by Basil Copper
Concrete floors, dripping taps; a cheerless place at the best of times but positively side-splitting under these conditions. The curtains weren’t drawn but frosted glass blocked the lower panes of the windows. Krug tightened his grip on the Browning. I walked over near a stone sink and stood facing him. A tap dripped with a high tinkle behind me. Krug opened a double wooden door. A metal laundry chute leaned away into the darkness below. I knew what he had in mind; my belly-muscles were already tensing. I judged the distance for a leap. Too great. I decided to play my ace.
‘Before things become irrevocable, I’ve got a proposition for you,’ I said.
Krug shook his head. His voice sounded as far away as his eyes had looked. ‘Not interested.’
‘I thought the will was the main purpose of the deal,’ I said.
There was a ten-second silence. Krug swivelled his dead eyes to join the black snout of the gun; the three dark circles made a compulsive triangle with me as the focal point.
‘Continue, Mr Faraday. You have perhaps a minute to live so make it count. You arouse my interest. It is to your advantage to see that I do not become bored.’
‘The old man’s will,’ I went on. ‘You know what I’m talking about. Not the one you and Hauser and Morey Wilson cooked up.’
I paused for a moment, wondering if there had been a movement outside the room. Krug hadn’t heard anything. His face betrayed nothing but impatience and a flash of greed in the eyes.
‘I’m listening,’ he said.
‘The will can’t be broken,’ I said. ‘The lawyers can’t fault it. They’re stalling for time. But the old man left another one. It favours the girl. Now, for a ten per cent interest we might make a deal.’
Krug moved the gun in an ugly arc. His face was puckered with thought.
‘No deal, Mr Faraday. Your life will be your reward. But make it quick.’
‘The real will puts you out of court,’ I said. ‘The old man had another big library. Up at Salamanca Heights. It’s stashed there. There’s thirty copies of one book. They’re all paperbacks so it may take some time.’
Krug’s eyes glistened. It was like watching the faint white fleck of a pebble dropping into water at the bottom of a deep mine-shaft.
‘How do you know all this?’ he asked.
‘Take too long to explain,’ I said. ‘But it’s genuine.’
Krug sneered. ‘Thin stuff with which to purchase your life.’
I shrugged. ‘You got any better ideas?’
He stood undecided for a moment longer. ‘If I destroy this will, the lawyers will have a copy. And how would I collect on the other?’
‘It’s the only one,’ I said. ‘The old man made sure of that. And even in South America you would have pull with the kind of money the old man left. You’d think of a way to collect.’
Krug scratched his sallow chin with the blue-steel edge of the revolver barrel. ‘It would be a pity to be beaten by the Freeman girl,’ he said. ‘What’s the name of the book?’
‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ I said. ‘About the only decent thing Whipfuddle had up there. It must have got in by mistake.’
Krug seemed to have made up his mind. His head came round but his eyes spelled a warning to me. I poised myself on the balls of my feet.
‘I accept the offer,’ said Krug.
His hand came up with the gun. The scream of a siren sounded outside the window. It got louder and tyres squealed on wet road surface. Car doors slammed and then came men’s shouts. The frosted glass window behind me shattered as somebody put something heavy through it.
Krug whirled as I jumped for the friendly darkness of the laundry chute. His gun blammed once and a hot breath fanned past my head. Metal screamed on the edge of the chute and then I was turning over and going down into darkness. The gun roared again and flame blossomed at the head of the chute. I saw Krug’s body whirling in a bright square of light as I bounced my way down. I spread out as I got to the bottom and I must have been making as good time as a bobsled driver on the Cresta. I went into a pile of dirty laundry with an impact that winded me. I crawled away into the darkness. A door slammed somewhere up in the house and a car gunned away. The noise of the siren went on.
*
I lay and listened to the rain and the silence. A door opened in the house. I took an old string vest out of my mouth and someone’s used sock away from my ear. I was afraid to investigate any further. I crawled toward the bottom of the chute. The staccato beat of a woman’s high heels fretted overhead. A shadow fell across the square of light above me.
‘You all right, Mike?’ Kathy Gowan’s voice called down. It had the slightest suspicion of a quaver.
‘Sure,’ I lied bravely. ‘When I get disentangled from this old pair of suspenders I’ll be as good as new.’
She laughed in relief. ‘Hold on, there’s a switch here.’ Light came dimly from a bulb in a corner of the basement. I got out of the pile of soiled linen and brushed myself down. I found a flight of steps in the corner and went on up. Kathy Gowan had already opened the door. She almost fell into my arms.
‘Steady,’ I said, when I recovered my breath. ‘We don’t want to shock the law.’
‘What law?’ she said.
I looked around. Come to think of it the boys in blue weren’t exactly thick on the ground.
‘What was all that racket just now?’ I asked.
Kathy Gowan grinned. She held up a small grey plastic case.
‘The wonders of science,’ she said.
She pressed a switch. Motors roared, car doors slammed, a siren wailed.
She burst out laughing at the expression on my face. ‘The latest thing in tape recorders,’ she said. ‘Our City Editor insists on our using them as a check on stories. I covered a police exercise out of City Hall last week. Dramatic stuff. I thought it might come in useful but not like this.’
I took her in my arms and showed her my appreciation.
‘Mind the machine,’ she said. ‘These come expensive.’
‘Did you see Krug?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘I got tired of waiting so I crept up to the house. I heard voices so I figured you were in trouble. I went round the back. I could see over the top of the frosted glass from the bank so I switched on the machine and broke the window.’
‘Krug’s gone on up to a place called Salamanca Heights,’ I said. ‘I sold him a bill of goods on the Whipfuddle will. He thinks it’s hidden in the library, in one of the books. Merna Freeman tells me there’s about ten thousand paperbacks up there so it may take time.’
‘Surely he wouldn’t go there now,’ Kathy Gowan, wide-eyed. ‘He must have known he missed with those shots.’
‘He’s round the bend,’ I said. ‘No telling what he may do. It’s worth a try. You didn’t see what car he was driving?’
She shook her head. ‘Too dark.’
I took her by the arm. ‘Don’t go in the parlour,’ I said. ‘It’s being used by the Late George Apley. Here’s what I want you to do.’
I gave her Tucker’s office and home numbers and told her what to say. ‘It may take several hours to get him up here but he may still be in time for the finale.’
‘Wait for me, Mike,’ said Kathy Gowan. ‘I want to go with you.’
‘Nothing doing,’ I said. ‘Too dangerous. You got your story.’
I went out to the Buick. It was raining harder than ever. When I put my weight on the floorboards something felt strange. I went around the rear of the car again. The nearside back tyre was as flat as a week-old glass of champagne. I put my hand down; jagged rubber lined the big slit in the tread. I checked. The other wheels were okay. Krug had time for only the one.
I went back into the house. Kathy has just come off the phone.
‘The Captain sounds quite a character,’ she said dryly. ‘He’ll be up. He thinks within three hours.’
I looked at my watch and then out at the rain and whistled. He would too, if I knew Tucker.
‘
He said not to contact the local Sheriff but play it by ear,’ said Kathy. ‘He knows where to come.’
‘We got problems too,’ I said. ‘Krug filleted one of my tyres.’
We were outside in the rain by this time. Kathy Gowan glanced down the street at the dim outlines of the parked cars. She sighed. She went around the Buick and opened up the door.
‘Where do you keep the tools?’ she said. ‘I’ll change the wheel.’
‘This is no job for a girl on a night like this,’ I said.
Kathy snorted. She already had the jack in her hand. ‘Don’t start that all over again,’ she said wearily.
I threw her the keys. ‘Change the wheel and follow me up.’
I left her and went back into the house. I opened the parlour door and looked in. My Smith-Wesson was still lying where I’d dropped it. Hauser’s sheeted form looked real peaceful. I picked up the gun and put it back in my shoulder holster. I felt twice the man I was half an hour earlier. I ran out of the house. Kathy Gowan had already started jacking the car up. She worked the handle like she’d been in the grease-monkey business all her life.
‘You’d do better to hang on,’ she said. ‘This will only take ten minutes.’
‘Can’t wait,’ I said. ‘And I may flag a car. You know the way?’
She nodded. ‘Take care,’ she said.
She bent over the wheel once more. I left her in the rain and the darkness. I started running uphill at a pace I knew I could keep up for some time. It was all of two miles and I had to save myself for Salamanca Heights.
Chapter Sixteen - Sieg Oder Tod
I pounded uphill at a fairly good pace. I had already covered about a mile, and the rain had started to let up. It was a dark night but my eyes had become accustomed to the gloom and the white-painted stones at the side of the winding road acted as markers. I looked back over my shoulder when I stopped for my third blow but I couldn’t see the lights of the Buick. Kathy must have found some snag on the tyre-change. Unless Krug had slashed the spare too. I swore under my breath. I hadn’t stopped to check on that.
There were one or two lights burning in houses set far back from the road. It still wound uphill and I kept plugging on. Presently it levelled out between big groves of pine and cypress; the wind played a mournful tune up here and there were no more houses. I slowed to a walk and moved into the side of the lane.
There was a grass verge and I walked on this, keeping into the shadows of the trees. A pair of massive bronze gates flanked by stone pillars floated up out of the semidarkness. I stood underneath a wrought iron arch which leapt from pillar to pillar and read the scrollwork; against the faint light of the sky it spelt out: SALAMANCA HEIGHTS. I looked at my watch. It had taken just over half an hour to come up. The place must have been nearer than I thought or else my track time was better than I figured.
There was a rambling pinewood lodge set behind the pillars, screened by a thick hedge of laurel and evergreens. One wing of the bronze gate was hooked back behind a bronze peg set into a concrete base. A car’s tyre-tracks ran through the open half of the gate, leaving clear imprints on the wet gravel. A thin stem of light shivered against the green of the laurel hedge. It came from a crack in the window shutters of the lodge. I went round in back.
An elderly, silver-haired man lay half-in, half-out of a screen porch door. He was wearing pyjama trousers and an open-necked shirt tucked into the trousers. A big splash of red spread out from his shoulder and dripped from the bones of his wrist. He eyes were wide open and surprised. A large metal torch that had fallen from his hand was still burning, buried in the soil of a flower bed. I switched it off. I felt for the old man’s heartbeat. It was very faint but still there.
I lifted him with difficulty and carried him inside the porch. I found some blankets on a half-made bed in an inner room; I folded one as a pillow for the old man’s head and covered him over with the others. I switched on the light in the bedroom and tried an inner door. I was looking for a phone. The door wouldn’t budge. I put my shoulder to it. It moved with difficulty.
Something like a bundle of old clothes was huddled just inside. A middle-aged woman, probably the old man’s wife, was lying with her hands stretched out like she was trying to stop the bullet which killed her. She’d been shot through the side of the head. I got another blanket and covered her over. I found the telephone eventually but the operator didn’t answer.
I traced the wires to an insulator just outside the lodge door and found the jagged end where Krug had cut it. I stood in the gloom of the porch and listened to the thin thrashing of the wind and the faint spit of the rain against the windows. I got out the Smith-Wesson, checked it and put it in the outside pocket of my raincoat. Just then I heard the faint hum of a car coming up the hill. I went out as the Buick crunched to a stop just beyond the main gate.
Kathy Gowan looked angry. There was a smear of grease along one side of her face.
‘One of the nuts on the wheel burred over,’ she said furiously. ‘I had one hell of a time getting it off.’
‘Never mind that now,’ I said. ‘Bring the car over to block the gate.’
She put the Buick broadside on, taking up the whole width of the drive. While she did this I told her about the contents of the lodge.
‘Keep well behind me and stay put when I tell you,’ I said.
We went down the drive together. I got the Smith-Wesson out. The faint scratch of our feet on the gravel came over the sound of the rain. The drive wound about and then split into two arms encircling an ornamental fountain. A large flagged concourse gave on to separate paths radiating off at angles. All led to a flight of marble steps in front of the house.
I couldn’t see much in the darkness but it seemed of enormous size. A VW saloon was slewed across the bottom of the steps. I bent down and unscrewed the valve cap on a front wheel; there’s nothing like returning a compliment. The hiss of the escaping air sounded eerily behind us as we went up the steps. Lights blinked out in several first floor windows as we got to the top of the first flight. The huge double doors in the porch were wide open. A dim entrance light shone across a black and white checkered-floor hall.
I pulled Kathy Gowan into the shadow of the balcony. There was a scrabbling noise coming from upstairs.
‘This is as far as you go,’ I said. I stifled her protests.
‘I’ll find a phone while you’re up top,’ she said. ‘If it’s still working I’ll get an ambulance for the old man.’
I left her and went up the stairs two at a time. They curved round in a wide spiral, separated and met again at the top. Lights were showing from open doors in the broad, thick-carpeted corridor here. I went on down past the open doors, holding the Smith-Wesson ready. The loud rustling noise finally drew me to the right place. I was on a broad balcony. Merna Freeman hadn’t exaggerated about old Whipfuddle’s Library. It made the one at the L.A. house look like a newsstand compared with the Library of Congress.
There must have been over a hundred thousand volumes, most of them paperbacks, almost all as trivial as the stuff back in L.A. The place was on two floors. On the balcony on which I stood and which was pierced at intervals by metal spiral staircases, long bookcases from floor to ceiling divided up the space. There was a similar plan for the ground floor. Frosted glass lamps shed an even glow on the main room below but the spaces between the bookstacks were in deep shadow.
I prowled along the balcony. The rustling noise was coming from somewhere in the middle of the stacks. I eased round an angle and looked along the tiers. The aisle was empty but my eye was caught by a white splash on the floor of the main library. I looked down and saw a heap of paperback books; the heap was being added to every minute. There was another flurry of paper and a cascade of books descended to the floor in a fluttering of leaves. Krug was tipping the stuff out of the shelves as he checked it. I grinned to myself.
Keeping the Smith-Wesson at the ready, I made two more cautious right-angle turns. The rustling noi
ses went on. I estimated the doctor was about two stacks away from me now. He had to be somewhere near the edge of the balcony at the rate the stuff was being pitched over. As I turned the last corner I was a little careless and the Smith-Wesson barrel scraped on the metal of the balcony edge. The clink it made was minute but the rustling stopped at once.
‘Wer ist da?’ said Krug’s high-pitched voice.
‘Tod, Herr Doktor,’ I said.
A snarl was the only answer from behind the bookstacks. Then a gun flamed; the report sounded thunderous in the close confines of the shelving. The bullet tore a dozen books from a shelf more than five yards away from me but by this time I had hit the deck and was inching my way along behind the stacks. Powder smoke hung heavy on the air.
There was a slithering noise as the doctor changed position. I lifted out a small section of books from the shelf in front of me and peered through; I could see nothing. I hefted the books in my hand and threw them several yards from me. The noise drew another shot from Dr Krug. Books whirled from several shelves as the bullet went on through and torn paper fluttered to the ground; the bullet spanged angrily on the iron railings of the balcony as it ricocheted.
The doctor was getting uncomfortably accurate. I pushed the Smith-Wesson through the stack in front of me; books fell down the other side. Through the gap I could see a glint of braid; a part of Krug’s uniform.
He fired again while I was thinking about it; the books exploded about a foot from my head this time and shreds of paper stung my cheek. I went down the aisle in a long, tearing dive, skinning my knees on the rough carpeting.
I passed the end of the bookstacks, making as small a target as possible. I risked a snap shot but it went over the balcony. I caught a quick glimpse of Krug writhing sideways behind the end of the aisle. He fired again but I had gone past by then; I heard the shattering of glass and got several sets of shelving between us. I crouched in the shadow at the top of a staircase and found myself sweating.
