The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  Timuroff watched him carefully as he played. At first, he had not been sure; now he decided that any suspicions Hemmet might have had had at least been lulled. Hemmet’s face showed he had been disarmed by the confirmed poker player’s concentration on his game. It was a wax-museum face, artificially contrived, held together—against what self-assassinating hungry drives and hatreds, despairs and guilts?—only by the hidden sinews of those Puritan restraints he had inherited.

  Timuroff quietly folded a heart flush, and allowed Hemmet to win once more with a hand which, at the very best, could have been three of a kind only, and was probably two pair. Hemmet’s pile of chips had grown to thirty-five or forty dollars. He won again, at draw—a fat pot called only after several raises.

  Timuroff watched his face. He watched the faces of the others there. They were just poker players’ faces, cheerfully rueful, slightly irked but hiding it, impatient for the next deal around.

  He nodded imperceptibly to Florencio Pambid.

  Hemmet, having gathered in his chips, was stacking them methodically; and now, slowly and gracefully, Evangeline finned her pretty head toward him, opened her eyes wide, reached out her right hand and, barely, ever so tenderly, touched his forearm.

  “My goodness, Mr. Hemmet” she said, in Penny Anne’s soft voice, her coral lips forming each word convincingly, “you are a clever man. Do you find poker very profitable?”

  Hemmet started; gathered himself together instantly. He laughed. “You’ve really got her trained,” he said to Hector Grimwood, and took her little hand in both of his. “Sweetheart,” he told her, “sometimes I find it very profitable indeed.”

  She smiled up at him dazzlingly. “More profitable than heroin?” she said.

  Silence struck the room. Her hand, abandoned suddenly, remained hovering there in front of her. A pile of chips in front of Judson Hemmet toppled over slowly.

  And all the lights went on. The room flared with them. The lamp above the table paled into nothingness; the firelight perished. And Hemmet saw the faces of his fellow players. All but Evangeline’s were set inflexibly, frozen in their cold hostility.

  His voice cut like a knife. “Dr. Grimwood,” he demanded, “is this a joke?” And he received no answer, and knew that it was not. And suddenly they felt the hatred flowing from him, inundating them.

  Again he smiled his artificial smile. “Well,” he said, “this all may be good theatre, but what’s its purpose?” He placed his hands flat down on the table, as though about to stand. “You can’t compel me to stay here and undergo all this.”

  “I think we can,” Pete told him, flatly, with no inflection whatsoever.

  Hemmet’s face twisted. He half rose.

  “Sit,” growled Norman Edstrom.

  “And who are you?”

  “I am a Treasury agent. You’ve heard of us. As Bill said, I’m in pharmaceuticals—hard drugs, that is.”

  Hemmet did not sit down. “I’m afraid that I can’t help you. I can’t imagine what this is all about, but as a lawyer I can assure you that you’re already in very serious trouble.” He looked at them. Their faces were expressionless. “What do you want?”

  “It’s very simple, Jud,” Timuroff said. “We want to know one thing. Where does Miranda Gardner keep her private papers?”

  Outwardly at least, Hemmet remained unruffled. “Have you lost your minds? If Mrs. Gardner has private papers, it’s not your business—and even if it were I wouldn’t tell you. She’s my client. Our relationship is privileged.”

  “An honest working girl trying to get along, you mean?” suggested Pete.

  “Essentially that’s true. Her business is legitimate.”

  “No heroin? No blackmail?” Timuroff was no longer making any effort to control the expression on his face. “Not even just a little bit of murder?”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Where does Miranda keep her papers, Jud?”

  Hemmet laughed at them. “This has gone far enough. It’s time I left.” He stood. “And I suspect that none of you will try to stop me. Gentlemen, good—”

  A sharp hard knock, twice repeated, interrupted him. He stared. They turned around.

  “Come in!” called Hector Grimwood.

  The door of the armoire, where van Zaam had hung, opened slowly. Reese Guthrie stood there for a moment, framed in darkness, his face like granite, his eyes on Hemmet’s eyes. He stepped into the room.

  “Tell the man what he wants to know,” he ordered. His Carolinian voice was deep and soft. He waited several seconds. “Did you really think it was poor old Amos who had you followed and then made all those tapes? No, Judson Hemmet. / did it. Because of Marianne. We’ve got them all, and quite a few we didn’t leave you copies of. I ought to kill you here and now, like I did van Zaam, but these good people need your information. Give it to them.”

  Observing Hemmet, Timuroff noticed that whatever held that waxen face together seemed suddenly imperiled, as though the vicious, agile intellect that lived behind it at last felt shaken, but the impression lasted for an instant only.

  “Give it to them,” Reese Guthrie said.

  “I don’t have anything to give.”

  “That’s your last word?”

  “It is.”

  “Those tapes alone can hang you,” Edstrom said. “Make it a little easier for us, and maybe you can make it easier for yourself.”

  “Mr. Edstrom, let us assume those tapes exist—that somebody has managed to contrive them. If any law enforcement agency had any part in getting them, they can’t be introduced in evidence.” Hemmet’s smile formed again. “Suppose one piece of electronic gear, found on the premises, can be identified as police property—your tapes would never be allowed in any court. Even if that were not the case, the fact that Guthrie, having admitted van Zaam’s murder, probably won’t be here to testify would make it easier to discredit them. Such tapes may give you information, but the road from information to conviction isn’t always an easy one.”

  Timuroff leaned forward. “It’s not that simple, Judson. Let’s be frank. We know that you’re the kingpin here where heroin’s concerned. Miranda is the money. You’re the mastermind. No—” his voice hardened, “—don’t argue. We know because Miranda told us so.” He gestured to Florencio behind the bar. “Listen!”

  Evangeline looked up. She looked at Timuroff and smiled. She looked at Hemmet. Abruptly her smile disappeared. Her whole expression changed.

  She spoke, and it was in Miranda Gardner’s voice. “Darling,” she said. “Don’t worry, Jeffte lamb. Jud thinks he’s in the clear. If anything goes wrong, the hard-drug evidence all points to him. I just own property.”

  “She’s talking to her pansy boyfriend,” Pete put in. “That’s how I’ve got it fixed,” Miranda said, “and, honey, Jud’s expendable. I can’t keep saving him from all those Vegas goons forever.” And Timuroff, watching her mouth work, could almost see Miranda Gardner sitting there. Hemmet listened, still smiling his cruel smile.

  “It’ll work out nicely,” Miranda’s voice went on. “He and the horse can go together when we’re through with them. Now you just stop your fretting, Jeffie lamb—” Grotesquely, the hard, harsh voice began to coo. “Be a good boy, real goodie-good, and maybe next time—maybe this very night—mommy’ll really let you get on top,” Timuroff gestured. Florencio shut her off.

  Hemmet swallowed. He snapped, “That’s faked-up, and you know it!”

  Pete Cominazzo threw his chair back. “For Christ’s sake, how long do we have to bother with this creep? Let’s get it over with and save the state a million bucks! Tim, tell him what the score is.”

  Timuroffs facial muscles had turned to steel. His scar stood out now, whiter than before. He stroked it carefully. He stood up, facing Hemmet. “The score is this,�
�� he said. “You are before a court of no appeal. We know exactly what you’ve done, to whom. We also know how hard it could be to destroy you legally. Therefore, as Pete said, we’re going to save the state a million dollars. I’m going to do it personally, because Amos was a friend of mine, and you murdered him.”

  “I killed the man in self-defense.”

  “You lie. Amos was a good kendo fencer. He’d also been an expert kata man. Do you know what kata is? Kata means ‘form.’ It is a two-man exercise with the live sword. To do it without cutting up your partner, you must have absolute control. Amos had it, and his blade was splendid. If you had parried any cut of his in six with that long piece of European iron, he would have cut right through it into you.”

  Quietly, Florencio came from behind the bar, carrying a sword in either hand. The first he gave to Timuroff. “Hand him the other one, Florencio.”

  His face as hard as all the rest, Florencio offered the long German rapier which Timuroff had brought. Hemmet shrank from it, then took it, backed two paces, held its point to the floor and to one side.

  “It’s almost the twin of the one you used on Amos,” said Timuroff. “And this—” he drew his own blade from its plated scabbard, “this one is quite as good as his. Inouye Shinkai made it three hundred years ago, and my father captured it in Manchuria in 1904—something which didn’t happen often in that war—and put his initials on the hilt in platinum. See? A.T.” He held the blade out. Its hilt was the gold-washed sabre hilt of the Meiji era, Western in 6tyle but lengthened to accommodate two hands. The blade itself was glorious. Its temper line was straight, a cloudy silver ribbon along its edge.

  “Isn’t it pretty, Hemmet?” said Timuroff. “And it cuts well. I’m going to tell you about a crash in Uruguay, and then you’ll understand that, when I say you murdered Amos, I base my statement on practical experience.”

  “I refuse to stand here and listen to this kind of crap. There’s no reason why I should!”

  “I can think of several why you will. As you all know, when I was very young I was an officer in the army of the Argentine, the cavalry. They let me wear this sword. Because my father was a splendid swordsman and a fencing master, in my first year of service I became known as the best man with a sabre in the army, and that’s why I got into the crash in Uruguay.” As he spoke, Timuroff played the bright light along the blade, examining its workmanship. “In Paraguay, you see, they had a general named Arazabal.

  His full name doesn’t matter, but he was very arrogant and powerful and bad-tempered, and well on his way to pulling off a revolution and becoming dictator. This the Argentine army for some reason didn’t want—so, never suspecting, I found myself appointed aide to one of our major-generals, and sent off with him on a diplomatic tour to Montevideo. I was proud as a peacock, naturally, and it seemed to me that all the Uruguayan ladies were not only beautiful but extraordinarily complaisant. So I was having a fine time when one day my general ordered me to run some errands for him in his car, and then to wait for him near the intersection of an avenue—I forget which one—named after ‘the Heroes of the Twenty-third of August,’ or something of the sort. We parked there in his open touring car, his chauffeur in the front seat, myself in back basking in the sunshine and in the knowledge that every passing woman was aware of me.”

  Timuroff sighed. “Of course, I had no notion that it was all a setup. I didn’t even know that General Arazabal had come to town. I first became aware of it when, without a word of warning, the chauffeur started up the engine, gunned it in first gear, and plowed directly into a huge Mercedes in the intersection. Though nobody was hurt, the crash was horrible. Out of the front seat of the Mercedes leaped the Paraguayan soldier who’d been driving. Out of the back seat roared Arazabal, in his dress uniform and his worst temper. My chauffeur stayed exactly where he was, but I jumped out intending to apologize. General Arazabal, gold epaulettes and all, came at me like a berserker. Before I could as much as say a word, he’d drawn his. sword—a Solingen sabre and a rather nice one, much better steel than that blade in your hand—and, when mine was only half out of its scabbard, he slashed my face. He really oughtn’t to have done it, for I immediately forgot he was a general, or a Paraguayan, or anything but a damned unpleasant enemy. I attacked at once, using my sword with one hand, which was all I had been taught. I parried one or two tries he made to cut my head off, and waited for my chance—a good cut at his forehead. He parried it in six, just as you say you did.” Timuroff’s eyes flashed fire. “And of course the Shinkai sliced through his blade and guard and hand. By then, I really was excited, so I went on and finished up the job with one more cut. It was too bad, because when they pensioned me off after the affair had been hushed up by everyone concerned—even his own people didn’t love Arazabal—I had to take my blade over to Tokyo to be repolished. So you see—” Very deliberately, he gripped the sword hilt with both hands, holding it out before him like a samurai. He fixed his eyes on Hemmet. He kicked off his shoes. His voice rang like a battle trumpet through the room. “You’re going to have a chance to prove your story, murderer! On guard!”

  And very slowly, poised, sharp edge cleaving the air ahead of him, he advanced on Judson Hemmet.

  Hemmet raised his point a foot or so, backing uncertainly. His eyes moved jerkily from face to face. “Two of you are police officers,” he cried. “You can’t just sit there and watch murder done!”

  “I won’t,” said Edstrom. “I’ll watch an execution.”

  “I’m a homicide inspector,” Pete declared, “and this is one homicide I’m yearning to inspect.”

  Bill Traeger simply gave him an obsidian stare, and from behind the bar Florencio Pambid watched him as he had once watched the invading Japanese.

  “Hector!” Hemmet was still backing up as Timuroff came forward. “Hector, stop this lunatic!”

  “I wouldn’t think of it!” answered Dr. Grimwood cheerfully. “Tim’s going to perform an operation on the brain. His technique probably won’t be quite like mine, but I wouldn’t miss seeing it for the world!” And his aged laughter, cracked and manic, echoed from the walls.

  Hemmet was backing as slowly as he could, as though he dreaded the moment, fifteen feet away, when he would have his back against the wall and could retreat no farther. He had assumed the fencer’s stance. His point was out, but not quite on guard.

  “Engage!” said Timuroff, through his set teeth.

  Hemmet drew his point back a little, continued his retreat.

  “Engage!”

  “No—” Hemmet whispered. “No—” He dropped his point.

  “Engage, I said!”

  They moved six feet in silence. In all the room, only their breathing now was audible.

  “On guard,” Timuroff whispered, and the Tartar in him glared out through his eyes.

  Hemmet’s lips had skinned back from his teeth. He gasped. Desperately, very swiftly, he brought his arm to full extension—and Timuroff exploded.

  Everything seemed to happen simultaneously. His forte caught Hemmet’s blade with one fast, powerful press. As fighting samurai and kendo fencers always have, he shouted out his great percussive “Hail” Up only a few inches the Shinkai flashed, then like instant silver lightning it cut down—

  “Holy Christ!” cried Pete.

  Whatever animated Judson Hemmet fell apart The rapier dropped from his suddenly nerveless fingers; his legs collapsed beneath him; the tight wax tissues of his face dissolved, showing the scars and furrows his life had graven there. He became only an ungainly bundle on the floor, sprawled on knees and elbows, eyes shut tight.

  He was uninjured. Timuroff had done what only first-class kata men can do. He had stopped the flashing Shinkai in midair.

  Hemmet’s eyes opened—and he saw that cutting edge held motionless six inches from them. A shudder swept him visibly.

&n
bsp; “Where are the papers, Jud?” asked Timuroff, in a low voice and very dangerously.

  Hemmet covered his eyes with his left hand. “A-at Jeffie’s place,” he blurted almost incoherently. “She—she owns the apartment house he’s in. A fireproof filing cabinet It—it’s built into the wall behind his bed.”

  “Where is the place?”

  Hemmet moaned and gave them the address; and Norman Edstrom left the room to phone. They waited for him. His calls were brief, and he returned almost immediately. “They’ll have the warrant right away. We should be hearing in an hour or so if he’s been telling us the truth.”

  Timuroff pointed to a chair near the fireplace. “You sit there,” he told Hemmet, “until this is checked out Then—” His voice was utterly contemptuous. “Then you can go.”

  He sheathed his blade, picked up the rapier, handed the two of them to Florencio, and resumed his seat next to the doctor at the poker table. “We might as well play a few hands of stud while we’re waiting,” he suggested. “And I could use a drink.”

  They played again, and Florencio made them one more round. After forty minutes, the phone rang and Edstrom answered it.

  “Well, it’s all over but the shouting. She wasn’t there, but we’ve picked up her boy. The papers are a gold mine. Now watch the bastards fall like dominoes! They want me over there tonight.” He turned to Pete. “You want to come along?”

  “Not at this stage,” said Pete. “I’d better stay away until the PD picture clears up.”

  “It will,” Edstrom promised him. He said good-night around, congratulated Timuroff, and left. Reese Guthrie stood up to follow him. Obviously finding it difficult to speak, he thanked them all. “I owe you a great deal, Mr. Timuroff—you and your sword.” He stared at Hemmet, bowed over in his chair. “You can’t know what this means to me. M-maybe someday I’ll repay you properly. I guess I’d better rush along. You know where you can find me from now on.”