by Basil Copper
The waiter came back with the drinks. His smile opened up another three millimetres when I told him to keep the change. The beer tasted good.
‘I cook the best steak in town,’ Patti said. That clinched it.
‘What time do we dine?’ I asked.
‘I’ll give you the address,’ she said. ‘Around nine o’clock?’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You’re quite a girl for handing out addresses.’
She laughed this time. ‘No sense in hanging back. Small towns teach you that.’
I took an envelope out of my pocket and pushed her a pen. She wrote the address and gave it me back.
‘I’m partial to a nice steak,’ I said.
*
I left Patti Morgan outside the hotel. I drove back to the place I went the day before and got outside some coffee, a plate of grilled fish with French fries and blueberry pie with cream. The same waitress in the Dutch outfit greeted me like an old friend. It was only after my second cup of coffee that I looked at the envelope; the address was a place called Greenside Manor. I wondered what her parents would be like. I decided to be a hick, wear a presentable suit and take along something for her mother. I bought a big box of candy after I left the lunch counter.
Then I drove out to Barrett’s Heights. I’d already been in the back way. It couldn’t do any harm to try the entrance. I stopped in front of The Palisades lodge and Slipped the horn; there was no response but the scuttering of birds’ wings in a nearby bush. I was about to give another blast when a surly-looking man in a mackinaw jacket came out of the lodge. He was big-built. I particularly noticed he had a revolver in a shiny brown leather holster at his waist. It looked like a Colt. I cut the motor and got out of the car. We faced one another through the iron bars. Close up he looked just as tough but not quite so unpleasant.
‘You got some business?’ he said, screwing up his eyes as he looked me over. I noticed he kept his right hand near the butt of his gun.
‘I’d like to see the General,’ I said.
I passed him the photostat of my licence in the plastic holster, through the bars. He studied it a moment and then pushed it back to me.
‘The General don’t see visitors,’ he said decisively.
‘Ask him,’ I said.
He shrugged again. ‘Wait here.’ He went back into the lodge. It seemed like a long wait. It must have been all of ten minutes. The cold was biting and the sky threatened rain. In the end I went back to the car and sat down. I almost started to reverse preparatory to going back to town. I was glad I didn’t. I was almost as surprised as the gateman. He came out at a run and started unlocking the gate.
‘He’ll see you,’ he said in an incredulous mumble. ‘You carry a gun?’ he asked.
‘Not today,’ I said.
‘Anyways, I’d like you to come in the lodge,’ he said. ‘I got my orders.’
He opened the lodge door and I followed him in. The interior of the first room was just bare pine walls. The only furniture was a table and chair. Most of the available space was covered by gun racks. The place was more like an armoury.
‘Expecting trouble?’ I asked.
He grinned. ‘Nothing we can’t handle.’ He stood me over against the window and ran an expert hand over me. He didn’t forget the forearms or the calves of the legs. It was as good as I’d seen for many a long year.
‘Clean,’ he whispered, like he was astonished. ‘Wait here.’
He went into an inner room but I could see him watching me in a mirror. He needn’t have worried really; the rifles were all locked into the racks. I heard a tinkle as he picked up the phone. He came back rubbing his hands.
‘Go right up,’ he said. ‘When you get to the main entrance ring the porch bell. They’ll take it from there.’
‘Thanks,’ I said politely. I went back to my car. Standing near it was another big man in a black leather wind-cheater. He had a rifle under his arm and one of the big Dobermanns tugging at a leash in front of him. He whistled like he was out enjoying the afternoon air but it was obvious he was guarding the open gate. These boys didn’t leave much to chance. The first man came out and stood by the gate waiting to lock it.
‘You must have been cashier at the Bastille,’ I told him.
He grinned again. I got into the Buick and gunned her up the drive. In the mirror I could see him lock the gates. The second guard looked after me, then he and the Dobermann went off across the lawn and under the trees. The drive was well kept and curved round in large arcs, bordered by thick bushes. It was dark here even though it was early afternoon. The drive was over a quarter of a mile long but it looped and curved back on itself. The lay-out would more than double the real distance from the main gate; this would give time to the people of the house. But time to do what?
There was another advantage too to this styling of the drive. A man on foot, with or without a rifle, could reach any point on it just as easily — or perhaps more easily — than a man in a car if he wanted to intercept it. And a dog would make twice the speed of a car over this terrain. At this point the Buick’s nose was going up the last slope and I was in low gear again; the curves were so fierce that I had to go around at a walking pace. There wasn’t room for another car to pass.
I noticed something else too; just before every bend were stationed old-style, long-shafted country carts. They were beautifully maintained; each stood on a trim shaved plot surrounded on three sides by low-chained enclosures. Each was a museum piece; their wheels were picked out in yellow and black and the brass fittings sparkled even in this damp atmosphere. More important still it would take only one man to roll them forward and block the drive. All faced slight downhill slopes, all were chocked with blocks of wood under the wheels. These were even fitted with rope toggles like they use on aircraft.
Question was: did General Diaz want to keep people in? Or out? Either way the answer would be entertaining. I stopped the car near a set of massive steps flanked by Grecian-type statues, which led up into the shadowy porch. I rang the bell in a door which wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Kremlin. A small peephole in the panel opened and a pair of cold eyes studied me; then bolts were drawn and I went on in.
The man who opened was tall and proportionately broad; he was dressed in fawn slacks and a khaki shirt open at the neck. The pips on the shoulders of the shirt made it look like a military uniform. Around his waist he had a canvas belt with a big-handled revolver butt protruding from a canvas holster. He had a strong, yellow-complexioned face and a heavy mustache. Dark glasses with side blinders covered his eyes. He impressed me as a durable, tough character.
‘Mr Faraday.’ He slurred the words in the Spanish style. His teeth were very white under his mustache. ‘This way, please. Have the goodness to walk in front of me.’
He motioned me forward along the hall. We went up an oak staircase lined with oil paintings. It made The Prado look like a two-bit provincial art gallery. The man in the side-blinders kept a hand on my elbow; his grip was hard and firm. We turned left along a corridor at the top of the stairs. The place was panelled in dark oak and looked as big as a museum. The pictures were mostly portraits in oils, in the style of the Spanish school. There was nobody else about and the place was so quiet that a mouse coughing would have seemed like a commotion; our footsteps were muffled in the thick carpet.
Then I caught a peculiar panting noise; I thought for a moment that my guide suffered from asthma. Then I looked over my shoulder and saw one of the big Dobermanns. He was padding along in the rear, keeping pace with us. He looked friendly enough, with his tongue sticking out of his pink mouth. He looked like he could eat off your hand. Or your leg come to that.
Presently the gallery finished and my guide pressed me to the left. I opened another door which had a brass handle. The guide said something to the dog.
When I looked round again the beast had disappeared. We stepped through the door. The guide still kept a grip on my elbow.
We were now very
high up. Light spilled in from huge windows facing over the tops of trees. We were on another gallery which ran round three sides of one of the biggest rooms I had ever been in. I could see the reflection of light on polished oak floors far below; that and the shapes of carpets and furniture set out like it was being seen in an aerial photograph. We started walking along the gallery towards the head of a staircase.
We got almost to the head of the stairs when the man behind me suddenly tightened his grip on my arm. He dragged me to a halt. At the same moment there was a vibrating hum and something silvery-metallic in the half-light split the air in front of my face. There was a sharp, whining thud as a steel bolt about two feet long buried itself with an angry detonation in the wall about six feet in front of us.
‘What the hell …’ I started to say, twisting myself out of the guide’s grasp.
There was a loud laugh from the floor of the great room.
‘My apologies, gentlemen.’
I looked over the banister and took in a group of people around a table. But it was an old man sitting in a wheel-chair who arrested my attention. He had a glittering arc of metal in his hand, which he put down on the table.
‘Please come in, sir, please come in,’ he said.
We went on down the staircase.
Chapter 8
The Palisades
‘William Tell, I presume?’ I said.
The man in the wheel-chair gave another booming laugh.
‘Come along in sir,’ he said. ‘You were in no danger, I can assure you. I am accurate to within less than half an inch.’ When I got up to him I could see he was an old man, well over seventy. His snow-white hair was plastered scantily over a great bare scalp that was all dents and angles. His eyes looked out at me from deep-chiselled caverns; iron grey eyebrows overhung his eye-sockets and white hair grew from his ears.
He had a deep yellow complexion and his big, heavy, old-fashioned mustache was brindled white and yellow; it gave him the look of an ancient hidalgo, which I had no doubt he was. He sat in the wheel-chair with a red and grey blanket covering his legs. He was dressed in an immaculate white shirt, buttoned at the neck and held in place by a grey silk stock from which a pearl-headed pin protruded. His sleeves were rolled back to his elbows, exposing forearms not emaciated as I should have expected, but knotted with hard muscle like wire ropes.
All the strength of his body seemed to have flown into his arms, as if to make up for his crippled legs. Bright yellow eyes looked steadily out at me from the darkness of his brows; his mouth was red-lipped and firm under the heavy mustache. He seemed to diminish the other people around him. All the life in the room was centred on his chair.
‘General Diaz?’ I said for form’s sake, though the query seemed pretty superfluous.
‘The same, sir,’ he said. ‘And you would be Mr Faraday?’
‘I nodded.
‘Please sit down, Mr Faraday,’ he said in the same courteous manner. ‘If you will excuse me for one moment. Captain Rodriguez …’
The man who had escorted me in snapped to attention and clicked his heels on the parquet floor. I dropped on to a leather-padded divan across from the old man’s wheel-chair and studied the room as he and Rodriguez whispered together. It was all of a hundred feet long; at the back, way up the balcony along which we had come and to the left of the staircase was a large target whose concentric circles looked like a staring eye at that distance.
The single bolt he had fired from the steel bow which lay on the table at his side was buried accurately within the central disc of the bull. It was just slightly to the right of centre. Another Spanish-looking servant stood behind the old gentleman’s chair; he carried in his hand a pair of heavy-duty pliers. Presently I saw him use them to retrieve the bolts; they must have been buried a couple of inches in the target. A canvas quiver was buckled to the side of the General’s chair; it was three-quarters filled with the feathered flights of the steel-shafted bolts.
The bow itself was a formidable-looking weapon; I should have been hard put to bend it myself. It was an all-steel effort except for the binding of the grip. Even the cord was a thin steel cable. The General picked up the bow again as Captain Rodriguez saluted and hurried out. He took another of the servants with him. That left only the man standing behind the General’s chair and a short, stocky fellow who had the look of a soldier. He had a revolver buckled around his waist too. He went and sat down in a chair at the side of the room where he could watch the proceedings.
The General took one of the steel bolts out of the quiver at his side and fitted it to the bow-string.
‘Your indulgence, sir,’ he said. ‘I find that one soon gets out of practice. And one has few pleasures at my age. Archery has been a life-long interest.’
The General flexed the bow and sighted the bolt on the target; he had drawn on thick leather gloves. The muscles in his forearm swelled as he pulled the taut cable effortlessly back.
There was a deep organ note as the bolt left the bow, a noise like tearing calico and the same thrushing thud I had heard before. The bolt hummed like an angry wasp as it embedded itself. The feather head of the shaft made an indistinguishable pattern with the first one, the two bolts were so close. The aide at the side of the room clapped politely.
I watched the General fire three more; all were grouped within half an inch of the centre of the bull but the way he clicked his tongue you would have thought he had missed the target altogether. His eyes smouldered as he threw the bow down on the table in disgust and motioned the servant to collect the missiles.
‘A lamentable exhibition, sir,’ he said. ‘I must apologize for such poor marksmanship. You will join me in a drink, I trust?’
He pressed a button at the side of his chair and a powerful electric motor hummed; the chair turned in a smooth circle and started rolling towards the great windows at the front of the vast room. I got up and kept pace with him down the carpet. He stopped in front of an impressive liquor cabinet; it seemed to contain every type of beverage known to man.
The General gave another rumbling laugh. ‘My only weakness,’ he said. ‘Your pleasure, sir?’
‘Scotch,’ I said.
The General’s chair whirred again as he angled it closer to the sideboard; there was a low serving surface, evidently designed specially for his needs, and he busied himself with glasses and a bowl of ice. The servant had gone up to the balcony to retrieve the arrows and the aide was reading a paper way down the room. I walked over to the window which must have been all of twenty feet across. I could see the grounds laid out like a relief map, with the drive crossing and re-crossing to the lodge; then the thin thread of the road and, above the far trees the top storeys of the country club.
The rubber-tyred wheel-chair squeaked on bare boards as I turned. The General put the generous-sized glass into my hand.
‘To your health, sir,’ he said, lifting his daiquiri.
I took one sip and then another, with increasing appreciation.
The General sat back in the chair, put down the glass on a small tray attachment he swung out from the arm, folded his long yellow hands and surveyed me. His eyes, under the profuse brows, were not unhumorous.
‘You must be wondering, Mr Faraday, why an old cripple like myself is surrounded by such elaborate security arrangements. You see before you, sir, the remnants of a once considerable physique. To put it plainly, wounds caused by bomb fragments plus the encroachments of anno domini have made my legs something less than what they were. Hence the chair and all the other arrangements to flatter my ailment. But what the Almighty takes away in one direction he usually compensates in others and so it has been with me. The strength of my arms, which I have been at some pains to develop, and my sharpness of eye, remain undiminished, I am glad to say. And there are days when I am even able to walk a few steps, albeit somewhat painfully.’
I started to speak but he held up his hand as if to call for patience. I went and sat in a carved wooden armchair of
Spanish mahogany, put my drink on the General’s leather-topped desk, and pulled the chair round to face him. He took another sip at his long glass before continuing.
‘However, that is enough of my history,’ he said. ‘The matter in hand. You are, as I understand it, Mr Faraday, a private investigator? It would be superfluous to ask what sort of assignments you undertake?’
I grinned. ‘The dangerous ones,’ I said.
The General smiled a melancholy smile. ‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘I fancied I recognized a kindred spirit.’
‘I’d like to ask you a few questions, General,’ I said. ‘Principally about Miss Benson, though I am interested academically in Mr Holgren. I expect you heard I found both of them?’
General Diaz slowly inclined his head.
He held his daiquiri up to the light and squinted at the frozen contents of his glass. Beads of moisture glinted in the cold winter light.
‘I had heard it suggested,’ he said drily. ‘We will leave over the small matter of trespassing in my grounds for the moment. I take it you are not implying that I had anything to do with either? Mr Holgren was a very valued friend and colleague of mine.’
‘I didn’t suggest anything, General,’ I said evenly. ‘But you can see how it looks to an outsider.’
He tapped with thin fingers on his glass; the noise made tiny shivering tinkles in the silence.
‘I can indeed,’ he said softly. ‘You are retained by whom?’
‘The employers of the dead girl,’ I said. ‘So far as they know — as far as anyone knows, apart from a handful of us — it’s still a case for Missing Persons.’
The General stroked his long mustache; he sat hunched in his chair for so long that I thought he had gone to sleep. Except that his yellow eyes were fixed unwaveringly over my head and out through the window to the far hills.
‘I am inclined to trust you, Mr Faraday,’ he said, ‘but I can say little without sanction from Sheriff Clark. He has not chosen to give that sanction for the moment. And until he does …’