The Turquoise Mask

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I turned out the lights and slipped between the sheets, drew up a blanket. The high mountain air was cool and Santa Fe nights were wonderful for sleeping. But I lay awake and listened to the house. It did not creak and groan in quite the same way that old wooden houses do, but there seemed a whispering of movement abroad. The lower bedrooms of the others were in an addition which had long ago been built onto the house. Only my grandfather’s room and my own were isolated from the others.

  Once I thought I heard footsteps on the narrow flight of stairs that mounted to my upper room. I tensed myself on one elbow, listening to the darkness with all my being. But there was no further sound. Either the stairs themselves had creaked in the changing temperature, or someone sat on the steps, patiently waiting for me to relax and go to sleep. Or to rise out of curiosity and go to some dangerous rendezvous?

  I couldn’t bear the suspense of not knowing, and after a while I left my bed and went softly to the door. It opened quietly upon the stairs that led down to the room that was an extension of the living room. Moonlight found its way through deep windows, touched the light patches of Indian rugs on the floor, flung the furniture into jet shadow. It also silhouetted the stairs. No one crouched upon them. But nevertheless, there was movement.

  In the room below one of the shadows moved. It did not dart, but moved slowly, with great stealth. Moonlight did not reach to my place at the head of the stairs and the moving shadow seemed not to sense my presence. I had no impulse to cry out, to ask who it was. I was filled with a dread curiosity. I had to know what was meant by this action. At least the shadow was not creeping toward Juan Cordova’s room, though I had the feeling that if there was danger, it was not to me.

  Maddeningly, the moon went behind a cloud and the chiaroscuro of the room was wiped out. Now there was no light and dark, but all was shadow. I could no longer distinguish movement, though there seemed a faint whisper of sound as if something drifted across the room below. Then I heard the soft creaking of a door and knew that the night visitor sought the patio.

  I turned quickly back to my room and ran to a window in the thick adobe wall. I climbed into the embrasure so that I could see directly down into the patio. The moon was still hidden, but there was starlight, and in the patio a single lamp burned on a standard. I could just make out the slow movement of that stealthy figure as it followed the path downward toward the little house at the far end of the garden. Lights were out now at the Stewarts’ and there was no one down there to hear or see. But if there was a tampering with the lock, the alarm would go off. This I knew. Unless the person who stole toward Grandfather’s precious collection had a key. He had come from inside the house, so he might well have one.

  I had to rouse someone. This might be another trick to be played upon Gavin, like the one with the stone head. No matter who it might be, our thief must be exposed. He would be trapped if he let himself into the little house and we could catch him there. I must call someone so that the culprit could be discovered.

  I put on my robe and for the sake of quiet crept barefoot down the stairs. The door that led into the bedroom wing stood open, and a dim lamp burned on a small table, lighting the long hall with its closed doors on either hand.

  Time was slipping by and I couldn’t wait. Clarita’s room was nearest and I turned the knob slowly, gently, so there was no sound. I didn’t want to rouse the house so our thief—if that’s what he was—would be alerted to escape. Softly I pressed the door and a wedge of darkness opened before me. The dim light from the hall gave me little help. I could barely make out Clarita’s bed across the room, but there was no sound of breathing, and I could make out no mound of sleeping body beneath the covers.

  Gathering my courage, I ran across the room in my bare feet. Clarita was gone from her bed. So it was she I must follow, and I needed no help for that.

  I left the hall with its other sleepers, and ran through the living room to a patio door, where I let myself outside. The area still lay in shadow, with the moon hidden, but now the patio light had been turned off. Nothing stirred. No shadow moved along the walk, and all seemed to be quiet down near the building which held the collection. Nevertheless, someone had come out here. Alarm stirred in me. The very quiet seemed menacing.

  Bricks were cold to my feet as I stepped outside and started down the walk. The faint rush of sound behind me came without warning—only another whisper in the night. There was no time for me to turn, to protect myself. Searing pain struck me across the shoulders and then came again and again, slashing furiously, so that I stumbled and fell to my knees, half stunned, trying vainly to escape the flailing whip. My own screaming split the night.

  The blows stopped as suddenly as they’d begun, and there was an outcry from farther along the walk, the sound of a fall. I crouched dazed on my hands and knees, aware only of stinging pain. In the house lights flared on, but it seemed an age before Gavin came running down the walk. He paused beside me but I waved him on.

  “Down there! Someone fell!”

  He went past me and I heard Juan’s choked voice. “The whip!” he moaned. “It was the disciplina!”

  I managed to stand, to move toward the place where Gavin knelt beside my grandfather. But before I had taken three steps, I saw the thing that lay in my path, its three leather prongs outflung on the tile.

  From the house Eleanor came running. She flung herself upon the old man, uttering cries of alarm. Where was Clarita? my stunned mind questioned, and I looked around to see her tall figure in the lighted doorway that led from the patio. She neither moved nor cried out, but waited while Gavin and Eleanor helped her father back to the house. Then her words reached me clearly.

  “Go and phone for the doctor, Eleanor.” There was no emotion in her tone.

  The three moved past me, with Juan faltering between them, and I saw that he was fully dressed and wearing a heavy leather jacket. Perhaps that had spared him what I had suffered. Clarita let them by and then moved toward me, but before she could ask questions I spoke to her.

  “I went to your room,” I said. “You weren’t in bed.”

  She ignored that. “Are you hurt?”

  “A little,” I said.

  “Then come inside,” she ordered, and turned back to the house.

  Awkwardly, I reached back to touch my throbbing shoulders, but when I would have followed her, a voice spoke to me out of the lower shadows. Paul’s voice.

  “Can I be of any help, Amanda? What seems to have happened?”

  I didn’t trust him. The disciplina still lay at my feet and I picked it up with repugnance. The cruel thongs that would have lacerated bare flesh hung limp in my hand as I held it out.

  “This belongs to you,” I challenged.

  He came toward me and took the whip questioningly. “So it does. There was another theft from the store today. My Penitente display has been rifled. This whip was taken, and so was the figure of Doña Sebastiana from her cart. But what’s the whip doing here?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” I said. “Someone struck me with it and then struck my grandfather, knocking him down on the walk. How could anyone be so cruel?”

  Sylvia came running through the gate from the other house, a coat flung over her night clothes.

  “Paul—what is it? I heard voices—someone screamed.”

  He said, “Go back to bed, Sylvia. I’ll be along in a moment.”

  He was stroking the thongs of the whip gently across one palm, but as the moon came out from behind its cloud, his eyes were fixed on me with bright curiosity. By moonlight all he needed were the pipes and a cloven hoof.

  “Who did this, Amanda? Who do you think did it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said dully. I wasn’t going to tell him about Clarita being out of her bed, or of my hearing sounds from the living room. I didn’t want to talk to him at all. As I turned toward the house, he let me go, and I didn’t look back until I reached a glass door. Then I looked around to see that both Paul and
Sylvia were gone, and the whip with them.

  Inside, Juan Cordova lay weakly on a leather couch in the living room, and Clarita was holding a wine glass to his lips. Eleanor stood by, her eyes alive with excitement rather than concern, and when they met mine across the room she gave me a smile filled with malice.

  “What happened, Amanda? Were you whipped too? You see what can happen to you if you don’t go away from Santa Fe!”

  Gavin was kneeling beside Juan, talking to him quietly, and he looked up sharply at Eleanor. “What do you know about this?”

  “I?” Her reproach was exaggerated. “Do you think I would ever injure my grandfather?”

  The old man roused himself and pushed Clarita’s glass away. “It was not Eleanor. She had nothing to do with this. Amanda, you were struck down first—did you see who it was? I had just come from the passage that leads to my bedroom when I heard you scream, and then he was upon me. In the darkness I couldn’t see the attacker.”

  “Nor could I.” I went closer to his couch. “I heard something but I couldn’t turn in time to know who struck me. When the whip first lashed me I stumbled and fell, and I didn’t see what happened clearly. I think someone rushed past me, but I was dazed.”

  He sighed and closed his eyes. “Whoever used the whip was strong. I have enemies, enemies.”

  “Are you going to call the police?” I asked.

  Except for Gavin, they all looked at me as though I’d uttered some obscenity.

  “There will be no police,” Juan Cordova said harshly, and Clarita nodded dark agreement.

  Eleanor laughed. “We never call the police, dear Amanda. There is too much guilt among us. Who knows what a policeman might turn up?”

  “That is not the reason,” Juan said coldly. “The papers are too much interested in Cordova scandal. It is not good for the store. There is nothing to be done anyway, since the culprit has escaped. We will handle this ourselves.”

  My eyes met Clarita’s and she stared me down boldly, disdainfully, not caring what I thought. Where she had been, and why Juan Cordova had gone outside, I didn’t dare ask, but Gavin had no compunction about asking direct questions.

  “Why were you in the patio at this hour?” he demanded of Juan.

  The old man answered readily. “I couldn’t sleep. When I looked out the window I saw someone down there. Since there have been thefts, I feared for the collection. By the time I came outside, someone had turned off the outdoor light. I was starting down the path when I heard Amanda scream.” He paused and seemed to draw a certain dignity about him, as though he would not allow himself to appear old and ill and half blind. “I would have gone to her aid. Naturalmente. But there was no time before I too was struck down.”

  Eleanor’s voice had a little rasp in it when she spoke and she surprised us all. “You know very well who used that whip, don’t you, Grandfather?”

  The old man gasped softly, and at once Clarita was at his side. “Let him alone, Eleanor. This is no time for your teasing.”

  The doorbell rang, and Gavin went to let the doctor in. Clarita rose from her knees with quiet dignity and went past me to greet him. And in passing she spoke one word to me in a deadly whisper.

  “Cuidado,” she said, and went to take the doctor’s coat and invite him in. Dr. Morrisby was a small man, gray-haired and in his mid-fifties. He came in shaking his head and scolding Juan gently.

  “In trouble again!” he said. “Can’t you keep my patient quiet, Clarita?”

  No one answered him. Gavin explained in as few words as possible that we had an intruder on the grounds. When the doctor had assured himself that Juan had not been seriously injured, spared by his heavy jacket, Gavin asked him to have a look at me.

  He came upstairs to my room. “A bad business,” he said as I lowered my robe. “The Cordovas have an attraction for violence. I attended your mother at the time of her death.”

  There were tender welts across my upper back and shoulders from which my light robe had hardly shielded me, but at his words I had no further interest in my own hurt.

  “Do you think she committed suicide?” I asked him flatly.

  He drew up my robe gently over the sore places and turned away to write a prescription for ointment. There was the matter of putting his glasses on and taking them off—all delaying tactics, I suspected—before he answered me. When he did his voice was kind, thoughtful.

  “Doro was my patient from the time she was quite young. She had a gift for happiness. When she loved, she loved with all her heart, and sometimes she claimed that her heart was broken. But I doubt that she ever hated, and she always recovered. I believe that she loved your father in a more adult way than she’d ever loved that boy who died, and she was happy with him. It was hard for me to understand why she would take the action she did, or to believe that she would kill herself.”

  I thanked him warmly, and his eyes were pitying as he said good night.

  “I will give this prescription to Clarita, so she can have it filled for you,” he said, and went downstairs.

  Alone in my room, I sat on the bed for a few moments, thinking about the doctor’s words. And of that warning Clarita had whispered to me: Cuidado! In spite of Juan’s belief that the real attack had been aimed against him, I didn’t believe it. I was the one whom the attacker had meant to frighten. Juan had been lightly struck, so that he supposedly would not be able to identify my assailant. But Eleanor, who read her grandfather with a cool and calculating eye, believed that Juan had known who it was.

  There had been someone on my stairs. The sounds had been intended for me to hear. Perhaps they had been bait to make me curious and entice me into the patio. It would not have been Juan down there in the living room, since he had his own passageway to the patio, if he chose to be secretly abroad.

  Someone was growing afraid. Someone who wanted to warn me away from Santa Fe before I remembered too much. Was it that shadowy third one who struggled in the mists of my memory, and would not make himself known? What had Clarita said earlier about a death march? That it had begun again, and that she’d heard the footsteps before, when my mother had died? But Clarita was given to the ominously mystical.

  Anyway, nothing further was to be gained by puzzling over all this now. I slipped off my robe and went to bed somewhat gingerly, trying to favor my shoulders. My thoughts would not stop their churning, however.

  Downstairs Gavin had been kind to me again. He had been concerned for my hurt. But of course his kindness had been impersonal—simply the sort of thing he would extend to anyone who had been injured. It did not mean that he thought differently about me, or was ready to retract the harsh words he’d flung at me earlier in the evening.

  Tears that I resented were wet against my pillow and I found that my teeth had begun to chatter with a reaction of nerves. I could feel the lash of the whip—intending to hurt, intending to warn. Warn of what might come next if I didn’t go away?

  I was so alone. There was no one to whom I could turn with confidence. The fetish had been the first hint of warning. Now it was growing worse. And I must keep my own counsel, lest he who was afraid be forced into more dangerous action. Or she? Clarita? Eleanor? But Eleanor wouldn’t care about the past. She had been only ten when my mother died.

  I tried to think of Gavin’s hand holding mine, comforting me. I could remember the feeling of his fingers about my own, and that was all I wanted. If he loved Eleanor, it didn’t matter—if only he would befriend me for a little while.

  Sleep came while I was clinging to that memory—and at once I began to dream about the tree. But this time I was strong enough to sit up in bed and fling off the nightmare. When next I fell asleep, sore and exhausted, my dreams were harmless, and I couldn’t recall them when I awakened to morning sunlight.

  There was a stiffness to my back and shoulders when I got out of bed, but I could tell by the bathroom mirror that the red welts were less marked. If I stayed, I would live to face the next attack, I thought
wryly. If I stayed. Was it worth it to risk what was now becoming a more determined warning to me to go away? I didn’t know. Doroteo Cordova Austin seemed a faraway stranger to me this morning, and I was simply the daughter who did not know her—and who was afraid and terribly uncertain.

  No one was at the table when I went to breakfast, and I ate very little. Coffee was warming and savory, and I began to make a plan for my morning. I needn’t decide at once whether to stay or to go. I must give my mind time to quiet so that I could choose wisely. Whatever happened, I didn’t want to run away in a panic—and have to live with an act of cowardice for the rest of my life. So this morning I would paint. I would go out into the street and find a vista that appealed to me, and I would give myself to catching it on canvas.

  Decision helped. When I left the table and started toward my room, I felt momentarily eased. From the foot of my stairs, I could look through into the living room, and I saw that a bustle was going on. Clarita was there, directing Rosa, and plumping up the small henna cushions strewn across the couch. She looked up and saw me, nodding indifferently.

  “How is my grandfather?” I asked.

  “Overly stimulated.” She shook her head in disapproval. “He wants to come downstairs to sit for a while. And he wishes to see you.”

  I stayed where I was, waiting. After a moment, she sent Rosa away and came toward me.

  “And you? Did you sleep? How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Sore and stiff,” I said. “Does anyone know what really happened?”

  “My father feels that he has enemies. Someone got into the patio last night while he was there. You were in the way.”

  “I certainly was. But what were you doing up?”

  Her head went back at such blunt questioning, and she made an effort to stare me down. When it didn’t work, she went back to her cushion plumping, and surprised me by answering.