The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  He shook hands silently, and said good-bye, and the armoire door closed silently behind him.

  Then, at a sign from Timuroff, Bill Traeger rose, and pulled Judson Hemmet roughly to his feet, and walked him out under their cold eyes, to set him free into an altered world.

  “Don’t worry,” remarked Timuroff, after he had gone. “I have a feeling he won’t run very far.”

  Then it was Pete and Hector Grimwood’s turn to praise what Timuroff had done, and then Florencio’s, who brought another drink, especially strong.

  “Hell, Tim,” Pete said, “it wasn’t that damn sword that buckled him—it was your Ivan face again.”

  “I think we all did very well.” Timuroff raised his glass. “Heck’s wild laughter bit about the brain surgery sent shivers down my back. And now—” he bowed, “I shall propose a toast. Gentlemen, to Evangeline!”

  And Evangeline looked up at him, and smiled, and dropped her eyelids modestly, and covered up her decolletage. “Oh, Tim,” she murmured, “I do think you’re simply wonderful!” To everyone’s surprise but Dr. Grimwood’s, she blushed. “Veux-tu coucher avec moi quelque soir?”

  “Heck, that’s not in keeping for Evangeline!” protested Timuroff.

  “No,” Dr. Grimwood said, “I don’t suppose it is. But I’m getting bored with Longfellow. I think I’ll change her name.”

  CHAPTER XV

  A Party for Evangeline

  Next morning, Timuroff went down to the shop at what had always been his customary time before Monrooney’s murder, and was relieved to find, awaiting him, a message from a pretentious Beverly Hills auction house insisting that he fly south immediately to appraise the hideously expensive, thoroughly nondescript collection of a millionaire recently deceased at Balboa Beach. Ordinarily, he would have turned it down, but Liselotte, on her return from the maestro’s, had awakened him to assure herself that he was still intact and to extort an accounting of his actions in her absence. She was convinced that he’d been up to something desperate, and she refused to sleep until he gave her a highly censored version—all mention of sharp instruments deleted—of what had happened. Olivia was still another matter. Her look declared eloquently that she knew all, she disapproved, and she was keeping silent only out of her sense of duty as wife and as employee. The sole saving grace was an almost imperceptible undertone of the respect that heroes get, and Timuroff wasn’t at all sure of that. He read the message, announced that he was taking off immediately, phoned Emilia and told her to inform Liselotte, called Kemble Street and left a message for the doctor, who today was driving himself out in his Rolls-Royce, and finally phoned Pete, who first accused him of chickening out on them, and then admitted that, as things were going, there was no need for him to hang around.

  “When do I get my station wagon?” Olivia called out after him as he left the shop.

  He drove south on Highway 101—he never flew unless he absolutely had to—and luxuriated in his new detachment from the murders and connivings and inevitable anxieties with which he had been living. He detoured in order to have lunch in Monterey, then drifted onward, reaching Santa Barbara in time to look in at a few antique stores before dining on the pier. By ten thirty, he was established at a motel in Pasadena, and had called Liselotte and Olivia to tell them where he could be reached. Very carefully, he neither turned the news on nor bought a paper, but read himself to sleep with a copy of Blackwood’s Magazine, and dreamed vaguely but pleasantly of Liselotte and the Argentine.

  He was not, of course, destined to escape so easily. The morning headlines screamed San Francisco’s latest scandal at the world, and though he refrained from buying any paper, he could not avoid the millionaire’s widow, a sinuous brunette whom the old man had purchased somewhere to spice up his declining years. She seemed much taken with him, perhaps because for the moment scandal made him a small celebrity. Occasionally she would rub up against him, purring rather loudly and hinting that he needn’t rush his work—that really he’d be much more comfortable in one of her own guest rooms than in anything as impersonal as a motel. From her he learned that Mario Baltesar had resigned as mayor of San Francisco, announcing that he would not run in the election, that Chiefy too had quit, that there had been any number of arrests—she wasn’t sure of whom—by federal officers, and that Miranda Gardner, mysteriously tipped off, had fled the country.

  By the day’s end, the widow’s nose was somewhat out of joint, his work was done, and he was feeling properly self-righteous because of his fidelity to Liselotte. But he had given up any idea of walling himself off. He bought a paper, and read it while he dined. From it, he learned that both Hemmet and Lieutenant Kielty, for whom warrants had been issued, could not be found, and that Hanno and several of his men already were in custody. There also was a boxed front-page human-interest story, under the noted by-line of Rop Millweed, revealing (exclusively) how poor defenseless Twinkle Mossmaker had been browbeaten and blackmailed by Lieutenant Kielty into misquoting Dr. Grimwood, who was a darling old man, really.

  At the motel, there was a message for him to call Liselotte instantly. He did so.

  “You ought to be ashamed!” she told him with asperity. “Think how you have hurt poor Hector’s feelings, and also Penny Anne’s!”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You have run away. You have been away two whole days, and you still will not be home until tomorrow. Hector and Penny have moved back into his house, and you have made him wait to open the big iron door!”

  Suddenly, Timuroff realized that, in the tension of preparing for the confrontation in the poker parlor, and in the excitement of that confrontation—when, he now admitted to himself, he could quite easily have had a rapier through him—his mind had somehow diminished the importance of whatever lay behind the lead-filled lock. “You mean he’s waiting till I get there?” he exclaimed, really touched. “Dearest, phone him immediately. Tell him I am sorry—that I’ll get home as soon as possible, sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Besides,” she continued, “Pete and Olivia have told me what you really did while I was gone. They think you were very brave. What I think—never mind, you will hear it soon enough! Now I shall phone Hector and apologize because you were so rude and inconsiderate.”

  “I love you, dear,” said Timuroff, kissing her good-night over the phone.

  He had promised to call at the auctioneers’ offices before he left, and he couldn’t very well get out of it. In the morning, he took off without breakfasting, got there just as they were opening up, spent nearly an hour discussing what the millionaire’s collection would bring in the New York galleries, and made himself eat brunch. Then he headed for Interstate 5 and home.

  He drove fast, stopping only once for gas, and speculating on what might be behind the iron door—his curiosity now once more thoroughly aroused. A hundred miles from the Bay, he turned the radio on and learned that Hemmet had been found, dead in his car, in a broken-down garage in a squalid ghetto alley at Hunter’s Point. The gun was there. It looked like suicide. But there were other factors, and the FBI had moved in to investigate.

  Timuroff was worried. Was it possible that Guthrie, instead of sensibly catching the first plane for South America, had been unable to forego one final vengeance? The radio went on talking, reiterating what he had heard already, and he switched it off to wonder once again what that lead-filled lock had been protecting for so many years.

  He arrived well before cocktail hour, and found that Liselotte had forgiven him—which, of course, was what usually happened. She told him that Reese Guthrie had phoned him from Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon, which took one worry off his mind. Then, at her insistence, he called up Hector Grimwood with explanations and apologies.

  “Tim, didn’t Liselotte tell you?” The doctor was once again his old enthusiastic self. “Both of you must come out here right away!
I’m calling it a party for Evangeline, but it’s in your honor really. I arranged it all as soon as I got the word that you were coming back this afternoon. We’re going to have a drink or two, and then we’re going to open up that iron door and find out what’s behind it. When I told Florencio and his wife about it, they promised us a banquet ‘just like those served at the Presidential Palace in Manila’—he said you’d understand.”

  “I do indeed,” said Timuroff, again deeply touched.

  “It’s not going to be a big party—no more of those for me!—just your friend Judge Faraday, the Cominazzos, Edstrom and his wife, Penny and me, and you and Liselotte, and of course Traeger.”

  “Opening that lock is going to be a job,” Timuroff said.

  “It shouldn’t be too bad. Mario Baltesar came to see me yesterday. He swore he simply had no idea what Hemmet and Miranda Gardner—and for that matter Munrooney—were up to. He was trying hard to make amends, and I believe him, Tim. He’d gone through Hemmet’s office with the FBI, and he found the key hidden there, with Albright’s original instructions to old Jefferson. He brought them here to me. Bill Traeger’s sure he can manage it. He’ll use a blowtorch to melt all that lead, and tongs and things to hold the lock itself and turn the key. Pete says he’ll help him. Now please hurry. Penny and I want you and Liselotte to be the first ones here.”

  They were not quite the first. When they entered, Pete and Olivia had just arrived; and Timuroff could tell immediately that Olivia also had forgiven him—though perhaps a little grudgingly. Dr. Grimwood was in the poker parlor, Penny Anne told them, and they joined him there. “Have you heard the news?” Pete asked.

  “I had the radio on while I was driving up,” Timuroff said. “What else has happened?”

  Pete grinned. “They’ve made Jake Harrell acting chief, which means that my vacation’s over as of now. But that’s not all.” Suddenly his voice became as hard as it had been across the poker table. “They’ve located Kielty. Less than an hour ago. He was as dead as Hemmet.”

  “Where was he?”

  “In a public john way off in the park. He’d swallowed his own cyanide. I guess they’d sucked him deeper in than anyone.”

  Hector Grimwood looked at all of them. “I know I should be shocked,” he said, “especially after all that’s happened here. But I’m not. I am glad. Not long ago, I thought this house could never possibly feel clean again. Now it does. I’m sorry, but Mr. Kielty’s death makes it feel even cleaner. It proves poor Hanson didn’t kill himself, and that I didn’t murder him.”

  “That was proved already,” Pete declared. “We’ve been tipped off that Hanson had been having trouble sleeping, and how Kielty’s man on swing shift gave him some kind of pill. The theory is they used a waker-upper—slipped it into his supper probably—to make damn sure he’d have to ask for something.”

  “Who tipped you off?” asked Timuroff.

  “A trusty at the jail. He was afraid to talk before. And that’s the way it’s going—they’re falling like dominoes, exactly as Norm Edstrom said. Either they’re no longer scared to talk, or now they’re scared not to. Besides, those papers told a lot about who had done what to whom, and some of it has been made public. Already there’ve been a couple of quick killings on the drug scene.”

  Hector Grimwood went behind the bar. “Florencio’s much too busy to mix drinks.” He draped a bar towel over his left arm, and beamed at them. “But I’m not. We won’t wait for the others. They’ll be along any minute now.” Expertly, he went to work, and Penny Anne ushered in the Edstroms and Judge Faraday while he was doing it.

  Mrs. Edstrom, a petite dark girl whom Edstrom had married only months before in Baton Rouge, was introduced around. With Penny Anne’s assistance, the drinks were made and served. “They’re all doubles,” explained the doctor. “I don’t think I could stand it if we postponed the opening for two separate rounds.”

  Clayton Faraday regarded Timuroff severely. “Tim,” he said, “I really shouldn’t be conversing with you. I’ve heard of what went on here the other night, and after all I am a judge. I haven’t tried to count the laws you broke deliberately. You are a malefactor and a reprobate. You have been saved only by the Nelsonian paradox.”

  “The what, sir?” asked Edstrom.

  “The fact that sometimes it is necessary to lift the telescope to one’s blind eye, as Admiral Nelson did when it became imperative for him not to see his commander’s signal.” He smiled at Timuroff. He raised his glass. “May your tribe increase!” he said.

  They laughed and drank.

  “Well,” remarked Edstrom, “it’s all turned out much better than I thought. Just one thing sticks in my craw—the fact that Gardner woman got away.”

  “Where did she get to?”

  “Rio, Mr. Timuroff—where else?”

  “In that case, she may have left the country, but I can promise you she’s not escaped—at least, not for long. Brazil is where Reese Guthrie is. He phoned us this morning from Belem.” Timuroff did not try to hide the grim amusement in his voice. “Miranda’s going to wish she’d stayed at home.”

  “I’ll drink to that!” growled Edstrom.

  Finally Bill Traeger and Florencio came in. They were loaded down—a heavy toolbox and a blowtorch, two suits of coveralls, two pairs of work gloves, two welders’ masks, a fire extinguisher.

  “I’ve come prepared!” Traeger announced, setting the clutter down. “That lead in there may sputter.”

  He received his drink, and Florencio, explaining that he had to hurry back to help his wife, went out reluctantly.

  “I wonder what we’ll find in there?” Hector Grimwood said. “From what I’ve heard of Albright, it could be anything”

  “It is a dragon’s treasure, like Fafner’s in Der Ring! Liselotte’s eyes were bright; she was almost dancing in her eagerness. “How can you foolish men stand here drinking, when there are probably whole chests of rubies, sapphires, emeralds, golden necklaces?”

  “We’re working up our courage, Madame Cantelou,” said Traeger, and he sang solemnly,

  “Sixteen men on a dead man’s chest—

  Yo-heave-ho and a bottle of rum!

  And drink and the devil may do for the rest—

  Yo-heave-ho and a bottle of rum!”

  “I’ll tell you what I think we’ll find,” Pete offered. “We’ll find a million dollars’ worth of opium and the skeletons of four Chinese. Just our luck too—with Norm and the judge here watching us!”

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” exclaimed Liselotte. “Please!”

  In two gulps, Traeger killed his drink. He handed Pete a pair of coveralls. “These ought to fit you pretty well,” he said. “Get into ’em, and we’ll get going.” He slipped out of his jacket and got into his own. “I don’t think more than four of us ought to go down in there until the torch is out How about you, Tim, with the extinguisher? And Dr. Grimwood too.”

  The doctor had opened up the doors of the armoire. He had opened the secret panel at its back, and the hidden door that Timuroff had found across the passageway. He had turned on the lights so that they could see the stairs leading down. “First we must show the ladies and Judge Faraday just what it looks like,” he declared. “They can go in and look and come right out again.”

  The judge went first. The ladies followed him, shuddering at the hook from which van Zaam had hung, exclaiming at the chamber where Muriel Fawzi had endured her brief captivity, and at the massive door, the ponderous lock. They hurried back, and Pete and Traeger carried the tools in.

  “You’d better stand well off to one side,” Traeger told Timuroff and the doctor. He fired up the torch. He produced a huge pair of iron tongs.

  “Looks like you robbed a blacksmith,” Pete said.

  “Just about. Now let’s have the key.”

&nbs
p; Hector Grimwood gave it to him—iron, five inches long—and he passed it to Pete, with a stout pair of pliers. “When the lead melts, stick it in the keyhole and give it a quick turn. A lock works just as well in fluid as in air, and that’s what lead is once it’s melted. Okay, let’s go.”

  With the tongs, he lifted the lock up almost at right angles. The blowtorch roared, and he played its flame as evenly as possible over the brass. “It’ll take a little while,” he told them. “There’s a lot of metal here to absorb heat.”

  Now only the torch itself was heard. Behind them, the watchers on the stairs were tense and still.

  Then the brass started to turn color with the heat. A thread of smoke rose into the air, a smell of ancient burning oil.

  “It’s melting!” Traeger said. “Wait till I give the word!… Now!”

  Pete pushed the great key into the almost red-hot lock. With the pliers, he gave it a full counterclockwise turn. Bill Traeger pulled down swiftly with his tongs. Molten lead hissed and flowed and spattered down unnoticed—

  And the vast lock hung there, open.

  Bill Traeger turned the torch off. Carefully, with the tongs, he freed the padlock from the hasp. Then he took off his welder’s mask. “Everybody can come in now!” he called.

  They filed in, moving to one side or the other.

  “Shall I open it?”

  “Of course!” the doctor cried.

  Traeger freed the hasp. He put the tongs down, seized the still-cold knob with his gloved hand, and pulled. Creaking its protest after sixty years, the iron door swung slowly open—onto darkness.

  “Don’t tell me we didn’t bring a flashlight?” Pete said.