She stumbled against a chair and then felt the twist of the iron latch under her groping hand. She turned the big key, and the lock creaked. Instantly the door slammed back against her, knocking her into the corner, and then Captain Perona gripped her arm with fingers like metal hooks.
"Is there anyone in here with you?" he demanded.
"Wha--what?" Janet said dazedly.
Two soldiers thrust past them. One carried a big flashlight, and its brilliant round eye flicked questioningly through the darkness. The second soldier had a carbine, and the steel of its bayonet flashed savagely as he prodded under the bed and into the cubbyhole closet.
"Let go of me!" Janet cried. "What do you mean--coming in this way... Stop that!"
Captain Perona released her. "Senorita, is it your custom to greet visitors unclothed?"
Janet looked down at herself. "Oh! Oh, my!" She turned her back and then turned around again and crouched down protectively.
Captain Perona picked up her dress from a chair and dropped it on top of her as though it were something unclean. "Please put this on and stop offending my modesty."
Janet fought with the dress. "I can't... It's caught... Don't you touch me!"
Captain Perona yanked the dress down over her head. "Please, senorita! This is no time to be flirtatious!"
Janet's head emerged from the dress. "Oh! You--you--You know very well I had no nightclothes with me, and I had to wash out my underthings, and I didn't have anything--"
"No doubt," said Captain Perona.
He shoved her at the soldier with the carbine. The soldier took her arm and hustled her out into the hall. It was a flickering nightmare tunnel with flashlights reflecting from the cold blue of gun barrels, from gleaming brass buttons. There were more soldiers, crowded so close Janet had no chance to count them, their faces dark and tense, excitedly eager.
The one who had hold of her hurried her along, steered her down the stairs at a stumbling run. The big kerosene pressure lamp was lighted, swinging violently on its chain, and its shadows chased and jumped crazily over more soldiers. There were three of them at the door, peering in, and more at the window and the door into the kitchen. The one who was escorting Janet let go of her and ran upstairs again.
"Pardon me," said Doan, "while I put on my pants." He hopped industriously on one leg and then the other.
Carstairs sat on the floor looking rumpled and sleepily indignant. Lepicik was sitting at a table beside the staircase. He was fully dressed and as neat as ever. He was even carrying his green umbrella. He was not at all concerned by the uproar. His expression was one of vaguely polite interest.
"My dress!" Janet exclaimed, pulling at it frantically. "And--and I haven't got any shoes on!"
"Neither have I," said Doan cheerfully. He sat down and put his bare feet up on a chair. "The Captain seemed to be in a bit of a rush."
"What is it?" Janet demanded. "What's the matter?" She looked at the soldiers. "Querasa?"
One soldier shrugged. The others shook their heads at her.
"That clears everything up," Doan observed.
"Are you sober now?" Janet asked him suspiciously.
Doan nodded. "Just about."
"Well, do you feel--awfully bad?"
"No," said Doan.
"I thought people always felt bad after they got drunk."
"You have to have brains to get a hangover," Doan told her. "I'm never troubled."
"You were very drunk, you know. You sang questionable songs and beat on the table and told jokes that had no point and spilled three drinks."
"That's me," Doan agreed. "That's your old pal, Drunken Doan, when he gets curled."
"Carstairs was very angry with you."
"He's an evil-tempered brute," Doan said. "He's always mad at something."
The Henshaws, all three of them, came rumbling down the stairs like a group of frightened sheep with a soldier herding them along with judicious thrusts of his carbine butt.
"Say!" Henshaw said, struggling with his suspenders. "What gives here, anyway? Are we invaded?"
Mrs. Henshaw screamed: "I'll tell the President! I'll write him a letter! He'll send a battleship right down here and blow you all up!"
"Yeow!" Mortimer screeched. "Maw!"
Mrs. Henshaw enveloped him in a stranglehold. "Don't cry, baby! I won't let the beasts shoot you!"
Henshaw was tucking in his shirttail. "This is sure a fine way to treat tourists and allies. Just wait until I talk before the Rotary Club. I'll sure put the blister on these birds."
"What were you yelling about a minute ago?" Doan asked him.
Henshaw looked sheepish. "You hear me? Well, I was havin' a nightmare. A lulu, too. You know this mountain range is supposed to be a sleeping woman. I dreamed she was lying there all peaceful when a big mouse that looked like Carstairs came sneaking along, and she jumped up and let out a screech and shook her skirts, and the whole damned town fell into the canyon. And then six soldiers started to shake my bed to wake me up! I woke up, all right! Out loud!"
Heels made a quick, crisp clatter on the stairs, and Captain Perona came down and looked at them. His eyes were narrowed, gleaming slits.
"Quiet!" he barked. "Quiet, all of you! Where is the man, Greg?"
No one answered until Janet snapped suddenly: "Was that who you thought was in my room? Why, I'll--"
Captain Perona took a step toward her. "Will you be quiet?"
"Yes," said Janet, scared.
There was a sudden uproar of voices in the kitchen and the metallic clangor of a pan rolling on the floor. Timpkins was thrust headlong into the room. He was wearing a long white nightshirt, and his nutcracker face was contorted and red with rage above it.
"Here now! What's all this? I'm a British subject, I'll have you know! I'll protest--"
"Silence!" Captain Perona ordered. "Where is the man, Greg?"
"Arr?" said Timpkins blankly. "Greg? In his bed, I suppose."
"No! His bed has not been slept in!"
"Why all the sudden interest in Greg?" Doan asked.
Captain Perona watched him narrowly. "Tonight the maid of Patricia Van Osdel--the woman, Maria--was stabbed and killed in her hospital bed. The soldier guarding her was also killed. Three hand grenades were stolen from the armory."
"Don't blame me," said Doan. "I didn't have any grudge against Maria, and besides I was so drunk I wouldn't have known a hand grenade from a howitzer. Ask anybody. Those hand grenades sound like our old pal, Bautiste Bonofile, is out and about again."
"No," said Captain Perona. "He would not need to steal explosives. He has plenty of his own."
"That's nice to know, too," Doan commented. "Looks like, what with this and that, we're going to have a quiet weekend among the peaceful peasants."
"As I may have mentioned before," said Captain Perona, "I do not appreciate your humor. Kindly be quiet. I do not believe that the absence of the man, Greg, at the time of the murderous attack on Maria can be a coincidence."
"Pardon me," said Lepicik. "Please. But it might be."
"Why?" Captain Perona demanded.
"I'm so sorry, but I think perhaps I frightened him."
"How?"
"I believe he recognized me."
"Why would that frighten him?" Captain Perona asked skeptically.
Lepicik smiled. "He would know, of course, that I came here to kill him."
"So?" said Captain Perona. "You came here to kill him. Did you?"
Lepicik shook his head regretfully. "No. I haven't as yet had a good opportunity. Now I'm afraid he has eluded me again. He is so very clever. I had no idea that he knew what I looked like, and he gave no sign that he recognized me. But perhaps he had a description or a picture of me. I have, after all, been hunting him for quite some time."
"This is very interesting," said Captain Perona icily. "Tell me why you have been hunting him."
"Greg is not a refugee from anything except the law in a dozen countries and his own conscience,
if he has one. He was a member of a Balkan terrorist group that specialized in political assassination for pay. My brother was a government official before the invasion. A minor official. He had a wife and a very beautiful daughter. One Sunday morning when they were all on their way to church, Greg or one of five other men--I was never able to narrow it down more closely than that--tossed a hand grenade into their small automobile."
There was a heavy little silence.
"And your relatives?" Captain Perona inquired softly.
"My brother and his wife were killed instantly. Both of my niece's legs were blown off. She was seventeen."
"Oh," said Janet, sickened.
"Fortunately," said Lepicik in his mild way, "she did not live. She died three weeks later. I sat beside her hospital bed all that time. She was in great pain."
"The other five men," said Captain Perona. "The ones, besides Greg, who were involved. What happened to them?"
"They died," said Lepicik. "Now, if you will excuse me, I will go find Adolfo Morales and his burro, Carmencita."
"And then what do you propose to do?" asked Captain Perona.
Lepicik looked faintly surprised. "Continue to hunt for Greg, of course."
"He cannot possibly have gotten out of Los Altos."
"I'm so sorry," Lepicik contradicted. "But I'm afraid he has. He is very clever."
"No," said Captain Perona. "He is here somewhere, no matter how clever he is." He hesitated. "I can understand how you feel, and I sympathize with you, but I cannot allow you to remain at large unless you give me your word you will not attempt to find Greg or to harm him."
Lepicik merely smiled.
Captain Perona shrugged. "Then I am forced to place you under technical arrest."
"It will be quite useless for you to do that," Lepicik told him. "I will find Greg sooner or later."
"But not in this district while I am in charge of his safety. You will be placed in my quarters under guard. You will be comfortable there."
"Thank you," said Lepicik.
Sergeant Obrian came part way down the stairs. "Captain, didn't that old artist doll say she was gonna flop here? She ain't around now."
"Amanda Tracy!" Captain Perona exploded. "Where is she?"
"Now how do I know?" Timpkins asked drearily. "I was sleepin' peaceful as a baby--"
"Somebody want me?" a hoarse, wheezing voice asked. "Well, here I am. What's left of me."
The soldiers shoved and squeezed in the doorway, and Amanda Tracy staggered past them. One side of her frizzed hair was matted into a crusted tangle, and blood lay like a red, glistening hand across her cheek. She braced herself on thickly muscular legs and swayed back and forth, staring blearily at Captain Perona.
"That fella Greg," she said. "You wait until I get my mitts..." She groped out vaguely with bloodstained hands. "Goes and socks a lady with a rock just because she says hello.... You wait--"
She fell forward as swiftly and suddenly as a tree toppling, and her head clunked solidly against the floor.
Mrs. Henshaw decided to scream and did so, frantically and senselessly, holding on to Mortimer so tightly that his eyes popped.
Captain Perona barked an order over his shoulder, and one of the soldiers in the doorway ducked away into the darkness. Captain Perona dropped to his knee beside Amanda Tracy and felt for the pulse in one of her thick, tanned wrists.
"She is alive," he said, breathing deeply in relief. Carefully he parted the matted, blood-soaked hair. "Ah! It is here! A blow like the one that killed Senorita Van Osdel, only this one glanced and cut instead of striking deep." He looked up. "Do any of you know anything of this?"
"Greg did it," said Henshaw. "Didn't you hear her? Greg smacked down Patricia Van Osdel and Maria and this one, too. Just find him and everything is solved."
"How do you know?"
"I deduced it," said Henshaw.
"Keep your deductions to yourself after this."
"Okay," said Henshaw. "But don't come around and say I didn't tell you--"
"Be quiet!"
Timpkins cleared his throat. "I was kind of muzzy-like from sleep first off... Seems like I remember--"
"What!" Captain Perona barked angrily.
"Here now," said Timpkins indignantly. "Not so rough, if you please. All I was gonna say was that she was complaining about the bedding I gave her--without no reason at all, you may be sure and she said something about goin' over to her place and diggin' some of her own out of the wreckage."
"Why didn't you stop her?"
"Arr?" said Timpkins. "Me? Stop her? Oh, no. I've had a brush or two with her before this."
"I warned you all to stay in the hotel!"
"Now, Captain," said Timpkins. "Naturally, she thought that just applied to these here tourists--not to old residents like me and her."
The soldier came back, panting heavily, with a rolled-up stretcher over his shoulder. He and an other soldier unfastened the straps, opened it out, and put it on the floor beside Amanda Tracy.
"Cuidado!" Captain Perona warned.
The soldiers lifted Amanda Tracy's thick body gently and put her down on the stretcher.
Captain Perona stood up. "You see now--from this--that it pays to give attention to my warnings. I do not talk to you merely for the pleasure it gives me. The rest of the night you will all stay in this hotel. I will leave soldiers to see that you do. If the man, Greg, returns he will be arrested. If he does not return, we will find his hiding place and very soon. I will take Senorita Tracy to the hospital now. Senor Lepicik, you will come with me, please."
"Certainly," said Lepicik. "Mr. Doan, will you take care of my umbrella for me, please?"
"Sure, pal," said Doan.
"You will be careful of it?"
"Indeed, yes," said Doan.
Lepicik and Captain Perona followed the soldiers carrying the stretcher out the door. Sergeant Obrian came down the stairs ahead of more soldiers.
"Don't none of you birds try to fly this coop," he warned. "Some of us will be outside, and we're feelin' nasty." He counted the soldiers as they filed through the door, nodded once meaningly, and followed them.
"Now I don't care for this!" Timpkins snarled. "Not a little bit! Turning my hotel into a jail and a slaughterhouse. I'm tellin' you, and you all hear me say it, no more of this hanky-panky or out you go. Right into the street. Captain Perona or no Captain Perona, I know my rights. I'm a British subject, and I'll protest to the ambassador."
He marched out the back way, his bony bare feet slapping on the floor and his nightshirt fluttering indignantly behind him.
"I'm going to bed," said Henshaw. "I got to snag old Timpkins for a bathroom tomorrow, and I can't sell good unless I get my sleep."
He went upstairs, and Mrs. Henshaw, trailing Mortimer, followed him.
Doan was examining Lepicik's green umbrella cautiously. "I wonder how this works."
"Why, just like any umbrella," Janet told him. "Let me show you."
"Ah-ah," said Doan. "No. Get away. I've got it now."
There was a sudden loud pop.
"Reminds me of champagne," said Doan.
"Did the umbrella make that noise?" Janet asked curiously.
Doan nodded. "Yeah. It also made that." He pointed toward the bar.
There was a bright sliver of steel, about the size and half the length of a knitting needle, stuck deep in the hard wood.
Janet stared. "It--it shot that?"
"Yes. It's an air-gun. A dandy, too. I'd hate to have somebody pop one of those pins into my eye. I bet it wouldn't be very healthy. Let's see. It should pump up here somewhere... Ah!"
The crooked handle turned and slid out six inches, revealing an inner sheathing of oiled metal.
"Sure," said Doan, working it experimentally. "Just like a bicycle pump. Throws air pressure into this cylinder and holds it until you release this catch and then blows it--and the steel pin--out through the length of the barrel. Very neat. I'll bet it's damned accurate at clo
se range, too."
While Janet watched him he went over and started to work the steel needle loose from the bar.
"I thought air-guns were toys," Janet said.
"What do you think now?" Doan asked.
"Why--why, that's a murderous thing!"
"I'll bet it is, at that," said Doan. "This needle is stuck in here two inches. It's got a leather washer here on the reverse end to hold the air pressure..." He stopped working at the dart and looked over the bar. "I think it's about time Doan should have another drink."
The Essential Works of Norbert Davis Page 19