He was staring in paralyzed horror at what had made the thud. That was a diamondback rattlesnake five feet long and thicker around the middle than a man's doubled biceps.
The snake had had its rattles clipped off and had been submitted to other indignities that hadn't improved its temper. It whipped back into a coil--all lithely sinister muscle--and struck. It missed Private Serez's leg by half an inch.
He yelled--loudly. He could no more have helped that than he could have helped breathing. He scrambled frantically on the floor, grabbing for his rifle, trying to get back out of range of the next strike. There was no furniture in the room. The snake was between Private Serez and the door. He jumped for the only other place that promised temporary refuge. He climbed right up into the window.
Garcia heard the yell. He looked up, and he saw Private Serez in the window. His yellowish face showed neither shock nor fear, but his lips peeled back thinly from his teeth, and he drew a thick, nickel-plated revolver from his coat pocket. He got up from his table, watching the proprietor. The proprietor mumbled and rolled his head on the bar, faintly disturbed by the yell, but luckily for him he didn't wake up. Garcia went quietly to the back of the room, opened the door there and went down a short passageway past a kitchen that smelled abominably. At the end of the passageway he opened another door and stepped out into a small, high-walled patio paved with garbage and less mentionable refuse.
He was halfway across the patio, heading for the side door, when a soldier stood up behind the back wall. Garcia and the soldier stared at each other, rigid with surprise, for the space of two heartbeats, and then Garcia whipped up his revolver and fired.
The report was a flat, ragged crash, and the bullet hit the soldier just under his chin. He clapped both hands to his throat and flopped backwards out of sight. Garcia opened the side door and looked at the butcher who owned the shop next to the cafe .
The butcher had been interrupted in the process of carving up a skinny cow with the aid of three cats and one million flies. He opened his mouth to yell, but he didn't, because Garcia hit him on top of the head with the revolver and knocked him flat. The cats went in three directions, and the flies droned up in an angry swarm and then settled back on the beef and the butcher indiscriminately.
Garcia didn't hurry. He went cautiously along the alley in the direction of the marketplace, sliding along one wall with the revolver thrust out ahead of him. He reached the alley-mouth and peered out. The people in the marketplace were beginning to stir and wonder uneasily.
Sergeant Obrian stood up on the roof of a building two doors away and leaned over the parapet, peering down to see what was happening. Garcia raised his revolver and aimed carefully at him. He was shooting up at an angle and against the sun. He missed by six inches. The bullet slapped a silvery blob of lead against the adobe. Instantly Sergeant Obrian dropped back out of sight behind the parapet.
In the same split second, Private Serez managed to spear the rattlesnake with his bayonet. He didn't know exactly what to do with it now that he had it, so he pitched it out the window into the marketplace. The snake, still writhing, fell across the nose of a burro below. The burro kicked out backward with both heels and hit its master squarely in the stomach. He fell down and screamed and flailed the ground with his arms.
The burro stamped on the snake and then ran away, and the butcher woke up and yelled, and the whole marketplace went off like a time bomb. All the people decided they would go somewhere else right away and, if possible, take their various dependents, human and animal, along with them. The confusion was something terrific, and Garcia stepped right into the middle of it and disappeared.
Chapter 3
THE ROLLED GRAVEL ROAD WAS LIKE A CLEAN white ribbon laid in graceful loops along the side of the mountain that towered red and enormous up into the thin, clear blue of the sky. Heat waves shimmered and wiggled above bare rock, and the dust from the bus's passage drifted back in a lazy plume. The engine burbled and muttered to itself in quiet protest over the steepness of the grade.
"This is a pretty sizeable rock pile," Henshaw volunteered, trying to look out the window and up toward the summit.
"Kindly do not waste the astonishment," Bartolome ordered. "This is not yet the magnificence. This is called 'La Cabeza,' the head, because that is its name. The scenery here is only ordinarily wonderful." Janet Martin's eyes were shining. "It's the beginning of the middle range," she said in a low voice to Doan. "One of Cortez's lieutenants discovered it. He thought the whole length of the range looked like a sleeping woman. He saw it first from the other side of Azela Valley--a hundred and ten miles from here"
"What was the guy's name?" Doan asked.
"Lieutenant Emile Perona. He was a soldier of fortune--an adventurer. He was the younger son of a very noble Spanish family, and he was one of the first men to come to America. He loved this country--its beauty and its ruggedness. It just suited his own nature."
"Was he handsome?" Doan asked, watching her.
"Oh, yes," said Janet softly. "Very. He was tall and hawk-faced and dark, with piercing eyes and a smile that seemed like a light in a darkened room. He was ruthless and cruel, too, as all brave men could be cruel in those old days, but he had integrity and honesty--" Her voice trailed away dreamily.
"You seem to know him pretty well," Doan observed, "seeing he's been dead for four hundred years or so."
"I read about him," Janet said.
"I can read, too," said Doan, "and often do. But I never ran across Lieutenant Perona. Where'd you find him?"
"He was mentioned in Cortez's reports."
"Did Cortez say he was handsome?"
"No," Janet said stiffly.
"Tell me some more," Doan invited.
Janet shook her head. "No. You're laughing at me."
"I'm not," Doan denied. "Neither is Carstairs. We like you."
"Do you--do you think I look sexy?"
"What?" Doan said, startled.
Janet was blushing furiously. "You don't! You weren't thinking of anything like that!"
"I was, too," Doan contradicted. "I was just working up to it in a roundabout way."
"Now you are laughing at me!" Janet bit down hard on her lower lip. "I don't care! It's not true, and it's wicked to make girls think it is!"
"What's not true?" Doan inquired.
"What they say in novels and movies about how you can go to beauty parlors and fix yourself all over and men will be--will be attracted to you."
"In a nice way, of course," Doan added.
"No!" said Janet angrily. "I don't want them to be attracted in a nice way!"
"I can work up a pretty fair leer if you give me time," Doan offered. "Will that help?"
"You stop making fun of me!"
Greg turned around in his seat and looked back at them. "Miss Martin, is that detective fellow annoying you?"
"What?" Janet said blankly.
"He looks like that sort," Greg said. "Wouldn't you like to sit up here with me?"
"Greg," said Patricia Van Osdel. "If you want someone to sit with you, Maria will."
Greg ignored her. He was smiling, and his teeth were white and glistening under the pencil-line mustache. He had quite a personality when he wanted to exert it. It hung around him like an aura.
Maria got up, and Greg turned to look at her with the slow, dangerous movement of a snake picking out the place it is going to bite.
"Stay where you are, you hag," Greg said evenly. Maria sat down again quickly.
"I'll sit next to you, then, Greg," Patricia Van Osdel said sweetly.
"When I ask you to--not before," Greg told her. "Won't you join me, Miss Martin?"
"Thank you," Janet said uncertainly. "But--I'm quite comfortable here."
"Later, then," Greg said, and he made the two words a promise and an insinuation.
Janet sat still, her face stiff and surprised looking. Patricia Van Osdel watched her with greenish, calculating eyes.
Henshaw cl
eared his throat.
"The scenery we came to see," said Mrs. Henshaw, "is outside the bus."
"Yeah," Henshaw agreed absently. "Pretty, huh?"
"How do you know?" Mrs. Henshaw asked.
"Huh?" said Henshaw. "Oh." He peered industriously out through the window.
"Feel better now?" Doan murmured to Janet. "Oh!" said Janet. "Why, then, it must be true about beauty parlors!"
"Undoubtedly," Doan agreed.
"I know it makes me sound awfully stupid," said Janet, "but you see I did spend seventy-five dollars in them before I started, and I was beginning to be very disappointed in the results. No men seemed to--to look at me. I mean--"
"I know what you mean," Doan told her.
Janet stretched out her legs. Carstairs grunted in sleepy protest as his headrest was shifted, but he didn't open his eyes. Janet looked at her legs thoughtfully.
"Are they the kind of legs men like?" she asked.
Doan studied them judicially. "Yes."
"I'm not wearing any stockings."
"I noticed."
"My toenails are tinted."
"Very prettily, too," Doan commented.
Janet relaxed again and sighed contentedly. "I can't believe I'm here and that this is really happening. It's much more wonderful even than I'd dreamed it would be. I've just got to talk to somebody. Can I tell you about it?"
"On one condition," said Doan. "And that is that you don't confess any crimes. Just because I'm a detective people are always taking advantage of me and confessing. You can't imagine how boring that is."
Janet looked at him. "Why, I should think you'd want people to confess to you. It would save so much time."
"That's the point," Doan told her. "I don't want to save time. I get paid by the week. The longer a job takes, the more I make. I always try to stretch them out, but it's pretty hard to do. Take the last one I was on, for instance. A clerk embezzled fifty grand or so from a loan company. No sooner did I walk in the joint and ask him his name than he started to confess."
"What did you do, then?" Janet asked, fascinated.
"Shut him up, of course, and went around making like I was looking for clues. But the guy wouldn't drop it. He haunted me. Every time I sat down to rest my feet, he started confessing all over again. It got so obvious I had to arrest him."
"Well, is that--ethical? I mean to--to stall around like you did?"
"Is it what?" Doan said.
"Ethical."
"I'm a detective," said Doan. "A private detective."
"Don't private detectives have ethics?"
"I don't know," Doan answered, frowning. "I never thought about it. I'll have to look the matter up sometime. But what was it you were going to tell me?"
"You won't laugh or make fun?"
"I promise."
"I'm a schoolteacher," Janet whispered.
Doan looked shocked. "No!"
"You promised!"
"I'm sober as a judge," Doan said.
Janet said: "I'm a schoolteacher in the Wisteria Young Ladies' Seminary."
"Now, after all," said Doan.
"It's true! There is such a place, and I teach in it. I'm on a leave of absence to visit my sick aunt. I haven't any aunt, of course. I haven't any relatives at all. I was raised in an orphanage--until I was eighteen. It was horrible there. We had to wear uniforms! With cotton stockings that were all prickly and lumpy."
"That's bad," Doan agreed.
"The orphanage got me a job at the seminary. I'm really very clever at studies and books. But little girls are horrible people, specially rich ones--and I was just a frump and--and a drab. I never saw any men, and if I did they didn't see me. And the seminary is in a small town and terribly strict and conservative, and I was just turning right into an old maid!"
"Until you discovered Mexico and Cortez--and Lieutenant Perona."
"Yes. I was studying Spanish because the seminary is going to give courses in it. They never did before, because it wasn't refined enough. But now, with all the horrible things that are happening in Europe--"
"Lots of people are rediscovering America," Doan commented. "Including our flypaper queen up ahead. She never got closer to the United States than the south of France or Bali until Hitler and Hirohito started on the prowl. Now she's suddenly discovered she's wild about democracy. But go on--you were studying Spanish."
"It's such a beautiful language! And then I got interested in the countries where it is spoken, and their histories. I read just thousands of books. Even dusty old manuscripts that had never been printed. The seminary has a marvelous historical library that no one ever uses. I read all about Cortez and his men, and then I came across the diary of a man called Gil De Lico. He was a scribe--a sort of a secretary and historian for Cortez. He kept all the official records, and he wrote this diary just for his family back in Spain. He traveled around with Lieutenant Perona, and he wrote lots about him. They were good friends. I--I feel as though I knew them both--personally, I mean."
"I understand," said Doan.
"And then I started reading about modern Mexico--the way the country they traveled through looks and is now. It--it's perfectly fascinating!"
"I know," said Doan.
Janet's eyes were shining. "I had to come and see it! I had to! I've never had a real vacation in all my life, and I saved and saved, and I came. I'm here! I'm really and truly here in Mexico!"
"That's right," Doan told her.
"Oh, you don't know how I've dreamed about it. All the glamour, and color and--and romance! I ached for it until I could hardly stand it, and there I was teaching horrid, stupid, rich girls how to parse French verbs!"
"Hunting for romance is much more fun," Doan said.
Janet nodded seriously. "It is, and that's just what I'm doing. I know it's foolish and crazy, but I've done sensible things all my life. I was getting--getting moldy! A girl has a right to romance and glamour and--and other things, hasn't she? There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"
"Not a thing," Doan said. "I hope you find romance by the carload. If I see any, I'll run it down and hogtie it for you."
Janet sighed again. "I feel better now that I've told somebody." She said suddenly and seriously, "What are you looking for?"
"A cop."
"A policeman?" Janet inquired blankly.
"Yeah. From the United States."
"Well, what's he doing in Mexico?"
"Hiding."
"Why? Did he commit some crime?"
"Oh, I suppose so," Doan said indifferently.
"Well, are you going to find him and bring him back to justice?"
"What?" said Doan, startled. "Me? No! I'm going to persuade him to keep on hiding."
"But why?"
"Because I'm hired to," Doan answered patiently.
"I don't understand," said Janet. "Why were you hired to persuade him to keep hiding?"
"He's not like you. He doesn't like Mexico. He can't speak Spanish, and the food gives him indigestion, and he doesn't think the people are friendly. He says he would rather be in the United States--even if he's in jail--than to have to stay here any longer."
"You mean he wants to come back and give himself up and answer for his crimes?"
"Yeah."
"And you're going to try to persuade him not to?"
"Not try," Doan corrected. "I am going to persuade him."
"But that's wrong! That's against the law!"
"It probably will be before I'm through," Doan admitted casually.
Janet stared at him. "Well then, you shouldn't do it, Mr. Doan. Why don't you let this man surrender like he wants to?"
Doan sighed. "The guy--Eldridge is his name--was a police captain in Bay City. They had a big graft scandal and a grand jury investigation there. Everybody in the city administration was involved. So the rest of them persuaded Eldridge to beat it to Mexico. Then they said he was to blame for everything that had happened since the city was founded. If he came back, he would p
op off about some of his old pals. They're still holding their jobs, and they want to keep them. They won't if Eldridge starts telling secrets."
Janet studied over it for a moment. "It doesn't sound quite--quite honest to me, some way. Are you sure you have your facts right, Mr. Doan?"
"Reasonably sure," said Doan.
"Oh," said Janet, still studying. "Well, perhaps these other city officials are afraid Eldridge would tell lies about them if he came back?"
"He'd certainly do that," Doan agreed. "He couldn't tell the truth if he tried."
"That's it, then!" said Janet triumphantly. "I understand it all now."
"That's good," said Doan.
"Of course, I knew all the time that you wouldn't do anything that was really dishonest."
"Oh, no," said Doan. "Not me."
The road dipped into a little swale and slid through the deep shadow between two needle-like rock pinnacles. A black and white striped board, like a railroad crossing guard, swung out slowly and blocked the way. Bartolome yelped angrily and hit the brake so hard that everything movable in the bus slid forward six inches.
The bus stopped with its radiator a foot from the board. Bartolome leaned out the window and screeched fiercely, "Do not delay this bus under extreme penalties. It contains tourists of the most vital!"
There were two soldiers standing beside the braced white pivot from which the warning gate swung. They were small men with dark and impassive faces. They stared gravely at the bus. Neither of them said anything.
"What's all this?" Henshaw demanded.
"Is a military outpost," Bartolome explained, "full of soldiers of the most incredible stupidity. Kindly ignore the unforgivable insolence of this delay." He yelled out at the soldiers again: "Donkeys! Elevate the gate instantly!"
The soldiers stared, unmoving and unmoved. There was a little white building, so small it reminded Doan of the cupola of an old-fashioned roof, pushed in against the steep rock face. A man came out of it now.
"You!" Bartolome shouted belligerently. "There will be punishments of unbelievable severity--" He caught a glimpse of the man's face. His mouth stayed open, but he didn't say anything more.
The man walked up to the bus. He was wearing a field uniform, and there were no rank markings on it. He was short and thickset, and there was a broad white scar on his right cheek. His eyes were as cold as greenish glass. He spoke English in a flat, toneless voice without any accent.
The Doan and Carstairs Mysteries Page 8
