Gateway to Hell

by Dennis Wheatley

  At what seemed a dangerously low altitude the little aircraft skimmed over the Mountains of the Coast, then came down out of a cloudless sky, to make a smooth landing. Tense and alert, they left the ’plane and walked across the tarmac to the airport building. As they had come in on an internal flight, there were no passport or Customs formalities, and no dreaded policeman was waiting there to accost them. Carrying their grips, they walked straight through to the taxi rank. Simon asked the driver of a cab to take them to a travel agency near the docks. The man drove them into the city and set them down outside an office in the window of which there were a number of flyblown posters; but, by then, it was past one o’clock and the place had been closed for the siesta.

  Paying off the cab, they crossed the street to a café. It was a gloomy place, with a solitary, surly waiter. They did not feel like eating anything, so ordered only pisco sours and, when they had drunk them, they repeated the order at intervals until they had whiled away the next two hours. Eventually the travel agency was reopened by a short, plump young woman whose blonde hair was obviously dyed. Simon told her that they wanted to make their way to the United States by easy stages, and asked her what ships carrying passengers were about to sail for the north. After much shuffling through papers, and two telephone calls, she told them that she could get them accommodation on a Dutch cargo ship that was sailing the next day. The ship had cabins for twelve passengers, and was bound for Curaçao in the West Indies, which was her home port; but on the way there would call at Callao in Peru, Guayaquil in Ecuador and at Panama on going through the Canal.

  Simon never ventured abroad without taking a considerable sum in U.S. dollars, to supplement the travel allowance to which he was entitled as a business man. So he had ample funds to pay the fare for the two of them up to Callao, the port of Lima. The Peruvian capital being much nearer La Paz than Santiago, there was a good hope that they would reach it perhaps as soon as the Saturday ’plane would have got them there.

  Outside the agency, they debated where to spend the night. Richard’s view was that if the police made up their minds that it was worth going after them, at whatever hotel they stayed they would be picked up, so they might as well go to a good one in Viña del Mar. Simon disagreed, on the grounds that, if the police believed the story that they had gone to the coast only for a couple of nights, they would naturally make enquiries for them at the best places first. Whereas it would take many hours for them to check up at the scores of hotels in both the big watering place and the great port; so they would evade a police search for a few hours longer if they took a room at a small hostelry down near the docks.

  Richard felt there was something to be said for that; and, after a quarter of an hour spent hunting for a suitable place, they found an inn that looked as though it might be patronised by the officers of merchant ships. There they were given adjacent rooms and, having unpacked their few belongings, went out to while away the rest of the day as best they could. By evening they were so tired of wandering aimlessly about and sitting over drinks in cafés, that they took a taxi into Viña del Mar, dined at the Casino and afterwards played roulette. Richard won the equivalent of three pounds and Simon over twenty, which cheered them up considerably as it seemed an omen that their lucky stars were in the ascendant.

  Next morning Simon rang up the ship on which they had booked passages and was told that she was not sailing until the evening, but they could come aboard at any time. Having nothing else to do, they walked along to the dock at ten-thirty. A solitary Customs man lowered a newspaper he was reading, glanced at their bags and nodded to them to go through. Getting out their passports, they walked over to the Immigration desk. A policeman was lolling against it, smoking a cheroot and carrying on a desultory conversation with the Immigration official. Richard put his passport on the desk. The official opened it, laid it down and said to the policeman:

  ‘These are the two you want.’

  The policeman suddenly became alert. Putting his right hand on the holster of the revolver at his side, he said politely, ‘Señors, I regret the necessity of preventing you from going on board a ship; but police headquarters in Santiago have issued an order that, wherever found, you are to be sent there for questioning. Be pleased to walk in front of me to the exit.’

  They had no option but to obey. Their careful planning, the periods of acute anxiety and dreary boredom they had suffered during the past twenty-four hours, had all been for nothing. After making a futile protest, seething with suppressed bitterness while endeavouring to appear no more than annoyed that their lawful intentions had been interfered with, they made their way back through the Customs hall, and through an archway to the street.

  There, their captor spoke to another policeman, who then went into a telephone box. For the best part of a quarter of an hour they stood on the pavement, pretending to take their arrest light-heartedly, but in fact now filled with gloomy apprehension. A police car then arrived and took them to the airport. There a police inspector took charge of them and locked them in a small, bare room. For the first time they were able to talk, in low voices, of their unhappy situation. But they were not left there for long. The daily service between Santiago and Valparaiso consisted of flights each way, both of which left at twelve noon. The prisoners were put aboard with an escort and, after the short flight, taken in another police car into the city. At a little before half past one, they arrived at police headquarters.

  A sergeant took charge of their bags and, when they had been searched, the contents of their pockets. Again Simon protested. He pointed out indignantly that they were not criminals, but law-abiding citizens who had every intention of aiding the police in their inquiries, to the best of their ability. It was of no avail. They were marched off to separate cells and locked in.

  Had they been treated in such a way in Britain, they would have taken a very pessimistic view of their prospects; but, as they sat on the wooden benches in their cells, both of them tried to cheer themselves up with the thought that police procedure in most Latin American countries was very elastic, and on lines which differed considerably between rich and poor. Therefore, as wealthy tourists, it seemed unlikely that, after having been questioned, they would be permanently detained.

  It was not until four o’clock that they were taken from their cells to a large room on the first floor of the building. There, behind an impressive desk, a much-beribboned police officer was sitting. Just behind him stood a short, plump, dark civilian; and, at a smaller desk to one side of the room, sat a uniformed man with pens and paper.

  The officer did not invite them to sit down, but stared at them for a full minute; then he asked, ‘Does either of you speak Spanish?’

  ‘I do.’ replied Simon.

  ‘That is good. But if there are any questions I ask that you do not understand, I have here an interpreter who will make them clear to you.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the short, dark man, and went on, ‘What was the name of the woman you took to the Carrera Hilton, the night before last?’

  Simon pretended to rack his memory. ‘Nathan, I think. Yes, that’s it, the Señorita Nathan.’

  ‘How well did you know her?’

  ‘Hardly at all. We met her only that night.’

  ‘She was, then, a prostitute, and you picked her up?’

  ‘Oh, no; she was not a prostitute; at least, not as far as I know. But I suppose you could say we picked her up.’

  ‘Anyway, you took her back to the hotel with you for immoral purposes.’

  ‘We did nothing of the kind,’ Simon declared firmly.

  ‘Why, then, did you take her to the hotel?’

  Soon after arriving in Valparaiso, Richard and Simon had agreed on the account they would give if they were caught and questioned. Now, Simon gave it:

  ‘My friend and I are fond of exercise, but we find it too hot here to take much in the daytime; so, after a late dinner that night, we decided to go for a long walk. I don’t know how far we
walked, but it was right out past the suburbs, and must have been five or six miles. On our way back, when we reached that wooded hill—the St Lucia Park I think it’s called—we decided to go up to the top. Our idea was that, from the ruin up there, we’d get a wonderful view of the city in the moonlight. But we never got to the top. A little way up we came upon this woman. She was sitting on a bench, crying. I asked her what was the matter. She said she had had a terrible quarrel with her husband and had walked out on him. To calm herself down, before looking for a small hotel in which to spend the night, she had sat for a while in a café and had a couple of drinks. Five minutes after leaving it, she found that she had left her handbag behind. When she went back, it wasn’t on the chair where she had left it. In her absence the waiter, or one of the other customers, must have stolen it. The bag had all her money and a few pieces of jewellery in it. Having lost it, she was penniless; she couldn’t pay for a room and had nowhere to spend the night.’

  ‘So you fell for her story that she was a respectable woman? It did not even occur to you that she might be a prostitute, hoping that you would offer to take her to your own bed?’

  ‘I had no reason to disbelieve her. She was quietly dressed and had a small suitcase with her. That supported what she had said about having left her home.’

  ‘Did you try to persuade her to go back to her husband?’

  ‘Yes. But she wouldn’t hear of doing that. She said she would rather starve.’

  ‘Was there nowhere else she could have gone?’

  ‘Apparently not, or we wouldn’t have found her sitting weeping on a park bench.’

  ‘What was her nationality?’

  This was a question that had not occurred to Richard or Simon they might be asked. After hesitating a moment, thinking it hardly likely that they would have come upon a foreigner in such a situation, Simon replied, ‘Chilean.’

  ‘In that case it seems very strange that, in a great city like Santiago, she had not a single relative or friend whom she could have asked to give her shelter for the night.’

  Simon shrugged. ‘She may be a stranger here. Perhaps she had come up from the country with her husband and had the row with him in an hotel.’

  ‘Did she ask you for money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you offer her any?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see,’ commented the officer sarcastically. ‘So, instead of giving her the price of a room for the night in a modest pension, you took her off to the most luxurious hotel in the capital.’

  ‘By then, Mr Eaton and I were tired, so…’

  ‘Really! Yet a few minutes earlier you had decided that, before returning to your hotel, you would walk another kilometre up steep paths, for no better reason than to see the city in moonlight.’

  Simon swallowed hard. ‘I meant we were anxious to get the matter settled and, as we had ample money, it seemed simplest to take the poor woman with us to the Hilton.’

  ‘And when you got there you asked for a room for her, and she went straight up to it.’

  Simon had been ready for that one. ‘Not right away. She was about all in; so first we took her up to our suite and gave her a brandy and soda.’

  ‘How long did she remain there with you?’

  ‘Ten minutes, perhaps a quarter of an hour.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I took her down to the room she had been given on the fourth floor.’

  ‘How long did you stay there?’

  ‘I didn’t. I didn’t even go in. I gave her her case and left her at the door. Then I went back upstairs and Mr Eaton and I went to bed.’

  ‘How long was it before one or both of you went down to her room again?’

  ‘Neither of us did. We had already planned to go down to Viña del Mar for a couple of nights; so next morning we paid our bill and hers, and left for the airport’

  ‘Without even seeing her?’

  ‘Yes. She wasn’t our responsibility. We felt that, after a night’s sleep, she should be able to sort out her own problems.’

  ‘Then you did not know that she had been murdered?’

  Simon had known that, sooner or later, he would be confronted with that fact. Letting his mouth gape, he exclaimed:

  ‘What d’you say? Murdered?’

  ‘Yes. That is what I said.’

  Turning to Richard, Simon said in English, That poor woman. She’s been murdered!’

  Richard pretended equal astonishment and swiftly came out with, ‘Good God! How terrible!’

  Simon’s dark eyes flickered back to the officer and, reverting to Spanish, he asked, ‘When was this? And who murdered her?’

  ‘The crime was committed between three and six in the morning. By whom, we have yet to find out. Tell me now. When you and your friend reached Valparaiso, instead of going to an hotel in Viña del Mar, as you say you had intended to, you booked passage in a ship that was leaving for Callao the following day. Why did you do that?’

  ‘Just an idea.’ Simon shrugged. ‘Mr Eaton and I are travelling in South America for pleasure, and we’ve plenty of money. We have already visited Buenos Aires, Punta Arenas and Santiago. When we got down to Valparaiso, it suddenly occurred to us that a few days at sea would make a pleasant change from air travel, and the obvious place to go was Callao, as then we’d be able to see something of the nearby Peruvian capital.’

  ‘Indeed? It had occurred to me that your sudden change of plan was due to an urgent desire to leave this country for good.’

  ‘Why should we want to do that?’ Simon asked, with an air of innocence. ‘We hadn’t the least intention of doing so. If you ask the people at the Hilton, you’ll find that we left most of our belongings there, and arranged to retain our suite.’

  ‘That I already know. But there are occasions when it is well worth while to abandon even valuable property. For instance, if one had reason to fear arrest.’ Picking up a gold-braided cap from his desk, the officer put it on, stood up and said, ‘For today, Señors, that will be all. I am detaining you for further questioning.’

  ‘One moment!’ Simon said quickly. ‘With what are we charged?’

  ‘Nothing, as yet. I am holding you as material witnesses in a case of murder.’

  ‘I see, but I imagine we shall not be refused bail?’

  ‘Perhaps bail will be granted. It all depends on how the matter develops.’

  ‘In any case, we shall require the services of a lawyer. I formally request that the British Ambassador be informed of our situation and asked to arrange for us to have suitable legal aid.’

  The officer nodded. ‘That shall be done.’ Then he signed to the escort, and the prisoners were marched back to their separate cells.

  Later, it transpired that as they were able to pay for a dinner of their choice and bottles of wine, they were allowed to send out for them. On hard beds both of them spent a far from happy night. But they felt that, although the police obviously suspected them of not having told the whole truth about their relations with Nella, Simon’s story was quite plausible and had been received reasonably well.

  At a little after ten o’clock on the Friday morning, they were taken from their cells to a bleak room furnished only with a table and a few chairs. Standing there was a tall, fair-haired, youngish man. He introduced himself as Ernest Phillips, one of the secretaries at the British Embassy.

  Sitting down at the table, Simon and Richard gave him their own account of their brief association with Nella, then discussed the situation. When the question of bail arose, they had reason to regret Don Caesar’s departure for Europe, as they knew no other solid citizen in Santiago. Neither of them made any mention of Philo McTavish, as they would have been most reluctant to bring him into the affair. Moreover, they felt that, even had he been willing, it was unlikely that he would be able, at short notice, to produce the considerable sum required.

  However, Richard stoutly maintained that, as they had not been charged with any crime, the pol
ice had no right to confine them in separate cells. Phillips agreed to do what he could to have that matter rectified, said he would arrange for the Embassy lawyer, a Señor Fidel Cunliffe, to come to see them that afternoon, and took his departure.

  His representations proved effective. Twenty minutes after he had left them, they were taken from their cells and put together in a larger one. So, for the first time since their arrest, they were able to talk over their prospects.

  Richard was inclined to be pessimistic, because of their having been arrested when about to go aboard a ship at Valparaiso. That they should have attempted to leave the country within a few hours of Nella’s murder could have been a coincidence; but nothing could have suggested more strongly that either they were her murderers or in some way involved in the crime. He now felt that it had been a cardinal mistake to try to escape being questioned by the police. But he did not press the point, because it had been Simon’s idea.

  However, Simon argued that, although the police would continue to believe that Nella was a prostitute, and that they had brought her to the hotel for immoral purposes, it could not possibly be proved that they had had anything to do with her death. So, with the aid of a capable lawyer, they would soon be released.

  Señor Fidel Cunliffe did not arrive until eight o’clock. He was a bulky, red-faced man, with grey hair, prominent blue eyes and a forceful manner. It transpired that he had lived in Chile all his life, but his father had been English and he spoke that language perfectly. Between them they gave him the same account of their brief association with Nella as Simon had given the police. Having made some notes, he then asked them a series of very searching questions. As by then they had their story pat, they did not falter in their replies, and he appeared satisfied. Before he left, Simon tactfully assured him that they had ample funds to pay for the best advice, so he need not be worried about money for expenses. The lawyer replied that, in that case, it would be worth while to instruct a private detective agency to endeavour to find out who, in fact, had murdered the Señorita Nathan.