The way he said that last line made it sound very much as though he suspected Laura might be lying. I blurted out:
“You’ve only got Myra’s word that she ever did.”
“True enough. But, so far as we know, Laura is the only one of the possible suspects who might have gotten hold of that gun. None of the rest of them had any chance to steal it from the Young home.”
“How about Dwight?” I asked belligerently. “He admitted keeping assignations with Young’s wife while he was away from home. He might have picked it up on one of his visits. If I were getting into deep water with a married woman, one of the first things I’d do would be to inquire about firearms around the house … and make some arrangement to get rid of a pistol in case the husband came home unexpectedly.”
Burke rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That’s psychologically correct,” he agreed. “But, Myra would have known.…”
“And would have lied about it if she did know,” I interrupted excitedly. “There’s been something fishy about that dame all along. She was throwing suspicion off Dwight by accusing the first person who came into her mind … Laura Yates.”
“Possibly. But, are you theorizing that Dwight killed Young … then carried the pistol home and shot himself with it and threw it out the window?”
“I’m not theorizing,” I growled. “I’m simply pointing out one way by which that pistol could have gotten out of the Young house into the possession of some one other than Laura Yates. If Dwight took it home with him for safe-keeping … any one of the others might have picked it up at Dwight’s. Desta, Michaela, Hardiman … any of them.”
Jerry Burke nodded and said mildly: “I haven’t accused Laura Yates of having stolen the pistol. I was merely stating the latest developments at your request.”
“Here’s another angle,” I exclaimed, warming up to the subject. “Why couldn’t Leslie Young have stuck that pistol in his pocket when he rode away from the cabin? His murderer could have taken it away from him and done the shooting … then carried it on away to use on Dwight later.”
“All right, all right.” Burke held up his hand in resignation. “You convince me that anyone might have gotten hold of that particular pistol and done murder with it. What next?”
“Coffee,” I told him, going toward the kitchen. “Will you have a cup with me?”
He followed me to the doorway, shaking his head. “I haven’t time. I stopped by to ask you to attempt a research job that I thought might be in your line. I want to get a definite line on that silver cross.”
I turned to stare at him, still blinking sleep from my eyes. “What about it?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I want you to find out. Anything. Everything!” His doubled fist pounded the palm of his left hand. “It has to mean something. As our friend Jelcoe points out, there has to be a reason for everything … even a cross with an extra bar. You’re supposed to know something about books and research. I want to know where such a bastard cross popped up from … what significance it carries.”
I put water on to boil, shaking my head doubtfully. “Damned if I know where to start looking,” I confessed. “Of course, there are all sorts of different-shaped crosses … all with certain symbolic meanings, I suppose. I don’t know whether I can turn up any dope on this one or not.”
“I’m betting you can.” Jerry slapped me on the shoulder and turned away. “You’ll know what to look for if you find anything at all. I’ll be at my office.”
He paused at the front door to turn and warn me: “I consider this damned important, Asa. Don’t stop digging until you exhaust every avenue of information. Here’s your dogs. I let them out when I came in.”
He opened the door and Nip and Tuck trotted in with red tongues lolling. The door closed behind him and I measured coffee into the dripolator, wondering where to start looking for what he wanted.
I kept on wondering, while I made coffee, and decided against trusting any food in my stomach on top of the dog-food I had eaten not so many hours earlier.
It seemed pretty hopeless to me, with nothing at all to go on. If I could just find a starting point … find out what it was called …
I finished a cup of coffee and was half-way through a cigarette when I guiltily realized I was just killing time … and Jerry was depending on me.
Without much hope, I went into my study and opened Webster’s New International dictionary at “cross.”
The first thing I saw was a plate showing pictures of twenty differently shaped crosses.
And number three on the list was an exact reproduction of the silver cross lying on my living room table.
With the blood tingling in my veins I read the descriptive phrase beneath the plate:
“# 3 Patriarchal or Archiepiscopal”
That was all, and that didn’t help much. Disappointed, I skimmed over the small type on the subject of crosses, and gathered that those pictured were formerly used as emblems in heraldry.
Tucked away in my book case was a seldom-used set of “The Americana Encyclopedia” which a fast-talking book agent had sold to me years before on the premise that no author could hope to be successful without a reference set in his home.
I dragged out the “H” volume and brushed off the dust, looked up “Heraldry” on the off-chance that I’d run onto something. At the beginning of the article on Heraldry I was coldly advised to see “Crosses and Crucifixes” if that was what I was interested in.
So I laid “H” aside and dusted off “C.” Under “Crosses and Crucifixes” I found an entire plate of various-shaped crosses, and there again was my old friend with the double bars. The caption this time informed me that it was a: “Patriarchal or double cross.”
I already knew that. Which is my chief argument against wasting money on an encyclopedia. I’m always looking something up and discovering I already know what they tell me.
But I buckled down and read through the text on the subject of crosses in general, finding one paragraph relating to my cross:
Reliquary crosses of small size were made for use of the general public as amulets, and were extremely popular in the Middle Ages. They were termed encolpia. Cardinals and Archbishops, for hierarchical distinction, are empowered to use a Latin cross furnished with two arms (patibula) or traverses. A special, distinctive, three-barred cross is dedicated, solely, for the use of the Pope. These two styles of crosses are known respectively as Patriarchal and Papal.
That was all of that. Not much help yet, but at least it wasn’t a dead-end. Turning back to the beginning of the information on Crosses I began reading every word carefully until I was brought up with a start by the hidden and seemingly insignificant statement: “… Prescott says that when the first Europeans arrived in Mexico, to their surprise, they found ‘the Cross, the sacred emblem of their own faith, raised as an object of worship in the temples of Anahuac.…’”
I read that over and over, trying to decide whether it meant a great deal, or nothing.
Mexico!
I don’t know why it excited me. Modern Mexico is predominantly Catholic. There are crosses and shrines all over Mexico. But the idea of a cross before the advent of Catholicism stimulated my imagination. I supposed Prescott didn’t mention a double cross, but …
I have a well-thumbed three volumes of Prescott’s “Conquest of Mexico.” I dug them out and went to the index in Volume III.
On page 484 I found: “Cross, the common symbol of worship, i, 267 note. See Crosses.”
The note on page 267, Vol. I, gave the following not particularly relevant information:
In the passages here referred to, the author has noticed various proofs of the existence of the cross as a symbol of worship among pagan nations both in the Old World and the New. The fact has been deemed a very puzzling one; yet the explanation, as traced by Dr. Brinton, is sufficiently simple: “the arms of the cross were designed to point to the cardinal points and represent the four winds—the rain-bringers.” Hence the
name given to it in the Mexican language, signifying “Tree of our life”—a term well-calculated to increase the wonderment of the Spanish discoveries. “Myths of the New World,” p. 96 et al.—ED.
That wasn’t much help. Checking through the various other references in Prescott, I gathered that the presence of a cross as a symbol of worship superseding Christianity had been most prevalent on the Island of Cozumel (just off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula) and in Yucatan itself.
I laid Prescott aside thoughtfully. There was a possible lead. Geographically, Yucatan is situated so as to be almost an island, set off from the rest of the continent by an almost impassable barrier of jungle, swamp, and low hill ranges. The home of the Maya Indians; the seat of one of the most astounding of ancient civilizations—the Mayan; Yucatan has been the object of intense archeological research during the last few decades … considered by scientists as an almost perfect “laboratory case” for such study because it is so isolated that outside influences have been reduced to a minimum.
And Mike O’Toole, renegade Irish adventurer, had settled in Yucatan, where Leslie Young had met him!
Not much of a tie-up. Far-fetched and fantastic, of course. But, a beginning. Something to start on.
Jerry Burke had told me I would know what to look for if I found something. Was this what he had in mind?
My next port of call was the public library. I hardly knew what I was looking for, nor how to go about finding it, but Yucatan was a lead that stuck in my mind.
The cross-reference filing cards of the library were peculiarly productive. Because of El Paso’s proximity to Mexico, I suppose, the reference shelves of the library contained more than their share of scientific research into the ancient Mayan civilization.
Choosing at random, I took a crack at Cheese-borough’s six volumes of “A Study of Mayan Antiquities.”
The numerous color plates fascinated me.… Tinted photographs, mostly, of reliefs sculptured God knows how many centuries ago on stone walls and the arches of ancient temples.
I flipped the pages rapidly, looking for a two-barred cross. I found crosses, dozens of them, but all were the conventional single traverse type.
I was half-way through the second volume before I thought to consult the index.
And … there it was! I had a crawling sensation in my belly as I stared at the words:
“Stone Crosses in Architecture: … Latin, Double Patibula, IV, p. 432.…”
My fingers trembled as I opened volume IV to page 432. There they were. Two of them. Flanking the entry of a teocalli near the fabled metropolis of Chichen Itza.
Stone crosses, rudely hewn from the solid rock by the copper instruments of a people unacquainted with iron.
Beneath the photograph of the two crosses was the caption:
One of the most curious and interesting archeological discoveries on the Yucatan Peninsula to date is the above entry to a ruined teocalli which is guarded by twin double-barred crosses of stone which appear to be exact duplicates of the encolpia worn only by Patriarchs or Archbishops during the Middle Ages.
Antedating such usage by centuries, an interesting field of conjecture is opened by asking ourselves what particular significance this symbol enjoyed in the Maya mythology … a question which is only partially answered by fragmentary hieroglyphics which indicate the existence of a secret cult which must have flourished about 200 B.C., dedicated to the worship of a strange God, Huexchipatlan, who is represented in two sculptured reliefs inside the above-pictured ruins as a squat Buddha-like creature, holding aloft a double-barred cross in his left hand and a rude sacrificial knife in his right. There are further inscriptions which indicate that Huexchipatlan may have been regarded as the God of Vengeance, and the sacrificial altar of this teocalli may have been used as a death tribunal for members of the cult convicted of traitorous acts. For further interesting conjectures, see: Martin Jenson: “Modern Mexican Mythology,” p. 341.
Back I went to the reference files, praying that the library would have a copy of Mr. Jenson’s book.
A brown-eyed girl wearing a smock and a friendly smile was hovering around the filing cabinet when I reached it. She asked if she could help me, and I let her because she seemed so anxious to help somebody.
“I wonder if you have a copy of Martin Jenson’s ‘Modern Mexican Mythology’?”
I noticed a little frown pucker her forehead, and was surprised by her prompt answer:
“Yes. I know there is a copy. But I’ll have to look up the number. It’s rarely asked for and I can’t tell you exactly where to find it.”
She turned her back and drew out the “J” drawer of cards. As her fingers flipped through them, I asked curiously:
“How do you happen to remember the name of that particular book? Don’t tell me you go in for Mexican mythology.”
She tossed me a professional smile over her shoulder. “I don’t, as a matter of fact. It just happens that I had another inquiry for the same book a couple of days ago.”
I stiffened like a bird dog on a point. It couldn’t be a coincidence. It had to mean something. Someone else running down the same dope.
“I wonder if you could recall who it was,” I said as casually as I could.
“She didn’t tell me her name.” The girl was copying some numbers down from the file.
“I wonder if you could describe her to me,” I said desperately. “I’m doing a feature article on Mexican Mythology and I’ve an idea.…”
“Why, that’s what she was doing, too. I remember she was particularly interested in the origin of a cross with two bars … and I helped her chase it down to this book you want to see. But I don’t believe I can describe her at all. So many people are in and out all the time.”
“Can’t you remember the color of her hair?” I asked. “Whether she was fat or thin? Young or old?”
“She wasn’t old. Moderately tall and slender … I think.”
“When was this?” I asked her tensely. “It’s … important.”
“Day before yesterday.” She was very positive about it. “Just before noon, day before yesterday. I was off yesterday, and I remember distinctly.”
I muttered my thanks and followed her to a shelf where she instantly found Mr. Jenson’s book and handed it down to me.
I sat down with it at a table, my mind in a whirl. Day before yesterday at three o’clock, Leslie Young had been murdered. At noon of that day … three hours before the murder occurred … Some woman had looked up the symbol which was later found marked on Young’s cheek with a woman’s lipstick.
I tried to quit thinking, and opened the heavy volume to page 341. A section titled: “DO THE DEVOTEES OF HUEXCHIPATLAN STILL WORSHIP AT THE SHRINE OF THE DOUBLE-CROSS?” read:
In Mexico today (1936) there is a closely guarded inner group in the Young Nationalist movement which would appear to be a dominant factor in the future development of that party.
Their policy is one of force and of ruthless reprisals in high places rather than of peaceful penetration as is advocated by the ostensible leaders of the movement.
Banded into secret unity by certain vows and rites known only to the initiate, it is cautiously whispered that their identity may be discovered only by the tattooing upon the chest of each member of a symbol which may be conveniently identified as the “Double-Cross,” described as a conventional cross with an extra transverse bar.
In this connection it is interesting to note evidence of a similar organization which had its inception in Yucatan during the reign of Iturbe in about 1825 whose members were similarly marked and whose object was to effect a return of the government to the common people of Mexico.
Delving still further back into fabled antiquity, we find indisputable evidence of this self-same cult of the Double-Cross in the ancient Maya civilization, which also seems to have had as its object the violent eradication of traitors against the common weal.
It is an interesting commentary on the nature of the Mexican
people and the peculiar national characteristic of …
I had read enough to know Jerry Burke should immediately see what I had found. Carrying the book under my arm, I went to the desk with my library card, waited impatiently until it was duly stamped to allow me to take the book out, then hurried to Burke’s office with my find.
20
When I hurried into Jerry Burke’s private office at police headquarters a few minutes later, I found him sitting at his desk loosing a lurid string of oaths that would have made an army mule-skinner blush.
He glanced at me and kept on cursing, paying no attention to my excited face nor to the heavy volume I slammed down in front of him.
I waited until he began repeating himself, then interrupted to ask what it was all about.
“These dumb flatfeet the city furnishes me and calls detectives,” he growled. “Can’t even tail a woman a few hours without losing her.”
“Laura Yates?”
He nodded disgustedly. “Not that it makes a hell of a lot of difference, now, for it’ll soon all be over. But it’s the principle of it. That fool I had tailing her just telephoned that he lost her an hour ago in a downtown crowd.”
I had an empty sick feeling inside of me as I realized that what I was going to tell him might make him consider the disappearance of Laura Yates more serious than he thought. I pointed to the book and said:
“You haven’t asked me what I dug up on the cross you were so curious about.”
He glanced at the book with a disinterested frown. “Oh, that. I’m sorry, Asa. I don’t believe it’s important after all. I tried to call you a while ago to tell you not to bother. You were out so I sent a man over to your place with a note.…” He paused gloomily.
“You don’t know what I dug up.” I opened the book at page 341 and shoved it under his nose.
The Kissed Corpse Page 15
