Dangerous Legacy

by George Harmon Coxe

  16

  WHEN THE KNOCK CAME AT HIS DOOR the next morning at nine thirty, Spence Rankin was shaving and he called, “Come in,” before he remembered that the door was locked. Then, the lather still on one side of his face, he went over and turned the key and Marie Dizon came quickly into the room clutching her yellow straw bag to her breast.

  If she noticed the lather she gave no sign but stood there while he shut the door, her long eyes bright and a flush in her cheeks he had never seen before. She did not speak and seemed, in fact, to have no breath for words and then, feeling the contagion of her mood, Spence Rankin responded to her excitement and his imagination rocketed.

  “You got it,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I did.” And then she stepped to the table and opened the straw bag, tipping it so a .32 Colt automatic with wooden stocks slid out.

  Rankin dropped his towel, reached for the gun, stopped, finally lifted it gingerly, using the towel. He examined first the butt and to his delight detected a tiny irregular stain bisected by the crack between the clip and the butt proper. He touched the small scab on his head, convinced that this was the right gun and then a horrible thought came tripping along and torpedoed his elation.

  “Oh—oh,” he said, and groaned. He put the gun down, blew his breath out noisily.

  Marie stared, the excitement dying in her.

  “Is it not the right one, Spence?”

  “It’s the right one, all right.”

  “But then—” She stopped, crestfallen and bewildered.

  “You should have left it where you found it,” he said. “Imean,” he said, wanting to soften the truth, “it’s no evidence at all now if we turn it over to the police—unless they could trace it, which is unlikely in a place like Manila.”

  “It isn’t evidence?” she said forlornly.

  “It’s wonderful evidence,” he said. “But the police have to find it on Sanchez or in his house. It’s not your fault,” he said quickly, seeing the tears start. “I shouldn’t have told you to take it. Look, sit down a minute till I finish shaving. We’ll go get some coffee.”

  “I have to go to work, Spence,” Marie said. Then, after a minute while she watched him shave, she said, in a little girl voice, “I could put it back.”

  Spence Rankin questioned her as he washed his face and learned that she had found the gun in the top, right-hand drawer of Sanchez’s study desk. She was positive she could replace it undetected but she could not do it this morning because Howard Austin had work for her.

  “Okay then,” Rankin said. “I’ll send you to work with Charlie Love and he can come back with the car. Then around noon I’ll send him back for you and you can keep him and the car as long as you like. And look,” he said, reaching for his wallet. “Ulio gave me some money.”

  He counted out five hundred pesos of the thousand that Ulio had given him altogether, but when Marie saw what he had in mind she drew back.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Really.”

  “But you’ve got to. Ulio would want you to.”

  She shook her head. “I’m all right, Spence. There were many months at first when I would have taken anything but now that I have my job with Howard—”

  She did not finish because Rankin had taken her bag and was stuffing the bills inside. He said it was Ulio’s money. He said he was bigger than she was and she was going to take it or else. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll go down and give Charlie Love his orders.”

  For the next few hours, Spence Rankin had a busy time. At eleven, with a half-bottle of Scotch under his arm, he went to the American Press Bureau and found Ed Kelly waiting with some eight by ten prints that were sharp and expertly lighted.

  The photographer beamed when he saw the Scotch. He said he’d try the drinks for size and assured Rankin that if he needed more prints all he had to do was ask for them. He now had two sets and Rankin took one of them.

  “Stick the other set away,” he said, “and put the negatives somewhere else that nobody but you would know about.”

  “Roger,” said Kelly and Rankin took the prints back to his room, convinced now that the two signatures were identical in every respect.

  How he happened to think about the note he did not know. He had slouched in a chair to review his conversation with John Kane and somewhere along the line the note popped into his mind and he remembered that he had not mentioned it the night before. Now, on a hunch, he went to his bathing-trunks, and from the change pocket took the note Ulio had enclosed with the will. He spread it out beside the two photographs of John Kane’s signature, and twenty-five minutes later he was climbing the steps to Claire Maynard’s dress shop.

  This time there were several customers about and Claire, looking very smart and seductive in skirt and blouse, was waiting on one of them.

  She excused herself when she saw him and her smile was forced, her Hello somewhat less than enthusiastic.

  “I’m rather busy right now, Spence,” she said. “Was there something special that—”

  “It won’t take very long,” Rankin cut in. “It’s about that note that Ulio found under his door in the Blake Hotel. I just found out how it got there.”

  “Just a minute,” she said and went over to speak to one of her assistants. When she came back her green eyes and red mouth were just the same but her voice was tired. “We can go upstairs,” she said.

  In her living-room she sat down on the divan and Rankin pulled up a chair, knowing what he wanted to say and feeling no anger or vindictiveness as he said:

  “You put that note under his door.”

  She stuck her chin out. “No,” she said.

  “You sort of took us over the jumps, Ulio and me,” he said. “I guess we were both a little dumb—especially me. It’s not easy to get to the States and back these days, and if I’d had sense enough to think things through I would have known that to make a trip like that at all you had to have someone behind you who had influence and pull. Someone like a member of the Senate who could go to bat if he wanted to and fix up your papers and transportation. So let’s not horse around,” he said. “You put the note under the door and you carried it with you all the way from here because this is where it was written. That signature was traced or copied from a paper Sanchez had that John Kane signed.”

  She folded her hands and put them on one knee and now the color had begun to ooze from her cheeks. “Yes,” she said finally, “I did.”

  “Sanchez sent you to deliver the note and spy on Ulio and try to get him to come home so he could murder him.”

  “No. I don’t believe it.”

  “He set you up in business.”

  “It’s his building,” she said, and suddenly she was talking without prompting, quickly, as though glad of the chance to free herself of the words. “I’ve known him a long time, since before the war. What I told you about being caught here when the Japs attacked was true but I could have gone before that. I was here about two months and I met him at a party and I’d been struggling too long for coffee and cakes to be too particular.”

  She readjusted her hands and said, “He was nice to me and attentive and I knew there would be a proposition in it finally and when it came I took it. I lived with him and he fixed up the Russian passport and I stayed there the first year and a half of the occupation and considered myself lucky to have the chance. I knew then he was doing favors for the Japs and at first I didn’t seem to mind because I was grateful to stay where I was. I don’t know what happened. It wasn’t any feeling of patriotism.”

  She hesitated and Rankin said, “You got a little sick of it.”

  “I got very sick. Maybe it was because I had to stay in the house and had so much time to think. I’d never done much thinking before and it frightened me, the things that went through my mind. I kept thinking of those who died on Bataan and Corregidor and the prison camps. I thought about those in Santo Tomas and Fort Santiago and Bilibid, knowing I should be there by rights and realiz
ing what a coward I must be to hide out and deny my citizenship. You can believe it or not—your opinion of me can scarcely go much lower, can it?—but I finally had the nerve to tell him.”

  “Did he turn you in?”

  “He made quite a show of it,” she said bitterly, “once he knew I was through with him. He called in a Jap captain and said he’d just found out that my Russian passport was a forgery. It wasn’t even worth the effort of trying to tell the Japs that Sanchez got it for me. I told them I was an American and I went to Santo Tomas where I belonged. I know all about the place and I know what it was like to dance in these gin mills they had running last summer and fall. But I got a little money and when some cloth began coming in I bought some and I always could sew and had a feel for clothes so—”

  She let the sentence dangle and Rankin watched her lean back and stare at the ceiling. “So?” he said finally.

  “I had nothing to do with Sanchez until he came to me with an offer to set me up in business. He offered this place rent free for two years, ten thousand dollars’ worth of whatever I wanted to buy in San Francisco, and my expenses. I’ve had nothing to do with him since I got back. It was strictly a business proposition.”

  “If you don’t care what you say,” Rankin said flatly. “You knew what you were doing and you knew what the cost was and that must have told you the deal was pretty important to Sanchez. You knew what was in the note. Didn’t you even care why you were doing all this masquerading?”

  “Certainly I cared. And he had a reasonable answer. He was worried about a title he had to some mine the Kanes owned. He said he’d heard that Kane might be in the hills somewhere and he was spending a lot of money getting the mine in shape and he wanted to get the title cleared up. If he could get Ulio here he might find out about the father and straighten things out.”

  Rankin knew how false the story was but he did not know whether Claire was doing the lying or whether Sanchez had told her this.

  She said, “I didn’t know Ulio Kane. I’d never seen his father. They were just names to me and I didn’t see anything wrong and it was a chance for me to get started and I took it.” She got up, her face working, and turned away. “I liked Ulio,” she said, her voice thick. “I was ashamed; only it was too late then. If I’d known he was going to be killed—”

  Her voice died out. Rankin saw her shoulders straighten. He still did not know whether this was all an act or not and it left him mixed up and uncertain. Some part of his mind told him that he should feel contempt for this woman and what she had done, but somehow he could not work up to it. When he saw there was nothing more to be done he went out quietly, leaving her standing by the window, her back to the room.

  At two thirty Charlie Love had not come back with the car so Rankin got a carromata and went to Jerry Walsh’s office. Lynn was at her desk now but so were Jerry and the Filipino office boy and, knowing he could not talk here, Rankin asked the girl if she would come outside and talk to him for a minute.

  She hesitated, glancing at Walsh. She said she had a story to do and Rankin, speaking so no one else could hear, said, “It’s about your father.”

  She opened her eyes wide. She started to speak, thought better of it, and stood up. They went downstairs and he asked her to step into the carromata; he said they could drive around the block and talk.

  “What about my father?”

  “He’s alive.”

  She stared at him, her face suddenly pale. Her lower lip quivered and she stilled it and tried to laugh.

  “I know,” Rankin said. “It’s ridiculous; it’s preposterous; and it’s true. Look,” he said, giving her no chance to answer. “You haven’t believed anything I’ve said about Sanchez and I’m going to try once more.”

  He paused, not knowing why he bothered and trying to find a reason. He wondered if it was his own stubbornness that made him want to convince this girl, or if it was because he knew trouble was brewing and he wanted to get her away from Sanchez before it happened.

  “I can prove Sanchez doesn’t own the mine,” he said. “And if I can prove that, he has to be a crook, doesn’t he? There’s a chance now that we can prove he killed Ulio.”

  She gave no sign that she heard any of this. “You said my father was alive.”

  “He is.”

  “No.” She tightened her mouth and her violet eyes were stony again. “If he were alive he would have got in touch with me.”

  “He didn’t dare.” Rankin felt her gaze upon him and said, “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He made a deal to get you out of Santo Tomas but he didn’t die in that hospital. He was out of his head for months.” He went on briskly, telling her the chief points of John Kane’s story.

  “How can you sit there shaking your head?” he said. “Isn’t it obvious, even to you, that he would have come to you if he had nothing to be afraid of? I don’t know how you feel about each other. Maybe you were never very close. You spent a lot of time in the States with your mother and for all I know you were ashamed of Ulio and his brother and maybe even your father.”

  “That’s not true. I always—”

  “True or not,” Rankin said. “He thought Ulio was dead and you were all he had left. So why didn’t he come to you? I’ve told you before and I’m telling you now. Sanchez is playing for millions and he’s gone too far to back out. With your father in town the title isn’t worth a dime and your father knows it. How could he trust you, knowing how you feel about Sanchez? The very fact that he didn’t come to you should prove he was afraid for his life.”

  He stopped, his throat dry and a little out of breath, but hopeful now because he had her thinking. She took a breath and then she shook her head again.

  “I could believe that,” she said, “if my father was alive. But no—I just can’t—”

  Rankin did it then. He couldn’t take any more of it. He brought out the ring and she went rigid beside him, her cheekbones white and her lips parted.

  “Where,” she said in a voice he could hardly hear, “where did you get it?”

  “From John Kane.” He glanced up and found the carromata had stopped in front of the office building again. “I can’t tell you where he is because I don’t know. But he’s alive and one of these days he’ll be coming in.”

  He got out and held his hand for her. She took it and when she was beside him he cupped his hands around her elbows though she did not seem aware of this.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “There may be some trouble and the less you talk the better off you’ll be.”

  She made no answer and he walked into the foyer with her and waited for the elevator. Her face was still pale against the background of her tawny hair, and her gaze was troubled and sightless as he handed her into the car and turned reluctantly away.

  Spence Rankin had told Marie to leave a note with Victor, the major-domo of the Lingayen Gulf Café, in case she wanted to get word to him, and at three forty he walked up to the bar and Victor handed him a small, folded paper. At the top the time had been written: 2:30. The note said:

  Victor didn’t know when you’d be back so I’m going to stop by the Kane place first and then go home and wait for you there. I haven’t put it back yet, but I found something else that I hope will be important. I’m taking Charlie Love with me.

  Marie

  Rankin went out fast, stuffing the note in his pocket. The carromata was still at the curb and he jumped in and gave the driver the address, arriving at Marie’s place twenty minutes later.

  It was a very small house, this place that Marie lived, on a street of other very small houses, all needing paint and repairs. There were no lawns or sidewalks. Even the trees looked stunted and discouraged and the back yards were cluttered, the wooden fences sagging and broken.

  She was lucky, Marie had said, to have this place. She shared it with some other business girl, and with a small bedroom for each, and a kitchen off the living-room, they made out very nicely. Now, Rankin went across the narrow porc
h and knocked stoutly, his fists opening a crack in the door which had not been properly latched.

  “Hello,” he called, pushing in. “Hey, Marie!”

  The light was not very good and he stepped forward, calling once more, and then he stopped. It was very still here. Even the street outside where half-naked children had been playing was suddenly quiet.

  He did not call again, knowing somehow that it would do no good, but advanced slowly, the tension inching up his back and his scalp oddly cool. This was the living-room and he could see now its disordered messiness, the half-open table drawer, the cards and papers littering the floor.

  And suddenly the room was tautly different and Rankin was moving again, not stopping here but looking for doorways and going through and into rooms and out into others, his fear not one of personal danger but of anticipation and the unknown.

  It stayed with him, this shapeless urgent fear, driving him stiff-legged through the little house, making him examine the closets and the areas under the beds. Only then, when he knew it was completely empty, did the fear evaporate and give reason a chance.

  He had known from the first that the house had been searched, and now that he was sure Marie was not here he went over it again, seeing the ransacked drawers and the personal effects that were strewn about the floor. In the end he came back to the living-room and stood there, eyes busy as he lit a cigarette, wondering what to do next.

  Even before he found the note upon the floor the worry had settled in his thoughts and a little of the fear came creeping back. For it was impossible now to ignore the facts.

  Marie had found something and she was in danger. But did she know she was in danger? Where had she gone and how could he find her? And then he saw the crumpled ball upon the floor beside the table and opened it, smoothing the paper so he could read the penciled message.

  For a moment then he was reassured, and knew that whatever was behind all this, Marie had been all right when she left the house. For this note had a time on it too: 3:40, and read: