Troubles in the Brasses

by Charlotte MacLeod

  And here came the man who must be Ranger Rick, swooping the smaller child up to his shoulders, taking the larger one by the hand, walking out to meet them. The triplane settled itself on the ground, well away from the monoplane, and taxied to a halt. Madoc could have sworn he heard the aged vehicle give a sigh of relief as its engines shut off, but the sigh might quite possibly have been his own. He leaped to the ground—it was only a long step, really—and held out his hand.

  “Ranger Rick, I assume? I’m Madoc Rhys.”

  “Madoc Rhys? Hey, you’re not by any chance the Mountie who captured Mad Carew, the Murdering Maniac of the Miramichi, single-handed, all by yourself?”

  “Sneaky-lookin’ little bugger, ain’t he?” Ace Bulligan put in sociably. “I brung ’im down from Lodestone Flat. He’s goin’ to get me some whiskey.”

  Madoc cocked an eyebrow at the ranger. Rick shrugged and nodded. Madoc reached back into the rear cockpit and pulled out the bottle.

  “There it is, Mr. Bulligan, and thanks for the ride. Why don’t I let Ranger Rick here hold it for you till you’ve had some supper?”

  “Sure, glad to.” Rick grabbed the whiskey before Bulligan could get his hands on it. “Come on in the house, Ace. Ellen will fix you a plate of stew. We were just getting ready to sit down. This is my wife, Inspector. Brian here’s our oldest and Annie’s the runt of the litter.”

  “So far.” Ellen was noticeably on the way toward a third. “It’s a thrill to meet you, Inspector Rhys. What brings you out here, if it’s all right to ask? And how in the world did you get up nerve enough to ride with Ace? I’d rather face Mad Carew than risk my neck in Moxie Mabel any day.”

  “I didn’t have any choice, actually. Bulligan’s the only one who showed up. I don’t know if you’ve heard on the news today that a private plane carrying Sir Emlyn and Lady Rhys and a group of singers and members of the Wagstaffe Orchestra was missing?”

  “Oh yes, isn’t it terrible? We’ve been catching reports on the radio all day. There was another plane crashed down around Calgary, and a car blown right off the road into a cornfield. They’re saying now that the Rhys plane must have crashed with no survivors. My gosh, they’re not relatives of yours?”

  “My parents. And I was traveling with them.”

  “But what are you doing way up here?” said the ranger. “They’re looking for you down around Montana and Idaho.”

  “That’s what we’ve been afraid of. Apparently the flight plan didn’t get corrected. You see, our pilot elected to go above instead of below that freak windstorm or whatever it was, but it caught up with us. We took quite a tossing around, which knocked out our entire electrical system.”

  “My God! Did you crash? How many are left alive?”

  “All of us, I’m glad to say. The pilot pulled off a miracle, gliding in to an almost perfect landing in the dark without any lights, right smack in front of the Miners’ Rest Hotel.”

  “I can’t believe it!” cried Ellen.

  “Neither could we. Nobody was injured and the plane’s intact except for the fact that it can’t start until it’s repaired and we have no way to fix it. I have to get us some help and call my wife. Bulligan says you have a radio hookup.”

  “We sure do, and you’re welcome to use it all you want. How about a bit of supper first?”

  “Thank you but why don’t you just go ahead and feed the children?”

  “An’ me,” said Ace Bulligan. “But I’m goin’ to have a slug o’ my whiskey first an’ there ain’t no damned Mountie goin’ to stop me.”

  “All right, but you’ve got to drink it out of a tumbler instead of the bottle,” said Ellen. “I’m not having you teach my children bad manners.”

  Leaving her to cope, which she was obviously quite capable of doing, Rick led Madoc into his office, where there was a setup similar to the hotel’s but complete with batteries that worked. “Here we are. We’re on a relay. What you do, Madoc, is just speak your piece into the microphone here. The chap at the next station will pass the word to headquarters. They’ll telephone your messages anywhere you want. Where’s your home?”

  “Fredericton, New Brunswick.”

  “They’ll get hold of your wife, never you fear. Just give Frank, that’s the guy at the next station, your home phone number.”

  Rick was already at the controls, fiddling switches and twiddling dials. “Frank? Come in, Frank. Hi, Frank, guess who I’ve got here, eh. Nope. It’s the Mountie who captured Mad Carew. He was on that missing plane they’ve been looking for. It’s down on Lodestone Flat. He’s got to get the word out. Here, I’ll put him on.” Rick got up and motioned to the chair. “Go ahead, Inspector.”

  “Hello, Frank? Madoc Rhys here. Yes, that’s right. No, he didn’t give any trouble. The whole affair got blown out of proportion.” Madoc wished by now that he’d never laid eyes on Mad Carew. “Look, I have to get some messages out right away. Do you have a pencil handy?”

  Frank had a pencil. Madoc got down to business. “First, you’d better let them know at the board of aeronautics that everyone on the plane carrying the Wagstaffe Orchestra group is alive and well, but the plane itself is disabled and we need transport. Do you know Lodestone Flat yourself? Can you give the precise location and the landing situation? No, it would be impossible for a jet. They’ll have to come in with a small plane or a big helicopter.”

  Frank tried to get in another question about Mad Carew. Madoc relentlessly kept to the main subject. “We’ve moved into the Miners’ Rest Hotel. The owners ought to be notified of what’s happening if there’s any way of reaching them. No, we weren’t able to turn on the water or the electricity. We’re using a hand pump in the kitchen and depending on wood fires and oil lamps. Yes, there’s enough to get by on for the moment. Canned foods, dried milk and eggs, flour and so forth. I’m afraid there won’t be much left of their stores by the time we leave. They’ll be recompensed, of course. I’m not sure how that will be handled, but tell them not to worry.”

  Now for the important part. “You’ll need to get in touch with the office of the Wagstaffe Symphony Orchestra and explain the situation to them. They must have the addresses of all the musicians and, I hope, the singers who were aboard, and can notify their families.” He ran through the names. “And I have to get a call through to my wife, Janet Rhys, as well. She won’t be on their list because I’m not a member. Yes, as a matter of fact, he’s my father. My mother’s with us, too. No, you needn’t do that, my wife will take care of the other relatives.”

  Madoc gave his home telephone number and made Frank read it back so there couldn’t be any mistake. “Tell Janet—just have them tell her not to worry. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can get to a telephone. Yes, we must have a good chat about Mad Carew one of these days. Right now I have to get off the air so you can get cracking on those messages. Maybe you’d better have them get hold of my wife first, if you don’t mind.”

  But Frank had one more question, and it was a good one. “No,” Madoc had to tell him, “we can’t manage signal fires tonight. We’ve already burned up far too much of the hotel’s firewood. First thing in the morning, then? Absolutely crack of dawn? Thanks so much, that’s wonderful of you. Good night.”

  Neither Rick nor Frank had said anything to him about Wilhelm Ochs. They probably thought he was on the case and couldn’t talk about it. Sensible fellows. As he cut off and stood up, Madoc realized he was sweating like a pig. Was that nerves, or the fact that he was still wearing Joe Ragovsky’s parka? He slipped off the heavy coat and left it on the chair.

  “Thanks very much, Rick. That’s a great load off my mind.”

  “I can imagine. How about a jolt of that rye you brought, and something to eat? Ellen’s made hunter’s stew and dumplings. Stay the night, if you want to.”

  “Sounds awfully good but I ought to be getting back. Does that road of yours run up to Lodestone Flat, and is there any sort of vehicle I might borrow? The people up there will be anxious to know w
hat’s happening.”

  “Won’t hurt ’em to wonder another hour or so, will it? Yes, the road’ll take us there. It’s only about twenty miles. I’ll run you back myself in the wagon after we eat. I expect you’ve had just about enough flying for a while.”

  “How right you are. Right then, let’s have stew and dumplings. I expect it’s canned peas and lamentations up at the hotel. Thank you, Ellen, this is awfully kind of you,” he added as the ranger’s wife handed him a tumbler of rye and water with genuine ice cubes in it.

  “It’s our pleasure, believe me,” she told him. “We don’t get to see many new faces around here once Lodestone Flat closes for the season. We don’t see all that many while it’s open, as far as that goes. They don’t get a lot of tourists willing to make so long a drive for what little there is to do. It’s mostly sales conferences and conservation groups, things like that. They fly the parties in and out.”

  She chatted on, making the most of their unexpected guest while she dished out the food and started the children and Ace, who rather seemed to count as another youngster, eating their supper. Madoc enjoyed his drink and let himself unwind. After a bit of coaxing and as a courtesy to his rescuers, he related the story of how he’d tracked the deranged lumberjack through the wilds until a wiggly caterpillar down Carew’s back had tickled the mass murderer into surrendering.

  For an encore, he told some stories about his parents and the orchestra, which interested Ellen quite a lot, Rick a little, and the children not at all. Then they chatted on about things in general while they ate up an apple pie that was almost but not quite as good as Janet’s.

  Afterward, he offered to help with the dishes, a gesture that struck all the Ricks as hilarious. Finally Ranger Rick heaved himself out of his chair.

  “Well, Madoc, if you really want to get back to Lodestone Flat tonight, I guess we’d better get started.”

  Chapter 14

  ACE BULLIGAN WASN’T COMING with them. After supper, the old man had retired with his bottle to a cot in the shed that the Ricks kept set up for him. He was planning to drink himself into oblivion, though he didn’t phrase his intentions in quite those words. Madoc had a few qualms of conscience about having provided Ace with the means to do so, but Rick told him to forget it.

  “Ace manages to get fried one way or another whenever he feels the urge. He’s got a still out behind that shack of his where he boils down anything he can get his hands on.”

  “Yes, he told us about the still. He claims that’s what he flies his plane on.”

  “And so he does, when he can’t wheedle me out of a few gallons of gasoline. How the hell he keeps that cussed old thing in the air is beyond me. Black magic, I guess.”

  “I just hope he doesn’t try to fly it blind drunk.” Madoc was still feeling a trifle guilty.

  “Don’t fret yourself. He’ll sleep off the whiskey and Ellen will get a decent breakfast into him before he takes off again. We feed him up two or three times a week.”

  “Good Lord! Is that all he lives on?”

  “Oh no. He gets the Old Age Security Pension and Supplement, and makes a few dollars in the summertime up at the flat, charging tourists to get their pictures taken with him and Moxie Mabel. He’d like to give rides, but the hotel folks won’t let him. Don’t want their front yard cluttered with mangled corpses, and I can’t say I blame ’em. I don’t know who’d be damned fool enough to go up with him, anyway.”

  Rick glanced sideways at Madoc and grinned. “Sorry, Inspector. Guess I put my foot in it that time.”

  “Believe me,” Madoc assured him, “if I’d known you were only twenty miles away, I’d much rather have hoofed it. The trouble was, I couldn’t get any sense out of Bulligan about where the road led to and how far I’d have to go to find a radio. Is he really as crazy as he makes himself out to be?”

  “Ace is crazy, all right, but he’s foxy, too. I gave up trying to figure him out long ago. Somehow or other, Ace always seems to land on his own feet. Wearing somebody else’s shoes, like as not. Say, I didn’t like to mention it in front of the kids, but what about that guy who got poisoned on stage in the middle of the concert?”

  “Actually he didn’t,” Madoc replied. “You heard it was ricin, I assume. Ace said they’d mentioned it on the news.”

  “Yes, that’s right, ricin. Comes from castor oil beans, doesn’t it?”

  “So I understand. We had a case some time back. Ricin is slow-acting as a good many of those vegetable poisons are. That means Wilhelm Ochs, the chap who died, must have ingested it quite a while before the concert, probably mixed in with something he ate. He was a real glutton, from what the other musicians tell me. I never got to meet him, myself.”

  Madoc saw no harm in giving Rick a brief rundown on the various orchestra members. They’d be written up in the papers anyway, no doubt. Loyalty to his parents, not to mention his calling, demanded of course that he keep certain information to himself, such as Delicia Fawn’s auditions and the fact that Madame Bellini was once Mrs. Wilhelm Ochs. Was the concertmaster actually intending to marry Bellini and had she ever been divorced from Ochs? Houdon was such a meticulous-appearing chap, it was hard to picture a man like that doing anything not wholly en règle. He ought to have talked to the pair before this, Madoc thought. But he’d been too busy in the kitchen.

  The road wasn’t great, but they had it all to themselves. They made the distance in a little over half an hour. The ride up in Rick’s wagon had been a lot more pleasant than his peak-skimming trip down; still, Madoc was relieved to spy the oil lamps in the front windows of the Miners’ Rest. This must have been how they welcomed weary prospectors coming in from their claims with their pokes of dust, or sacks of ore, or whatever it was they’d mined for around here. It occurred to him that he hadn’t got around to asking, and that right now he didn’t give a rap.

  Ed and Steve must have spread the word about his having gone off with Ace Bulligan. He got a full-dress reception from the entire company, including Lucy Shadd in a Black Watch tartan bathrobe, with a dark blue scarf wound twice around her neck.

  “By the way,” Madoc had to murmur when it came time for introductions, starting of course with Lady Rhys. “Is Rick your first name or your last?”

  “Both; it’s Richard Rick. Don’t ask me what my parents were thinking of at the time. How do you do, ma’am? This is a real honor for me.”

  “The honor is ours, I assure you.” Lady Rhys hadn’t put on her black gown and diamonds, but she could be just as impressive without them. “We are delighted to see you. Tell me, Mr. Rick, have you been able to let people know where we are?”

  “Oh yes, we got the word out. To the next relay station, anyway. They’ll pass the word along, never you fear. There won’t be a plane in here tonight. Trying to land in the dark would be too dangerous, so you all might as well go on to bed. I guess you didn’t get much sleep last night, eh? Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of company come morning.”

  Most of the group were concerned as to whether their families had been notified, but Lucy Shadd wanted more. “What time in the morning? What sort of plane? Or will it be a bus? Who’s supposed to provide breakfast? Are they bringing milk and eggs?”

  “We don’t know anything about anything yet,” Madoc had to keep replying. “Ranger Rick has explained to you that his radio is on a relay. The only person we got to talk to was the ranger at the next station along the line. He promised to pass on our messages so they could be telephoned to the right people.”

  “For God’s sake, Madoc, how stupid can you be? Couldn’t you have waited for the answers?”

  “And leave us wondering whether our son had crashed in the mountains, risking his neck with that crazy old man?” Lady Rhys did not lose her temper, but it was a near-miss. “Lucy, you forget yourself. You know as well as I that it’s going to take time for arrangements to be made.”

  “But we have to find out what they are.”

  “We’ll find out when the
time comes. There’s not a blessed thing we can do about them anyway. I suggest you nip on back to bed and save your fretting until you’ve something to fret about. Mr. Rick, Sir Emlyn and I are immensely grateful for your efforts on behalf of us all, and particularly for your kindness to our son. Would you care to come into the hotel? Our hospitality is limited, but we’d be happy to offer you a cup of tea. Or perhaps a drink?”

  “Thanks, Lady Rhys, but we just got up from the supper table. I expect likely I ought to get back home and find out what’s happening on the radio. I wish I’d had an extra battery to bring so you could get the one up here going, but it just so happens I had to lend out my spare and haven’t had a chance to replace it yet. I’ll most likely be up in the morning if something important comes along. Anything else you can think of before I go that you’d like to have transmitted?”

  Lucy Shadd thought of several things. However, it turned out Madoc and Rick had thought of them, too. Frustrated, she picked up the skirt of her long robe so she wouldn’t trip over it and went back into the hotel.

  Most of the others, especially the Rhyses, stayed to see Rick off. By the time no glow from his headlights was visible, they were all yawning. As soon as they got inside, just about everybody headed for the stairs.

  Jacques-Marie Houdon was a barely discreet four steps behind Norma Bellini, Madoc noted with no great feeling of disappointment. That projected conversation would have to wait till morning. Too bad. He was damnably tired himself. In fact, his father was making a gentle suggestion that Madoc get to bed before he undermined the family’s dignity by falling on his face.

  That was as good an excuse as any. Going through the lobby, Madoc noticed that Cedric Rintoul was seated over in a corner by the window with David Gabriel, another orchestra member Madoc hadn’t yet got around to chatting with. Gabriel had the lamp at his shoulder and his hands busy with some finicky task. Making another reed for his oboe, no doubt. Madoc still hadn’t checked on those wire cutters, but they probably didn’t matter.