“Packy,” Lynn said and then, considering the word, shook her head. “No—Porky is better.”
One of the men went out. The other stood near the door and De Borja drew one of the canvas chairs between the first man and the rest of the room.
“It is quite awhile to wait,” he said. “Sit down. That side of the room,” he added.
Rankin inspected his surroundings. He had been right about the skylight. There was an Army cot with a couple of dirty blankets which he kicked to the floor so Lynn could sit down. There were two more canvas chairs, a table, a sink in the corner with a small oil stove beside it. A homemade cabinet, apparently containing supplies, stood on the other side and in one corner a closet had been fashioned of wood from packing cases, its contents hidden by a burlap curtain.
Rankin gave Lynn a cigarette and sat down beside her. He glanced at his watch and it was then nine thirty and he knew De Borja was right about there being a long wait. He began to talk to the girl and presently he got her talking about herself and her mother and the schools she had gone to. He told her about Ulio and college and the picture on Ulio’s bureau; he said he had the idea she was a snob.
“If I was, Mother was partly to blame. She didn’t like it here and Dad did. She wanted me to go to school in the States and he agreed. We did a lot of traveling. Yes, I suppose I was a snob,” she said.
Rankin didn’t touch her but he wanted to. He liked her easy frankness and there was between them now something that made unnecessary any pretense or reserve. He liked particularly her calm acceptance of their predicament and that made him think about Carlos de Borja—but not for long.
That bent-nosed character had lost face the other night when Rankin had made him walk into the gutter to pass. De Borja was not drowsy but alert and ever watchful, his little eyes mean and direct, as though he hoped that Rankin would make some mistake that would justify his pulling the trigger of the gun. Even his big ears seemed alerted and listening for a false note and Rankin, sensing the potential danger, made no move.
At twelve he asked Lynn if she didn’t want to try to get some rest and she said, “On this?” distastefully, and he said she ought to stretch out anyway.
He rose and removed his jacket and folded it and they argued some but in the end she accepted it for a pillow. She lay back and he took one of the canvas chairs, listening to the gentle tapping of the rain on the skylight, letting his thoughts wander until they settled on Ulio Kane. He examined things he had not had time for until now; he went over the afternoon of Marie Dizon’s death and he remembered the stiff new sheets of paper she had placed in the metal box for him before she died. Certain things he had not been able to understand grew clearer as he pried into the corners of his mind and he was still at it at three o’clock when he heard the car stop outside.
Lynn heard it too. She sat up as De Borja got to his feet and backed to the door. He spoke to his companion and then moved to one side while the other opened the door and glanced out. Charlie Love and John Kane came in a moment later with the man called Sixto behind them.
John Kane stopped when he saw the girl jump up. He seemed to stiffen and grow taller, his brown face working. He put his arms out. She was in them a second later and he said, “Lynn,” and held her close.
“Dad!” the girl cried. “Oh, Dad.”
She held on convulsively, her blond head burrowing into his shoulder and John Kane stood there with the rain glistening on his bald head as he bowed it over his daughter.
Spence Rankin dropped his glance, his chest tight. He glanced at Charlie Love’s battered face and Charlie wasn’t watching any more either. Then Rankin saw De Borja’s sneering mouth and the anger came back so that he felt his knees begin to tremble.
“There, there,” John Kane said, smoothing the girl’s hair. He held her off and smiled but she would not look at him. “I understand,” he said.
“I know. That’s why I’m so ashamed,” she said and then, quickly, she shook her head back and somehow, drawing recklessly on her courage, she smiled and said, “I’m all right now, Dad. I’ll be good.”
Pascual Sanchez came in twenty minutes later, his hat and coat spotted with rain. He discarded them at once and looked the room over, his eyes pleased with what they saw and his lips tight. He nodded at John Kane, who sat beside his daughter.
“Hello, John,” he said. “I thought you’d want to come.”
He said something to the man who had waited with De Borja and this worthy went out leaving Sixto and De Borja to stand guard in the room. Then Sanchez took a legalsize envelope from his pocket and removed some papers which he spread on the table.
“I have everything in order here. All we need is your signature and”—he glanced round—“the signatures of your daughter and Rankin as witnesses.”
Kane held out his hand, his voice calm and businesslike. “You don’t mind if I read it over, do you?”
Sanchez blinked. Then he shrugged and gave Kane one of the copies.
Rankin leaned forward, his eyes on John Kane, and from that moment on he felt a tension spread across the room where none had been before. John Kane was stalling, but there was something behind his delay that Rankin felt but could not understand, some purpose other than the mere wasting of time. He half expected the older man to bring up the point that he, Rankin, had accepted long ago. For it was obvious to him, and to John Kane, though possibly not to Lynn, that any such document was worthless no matter how signed, if the three of them were alive to testify that they had signed under duress. Yet now, in all calmness, John Kane was saying:
“Seems to be all right.”
“No,” someone said in a high, strained voice that Rankin did not recognize. “No,” Lynn said again. “You mustn’t, Dad.”
“Now, now,” John Kane said, as if addressing a child. “Have you a pen?” he said to Sanchez.
The blocky man looked relieved. He fumbled for a fountain pen and removed the cap. John Kane stood up and wrote part of his name; then he stopped.
“You know this won’t do you much good.”
“Never mind that. Sign it.”
“How many men have you got around this place?” John Kane said, bending to complete the signature but not writing.
“Three. Why?”
“It’s not enough, Pascual.” Kane wrote his last name and straightened, his smile thin. “Not nearly enough.”
Sanchez glared at him but suspicion darkened the corners of his eyes. He spoke rapidly in Spanish to Sixto. When the answer reassured him he smiled.
“Don’t stall, John,” he said. “You weren’t followed. Sign the other copy.”
“We were not followed until near the end,” Kane said. “But someone saw me leave, and the marks on Charlie’s. face. And there are a few telephones now, Sanchez. I think we were picked up on the Rizal Extension, out beyond the golf club.” He signed the second copy and stepped back.
Sanchez surveyed Sixto coldly and the man argued excitedly in Tagalog, shaking his head and gesturing. Then Sanchez said, “All right, Lynn. Sign here.”
The girl glanced at her father and he nodded. She went to the table and signed both copies and dropped the pen. Sanchez extended it to Rankin. “If you please,” he said.
John Kane cleared his throat.
“It is nice weather for guerrillas,” he said. “Very black and wet. In the rain they move unnoticed.”
Rankin took an upward-slanting glance at the skylight as he accepted the pen. He saw nothing there but the rain upon the glass and the blackness beyond, but in that moment he thought he heard another sound, like some faint creaking of wood, as if somewhere a new weight and pressure was applied. Then the silence stretched taut and rigid through the room as he bent over the table.
As he started to write he noticed that the pen was designed for lever-action filling and in that instant some perverse working of his mind saw its possibilities.
“Have you got a blotter?”
“I don’t need a blotter.”
Ran
kin thought, Just for the hell of it, and followed through on the idea, slipping his thumbnail under the lever and prying upward while a blob of ink dropped and spread across the sheet.
“You do now.”
Sanchez cursed. The back of his fist caught Rankin across the cheekbone and staggered him. He took it and laughed because he saw the tightness of De Borja’s hand upon the gun.
Sanchez hauled a checkbook from his pocket and found a small blotter. He dabbed at the sheet. “I can get another signature if I have to,” he said through taut lips. “This is your last chance.”
“It’s all right, Spence,” John Kane said. “It isn’t going to matter…. Hadn’t you better check up on your guards?” he said to Sanchez.
Rankin held his breath, for he had heard the faintly creaking sound again. He watched Sanchez fold the documents, feeling the stiffness move across his back and into his neck. With no more than his own instinct to guide him, he sensed the threat in John Kane’s words and knew time was running out.
There was no sound of the rain on the skylight now; there was no sound at all but the swift uneven breathing of the others in the room. Kane was leaning forward; so was Charlie Love. And Sanchez, too, felt the danger in the room. For the first time his blocky face was uncertain; his gaze wavered.
“Step outside,” he said to Sixto. “Make sure that this man is lying.”
Sixto was neither tall nor strongly built and now his eyes were very big. He shifted the gun in his hand and it was plain that he had heard what John Kane said and had no stomach for the job. But he went out and closed the door behind him.
“He won’t come back,” John Kane said.
He paused and the silence came.
He broke it ominously.
“Going from this light to the darkness he will be blind and helpless,” he said, and the way he said it made Rankin’s scalp tighten and prickled the back of his neck.
De Borja swore softly and Sanchez thrust his right hand into his jacket pocket. He half turned, his neck and torso stiff and his head cocked, as if listening for some new sound.
Another minute dragged by and no one spoke.
“You’d better put those papers on the table,” John Kane said in that same flat cadence. “Empty your pockets and have this man”—he nodded toward De Borja—“put down his gun. Kill someone now, Sanchez, and you will—”
Sanchez cut him off with an oath. His deep-set eyes had a wild and hunted look and he could not keep them still. His gun bulged in his pocket.
He took a backward step, but he glanced behind him first.
Rankin looked at Lynn Kane.
She sat on the edge of the cot, her arms braced stiffly at her sides, her face pale and white-lipped as she watched her father and sensed the overtones of disaster in his voice.
Rankin broke the mood with a tremendous mental effort. He put one hand in his trousers pocket and felt the trick knife there as the seconds dragged by. He remembered how the knife opened but he was not practiced in its manipulation and had little skill in such matters.
But it was nicely folded in his hand and he made sure it could be swiftly withdrawn.
“I told you he wouldn’t come back.” John Kane’s voice was grim. He waited two seconds and said, “It will be the same when you step out, Sanchez!”
That did it. Sanchez cracked and fear jerked at his hard-muscled face. Fear struck at Rankin too because he remembered De Borja. What helped was the automatic and long-trained reflexes that, properly alerted, enabled him to sense an opponent’s move an instant before it occurred.
Sanchez said, “Damn you!” and his hand came out of his pocket. “De Borja!” he said. Then Rankin threw the knife.
What happened then was only partly clear, for he was not the only one who moved and sensed rather than saw what went on about him. He did know that Charlie Love lunged forward as Sanchez spoke, that Lynn cried out as her father tipped her over on the floor; but he saw this only vaguely and followed the flight of the knife with his body, finding time to be proud of his half-armed pitch.
It was not a difficult chance—no more than ten feet—and De Borja, watching the others, had no time to duck, though he tried, jerking just enough to spoil his aim.
The closed knife hit him just above the bridge of the nose, ricocheting upward as the gun in his hand went off. Then Rankin was reaching for it as he dove in with his shoulder, hearing now the crash of glass and feeling the fragments shower about him.
In the same moment a gun hammered twice in quick succession from somewhere above and as he fell with De Borja, bending the gun hand back, he twisted somehow so that he saw the two men framed in the skylight and the pointed gun in Austin’s hand and the one in Esteban’s hand as he kicked more glass away.
He did not see them jump through because he was on top of De Borja now, jerking the gun free, but he heard them land and felt the floor tremble under him.
With that he was up, hauling De Borja with him, slugging once with his right as Esteban came to help. And then John Kane was by the door and some little men were coming in and Pascual Sanchez, already on his knees, was tipping forward on his face, a crimson stain on his back that widened slowly as he lay still.
Howard Austin was over him then, crouched and reaching and then turning the body and picking up the fallen gun as Sergeant Esteban came up beside him. Austin got up, sucking the blood from the cut on the back of his left hand. He put his gun away and though his blond face was still gray, behind the glasses his eyes were bright and satisfied.
“He’s all yours, Sergeant.” He handed the automatic to Esteban; then cocked an eye at Rankin. “I told you I’d probably kill him,” he said and stepped quickly to Lynn Kane, who stood back against the wall looking dazed and pale with shock.
Austin asked her if she was all right and she nodded as he took her shoulders in his hands and drew her close. Rankin glanced away. He swallowed and examined the gun he had taken from De Borja, a little surprised that his hands should shake so. Then he was watching John Kane and the others who stood just inside the door.
They made an odd assortment standing there but Rankin found a familiar face among them: Good old Silvestre, who grinned broadly beneath his wide-brimmed hat before he went over to put handcuffs on De Borja.
The other four were brown-skinned men wearing dark, rain-soaked coats and trousers. Two were barefooted but the three of them had American-made carbines slung over their shoulders and the fourth carried a Reising submachine gun.
“I didn’t know whether you were bluffing or not,” Rankin said to John Kane. He indicated the four grinning gunmen. “You really did have guerrillas.”
“Ex-guerrillas,” John Kane said. “We had a plan in case something like this happened, and Sanchez made it easier by sending Charlie and Sixto out in Charlie’s sedan. My friends here know that sedan and it was not hard for them to spot it coming in tonight and trail along.” He nodded at Silvestre and Esteban. “I didn’t know about them.”
Rankin told about the scheme that he and Esteban and Austin had thought up. “It was all we could think of,” he said, “but when they took us out of that house down in town the wrong way it didn’t look so good.”
“But I knew this house,” Silvestre said happily. “For a while the underground made use of it. When I see you go there it is a simple matter to cover the other exits. Oh, yes,” he said. “We knew, Mr. Rankin.”
Esteban was hunkered down beside Sanchez’s body, the automatic still in his hand. “We followed you here,” he said. “But we had seen Charlie Love driven from the other place so we decided to wait. When he came back with Mr.Kane we waited for Sanchez.”
He nodded at the guerrilla with the Reising. “Francisco and I did some work together during the war,” he said. “I recognized him when he approached the building and so”—he shrugged—“we thought it wise to get together. It was simple for them to take care of the guards unnoticed and when this was done Mr. Austin and I went up on the roof by pushing a car a
longside and climbing to the top.”
He glanced at the gun he held, displayed it. “I think this is what we want. Can you tell if this is the one Marie Dizon had in her handbag that afternoon?”
Rankin took the automatic. He held it under the light and examined the butt, the wooden stocks; the little stain he and Marie had seen was still there.
“That’s it,” he said. “The one she got from the study.”
“I will have it checked,” Esteban said. “We will go to the Sanchez house now, if it is agreeable, and see what else is there.”
Rankin walked past Lynn and Howard Austin, avoiding them with his eyes. He stopped in front of Charlie Love and took his hand. He said maybe Mr. Kane would want to go out to the house and get the metal box that Ulio had told him about.
21
THEY HAD BEEN IN THE SANCHEZ HOUSE nearly an hour—Lynn and Howard Austin on the porch divan and Spence Rankin helping Sergeant Esteban search the study—when the telephone rang. The call was for the sergeant and when he came back to the porch his broad dark face seemed pleased.
“You were right,” he said to Rankin. “The gun we took from Sanchez was the same that Marie showed you and the test has been made. It is the gun she and Ulio Kane were killed with.”
He sat down as a car’s lights swung up the driveway. “It is good,” he said, “to close the case so simply, though without your help—”
He let the sentence dangle but his shrug was expressive. He watched John Kane and Charlie Love come up the steps, and repeated his information for their benefit. John Kane sat down and stretched out his long legs. There was a bottle of whisky and glasses on the table that Lynn had supplied and he poured a solid drink and took it without a chaser, passing the bottle to Charlie Love who said:
“Wasn’t ever any doubt, was there?”
“Only to me,” Lynn said, her voice softly bitter. “Me of all people.”
John Kane spoke sharply but not unkindly. “Stop it, Lynn. We understand how you felt.”
Rankin fixed a fresh drink and took it to the divan. “There was never any doubt in my mind after the guy grabbed me in the bedroom while I was watching for Ulio and said, ‘Just so you won’t bother the boss.’”
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