by Todd Downing
“Diego Echave is perfectly trustworthy, isn’t he?”
Weikel shrugged and said tonelessly:
“I suppose so. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Dr. Fogarty.”
Rennert asked in the same manner, “Did you know Professor Garnett Voice?”
Save for a quickened rise and fall of his nostrils that bespoke accelerated breathing, Weikel’s facial expression did not change.
Rennert waited and, when no reply seemed forthcoming, repeated his question.
“Yes, I knew him.” It was said with a slight tightening of the lips, so that it sounded almost like a sneer.
“You knew him at Southwestern University, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“I don’t remember. A long time ago. A month or six weeks.”
“Did you know about the threatening letters he received?”
Weikel raised an arm and ran his sleeve over his forehead as if to remove invisible perspiration. “Yes, I knew about them.”
“Do you know who sent them?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” Rennert was regarding him steadily.
Weikel stared straight in front of him and repeated the monosyllable doggedly.
“I’ve learned about the trouble you had with Voice at South western University,” Rennert pursued quietly. “The Phi Beta Kappa election.”
Weikel glanced up quickly, then leaned forward, his hands propped on his knees, to gaze at the floor.
“So that’s why you’re here, is it?” he said through half-shut white teeth. “Voice has gone to the police. Well, you can tell him to be damned. He hasn’t got any proof I sent those letters. He can’t pin anything on me.” He laughed, a little wildly and with a rasping sound.
“Voice has not gone to the police.”
Weikel looked up. “He hasn’t?”
“Voice was murdered near this house the night of May first. After he had received two letters threatening him with death if he didn’t pay a sum of money. After he had been frightened by owls flying to his windows at night. His body was buried and covered with lime. It was dug up recently, put into a plaster cast and sent off to the United States with the skeletons which John Biggerstaff took up. That’s why I’m here.”
Weikel had lifted himself half out of his chair. His breath came and went in quick, tearing gasps. He seemed incapable of speech. There was no mistaking the emotion in his eyes now. It was stark, undisguised fear.
“You must realize the seriousness of your predicament, Weikel. Do you have any statement to make?”
The other sank back into the chair and shook his head.
Rennert waited for several seconds, until the clangor of the knocker on the front door reverberated through the house.
He rose then. “Pardon me a moment. I’m going to ask you that same question when I come back.” He caught up his candle and went down the stairs.
At the front door he found the chauffeur from the embassy. The young Mexican was a solid and cheerful figure, smiling in disregard of the rivulets of water which trickled from his hatbrim.
“Good night,” he said in slow, painstaking English as he stepped inside. “You are Mr. Rennert, no?”
“Yes. You have a report on Echave?” Rennert repressed the shiver which came on contact with the raw night air.
“Yes, mister. I go to the plaza with Mr. Roark in the automobile. We stop near the tranvías—the streetcars. Mr. Roark talks to Echave so that I know who he is. Then I wait. Echave enters in the tranvía. I enter in the—”
“Hablemos español,” Rennert interrupted kindly.
The other seemed disappointed but went on more swiftly in his own language. Upon his arrival in Mexico City Echave had gone at once to the offices of the Department of Archaeology. He had remained there about twenty minutes. Then he had taken a taxi to an address far out on the Paseo de la Reforma, near Chapultepec. This was an old family residence, the chauffeur had ascertained, where lived one Moises Sart. After about half an hour Echave had come out and returned in the taxi to the Zócalo, where he boarded the San Angel car.
Rennert’s questions brought out the fact that Roark’s instructions to the man had been that he need not follow his quarry farther. Consequently the chauffeur had dined and returned to San Angel in no great haste to make his report. This meant that Echave had preceded him by forty-five minutes or more.
Rennert frowned. This had not been according to his plan. He had wanted Echave’s movements accounted for not only in Mexico City but in San Angel as well. His face was thoughtful as he thanked the man, tipped him and dismissed him.
He looked at his watch. Eight twenty-five. Where, he wondered as he went up the stairs, was Echave now?
He found Weikel sitting in the same abject posture. The fellow raised dull eyes as Rennert entered.
The latter did not resume his seat but stood with folded arms. “I’m repeating that question, Weikel. Do you have a statement to make?”
There was no reply. Only a desperate tightening of the large splayed fingers on the chair arms.
“I have those letters which were sent to Voice.” Rennert’s tone was incisive. “They were printed, you remember. There on the table are some pieces of pottery, with labels on which numbers and letters are printed. I think that an expert might be able to determine whether or not they correspond. I have taken some of them for comparison.”
Up the stair well came the sound of the closing of the rear door.
“I’m going to leave you alone for a few minutes, Weikel. Understand this: the matter has not been turned over to the police as yet. Anything you say to me will be treated confidentially if I think best. I should advise you to do some thinking while I’m gone. Some damned hard thinking.”
Rennert went out and closed the door.
He was in time to meet Dr. Fogarty at the head of the stairs. The archaeologist held a flashlight and a hat in one hand, and was unbuttoning his raincoat with the other, shaking himself mean while like a large Newfoundland dog. He looked ill-tempered as he grunted an unintelligible greeting.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Doctor,” Rennert said.
20
Pick
“Waiting for me?” Fogarty seemed to address the raincoat, which he had stripped off and was holding at arm’s length.
He bent over and slapped at his damp trouser legs. “Oh yes, about those specimens.”
He straightened up. “Come in my room. Rennert, I believe you said your name was.”
“Yes.”
Rennert followed him across the hall and into his room.
“Have a chair.” Fogarty extinguished the flashlight.
Rennert deposited his candle on the table and sat down. He noticed that the archaeologist glanced surreptitiously at his watch as he carried his coat and hat to the closet.
The room was similar to Weikel’s and Biggerstaff’s. There were a few more articles of clothing lying about, and the table was piled higher with books, papers and variegated pieces of pottery. In their midst was a typewriter, its cover in place.
Fogarty went to the table and poked about in the litter until he found a battered briar pipe and a pouch. He began to cram the bowl with tobacco, spilling a great deal on his trousers in the process. Rennert, looking past the powerful, rangy frame, could see that the pottery bore typewritten and not printed labels.
“Well—” Fogarty made an effort at joviality—“it’s a bad night for the old rheumatism, isn’t it? I’m beginning to feel twinges of it already.”
Rennert agreed that it was an exceedingly bad night for rheumatism. “You must have gone out just in time to get caught in the rain, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I was on my way to the plaza when it started.” Fogarty had located a packet of matches and was moving to a chair a few feet from Rennert.
He presented a more dignified and genial figure now than he had in his work clothes. A heavy tweed coat of
checkered rust and black, brown trousers and a white shirt with dark tie were in harmony with the healthy tan of the cheeks momentarily hollowed by suction. Even the incipient baldness was almost concealed by the carefully brushed iron-gray hair. It was the man’s eyes, staring in fierce concentration at the match flame, which betrayed his lack of ease.
He flicked away the sliver of wax. “You wanted to see me about those skeletons, I suppose.”
Without giving Rennert a chance to reply he hurried on: “I’d be glad to help you, but I’m afraid I’ve told you all I can. The shipment was in perfectly good order when it left here. We’ll file a claim for damages with the Mexican National Railways.”
“You can be of a great deal more help to me, Doctor, by answering a few questions. I assure you that they’re not as irrelevant as they may sound. To begin with, you have two assistants: Karl Weikel and—what’s the name of the other?”
“Biggerstaff. John Biggerstaff.”
“Not Biggers?”
“Why no. Biggerstaff.”
“How long have you known them?”
“I’ve known Karl for four years, John for three. Both of them were students of mine at Southwestern University before I resigned my position there.”
“Can you tell me anything about their backgrounds?”
“Their backgrounds?” Fogarty repeated irritably, taking the pipe from his mouth. “Of what importance is that? They’re both good workers and have the makings of first-rate archaeologists. That’s all I’m interested in.”
“I understand that. But take my word for it that you’ll be acting in their own interests by answering my question.”
Fogarty’s teeth clamped upon the pipestem again. For some time the only sounds to break the stillness were the gurgle of saliva and the thudding of the raindrops, like spent BB shot, on the leaded panes.
“I can tell you all I know about their backgrounds in a very few words,” he said abruptly. “Weikel comes from Kansas City. His father has a secondhand store or a pawnshop or something of the kind there. I don’t know where Biggerstaff’s home is. Both of them worked their way through college. From that I’d infer they’re not rolling in wealth exactly.”
“Biggerstaff attended Chicago University before going to Southwestern, didn’t he?”
“He spent one term there.”
“You doubtless knew Professor Garnett Voice, didn’t you, Doctor?”
A frown cut into Fogarty’s forehead. “Yes.”
“I’d like some information about him. I thought you might be able to give it to me.”
“Why yes,” in a puzzled tone, “I can tell you a little about him. He spent the winter here in this house, in fact. I can’t say I was particularly intimate with him. He didn’t have many interests outside his own field. Rather an uninspired research worker, I always thought. A damned poor teacher. Did quite a bit of spadework on the Mexican ambitions of some of the Confederate leaders, but it’ll take a man of broader intellect to make it of much real value.”
“Like John Randolph’s ‘rotten mackerel that shines and stinks in the moonlight’?”
Fogarty chuckled. “Describes the man exactly.” He sucked for a moment, contemplatively, on the pipe. “But don’t tell me you suspect him of anything dishonest. I didn’t mean to infer that. Intellectual dishonesty, yes, but nothing more.”
“No, I’m not inquiring into his honesty, intellectual or otherwise. I understand that Weikel had some difficulty with him at Southwestern.”
“Oh, so that’s been dug up, has it?” Fogarty began to speak more slowly, weighing his words. “Yes. There was an altercation about a history grade. It was at the time of the annual election to Phi Beta Kappa. Weikel claimed that Voice purposely lowered his grade to keep him out. Karl’s inclined to be a little hasty sometimes. I might have been able to straighten the matter out, but he went ahead and got into a row with Voice. There wasn’t anything to do then. Biggerstaff was elected, but Weikel wasn’t.”
“Voice was a member of Phi Beta Kappa?”
“No.”
“He wasn’t? You’re sure of that?”
“Positive. I’m a member myself, so I ought to know.”
Rennert lit a cigarette and stared for a moment into its blue spirals of smoke.
“Was there any further trouble between Voice and Weikel down here?” he asked finally.
“Oh no. They seldom saw each other, except to pass in the hall.”
“Nothing happened this spring to stir up Weikel’s old resentment?”
Fogarty hesitated. “Why yes, come to think of it, there was something. Karl and John were both applying for a permanent place with the Teague Museum. There’s only one open. Voice gave Biggerstaff a very good recommendation. Karl didn’t even ask him for one, of course, after what had happened. He said, although I don’t know whether it’s true or not, that Voice had written to the museum urging them not to consider his application. Karl has a deeply ingrained inferiority complex. He’s convinced that the world is against him. On account of his racial antecedents, his appearance, his poverty, any number of things. It’s unfortunate, as he will always be handicapped by it.”
“When did this matter of the applications come up?”
“Last April.”
Rennert nodded thoughtfully. That was one of the things which had puzzled him: why an animosity of such long standing should have flared suddenly into action.
Fogarty pulled a watch from his pocket and glanced at it.
Just as he put it back into place Rennert said, “You knew about the threatening letters that Voice received?”
The other took the pipe from his mouth and sat up straighter in the chair. His Yes was noncommittal. “In your opinion, who wrote them?”
The long jaw moved, then set grimly. With the pipestem Fogarty described a circle in the air and jabbed accurately through its center. His eyes met Rennert’s then in what was almost a glare.
“So that’s it! I had the feeling that you’d been beating about the bush. I thought it odd that the United States customs authorities should send a man all the way down here to inquire into some forgeries of pottery or a damaged shipment of skeletons.” He laughed. “But I’m afraid you’ve let yourself be led on a wild-goose chase, Mr. Rennert. I wouldn’t take those letters too seriously. Someone was just pulling Voice’s leg. You must know the temptation—to disturb someone’s smugness? Just a schoolboy prank.”
“You saw the letters, Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Did those drawings on them impress you as having been done in the spirit of a schoolboy prank?”
The archaeologist’s eyes dropped, and he moved uneasily in his chair.
“Well,” he admitted reluctantly, “to tell you the truth, they did worry me a bit. Whoever made them had a decidedly nasty mind, I should say.”
“You would also say that the person who wrote them was inspired by a very real hatred of Voice?”
“Yes, undoubtedly.”
“Enough to do murder?”
“What?” The pipe dropped from Fogarty’s fingers.
“Murder, Doctor. You spoke a moment ago of beating about the bush. That’s exactly what I have been doing. But to a purpose. One of the skeletons in that last shipment you sent to the border was that of Garnett Voice.”
Fogarty’s lips had remained parted after that last startled cry, so that the gold bridgework on his teeth gleamed in the candle-light. His tan seemed suddenly to have changed to leather, holding the facial muscles immobile.
“That’s impossible,” he managed. “You’re insane, man, insane!”
“It’s the truth, Doctor. Voice was murdered in this vicinity the first of May and his body buried in lime. Some time later it was put into a plaster cast and sent away with your specimens. That’s why I’m here. The case hasn’t been turned over to the Mexican authorities yet. If there’s anything you have to say to me before it is, I shall be glad to hear you.”
Fogarty continued to stare at
him, almost blankly. The tendons of his hands stood out like tightened wires as he grasped the chair arms.
“Before God, Rennert, what I told you this afternoon was the truth! I can see no possible way this could have happened.”
“Remember the forged pottery on your previous shipment. The two substitutions could only have been the work of someone familiar with your excavations. The list is limited. Biggerstaff, Weikel—”
“No, no!” Fogarty started to his feet and began to stalk with long strides, his hands jammed into his pockets. “You’ve led me on to talk about my assistants. But they couldn’t have done this. Their whole future is bound up with our work here. They wouldn’t have had anything to gain.”
“What about the original pottery and the skeleton that disappeared? Wouldn’t they have some value?”
Fogarty stopped. “Yes, that’s right. They were valuable. Any museum would be glad to get hold of them.”
“I thought so. There’s one more person to consider. Diego Echave, the inspector for the Department of Archaeology.”
The archaeologist stood towering over the candle, his gaze fixed on it as if in fascination.
“Echave,” he repeated slowly.
Rennert sat half shadowed by the tall body and watched conflicting emotions play across the sharp features.
“There is going to be a very close inquiry into the management of your expedition, Dr. Fogarty. Questions are going to be asked about the share the Mexican government has got out of these finds. The reports which Echave has turned in are going to be inspected carefully. Do you know a man by the name of Moises Sart, who lives on the Paseo de la Reforma?”
“Sart? Why, of course. He has a large collection of Mexican antiquities. That is, he’s supposed to have. Very few have ever seen them. He used to do some digging himself, I believe, but in recent years he has left the work to agents. Why?”
“I thought you might be interested in knowing that your friend Echave paid a hurried call to his house on leaving you tonight. After learning that I was suspicious about your shipments.”
Fogarty’s fist struck the palm of his hand. “He did, did he? To Sart, whose Archaic collection is said to be so good.”
