The Devil's Game

by Poul Anderson

  “And in his case, I can’t say it was a bad idea,” Ellis stated. “He wasn’t just our opponent in a contest. He was the enemy.”

  “No more than you,” Larry retorted.

  Byron lifted a hand. “Wait. Please. Let’s think. Mr. Haverner knows this country inside out, we don’t know it at all. We’d better be guided by him. Sir, if this was a, uh, an impersonal murder as you suggest … maybe we shouldn’t lean on the local police. Am I right?”

  Haverner nodded. “It could cause difficulties.”

  “You mean, don’t report this, ever?” rattled from Larry. “What happens when they find out we didn’t?”

  “Nothing,” Haverner answered. “Because I will, of course, report it myself. Not to any local incompetent, but by radiophone to a more appropriate person in Ciudad Vizcaya. He will instruct both me and the comandante in the North Port as to what we should do. I can tell you in advance, he will—if I request it—deputize me to conduct what investigation I see fit. If I report no result, the case will simply and quietly be closed. He and I have a mutual understanding, do you see, and violent death is nothing extraordinary to a mainland Santa Anan.”

  York rocked on his heels.

  Julia took the word: “Let me get this straight, Mr. Haverner. Are you saying we have a choice? That we can either sweep Orestes’s killing under the rug with the connivance of a government that’s quite happy to be rid of him and maybe did the job itself … or we can send direct to North Port for the gendarmes and raise a stink?”

  “Correct, Mrs. Petrie, even to the literal meaning of the word ‘gendarmes.’ The military garrison doubles as the constabulary. If you choose to invoke them, it may become a little awkward. We will probably have to terminate our game.”

  “What?” It was odd to see that Ellis too could be hit. “Publicity, you know,” Haverner said. “From my viewpoint, the game is an experiment; and experiments require controlled conditions. If you don’t play isolated, we get too many variables.” He raised his brows. “However, if your desire is to stop here, so be it. That in itself will be a significant datum.”

  “No!” Julia said.

  They regarded her. She flushed in the humming shadowiness and defied them. “I liked Orestes. I did. But he’s gone. My daughter isn’t, yet. We can’t help him; I can help her. Let’s shovel him under and get on with our business.”

  “Right,” Ellis said at once.

  “Agreed,” Byron added.

  “But … but you’re crazy,” Larry stammered. “A man’s been killed. And the killer could be one of us!”

  Byron half smiled. “I don’t want to sound callous,” he said. “It’s certainly a terrible tragedy that’s happened. But tile fact you mention—let’s be frank—does add a certain spice, doesn’t it?”

  From Matt’s smug embrace, Gayle watched them in horror. “I fear you are outvoted, Mr. Rance,” Haverner said. “I will obtain magisterial authority from the capital itself, immediately, that legal forms may be observed. Among other things, I can then order a closed coffin made here, and the body taken to the North Port for burial before sunset. With no coroner, and in this climate, that will be entirely proper. And no inconvenient questions will be asked. The Island has come to accept the fact that outré things sometimes happen here, as it accepts the value this establishment has to its economy.” He gave a dry spasm which may have been meant as a chuckle. “I fear Sr. Cruz would not have appreciated the religious ceremony that will accompany his interment. But we must not flout local mores.”

  “You’re crazy!” Larry yelled. “You’re—” He groped for the word. “You’re cruel!” He looked like an outraged schoolboy. Leaping to his feet, he stormed from the room.

  * * *

  A while later no one was in sight on the grounds. The staff had withdrawn to their posts in the mansion or to their cottages, hiding from the incandescence around, or from the body laid out in a locked shed? The house loomed huge and white, the lesser dwellings huddled small and bleached-pastel, amidst mowed grass, trimmed flowers, motionless leaves from which the sun smashed all real color, alien shapes rearing higher than the wall around the botanical garden. Above them the sky reached wan, without depth, empty save for a cruising vulture. In the forest to northward, which seemed like a cardboard cutout, a woodpecker drummed and a macaw shrieked, over and over, endlessly. From one of the cottages, several voices, male and female, droned a capella, “Ve vill rest in de arms of Jesus. …” A lizard panted.

  Larry stopped. He was breathing equally hard. His shadow lay in a puddle at his feet. He swung his head from side to side.

  Abruptly he gathered himself and sprinted. As quietly as might be, he passed through the row of servants’ quarters, across a narrow road covered by pipeshank still faintly redolent of the once-living coral, to the long stoutly timbered building where that road ended—or began. Its several sliding doors were closed but not secured. They gave on chambers used for various kinds of storage. The roadway indicated which was the garage.

  Larry entered. He needed a moment for his vision to adjust to the gloom within. Beneath a corrugated iron roof, the place was a furnace. Three pickup trucks, a station wagon, and two automobiles waited like bulky cats at a mousehole. He poised himself awhile, inhaling shallowly because the air here was so vicious, and looked them over. The wagon was a utility vehicle, likewise the Buick. He’d started out for town in the latter before he fell sick. The Mercedes was reserved for Sunderland Haverner and extremely special guests.

  A grin of sorts crossed Larry’s lips. “As well be hanged for, et cetera,” he muttered. “Besides, she’s got more legs than anything else.”

  By now he could see reasonably well if he kept his glance from the open door. He found a workbench and tool rack. The Mercedes wasn’t locked. If it had been, a piece of stiff wire would have corrected the situation in short order. Larry had never worked for an auto repossessor; he claimed it was immoral for banks to pick on some poor devil down on his luck. But he had known, and watched in action, men who claimed it was immoral to be a deadbeat.

  Hotwiring the car took a few minutes. It purred to life. He got behind the wheel, touched the gas pedal, eased the machine outside, stopped to let his pupils contract again.

  A man, who must have heard, popped from a cottage. “A’oy!” he called. “Vhat you doing, sir? Dat Mr. Haverner’s, dat is!”

  Shell spurted from tires and Larry was off. Past the service building and landing strip, his road led to the North Port. Dust whirled pallid behind him.

  Sunderland Haverner appeared to find humor in the news. “Doubtless our impetuous friend has gone to seek what he imagines is the police,” he said. “Well, I presume he’s a good driver who will take care on those treacherous curves.”

  “But won’t you try to have him stopped? Intercepted?” Ellis asked in an appalled tone. “He could bring an end to the game!”

  “I think not, Mr. Nordberg,” Haverner replied. “I rather think not.”

  Gayle, stretched belly-down on her bedspread, stirred at a knock on the door. Midafternoon flamed beyond drawn blinds. An air conditioner labored noisily to maintain coolness. Distantly came the hammer falls where a carpenter worked on a coffin. “Who, who is that?” she called.

  “Lemme in,” ordered the Chicago voice.

  “No. No, please. Please go away.”

  “Lemme in, I said. We got a lot to talk about, sister.” Gayle rolled over, sat up, plucked at a button under her throat. “No,” she begged. “Later, Matt. Honest.”

  “Now. While we got the chance. Quick! Or do I have to tell you-know-who you’ve ratted on us?”

  She moaned but rose, passed through the disorder of the room, turned the knob. Matt slipped through and refastened the door behind him. “That’s better,” he said.

  They stood, he staring down and she up, for half a minute. Her arms were crossed, fists drawn against breasts. Air shuddered in and out of her. His blue-shadowed face bent in a laugh. He chucked her under the
chin and said, “It’s not that bad, sweetheart. Relax. We just got to get a few things straight.”

  She couldn’t answer.

  “Now’s the chance,” he continued. “Larry’s off on his Boy Scout mission. Don’t worry about it. Byron’s in the library; Julia’s gone for a walk—in this weather, can you imagine? We won’t be snooped on, except maybe by Mr. Haverner, and he don’t care.”

  “El-Ellis … Nordberg?”

  “In his room. But we don’t worry about him either, do we, sweetheart? It’s you we got to get squared away. Come on, siddown, let’s talk.” He urged her to a chair and took the other, directly opposite her, reversing it so he sat astraddle with his arms laid over the back.

  She reached to the table and groped in the cigarette box. “Me too,” Matt said. She gave him one. “Light,” he commanded. She put the fire to his before her own.

  He sucked smoke. “Ahh! Good, huh?”

  She gathered courage until she could say in a rush, “Matt, listen, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I never expected … And then the shock, you know, like I was numb. I couldn’t think, I was scared and went along, like I was programmed, you know? But now—no, I can’t.”

  “You can, baby, and you will.” He transfixed her from between squinched-together lids. “You’re in this every bit as much as me. Or you’re dead, understand? Maybe worse than dead.”

  “But I never—I mean—” She strained backward into her chair. “I thought we’d cooperate, you and Ellis and me, but I never—”

  Matt gave an elaborate sigh. “Listen,” he said. “Listen close, because I don’t feel like repeating.

  “Ellis and me got this here signal. He says, ‘Do what seems best,’ and that means anything goes. He gave it to me down there on the beach, right before you and me left the scene, Gayle. Remember? ‘Do what seems best.’

  “Okay, so we walked a little ways into the woods on the blufftop. And I said you should wait, and ducked into that bamboo thicket, and there was a couple of shots, and I come out and hustled you on along the trail.”

  “You … had a gun in your hand—” Her voice broke. “You killed him. You’re a murderer!”

  “And you’re the accessory, sweetheart. You were willing to string along with me and Ellis, weren’t you? He must’ve told you this game is for keeps. How much were you worth to your precious Larry Rance, baby, when he saw a better partner in Julia after she’d given up on Byron? Huh? Think about it.”

  His words smote her. “Okay. Ellis ordered the gun. Old Ha—Mr. Haverner doesn’t care. He only wants to see what we do. Well, Ellis hid the gun after they handed it to him in Mr. Haverner’s office. He turned it over to me later. Idea was, if a situation looked too tough, he’d pass me the high sign and I’d cool the leader.” He laughed anew. “I told him I’d never done that sort of thing before. I don’t know if he believed me, but it helped jack up my price. Hell, I lost that cherry at age twenty-one. So I stashed the rifle where it’d be handy, and today I told you to give me an alibi—”

  “I was stunned,” she pleaded. “I was scared. You threatened—Ellis’d threatened—I didn’t know what I was doing. Now I see: we murdered Orestes.”

  “ ‘We’ is right,” he answered sardonically, and shook ashes off onto the floor. “You’re in it over your scalp, kid. You didn’t see exactly where I hid the weapon and ammo along the trail. I didn’t let you watch that, but you know I’ve got ’em, and I’ll use ’em again if I have to.”

  She trembled so much that she dropped her cigarette. It scarred the hardwood before going out.

  Matt reached around his chair to pat her thigh. “Take it easy, Gayle.” His voice turned soothing and his smile beguiled. “Look, ask yourself exactly what did happen. You were out of the game. You’d been booted out by dear Larry, too. Nothing was ahead of you except back to the same old nothing. Remember? This way, you still got a chance, a damn good chance, to be a winner. To be your own boss, for the rest of your life. How’s that sound?

  “Okay,” he went on into her sobs. “Too bad about Cruz. That’s what you say. Me, I don’t think he’s any loss. He was ready to fry those people alive, wasn’t he? But however you think, dead’s dead. You got no way to bring him back, do you? Okay, why not make the best of it? You got nothing to be scared of. You’re covered. All you have to do is stand pat. Right, Gayle, baby?”

  She shook her head. Still she wept. He stiffened. For a while he glared at her. At length he rose, kicked his chair aside, seized a handful of brown curls, hauled her face up and slapped with his free hand. They were hard, loud blows, which rocked her where she sat. She made a tiny noise, and afterward none, while he hit her.

  When he stopped, both cheeks were livid in the yellow dimness of the room. She stared at him, mute and slack. He grinned.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Now listen, you stupid bitch. I don’t want to have to say it again.

  “You’re in this thing. You got in of your own free will, but there’s no way out. If you squeal, you lose your money, and maybe I’ll cool you, or maybe you’ll go to jail here in Santa Ana. You know what a Santa Anan jail is like? Killing-hard labor. A dish of dirty beans and a dirty glass of water, once a day. No bath, no toilet; down the hall, a hole to squat over when they let you. No lights in the cells, no radio, no TV, no books, no cooling system, half a dozen women crammed together and the guards … well, I won’t say they’d use you, they might, but they’re for sure quick with a whip or club. You saw Cruz’s bare back, didn’t you ? And rats, roaches, lice. They lose a lot of prisoners to typhus and such. You might come out alive, baby, but if you do, you won’t be the same gal who went in. Uh-uh. You’ll be no use to yourself.

  “Better you stick with me and Ellis. We got protection for you, and money, and the freedom you always wanted. Right?” Her lips moved. “Answer me!” he demanded.

  “Right,” she whispered.

  “Good.” Matt relaxed. “I knew you weren’t dumb.”

  He finished his cigarette, tossed it in the ashtray, leaned down and took her by the elbows. “C’mon,” he directed. She obeyed. They sat down side by side on the bed. He started to feel her.

  “We’re partners, you and me, hm, Gayle?” he breathed in her ear. “You want to keep me happy, don’t you?”

  She sagged. “I’ve got a choice?”

  “No,” he admitted. “You don’t.”

  Tlat, tlat, tlat went the carpenter’s hammer.

  He laid her down and unbuttoned her blouse. “I like it in special ways,” he told her. “I hope you do too. Because that’s how it’s going to be, baby.”

  The North Port has a curiously New England look.

  When the visitor takes thought, this is not curious after all. Some of those weathered-gray houses were built when Massachusetts was being colonized, and the rest are in much the same style. Furthermore, homes, the general store and caf6, the ship chandler’s, the church cluster on a hillside which descends to a bay where fishing boats, the packet, an occasional trading schooner, a rare yacht lie along the wharf and its sheds. There the stevedores are young boys, light-haired and in calf-length trousers; they all look like Tom Sawyer.

  But if the visitor takes further thought, the illusion is gone and the marvel is that he ever had it. That water and that sky are too blue; the land behind is too green; coconut and coyal palms rustle near the remains of groves whose wood was once precious; trumpet vines cloak the pillars of porches; yams and plantains grow in cactus-fenced backyard gardens; orchids flare in the foliage of enormous ceibas whose “cotton” the Arawaks brought to the first Castilians. The streets are unpaved: winding dusty lanes where children play, dogs and chickens wander, horsecarts are common and automobiles scarce. The people are loosely clad, usually barefoot, easy of gait, free with laughter; they are a brown folk, half British, half Negro, half Indian, for that kind of arithmetic makes sense in this part of the world. And the flag above them is not the Stars and Stripes nor the Union Jack, but the red and gold
of Santa Ana.

  That staff rises over the Cabildo, which the Spanish erected in one of their several takings of possession two hundred years and more ago. It is still a foreigner in town; the brick wall around it seems to expect Moors or Cid to come and thunder at the gate, while the building at the middle of a flagged courtyard is pure Criollo. Most of its rooms stand empty these days, and none are in good repair.

  A fat comandante blinked across his dusty desk in the dusky refuge he called an office. First he blinked at the large Yankee, then at the two soldiers who had escorted this person in to him, back and forth, back and forth. He took a comforting drag on his cigar. Spanish torrented from him.

  “Uh, uh … pardon, Señor,” Larry Rance stumbled. “No comprendo.”

  More Spanish. “Yo no—” Larry tried. “I mean … un muerte en la casa de Haverner … no, damn it, that can’t be right…. ¿Hay un hombre que habla inglés?”

  Words ripped past him. A soldier slouched out. His Garand rifle (military aid or surplus sale, three decades back? slapped the jamb as he went through. The comandante thought for a minute, issued an order, and waved Larry to the chair the other soldier brought.

  They stared across the desk, face into unlike face, till the dispatched mainlander returned with a chance-found Islandman, a youth nervous and unhappy. (The garrison had an annual quota of smugglers to apprehend for six-month sentences to road gangs and similar jobs.) When he saw the newcomer, he beamed with relief. “Ah, sir, you are de guest of Mr. Sunderland, not so?” he exclaimed. “Villcome to Tanoa! How can I help you?”

  “You can interpret,” Larry said. “I want to report a murder.”

  “Vhat?” The youth was taken aback. “But sir, ve got no murders on Tanoa. De Sponyard, yis, he kill plinty. But here ve got only six of dem, in de Nart’ Port, and I can tell you, sir—”

  “This was at the Big House.” Larry rose to tower above everybody else. “I saw a man shot from ambush, three, four hours ago. And nobody aims to do anything about it!”

  “But Mr. Sunderland, sir, he vould newwer—”