Quincannon stood puzzled and scowling in the icy draft. No room at the inn?, he thought ironically. On the contrary, there was plenty of room at this inn on Christmas Eve. It didn't seem to have any people in it.
On a table near the bed he spied a well-worn family Bible. Impulse took him to it; he opened it at the front, where such vital statistics as marriages, births, and deaths were customarily recorded. Two names were written there in a fine woman's hand: Martha and Adam Keene. And a wedding date: July 17, 1893. That was all.
Well, now he knew the identity of the missing occupants. But what had happened to them? He hadn't seen them in the barn. And the other, smaller cabin—guest accommodations, he judged—had also been in darkness upon his arrival. It made no sense that a man and his wife would suddenly quit the warmth of their home in the middle of a Christmas Eve supper, to lurk about in a darkened out-building. It also made no sense that they would voluntarily decide to rush off into a snowstorm on foot or on horseback. Forced out of here, then? By Slick Henry Garber or someone else? If so, why?
Quincannon returned to the parlour. He had no desire to go out again into the wind and swirling snow, but he was not the sort of man who could allow a confounding mystery to go un-investigated—particularly a mystery that might involve a criminal with a handsome price on his head. So, grumbling a little, his un-mittened hands deep in the pockets of his coat, he bent his body into what was swiftly becoming a full-scale blizzard.
He fought his way to the barn First, because it was closer and to satisfy himself that it really was occupied only by horses. The wind had blown out the lantern when he'd left earlier; he relighted it, but not until he had First drawn his revolver. One of the animals—not the rented roan—moved restlessly in its stall as he walked toward the far end. There were good-sized piles of hay in each of the empty stalls as well, he noticed. He leaned into those stalls with the lantern. If anyone were hiding in a haypile it would have to be close to the surface to avoid the risk of suffocation; he poked at each pile in turn with the Navy's barrel. Hay and nothing but hay.
In one corner of the back wall was an enclosure that he took to be a harness room. Carefully he opened the door with his gun hand. Buckles and bit chains gleamed in the narrow space within; he saw the shapes of saddles, bridles, hackamores. Something made a scurrying noise among the floor shadows and he lowered the lantern in time to see the tail end of a packrat disappear behind a loose board. Dust was the only other thing on the floor.
He went back toward the front, stopped again when he was abreast of the loft ladder. He climbed it with the lantern lifted above his head. But the loft contained nothing more than several tightly stacked bales of hay and a thin scattering of straw that wouldn't have concealed a packrat, much less a man or a woman.
No one in the main cabin, no one in the barn. That left only the guest cabin. And if that, too, was deserted? Well then, he thought irascibly, he would sit down in the main cabin and gorge himself on venison stew while he waited for somebody—the Keenes, Slick Henry, the Ghost of Christmas Past—to put in an appearance. He was cold and tired and hungry, and mystery or no mystery he was not about to wander around in a blizzard hunting for clues.
Out once more into the white fury. By the time he worked his way through what were now thigh-deep drifts to the door of the guest cabin, his legs and arms were stiff and his beard was caked with frozen snow. He wasted no time getting the door open, but he didn't enter right away. Instead he let the wind hurl the door inward, so that it cracked audibly against the wall, while he hung back and to one side with his revolver drawn.
Nothing happened inside.
He waited another few seconds, but already the icebound night was beginning to numb his bare hand; another minute or two of exposure and the skin would freeze to the gunmetal. He entered the cabin in a sideways crouch, caught hold of the door and crowded it shut until it latched. Chill, clotted black encased him now, so thick that he was virtually blind. Should he risk lighting a match? Well, if he wanted to see who or what this cabin might contain, he would have to risk it. Floundering around in the dark would no doubt mean a broken limb, his luck being what it was these days.
He fumbled in his pocket for another lucifer, struck it on his left thumbnail, clucked down and away from the flare of light. Still nothing happened. But the light revealed that this cabin was divided into two sparsely furnished bedrooms with an open door in the dividing wall; and it also revealed some sort of huddled mass on the floor of the rear bedroom.
In slow strides, holding the match up and away from his body, he moved toward the doorway. The flame died just as he reached it—just as he recognized the huddled mass as the motionless body of a man. He thumbed another match alight, went through the doorway, leaned down for a closer look. The man lay drawn up on his back, and on one temple blood from a bullet furrow glistened blackly in the wavering flame. Young man, sandy-haired, wearing an old vicuna cloth suit and a clean white shirt now spotted with blood. A man Quincannon had never seen before. . .
Something moved behind him.
Something else slashed the air, grazed the side of Quincannon's head as he started to turn and dodge, drove him sideways to the floor.
The lucifer went out as he was struck; he lost his grip on the Navy and it went clattering away into blackness as thick as the inside of Old Scratch's fundament. The blow had been sharp enough to set up a ringing in his ears, but the thick rabbit-fur cap had cushioned it enough so that he wasn't stunned. He pulled around on to his knees, lunged back toward the doorway with both hands reaching. Above him he heard again that slashing of the air, only this time the swung object missed him entirely. Which threw the man who had swung off-balance, at the same instant that Quincannon's right hand found a grip on sheepskin material not unlike that of his own coat. He yanked hard, heard a grunt, and then the heavy weight of his assailant came squirming and cursing down on top of him.
The floor of an unfamiliar, black-dark room was the last place Quincannon would have chosen for hand-to-hand combat. But he was a veteran of any number of skirmishes, and had learned ways to do grievous damage to an opponent that would have shocked the Marquis of Queensbury. (Sabina, too, no doubt. Or maybe not.) Besides which, this particular opponent, whoever he was, was labouring under the same disadvantages as he was.
There were a few seconds of scrambling and bumping about, some close-quarters pummelling on both sides, a blow that split Quincannon's lip and made his Scot's blood boil even more furiously, a brief and violent struggle for possession of what felt like a long-barrelled revolver, and then, finally, an opportunity for Quincannon to use a mean and scurrilous trick he had learned in a free-for-all on the Baltimore docks. His assailant screamed, quit fighting, began to twitch instead; and to groan and wail and curse feebly. This vocal combination made Quincannon's head hurt all the more, and led him, since he now had possession of the long-barrelled revolver, to thump the man on top of the head with the weapon. The groaning and wailing and cursing ceased abruptly. So did the twitching.
Quincannon got to his feet, stood shakily wiping blood from his torn lip. He made the mistake then of taking a blind step and almost fell over one or other of the two men now lying motionless on the floor. He produced another lucifer from his dwindling supply. In its flare he spied a lamp, and managed to get to it in time to light the wick before the flame died. He located his Navy, holstered it, then carried the lamp to where the men lay and peered at the face of the one who had tried to brain him.
'Well, well,' he said aloud, with considerable relish. 'A serendipitous turnabout after all. Just what I wanted for Christmas—Slick Henry Garber.'
Slick Henry Garber said nothing, nor would he be able to for a good while.
The young, sandy-haired lad—Adam Keene, no doubt—was also unconscious. The bullet wound on his head didn't seem to be serious, but he would need attention. He wouldn't be saying anything, either, for a good while. Quincannon would just have to wait for the full story of what had
happened here before his arrival. Unless, of course, he got it from Adam Keene's wife. . .
Where was Adam Keene's wife?
Carrying the lamp, he searched the two bedrooms. No sign of Martha Keene. He did find Slick Henry's leather satchel, in a corner of the rear room; it contained several thousand shares of bogus mining stock and nine thousand dollars in greenbacks. He also found evidence of a struggle, and not one but two bullet holes in the back wall.
These things, plus a few others, plus a belated application of imagination and logic, allowed him to make a reasonably accurate guess as to tonight's sequence of events. Slick Henry had arrived just before the snowstorm and just as the Keenes were sitting down to supper. He had either put his horse in the barn himself or Adam Keene had done it; that explained why there had been three saddle horses present when only two people lived at Traveller's Rest. Most likely Slick Henry had then thrown down on the Keenes: he must have been aware that Quincannon was still close behind him, even if Quincannon hadn't known it, and must have realized that with the impending storm it was a good bet his pursuer would also stop at Traveller's Rest. And what better place for an ambush than one of these three buildings? Perhaps he'd chosen the guest cabin on the theory that Quincannon would be less on his guard there than at the other two. To ensure that, Slick Henry had taken Adam Keene with him at gunpoint, leaving Mrs Keene in the main cabin with instructions to tell Quincannon that no other travellers had appeared today, and to then send him to the guest cabin.
But while the two men were in that cabin Adam Keene had heroically attempted to disarm Slick Henry, there had been a struggle, and Keene had unheroically received a bullet wound for his efforts. Martha Keene must have heard at least one of the shots, and fearing the worst she had left the main cabin through the bedroom window and hidden herself somewhere. Had Slick Henry found her? Not likely. But it seemed reasonable to suppose he had been out hunting for her when Quincannon came. The violence of the storm had kept him from springing his trap at that point; he had decided instead to return to the guest cabin as per his original plan. And this was where he had been ever since, waiting in the dark for his nemesis to walk in like a damned fool—which was just what Quincannon had done.
This day's business, Quincannon thought ruefully, had been one long, grim comedy of errors on all sides. Slick Henry's actions were at least half-doltish and so were his own. Especially his own—blundering in half a dozen different ways, including not even once considering the possibility of a planned ambush. Relentless manhunter, intrepid detective. Hah. It was a wonder he hadn't been shot dead. Sabina would chide him mercilessly if he told her the entire story of his capture of Slick Henry Garber. Which, of course, he had no intention of doing.
Well, he could redeem himself somewhat by finding Martha Keene. Almost certainly she had to be in one of the three buildings. She wouldn't have remained in the open, exposed, in a raging mountain storm. She would not have come anywhere near the guest cabin because of Slick Henry. And she hadn't stayed in the main cabin; the open bedroom window proved that. Ergo, she was in the barn. But he had searched the barn, even gone up into the hayloft. No place to hide up there, or in the harness enclosure, or in one of the stalls, or. . .
The lamp base on the bedroom floor, he thought.
No room at the inn, he thought.
'Well, of course, you blasted rattlepate,' he said aloud. 'It's the only place she can be.'
Out once more into the whipping snow and freezing wind (after first taking the precaution of binding Slick Henry's hands with the man's own belt). Slog, slog, slog, and finally into the darkened barn. He lighted the lantern, took it to the approximate middle of the building, and then called out, 'Mrs Keene! My name is John Quincannon, I am a detective from San Francisco, and I have just cracked the skull of the man who terrorized you and your husband tonight. You have nothing more to fear.'
No response.
'I know you're here, and approximately where. Won't you save both of us the embarrassment of my poking around with a pitchfork?'
Silence.
'Mrs Keene, your husband is unconscious with a head wound and he needs you. Please believe me.'
More silence. Then, just as he was about to issue another plea, there was a rustling and stirring in one of the empty stalls to his left. He moved over that way in time to see Martha Keene rise up slowly from her hiding place deep under the pile of hay.
She was young, attractive, as fair-haired as her husband, and wrapped warmly in a heavy fleece-lined coat. She was also, Quincannon noted with surprise, quite obviously with child.
What didn't surprise him was the length of round, hollow glass she held in one hand—the chimney that belonged to the lamp base on the bedroom floor. She had had the presence of mind to snatch it up before climbing out the window, in her haste dislodging the base from the bedside table. The chimney was the reason neither he nor Slick Henry had found her; by using it as a breathing tube, she had been able to burrow deep enough into the haypile to escape a superficial search.
For a space she stared at Quincannon out of wide, anxious eyes. What she saw seemed to reassure her. She released a thin, sighing breath and said tremulously, 'My husband—you're sure he's not. . .?'
'No, no. Wounded I said and wounded I meant. He'll soon be good as new.'
'Thank God!'
'And you, my dear? Are you all right?'
'Yes, I. . . yes. Just frightened. I've been lying here imagining all sorts of dreadful things.' Mrs Keene sighed again, plucked clinging straw from her face and hair. 'I didn't want to run and hide, but I thought Adam must be dead and I was afraid for my baby. . . oh!' She winced as if with a sudden sharp pain, dropped the lamp chimney and placed both hands over the swell of her abdomen. 'All the excitement. . .I believe the baby will arrive sooner than expected.'
Quincannon gave her a horrified look. 'Right here? Now?'
'No, not that soon.' A wan smile. 'Tomorrow . . .'
It was his turn to put forth a relieved sigh as he moved into the stall to help her up.
Tomorrow. Christmas Day. Appropriate that she should have her baby then. But it wasn't the only thing about this situation that was appropriate to the season. This was a stable, and what was the stall where she had lain with her unborn child but a manger? There were animals in attendance, too. And at least one wise man (wise in some things, surely) who had come bearing a gift without even knowing it, a gift of a third—no, a half—of the $5000 reward for the capture of Slick Henry Garber.
Peace on earth, good will to men.
Quincannon smiled; of a sudden he felt very jolly and very much in a holiday spirit. This was, he thought, going to be a fine Christmas after all.
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11 - Sister Bessie by CYRIL HARE
CYRIL HARE (real name Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark, 1900—58) only wrote nine detective novels. Double that would still have been too few. Out of those nine books, four—Tragedy At Law (1942), With A Bare Bodkin (1946), When The Wind Blows {1949), and An English Murder (1951)—constitute a quartet of peculiarly English masterpieces of the murder-writer's art.
Not that the rest of his slim output is that far behind (one book not included is The Magic Bottle, a wholly delightful fantasy for children which begs to be reprinted). I have a particular fondness for Suicide Excepted {1939), a fine novel, much underrated, with a nicely contrived shock at the end. Cyril Hare was good at shocks. Even his last book, He Should Have Died Hereafter (1958), though plotline-slim, manages effortlessly to surprise the reader, even though there's a strong nudge in the direction of the solution in its own title. But then he never seemed to mind taking risks. Tragedy At Law has 284 text pages; the only murder takes place on page 253. On the face of it that's not just a risk, it's an act of madness. Yet since it was first published half a century ago the book has achieved classic status. Judge Henry Leon (who, as Henry Ceceil, wrote quantities of legal farces as well as some entertaining and characterful near-mysteries) prais
ed it immoderately; Julian Symons included it amongst his list of 'best, anywhere, ever'.
For most of his working life—apart from a brief wartime stint at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and a longer spell under the Director of Public Prosecutions—Cyril Hare was at the hard end of the law, a working barrister whose career reached its peak when he was appointed a County Court judge. By all accounts he was a congenial man, urbane, dryly amusing, a lawyer to his fingertips yet one who had a gratifyingly short way with life's little problems. His friend Michael Gilbert recalls an occasion when the gasfire in the Detection Club died and no one had a shilling for the meter; it was Cyril Hare who gently pointed out that an Italian one-lira coin worked just as well. All things considered, if I'd been up before the beak on the Surrey circuit circa 1950-58, I rather think I wouldn't have minded that beak being Judge Gordon Clark.
His short stories are little gems. I've yet to come across a real dud. Even his earliest efforts—those written in his twenties for the popular weeklies and glossy magazines of the day: the Novel Magazine, Pearson's Weekly, Passing Show, the Bystander—exhibit an enviable deftness of touch, narrational and plotting skills well above average, and a natural bent towards jurisprudence, however oddball ('The Devil and Mr Tosher', a very early story and never reprinted, hinges on a slackly drawn-up infernal contract). He had a lively sense of irony which he never lost, and was one of those rare souls—Leslie Charteris was another—capable of keeping a joke going throughout a full-length novel (there's a priceless last line to That Yew Tree's Shade which has clearly been biding its time for most of the book's 70,000 words).
Mind you, on occasion—like that other great detective story writer and meter-out of the law, Henry Wade—Cyril Hare's irony could take on a decidedly darker tinge. . .
At Christmas-time we gladly greet
Crime at Christmas Page 14