“Right! But I was wondering about Charlie. It’ll be a bit difficult if we leave him out. On the other hand—well, you know what you said about him yourself—he’s wild—and I don’t want to say too much at this stage of the thing.”
“No. I understand.” She thought for several moments, leaving her food untasted, and cupping her chin in her hand. In this cosy domestic setting she seemed to him more delicious and desirable than ever. He had never seen her before without a hat, and now he had a clear view of the grey curls framing the round face, the cheeky little nose, the friendly soft mouth, the clear bright eyes, and making it all reasonably contemporary with his own middle-age and yet delightfully youthful too, and somehow more genuinely youthful than half the young girls you saw about these days. He stared at her appreciatively, in the soft lamplight, and felt he was ready to go on doing it for a good long time. Now she looked up, smiled to see him there, then looked serious.
“I think you ought to tell Charlie. Not just because it might be awkward—and not very nice, anyhow—hiding it all from him, but because I think he might be very useful. About some things—well, you’ve seen him and heard him—he’s no sense at all, but about other things he’s really quite smart. And he’s knocked about all over the place, here in Southern California, and he might be able to tell you some things you don’t know. Yes, please, Jimmy, do tell Charlie.”
“I will,” said Jimmy, and now he began from the beginning and told her all that had happened to him since he landed and all that he knew about the Brotherhood of the Judgment. He had a grand time doing it, too. She was a perfect audience. Sometimes she looked startled, sometimes angry, and sometimes, of course, she laughed, and then he had to laugh too, though he had not been much amused by the actual events; so although in the main it was such a grim and serious business, they did quite a lot of laughing. After the table had been cleared, and the varnish in his new pipe was frizzling nicely, he brought out the package, and together they stared at it.
“Of course it isn’t ours,” he remarked. “No getting away from that. I’ve stolen it.”
She dismissed these qualms at once. “Didn’t they try to kidnap you? It isn’t stealing from people like that, up to any kind of horrible wickedness. And it isn’t as if you wanted whatever’s in there. You—we, because I’m in this now as much as you, Jimmy—we want to see what they’re up to. And I know too they’re up to something. Didn’t I say to you, that very night—and I didn’t know you at all, hadn’t I a nerve, but I had to say something to somebody and you looked all right—but didn’t I say then they were all mad? I saw it in their faces. I hate those sunken eyes, and big noses, and tight mouths. Now let’s open it, shall we?” She laughed then at her curiosity, and was as flushed and eager as a child. “Isn’t this exciting?”
Whatever was inside that package, the people responsible for sending it had been most elaborately careful to ensure that it would arrive intact. They had done a most thorough job of packing. It took Jimmy and Mrs. Atwood about five minutes to unfasten and clear away all the various inner wrappings and layers of packing. But at last the table was bare of everything but the one important object.
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Atwood, with a touch of disappointment in her voice.
“Looks like some sort of scientific apparatus,” said Jimmy, still staring, “but God knows what it’s for.”
It was some kind of long and fat glass tube with metal attachments of various shapes, all bright and beautifully made, at each end. It made no sense to Jimmy, who did not pretend to have any scientific knowledge.
“But what could those people want with a thing like that?” she demanded, looking at it with some disgust.
“It’s my belief,” said Jimmy slowly, for he was still thinking hard, “they were taking it up there for the other brother, the one that young scientist mentioned. But they weren’t just acting as delivery agents, I’m sure of that. I mean to say, the Brotherhood and Father John and the whole works came into this business. I know that by the way they talked about it. They’d had word this thing was tremendously important, whatever it is.”
Involuntarily he glanced across at the window, which was open. They had not troubled to draw the curtains. Outside was the vast impenetrable darkness of night in a remote place. Jimmy frowned at it, then went and drew the curtains.
“Nobody’d come here, you know.” She had guessed his thought. “It doesn’t lead to anywhere. We’re very quiet out here. And we’d hear the dogs if anybody strange was near.”
“Yes, it’s a good place, from one point of view. And a bad one, from another. If somebody did come, they could do what they liked right out here. Is there any chance, do you think, of Kaydick finding I’m out here?”
She thought a moment. “If he went all round Barstow asking if they’d seen you—he could easily describe you, especially as you looked rather a sight—and somebody told him they’d seen us together, then it might be awkward, because of course there are people in Barstow who know I live out here. But even then they’d have to take the chance of wasting a lot of time, coming out as far as this.”
“It doesn’t sound likely, does it?” He was more cheerful now. “Well, we’d better put this object carefully away. Perhaps Charlie might know what it’s for. I’ll try him to-morrow. How long does he take to recover from one of these blinds of his?”
“He’s usually all right by the middle of the next day,” she replied.
The next day proved that she had shrewdly guessed Charlie’s form. He made no appearance at all during the morning, when Mrs. Atwood interviewed her employees and attended to the ranch and the house, while Jimmy smoked his pipe and explored a bit and pottered about happily in the sunshine. It was early afternoon when Charlie appeared, looking more battered than ever, but fairly spruce, and quite sober.
“Jimmy,” he began, holding out his hand. “Jimmy’s the name, isn’t it? Well, Jimmy, I’m glad to know you. Rosalie’s been telling me a few things. You look all right, a good guy. I’m a louse.”
“No, Charlie, that’s all right. How do you feel now?”
“Like a louse with a big head. Got out here and Rosalie’d gone —say, isn’t she swell?—so started feeling sorry for myself, got the willies, and drained the ranch. Sorry, don’t seem to have left you a drop.”
“I can do without it—for once.”
“Fine! I lay off for about three years one time—when I was making good money too as a stunt man—but what the hell! I went and busted myself so many times in so many different places, I just had to relax. Half the pictures you saw, one time, when the leading man had to drop from a plane into the cab of a locomotive because the bridge was down in front and the villain had switched the signals, that was me, but when it was all over and the beautiful blonde was twining her arms round his neck and he was saying, ‘Let’s begin a new life together, Mary’, that was the leading man back on the job again and I was back in hospital and plaster of Paris. And now they don’t even want mugs like me, to risk our necks for fifty dollars a time, because all the leading man does now is to sing to her, unless she’s too busy singing to him. Let’s walk round.”
As they walked round, Charlie, whose powers of speech had certainly not been impaired, gave a picturesque sketch of his career, with some incidents, professional or amorous, narrated in full; and Jimmy, amused, was quite content to listen. Towards the end he found himself less and less amused, however, not because Charlie was a bore, for he was not, but because Jimmy could not help feeling sorry for this younger man who was no longer young enough, who had risked his life so often, anonymously and for a poor reward, for the idle entertainment of the crowd, and who now, beneath the superficial appearance of ease and cynicism, was broken, bitter, despairing. He had struggled back to life so many times—and for what? This he more or less admitted himself. Rosalie had said to him several times, “Really, Charlie, I
don’t know what’s to become of you?”
“And she asked something when she asked that,” Charlie now confessed. “Though she didn’t mean it badly, take it from me. I tried to get out to China—like you, only I was going out as a pilot—but I couldn’t make it. The things I haven’t made! I ought to have conked out long since—saved a lot of trouble. They put you together again, only to throw you out. I’m about through. You can’t see me—after the life I’ve had—filling your gasoline tank and wiping your windshield and hoping you’ll come again very soon—even if they’d have me, which they wouldn’t, not with a lot of nice polite college boys to choose from. Or wiping the counter in an all-night joint and serving hash to truck-drivers. Or calling with my hat in my hand asking some frozen-faced wife of a drug-store assistant if she’d like to see me demonstrate the new dish-washing machine. I couldn’t even hold a gun steady enough to make good as a stick-up man. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, Jimmy, unless it’s the hang-over and because I let Rosalie down last night. Didn’t know she was bringing a friend, of course, though I guess it would have been all the same if I had have known. All I really know, most of the time now, is that I’m all washed up. I wouldn’t be sorry to pull one good stunt—a really good one, some use to somebody too—and then call it curtains.”
As he heard this, Jimmy, not usually aware of such things but somehow feeling more sensitive than usual this afternoon, had a strange premonition, as if there came suddenly from the blue a whisper of sudden disaster, sudden glory; and he looked earnestly at Charlie almost as if to discover some confirmation of this written on him, there in the sunlight. And for long afterwards he was to describe this moment of queer revelation, which came as if a trumpet had suddenly sounded through the quiet little valley.
“What’s the matter?” asked Charlie. “Am I talking too much? Are you wondering whether I always talk too much? You needn’t. I can keep my mouth shut, I’ve had to sometimes. Rosalie said you’d something to tell me. I’d like to hear it, Jimmy.”
Jimmy was in no mood now to hide anything from his companion, and once again, as they walked slowly back to the ranch-house, he told the story of his adventures with the Brotherhood and revealed the maze of vague speculations in which he was now wandering. What were they after, what were they up to?
Charlie didn’t know, of course; indeed, he had never heard of the Brotherhood. He had heard of the MacMichael family. And there was something he definitely knew, and was jubilant about it.
“Yes, Jimmy, you’re talking to the right man. I’ve seen that place of the MacMichaels.”
Jimmy stared. “You have?”
“I have. It’s—wait a minute—” then he pointed a towards the north-east—“over there, perhaps sixty, eighty, might even be a hundred miles, in more or less a straight line. I don’t know how far by road, because I didn’t go by road. You see I flew over it, one time. Yes, that’s how I came to see it. I was cruising over it, and came right down to have a good look, took Bendy—that’s my old plane there, Bendy—as far down as I dare go to have a look.”
“Where is it?”
“I’ll show you on the map. Lost Lake, of course, but then you said that. But I’m not kidding you, Jimmy. I saw it all right. Quite a place, I’ll tell you, all set out towards the top of a little canyon. Trees and some small houses, then a big house—Spanish style, it seemed from the air—and then a tower, a white tower. It’s the queerest set-up to be in a place like that, farther away from anywhere than even this is. They must have spent a fortune on it. I wondered what the idea was, at the time. Here, Jimmy, listen—” and he stopped, and halted the other promptly by seizing him by the arm—“now listen, we’ll go and have a look at it together. I’ll fly you over. My tank’s nothing like empty, and Rosalie’s got plenty of gas she can spare. Take you any time you like.”
This was tempting. “Is this plane of yours—what do you call it?—Bendy?—all right?”
“All right? Of course she isn’t all right. She’s all wrong. There isn’t a disease that planes suffer from that Bendy hasn’t had for years—she’s a worse crock than I am—she’s thousands of years old—she’s shaking herself to bits, and one of these days the whole damned engine’ll drop out of her, unless the wings go first—but she can fly—I’d take her anywhere, and take anybody in her. Hell!—let’s go.”
But Jimmy had no intention of going there and then, and even Charlie admitted that the middle of the afternoon—or even late in the afternoon, for they could hardly set out that very moment—was not the best time to start a journey over the mountains. However, Jimmy half-promised to make the trip the next day, if conditions were favourable; and this delighted Charlie, who said he was longing for something to do. On their way back to the ranch-house Charlie decided that the MacMichaels had built their tower over a huge secret gold-mine, which the brethren of the Judgment for some reason he did not trouble to specify were busily and grimly engaged in protecting against discovery. He had not yet seen the strange piece of apparatus, and now Jimmy showed it to him. Charlie spent a long time examining it from every possible angle, and finally declared that it must be some kind of instrument used in testing the gold they were bringing up, which he obviously imagined to be in the form of great shining nuggets. In short, Charlie knew nothing whatever about the large glass tube, and under a severe double cross-examination from both Jimmy and his sister-in-law had in the end to admit as much. But he stuck to his secret gold-mine theory, and half-succeeded in convincing Rosalie, who was more than ready to welcome any glittering marvels of this kind.
It was when, after much talk, they had settled down to play rummy, between supper and bedtime, that Charlie again mentioned the idea of flying Jimmy over Lost Lake. Rosalie was at once alarmed.
“Don’t go, Jimmy,” she cried. “I told you what that awful old plane of his is like. It’s terrible, all falling to bits. Don’t go.”
“Poor old Bendy’s all right.”
“Poor old Bendy!” cried Mrs. Atwood scornfully.
“Well, she brings me here quite safely, doesn’t she, and takes me back again? And that’s a whole lot farther than just flipping over to Lost Lake. Don’t take any notice of her, Jimmy. This is your great chance to have a peep at ’em. Don’t miss it.”
Jimmy looked apologetically across at his hostess. “I think I ought to take the chance, y’know, Rosalie. It might give me some idea of what they’re up to there, and we agreed we ought to know.”
“I knew you’d say that,” she told him, without a smile; then to Charlie: “Oh!—you are annoying, Charlie. Sometimes I could—I could slap you—yes, slap you hard, you and your ridiculous Bendy!” She left the table, throwing her cards down, marched away, then turned accusingly on both of them: “I suppose it doesn’t matter you both going away and leaving me here alone, does it? What am I going to do if those awful men come? You’ve never thought about that, have you?”
“They won’t come here,” said Charlie, dismissing them airily. “Why should they?”
“They might. And Jimmy knows they might.”
Jimmy was silent. She had a nice little temper of her own too, this nice little woman, but then, why shouldn’t she have? Also, he couldn’t help feeling flattered by her concern. He didn’t believe she really minded being left there alone. She was only trying to make them put off the trip.
“If they find out that thing’s here and that Jimmy’s here,” she continued, reversing their reasons in her haste and annoyance, “they’d be up here in no time. And then what am I to do?”
“The fact is,” said Charlie, with some penetration but a complete want of tact, “you’re only finding excuses, so we won’t go. And not to prevent me going either, because I’ve been coming and going in poor old Bendy for years and you haven’t objected. Jimmy, she thinks I’m going to smash you up among those mountains, and she’s all against it.”
“It’s far too early,” said Charlie.
“Not after the way you upset me last night——”
“Why, you said this morning, when I begged pardon——”
“It doesn’t matter what I said this morning,” the unscrupulous female retorted sharply, and then, suddenly catching Jimmy’s eye, she had to laugh. “But I’m cross with you both,” she announced, as she sat down again.
And somehow the life had gone out of the game. Jimmy caught himself several times wishing Charlie were not there, and once or twice he fancied that Mrs. Atwood, who was now very severe upon Charlie if he tried to evade the more stringent rules of the game, felt the same thing too. They went to bed early.
The next morning was fine again, and good for flying, Charlie declared at once, on making a rather late appearance. Now Rosalie did not press her objections again. She quietly accepted the fact that they were going, and as they would not be back until some time in the afternoon, she gave them some sandwiches to eat in the air. She seemed to Jimmy oddly subdued, almost sad, and while Charlie was putting some more gasoline into his Bendy, Jimmy took her to one side and asked what was the matter.
“I don’t know,” she answered, looking troubled. “I didn’t want to say anything. You’d think me silly, going on again, after last night. But this is different. And I wouldn’t have said anything if you hadn’t asked me. But I feel—oh!—I dunno—queer and rather sad inside. Not like me either, but I must be honest and tell you what I feel. But I’ll be all right, don’t worry. And just see that Charlie doesn’t do anything silly.”
The Doomsday Men Page 19