Dangerous Legacy

by George Harmon Coxe

  “This is Sergeant Esteban,” Austin said. “From old Bilibid. He’s on the homicide detail.”

  Esteban bowed, his eyes quickly taking in all the room before focusing on Rankin. Neither slim nor stout, he had a broad, high-cheekboned face, rather flat in profile, a broad nose, and straight black hair that did not lie quite flat. He wore a neat but faded blue serge suit and when he spoke his voice was curiously soft.

  “You were here when it happened?”

  “In the other room,” Rankin said.

  “Is that where Lynn is?” Austin asked.

  Rankin said it was and Esteban, indicating Austin and Marie Dizon, said, “And these others?”

  “They came later.”

  “You will wait in there, please,” Esteban said and watched while Austin and Marie went into the bedroom. He spoke to his associates in Tagalog and turned once more to Rankin. “If you will give me a minute or two I will be at your service.”

  Rankin lit a cigarette and sat on the arm of a chair, a little surprised by what was happening. Thoroughly and with a quick and practiced efficiency, the three men were going about their jobs, and except that they were Filipinos, the routine was no different from that practiced in the States.

  Already a camera was set up on its tripod and while he watched, the man with the physician’s bag moved back from the body and a flash bulb exploded light into the room. The doctor went back to his work as the camera was moved and Esteban hunkered down beside him while the inspection was made. The fourth member of the quartet was busy searching for fingerprints, his paraphernalia beside him on the rattan table.

  Rankin watched with undisguised interest and when Esteban joined him he said he hadn’t expected anything like this.

  The sergeant seemed pleased. “It is the American influence,” he said. “The Manila Police Department has been completely modernized. By the Provost Marshal’s office, with the help of one of your F.B.I. men who was here to advise us. We had American Army captains as joint heads of precincts and in the various detective bureaus. We had an Army major as chief medical examiner. Now we have mostly our own men.”

  A flash bulb went off again and the doctor opened the door and called outside. Presently two men came in bearing a stretcher and Rankin went over to stare out the window until he heard the door close.

  Esteban was at his side as he turned. “Now,” he said politely, “if you will tell me what happened.”

  Rankin told him, conscious now of the measured inspection of the opaque black eyes. He had the feeling that those upward-slanting eyes missed nothing, imprinting each detail indelibly upon the sergeant’s brain, and he had an idea it would be a mistake to let Esteban’s pleasant manner fool you for long.

  He had a notebook out now, the sergeant did, and when Rankin mentioned Sanchez’s name he looked up with a new intentness.

  “Pascual Sanchez?” he said. “You are sure of this?”

  “He was talking with Ulio when I got slugged. The guy that did it said, ‘Just so you won’t bother the boss,’ before he let me have it.”

  Esteban heard him out, nodding, writing in the notebook from time to time. When Rankin told him about the missing forty-five thousand pesos, he called his fingerprint man’s attention to the drawer.

  “You think Sanchez knew of this?”

  “He had to know,” Rankin said. “His gunman was planted in that bedroom while Ulio and I were talking. The door could have been open a crack. Why shouldn’t he take the dough? It was right there waiting for him.”

  Esteban nodded. “Do you object to my searching you?” he asked quickly.

  Rankin told him to go ahead and Esteban examined the two automatics Ulio had furnished and made sure Rankin did not carry the missing money.

  “And this wound you got?” Esteban pressed. “Yes,” he said when he examined the swelling on Rankin’s head. “The skin is also broken. You think he struck you with a gun?”

  He thought over Rankin’s affirmative, spoke again to the doctor who was about to leave.

  “There is one thing that bothers me,” he said when he came back. “Why, if Pascual Sanchez knew you could be a witness to this thing, did he not kill you also?”

  Rankin stared, his brows warping. He turned to flip his cigarette out the open window, wondering how he could have overlooked so obvious a point. He said:

  “That’s a fair question. He must have wanted a fall guy.”

  Esteban frowned. “I am sorry. That is one I do not understand.”

  Rankin explained. “Killing me would have made it tougher,” he said. “You’d wonder why we got murdered the day we arrived and you’d smell around for a suspect and you’d finally get to him when you checked back. This way you’ve got a suspect—me.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t like the way you say it,” Rankin added dryly. “But suppose Sanchez figured that way. I’m on the spot and I’ve got no witness. Maybe we had a fight and I shot Ulio. Maybe I stole the forty-five thousand pesos. Hell, I don’t know,” he said, the uneasiness growing in him. “There could be other reasons. But whatever it is I’ve got an idea Sanchez is going to deny everything I say.”

  “The same idea has occurred to me,” Esteban said. “Come. We will talk to the others and find out how they happened to be here so soon after it happened.”

  Sergeant Esteban got the answer after he had gone into the background of the three who waited, and only Lynn Kane showed any surprise at the truth.

  “Howard,” she said, her voice stricken. She wet her lips and took a moment to puzzle it out for herself before she spoke. “Of course,” she said finally. “You had to know about Ulio to bring me here. You knew when you came to the office for me before dinner.”

  “I’m sorry.” Howard Austin removed his glasses. He began to polish them, his blue-gray eyes tired and distressed. “I promised Ulio. He didn’t want you to know at first because—well, because of where you were staying. He said it would be better if we surprised you and Marie.”

  He replaced the glasses, continued earnestly. “It wasn’t my place to argue. He said he had a lot to do and asked me as a friend. He didn’t know Marie was working for me—if I hadn’t given her the afternoon off he might have seen her there—but he told me to get word to her. It was the same with Rankin,” he added defensively. “He promised one thing and I promised another.”

  Esteban coughed softly. “I think I understand now.” He glanced at Marie Dizon. “You arrived a little early? Mr. Rankin says Mr. Sanchez was here,” he said to Lynn. “He thinks Sanchez may know something of this murder.”

  “I know.” She did not look at Rankin; she looked over his head as if he had vanished. “It’s the most vicious nonsense I’ve ever heard.”

  “Get him here and see,” Rankin said.

  Esteban considered the suggestion and for the first time seemed uncertain. What he said then gave a hint as to the position Mr. Sanchez occupied.

  “Perhaps it would be better,” he said, “if we went there instead. That is if you have no objection. We can manage if you will use your car, Mr. Austin.” He stepped to the door, glanced once more at Lynn. “It is true that Mr. Rankin and your half brother were friends?”

  “They were friends in college.” Lynn straightened her dress, making sure to avoid Rankin’s gaze. “That was a long time ago.”

  Rankin told about Claire Maynard, his anger in hand and his voice controlled. “She can tell you how it was with Ulio and me,” he said. “She can tell you whether or not we were friends.”

  Pascual Sanchez wore pajamas and a black silk dressing-gown. He had not gone to bed but was reading on the porch when they arrived and when he heard what had happened he made appropriate sounds and gestures toward Lynn to indicate his distress and concern. This done he listened calmly to what Esteban said and busied himself with a cigar he had taken from a leather case.

  “Mr. Rankin is mistaken,” he said without resentment. “From nine until ten this evening I was at the office with o
ne of my assistants.”

  “Carlos de Borja, maybe,” Rankin said.

  Sanchez let his brows climb. “Carlos is due in from the States tomorrow.”

  Rankin knew this was probably true. De Borja had not been on their plane this morning.

  “De Borja was in San Francisco,” he said. “He knew Ulio was there and so did you.”

  “I have not seen De Borja.”

  “The mail still goes through; so do cables.”

  Sanchez gestured indolently with the cigar. “De Borja said nothing to me. I doubt if he knew Ulio Kane.”

  “Look.” Rankin sat up. He got himself in hand and took pains with his words. “You saw Ulio this afternoon. He told me so at nine thirty tonight. He wanted to see the bill of sale for the mine this afternoon and you stalled him and said you’d bring it tonight.”

  Sanchez glanced at Esteban. He glanced at Lynn, smiled reassuringly, and his voice held an overtone of injured patience.

  “If you would stop and think, Mr. Rankin,” he said, “you’d see how preposterous you sound. I scarcely knew Ulio Kane, but I’ve known his half sister for two years and she has come to mean a great deal to me. If I had known Ulio was in town this afternoon I would have told her so at dinner. If I’d had the faintest idea that he was alive before that I would have certainly told her so. How could I possibly have done otherwise, knowing how much it would mean to her? No, Mr. Rankin,” he added, still patient, “I did not see Ulio Kane this afternoon or this evening, nor did I know he was in town.”

  Rankin choked but kept his mouth shut, as amazed by Lynn Kane’s expression as by what he had heard. She was watching Sanchez, almost proudly, it seemed to Rankin, nodding slightly in approval. And even in his frustration there was time to wonder how it was possible for them to look upon the broad, hard-muscled face and watch the droop-lidded eyes and see such entirely different pictures.

  To Lynn, Sanchez’s voice was fatherly and reassuring, his face benign, calm, and thoughtfully considerate; what Rankin saw was a shrewd, ruthless man, highly intelligent and without scruples.

  It baffled him now and he had no equipment with which to attack. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for such a thing. Always before there had come a time when he could solve his problems by action and there had been no need for guile. Now he realized that he could not possibly cope with Sanchez in his practiced way; he had to outthink him or take his licking.

  He sighed and lit a cigarette. He knew Esteban was watching him with those slanting eyes. Marie Dizon stared straight ahead, her face composed now, and Howard Austin looked worriedly from Lynn to Sanchez and had a hard time sitting still. Then Sanchez was talking again, building up his premise with patronizing confidence.

  “It was Hitler, wasn’t it,” he said, “who maintained that to get a lie accepted one must tell a whopper.”

  Rankin found he could grin. It did not touch his eyes but he knew the score now and was able at last to talk back without losing his temper. It was a nice feeling; it did something for him.

  “He had something there,” he said. “Now all we’ve got to do is find out which one of us is the liar. Maybe Ulio shot himself.”

  “You were there.”

  “Maybe I also slugged myself.”

  “I have read of such things.”

  “Maybe you could figure a motive for me too,” Rankin said, a little surprised that he could speak so unconcernedly.

  “I’m afraid not,” Sanchez replied. “That’s a matter for the sergeant, isn’t it?”

  A car swung into the drive as Sanchez spoke and presently a plain-clothes man came up the steps with Claire Maynard. She wore a seersucker suit and sandals, and her hair was not piled high now but brushed out on her nape and tied with a ribbon. Rankin went to meet her. He took her hand and introduced her, noting that apparently she did not know Lynn or Marie or Howard Austin.

  Sanchez said, “Hello, Claire,” and then Esteban was asking questions about Ulio Kane and Rankin.

  Claire listened, her face shiny in the artificial light, her greenish eyes shadowed but concerned. Everything she had to say was the truth and Rankin’s relief mounted as she retold the meeting in San Francisco and the trip back. When she corroborated Rankin’s story of Ulio’s request for secrecy once they reached Manila, Esteban said:

  “There was never any bad feeling, or quarrels?”

  “None that I saw. Quite the contrary.”

  Esteban closed his notebook and stood up. “Thank you,” he said. “You have all been most helpful, and I do not believe there is anything to be done now. Tomorrow we will perhaps know more.”

  The Lingayen Gulf Café was dark, its shutters in place, when Esteban let Rankin out of the police car. On Rizal entertainment, but here it was quiet and Rankin went up and sailors who were reluctant to call off their search for the sidewalks still echoed the footsteps of a few soldiers the narrow stairs toward the light that burned dimly in the upper hall.

  There were six rooms here and his was the middle one on the right. The lock was old-fashioned, the key large, and when he had locked himself in and turned on the single electric bulb he went directly to his flight bag and dug out the envelope Ulio had given him on shipboard.

  He sat down on the bed with it, not opening it immediately but thinking of his friend. He had no anger to support him now, for Sanchez and Lynn Kane were no longer in his thoughts, and gradually a black wall of loneliness pushed in on him, leaving only emptiness inside him and a constriction in his throat. When it got too bad he quickly tore the end off the envelope and shook out its contents.

  There were two pieces of paper folded there and he opened the smaller one and saw that it was the note Ulio had found under the hotel room door and signed by his father. He put it aside and unfolded the second sheet. Then he knew what it was.

  It was signed by Ulio and witnessed by the captain, first officer, and a steward on the Molokai. It was a will, simply drawn and brief, which said in effect that Ulio was leaving everything he had to Spencer Rankin, knowing full well that he would make the proper provision for Ulio’s fiancée, Marie Dizon.

  Rankin stood up. He went to his bag and got out a bottle of Scotch. He was not, in those first moments, much surprised. He drank a silent toast to his friend; he drank again, bitterly. He gave his thoughts free rein and they were not maudlin thoughts but purposeful and stubborn.

  “Maybe Lynn will believe we were friends now,” he said half aloud. And then it hit him.

  He stared again at the will and recognized with a sinking heart the unmistakable threat it carried. The very possession of it could be disastrous and he knew finally that he could not show it to Lynn or even mention it. For here was a motive for murder that even he could not deny.

  8

  THEY WERE SWEEPING OUT THE CAFE when Spence Rankin came downstairs the next morning so he went to the corner and walked along Rizal until he found a restaurant that looked clean. It was an open-front affair like so many of the stores, shaded by the overhanging second floor which was built flush with the curbing and supported by pillars that angled out at the top to give an arched effect.

  When he had eaten—two eggs with bread and coffee cost him three pesos without the tip—he walked idly along with sight-seeing soldiers and sailors and Filipinos and Chinese, hearing a hubbub of strange voices and the ever present clop-clop of zapatillas on the women’s feet. On the way back he passed a cigar-box of a newsstand and that made him think of Ulio and the advertisements he spoke of inserting. He bought six different four-page local papers, discovering that there were at least a dozen more published daily which the dealer did not have, and tucked them under his arm. When he climbed the stairs to his room a few minutes later two men in the khaki uniform of the Manila police were waiting outside his door.

  “We come from Sergeant Esteban,” one of them said. “Please to accompany us.”

  Rankin had seen news pictures of old Bilibid Prison and when the police sedan swung off Azcarraga and he saw th
e wall and gates and the ugly, yellowish building beyond, he remembered having driven past there that summer he had been here with Ulio. Now the car rolled across the courtyard and parked to the right of the main entrance. They entered here, mounted wide wooden stairs smoothly hollowed by age and use, and turned right along a corridor which had offices on one side and a railing on the other. They stopped in front of one of the doors, knocked, entered.

  It was a sizable room, newly-painted in gray, with two full-length windows that overlooked the prison yard and buildings. A little man was busy at a typewriter and Sergeant Esteban rose from a corner desk and smiled.

  “This is the captain’s office,” he said when he had offered a pleasant good morning. “But he is away today and we can use it.” He glanced at his watch, considered some problem thoughtfully. “Miss Kane and Miss Dizon will be here shortly,” he said. “Meanwhile if you would like to look around—”

  Rankin said he would and Esteban dismissed the two policemen and led him down the hall to a second stairway much narrower, darker, and steeper than the first. At the top they turned a small landing and started up a third and still steeper set of stairs and came at last to the tower with a pointed roof and open on four sides.

  What Rankin saw then fitted perfectly the things he had heard and read about, for this was no mere prison but a cruel and decadent example of man’s inhumanity. How old it was he did not know but at its best there was something in its ancient masonry and yellowish cast that sobered him instantly; when he considered its wartime use he could begin to understand the suffering that had been endured here.

  In shape it was roughly a square, its bartizaned walls formidable, and there was not one yard but several, studded with long, narrow buildings and separated by inner walls, some topped with wire.

  Esteban explained that the Japs had charged these wires with electricity. He pointed out the printing plant and said that during the occupation the civilian prisoners were kept together in the farthest enclosure and buildings, the military personnel crowded into whatever space was left.