Hooker did not look amused, but rather puzzled. “I didn’t quite get that,” he confessed. “That’s not the usual thing with these people. But living right out here, I guess——” He ended with a shrug.
The two young men lit cigarettes, and ruminated. It was very peaceful in there. The Golden Fleece itself was now piling up in the western sky. This was not the moment to begin planning again. Let things look after themselves for a little while: let them run just natural.
But Malcolm, looking out to enjoy the magnificent sky, found himself remarking: “The old couple seem to be very curious about your car, Hooker.”
This did not surprise Hooker, who knew that all good Americans have a deep and abiding passion for the automobile. Only the year before, one afternoon as he was going down Lexington Avenue during a brief visit to New York, he had noticed the unusual look of awed and reverent expectation on the faces of all the people approaching a large building and had then remembered it was the week of the Automobile Show. So he did not rise, but casually enquired what the Larrigans were doing.
“Poking round it,” replied Malcolm. “Pa’s inside now.”
Hooker chuckled. “There are one or two little gadgets of mine on that board that’ll give him something to think about.”
“He looks thoughtful,” Malcolm continued. “He’s getting out now. He’s coming back. So is Ma. She’s looking grimmer than ever. I hope she won’t mind about her pie. You’ve made it look pretty silly, y’know, Hooker.”
“I have. Gosh!—you’d twice as much, Darbyshire. Not that I blame you. I tried pie and coffee over in England. You’re right to make the most of your chances.”
“Seems to me, Hooker,” said Malcolm, falling into the same vein, “you were too busy in England going on switchbacks and wearing false noses and picking up shop-girls, to know what sort of grub we have.”
Pa Larrigan stood in the open doorway, and surveyed them in his own easy candid fashion.
“Mr. Larrigan,” cried Malcolm, “the pie was marvellous. You must let us pay for what we’ve had. It’s not fair to come here and eat you out of your house——”
“Call it your supper,” said Mr. Larrigan briskly. “Now then, young fellers, step outside.”
There was such an odd change in his tone and in the look in his eye that first they stared at him and then at one another.
“Come on, step outside, before there’s trouble. And you can have trouble, if you want it.” And now he showed them, as he stepped back on to the porch, to allow them to come out, a very nasty-looking revolver that seemed to have seen much service.
They stared, wondering if this was some elaborate joke. But the genial, homely Western philosopher and humorist appeared to have vanished. There was a very hard and uncompromising look about Mr. Larrigan now. His tone was harsh. There was cold blue fire in his eyes—to say nothing of the revolver in his hand. They went out, still staring. Mrs. Larrigan appeared round the corner.
“Mrs. Larrigan,” cried Hooker, protesting, “what’s this?”
“This, young feller,” said Mrs. Larrigan grimly, deliberately mistaking his meaning, “is a shot-gun, and if you think I can’t use it, you don’t know me. Jest do what Paw tells yer, if you don’t want to get hurt.”
“Got another key to your car?” asked Mr. Larrigan sternly.
“No,” replied Hooker, not convinced yet that this wasn’t their idea of a joke.
“Well, I’ve got the one that was in the car, so don’t think you can get away. It’s a long walk to anywhere. And you can’t get that way.” He pointed towards the wire fence. “Don’t try it, young fellers. Did you open that door, Maw?”
“Shorely did, Paw.”
“Mr. Larrigan,” cried Malcolm earnestly. “I was just going to thank you both for being so kind and hospitable to a couple of strangers. But if you’re serious about this, let me tell you I think it’s a damned dirty trick.”
“And so do I,” said Hooker angrily. “I didn’t know Westerners asked strangers in to have a bite and a drink, and then did this to them.”
These reproaches had no effect upon Mrs. Larrigan, who told them to be quiet, but her husband looked a trifle shame-faced.
“My orders is to keep you here, boys, till I know what they want to do with you,” he said, with some trace of apology in his tone.
“But you can’t have had any orders,” said Malcolm, bewildered.
“The telephone,” said Hooker, out of the corner of his mouth. “After we told them who we were, she must have rung up the MacMichaels and told them. They gave the orders.”
“Now come on, Paw, we’re not going to stand here jest chattering.”
“Move on, boys,” Larrigan commanded. “We’re puttin’ you in that shack up there till you’re wanted.”
The two young men glanced at one another, then with a shrug walked slowly round the back, and, under the directions of Larrigan, who followed them, entered a small bare shack, which contained nothing but a couple of rough bunks, an old blanket or two, some sacking, a little tin stove and a little heap of wood.
“Here’s your place for the night, boys, or till you’re wanted,” said Larrigan at the door. “And it’s orders and can’t be helped. If you’re ready to take it easy—just letting her run natural—then that’s okay with me. But if you try any tricks, you’ll find we’re good an’ tough around here. So better make the best of it.”
“And how long are we supposed to stay here?” demanded Hooker.
“Couldn’t rightly say. Till morning, anyhow.”
“Then you might let us have our things out of the car,” said Malcolm.
Larrigan nodded. “Let you have some of ’em, mebbe. No orders sayin’ I shouldn’t.” He locked them in, and departed.
They examined the shack thoroughly. There was a small window, and it would not be difficult to smash the thin wooden strips that held the panes, clear all the glass away, then climb out.
“No use to-night, though,” said Hooker. “We couldn’t do anything if we got out.”
“Well, I wondered once or twice what we were going to do to-night,” replied Malcolm, pretending to be more cheerful than he felt, “and now it’s been neatly settled for us.”
When Larrigan returned, with his wife behind him, he dumped into the shack the two rugs, some of their things, and the provisions that Hooker had bought in Barstow. If he had overheard their remarks, he could not have spoken more exactly to the point. “You might get out by smashing that window,” he observed calmly, “but I’ve a dog out here, an’ he’ll bark, an’ me an’ Maw happens to be light sleepers. Then when I put you back in here, it won’t have a window, that’s all, an’ it’s cold up here nights. So I shouldn’t try it, boys, jest for your own good. Light your stove if you feel like it, but don’t call for no more wood because you won’t git none—we’re short o’ wood in these parts. Let her run natural, boys, that’s my advice,” he concluded, with a slightly sardonic emphasis.
“You go to hell,” said Hooker irritably.
Pa Larrigan only chuckled as he slammed and locked the door on them.
“Now do you believe that chap Edlin was only a crazy drunk?” asked Malcolm, as they sat on the edge of their bunks.
“No. And I wish he was here with us.” Hooker stared at the little tin stove. “You see what happened. They just kidded us along, of course.”
“I know that part all right,” said Malcolm bitterly. “I thought that name business a bit queer at the time.”
“While the artful old devil had us up on the hillside, well away from the house, his wife was telephoning to Lost Lake to say that that couple of saps, Mr. Darbyshire the architect from London, and Dr. Sap-brained Hooker of the Weinberger Institute of Technology, had come prying round. Old Larrigan knew, of course, from the word ‘go’ we hadn�
��t simply got lost but were up to something. That’s what he’s here for—the nice simple old-timer.”
“Yes, I can see all that. But why did they tell them to keep us here?”
“Search me! If they’d told us to get out and mind our own business, I could understand it.”
Malcolm thought for a moment. “If Andrea’s there—well, she knows my name, of course. But either she’d ask them to tell me to go away or she’d come out here herself. What I can’t see her doing is telling them to take out their guns and have me locked up for the night. And the others—her father—and her uncles, if they are her uncles—I’m still confused about all that—don’t know anything about me. So I can’t make it out.”
“I don’t want to be egoistical, Darbyshire,” said Hooker dryly, “but I must tell you that I think it’s me—and not you—they’re interested in. Both Paul and Henry MacMichael know my name all right, and they know very well I wouldn’t be poking round up here if I wasn’t on to them again. They tried to frame me over there in England, and now they’re having me locked in for the night here. And my guess is this. Paul MacMichael is on the other side of that wire fence, and he’s working at something very big. And either he’s going to tell me himself to keep away and stay away or—and this is just possible—and—gosh!—it’s an exciting notion—he’s in some sort of jam with his experiment and wants me to take a look at it. I know that isn’t likely—he’s not the kind who wants to let you in on anything—but it’s just possible. Gee!—that would be a break. I’d forgive ’em everything for that.”
Afterwards, when it had been dark some time and they had the stove going and had made the shack as snug as possible, Malcolm broke a long silence by saying, “I’ve been thinking. We might as well try to work this whole thing out. I feel we’ve been dodging it rather.”
“Dodging what?”
“Dodging the issue, I suppose. We’re not really pooling our evidence, to begin with. We ought to put everything we know together, then try to deduce something from it.”
“But—no, go on.”
Malcolm waited, however, until Hooker, who appeared to think he was in for a long session, made himself comfortable by removing his collar and tie and shoes and then stretching out his long legs on the bunk. They both began smoking again. Fortunately, they had brought along plenty of cigarettes.
“Now then,” said Malcolm, “I’ll begin with my little bit. I know it’s the least important, from this point of view, though I think it’s more important than you imagine.”
“The trouble is, there’s a girl in it, as I told you before.”
“Yes, I’ve heard all that,” replied Malcolm, with some impatience. “But just listen. I meet this Andrea MacMichael and I feel there’s something wrong with her. Obviously she isn’t ill or anything. We know it’s nothing to do with money. What is it?”
“Some love affair,” the other gloomily suggested.
“No, I’m sure it wasn’t that. You can tell. She wasn’t—how shall I put it?—her real self, the sort of girl she ought to have been, and really was inside. She was repressed and unhappy, and she told me nothing was any use—which is dam’ silly—and really meant it.” He reflected a moment. “It was as if she’d been brought up to believe nothing was any use, that life was hardly worth living, and had come to believe it—in a dreary sort of way.”
“She sounds a dreary girl to me.”
“No—that’s the point—she isn’t, really. Underneath that cold covering, as if she’d been packed in ice, there was somewhere a grand girl—that’s what I felt all the time. Now she’s Henry MacMichael’s daughter, we know. She never talked about him. She never talked about her life here at all. Why?”
“It’s unusual, certainly,” said Hooker. “The girls I used to know would go gassing on for hours about their families and homes. I thought all women did.”
“Well, she didn’t. You’d think a girl who was living in a fantastic sort of modern castle among these mountains, miles from anywhere, would have plenty to say about it—but she didn’t. She was very secretive. Why?”
“If you’re asking me, you needn’t. I give it up.”
“I’m asking myself, I suppose, seeing you’re so useless. But, take it from me, there’s a mystery there. Mystery Number One, which brings me here—like the chump I am. Now how does that connect with Mystery Number Two—yours?”
“I’ve told you what I think. Paul MacMichael, the late Professor Engelfield, cleared out, disappeared, changed his name back again, because he’s on to something new in his—and my—field of work, atomic structure. He’s money of his own, and now he has his brother Henry to back him up. Ten to one he has his lab. in this Lost Lake place. And whatever he’s doing, he doesn’t want me or anybody else to butt in. At least, he didn’t. He may have other ideas now he’s made me stay here until wanted. That’s all I can tell you, Darbyshire. It may possibly be something that Henry MacMichael thinks he can exploit commercially—which may explain the secrecy—but knowing Paul and the sort of work he does, I don’t think that’s likely.”
“Mystery Number Two, then,” cried Malcolm, now warming up. “The first is—why is Andrea MacMichael so secretive and unhappy? The second is—what are Paul MacMichael and his brother up to here? And now we come to our friend Edlin. Let’s assume he meant everything he said. I’ve been going over all he told us last night. Now he didn’t know anything about my approach to this business, had never heard of Andrea——”
“And he knew nothing about Paul.”
“Right. He said—unless I’m sadly mistaken—that his brother, the reporter, had probably been murdered by a religious sect called the Brotherhood of the Judgment——”
“Los Angeles is full of ’em.”
“Yes, but the others don’t go murdering and kidnapping people. Now he’d got some information from his brother’s notebook, had gone to their meeting, gone behind the scenes, so to speak, because he happened to know their passwords, and arranged to go to Barstow, where one of their men—what did they call them?—wasn’t it servers?—something like that—was to meet him and take him to their leader—Father John, otherwise John MacMichael, whom we know to be a brother of these other two queer fish. These brethren or whatever they call themselves are gloomy religious fanatics, and he told us definitely they were up to something. And before we could compare notes, they’re on to him again, and he’s whisked away—by some trick about a doctor.”
“I wonder,” said Hooker with a grin, “if he’s somewhere on the other side of that fence?”
“If you remember,” replied Malcolm gravely, “he said he was sure they were going to kill him, or that’s what he thought when he was in that car with them. Mystery Number Three now—what is this Brotherhood doing, that it’s ready to kidnap or murder people who seem to know too much? Remember, they’re fanatics, who are looking forward—according to Edlin—to something grisly happening.”
“I wouldn’t take too much notice of that,” said Hooker. “Those people always like the gloomier bits of the Bible. They’re usually farmers who look forward to seeing the wicked city folks burning in hell. But—I’ll admit one thing—if you could work on them properly, they’d make a thundering good bodyguard or something of that sort—they’d be completely loyal—and they’re probably tough. Like these Larrigans. They’d be a darned sight better than hired gunmen, at that. Listen, Darbyshire,” he continued, with more excitement than he usually displayed, “this is where it might all link up. John MacMichael, we’ll say, is some kind of religious loony—the Hitler of the Brotherhood of the Judgment—and so Paul and Henry say to him ‘Come and live with us, and we can use your big boys from Los Angeles, give some of the tougher ones a nice job.’ Meanwhile they get on with the real work, keeping well out of everybody’s way, and importing a lot of apparatus. I know for a fact they’ve done that. You see what that mean
s?”
“No. What?”
Hooker sounded aggrieved in his reply. “It means it can’t be some purely scientific experiment. There’s a commercial angle to it, obviously, or there wouldn’t be all this elaborate secrecy and flourishing of guns and what not. They’re fooling about, trying to make a new precious metal or some rubbish of that sort. I’m surprised at Paul MacMichael, but I suppose the family spirit’s been too strong for him.” Hooker was quite disgusted. “That’s the only possible explanation. And they think we’re being employed by some rival commercial gang. It’s disappointing, but there it is.”
“There it isn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, that may possibly explain your mystery, possibly Edlin’s
—though about that, I’m doubtful—but it just doesn’t begin to explain mine. No girl is going to behave as Andrea MacMichael did at Beaulieu, merely because her father and her uncle are pottering about with metals. I don’t care if it’s the most tremendous commercial discovery of the age, that’s not going to make a girl like Andrea so secretive and mysterious and unhappy. You’d see in a minute what I meant if you met her.”
“I doubt it,” said Hooker, shaking his head over the whole mysterious sex and its bewildering and inexplicable antics and tantrums, “but I do see your argument. If the whole girl angle isn’t just your fancy, then my explanation won’t do—I can see that.”
There was a long silence, only broken at times by the howling of the wind through the passes and down the valley and by an occasional shake or creak of the thin wooden walls. Through his brooding, Malcolm was now aware of the strange remoteness of their situation here, and of the fantastic character of their position. What was he doing here, in a shack in the mountains above the Mohave Desert, a prisoner for the night at least, perhaps for longer, with a young American physicist, whom he had only known about twenty-four hours? And somewhere among these mountains, a prisoner like them or perhaps dead by this time, was a middle-aged adventurer from China and Honolulu, who had arrived on a similar quest to theirs. He remembered now what Edlin had said about their meeting at Barstow, that it could not have been a coincidence.
The Doomsday Men Page 17
