Detour to Death

by Helen Nielsen

  “It’s no matter,” he said, brushing aside the argument with a dismissing hand. “I’ve been thinking things over, and it seems to me now that the wallet is irrelevant. As a matter of fact so is the late Mr. Malone.”

  “The police don’t share your view,” Trace remarked.

  “Oh, a murder is a murder; I’m not forgetting Malone. It’s just that whatever he could have contributed to clearing up this affair died with him. Now we must look elsewhere. Now we must look for the roots. And the roots, Mr. Cooper, may go very deep. You were, I believe, a close friend of the good doctor’s last patient.”

  It was Trace’s turn to freeze in position now. He’d been thinking of Francy all morning, but he’d never expected to have Alexander Laurent bring her into the conversation. And certainly not in so pointed a way! “For a recluse you seem amazingly well up on the local gossip,” he observed. “It’s not too difficult to see where you got it, with Charley Gaynor coming out here so often.”

  “The servants—” Laurent began, but Trace would have none of that.

  “No, not the servants,” he insisted. “I know these people, Mr. Laurent. They chatter among themselves as much as you and I, but they’re choosy about sharing a confidence. I just can’t see Ramón, for instance, coming to you with the latest scandal. If we must discuss my relationship with Francy Allen let’s at least start with the truth.”

  Laurent smiled and nodded his approval. “Sound reasoning,” he said. “That comes in handy in a courtroom. Yes, it was Doctor Gaynor who told me about Miss Allen, but in all fairness I must admit to leading him on. It was some months ago—time means little to me any more—when we were playing chess of an evening. The doctor seemed quite unlike himself: distraught, troubled, unable to concentrate. Since conversation is the best antidote for worry, I drew him out. Little by little he told me the whole story.”

  “He couldn’t have told you the whole story,” Trace snapped. “He never knew the whole story.”

  “That’s quite possible. The whole story is rarely known by any one individual, but there’s no reason to doubt that he did know the principals of this one. One he had brought into the world, the other was his own granddaughter, and the third—”

  “Was a human being!”

  “Too much so! It was a rather sad story, as I recall, concerning a young woman who went bad and a promising young man who seemed to prefer her to his fiancée. Temporarily at least.”

  “That’s a lie!” Trace exclaimed. “I took Francy into my home because she was in trouble and had no place to go. Even an animal is entitled to decent care at a time like that.”

  “And prior to the trouble?”

  Trace was going to get good and mad pretty soon, and not with Laurent but with himself. He’d come here to discuss Danny Ross and a mess called murder—not the private life of Francy Allen! And he didn’t have to go on with it, but he would. Something about that calm expectancy of Alexander Laurent made it perfectly plain that he would. No wonder the man was a master at cross-examination!

  “You don’t understand about Francy,” he said. “Nobody does. She grew up on this ranch. She belonged here. She was a part of something solid and secure that was going to last forever, and she didn’t have to worry about a thing.”

  Trace couldn’t sit there any longer with his grandfather’s face staring down at him. He got up and stood with his back to the cold mantel.

  “But it didn’t last forever,” he said bitterly. “It fell into the hands of a crazy fool who couldn’t recognize ruin when it was all about him. He went overseas to find something easier to fight than himself, but Francy didn’t have any place to run. She stayed and went down with the wreckage.”

  “And you blame yourself,” Laurent observed.

  “Who else is to blame?”

  It was good to have it said at last. Now Trace could forgive Laurent’s prying; what’s more, the man seemed to understand. Without knowing Francy, without remembering her through a score of years, Alexander Laurent accepted without question what Trace supposed no one could comprehend.

  “Noblesse oblige,” he murmured. “One does find it in unexpected places. Not that your attitude surprises me, Mr. Cooper. I’ve seen you with your other adopted burden—your partner, I believe you call him.”

  “Arthur is my partner!”

  “Of course he is, but where do you suppose he would be without your protection? Oh, I’m not scolding. Every man’s entitled to choose his own cross, but it does seem that you’ve gone rather far afield.”

  “Maybe we’d better get back to the subject at hand,” Trace suggested, but Laurent smiled knowingly.

  “We’ve never left it,” he said. “Since you indicate, and I believe you, that Doctor Gaynor erred in fixing the blame for the illegal operation he was called upon to mend, an interesting thought arises. Who was responsible?”

  It wasn’t the first time Trace had faced that question. Francy was a stranger to him after he came home from the war: a wild, careless creature with her laughter too loud and her thirst too long. She seemed determined on self-destruction, and her affairs were her affairs—affairs without names. But Laurent was waiting for his answer.

  “I don’t know,” Trace said. “Francy never told me and I never asked.”

  “Noble,” Laurent conceded, “but hardly practical. Now if you had asked—”

  “Don’t you suppose anyone did? Charley Gaynor, for instance. When she wouldn’t answer, he took it for granted that she was shielding me. Francy was loyal in her way.”

  “A rather peculiar way! She must have known what her silence would cost you.”

  “Why? Francy wasn’t the kind to walk out on a man because of some dirty gossip!”

  Trace swung about and stared into the black mouth of the fireplace. He was saying too much; he was letting too much show, and this man’s eyes and ears were the collection agencies for a most discerning mind. “Nevertheless,” he was saying, “it would be extremely helpful to know that man. Suppose, for example, he made promises he couldn’t keep—or threats that he could. Surely you must realize by this time that our trail leads back to Miss Allen. There can be no other reason for the doctor’s death than what he must have known about this man.”

  It was an oversimplification, but when Laurent spoke, it became the judgment of Jehovah. And Trace would be starting from scratch. Francy had stayed at the farm spasmodically. It was on again, off again, between jobs in town—usually at the Pioneer Hotel until the lady vigilantes had Virgil speak to the management. At the hotel she met everybody from the locals who patronized the bar to every visiting salesman, mining engineer, and cattle buyer. Trace raised his head. Maybe it was just an association of ideas, but suddenly he had a longing to have a talk with Jim Rice. Jim always had an eye for the ladies; he couldn’t have overlooked Francy.

  “A promise, a threat, or an attachment,” Laurent added thoughtfully. “Some such thing must have kept Miss Allen silent—and some such thing must have come to the doctor’s attention.”

  The door was wide open for Trace to lead into the subject of the inkstained fingers, but the door to the patio was also open, and this was the door that arrested his attention as he turned around. A man was coming across the patio at an unsteady gait—half run, half stumble. He made straight for the house and burst into the living-room with no more ceremony than a barbarian descending upon Rome.

  “Why, Douglas!” Laurent gasped, coming to his feet. “What’s happened? What have you done?”

  It was more than the sudden and unexpected entry that prompted this anxiety. Douglas Laurent was in a state of disheveled agitation. His nice white trousers were streaked with dirt and his expensive sport shirt looked as if he’d been rolling in barbed wire. He stood framed in that bright doorway, blinded for the moment by the contrasting darkness, and then Laurent the elder was between him and Trace, a fatherly arm about the boyish shoulders and all of that cold unemotionalism gone out of his voice.

  “You’ve been
running,” he scolded gently. “You know that you mustn’t run, Douglas, especially not in the hot sun.”

  “I had to run,” Douglas gasped. “The fire!”

  “Of course it’s like fire—and no hat, either! You’ll have to excuse us, Mr. Cooper, but my son’s health isn’t up to this sort of thing.”

  “What’s that in his hand?” Trace demanded.

  He couldn’t see the hand in question at the moment, Laurent was in the way, but he’d seen it clear enough when Douglas came through that doorway. “His hand?” Laurent looked at Trace oddly, and then backed away. “Why,” he said, “it’s a gun!”

  It was a gun all right, and a gun Trace wasn’t likely to forget after the way Danny had been pointing it at him last night. “Where did you get this?” he demanded. “Where did you find it?”

  By this time Douglas Laurent’s eyes must be adjusted to the light of the room, and there surely wasn’t anything wrong with his hearing. “The gun,” Trace repeated loudly. “Where did you get Virgil Keep’s gun?”

  “Virgil’s!” Douglas might be momentarily dumb, but his father had a tongue. “Do you mean this is the weapon Danny Ross took from the sheriff?”

  “I’m sure of it. And Danny was hanging onto it like a drowning man clutching a life belt when I left him last night. Your son’s health may be delicate, Mr. Laurent, but not nearly so delicate as Danny’s may be if those trigger-happy deputies have stumbled onto that cabin in Peace Canyon!”

  Trace had no idea how he’d been shouting until the silence came. Total, complete silence, and then Laurent’s voice like a hollow echo.

  “Is that where you left him—in that cabin?”

  “Why not? Nobody’s used it for years.”

  He didn’t get an argument—not in words. He got a pair of undefinable stares, and then Douglas began to laugh softly. “Nobody,” he said. “Nobody at all! Well, she won’t use it any more. No one will ever use it now.”

  Trace didn’t understand what he was hearing, but he’d heard enough to head him for the door. “Where are you going?” Laurent demanded. It was a foolish question. “I’m going to that cabin,” Trace said. “I’m going to find out what this is all about!”

  “You can’t!”

  The words came from Douglas, and Trace wasn’t likely to take orders from the likes of him. “And why can’t I?” he demanded. “Who’s going to stop me?”

  “The fire,” Douglas said. “It’s all burning down—the cabin and everything in it.”

  CHAPTER 14

  FIRE! DOUGLAS HAD USED the word before. He’d tried to tell them about the fire and been silenced in the discussion of the gun. But this was no time for regrets. That dry shell of the cabin would go up like a matchbox and somewhere, in it or mercifully out of it, Danny was in danger.

  “Did you see him?” Trace cried. “Did you see Danny Ross?”

  “Douglas doesn’t know anything about Danny Ross,” Laurent said. “The name means nothing to him.”

  “It’s been on the radio enough these past two days.”

  “Douglas never listens to the radio.”

  It was maddening to have him stand there like that, disheveled and dazed and with that telltale gun in his hand and not a word on his lips. Trace couldn’t wait around for stumbling explanations. He left the elder Laurent to get to the bottom of Douglas’s adventure and raced for the jeep in the driveway. From the road he could see a plume of white smoke lifting up from behind a yonder ridge like a beckoning finger, and he made for that plume with the accelerator flat against the floor boards.

  • • •

  Trace wasn’t the sole observer of that smoke signal—and it was like a signal to all who saw it. There was little wind in Peace Canyon at such an hour of the day, and the white plume rose straight and high for all eyes to see. The valley was full of eyes that day. Failure to find Danny Ross in Junction City had turned the search back toward its source; for if Danny had one friend that friend was Trace Cooper, and Trace specialized in reckless acts. Hiding a fugitive of the law would probably come under the heading of exciting sport. So reasoned Virgil Keep when his morning visit to Laurent provided no more than an excursion rich in fluent conversation and destitute of consequence.

  But where would Trace conceal a fugitive? The farm was too obvious, and a quick check on his way back to town took care of Virgil’s curiosity in that direction. The place was deserted except for the usual quota of dogs in the barnyard. But the longer Virgil considered the matter the more sure he became that Trace must know something. He’d been entirely too calm about Malone’s death this morning, just as if he’d known all about it before Virgil broke the news. Just as if he’d heard the whole story from a first-hand witness. Even Trace Cooper couldn’t be that cool about a third violent death within forty-eight hours.

  One, two, three— They were beginning to add up, and so was the pressure on Virgil Keep. He studied that map on his office wall, but this time the question wasn’t where Danny might be hiding—it was where he might be hidden. That old Cooper ranch was honeycombed with hiding-places, caves, ravines, and old outbuildings that a man like Alexander Laurent would neither know nor care about; but Trace knew them all. And so Virgil went ahunting and found—hung like a chiffon scarf against the turquoise sky—a signpost of smoke.

  The trail to Peace Canyon was corrugated with the wear and weather of many years, and Virgil wasn’t driving the four-wheeled counterpart of a mountain goat. Even so he reached the cabin site ahead of Trace, and by then the building was a black ruin. Orange flames still licked at the smoldering uprights, but the roof had fallen, most of the walls were gone, and the galvanized sheeting over the heavy plank porch teetered crazily between the skeleton supports of the few posts the flames had so far spared. He crawled out of his car and surveyed the scene with a sense of futility and wonder. A deserted cabin couldn’t set itself afire, but if any living thing had been in that inferno the ashes would have to be sifted to find the bones.

  “Danny! Danny Ross!”

  Virgil whirled about to meet the cry behind him. The wheels of the jeep had hardly stopped turning before Trace was racing toward the smoldering ruin, and when he saw Virgil it was too late to stop his words. “Looking for someone?” the sheriff inquired quietly, and Trace could deny nothing.

  “Have you seen him?” he gasped.

  “All I’ve seen is what you’re looking at. If the kid was in there, his troubles are over now.”

  Trace felt sick. He tried to get nearer to the cabin, or what was left of it, but Virgil’s hand was like a vice on his shoulder. “Don’t be a fool!” he snapped. “That porch roof is going any minute!”

  “Maybe he got out,” Traee said. “Douglas got out.”

  “What are you talking about? Who’s Douglas?”

  “Douglas Laurent! He came home just now with Danny’s gun—the one he took off you, and he must have gotten it from the cabin. Danny had it with him when he went in there last night.”

  Trace looked about searchingly. There was only one other building in the canyon, and that one just a few running steps away. He had company on the run because now Virgil wasn’t going to let him out of sight; but the barn was as empty as Danny had found it, and Trace had no time to study tire tracks. Out in the sunlight again he threw back his head and called out at the top of his voice, “Danny! Where are you, Dan-ny!” And a half a dozen echoes threw back the call.

  A tongue of flame shot up higher at the taste of fresh timber, but only the crackling of the fire answered the echoes. Nothing was left of the cabin now but the heavy porch floor and the burning uprights, and nothing would be left inside but the twisted ruin of the kerosene stove and a few blackened objects of metal. Trace began to think of that now and to think too of what Douglas had said about the cabin. “… she won’t use it any more. No one will ever use it now.” At the edge of disaster a man got strange ideas, and when a little scrap of white something waved to him from the porch floor, he moved forward without thought o
f danger.

  “You crazy idiot!” Virgil yelled. “Come away from there!”

  But when Trace came away he had Francy’s handkerchief in his hand.

  A scrap of flimsy white cloth edged with cheap lace and embroidered with the letter F. F for Francy, F for failure. Now Trace understood just a little of what would have to be known to find the face of murder; but now it was too late. The cabin was gone and, as Douglas had said, everything in it. Was Danny gone, too? He turned away from the cabin and began to search the canyon wall for some sign of movement on the rocks. Even if Danny had fallen asleep with a lighted cigarette he was young and fast enough to get out ahead of the fire—providing he was only asleep. It might take hours for that ruin behind him to cool enough for searching, but those same hours could mean another kind of death to a green kid lost in this canyon.

  • • •

  Danny was no mountain climber. That hike across the desert after abandoning the sheriff’s car couldn’t be classed as a Sunday school outing, but at least the desert was level and as far down as a fellow could go. The earth didn’t crumble under foot, and rocks didn’t go bouncing down the dizzy descent just as you were about to put your weight on them. It wasn’t such a deep canyon from the standpoint of the geography books, but it seemed to get deeper below and higher above the longer Danny climbed.

  It was easier if he didn’t look down. It was easier if he didn’t look up and try to measure the distance to the top, if he just thought about one arm’s length, one footing at a time. He should have gone back and tried to find the cabin and that narrow road the jeep had taken last night; but the man with Virgil Keep’s gun was back there, and the skillet and the bloodstained towel. There was a limit to what Danny’s nerves could stand. There must be a limit, too, to what his body could stand, but the body was a peculiar mechanism. Just when it seemed ready to give out and stop functioning, a new spurt of life would come like all the cylinders taking hold after a misfire. Danny kept climbing.