The Last Trumpet

by Todd Downing

  “He was to have left with the others on the Pullman?”

  “No, but Bruce says that the peon may have thought he was. Or he may have held a grudge against all Americans for what Angerman had done.”

  Jester let the door slam again and came hastily across the grass. His face wore a quizzical smile. “You’re still a notary public, aren’t you, Hugh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s Jarl Angerman on the’phone. He wants you to attest some affidavits for him to-morrow. From the witnesses in Torday’s lawsuit. Want to do it?”

  Rennert hesitated. “How in the world did he come to call on me?”

  “Don’t know. Bruce Lincoln may have suggested you. He was the one who told Angerman where to find you. He’s waiting for an answer.”

  “Why, yes, I’ll do it. Shall I talk to him?”

  “I can tell him. Nine o’clock suit you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Talk about the devil!” Rennert turned to Christine.

  She nodded in preoccupied fashion and her eyes rested on her husband’s back as he made his way to the house.

  “Hugh,” she said suddenly, “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Rolf a few minutes ago. It’s a mistake to have any dealings with Torday or anyone connected with him. Especially this Angerman. Rolf thinks it’s his duty to testify in this case because Torday was on an excursion of his when he was injured. I don’t see it that way. There’s certainly no need for you to be drawn into it.”

  Rennert drew slowly on his cigarette. “I won’t be drawn in very deep merely by attesting affidavits. And I’ve got to admit I’m rather anxious to meet Torday, see what kind of a man he is.”

  “Oh, Hugh, you’re impossible! He’s just a charlatan. And you know it.”

  “He doubtless is. But he has a tremendous influence. I’ve listened to his radio talks. They’re rather clever—advertisement of his health resort coated with the sugar of philosophy. I don’t know anything about his treatments, but I’ve always felt that there must be some worth to them. Otherwise a reputable physician like Bruce Lincoln wouldn’t be associated with Torday.”

  “Yes,” Christine said unwillingly. “Rolf uses the same argument. Of course, Bruce really has very little to do with the sanatorium. He has his own private practice and is only called in once in a long while as a consultant. But there,” she laughed, “I’m afraid I’m too suspicious about everybody. I have to be, though, to offset Rolf. He trusts the whole world.”

  Jester returned with word that dinner was ready.

  “Angerman will call for you at the hotel at nine,” he told Rennert. “I’ll stop by there on my way to the office.”

  “What’s the purpose of these affidavits?” Rennert asked, as they walked toward the house.

  “Merely to prove that we’re the persons who witnessed the wreck. We’re American citizens, you see, testifying in a Mexican court. Torday’s lawyers think it would be a good idea to be prepared in case there’s any question about our identities.”

  At the door Christine stopped and laid a hand on the arm of each of them. “We’re not going to have dinner spoiled by talk of Dr. Torday,” she said firmly. “So Cassandra is going to make her last utterance now.”

  “Cassandra?” Rolf repeated blankly.

  “Dear, Cassandra was a woman who made herself very unpopular by predicting evil. No one believed her until it was too late. You two men are going to regret the day you get involved in Torday’s affairs. And, Hugh”—Rennert was surprised at her fervour—“you must take care of this husband of mine. Don’t let anything happen to him. Because the world and I couldn’t get along without him.”

  Rolf was concerned. “Why, what’s the matter, sweetheart? Nothing’s going to happen. What makes you think there is?”

  “I don’t think it, dear. I know it.”

  “But how?”

  Her look was maternal. “How,” she asked, “do you always know when a hurricane is coming?”

  4

  A Ring Round the Moon

  I

  Any perturbing thoughts which Rennert may have had previous to dinner had been dispelled by the time he left the Jesters. As he loosened his belt, settled comfortably behind the wheel and drove slowly down the road, everything contributed to his feeling of pervasive well-being: the secure knowledge that his pleasure in Rolf’s and Christine’s company was reciprocated; his new-found freedom from harness; and, of course, roast turkey, rum-essenced plum pudding, and the night.

  The night was tropic in its softness. The moon, twenty-four hours from its full, in a cloudless sky brightly faceted with stars, silvered the leaves of Jester’s trees and made distended balloons of the light-coloured fruit. A faint rim round the dead planet was, at this calm season, no portent of disturbed elements. The Gulf breeze had long ago relieved the earth of its effluvium of heat. It must have been to such a land of the lotus, Rennert thought, that Ulysses came, like himself, late in life.

  The route which he was following was not the direct one to the hotel. It took him southward to the intersection with the highway by Dr. Lincoln’s house. Had anyone asked Rennert why he was going in this roundabout way he would have replied that he was merely idling. But that wasn’t the real reason. He wanted to look at his own home. He wanted to gloat over it in secret and simple fashion.

  Critically, he watched it loom against the trees on his left. Low, one-storied, rambling, it formed an integral part of the landscape, he felt, tied there by its whitewashed bricks of uneven texture and the dull red tiles of its roof. A lot of planning had gone into it.

  His own home! He repeated the words to himself and found them good, as only a man can who discovers belatedly the joy of being anchored by possessions. He reviewed the long years which he had spent in temporary quarters up and down the border, never knowing but that the next month he might be stationed a hundred miles away. There had been Del Rio, then Eagle Pass; Del Rio again, El Paso, Brownsville; Laredo, perhaps the best of the lot; one summer in the inferno of Presidio.

  The night was very still, plated with moonlight, and the back-fire of a car on the highway ahead was a steel knife that cracked against glass.

  Back-fire?

  Rennert shut off his motor and listened.

  The stillness had returned, intensified if that were possible, so that he heard very distinctly the gentle rustling of the leaves on either hand, the dispassionate ticking of his watch. Nothing else at all.

  Damn it, his heart was pounding, and he felt the touch of indigestion.

  Angry at himself, he started the car and sped forward. Utterly silly, this business of cruising about in the moonlight when he ought to be in bed. That explosion had been made by a firecracker, of course. Throughout the South, firecrackers are concomitants of Christmas, not the fourth of July. For the last week they had been popping continually.

  But his eyes were keener now, scanning the dusty road.

  The brick chimney of Dr. Lincoln’s two-storied residence came into view. It was a landmark, that chimney, a conspicuous anomaly in a land where no fires are ever built for warmth. It dated the dwelling, back to the first influx of homebuilders into the Valley twenty years before. The house itself was attractive, with its walls of dipped shingles weathered to a rich buff, its shutters of yellowish green, its sloping roof that blended its colour with the foliage of tall palms. A driveway circled it, from the side road to the highway, and gave access to the former carriage house which Professor Radisson had converted into living quarters.

  If the hour had been earlier Rennert would have been tempted to turn in there and call upon Radisson. Dr. Lincoln had gone to some pains to introduce them to each other as men with intimate knowledge of Mexico who should have much in common. Rennert, who knew of the monumental work on Mexican linguistics which Radisson was preparing, had been more expansive and cordial than was his wont. Consequently he had been inclined to take as a rebuff the reserve which the other had manifested. He was fully aware of hi
s deficiencies in the matter of scholarship, and had thought that it was on this account that Radisson had not responded to what amounted to an offer of friendship on his part. But Dr. Lincoln had assured him later that the man was merely self-conscious and would welcome—

  Startled, Rennert jammed on the brake and peered through the windshield. He backed a few inches, then jumped out of the car, walked to the front, and sat down on his heels.

  The glare of the headlights yellowed the dust and reddened the dark little pool which fouled it. A wet and glistening pool that was soaking rapidly into sand.

  Rennert got to his feet. Blood again, he thought, and sand.

  He glanced at Dr. Lincoln’s residence, where there were lights, and at Radisson’s, which was dark. He stood for a moment, scrutinizing the road-bed.

  It was seamed by tyre-marks and stamped by the imprint of a pair of shoes which had turned in the direction of the drive, accompanied by little pellets like thick black raindrops. No other object was to be seen.

  Rennert locked his car, but left it standing where it was. He walked swiftly up the drive and cut across the lawn to the front of Lincoln’s house. Although the living-room beyond the wide screened verandah was lighted there was no one in sight. He knocked.

  There was movement inside, but it was several moments before Kent Distant appeared. “Who’s there?” his voice was sharp. “Oh, Mr. Rennert! It’s you.” He came to open the screen door and, in an access of relief, laid a hand familiarly on Rennert’s shoulder. “Come in. There’s been an accident. Professor Radisson’s been shot.”

  “Seriously injured?” Rennert asked as he passed into the long, high-ceilinged room. Janell was there, sitting on the edge of a chair and tugging at the corners of a handkerchief. She looked very, very young—and frightened.

  “I don’t think so,” Kent told him. “It’s his hand. He’s in the study with Dr. Lincoln.”

  “Go on in if you want to, Mr. Rennert,” the girl spoke up. “I’m sure it’ll be all right.”

  “Thank you. I know the way.”

  Rennert crossed in front of her and went down a wide hall towards an open door from which streamed hard white light. It was an orderly book-lined room on whose threshold he paused. Within, Radisson was leaning back in a chair with his eyes closed. His left hand rested in an enamel basin which was brimful of ruby-red water.

  Dr. Lincoln stood beside him, deftly unrolling strips of gauze. He turned his head quickly, swallowed, and said in a low voice: “Come in, Rennert. Close the door, will you?”

  Radisson opened his eyes and looked around. His dry chapped lips parted in a wry smile. “Hello, Mr. Rennert.” The glitter in his brown eyes showed that he was in pain, but his voice was careful and precise as always. So careful and so precise that it alone put conversation with him upon an impersonal plane. (A characteristic, Rennert had decided, of professional linguists, who invest words with so much purely scientific significance that they lose spontaneity of speech.)

  “I was driving in from my house. I heard what I know now was a shot. I saw the blood in the road. May I ask what happened?”

  “You may ask, but I can’t tell you more than that there was a shot.” Radisson’s body was tense, and Rennert thought at once of tightly coiled springs. He watched Lincoln as the latter prepared a tourniquet. “I was walking in the moonlight, a short distance in the direction of your house, Mr. Rennert. Then back. I stopped at the entrance of the drive and decided to smoke another cigarette before I retired. I lighted it. Then”—he shrugged—“I don’t know what I was aware of next. Whether it was the shot or the red-hot pain that went through my hand. It rather stunned me for an instant. I caught my wrist to stop some of the flow of blood and ran in here. That’s all.”

  “You don’t know where the shot came from?”

  “The highway. Cars were passing, but I paid no attention. There was one parked on the other side, without lights. When I looked again it was gone.”

  “Did you notice what kind of a car?”

  “A small one. A roadster or coupe. Black or grey or some dark colour. But I couldn’t say that the shot came from it. Another car—I don’t know what kind—had just gone by.”

  “Your hand was by your side?”

  “No, Mr. Rennert, my hand was close to my face. I had just started to put the cigarette between my lips. I had just tossed away the match with my right. I felt”—the facial muscles twitched slightly—“the taste of blood in my mouth.”

  Dr. Lincoln straightened and surveyed the tourniquet which he had affixed above the wrist. His forehead and temples, at the edge of his greying hair, were damp with perspiration. “Keep your hand in the water until I fix you an opiate. I’m afraid this is going to hurt a little. I’ve got to get the bullet.”

  Rennert was intensely curious. He wanted to stay, to learn what kind of a gun the bullet had come from, to ply both men with questions. But he felt that to do so would be to seem unduly officious. He resolved to give them an opening.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Nothing at all, Rennert,” was Lincoln’s reply. “The bullet is lodged, probably, in one of the bones. But I don’t think much damage has been done.” He turned his back and began to explore the contents of a black leather case.

  “I was wondering, Professor Radisson, if you wanted me to notify the police for you? Or the sheriff, rather, since we’re outside the city limits.”

  Radisson’s eyes met his in a steady neutral gaze. “The sheriff,” he repeated. “What could he do?”

  “Identify the car and the gun that were used, perhaps.”

  The other smiled without humour. “The car and the gun, Mr. Rennert, are crossing the bridge into Mexico by this time, I’m sure.”

  “Well, I advise you to get in touch with him anyway. I’ll say good-night now. I trust the wound won’t be serious.”

  “I trust not. Good night, Mr. Rennert.”

  Rennert opened the door, then paused. There was one question which he wanted very much to ask.

  But Dr. Lincoln’s back was still turned and Radisson had closed his eyes again. Rennert went down the hall in somewhat of a huff. Of course the newspapers had exaggerated grossly the results of his amateurish efforts at crime detection. But nevertheless he had learned a few things. And Dr. Lincoln had not even asked him to sit down.

  II

  The lights of Rennert’s car were yellow cones alive with little insects that darted in and out and dashed to destruction against the glass. The stain on the dusty road-bed was innocent-looking now and no longer glistened.

  Rennert stood on one side of it with Kent Distant, who had accepted his offer of a ride to the hotel. “You heard the shot, of course?” he broke the silence which had held them since they left the house.

  “Yes. Janell and I were sitting on the verandah. We thought it was a firecracker. People had been throwing them from cars all evening. Dr. Lincoln was upstairs reading. He came out and asked us if we had heard a shot. Just then we saw Radisson coming across the lawn.”

  “Did you notice the automobile that was parked on the other side of the road?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Or the last one that passed before the shot?”

  “I didn’t, Mr. Rennert. There were so many.” The young man spoke apologetically.

  “Was any part of this side road visible from where you were sitting on the verandah?”

  “No, we were in the swing on the other side.”

  “You didn’t hear a car enter or leave it during the evening?”

  “No. All I can say is that there was none on it about half an hour before the shot. That was when we went to call Professor Radisson to the’phone.”

  “Tell me about that, Kent.”

  “Well, the’phone rang. Janell didn’t answer it because she knew her father was upstairs. He called her though, said he had his slippers on, and asked her if she and I would tell Mr. Radisson someone wanted to speak to him. We walked around the house
to the professor’s apartment and gave him the message. That was the only time I saw this road after dinner.”

  “Radisson came to the telephone?”

  “Yes, he came in, talked a few minutes, then went out again.”

  Rennert cast a last glance over the bare surface of the road. Sand and dried blood—symbols to him now of an evil which had no place in the Magic Valley—and nothing else.

  “Let’s go,” he said abruptly. “This isn’t any affair of ours.”

  They got into the car, Rennert turned on to the highway and headed north. “Kent,” he asked then, “have you had any word yet from your father?”

  “No, I haven’t, Mr. Rennert.”

  “You don’t know whether or not he has left Oklahoma?”

  “No. You see, Dad’s never in a hurry. He always gets where he says he’s going to—eventually. So I’m just waiting.”

  “You had no definite date to meet here?”

  “As definite as he ever makes one. The last letter I had from him, he said we’d spend Christmas together. So I expected him yesterday or last night.”

  There was no apprehension at all in his manner, and Rennert found himself exceedingly reluctant to continue. He took a deep breath. “Kent, do you know of the legal bout which Dr. Torday is having with the National Railways of Mexico?”

  “Something, yes. Dad is going to testify if he’s called on.”

  “That newspaper reporter I introduced to you at the bullfight hinted that an attempt was being made to intimidate Dr. Torday’s witnesses. I’m being perfectly frank, Kent, because I know you have too much sense to get wrought up unnecessarily. But the facts are that Campos was killed this afternoon and Radisson was shot tonight. Both were to have testified. Don’t you think it would be wise to find out where your father is and when he’s due to arrive?”

  “Yes, Mr. Rennert,” the young man answered gravely, “I do. I’ll put in a long-distance call as soon as we get to the hotel. Thank you. But it’s hard to believe that the Mexican Railways would stoop to anything like this for a thousand dollars a week.”