanded by a Spanish officer named Arvaez y Moncada. She carried a mighty rich cargo that year. Old records put the value of the pearls alone at four or five million dollars.”
“Gosh,” Sin murmured.
“An English pirate named Bledsoe fired on the Queen off the tip of Lower California. But Captain Arvaez was lucky. A storm blew up and he was able to dodge the buccaneers. However, to be on the safe side, Arvaez decided to take the Reina north, up the Gulf of California. I guess he figured on waiting a few days until Bledsoe got out of the neighborhood.
“Well, the Reina reached the head of the Gulf. But as far as Arvaez could see to the north was a great inland sea. Neither he nor his navigator, a Portuguese named Ferrelo, had dreamed of such a body of water. But I don’t suppose they were too surprised. In those days, the maps were more often wrong than right.
“Arvaez decided to explore this new sea. So the Reina kept going north. Now and then they passed little islands but there weren’t any signs of life. After several days, Arvaez discovered the sea was getting shallower. So he turned back, and got the shuck of his life. The water had disappeared and only sand was left. Desperately, he sailed back and forth. Everywhere he went, the inland sea was drying up. At last, there wasn’t enough water to allow the Reina to draw. Her keel struck bottom and that was that. There’d been heavy rains and the Colorado River overflowed its banks. The overflow flooded this desert country, most of which is below sea level, anyway. The Queen sailed in when the flood was at its height. Then when the waters receded, she was left high and dry.” He surveyed the Conovers’ expressions of incredulity. “It’s fact. The floods have happened three times since. The last time was in nineteen-hundred-and-five. That’s how the Salton Sea got there.”
“Oh!” cried Sin excitedly. “That’s what you were doing with those maps!”
Barselou’s heavy lips curled ironically. “Let me finish the story. The Reina was stranded in the middle of the desert. Arvaez and his crew were hundreds of miles from civilization, with a cargo worth millions and no way to get it out.
“They packed up what they could carry and hit the trail for Mexico. Only one man made it—Ferrelo, the navigator. He didn’t want to go back and look for the Queen, but during the next sixty or seventy years, several parties searched all over this section of the country for the lost treasure ship. They didn’t find her.”
“Maybe Ferrelo’s memory was bad. The important part is that the galleon stayed lost—until recently. That’s where you folks come in.”
SIN ASKED unbelievingly, “You know where the Queen is now?”
“The general location, yes. She’s
somewhere in the Badlands, between here and San Felipe Creek, rocky, rugged country, chopped up with a lot of sublevel canyons.”
“Why don’t you
“Because finding something in the badlands is like looking for the needle in the haystack,” Barselou replied coldly. “You can find it if you’ve got the time. I thought I had the time—until you showed up.” His pupils showed as chips of silvered glass. “Now I can’t afford to wait. From here on, you help.”
“Who killed Anglin?” John Henry insisted.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Barselou impatiently, ignoring the shocked faces across the table. “I hired him last year to find the Queen. I was to pay him so much over expenses. A week ago, Anglin said the galleon was in the Badlands and he was figuring out a route to reach her. Yesterday Odell found out that Anglin wasn’t playing all his cards over the board.”
“He thought he’d play it smart,” Odell muttered.
“Anglin had wired to a Mr. and Mrs. Jones in San Diego telling them he’d found the Queen. What exactly Anglin had in
his mind, I don’t know. However, Mr. and Mrs. Conover—or Jones—I will not play games.”
Sin protested faintly, “But we’re not the—”
“We tried to get to Anglin before he saw you. We couldn’t. So we tried to bluff you out. That didn’t work either. Then”—he looked at Odell—“Anglin got himself shot.”
John Henry said desperately, “You know we didn’t kill him, Barselou. You were right behind me.”
“I can’t remember, Conover.”
“If you think we killed Anglin, then turn us over to the police!”
Barselou bared his teeth. “You don’t get the point, Conover. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done. Anglin had only one thing that was worth a damn—the route I need to find the Queen”
John Henry was careful, “I’m not saying we have the route, Barselou. But if we have—and hand it over to you—what next? The last guy that had the Queen information for you got killed at your door.”
Barselou put a mask of friendliness over his granite features. “My lifelong policy has been to avoid bloodshed. Give me the information, Conover, and as soon as I’ve verified the dope, you’re as free as birds.”
John Henry looked at his wife tensely upright in her chair.
“I know you won’t go to the police,” Barselou went on smoothly, “because if you did I’d have to tell Lieutenant Lay that there’s a handprint in blood by the door of Cottage fifteen, which you occupied last night. Gayner saw it this morning. We think it’s Anglin’s blood. The police would be glad to test it for us.”
Sin’s eyes were big and hopeful.
“Okay,” said John Henry. “Let me talk to my wife alone for a minute or two and I’ll give you the route.”
“You’ll have to do your talking in this room,” Barselou demurred firmly.
John Henry rose and Sin followed him across the room.
“Johnny, what are we going to do?” Sin whispered.
“Can’t you remember that combination, honey?”
“I guess so.”
“Okay,” he muttered. “Start talking. Softly.”
Sin closed her eyes and began whispering the combination to him. John Henry wrote it down and folded the paper into a small pellet.
“Now listen, redhead. I want you to do everything I say. Don’t argue. Just remember I love you.”
“Well—”
“Promise me.” John Henry squeezed her arm.
She smiled but her face was troubled. “I promise.”
John Henry marched her back to the two men.
“Got it?” Barselou queried.
“Uh-huh.” John Henry held up the pellet. “I’m going to give it to you, Barselou—on one condition.”
“Conditions yet,” grunted Odell.
Barselou said softly, “Yes. A condition?”
“That my wife be allowed to leave the ranch immediately.”
“Oh, no, Johnny!” Sin cried.
“Shut up, Sin. How about it, Barselou?”
Barselou moved his eyes to Odell’s heavy coat pocket and said, “Why?”
JOHN Henry popped the pellet in his mouth. Barselou didn’t stir. He said, “So you swallow it. We know your wife has the information memorized. What’s to keep me from letting Odell wring it out of her?”
John Henry spoke carefully around the paper. “Don’t make me discuss it, Barselou. My wife has a freak memory. Sure, she had the combination memorized. But once she repeats it, she can’t remember it any more. And she’s repeated it. Anglin’s dead, she doesn’t know the key anymore, and I never knew it. Your move.”
“Nuts,” said Odell, and dropped his hand in his pocket.
Barselou said, “Luckily for you, we’ve checked pretty closely on you two. What you just said jibes with something Gayner found out from that Loomis woman. All right. Suppose Mrs. Conover does leave.”
“Fifteen minutes after she’s gone, I’ll give you the combination.”
Barselou nodded. “You’re free to go, Mrs. Conover.”
Sin hugged John Henry’s arm. “I’m not going, honey!”
“Sin, you’ve got to. Don’t argue about it. Nothing’s going to happen to me with you loose. I’m ordering you to leave.”
“All right, darling,” she whispered. “Please be careful.”
He kissed her and mumbled, “Go to the Brawley police station. If I’m not in front of it by six in the morning, go inside and spill the works.” Aloud he commanded, “Now, scoot!”
There was silence in the room after the door had closed behind her. Then there was the sound of a car being started. Tires whispered away on the gravel. The desert quiet returned.
John Henry straddled a chair facing the other two men. Their eyes were glued to his throat muscles.
The three of them sat in the silence as the hands of John Henry’s wrist watch crept from 3:15 to 3:30.
Odell let the front legs of his chair come down on the floor.
“Fifteen minutes,” he announced sleepily.
John Henry extracted the small wad of paper from his mouth. Barselou stretched out an eager hand, but John Henry backed toward the door, keeping the big man between himself and Odell.
He reached in back of him, found the handle, twisted it.
“Okay,” he said. “Catch!”
He tossed the pellet at Barselou. As the hairy hands grabbed, Conover leaped into the hall, slamming the door behind him.
There was a muffled crash. A moment later, the door opened.
“That does it,” said Vernon.
Barselou said jovially, “Good work, Vernon. I think that takes care of that Jones situation. . . .”
John Henry moaned and opened his eyes. Gray light stabbed them and he shut them again. A slow fire was baking one side of his face; the other was ice-cold.
“Johnny, Johnny!” He could hear Sin’s voice near him. “Darling—please wake up!”
He was lying on his side with one cheek pressed against dark concrete. He tried to sit up but discovered that his arms were bound in back of him. His legs, too, had been tied together and a rope connected his wrists with his ankles.
He wriggled to a sitting position, groaning, to look at his wife. Sin had been similarly hobbled. Her red hair was mussed and her bright eyes had held recent tears.
John Henry groped for memory. “Sin—what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in Brawley? What happened?”
Sin repeated the gibing explanations she had got from Vernon when he had added John Henry to the basement prison. Vernon claimed the Conovers hadn’t fooled him. When they had turned the Mercury toward Barselou’s ranch, it had just saved him trouble. He had followed them and listened outside the casino door. When Sin came out, he had shoved a gun into her spine and a cloth over her mouth. She had been left, trussed, in the cellar and Vernon had driven Faye Jordan’s coupe down the road to persuade John Henry that Sin had left.
The story didn’t help John Henry’s head. He was not cheered by the thought that he had not only set his own feet in the danger zone, but had dragged his wife along with him.
Sin’s thoughts strummed the same funereal note. The basement was too much like a tomb. “What do you think’s going to happen to us, Johnny?” she asked fearfully.
“I don’t know, Sin,” he admitted gloomily. “It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t thought I could do better than the police—”
“It’s not either all your fault,” Sin said bravely, trying to control her trembling lower lip. “If I hadn’t followed Gayner to the restaurant—”
“I should have left Faye Jordan alone. Then we wouldn’t have come back here to the ranch.”
HE THOUGHT about Faye Jordan.
“I don’t think she knows anything about this ship business,” he said suddenly.
“Well, then who was it that put something in your drink and searched you?” Sin demanded.
“I thought it was Faye. But why couldn’t it have been that bartender of Barselou’s?”
“Why’d the
y let you go then?”
“Barselou wasn’t sure we were the right people,” said John Henry. “But when you got caught with Barselou’s maps, it made him sure. It just goes to prove that there’s somebody else mixed up in this race for the Queen.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Jones?”
“Sure. I don’t know where Robottom fits in but he thinks we’re the Joneses. Barselou thinks we’re the Joneses. Anglin was looking for them when he stumbled into our cottage by mistake. There are two sides. Barselou on one and the Joneses on the other. Anglin was playing on both teams and didn’t score anywhere. So the next big question is are the Joneses man and wife or a team of acrobats or what?” He was staring blankly at the opposite wall. “Look, Sin. Whoever Jones is has to be living at the Las Dunas, because Anglin was supposed to meet him there. It has to be somebody that isn’t working for Barselou. Therefore, we can eliminate Vernon and—”
He stopped. A scratching noise came from one of the high windows in the cellar wall. The window was being shoved from the outside. It stuck for a moment, then screeched inward and upward. Crouched on the window sill, peering in at them curiously, was a gigantic black cat.
The cat leaped lithely to the concrete floor, stood up on its hind legs. Without moving its jaws, it said, “For goodness sakes, what are you doing here?”
The cat put a paw up to its nose, lifted its face off and the puzzled face of Faye Jordan took its place.
“Faye!” John Henry almost shouted. “Quick! Get a knife, Faye!”
“Where is that policeman and all the cute people?” She peered at the dark corners.
“Don’t waste time with questions! Find a knife somewhere and cut us loose, will you?”
Faye said to Sin, “He wasn’t very nice to me this morning. He put something in my drink!”
“Oh, no!” groaned John Henry.
“You did too! And when I woke up in a closet somebody had searched me. You should be ashamed of yourself, Johnny!”
“I am, believe me,” John Henry said sincerely. “But now, Faye, please forgive me and cut us loose, will you?”
“How do you like my costume?” Faye asked, surveying herself contentedly. The big black ears flapped grotesquely. “It’s for the ball tonight, you know. Are you coming?”