by Otto Penzler
“This’s one place,” he said tormentingly, “where people come naturally from all parts of the world.”
“Really?” I said acidly.
Banner swallowed the last of his whisky. “I wanna have a chat with Das. Where’s he at?”
“I heard him tell the police he’d be at India House.”
Banner struggled up out of his soft leather chair. I put away the bottle, soda, and glasses.
We went back through the quiet, darkened corridors to the lobby of the Secretariat.
It was crawling like a beehive.
Banner took one sour look around. Then he said: “They ain’t found it. Why wait? Let’s scram up to 64th Street.”
64th Street, just off Fifth Avenue, was a canyon of cold fog. We got out of the cab at India House, stumbled up the front steps and entered the pink marble foyer.
We took the spinsterish self-service elevator up to the fourth floor, where Surendranath Das had a temporary office. Under a green-shaded desk lamp we found a lotus-eyed girl in a sari reading a thick book. She smiled at me and said hello, then looked a little frightened at Banner. He had that effect on some people.
I said: “Hello, Happy.” I’d got to know her around the UN. She had told me that the red dot she had on her forehead just over her eyebrows was not a sign of caste. It was a dab of kum-kum denoting happiness. So I called her Happy. “This is Senator Banner.”
Banner, his tarp in fat folds, pushed forward. “Lemme see Das.”
“Yes, sair,” said Happy obediently. “This way, if you please.”
She rapped discreetly on a closed door before opening it. I could see Das’s purple turban and coffee-colored face and speckled black beard hovering over another desk. He was having a midnight snack of chicken curry, pickled onions in a bottle, fritters, and saki. He half rose at Banner’s blundering entrance
“Senator Banner!”
“Whaddya know, Das! No innerductions needed! Good! If I had more time I’d chin with you about the Crims.”
“Crims?”
“Those hereditary criminals in your country, saheeb. They operate by paralyzing geese ’n’ sheep before stealing ’em. Interesting rascals. Only there’s the more pressing problem of a man getting his throat slashed on an escalator without a soul being near him.”
“Ah yes. Sir Quiller.” Das subsided again to absently spear a pickled onion out of the bottle. “Will you sit down, gentlemen?” he went on in his high piping English.
“Yass.” Banner headed for the most comfortable chair. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Happy slip out again. Banner was saying: “This here now AP feller, Bob Farragut, says both you and he were witnesses to the killing. He says he saw nothing but old Quill. Did you see anything else?”
“Nothing else,” answered Das.
“You heard something!”
I stirred uneasily. Yes, we heard something. Something that didn’t fit in at all.
“Ah yes, Senator,” said Das. “I heard a loud report like a pistol shot. I’m sure Mr. Farragut did too.”
“Wait a minute, saheeb! What businesses have you been in? How qualified are you to judge the sound of a pistol shot?”
“I come from a family of rich clothing merchants,” said Das placidly. “My father and brothers have shops in New Delhi and on the Chowringee in Calcutta. But I know firearms, Senator. I’ve been on many a shoot with the Maharajah of Jubbulpore. I’ve used everything from the big bore for tigers to a small automatic. Yet that sounded like no caliber I’d ever heard.”
“Yass,” muttered Banner, “I didn’t think it would … Now, sir! This’s more personal. Old Quill was gonna meet me at the Secretariat tonight. It was gonna be a meeting that’d spell curtains for somebody. What were you doing there?”
Das screwed closed the lid on the pickled onions bottle. “Sir Quiller had sent a message to come and see him. He sounded urgent.”
“Did he say why?”
“No, Senator.”
“Hey? He musta given some indication.”
“I really—”
I butted in finally. “There was something. He looked alarmed. As soon as he saw Mr. Das he shouted.”
Banner swarmed around in his chair. “Shouted what?”
“How was that again?” I tried to recollect. “As well as I can remember—Das! Have you taken leave of your senses! They’re the most deadly—! Then he cut himself off and started down. Correct, Mr. Das?”
Das was leaning forward at his desk, absorbed in my recitation, grimacing through his thick beard. “I’m afraid you are correct, Mr. Farragut. But I assure you, Sir Quiller was unduly alarmed. Everything was quite safe. They—”
Banner thumped the desktop and the china dishes rattled. “Lemme be judge of that, Das! What in blue blazes are you talking about?”
Das leaned back and sighed. “I’m sure Sir Quiller was referring to what I have in a big satchel in my office at the Secretariat. It’s a pair of king cobras that I brought from India as a good-will gesture. I was going to present them to the Bronx Zoo.”
I wasn’t as bland as he was. “King cobras! The most deadly of all poisonous snakes!”
“As Sir Quiller feared,” nodded Das. “But, gentlemen, the satchel is securely closed with safety catches. They can’t possibly get—”
I turned to look at Banner to see how he was taking all this. There was a silence from his side of the room that was overwhelming. He was sitting there thunderstruck, his jaw unhinged, the stogie having fallen out of his mouth into his vast lap.
Then—
“Snakes!” he hollered. “Great Caesar’s ghost! We gotta get back there!”
And he went out through the door like a hurricane.
On the wild ride back to the UN I got a grim briefing on king cobras.
Their fangs inject a poison so venomous that it can kill a man inside of a few minutes. They have great lashlike bodies, loops of pale olive, that grow to a length of fifteen feet.
What this had to do with the murder of Sir Quiller I couldn’t even grasp. Sir Quiller hadn’t been poisoned. Banner wasn’t explaining. After the king cobra lecture, he spent the rest of the ride chomping the dead stogie and scowling at the back of the cabbie’s neck.
We beat our way out of the fog, came into the court around the great basin of the pool, and, leaving the cab, spun in through the revolving glass doors of the Secretariat.
A big husky Irish cop was standing there with a UN guard.
Banner halted and snapped: “Has any staff member left?”
The Irish cop gave Banner a half salute. “Yes, sir. The young fella with the limp and the girl. Only not together. He left a bit before she did.”
“And one of ’em,” said Banner slowly, “was carrying a satchel!”
He had a knowing look, as if he meant to amaze everybody with his remarkable powers of second sight.
But he was the one to get surprised.
“Yes, sir,” said the cop. “The girl was.”
“The girl!” Banner, his tarp flapping like the membranous wings of a bat, rocked back on his heels. He’d had a set-back, that was for sure. He braced himself again. “You looked inside it, I hope!”
“I did. I was ordered to search everything. There was two of the foulest divils you ever clapped your eyes on, their bodies all twined up in one another. As soon as they saw me they began to raise up their orange-colored heads. They had ruddy yella eyes that glowed. Wide-awake, they was. I took one good look and I saw all I wanted to see. There was nothing in there but those snakes’ bodies. And I slammed it shut on them again.”
Banner worried his double chins with his fat fingers. “Where’d she say she was taking ’em?”
“To the Bronx Zoo. Where else could you take them? And that’s the same direction I heard her give to the cab driver. There was something else she had him do. She told him to tie that satchel to the outside of the cab before they drove away. Not that I blame her any. I wouldn’t want them divils inside the cab with me neither.”
/> The UN guard nodded solemn agreement.
Banner was gone. He was flouncing out into the murky night again with me sticking as close behind him as a splinter in the seat of his pants. I wouldn’t have lost him now—or the story—no matter how hard he tried. He ran down a cab on First Avenue. I reached it in time to hear him bellow: “Bronx Zoo! And there’s a sawbuck for you if you break all traffic rules!”
I leaped in behind him. The cab started so fast I almost dislocated my neck.
Banner was howling: “For crissakes, never mind that red light! We gotta ketch ’em before they turn those snakes loose!”
The cabbie drove as if he had two maniacs in back—and we weren’t far from it.
The memory of that journey northward remains a blur. I hardly knew where we were. Banner kept peering through the fog-curtained windows and finally announced: “Southern Boulevard. We’re tearing past the Zoo now. Turn right, cabbie, at Fordham. We’ll try the Pelham Parkway entrance.”
The cab skidded greasily on wet pavement, and I thought I heard a faint scream as we missed a pedestrian by a hair, then we came to a squealing stop at some mist-enshrouded ornate gates.
Banner flopped out and flung money at the cabbie. “You earned it!” He ran full tilt at the driveway’s iron gates and crashed into them. “Locked! … They’re outside somewhere. Foller the railing along, Farragut. Lissen for voices!”
I listened.
The sparse traffic on the Parkway was a muffled whir. We blundered among some bare trees and budding shrubbery. Banner, beside me, hissed and raised his hand.
“Look! Over on the left! See those shadders!”
Muzzy silhouettes stood close together in the bushes. A man and a woman. There were murmuring sounds as they spoke. The man had taken the satchel.
“He’s opening it,” hissed Banner.
I could barely see.
Banner gulped. “Suffering sunfish! He’s dumped ’em out on the ground!”
“The snakes?”
“What else, you nitwit? We’re almost too late now. We gotta charge in and ketch ’em red-handed. I’ll scare ’em stiff with a Comanche war whoop. And you—wait!”
He let out a howl like a dervish sitting on a hot cookstove. I felt my skin shrivel.
Then he wallowed forward, shouting: “The game’s up!” or something just as corny.
There was a stir of real agitation from the man and woman.
Banner whirled, pointing. “And you, Farragut, dive into that bush! Quick!”
By now I was beginning to have an unreasoning regard for his screwball orders. Tonight we’d all gone mad. I flung myself in a foolhardy dive into the crackling brush.
When I landed I knew how foolhardy.
Smack under me was a thick coil. I supported myself against it with my outstretched hands. It was scaly and long and as thick as my wrist. And as I instinctively grasped it, it began to glide from under my faltering fingers.
Sweat soaked me like a cold shower.
I heard Banner’s holler: “Hold on to it, Farragut! One end’s dangerous!”
Both ends were dangerous as far as I was concerned!
I heard the girl scream. There was a thrashing of bodies. Night birds screeched in their vaulted cages. In the distance a restless lion roared.
The coil under my fingers was yanking violently to get free. I fastened myself onto it.
I heard Banner’s warning. “Don’t let go, Farragut! Your life depends on it!”
I’d heard of riding a tiger—but never a king cobra.
“Grab holt and pull!”
When you face a life span of only a few minutes, you get mighty reckless.
I got my knees braced on the ground underneath me, tightened my grip on the sliding thing, and tugged backwards. It held staunchly, as if the front end of the cobra were snubbed around a post. It was all very unusual. It gave me the courage to yank back again.
It yanked in return—so roughly that I was dragged a few feet through the shrubs.
I dug my heels in hard and hauled away with all my strength.
Something came loose.
I toppled over backwards, falling flat on my spine. The coils came hissing through the air, landing in a heap on my chest.
For a moment I didn’t breathe, as sweat drenched me.
It lay over me and around me. Gingerly I touched the end. Then I knew I was safe.
It was an incredibly long rawhide whip!
The most fitting place for the last act was the delegates’ lounge. Led by the Secretary General and the police inspector, our headliners trooped in—Surendranath Das, Bernice Harper, Jack Croydon, and Moira Selwyn.
Banner told them all to be seated, then he scowled around at their faces. “I got all of you here so that if I say something wrong you can stick in your two cents. But,” he added ominously, “I don’t expect any interruptions.”
Stretched out full length on the immaculate carpeting was the whip. It had a shortish handle, a long trunk about two inches thick, which gradually tapered to a mere ribbon at the end. A good twenty-five feet in all.
“That,” said Banner, pointing, “is called, among other things, a Spanish bull whip.” He paused. “There was a wunnerful old movie. Old Doug Fairbanks in Don Q, Son of Zorro.” For a moment his frosty blue eyes had a faraway look of nostalgia. Overcome by memory, he bleated: “Why ain’t they making pitchers like that anymore? … Haaak! Waal, in that whiz-bang movie Fairbanks used a whip like this ’un. With it he could snuff out burning candles without disturbing the wick, or flick seegars outta a stooge’s mouth. In the Old West, bullwhackers could cut a notch in a maverick’s ear at twenty paces, or snap a bandana outta a man’s hip pocket and still leave the seat of the pants. What I’m driving at is that there’s no dispute about how skillful a man can become in using one of these bullwhacks.”
He stopped and stared at the faces.
“They’re not used in this country much anymore, ’cept at Wild West shows. But there’s another place as woolly as our West ever was. Right now! I kinda forgot to tell you, accidentally on purpose, that this’s also called an Australian stock whip. And a stock farm is just another way of saying a cattle ranch!”
Everybody involuntarily glanced at Jack Croydon. It was then that I saw that two cops had come in to stand behind his chair. Yet he was sitting there, his mechanical leg stretched out comfortably in front of him, taking it all in as if it were being put on for his amusement. As cool a cuss as I’ve ever seen.
Banner’s buzzsaw voice droned into the silence. “Only one of us, y’see, has had the background to be able to use this thing. Now you say, as vicious as a whip of this sort is, it couldn’t’ve sliced a man’s throat as if with a razor. True. But lookit the thin end! A piece of steel, about three inches long, honed razor-sharp on both sides, has been fastened to the end of the whip. With the deadly accuracy of long practice, you could slash a man’s throat while standing twenty-five feet away from him. It could be all over in an instant. And the only clue as to how it was done would be the pistol-like crack of the whip!”
I wondered now why it hadn’t occurred to me in the very beginning.
“Sure,” said Banner, with pure disgust, “it was you, Croydon. You were peddling old Quill’s secrets to the Commies. You found out that he was gonna expose your filthy hide. You killed him to prevent exposure. It’s as simple as that!”
Croydon finally spoke. His voice was strong, though he had to clear his throat with a slight cough before he could begin. “How would I know what Sir Quiller’s secrets were? How did I know he was going to expose me?” He looked like a man with an ace up his sleeve.
“Quit being coy!” snapped Banner. “You’re Moira Selwyn’s lover! Is that blunt enough for you? Hah! That scourges like the whip, don’t it? … Yass, Farragut, are you surprised, after the front you saw him putting up with Bernice Harper? Nice diversion. Actually he was smooching after hours with Moira. Moira admitted to you that her hubby confided in her. Poor old Q
uill didn’t suspect her hand in it at all. What she learned from Quill she passed on to Croydon. She knew the secrets—and she knew that Quill was gonna jerk the rug from under Croydon tonight. She warned her lover in ample time. No wonder she was expecting bad news about her husband when you showed up at the Waldorf suite!
“So, knowing the game was up, Croydon had plenty of time to prepare the whip. Carrying it into the building was no trouble. Nobody’d search him. He then stalked Quill, waiting for the opportune moment. It came when Quill was going down the escalator. Croydon was in a perfect position on that balcony facing the escalator, hidden from the sight of anybody below. He trailed out the long whip—then let it fly at Quill’s throat.”
There was a sob. It came from Bernice. I could have knocked out all of Croydon’s teeth then and there for causing Bernice one moment of unhappiness.
Banner considered. “Croydon’s pretense with Bernice served its purpose. He hadda get the whip outta the building again, before we found it. This time it wouldn’t be easy. Everybody was being shaken down. Then he remembered Das’ snakes and the fuss Quill’d been kicking up about ’em. I gotta give you credit for that cunning bit, Croydon. You simply put the snakelike whip in with the whiplike snakes. A quick gander into that crawling satchel would only reveal a twisted mass of greenish folds. The cops’d let it pass out the door. Still, you didn’t wanna chance carrying it. You sweet-talked li’l Bernice!”
“I did it for him,” she murmured, clutching a handkerchief. “But I thought it was only the snakes. He said I ought to bring them up to the Bronx Zoo right away.”
“What excuse did he give for not bringing ’em by himself?”
“He said he had to see the curator first about opening the Zoo at that time of night. Naturally he left first and I followed—with the satchel. We met there.”
“Uh-huh,” said Banner. “He also instructed you to have the satchel carted outside the cab you took. Y’know why? So the snakes wouldn’t get nice ’n’ warm in the heated cab. Outside it was cold. The cold’d make the snakes sluggish. They’d be pretty near harmless when he dumped both outta the satchel to get the whip.”
That was right, of course. I’d mentioned how chilly the night was several times.