The Case of the Unconquered Sisters

by Todd Downing

  Another throaty sound.

  “When Professor Voice came to me with this letter I didn’t take it very seriously. He seemed just the type of man to be made the butt of a joke. He had a wild story about owls gathering about his window at night. He was so obviously terrified, however, that I sent one of the young men on our staff, Mr. Roark, out to San Angel with him. He was living with the Faudree family there. Roark was to question Voice more fully, examine the letters and then, if he thought there was any basis for apprehension, call in the Mexican police.”

  “Do you recall the date of Mr. Voice’s visit?”

  “It was toward the end of April. Mr. Roark will be able to tell you more definitely. He reported that in his opinion Voice was really afraid but that the whole thing was a practical joke.”

  “Did he specify on whose part?”

  A moment of hesitation. “One or both of the young men in the Teague party, he thought. They haven’t been out of college long. We didn’t hear from Voice again, so dropped the matter. Now it seems we were too hasty. Your mission will be to make up for our negligence, in a way. It will be complicated by one more consideration. Are you acquainted with the name of the Faudrees?”

  Rennert nodded. “I believe the family has been established here since the Civil War.”

  “Yes. One of the families of Southern irreconcilables who took up Mexican citizenship. There are two sisters and a niece left. Unfortunately both Voice, who was a distant relative, I believe, and the Teague party were staying at their home, so that your investigation will have it as a starting point. Now the Faudree name still has some prestige here. These women, of course, are not concerned in this matter, and I hope you won’t find it necessary to worry them. I have been informed confidentially that you are acceptable to the Mexican authorities, Mr. Rennert, and that they will delay taking any action until you make a report. Now, that’s the job. Do you want to undertake it?”

  Rennert’s eyes met the steel-gray ones without wavering.

  “You realize,” he said quietly, “that it is not impossible that I shall have to pick a murderer from one of these two groups. The Teague party or the Faudree family. You asked me to speak frankly. Can I rely on your support—regardless of what I discover to be the truth?”

  The other got up and walked slowly to the window, where he stood with his head half turned away, staring out at the bougainvillaea.

  “You aren’t taking the bandit idea seriously then?” he asked.

  Rennert was blunt. “Are you?”

  The personage emitted a low sigh, and a look of weariness crossed his face as he turned back into the room.

  “No, Mr. Rennert,” he said heavily, “I’m not.” He paused. “I know that I have seemed to put expediency above the primary consideration that a crime has been committed. I assure you, however, that I want to see justice done. Whatever you discover, whatever action you see fit to take, I will back you up.”

  “Very well,” Rennert said. “I’ll take the case.”

  “Thank God, Rennert!” It was a spontaneous outburst. “I don’t have words to express my gratitude. You can name your compensation.” He took an envelope from a wire basket and handed it to Rennert. “Here is a letter which I had Roark draw up. I have signed it. It will serve as a credential for you in case you have need of it.”

  His hand sought a button on the edge of the desk.

  “I’m going to turn you over to Mr. Roark now. He is at your orders as long as you require him. Roark is a very good man. He was educated in the United States. A brilliant scholastic record. He has lived a great part of his life in Mexico and speaks Spanish fluently. He has a future ahead of him, I believe, if he remains in the service.”

  There was a long-drawn-out pause.

  The personage said companionably, “Have another cigar, Mr. Rennert.”

  5

  Threat

  At first glance Delaney Roark seemed to conform to the type of foreign service man with whom Rennert had come in contact so often. He was tall, well-built but without the carriage of the athlete, and his gray suit had the cut of an excellent and expensive tailor. He had a long, thin, boldly handsome face, with a high forehead from which his sleek blond hair was brushed sharply back. There was an air of restrained nervous tension about him, and his gray-blue eyes looked tired, with slightly discolored pouches beneath them.

  He took Rennert’s hand with just the right amount of warmth, listened with polite lack of attention to something in the nature of a homily from the personage behind the desk, then escorted the visitor to a smaller office down the hall. There he soon had him ensconced in a chair which, while it was not as comfortable as the one which he had left, was more conducive to relaxation.

  He seemed sincere in his desire to put Rennert at his ease and to stamp their relationship at the outset with informality. He held out a creased package of a popular make of cigarettes, grinned at the sight of Rennert’s cigar, then rested his coattails against the edge of the desk by an uncovered typewriter.

  “Well, that’s over with,” he said as he flicked a match in the general direction of an ash tray. His voice was soft and pleasant, with the labial effect of a man who speaks a Latin tongue a great deal. His full, rather sensuous lips held the cigarette tilted upward. “The old man is inclined to be long-winded sometimes.”

  “It did take him quite a while to tell me that I was going to have to depend on you for my information.”

  “He’s worried, all right. Worried as hell. I haven’t seen him like this in months. You seem to have given a good poke at a hornet’s nest.”

  “It looks like it. I only hope this letter you were kind enough to draw up will afford me some diplomatic immunity from their bites.”

  Roark’s eyes took on a bit of life. There was a speculative quality to them. “I see what you mean. That you’re liable to be the fall guy. It’s happened before. But you don’t need to worry about that in this case. The old man wants to keep his political waters well smoothed with Teague oil, but he’s a square enough shooter. He won’t let you down.” His nostrils flared as he blew smoke from them. “I know you have a lot of questions to ask me, Mr. Rennert. Suppose, before you start, you tell me what you’ve learned. I know that you found this fellow Voice’s skeleton among those museum specimens. That’s about all.”

  “Really, that about sums up the situation.” Rennert proceeded to recount his activities since young Crockett had stepped into his office that hot afternoon. He concluded with the identification of the skeleton as that of Professor Voice and the report of the ballistic expert that the bullet found in the skull was that of a 32 caliber revolver.

  Roark listened intently.

  “What became of Biggerstaff?” he asked.

  “I brought him back in the plane with me,” Rennert told him. “He’s at the American Hospital now, getting an examination.”

  “What did you learn from him?”

  “Not a great deal. He’s still suffering from the effects of that blow on the head, and the doctor thought it best not to worry him with questions. He seems to be at a complete loss to account for the presence of the skeleton in that shipment. He says there are two other members of this excavating party. Dr. Fogarty, the head, and a young man named Weikel. Know them?”

  “I’ve met them. Fogarty’s a gruff, kind-hearted old fellow. Weikel I never got to know. He looks like an unpleasant sort of chap. All of them were formerly at Southwestern University, I believe. Fogarty as a member of the faculty, Biggerstaff and Weikel as students.” He shook his head slowly. “It’s a puzzler, all right. I made a discreet inquiry at the Department of Archaeology. Didn’t tell them, of course, what was up. They said that the shipment was in order when their inspector gave the permit. His name is Diego Echave, by the way. All three skeletons came from under the Pedregal, the lava flow behind the Faudree house. They weren’t greatly interested in the Teague expedition, since they have been finding very few valuable things.”

  “That’s
strange. I understood from Biggerstaff that they had been having a very profitable winter. But suppose we get on with your story now. I’d like to hear about those letters. Any personal information about Voice would be helpful too.”

  Roark stared in absorption at the thick-napped green rug.

  “It was on the twenty-ninth day of April that Voice came to the embassy,” he said. “Soon after we opened, on Wednesday morning. The old man called me in and introduced us. He was anxious to get rid of Voice, who’d come without an appointment and talked his way in. I brought him in here and had him tell me about the letters. I could see that he was really frightened. He had received the second one that morning. The first one came two days before. Both of them were mailed in San Angel. But I have them here, if you’d like to see them.”

  Roark strode around the desk to a metal filing cabinet and pulled open one of the drawers.

  “About Voice,” he said over his shoulder as he sorted out the manila folders with nimble fingers. “He was a typical college professor who goes in for research. About forty-five or fifty. Unmarried. Frail, stoop-shouldered and bleached-looking. Wore gold-rimmed glasses which he kept taking off and polishing all the time. Spoke with a precise voice that got rather shrill when he became excited. He was excited that morning, both on account of the letters and the tecolotes, the owls. Said he hadn’t had any sleep in several nights.”

  Roark located the folder and took out two envelopes. “Here we are.”

  Rennert seemed on the point of asking a question but reconsidered and gave his attention to the envelopes.

  They were of the ordinary sort, which can be bought for a few centavos in any stationery store in Mexico. On them were printed in precise letters the words “Prof. Garnett Voice,” with an address.

  Rennert took a single sheet of notepaper from the one whose cancellation showed the prior date. He noted as he did so that the flap had been torn open carelessly or hastily, leaving jagged edges. The paper was of the same quality as the envelope, and the printing was similar to that of the superscription. He read:

  My frend, I need 10 thoussand pesos. Get them in silver and have them reddy when I call for them. Keep this to yourself. If you don’t…

  The rest of the page was devoted to a gruesome account of the fate which would befall Voice. There were four drawings, pains-takingly made.

  In the lower right-hand corner was a splattered blood-red drop in place of a signature.

  Roark had been following the course of Rennert’s eyes. “Mercurochrome,” he said. “I had it examined.”

  Rennert nodded and went on to the second letter.

  Bring the 10 thoussand pesos to the Pedregal tomorrow nite. There are 3 tal cacti in a direck line with the south window of your room. Each nite at midnight you will do this: Walk to the first cactus and wait 5 minutes. If you hear nothing go on to the second cactus and wait 5 minutes. If you hear nothing go to the third cactus and wait 5 minutes. Keep this up each nite at the same time. If you are alone I will call you and tell you to lay down the money. Don’t tell anybody about this and don’t fail to bring the money. If you don’t—well, look here….

  There were more drawings, done with elaborate attention to detail. In each instance Voice was represented as a large figure, stark naked, with exaggerated buttocks, while his tormentor was a tiny thing with a body composed of straight lines and a spade-shaped head, whose thick lips were set in an evil snicker.

  Rennert took the letters in turn, scrutinizing them carefully, particularly the drawings. At last he laid them on his lap and sat staring at them. There was a discernible tightening of the corners of his lips.

  “Well,” Roark asked, “what do you make of them?”

  When Rennert didn’t reply at once, he went on:

  “I’ve never had any experience with this sort of thing, but I showed them to a member of the staff here who is something of an expert on handwriting. He pointed out that the misspellings were a little obvious. ‘Frend,’ ‘thoussand,’ ‘tal,’ and so forth. And ‘nite,’ but ‘midnight.’ He mentioned, too, the correct plural of ‘cactus,’ which few people use. His opinion was that an educated person wrote the letters.”

  “Yes,” Rennert was abstracted. “It’s always difficult for an educated person to know what words an uneducated one would misspell. There’s another thing—that figure 7. Would a Mexican make a 7 like that?”

  Roark leaned over and glanced at the sheet.

  “Of course not,” he said almost at once. “He’d put a horizontal bar through it. They always do that to distinguish a 7 from a 1.” He straightened up and looked hard at Rennert’s face. “You agree, then, that it must have been an educated person who wrote those letters? Probably an American?”

  “Yes.” Rennert’s thoughts were elsewhere. “And one who prints deftly. Do you mind if I keep these for a time?”

  “Of course not.” Roark’s face was very sober now, drawn into lines which made him look older. “At the time Voice showed me those letters I thought somebody was playing a joke on him. He was so frightened by the tecolotes that he was ready to jump at his own shadow. But since I heard that you had discovered his body, that he had been murdered, I’ve been doing some thinking.”

  He hesitated and kept his gaze fixed on the rug. “I’m not putting any stock in the melodramatic bandit idea. There aren’t any of them in the Pedregal. But isn’t it possible that there is an up-to-date band of extortionists operating here in Mexico City? The newspapers give so much space to the work of extortionists in the United States that it’d be surprising if someone didn’t get the idea of imitating them.” His eyes were keener now as they rose hopefully to Rennert’s face.

  “That’s a theory which we’ll have to consider,” the latter said. “But go ahead and tell me what you did after Voice visited you.”

  “Well, looking back on it now, I can see that I didn’t do much. I went out to San Angel with him and had a look around the Pedregal. Sure enough, there are three cacti in a line with his window, so whoever wrote the letters must have known the ground. I talked to the members of the Teague party and the Faudrees. None of them had anything helpful in the way of information. I don’t think they took Voice and his fears very seriously.”

  “All of them knew about the letters, then?”

  “Oh yes. I judged that Voice had appealed to everyone for help in watching the Pedregal for suspicious characters.”

  “Are you sure that John Biggerstaff knew about them?”

  “Yes. I remember talking with him.”

  “What comment did he make?”

  Roark thought for a moment. “He just laughed and said that he didn’t think there was anything for Voice to worry about, that no bandit worthy of the name was going to waste time trying to get money out of a college professor when there were so many better prospects.”

  “Not a bad point. Did you learn anything about Voice’s financial condition?”

  “He told me at the beginning that he didn’t have ten thousand pesos or he’d have taken it to the Pedregal and kept still. He was taking this year off from the university without pay, and his savings were just about used up.”

  There was a slight narrowing of Roark’s eyes. “Biggerstaff didn’t tell you about these letters?”

  “No, but, as I said, I talked to him very little.”

  “But you’d have thought they would have come to his mind at once when he heard that Voice had been murdered, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a momentary silence.

  “That ended your investigation at San Angel?” Rennert asked.

  “Yes.” Roark brought his attention back. “I stayed there that night with Voice, but nothing happened. Except,” he said in an odd voice, “the tecolotes. There were a lot of them.” He went on hurriedly, “No letter came the next morning, so I left. I told Voice to call me the next time one came. I talked to the police, but they knew of no one in the vicinity who might be writing the letters. They r
idiculed the idea of kidnapers. I came on back to the embassy then. I called up the Faudree house several days later and asked for Voice. I wanted to be sure he was all right. But I was told that he had gone back to the United States.”

  This interested Rennert. “Was any explanation made of this sudden trip?”

  “No.” Roark glanced at his watch. “Do you want to go out to San Angel this afternoon?”

  “Yes, if it’s convenient.”

  “I’ll call and find out.” Roark swung a receiver from its cradle and spoke to the switchboard operator.

  “If we start now we can look over the excavations before the rain starts,” he said as he waited. “You know Mexico well enough to expect the daily showers in the summer, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I may forget anything else down here, but not my raincoat. It’s in the hall.”

  Rennert had risen and strolled nearer the desk.

  Facing the typewriter was a small picture frame of black leather on a base of milky-gray onyx. The photograph in it was, he felt sure, that of the girl whose face had looked out at him from Biggerstaff’s billfold. She was younger here, undoubtedly, but at the same time less attractive. Her hair was close-cropped like a boy’s; her eyes were darker and lusterless; her mouth hard and cynical. She wore what looked like an artist’s smock. Photography alone couldn’t account for the difference….

  “What are the names of the Faudree sisters and their niece?” he asked.