Norden’s teeth bared in a grimace of hate, and when he spoke his voice was choked with emotion. “Perhaps I will be captured, but not yet.…”
The submachine gun lifted, and Jim thought that even at that distance he could see the man’s finger tighten.
A gun roared, and the submachine gun began to chatter, but the muzzle had fallen, and the bullets merely bit against the stones of the street and ripped the dust into little fountains of fury.
Don Pedro Norden, a great black hole between his eyes, the back of his head blown away, fell slowly on his face.
Turning, they saw Armando Fontes, the big pistol clutched in his right hand, leaning nonchalantly against a corner. With a match in his cupped left hand, he was lighting a cigarette.
For a long moment, they stared, relief soaking through them. Ponga Jim looked at the disreputable little man.
“All right, Armando,” he asked. “Tell us. Who are you agent for? What’s your part in this?”
Fontes shrugged, his eyes lidded. He drew on his cigarette and took the occasion to slip the big gun back into his waistband.
“I, señor? I am but a little man. A little man who likes his government.”
He turned, and with a deprecating wave of his hand, walked down the street, and away.
THE VANISHED BLONDE
* * *
ONLY ONE LIGHT showed in the ramshackle old house, a dim light from a front window. Neil Shannon hunched his shoulders inside the trench coat and looked up and down the street. There was only darkness and the slanting rain. He stepped out of the doorway of the empty building and crossed the street.
There was a short walk up to the unpainted house, and he went along the walkway and up the steps. Through the pocket of the trench coat, he could easily reach his .38 Colt automatic, and it felt good.
He touched the doorbell with his left forefinger and waited. Twice more he pressed it before he heard footsteps along the hall, and then the door opened a crack and Shannon put his shoulder against it. The slatternly woman stepped back and he went in. Down the hall, a man in undershirt and suspenders stared at him. He was a big man, bigger than Neil Shannon, and he looked mean.
“I’ve some questions I want to ask,” Shannon said to the man. “I’m a detective.”
The woman caught her breath, and the man walked slowly forward. “Private or Headquarters?” the man asked.
“Private.”
“Then we’re not answering. Beat it.”
“Look, friend,” Shannon said quietly, “you can talk to me or the DA. Personally, I’m not expecting to create a lot of publicity unless you force my hand. Now you tell me what I want to know, or you’re in trouble.”
“What d’you mean, trouble?” The man stopped in front of Shannon. He was big, all right, and he was both dirty and unshaven. “You don’t look tough to me.”
Shannon could see the man was not heeled, so he let go of the gun and took his hand from his pocket.
“Get out!” The big man’s hand shot out.
Shannon brushed it aside and clipped him. It was a jarring punch and caught the big fellow with his mouth open. His teeth clicked like a steel trap and he staggered. Then Shannon hit him in the wind and the big fellow went down, his hoarse gasps making great, empty sounds in the dank hallway.
“Where do we talk?” Shannon asked the woman.
She gestured toward a door, then opened it and walked ahead of him into a lighted room beyond. Shannon grabbed the big man by his collar and dragged him into the room.
“I want to ask about a woman,” he said, his eyes sharp. “A very good-looking blonde.”
The woman’s face did not change. “Nobody like that around here,” she said sullenly. “Nobody around here very much at all.”
“This wasn’t yesterday,” Shannon replied. “It was a couple of years ago. Maybe more.”
He saw her fingers tighten on the chair’s back and she looked up. He thought there was fear in her eyes. “Don’t recall any such girl,” she insisted.
“I think you’re wrong.” He sat down. “I’m going to wait until you do.” He was on uncertain ground, for he had no idea when the girl had arrived, nor how, nor when she had left. He was feeling his way in the dark.
The man pulled himself to a sitting position and stared at Shannon, his eyes ugly.
“I’ll kill you for that!” he said, his voice shaking with passion.
“Forget it,” Shannon said. “You tried already.” His eyes lifted to the woman. “Look, you can be rid of me right away. Tell me the whole story from beginning to end, every detail of it. I’ll leave then, and if you tell me the truth, I won’t be back.”
“Don’t recall no such girl.” The woman pushed a strand of mouse-colored hair from her face. Her cheeks were sallow and her skin was oily. The dress she wore was not ragged from poverty, merely dirty, and she herself was unclean.
Disgusted, Shannon stared around the room. How could a girl, such as he knew Darcy Lane to be, have come to such a place? What could have happened to her?
* * *
HE HAD LOOKED at her picture until the amused expression of her eyes seemed only for him, and although he told himself no man could fall in love with a picture, and that of a girl who was probably dead, he knew he was doing a fair job of it.
Right now he knew more about her than any woman he had ever known. He knew what she liked to eat and drink, the clothes she wore and the perfume she preferred. He had read, with wry humor, her diary and its comments on men, women, and life. He had studied the books she read, and was amazed at their range and quantity.
He had sat in the same booth where she had formerly come to eat breakfast and drink coffee, and in the same bar where she had drunk Burgundy and eaten Roquefort cheese and crackers. Yet despite all the reality she had once been, she had vanished like a puff of smoke.
Alive, beautiful, talented, intelligent, filled with laughter and friendship, liked by both men and women, Darcy Lane had dropped from sight at the age of twenty-four as mysteriously as though she had never been, leaving behind her an apartment with the rent paid up, a closet full of beautiful clothes, and even groceries and liquor.
“Find her,” Attorney Watt Braith had said. “You’ve three months to do it, and she has a half million dollars coming. You will get twenty-five dollars a day and expenses, with a five-hundred-dollar bonus if you succeed.”
Whatever happened to Darcy Lane had happened suddenly and without preliminaries. Nothing in all her effects gave any hint as to what such a girl would be doing in a place like this. Yet it was his only lead, flimsy, strange, yet a lead nonetheless.
The police had failed to find her. Then their attention had been distracted by more immediate crimes; the disappearance of one girl who, it was hinted, had probably run off with a lover, was forgotten. Now, he had a tip, just a casual mention by a man he met in Tilford’s Coffee Shop, to the effect that he had once seen the beautiful blonde, who used to eat there, living in a ramshackle dump in the worst part of town. The description fit Darcy Lane.
Six months after she disappeared, prospector Jim Buckle was killed in a rockslide that overturned his jeep and partially buried him, and Darcy Lane sprang into the news once more when it turned out that Buckle had two million dollars’ worth of mineral holdings and that he had left it to four people, of whom Miss Lane was one.
* * *
TALK,” NEIL SHANNON said now to the disreputable-looking pair before him, “and you might get something out of it. Keep your mouths shut and you’re in trouble. You see,” he smiled, “I’ve a witness. He places the girl in your place, and you both were seen with her. You”—he pointed a finger at the man—“forced her back into a room when she wanted to come out.”
The man glared balefully at him. “She was sick,” he said, “she wasn’t right in the head.”
Neil Shannon tightened, but his face did not change. Now he had something. At all costs, he must not betray how little it was, how the connection was based on
one man’s memory, a memory almost three years old. “Tell me about it.”
He reached in his pocket and drew out a ten-dollar bill, smoothing it on his knee. The woman stared at it with eager, acquisitive eyes.
“He found her,” she said. “She was on the beach, half naked, and her head cut. He brought her here.”
“Shut up, you old fool!” The man was furious. “You want to get us into trouble?”
“Talk, and maybe you can get out of it. You’re already in trouble,” Shannon assured them. “If the girl was injured, why didn’t you take her to a hospital? Or report it to the police?”
“He wanted her,” the slattern said malevolently. “That’s why he did it. She didn’t know who she was nor nothin’. He brung her here. He figured she’d do like he said. Well, she wouldn’t! She fought him off, an’ made so much fuss he had to quit.”
“What about you?” the man sneered. “You and your plans to make money with her?”
Sickened, Shannon stared at them. What hands for an injured girl to fall into! “What happened?” he demanded. “Where is she now?”
“Don’t know,” the man said. “Don’t know nothin’ about that.”
Neil got up. “Well, this is a police matter, then.”
“What about the ten?” the woman protested. “I talked.”
“Not enough,” Shannon said. “If you’ve more to say, get started.”
“She’d been bumped or hit on the head,” the woman said. “First off, I thought he done it, but I don’t think he did from what she said after. She was mighty bad off, with splittin’ headaches like, an’ a few times she was off her head, talkin’ about a boat, then about paintin’, an’ finally some name, sounded like Brett.”
“Where did you find her?” Shannon asked the man.
He looked up. “On the beach past Malibu,” he said. “I was drivin’ along when I thought I saw somebody swimmin’, so I slowed down. Then she splashed in an’ fell on the sand. No swimmin’ suit, nor any dress, either, nor shoes.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “She was some looker, but that gash on her head was bad. I loaded her up an’ brung her on home.”
“What happened to her?” Shannon watched them keenly. Had they murdered the girl?
“She run off!” The man was vindictive. “She run off, stole a dress an’ a coat, then took out of here one night.”
“You ever seen her again?”
“No.” Shannon felt sure the man was lying, and he saw the woman’s lips tighten a little. “Never seen nor heard of her after.”
* * *
WHEN HE WAS back in the street, he walked a block, then crossed the street and came back a little ways, easing up until he could slip close to the house, the dripping rain covering his approach. Listening, he could hear through a partly opened window, but at first nothing but the vilest language and bickering.
Finally, they calmed down. “Must be money in it,” the man said. “Mage, we should’ve got more out of that feller. Private detective. They ain’t had for nothin’.”
“How could we ever git any of it?” the woman protested.
“How do I know? But if there’s money, we should try.”
“I told you that lingerie of hers was expensive!” Mage proclaimed triumphantly. “Anyway, she ain’t writ this month. She ain’t sent us our due.”
“This time,” the man said thoughtfully, “I think I’ll go see her. I think I will.”
“You better watch out,” Mage declared querulously. “That detective will have an eye on us now. We could git into trouble.”
There was no more said, and he saw them move into a bedroom where the man started to undress. Neil Shannon eased away from the window and walked down the street. He was in a quandary now. Obviously, the two had been getting mail from the girl, and from the sound of it, money. But for what?
They had found her with a cut on her head. That part would fit in all right, but what would she be doing in the sea? And who had hit her? If she had been struck, she might have amnesia, and that would explain her not returning to her apartment. That she was an excellent swimmer, he knew. She had several clippings for distance swimming, and others telling of diving contests she had won.
She must have come from a boat. Yet whose boat, and what had she been doing on it? One thing he resolved. These two must never learn that she was Darcy Lane, and heiress to a half million—if they did not already know it.
* * *
BEFORE DAYLIGHT, HE was parked up the street, and he saw the man come from the house and start in his direction. From where he sat, he saw the man draw nearer and, without noticing him, drop a letter in a mailbox. As soon as the man was out of sight, Shannon slid from his car and, hurrying across the street, he shoved a dozen blank sheets of paper from his notepad after it.
They would, he knew, provide an effectual marker for the letter he wanted to see. It was almost two hours later that the mail truck came by, and he got out of his car and crossed the street again. He flashed his badge.
“All I want to see is the top envelope under those blank pages I dropped in.”
“Well”—the man shrugged his shoulders—“I guess I can let you see the envelope, all right, but only the outside.”
From their position, there were three letters that it could have been. He eliminated two of them at once. Both were typewritten. The third letter was written in pencil, judging by the envelope, and it was addressed to Miss Julie McLean, General Delivery, Kingman, Arizona. The return address was the house down the street, and the name was Sam Wachler.
“Thanks,” Shannon said and, noting the address, he climbed into his car and started back for his office.
* * *
WHEN HE OPENED the door, a tall, slender man with sharp features and a white face rose. “Mr. Shannon? I am Hugh Potifer, one of the Buckle heirs.”
Shannon was not impressed. “What can I do for you?” he asked, leading the way into his private office.
“Why, nothing, probably. I was wondering how you were getting along with your search for Darcy Lane?”
“Oh, that?” Shannon shrugged. “Nothing so far, why?”
“There isn’t much time left, Mr. Shannon, and she has been gone a long time. Do you really think it worthwhile to look?”
Shannon sat down at his desk and took out some papers. His mind was working swiftly, trying to grasp what was in the wind.
“I get paid for looking,” he replied coolly, “it’s my business.”
“Suppose”—Potifer’s dry voice was cautious—“you were given a new job? Something that would keep you here in town? Say, at one hundred dollars a day?”
Neil Shannon looked up slowly. His eyes were darker and he felt his gorge rising. “Just what are you implying? That I occupy myself here, and stop looking for Darcy Lane?”
“At one hundred dollars a day—that would be seven…no…six hundred dollars.” Potifer drew out his wallet. “How about it?”
Shannon started to tell him to get lost, then hesitated. A sudden thought came to him. Why should Potifer call on him at this time? What was the sudden worry? It was easy to understand that he might not want Darcy to show up now and lay claim to her share, which otherwise would be divided among the remaining three heirs. But why come right now? There was little time left and no indication that the girl would ever be found. So what did Hugh Potifer know?
Shannon shrugged. “Six hundred is a nice sum of money,” he admitted, stalling. “On the other hand, you’d stand to make well over a hundred thousand more if she doesn’t appear. That’s a nicer sum, believe me!”
Potifer pursed his thin lips. “I’ll make it a thousand, Mr. Shannon. An even thousand.”
“Why,” Shannon asked suddenly, “did you specify that I stay in town? Do you have reason to believe she is alive, but out of town?”
From Potifer’s expression, Shannon knew he had hit it. Certainly, Potifer knew something, but what? And how had he found out? Suppose he had been the one who—but no. No
ne of these three admitted to knowing each other or Darcy before becoming heirs to the Buckle estate. Further, Darcy had vanished six months before Buckle died, and none of them had known about the will. Or had they?
“You forget,” Shannon said quietly, “there’s a five-hundred-dollar bonus if I find her—and one would suspect that she might be quite grateful herself. Why, she might give a man four or five thousand dollars for finding her in time!”
“Well?” Potifer got to his feet. “You’re trying to boost the ante. No, Mr. Shannon. You have my offer.”
Neil Shannon tipped back in his chair. “So you know something about Darcy Lane’s whereabouts? If I were you, I’d do some tall talking, right now and fast!”
“You can’t frighten me, Shannon,” Potifer said coldly. “Good day!”
When the door had closed behind Potifer, Shannon rose. Thrusting all the papers into a briefcase, he raced around to his apartment and hurriedly packed a bag with the barest necessities for a two-day trip. Then he went down to his car.
He was afraid to take the time, but he drove by Braith’s office to check in. He met the attorney coming toward the street. Braith was a tall, handsome man with a quick smile.
“Any luck, Shannon?” he asked. “Only a week left, you know.”
“That’s what I was coming to see you about,” he said. “I got a lead.”
“What?” Watt Braith was excited. “You don’t mean it!”
“Yes, I’m going to investigate now. I’m driving over to Kingman.”
“Arizona?” Braith stared at him. “What would a model be doing over there?”
“Well, she was a secretary before she was a model, you know. A year of it, from the records. Anyway, I’ve a good lead in that direction. I think,” he added, “that Potifer knows something, too. He dropped around today and tried to bribe me to lay off.”
“I’m not surprised. He stands to make more money if she’s not found; however, I doubt if he had anything to do with her disappearance. What information do you have?”
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