by Bob Wade
There was nothing interesting in sight, so Sin tried the desk drawers. They were unlocked. In the center drawer, under an open pack of cigarettes, was a sheaf of papers held together by a wire clip. She sat down in the big chair and liberated the sheets from the imprisoning clip.
The papers were all maps apparently of the area surrounding Azure, the Salton Sea and Borego Valley. The first one was labeled in ink: “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 but Sin discovered by comparison that the area was slightly smaller than on the first map, and more oval.
The date on the third map was 1905-07 and it was titled: “Formation of S/S.” The familiar darkened area was present, but the topography was drawn in greater detail, with place names added. Sin recognized Highway 99 which they had followed north from Brawley to Azure. 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 heavier and glossier-aerial photographs of desert country on which she distinguished nothing familiar. She laid them aside and went back to the drawings with labels.
Sin squinted at the 1905-07 map in the brown light and then held it up to catch a little of the brightness filtering through the Venetian blinds.
Light, torrents of it, flooded the office. Sin shrieked and jumped up.
“Bad for your eyes, Mrs. Conover — reading in the dark,” Vernon lisped. He leaned sorrowfully in the doorway, his hand still on the light switch.
Sin swallowed and tried to say something. All that came out of her dry throat was a croak.
Vernon moved toward the desk. Sin backed away, her hands outstretched to ward him off. The maps floated to the carpet. “I’ll scream,” she whispered.
Vernon shook his head mournfully and Sin saw for the first time that he was pointing a gun at her — a short gray automatic that matched the lapels and trouser-stripes of his maroon uniform. “Don’t scream,” he said, looking the happiest that Sin had seen him. “Keep quiet 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. “But you can understand we had to take certain precautions. Vernon, I believe you may put away the gun. Mrs. Conover realizes that she’ll have to do as we say.”
Vernon appeared displeased as he slipped the automatic under the tail of his tunic into a hip pocket.
“What do you want from me?” Sin quavered, her eyes darting between the two. Her lips were trembling so that it was an effort to form the words.
Gayner said heartily, “That’s exactly what I was going to ask you. I’d be surprised if Mr. Barselou didn’t repeat the same question. Don’t make him repeat it too often.”
“Start thinking up a good answer,” Vernon advised her. “If you can.”
Gayner motioned Sin courteously toward the door. He followed her out of the office and down the wrought-iron staircase. The young bellboy threaded a path before them among the empty tables and pushed through the swinging doors into the kitchen. The hiss of hinges and their footsteps were the only noises.
No one had mentioned John Henry, Sin thought. Was that good or bad? Well, she’d soon know. This would certainly be a lesson to her. She stepped high over the scrubbed spot on the kitchen floor where Anglin’s body had lain last night. It might be the final lesson.
“Where’s the car?” asked Vernon. “I’ll bet we don’t have any keys.”
“The usual place. I have keys,” Gayner reassured him quietly. Before he opened the back door, “Now, Mrs. Conover, I needn’t warn you that screaming or running or any commotion at all will be utterly useless. And very foolish on your part, I assure you.”
They went out into the alley. Sin fought to grasp her dilemma. Here was not the terror of those frozen moments by the aviary when the white-haired savage had threatened her. The men walking on either side were not strangers. They were prosaic everyday persons — the assistant manager of her hotel and the bellhop who had brought her breakfast. Surely, Vernon in his ridiculous pillbox hat and overdecorated uniform couldn’t actually kill her with that gun he carried!
Sin thought hard and said, “Wait a minute.” The trio stopped. Gayner eyed her inquiringly.
Sin did her best to look tough and confidential at the same time. “Suppose,” she said, “I was to spill it to you torpedoes and not to Barselou.”
Vernon asked, puzzled, “What’s a torpedo?” Gayner said, “Yes?” encouragingly.
“Well — ” Sin groped for words. “If you got there first, you wouldn’t have to split with the big boy.” She hoped it meant more to them than it did to her.
“We certainly wouldn’t,” Gayner ruminated. “But, Mrs. Conover, can you give us the correct information?”
Sin nodded emphatically. “Play along with me and we’ll all wear diamonds.”
Vernon said, “I’m right for once.” A smile nearly encroached on his freckled features. Then he confronted the other man bitterly. “You’ll probably claim you’ve been thinking that all along.”
“No,” said Gayner. “You win.” He prodded Sin toward the street. “I didn’t think you knew anything, Mrs. Conover. Mr. Barselou was about to agree. I thought you were just a harmless snooper. But this puts a different light on it.”
“You’re going to take me to Barselou, anyway?”
“Definitely. You can make your bargain with him. As you quaintly put it, he’s the big boy.”
“But I really don’t know anything!” Sin cried desperately. The dam of reason broke. Mounting waves of dread overwhelmed her. The men beside her were prosaic — but their matter-of-fact purposefulness was a gripping peril in itself. “I was just kidding!” She begged with wide shiny eyes.
“Come on,” said Vernon. “I’m supposed to be on duty.”
They urged her out into the white sunlight of Date Street. A few paces down the block, a sober black Buick sedan nuzzled the curb. The two men walked her quickly toward the car.
From behind them, a man’s high-pitched voice called, “Yoo-hoo! Mrs. Conover!”
“You don’t hear him,” Gayner muttered and quickened his steps.
“Mrs. Conover!” Tires whirred on cement and Mr. Trim appeared alongside the trio, perched on a bicycle. Coming up behind him was the chunky figure of Thelma Loomis, also pedaling energetically. The Bry-Ter representative showed all his bad teeth in a waggish grin. “Ah, Mrs. Conover — you were trying to run away from me!”
“Not from you!” Sin choked.
Vernon and Gayner pushed against her from either side. Gayner said hurriedly, “We’re in quite a rush, Mr. Trim, so if — ”
Sin wriggled forward frantically. “Don’t wait for me, Mr. Gayner. The streets are too crowded today for what you had in mind.”
Vernon’s hand strayed to the pocket under the tail of his tunic. Gayner’s eyes were startled, but he said smoothly, “Oh, we wouldn’t think of going without you, Mrs. Conover.”
“I’ve been wanting to talk to Mr. Trim, anyway.” Sin put a hand on Vernon’s arm, pulling the little bellboy’s hand away from his hip pocket. “It was nice of you to offer me the ride.”
Thelma Loomis got off her bicycle and grated, “I’m glad that’s settled. You take this machine, young lady — I’m not built for it. I shouldn’t have left the hotel at all, but Trim here talked me into it.” She shoved the bike at Sin. “Here — or don’t you think these things are safe?”
“Oh, yes!” breathed Sin, grabbing the handlebars.
Gayner bowed slightly. “We’ll run along then, Mrs.
Conover. I see we can’t do anything to change your mind.”
Sin couldn’t do anything but shake her head.
Gayner smiled frugally. “Some other time.” He jerked his head at the open-mouthed Vernon and the two got into the Buick. It slid away from the curb and turned the corner into Cahuilla Street.
Thelma Loomis clapped Sin on a trembling shoulder. “You and Trim have a good time.” She 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. Disregarding the straw hat he clasped against his chest, she threw her arms around the little man and kissed his bald spot resoundingly. “Mr. Trim, I love you!”
Mr. Trim looked solemn. “But what about your husband?”
“Whereabouts you want to go?” the truck driver growled.
John Henry frowned and then wished he hadn’t because it made his headache worse. “Any place in town,” he said. The driver eased his foot away from the accelerator and the huge freight truck slowed down for the 25-mile speed limit that began with the outskirts of Azure.
As the truck crept into the center of the city the vacant lots and stucco homes became fewer. Here were shops, many of them branches of New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles stores, crowded close together and interspersed with neon-fronted and palatial nightclubs. Souvenir stands dotted street corners. Here and there, conspicuous in austerity, a branch brokerage office awaited the vacationing industrialist.
Few cars crawled the street today and only a sprinkling of people, although none of the stores observed Sunday as a holiday. Most of the tourists wore informal garb which was virtually a uniform in Azure — the men in shorts, slacks and T-shirts, the women in any of those, plus sun suits. Now and then this gaudy uniformity would be broken by the blue levis, plaid shirt and ten-gallon hat of a dude cowhand from one of the surrounding ranch resorts. Or the moccasined and brightly blanketed Indians who made their livelihood by posing for the eager cameras of Eastern tourists.
John Henry forgot his aching head for a moment as he got his first good look at the bizarre city. “What did you say?” he had to ask when he realized his burly companion had spoken.
“I was saying,” the driver repeated ungraciously, “that you really 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 on the opposite side of the avenue.
John Henry followed the grimy finger. Then his eyes lit up. “Stop the car!” he yelled. Alarmed, the driver jammed on his brakes and the big truck and trailer screeched to a halt in the middle of Date Street.
“What the hell — ” he was beginning.
John Henry had already opened the door and now he 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. Her eyes got wider and wider. Then she put her hands on her cheeks and 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 for good again, Sin was sitting on the cement without a vehicle. Both bicycles were heaped near by on Mr. Trim.
“Sin, Sin — are you all right?” John Henry’s voice said. Sin shook her head to clear it of everything except what she wanted most to see. Then she reached her arms up for her husband. He hugged her. She laughed against his shoulder.
“Johnny, darling, I was worried sick —
“I’m sorry, Sin. I shouldn’t have — ”
“I was afraid — I didn’t know — and those men — and the gun — they were going to — ”
“You don’t seem to be bruised,” said John Henry, surveying her lovingly.
Sin put an experimental hand behind her. Then she sighed. “It won’t show.”
Amid a jangling of metal, Mr. Trim arose from the street to join them. His lower lip trembled. “Vicious!” he said and kicked the tire of the top bicycle. It rolled over lazily and impaled a pedal through the straw hat he hadn’t picked up yet. He clenched his fists and drew ten deep breaths.
Sin began to get back 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 quite a bit as he discovered one serge trouser leg was ripped from the hip down, exposing a milk-white thigh and calf. “They were new, too,” he reminded himself.
“I’ll insist on taking care of this,” John Henry said.
Trim shook his head wisely. “Expense account.”
Sin wrinkled her nose at the tangled bikes. “For real enjoyment give me a well-boiled icycle,” she quoted.
The tooth-paste man looked puzzled. “That’s a Spoonerism,” explained Sin apologetically. “From Reverend Spooner of Oxford. He was always talking in reverse English. My mind’s cluttered with useless quotes like that.”
“Let’s get out of the sun,” Conover suggested. His headache was beginning to nag him again. Trim passed a palm cautiously over his naked scalp and agreed eagerly.
Across Date Street, the broad walk had been roofed over to shade the tables of a sidewalk cafe. They dragged the bicycles to the curb, sat down at the table nearest the street and listened to John Henry relate his adventures.
“I got dizzy all of a sudden,” he concluded. “When I woke up I was all by myself in this empty library. 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 walked to the main road 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.”
His wife shifted uneasily and picked at a loose thread on her gay skirt. “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 the near kidnaping, her husband slammed his fist down on the linoleum-topped table hard enough to bring a waiter scurrying out from the café interior.
“That does it! That’s enough for us, Sin.”
“What would you like, sir?” the waiter requested timidly.
“Nothing in this town!” John Henry roared, glaring at him. The waiter backed up and regarded him with bewilderment.
There was no amusement on Trim’s face as he hunched across from the Conovers. He confessed slowly, “I don’t know what to say. My instructions never allowed for this sort of thing.”
“We came here on a vacation,” John Henry stated, and his voice was dangerously level. “Not to sun ourselves on a firing range. Not to be searched. Not to have my wife threatened.”
“I’ll admit that all this hasn’t been very pleasant, but before you do anything hasty think of the Company that sent you here — free of charge. I feel personally responsible. What could I ever tell my Company?”
“Tell them to stop sending people to this munitions dump! We’re through with it.”
“Please reconsider. Please stay till tomorrow, at least. Until I can get in touch with the Company. I’ll send a wire — ”
John Henry sucked in his breath. He looked at his wife questioningly. “I’ll leave it to you, Sin. You won this vacation. Do we go or stay?”
Sin spoke for the first time in several minutes. “We’re already packed,” she said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MR. TRIM BADE them goodbye on the cement walk that led through the palms to the front entrance of the Las Dunas. Sin flatly refused to enter the lobby where Gayner or Vernon might be waiting. After a moment’s thought, John Henry agreed.
So the Conove
rs sauntered innocently along the front of the hotel’s south wing. Then, with a hurried backward glance, they turned the corner and plunged into the shrubbery that fringed the building.
“Do you think anybody saw us, Johnny?”
“Hope not,” muttered John Henry. He pushed a path through the clawing branches for his wife. Trying to think out the best thing to do hadn’t helped his headache any. The dangers of the morning — particularly to Sin — had sobered him more than he cared to admit. Last night, they had been merely bystanders to Anglin’s murder. Today, they were virtually fugitives — possibly already marked as victims by some unknown hand.
“We’ll get the baggage to our car and beat it,” he outlined. “I’ll phone what we know to Lay from some other town. The main thing is to get you safe, Sin.”
Within view was the curving path which would guide them to the cottages. It was silent and deserted. John Henry held the last branches apart for Sin. The grass they hurried across was lifeless in the hot afternoon sun and lackadaisical bees sparred with the flowers. The flagstones leading up the canyon gave off ripples of heat.
Sin stopped in her tracks and squeezed his arm hard. “Johnny — look!”
Slouched on the porch of Cottage 14 was a familiar uniformed figure. It was Vernon. He was watching the path and his mournful face split into a pitying grin at the sight of the Conovers. He got to his feet.
John Henry hesitated only a second. Then he grabbed Sin by the elbow and whirled her around. “Back to the hotel,” he said under his breath. “Keep going!” She had to quicken to a little trot to keep up with him.
“Gayner,” she panted. “He might be there!”
“They can’t do anything in the lobby. Not right there with people around.”
“Honey, I’m scared!”
Vernon was matching them stride for stride. They reached the sunken patio. Sheltered beneath umbrella shade, two old men looked up curiously from behind their newspapers. There were no other loungers.
The Conovers pounded up the wide steps to the glass doors. They were halfway across the cool lobby when a thin length was framed on the front steps in the opposite glass portal. Gayner was just entering, his cadaverous face startled. His long arms came up, shoving the doors open.