Murder on the Tropic

by Todd Downing

  “You saw no one?”

  “No, it was dark.”

  “Were lights on in any of the rooms?”

  “Only in Falter’s. I made a good mark, with the light coming from behind me.”

  “You were coming from Falter’s room?”

  Arnhardt hesitated for a perceptible period.

  “Yes,” he said gruffly. He got to his feet. “Rennert, I’m going to get this business settled tonight. Whoever shot me has still got the gun. If not he hasn’t had a chance to throw it very far away. I’m going to search every room in this damned house. Want to go with me?” he demanded over his shoulder as he jerked open a drawer of the desk.

  “Yes,” Rennert replied, a worried frown on his forehead.

  “O. K.” Arnhardt turned about. In his right hand he held a bluntnosed revolver. “Let’s start.”

  “It might be well,” Rennert suggested as he followed him out, “to look over the patio first. The gun may have been dropped. At any rate the shell should be on the ground.”

  “All right.” Arnhardt was glancing over the enclosure, upon which light shone from three rooms—those of the Tolmans, Flores, and Miss Fahn.

  Rennert stepped forward and ran the beam of the torch over the ground in front of the door. He considered footprints but realized that the hard baked surface would retain none. Arnhardt walked slowly at his side, his eyes on the wavering light.

  “If it’s in those damned flowers,” he muttered, “we can let it go until daylight. It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack.” He stopped suddenly, with an exclamation, stooped over and picked up a bright object. He straightened up and held it out. Rennert centered the light upon it.

  It was a spent cartridge.

  “So this is where he stood.” Arnhardt planted himself on the spot and his eyes swept the patio. They came to rest, Rennert noticed, on one lighted window. “Then it was easy enough to duck around the eaves to his door. Let’s start on the rooms now.” He dropped the cartridge into a pocket and moved forward.

  Rennert followed him in silence. He was wishing that the young man wouldn’t be quite so impulsive. He, had the feeling that nothing would come of this search yet had to admit that in his place he would probably have gone ahead as he was doing. The whole affair of the shooting bothered him. There was something about it that was at variance with the rest of the crimes that had been committed there. A direct and daring act whereas the poisonings had been carried out with a precision and a deliberateness of forethought that had so far safeguarded their perpetrator. Did this bullet sped into the darkness mean, he asked himself, that the latter was now striking out blindly in a panic of self-preservation?

  Arnhardt had paused before the sala. Rennert stepped to his side and threw his light into it. It was deserted.

  “If it’s hidden in here we’ll find it later,” Arnhardt said. “In the meantime I’ll lock the door.” He turned the key in the lock and continued his way about the stone path.

  They passed Rennert’s doorway and stopped before Miss Fahn’s.

  “No use going in there,” Arnhardt said after a moment’s deliberation. “We might ask her, though, if she heard anything.” He rapped on the door.

  There was a scurrying sound from within and then dead silence. Arnhardt rapped again.

  “Who’s there?” came faintly from within.

  “Arnhardt and Rennert, Miss Fahn. Can we come in?”

  “Oh, no,” it was a cry of consternation. Then: “Wait a minute.”

  They waited for perhaps two minutes, Arnhardt fidgeting in impatience. A key turned in the lock and there was the sound of a bolt being withdrawn. A thin crack of light emerged and in it the face of Miss Fahn.

  “Oh, yes,” she said with relief as she opened the door more widely. “I just wanted to be sure it was you.”

  She held a woolly kimono about her and was adjusting a lace cap over her hair. The ends of curlers protruded from the frills at its edges.

  “What is it?” she was breathing heavily. “What has happened? What was that shot?”

  Her eyes found Arnhardt’s bandaged shoulder and she stepped back, the color receding from her face.

  “Somebody shot me a few minutes ago,” Arnhardt said bluntly. “We wondered if you’d heard anything.”

  Her face was gray lead. She said through tight lips: “Yes, I did. I did hear something. Somebody running outside.”

  “Running?” Rennert seized on this. “You heard this after or before the shot?”

  “After. Right after. You see, I wasn’t able to sleep after—after my experience with that Chinaman. I kept imagining I heard him coming back and fumbling at my door. So I was wide awake.”

  “Could you tell in what direction the footsteps went?”

  “Out there,” she gestured vaguely toward the window that faced the south and the mountains. “There was so much noise in the patio then that I couldn’t be absolutely positive, though.”

  “Well, thanks, Miss Fahn,” Arnhardt said. “You can go on to sleep now. We won’t disturb you again.”

  She abandoned her last grip on the reins of control and was a terrified old woman.

  “Sleep! I couldn’t ever sleep in this place again. I want to get back home. I want daylight to come.”

  They left her staring straight ahead of her with fear-haunted eyes. The bolt slid quickly into place behind them.

  “The old fool,” Arnhardt said. “Always imagining she hears noises in the night. If she heard anything at all—and I doubt it—it was probably some coyote frightened by the shot.” He passed the door of Falter’s office, it was closed now, and paused at the archway. “He didn’t go in there, I’m sure, or I would have seen him. Let’s go ahead.”

  “Just a minute, Arnhardt.” Rennert stopped him.

  “I’d like to take a look in Lee’s room while we’re here.”

  “Lee? It couldn’t have been him.”

  “No,” Rennert said, “I don’t think it was but it will do no harm to look.”

  As he spoke he flashed the light in the direction of the dining-room door. It stood open.

  “This is usually locked, isn’t it?” he asked as he walked toward it.

  “Yes, Lee’s supposed to lock it. With things in the state they’ve been tonight I don’t suppose it’s any wonder he forgot it.”

  Rennert went into the room, rounded the table and tried the handle of the door that opened onto the inner patio. It was unlocked.

  They walked past the kitchen to the door of Lee’s room. Rennert opened it softly and sent the yellow ray to the rumpled empty bed and about the bare gray walls.

  Lee was not there.

  23

  One is Unperturbed

  Arnhardt gave a sharp whistle of surprise. “That’s strange. Lee usually goes to bed early.” He looked at Rennert. “Say, I heard about him going in Miss Fahn’s room tonight and frightening her with that knife. What was the matter with him? Drunk?”

  “No,” Rennert said slowly, “Lee wasn’t drunk. He had been smoking marihuana.”

  “Marihuana! Well, I’ll be damned. I didn’t know he used the stuff.”

  “I don’t think he is in the habit of using it. This was left in his room in the form of cigarettes. He probably smoked them without knowing what was in them.”

  Arnhardt leaned against the door jamb, lightly balancing the revolver on the palm of his hand. He let his eyes stray to it then brought them back to Rennert’s face.

  “You mean someone left them there for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t suppose,” with evident reluctance, “that it was Lee who shot me? That it was his steps Miss Fahn heard? They say that marihuana makes a man do insane things, things he wouldn’t think of doing in his right mind.”

  This was exactly the possibility which Rennert was considering. He had his own explanation for the presence of the drugged cigarettes in Lee’s room and felt sure that it was the correct one. The results, however, might be f
ar different from those which the person who had put them there had anticipated. Witness the attack on Miss Fahn, which he was sure had not been a part of this person’s plan.

  Arnhardt’s laugh had a slight rasping sound.

  “Oh, hell, I’m sure it wasn’t Lee. Let’s go look through the other rooms. I still think we’ll find the gun in one of them.”

  They started toward the dining room. Rennert’s torch strayed for an instant over the dark sea of flowers. He stopped.

  “You go ahead,” he said to Arnhardt, “I’ll look through the rooms about this patio.”

  “That’s right,” the young man’s eyes went from one door to the other. “Whoever shot me could have come through the dining room without passing under the archway, couldn’t he?”

  “Yes.” Rennert’s voice was abstracted. Evidently Arnhardt had not seen, as the light played over the patio, the figure that stood, still as one of the shadows about it, in the corner on the other side.

  “Well, I’ll go ahead,” Arnhardt said. “Every minute gives more time to get that gun hidden.”

  Rennert repressed the observation that by now sufficient time had elapsed for any number of guns to be concealed. He waited until the other had gone, then walked across the patio. An effort at silence was useless on the crunching gravel of the walk. Halfway across he paused.

  There was no sound at all yet he knew that someone was standing a few feet from him and, like himself, listening.

  He had turned off the flashlight. Now he pressed its button.

  The beam shot into the darkness and centered upon Maria Montemayor.

  She stood under the eaves by a dense bed of yellow marigolds. In one hand she held a clay jug. At her feet rested a water bottle, its contents sparkling in the light. There was no alarm on her face, only a steady unblinking scrutiny after the first instant of adjustment of her eyes to the illumination.

  “Buenas noches, Maria,” Rennert said.

  “Buenas noches, señor,” they might have met in broad daylight, each on the most commonplace of errands.

  “The flowers have thirst, do they not?” Rennert broke the silence.

  “Yes, they have much thirst,” her voice quickened into something like animation. “You understand?”

  “I understand. They are so helpless, are they not? They ask so little. A little drop of water. They give beauty in return. They are generous.”

  “Yes, that is it,” her smile was of delight in comprehension from this man with a white skin. “I hear them in the afternoon, when the sun is burning them. They call for something to drink. Just a little drop of water. When I can, I give it to them. They know me and thank me.” Her voice sank into a soft murmur, “They have the voice of a little child.”

  “The one who is buried here?”

  “Yes, señor, you know of him?”

  “I have heard.”

  “And these,” one hand fell and its fingers brushed lightly against the petals of a marigold that raised its head higher than the rest, “the cempoalxochitl, they served the Virgin today.”

  “By telling Miguel that he was to die?”

  “Yes, she wanted to prepare him. She took away the white claveles that I put by his bed and put these in their place. They are the flowers of death, you know. But I did not understand. I would not see that the flowers were no longer white. Now I must not let these flowers die.”

  And thus, Rennert thought, another miracle is born! He kept his voice soft, conversational, using the half-toned diminutives and the gentle reverberation of ideas that mark the speech of the Mexican Indian. He was hoping that he could preserve this mood of mutual confidence until he had acquired the information which he was sure this woman held.

  “Did the flowers have a message of death for your son as well as Miguel?” he asked.

  “No,” she shook her head and vagueness smoothed her face, “they had no message for him. It was because of the doctor, the medico from the city.”

  “They brought a doctor from the city then?”

  “Yes, Senor Stahl thought that a doctor could help him. He did not know. My son died. That is why, señor, I did not wish a doctor for Miguel.”

  “The doctor gave him medicine?”

  “Yes, he left the medicine.”

  “The boy took all of it?”

  “No. After the doctor left he took no more. But it was too late then to save him.”

  “And this medicine—you kept it?”

  “No, señor.”

  “What became of it?”

  “I do not know, señor. The doctor left it there,” she gestured toward Falter’s office, “for them to give to the boy.”

  Rennert felt a pleasurable surge of excitement. Again he was on the path, straight and well defined as the graveled one on which he stood, that he had left earlier for a brief and futile excursion. He came back to what was for him now a triviality.

  “You have watered the flowers each night?” he asked.

  “Yes, señor, each night.”

  “And your key to the kitchen where the water is kept?”

  “Here,” in disarming childlike confidence Maria pulled from the folds of her dress a string at the end of which dangled a key. “I did not lose it, no. I told them—the others—that I had lost it. They would not understand and would not have permitted me to use the water.”

  “And Lee, the chino?”

  “Ah, that one!” there was a flicker of contempt in her voice. “He is sleeping.”

  “You have been here in the patio how long?”

  “A few little moments, señor.”

  Rennert knew the difficulty of extracting measurements of time in this land where time is meaningless.

  He asked: “You were here before the shot in the other patio?”

  “Yes, much before.” The matter of the shot remained an event of no interest to her except to fix time upon.

  “And Lee did not pass through this patio?”

  “No, señor, he did not pass. I would have heard him.”

  “There are places near by where one could hide, are there not?”

  “In the mountains there are many places.”

  Rennert stepped past her, flashed the light into the bathroom. It was, as he had thought it would be, empty.

  “The rains will come tonight, I think, Maria,” he said as he returned. “There will be plenty of water. But these last few weeks men have needed this water. Did you not think of them?”

  “Yes, señor, but I myself have drunk little water so that the flowers could have more. They could do the same. The flowers,” she said softly, “were here before men.”

  She stood, the embodiment of the Mexico that stands self-sufficient by the side of the road while conquering armies march by, to be replaced in days or years or centuries (it doesn’t matter) by other armies under other banners. Along the paved highway to the east, Rennert thought, will come another, more dreadful army with billboards and refreshment stands and blatant automobile horns, but Maria and her kind will stand when they have passed by.

  “Buenas noches,” he said quietly.

  “Buenas noches, señor.”

  As he walked away he heard behind him the gentle splash of water.

  He stood in the door of Flores’ room and watched Arnhardt push shut a steamer trunk. Beside him were an alligator-skin grip and the black leather case which Rennert had seen in the Mexican’s hands the afternoon before. He flung the grip on the bed and began to rummage through its contents with his free hand.

  Flores stood to one side, placidly smoking a cigarette. He looked up at Rennert.

  “Come in, Mr. Rennert, and join in the search,” his pleasantly modulated voice held an undercurrent of raillery. “I suppose you know that Mr. Arnhardt is searching for a gun. Really you should have him on duty at the border to examine the luggage of the tourists and the school teachers from Kansas who come down to see our picturesque country. He is most thorough.” As he spoke his eyes went to Arnhardt’s back and there was
a slight widening of his fixed smile.

  After a moment’s contemplation of the scene Rennert walked slowly and as if at random to the leather case, noticing obliquely the expression on the Mexican’s face. He saw, for the merest fraction of time, a calculating look come into the dark eyes. It was gone then and Flores moved a step in his direction, saying: “Mr. Arnhardt has already examined that, Mr. Rennert. It is a little invention of mine.” He paused and pronounced the words with distinct emphasis, “A radio attachment.”

  Arnhardt closed the grip with a snap and set it on the floor.

  “Yes,” he said to Rennert, “I looked through that case. Nothing but a bunch of metal and wires. Let’s go. Sorry to have bothered you, Flores, but we’ve got to search all the rooms, you know.”

  That, Rennert thought, is exactly what you are not doing. There was a precipitousness about Arnhardt’s movements, an eagerness to get ahead with this perfunctory search that puzzled him. He thought: He acts as if he knew beforehand what the result will be.

  “I am very glad that you have found nothing, Mr. Arnhardt.” Flores’ voice was too suave, faintly metallic. “If you had found a gun it would have been very hard for me to explain, would it not?”

  “Damn right it would!” Arnhardt’s mouth was twisted in a grin.

  “You have, however, neglected to look in one place.”

  Arnhardt frowned at him.

  “Where’s that?”

  “On my person.” Flores held his arms slightly away from his body, inviting search.

  “Oh,” Arnhardt hesitated. “That’s right. I didn’t suppose you’d be fool enough to keep it on you, if you had it.” He ran his hand quickly over Flores’ body.

  “Nor would I be such a fool,” the Mexican said evenly. “That is all, Mr. Arnhardt?”

  “That’s all, yes.”

  “Good night, then. We have here in Mexico the saying ‘My house is yours.’ It is literally true in this case.”

  “Good night.”

  Outside, Arnhardt’s steps quickened as he moved toward Tolman’s room.

  “The last place,” he said grimly. “We might as well have begun on this side of the patio and saved ourselves some trouble.”