by Joan Sanger
“I do not think so.”
The police officer intervened with a broad smile. “I have checked this myself, Señor Alcott. There were neither callers nor messages.”
Alcott shook his head thoughtfully and turned again to the clerk.
“Did Mr. Watts put in any phone messages during the day?”
The young man looked dubious.
Again the police officer spoke up. “I have also talked about that with the operator. There were no phone messages, Señor.”
Alcott smiled and patted the officer’s back. “We need you around home, Montaro. Cuba’s really too cramped for your talents.” He paused a moment. “By the way, how did you leave our friend Señor Sanchez at Headquarters?”
Suddenly the inspector looked uncomfortable. He gave an embarrassed cough. “Er—er—Señor, I am very sorry to report, but in spite of everything I could say, that José Sanchez managed to get himself, how do you say it, freed on bail at ten o’clock this evening.”
“Wha—at!” Alcott ejaculated in sudden interest; then, after a pause, “Did you think to have him shadowed when he left Headquarters?”
“Er—er, Señor, it so happened I was not there at the time.”
Alcott let out a low whistle. “Montara,” he said gravely. “You stick right here in Havana. I was mistaken in what I said a while ago. We have a thousand like you back home!” Pete lit a cigarette.
Montara looked over at me. Anyone could see he was as woebegone as a licked puppy. To ease his tension, he made a brave stab at conversation. “Very soon, you Americanos will be thinking Havana no very safe place for your little vacations, eh? First, that young Americano who get killed last year. How you call him—Wyndham? And now this young man tonight.”
Alcott was blowing a series of smoke rings ceiling-ward. “Don’t fret, Montara!” he snapped, mercilessly. “Americans in general will still be safe enough in spite of your carelessness. Anyhow, the Wyndham mess of last year and this dead man here tonight are both the work of the same cold diabolically cunning hand.”
The idea took a seemingly endless time crawling into Montara’s brain. When at last it registered, he broke out in wonder.
“Señor Alcott, you really believe this?”
Alcott looked the little Inspector over coolly. “I know it.”
Inspector Montara smiled and shrugged. “You right about so many things, maybe you right about this. Only one thing I know you’re wrong about, Señor.” Dramatically, he bided his time. “This young man who was shot tonight, you say he was killed, eh? But non, Señor. He’s unconscious, si! . . . But he still have a small chance at life.”
Alcott strode over and grasped Montara by the shoulder. His face was white.
“What makes you say that?”
“I got the word not ten minutes ago from the Mercedes Hospital.”
When Pete turned back to me there was a strange look on his face. “Listen here, Johnny,” he said with quiet decision. “We’ve stalled around long enough. No matter what it costs, rent Wyndham’s old suite at the Sevilla Biltmore for tomorrow night. Set up a table with cards and chips. See that there are plenty of drinks on hand; and, oh yes, plenty of cigars, too. Round up every living person who was in on that damned poker party of last year. Lasso everyone else who was anywhere around. Drag them there, tie them, kidnap them, but get them there by ten o’clock sharp! We must have the old scene in every possible particular. And, oh yes! Be sure to have a couple of police on hand too! We’ll need them, Johnny.”
“What’s the big idea!”
“A last play! Or maybe, a last tragedy.”
He turned on his heel.
“Where are you off to?” I called in curiosity.
He looked back with a peculiar smile. “Sorry, but I’ve a kind of hankering to see that guy at the Mercedes Hospital.”
PART THREEPoints Unknown
Chapter XXIV THE ROUND-UP
WHEN I try to think back calmly and coherently on the events of the day that followed, my memory staggers, reels and despite a record of fairly dependable service this once it fails me completely. There is a confused blur of frantic phone calls, frenzied interviews, hotel authorities, Police Headquarters, infinite yards of administrative red tape, countless wearisome details and over and above all the necessity to see and to persuade into coming to Pete’s absurd meeting place the six men who represented all that was left of that once strange and fateful party.
Six pretty queer men at that, I kept telling myself as I cornered each. Somehow that private verdict bolstered my nerve. And after all what else could I think of a group, who no matter what their excuses had sat by for nearly a year since that mysterious occasion when a so-called friend had vanished from their very midst into the unknown.
Needless to say I did not rely too implicitly upon their several assurances that they would meet me without fail in Room 209 of the Sevilla Biltmore Hotel at ten o’clock that night. As I left each I took care to station on watch a plainclothes man from the best Havana Agency with instructions to keep a sharp look-out and notify me promptly if by 9:30 P.M. his quarry looked as though he were heading anywhere else but to our net.
However, I could have spared myself both trouble and expense.
At ten o’clock precisely I looked around the suite that had once been Wyndham’s and congratulated myself. The stage was set in every detail, from the marble topped table and wicker furniture of last year, down to the minutest particulars of ice, drinks, cigars, chips and cards. Yes, and at the last minute, by some white flash of inspiration I’d even remembered to draw the Venetian blinds.
As for the cast? Outside in the corridor, mystified but obedient, Miguel, the night attendant, took up his stand as he had almost a year ago. And inside the room, in varying attitudes of annoyance, boredom, interest or curiosity lounged the men who were once brought together by the simple bond that they all liked poker, and now by the more tenuous tie that they had all been present on the occasion of the last known appearance of Stephen P. Wyndham.
The situation was hardly conducive to ease or affability. The atmosphere seemed charged with an electrical tension. On the surface Barton Dunlap and Hugh Ford seemed chatting as nonchalantly as though their meeting were occurring on the golf links or in their club room or under any conceivable circumstances other than the present. However, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a few peculiar things. One was that Ford was smoking with nervous incessancy. The other was the phenomenon of Barton Dunlap’s tie. A small thing to be sure, but puzzling withal. Because, despite all his usual sartorial correctness, his tie was on quite awry. And the color was in ghastly disharmony with the rest of his costume. Furthermore, I noticed he had already gotten away with half a bottle of brandy and was still going strong.
Judge Lamar who stood at my side noticed the latter. “Look here, Ellis!” he said with his usual air of tolerant omniscience, “better lock up your liquor, or your little party will be turning into a free-for-all souse!”
“Let it!” I said wearily. “And here we go with it!” I poured a stiff drink for the Judge and myself. As though in common impulse, we raised our glasses. “To Lynn,” I said suddenly, with a change of mood.
The Judge drained his drink and reached for a chaser. “What’s the big idea?” he said gravely. “I don’t mind for myself, but young fellow, you’d better keep your wits about you.”
“Aw, my friend Alcott will be breezing along any minute now to take charge of this show. Anyhow, I’m so damned tired, it would feel simply great to get pie-eyed drunk this once.”
That was the God’s truth. Furthermore, the atmosphere of that room was getting on my nerves. Across from me, Charles Stone was sitting aloof and detached, smiling at me with that everlasting sardonic smile of his. Smug and imperturbable he seemed behind the bulwark of his would-be admirable character, but never for a moment did he seem to take his eyes from me.
Nearby, glowering at us all in rage, and filling the room full of his cigar smoke, was
Señor José Sanchez. Every now and then he walked sullenly down the passageway to what had been Wyndham’s former room, and where, just now, Señorita Lola had been permitted to ensconce herself in a deep and moody solitude. There was something questionable about that pair. When I tried to view them, as I had the night before, as the sole key to the disappearance of Stephen Wyndham, Señor and Señora de Sanchez may have seemed a very inadequate answer to all our many complexities. But now that I actually faced them, temporarily free and at large, well—that couple bothered me more than a little. I can tell you that.
As I look back on that room, I think the only thoroughly unconcerned person present appeared to be Mr. Philip Brady of the West Coast and Fine Art Studio. I’d met him for the first time that day. Of medium height, blond in a baby-doll way, he ambled around, addressing now this person, now that, his deep blue eyes and high voice proclaiming more plainly than words ever could the fact that he was about every other inch a man. He was garrulous and amiable, telling everyone how he’d flown down from Hollywood upon the receipt of Mr. Ford’s radio, how terribly upset he’d been at the first intimations that anything was amiss; how awfully impressed he’d always been with young Wyndham ever since he’d met him—oh, years ago, during a sojourn in India.
“I was just appalled about this affair! It’s just too frightfully awful! We think we have occasional sensations out in Hollywood, but dear me! Dear me! When I think of this!”
By eleven o’clock, the strain of the occasion was beginning to tell on us all. Conversation petered out. An ominous silence filled the place. Pete Alcott had not turned up as yet, and minute by minute I was growing more anxious about him. Furthermore, even with a couple of police in the corridor outside, and the ordinary quota of human curiosity to back me, I began to doubt my ability to hold this ill-sorted crowd together much longer. At last, to relieve an unendurable situation I suggested we try a few hands of poker.
With varying degrees of affability the men there fell in line. The question of stakes was quickly settled. Dunlap and Ford suggested high limits. I, of necessity, had to hold them to low ones. I got the crowd to seat themselves in precisely the same positions they had occupied nearly a year ago.
At the head of the table, near the door that communicated with Ford’s room, we left a vacant place, the place that had once been Wyndham’s. Next to it, on the left, Barton Dunlap, moody and silent, sank his huge frame. I suggested to young Stone that he take the next chair, (the one which actually had been occupied by Watts on the ill-fated night), but Stone shook his head, and looked me over with his peculiar smile.
“I don’t play cards as you well know. What’s more, I’d rather look on, just as I did last year!” He paused, then added insolently, “Anyhow, don’t bother about me. You better figure out what’s keeping your friend, Mr. Alcott.”
The fellow gave me the creeps. And then for no ascribable reason there arose in my mind’s eye the image of Miss Wyndham’s pale face as she had peered down at us that day from her second story window, cold and malevolent.
Stone drew up his chair behind Sanchez. Lamar and Brady took the next seats. And still there were three empty places. Grim toll of the passing year. Wyndham, Meenan and Watts! What strange dark skein of fate united those men in common destiny? I wondered. But wondering got me nowhere. Certainly, I knew that by now. Gloomily, I motioned Hugh Ford to Watts’ vacant place, pulled out Meenan’s chair for myself and commended to deal to a table that looked like this:
As I remember, we had played exactly three hands and were just commencing the fourth, when as I live, move, and have my being, the damn thing happened again, exactly as it was supposed to on that previous occasion, and before anyone realized what was up, the entire room went pitchy black. The lights in the corridor had failed, too, judging by the sounds outside. I couldn’t figure how, or why it had all come about. It was the one grim touch that lay outside my plan and it gave me a vague sense of disquiet.
From out the Stygian darkness that engulfed me came an immediate burst of anger and exclamations of surprise. Then an instant later matches were struck, cigarette lighters flickered on and every man at that table peered about at the startled and annoyed faces of his companions around him.
“What’s the big idea?” Ford broke out in a dour tone as though he held me personally responsible for the inky darkness.
But I didn’t get a chance to answer. In the moment the followed, the hall door swung open and I heard Alcott’s lazy drawl, “Gosh! I’m sorry to be so damned late.”
As he crossed to the table within the pale range of our light I observed with surprise that he was looking especially well groomed. Fresh shirt, clothes pressed, hair slicked back, all that sort of thing. And in the same glance, I noticed, too, that he was very pale and for some unaccountable reason, deeply shaken.
Without any ado, he made his way to the vacant place at the head of the table. As he glanced around at our flickering matches and cigarette lighters he suddenly smiled as though at some entirely private joke of his own.
“Had a kind of a hunch those matches and lighters would be working more quickly this time than they were supposed to on the last memorable occasion. But it’s a rather peculiar thing that this should be so.” His voice was low and even. “Doesn’t it strike you that way, gentlemen? Not individually, you understand. For anyone person’s lighter could fail him. But collectively, now! You’ll admit it’s really a little queer.”
Every pair of eyes at the table was focussed with sudden interest on Alcott’s tall, spare form as he stood there in the circle of wan, uncertain light. Over the entire scene hovered something spectral, supernatural.
The flickering of the matches threw vague shadows over Pete’s face, elongating some features, throwing one scar into complete oblivion, bringing another out into high relief, making his mop of grey hair seem almost white by contrast with the gloom all about him. But it was die burning intensity of his eyes as he turned to Barton Dunlap that held my own.
“For instance with you, Mr. Dunlap!” he said in that same low, even tone. “How does it happen that you manipulate your lighter so well now and on that last occasion, from all accounts, it failed you so completely?”
Barton Dunlap, despite all the liquor he had consumed, looked up at him sharply. His come-back was instantaneous and heated. “If you’re set on knowing, I’d loaned my lighter to one of the men.”
“To whom?”
Embarrassment. “Er—I don’t remember.”
Alcott smiled. His eye swept the table, past Ford who was known not to have been part of the fatal poker game; past Stone, who had already avowed that he never smoked; on . . . straight to Señor Sanchez.
“And you, Mr. Sanchez? I notice you keep striking those matches against that little box in your hand. Was it so inconvenient for you to have done that same thing when you last sat in this room?”
In an instant José Sanchez was on his feet, glowering in our direction. “I put up with enough these last two days. I no stand any more.” He looked bellicose enough to give his words special force. Then suddenly, Lolita darted from out the darkness to his side and whispered something in his ear. His mood underwent a swift change. He looked with attentive interest at the man at the head of the table. Then his hands unclenched. Sullenly he said, “Why do you not make to enquire if I had the matches before you talk like this, eh?”
Alcott was nonchalant. “Because I observe that little box in your hand is a valuable one. It has your monogram and it looks as though it might be more than a year old.”
“That much is true,” Sanchez sourly admitted. “But on the occasion you mention I could not find this little box of matches which I keep always beside me. Only after the lights come on did I see it down on the floor.”
Alcott turned to Judge Lamar. “And you, sir?”
“The same holds. I never carry a lighter, but I distinctly remember at the time of the disturbance groping about on the table for the matches that had been there, and fi
nding none.”
“And you, Mr. Brady?”
Meditatively, Mr. Brady’s slender white hand pressed his forehead. “Well, now, let me see. Let me see! I always do carry a lighter. Not the lovely jade one I now have, to be sure. This was a recent gift from one of my stars. Charming thing, isn’t it? Ah! it’s made me very happy. But let me see. I must have had another lighter with me that night. And why didn’t I use it?”
“Why, indeed?”
“You borrowed it from me, didn’t you, Judge Lamar? Ah, no! no! Now I remember it was the big gentleman on the other side of me. Yes, that Mr. Meenan.”
Alcott looked Brady over with mild curiosity.
“A statement which, like most of the others here tonight we are unable to verify. But no matter. Did Mr. Meenan give your lighter back to you before you left that evening?”
“Oh, yes! As a matter of fact, I remember now. Mine was the only lighter that worked during all that dreadful darkness. I remember seeing it in Mr. Meenan’s hand!”
I stirred uneasily in Meenan’s chair. There was a grey hush of expectancy in the room. Tense faces! Taut nerves! Then Alcott’s voice, still smooth and unruffled.
“Don’t look so disturbed, gentlemen. No one can be indicted for murder, simply for failing to use his lighter at the psychological moment. It only happens that each of you willingly or unwillingly were duped that night into playing straight into the hands of the criminals within your midst.”
A wave of indignant surprise swept over the group. Barton Dunlap forgot his superciliousness, Señor Sanchez his private grievance, young Stone sprang impulsively to his feet, then thinking better of his intention, subsided once more in his chair.
Only Alcott, undisturbed, went on in the same low, even tone:
“For you see, gentlemen, you all sat in on a very horrible crime that night. Under the cover of that cunningly planned darkness, within a very few feet of you, Stephen Wyndham was knocked over the head with some hard, jagged object. My theory is that he fell forward just where he sat, instantly unconscious. He may have uttered a groan at the time, for several of you in your accounts of that night have mentioned hearing some sound that could have been taken for a groan. But each of you attributed that sound to the prevalent tomfoolery. That was your error and Wyndham’s very bad luck.