by Basil Copper
‘You’re not talking about Cheney?’ I said.
There was another tremendous clap of thunder which made the whole house shake. Clark blinked in the white glare which followed.
‘One and the same,’ he said. ‘Cheney kept in touch with his old pals over the years. And as luck would have it he took the Redbarn business in Mudville a while ago, only a few miles from where the General was living. The Cubanos had never given up and when he heard they were being released, he tipped them off.’
‘Hoping to gain what?’ I said.
Clark shrugged. ‘Money, perhaps. In any event he’s just a mean cuss. He realized the General wouldn’t remember him from the old days. In the meantime he kept his eyes open and passed information along. I must admit Mr Holgren’s death is largely guesswork, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to check. Supposing he ran into Hernando, or the four Cubans together in L.A. He would have recognized them, of course, as he worked with you on the prosecution case in Havana, General. He realized you would be in deadly danger. He tries to reach you but you are away.’
‘So he drives up, passing me on the way,’ I said. ‘When he gets to Mudville, Hernando had already warned Cheney by phone. Or perhaps Holgren by an unlucky coincidence stops at Cheney’s place for gas. But however it came out, Hernando must have recognized Holgren in L.A. anyway, because he’s not far behind. Cheney asks Holgren into his office on some pretext. When they go to the car Hernando is hiding on the back seat. Cheney pulls a gun on Holgren, forces him to drive around Mudville. Then Hernando makes his play and batters Holgren with the pick, I drive by and the two men hide in one of the gardens until I’ve gone to fetch the Sheriff.’
‘Then they drive Holgren to the river for a midnight bathe,’ said Macklehenny sourly. ‘There was another car up there, that they came back in. We found more tracks on the road.’
There was a long silence. The General sat slumped in his blanket; only his yellow eyes seemed alive in the dark recesses of his face.
‘Undoubtedly the correct sequence of events, gentlemen,’ he said at last. ‘I must congratulate you both. However, following the attempt with the rifle we may assume our friends have had a change of plan. It has now been more than two weeks since they made any positive move.’
‘We can’t be sure of that,’ said Clark sharply. ‘We don’t know what they’ve been doing or what their movements were. You may have been in danger any one of a dozen ways without knowing it.’
The General sighed. His voice sounded very tired as he replied.
‘Life can be a burdensome thing, gentlemen. I cannot say that I would be really sorry to see a term put to my existence.’
‘You mustn’t say that, sir,’ said Macklehenny with rising heat.
The General stirred and passed his hands across the bow on the desk in front of him.
‘You are, of course, right, Mr Macklehenny,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, gentlemen. I think I had better ring Valdar at the gate. We have much to discuss.’
He propelled the wheel-chair over towards the grey plastic telephone. He lifted the receiver and held it to his ear. I saw a puzzled expression on his face. He jiggled the receiver rest and then put it stiffly back.
‘There is no reply from the gate,’ he said in tones from which surprise had drained all emotion.
‘Perhaps the storm put the line out,’ said Clark, still not comprehending.
‘Storm nothing,’ I said, sliding out of my chair as another crack of thunder sounded.
‘Keep your eyes peeled, Clark. I got a feeling this is it.’
*
Clark and Macklehenny got up without hurry and covered the General without seeming to.
‘I’ll have a looksee at the front,’ I told Clark. He patted his revolver butt. I took his point. I had the Smith-Wesson out as I went down the big staircase that led to the main hall. I passed Rodriguez in the corridor. He saluted and hurried on towards the General’s room. I called after him but he didn’t stop. Thunder was rumbling again as I got down by the main entrance. There was something definitely wrong.
When I pulled at the main door it wouldn’t budge. Then I saw that it was locked and the inside key was missing. Fanning the gun I stepped over to the window flanking the porch. It was now almost dark outside and I couldn’t see a thing. I found a panel of three brass switches alongside the front door; I flipped them on and off experimentally. Two controlled the hall and staircase lighting. The third lit the porch. I went cautiously back to the small window and peeked through.
One of the Dobermanns was lying not more than three yards away, at the edge of the porch. It was spread out unnaturally still; I watched it for nearly half a minute. It was either dead or doped. I switched off all the lights and stepped back into the hall. I saw the half-open door and a thin bar of light coming up. I pushed the door all the way open; rough steps led down into some sort of cellar.
Warm, oil-heated air came up to me. I took the safety-catch off the Smith-Wesson and put out a foot into the darkness; the brushing finger tips of my left hand found a switch on the wall. Neons blinked into trembling radiance. I went down the stairs into the boiler room. In one corner an oil furnace for the General’s central heating rumbled to itself with controlled power. Light flickered on to the gritty floor through a yellow heatproof glass panel.
The cellar was a large, shadowy place and there were a lot of peculiar marks on the dust of the floor. On the far side was a coke heap. To the left of this was an enormous old solid fuel boiler that looked like something out of the engine room of the Titanic. It evidently hadn’t been used since it was superseded by the oil-fired unit. But someone had been using it recently.
A piece of khaki-coloured cloth protruded from the edge of the rusted furnace door that was half the height of a man. I lifted up the heavy iron latch on the front of the furnace. Something sagged out at me, something that had once been human. It was clad in shirt and underclothes and had been thrust, halfkneeling in among the ashes. The shirt and front of the face were stained and clotted with blood and the eyes stared fixedly in front of them with that far-seeing look the dead always have, like they know what lies beyond the stars.
I had a job to keep the furnace door steady as that face came at me out of the darkness. Belsen-like it swung against the side of the boiler and showed me the whitened bone of the brain pan. An object fell down tinkling into the ashes at my feet. Someone had been fooling with ice-picks for the second time in my experience.
Chapter 12
Electric Chair
I held the door with one hand and reached for an iron slicing bar with the other. I put the bar against the corpse’s chest and levered him back into his iron coffin. Then I slammed the oven door and latched it. The triangle of shirt still stuck out. The oil furnace roared and bubbled to itself; it made a sinister sound in the depths of the cellar. The old familiar scratching was round the base of my spine and my forehead was wet and clammy. It didn’t come from the heat of the furnace either. I stood and thought for ten long seconds. Nothing moved in the house above.
Then I took off my jacket, unbuckled my holster. I got out the revolver again and unscrewed the silencer. I put the silencer in the spring-clip holster, put some spare slugs on the cellar floor beside me, wrapped the harness round the holster and buried it among the coke. I wiped my hand clean on the handkerchief. Then I took the Smith-Wesson and shoved it down inside the sock on my right leg. The barrel fitted just inside my shoe without too much trouble. I was afraid it might fall out when I walked but I tried it a few times up and down the cellar and it worked.
Then I had a better idea and transferred it to my left instep so that I could get at it easier with my right hand. The Smith-Wesson held five slugs. I took the other five I’d put on the floor and made them into a small flat package, using an old envelope from my pocket. I shoved that down inside my right sock, just inside the shoe. When I tried walking again it wasn’t too uncomfortable. I put my jacket on.
I transferred the sli
cing bar to my right hand and went upstairs again very fast but very light; we might have ten minutes at most. When I got to the balcony I saw Rodriguez standing along the end of the corridor; he looked worried. The shock didn’t register until I got down to the ground floor and up to the General. Another great booming cannonade of thunder sounded like it was going to bring the roof in with it. The electric-blue glare of the lightning gave Rodriguez’ face a deathly pallor; I could see his eyes twitching even underneath the dark side-blinders he wore.
‘Who can you rely on here tonight?’ I asked the General.
‘Two at the gate, one man in the grounds,’ said Diaz. ‘The Captain there, we four. Gomez and one of the guards are away in L.A., I don’t count the servants, of course.’
‘We got company,’ I told him.
I sketched in what had happened downstairs. Clark’s lips tightened and he moved his hand towards the butt of his gun. I stopped him.
‘Take it nice and easy,’ I said. ‘We’re being watched.’
The General’s yellow eyes were unblinking as ever; he didn’t move a muscle as I explained the set-up.
‘Thank you, Mr Faraday,’ he said as I finished. ‘I think you can leave this to me.’
He called Clark and Macklehenny over to his chair and spoke with them in a low voice. Rodriguez looked down curiously from the stair-head. I went and sat in one of the General’s chairs and smoked a cigarette. I wondered why he didn’t put the main lights on.
The General called me over. ‘I’m going up top,’ he said. ‘Please stay with Sheriff Clark and do as he says. Whatever you see happening, stay put. Is that clear?’
I nodded. Diaz smiled. Macklehenny came up behind the chair and pushed it towards the bottom of the left-hand staircase. Clark stood looking up the stair-head until he heard the whirr of the lift. Macklehenny walked up the stairs, keeping pace with the General’s chair on its electrically operated platform. When they got to the top, the General said something to Rodriguez. The Captain saluted and went off down the corridor.
Clark came over to me in the gloom and gripped my arm; we went to the foot of the right-hand staircase and waited in the semi-darkness. I could hear a faint shuffling. I noticed that the Sheriff had the General’s bow and the quiver of arrows. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. We waited for perhaps a quarter of a minute. The only lights in the vast room came from a couple of shaded lamps down near the General’s desk, which had been switched on at dusk. In the half of the window not masked by the curtain, the blue glare of the storm played a will-o-the-wisp dance macabre among the tree-tops and the hills beyond. Boris Karloff might have been at home here but I wasn’t.
Then I heard the soft thump of Rodriguez’ feet coming back down the top corridor. Almost at the same moment, from the dark stair-head behind us came the well-known whine and the squeaking of rubber-treaded tyres on the General’s wheel-chair. As the lightning flickered again, Clark and I could see the chair silhouetted on the balcony; it passed the top of the staircase at an incredible speed and made off down the corridor. The note of the electric motor made a high, shrill scream that sounded even above the racket of the storm. The chair went on down the landing towards Rodriguez with increasing velocity.
I heard the Captain stop and shout in alarm. There was a shuffling on the staircase behind us but Clark and I had no time for it. The hollow boom of a shot sounded high above another rising peal of thunder. In the flare of the next lightning flash I saw the General’s figure hunched oddly in his blankets; the chair went straight at the Captain as he emptied his revolver into the helpless form of the General. A bullet spanged off metal. As I leapt forward, Clark’s hand was on my shoulder, forcing me down. Rodriguez kicked at the chair as it reached him; for a moment he and the chair tottered at the top of the left-hand staircase in the flash of the lightning.
Incredibly, I found the General at my elbow. He was wheezing and puffing after dragging himself painfully down the stairs behind us. He held the bow that Clark had passed him. The steel arc sang against the boom of the thunder and the great organ-notes of the string sounded again. The steel bolt whistled in the air. Rodriguez screamed once and twisted as the shaft went through his throat, came out the other side.
He grasped the wheel-chair with dying hands and brought it crashing the length of the stairs with him. The motor shrieked as the wheels left the floor, and the big metal chair bounced and trembled its way down the flight, dragging the recumbent figure of the Captain with it. His twitching hand tightened on the rail of the chair and then was still. Thunder boomed again as Clark wiped his face. He went over and switched off the motor of the wheel-chair. The wheels ceased their frantic spinning.
‘Well done, Howard Hill,’ I told the General.
The whole room sprang into light as Macklehenny flung the switch. He walked down the stairs behind us. The General sagged back and I helped him into a chair. His face was white and chalky with the effort of dragging himself down the steps. Clark released the Captain’s dead hand from the rail of the chair and righted the whole thing. He tossed out the bundled pillows and blankets with which Macklehenny had duplicated the figure of Diaz. He and the deputy righted the chair awkwardly. It seemed to work all right, except that one of the rails was bent. Clark and Macklehenny helped the General back into the chair. Clark went over to Rodriguez and lifted away the dark cheaters. ‘Julio,’ he grunted. Then I remembered the photographs he’d showed me earlier. The one with the moustache. It would have had to be him. He looked most like Rodriguez.
‘The General figured he’d crack when the chair came at him,’ he said softly, almost to himself. He rubbed his chin and looked across at me.
‘He killed Rodriguez somewhere in town,’ I said, ‘and took his place. I thought he looked a bit strange tonight. That’s why he stood a long way off whenever the General spoke to him. Drove back in the car past the gate men. He hid the Captain’s body in the furnace room and poisoned or drugged the dogs. Rodriguez was in charge of feeding them.
Question is, were the others with him, or was he supposed to let them in?’
‘My bet is that they’re inside the house,’ said Clark. ‘We haven’t heard a word from the servants. And the phone’s cut off from the gate and the outside. The guards would have been up to investigate if they’d been able.’
The General nodded slowly. ‘I’m afraid the Sheriff is right, gentlemen,’ he said.
He sat looking down at the body of Julio. He prodded it curiously with the end of his bow; blood was coagulating where the steel tip of the shaft stuck out beyond the neck muscles. Remembering Rodriguez in the boiler room I couldn’t feel sorry.
‘Thank you, Mr Clark,’ Diaz said to the Sheriff, ‘for agreeing to my little plan. Melodramatic and unnecessary, of course, but for a minute there I felt my old self again.’
His eyes flashed and sparkled. Twenty years seemed to have dropped off his age. I went over to the table and lit another cigarette.
‘That leaves three, then,’ I said.
‘And Myers,’ Macklehenny reminded me.
‘And Myers,’ I agreed.
As I spoke dark figures came into focus on the balcony.
‘I said we’d got company,’ I told Diaz. ‘Meet the Four Just Men.’
Chapter 13
Three from Cuba
The persuasive black snout of a Schmeis-ser machine pistol focused unwaveringly on our small group round Julio. The barrel looked as big as a mine-shaft and it seemed centred dead on my belly. It was very necessary not to move. I stayed so still it felt like my feet were nailed to the floor. Clark and Macklehenny had frozen too; in any case no-one could have done anything because of the General.
Only he seemed perfectly at ease; he sat back in the chair, fingering the string of his bow almost sensually and looked at the three men who stood on the balcony. I couldn’t see Myers though I guessed he wouldn’t be far away. The one with the machine pistol I took to be the man they called Damascus. That was why I hadn’t mo
ved.
The medium-sized man holding the sub-machine gun, resting the squat black barrel gently on the staircase railing before him could only be Salivar. But it was the one with the automatic and looking nowhere in particular, though all his attention was evidently fixed on the General, who arrested my gaze. Hernando’s picture hadn’t done him justice. He stared about him for a moment or two longer, sizing up the situation. Then another shadow moved on the balcony and the big, thickset form of the man I had known as Cheney came forward into the light.
It was the General who finally broke the silence which had superseded the low growl of receding thunder.
‘You have not changed, Hernando. Jackals always gather in packs.’
Hernando didn’t say anything. He looked down at the body of Julio and smiled. I thought it was the most sinister thing I had ever seen. I wasn’t anxious to see him in an unpleasant mood. He moved the automatic in a steady arc, stopping momentarily on each of us in turn.
‘Weapons on the floor,’ he said. ‘Slow’s the word.’
I put down the slicing bar as ostentatiously as possible. The General placed his bow on the floor by his chair. I saw Clark and Macklehenny exchange a brief glance. Then they unbuckled their gunbelts and dumped them on the carpet.
Hernando turned. ‘Go down and search them, Myers,’ he said. The big man raised a shaky hand in protest.
‘Why didn’t you call me Cheney?’ he whined. ‘That’s what I’m known as here.’
‘You don’t think you’re fooling these people any?’ said the man called Damascus. ‘They was wise to you a long while ago.’
His voice sounded like a rusty gate. Myers flushed and came on down the stairs towards us. He looked about as lethal as a flit-gun. If Damascus had said anything else to him I felt he might have bust out crying. He ran me over with his unsteady hands. A blast of whisky blew in my face.