by Todd Downing
Preston Radcott’s right hand was buried in the pocket of his trousers. He felt reassured now and a peculiar sense of exhilaration, never before experienced, sent electric tingles through his body. He felt singularly wide-awake and cool after the heat and perspiration of the day. He contemplated going back into the diner and getting a drink but hesitated. He thought: Something is going to happen soon and I had better stay in sight of the others. He wanted someone to talk to, someone with whom he could share this glowing sensation of recklessness that made him impatient of the prolonged quietness which held them.
He felt a kind of relief when King raised one hand, took the cigar from the corner of his mouth, surveyed it speculatively and dropped the end into the cuspidor. The man’s silence had begun to annoy him.
King looked at his watch and said: “We’ve been here two hours and twenty-five minutes now.”
“Um-huh,” Radcott pulled himself up in his seat, drew a package of cigarettes from his pocket and selected one. He searched for matches then turned to King. “What about a match? I seem to be out and there aren’t any here in the smoker.”
King extended a packet of safety matches. Radcott took one, lit his cigarette and tossed the extinguished match to the floor.
“Thanks,” he handed the packet back to King. “Seems longer than that, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” King agreed, “it does.”
Radcott blew a smoke ring and watched with half-closed eyes as it dissolved in the current of the electric fan.
“What do you think of things?” he asked.
“Things?” King looked at him sharply. “What things?”
Radcott’s eyes squinted as a little eddy of smoke was thrust back into his face.
“The situation on this car,” he said.
“Oh,” King removed his pince-nez and slowly polished the lenses with a piece of chamois skin. The lids of his eyes were heavy and dark circles were discernible beneath them. He finished polishing the glass and carefully adjusted the pince-nez upon his nose.
“I think,” he said judiciously, “that we have been heading straight for trouble ever since we crossed the border.”
“How’s that?”
King glanced at him sideways. “I haven’t told anybody yet but this fellow Rennert,” he carefully lowered his voice, “about a conversation which my wife heard last night before we got to the border.”
“Your wife?”
“Yes, she got off at Laredo. She was sitting in one of the berths which hadn’t been made up and heard two people talking. One of them said: ‘I’ll get off with you at Monterrey and you can get the money. If you don’t, I’ll blast the train on this trip.’ The man who was talking had a foreign voice, my wife said. You see the connection, don’t you?”
Radcott uncrossed his legs and sat up still straighter. “I don’t know whether I do or not. What do you mean?”
“Just this,” King’s voice sank lower, “the man my wife heard talking was this Jeanes, of course.”
“It was?”
“Yes, I’m sure of it. He’s evidently some kind of a foreigner, judging by his voice. I think it’s all tied up with these labor troubles. I think that Jeanes is an agitator for the strikers and that he’s on this train to pass the word along down the line when to blow up this train.”
Radcott emitted a startled whistle. “Gosh!” he said softly. “Maybe that’s why the train is stopped out here. It may all have been a frame-up and they’re just waiting until they think it’s safe to do something. Still, it doesn’t look as if Jeanes would stay on this train if he knew anything was going to happen to it.”
“He can’t get away, can he, the way the car is guarded?”
“No, that’s right. That may be the reason he’s been acting so funny all day.”
“You remember the message that Rennert read to you back in the Pullman?”
“Yes.”
“That was handed to me by a Mexican back in Saltillo. He must have thought I was Jeanes. We’ve both got rather gray hair, you know, and he could easily have mistaken us. That was evidently a warning from some of his friends that the soldiers were watching him and that it wasn’t safe to do anything yet.”
Radcott’s eyes remained for a moment on King’s face. Then he looked away and stared straight in front of him.
“What does Rennert think about it?” he asked.
“I don’t know for sure. I think he believes that Jeanes killed that fellow back in the tunnel and this Van Syle woman or whatever her name was. Judging from what he said to Jeanes about a message that he tore up at Vanegas, he must suspect him of being mixed up in this other business, too.”
“Why doesn’t he have Jeanes arrested then?”
“I don’t know. I wish he would. I’d feel safer.”
Radcott sat for a long time, a frown creasing his forehead. The cigarette burned unheeded toward his fingers.
“If Jeanes can’t leave the train we can’t either, can we?” he murmured as if to himself.
“That’s exactly what’s worrying me,” King said.
When Radcott spoke again his voice was grim.
“I’m glad,” he said, “that I’ve got a knife handy in case anything happens.”
King did not say anything for a moment.
“A knife?” he repeated then, very carefully.
“Yes.”
“But why didn’t they find it when they searched you and your luggage?”
Radcott smiled slightly. “They’d never think of looking for it where I had it,” he said.
King leaned toward him.
“You can get it—?” he started to ask, stopped abruptly, looked up and said: “Good evening, Mr. Rennert.”
16
Guadalupe, Virgin Mother, Shield from Harm! (9:25 P.M.)
“Good evening.”
Rennert let the curtains fall to behind him and stepped into the smoker. His eyes rested on King’s face, then on Radcott’s. They did not miss the slight perturbation on both faces. He wondered what they had been talking about in low voices when he had appeared at the doorway.
“I’m going to ask you men to help me,” he said pleasantly.
“Help you?” Radcott spoke up readily, taking his hand from his pocket. “Sure!”
“It’s the same question—the whereabouts of everyone at the time of Miss Van Syle’s death.”
Radcott said: “Oh” tonelessly.
“I’ve asked Mr. Spahr and Mr. Searcey to reenact their movements after the train stopped and I should appreciate it if you gentlemen would do the same.”
“Of course, if you think it will accomplish anything,” King said with drawn brows, “but I’ve told you everything that I know about what happened.”
“This will just be a repetition of your actions, of course. I thought we might get the time element straightened out a little better if we repeated them rather than depend on our memories.”
“All right,” King got to his feet and, followed by Radcott, walked to the door.
Rennert followed them. “Up in the diner, if you please.”
In the diner they found Spahr and Searcey. As they entered, Searcey sat at the first table on their right, Spahr at the center table on their left, his back to them.
“If you will be kind enough to take the seats which you occupied when the train stopped,” Rennert suggested.
They filed down the aisle and sat at the table across from Spahr. King sat with his back to the door, Radcott facing him.
Rennert stood in the doorway, watching them.
“We shall suppose,” he said, “that Miss Van Syle is sitting across from you, Mr. Spahr.”
Spahr glanced back over his shoulder and nodded silently, as his fingers played with the silverware.
Rennert held his watch in his hand and said: “The train stops now. Will you, Mr. King and Mr. Radcott, remain in your seats as long as you estimate you stayed before.”
He waited.
They all sat in an uneasy silen
ce. Spahr stared steadily at the tablecloth. Searcey leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and regarded the others with blank eyes and expressionless face. Radcott and King sat and glanced self-consciously now at each other, now at the tablecloth, now out the window.
Not quite two minutes had passed when King turned to Rennert. “About this time, I think, we got up and left the diner.” He looked back at Radcott. “That right?”
Radcott nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
“Very well,” Rennert said, “will you go back to the smoker now, as you did.” The slight discrepancy in time, he knew, was to be expected throughout this procedure.
They got up and walked down the aisle and out the door.
“And now,” Rennert looked up from his watch, “will you gentlemen estimate the time that Miss Van Syle remained in here.”
Searcey nodded. He had drawn his pipe from his pocket and was filling it with tobacco from a pouch. He tamped it down with a forefinger and returned the pouch to his hip pocket. He took a match from the stand in the center of the table, struck it and applied it to the bowl. He drew upon the pipe and leaned back in his chair, in relaxation. A slight gurgling sound from the pipe was the only noise to relieve the stillness.
Spahr’s face, seen in profile, was deathly white and his fingers were twitching as they moved the silverware back and forth, back and forth.
Outside, upon the gravel at the foot of the steps, Guadalupe Serrano, the little porter, stood and smoked a surreptitious cigarette and watched one of the señores from the Pullman talking with the brakeman.
They were standing close beside the train, between the diner and the Pullman car, and the brakeman seemed to be explaining something to the tall gray-haired man in the dark suit who was peering forward intently as the other held up his lantern. The light brought out their faces distinctly against the darkness—like, Guadalupe thought, two masks upon a dark stage in a show of títeres. One mask white and clear-cut, with bright shining eyes; the other, of smooth dark wood whose outlines were lost in the darkness.
Guadalupe wondered what they were talking about and what this americano was so interested in. But they were all like this (his dark eyes were luminous as he drew upon the cigarette) always asking questions about things that were unimportant.
At first it had amused him but ever since that man had died in the Pullman and the other man—the one so simpático who seemed to have charge of everything—had kept asking so many questions about the night before he had felt a kind of coldness all over his body, even though the sun had been bright and hot.
The conductor had been staring up at the zopilotes all day, afraid that they were following the train because of the dead body on it. Worse than the eyes of the zopilotes, Guadalupe thought, had been the way one person back in the Pullman had kept watching him, as if afraid that he were going to tell something.
Guadalupe watched the americano take some object—a billfold, it was—from his pocket and hand the brakeman several bills.
He tossed away the stub of his cigarette and turned back to the steps. As he glanced out into the darkness of the desert his brown fingers sought and fondled reassuringly the little wax figure which he wore attached to a string about his neck. It was the image of his patroness, the dark-eyed Virgin of Guadalupe, whose shrine stood upon a far-away hill outside Mexico City.
“Tonantzin,” he murmured, applying to her the Indian name which she knows best, “defiende del peligro!”
Spahr turned around in his chair and looked at Rennert.
“I think,” he said in a toneless voice, “that she left about this time.”
Rennert glanced at Searcey. “That right?”
“I’d judge so,” Searcey said without taking the pipe from his mouth.
“Very well. Will you tell me when you followed her out?’
Another interval of silence that seemed endless.
Spahr leaned forward, his elbows on the table and his hands tight about the handle and the blade of a knife. His knuckles stood out white as he slowly bent the blade back and forth, back and forth.
Searcey looked out the window, the outlines of his face lost in the smoke that coiled upward from his pipe. His hair looked sleek and glossy under the electric lights. (Too sleek and glossy altogether, Rennert told himself. Hair dye in itself was not suspicious in the case of middle-aged men such as Searcey. But taken in conjunction with the dark glasses it made him wonder.)
Spahr let the knife clatter upon the top of the table.
“I think,” he turned around, “that this is about the time I went out.”
“Very well,” Rennert said quietly, “do so.”
Spahr got to his feet and began to walk a bit unsteadily down the aisle.
As he passed his table, Searcey too rose.
“I got up and walked out with him,” he explained to Rennert.
“Very well,” Rennert paused. Standing as close to Spahr as he was he could observe the frantic look in the young man’s eyes and the suspicious tightening of his jaw.
“Did you gentlemen pause for a conversation here or did you leave the diner at once?” he asked.
Spahr glanced first at Searcey and then at Rennert.
“No,” he said hurriedly, “we didn’t stop. He said something to me and I answered him. Then I—”
“What did he say to you, Spahr?” Rennert asked quietly.
Spahr stared at him, his mouth partially open. The last remaining vestige of color had drained from his face and he put out a hand to support himself against the side of the door. “I don’t remember,” he said weakly, “it didn’t amount to anything.”
Rennert looked at Searcey, who stood very still, one hand about the bowl of his pipe. The smoke rose in slow lazy spirals before his blank glasses behind which his eyes seemed to be regarding Spahr steadily.
Rennert said: “Very well, will both of you proceed to the smoker, as you did.”
Spahr moved forward like an automaton. Searcey followed him more slowly, with a lithe swinging gait.
The three of them crossed the platform between the two cars and came to a stop at the door of the smoker.
Searcey turned. “This is where Spahr left me,” he said. “I went into the smoker.”
Rennert seemed to consider this for some time. “Are you sure,” he asked Spahr suddenly, “that Mr. Searcey went into the smoker?”
Spahr nodded. “Yes, I saw him go through the curtains.”
Rennert looked directly at the dead surfaces of Searcey’s glasses. “You see, Mr. Searcey, I thought it possible, although not exactly probable, that he had turned away before you entered.”
Searcey’s smile was mirthless. “Are you convinced now? If not I am sure that our friends inside will swear that they saw me come through the curtains.”
Rennert’s smile was frank. “I am convinced that you did enter the smoker immediately.” He turned to Spahr. “And now if you will go back to the diner as you did and return here we will have finished.”
Both of them stood and watched Spahr’s back disappear into the doorway.
Rennert’s hands were upon the curtains when Searcey asked bluntly: “Was that the reason for all this acting—just to find out whether or not Spahr saw me go through this door?”
“No,” Rennert told him, “I wanted to be sure of something else.”
“And are you?”
“Yes, Mr. Searcey, I am.” He held aside the curtains. “Shall we join the gentlemen?”
King and Radcott sat against the wall, as they had been sitting when Rennert interrupted them earlier. Both looked up inquiringly as Rennert and Searcey entered.
“Is the time about right for Mr. Searcey’s entrance?”
“Yes,” Radcott answered, “although of course it seems longer sitting here waiting like we have been.”
Rennert returned his watch to his pocket and faced them. His face was grave.
“I estimate,” he said, “that the three of you remained in this room for about fou
r minutes, or possibly three, before Spahr came in. I want each of you to think back over those minutes and tell me if anything—anything at all—happened, to fix the time in your mind.”
There was silence for a moment.
Memory seemed to come to Searcey and to Radcott simultaneously. It was Searcey who spoke. “It was the lights,” be said with a stir of interest in his usually even voice. “They went out for a second or two while we were in here.”
“That’s right!” from Radcott. “I remember that distinctly. We talked about the possibility of them going off again.”
Rennert looked at King. “You remember that also?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And how long, Mr. Searcey, was that after you left Spahr at the door?”
“Less than a minute, I should say.”
“Good!” Rennert could not repress his satisfaction. “That will be all, gentlemen. I should like you to retire to the Pullman now, if you will.”
King and Radcott got up and walked with Searcey to the door. Radcott stood aside to let them precede him. He turned back to Rennert.
“Have we been of any help?”
“Yes, Mr. Radcott,” Rennert looked him straight in the face, “you have been of a great deal of help.”
Rennert watched Radcott’s broad back disappear through the curtains. Then he walked slowly across the room, sank onto the leather cushions and lit a cigarette. He was smoking when Spahr entered.
Rennert watched him as he stood just inside the door, his hands held straight down at his sides and doubled into fists.
“Sit down, Mr. Spahr,” he said quietly.
Spahr moved forward as if jerked by a string and sat beside Rennert.
Rennert kept his eyes on the young man’s face as he asked: “You have gone through your actions exactly as you did earlier tonight?”