“Theo, you came in without knocking!”
“Please, old friend. You know my knack with a lock. What you’ve got on that front door wouldn’t keep out the cat. I’m apologizing, not for my entry, but for not paying you a visit for so long. It’s too bad we sort of lost track of each other. Yes, much too bad. Old comrades in arms shouldn’t do that. But I’ve come here tonight on the coat-tails, so to speak, of our young acquaintances. I felt it necessary to check up. I’ve been worried and anxious since early afternoon. Sara didn’t come home from an errand.” He was standing still now, his hands idly looped together across the middle of his tweed vest watching Jennifer. “Sara went for you, Miss Hamilton, but she never came home. She went to bring Mrs. Burch, but she didn’t get her, either. I think we should all take chairs and discuss this.”
“I won’t be ordered about in my own house!” shrilled Mr. Coulter. “You’re a beast, Theo. I always knew—”
“Oh, shut up!” said Mr. Fallon. “You’re such a boring little pipsqueak.” He waited with his eyes on Mr. Coulter, commanding obedience by his silence; but Mr. Coulter went defiantly to the small table by the wall and stood there with his hands braced on its shining mahogany surface.
“Make me! Make me!” squeaked Mr. Coulter.
Mr. Fallon’s glance turned to one of disgust, and he shrugged, switched his attention to Jennifer. “Will you sit down, Miss Hamilton?” Under the mocking courtesy was an iron command.
Jennifer sank down into the rocker. Scott Dunavan took up a position just behind her chair. One hand lay lightly, protectively on her shoulder.
“Sara’s dead!” Mr. Coulter said, with a touch of pleasure in saying it. “She looked like she was having a heart attack somewhere downtown, and instead….” He suddenly burst into a loud hysterical cackle. “… he he he … she’d got the Needle. Somebody gave her the Needle—”
“Shut up!” The ferocity of Mr. Fallon’s voice brought a shocking quiet into the room. He lost all the myopic, casual look in the instant. His eyes gleamed like a leopard’s and his hands turned into claws.
“You didn’t care!” shrilled Mr. Coulter. “Not really. Not more than five minutes—”
“If you don’t shut up—” Into Mr. Fallon’s hand came the most improbably thin blade Jennifer had ever seen. It did really look just like a rather flat extra-long needle. Its handle must be extremely small and fist-shaped, as it was not visible. The blade protruded from between Mr. Fallon’s first and second fingers, perhaps seven inches of gleaming steel. When Mr. Coulter saw it, he did, finally, fall completely silent. He also got pale, paler than before, and his eyes fluttered as though he might be about to fall in a faint.
Jennifer tore her gaze away. She didn’t want to look at the thing Mr. Fallon was holding, she didn’t want to remember its uses, its swift and secret damage. Resurrected by the General, she thought, and shivered, and in that moment she lost all sense of regret over any duplicity shown to the General by the proud family whose daughter he had married. She felt sorry for the woman, the proud despairing woman who had posed for her photograph with death in her eyes.
“If you killed Sara with that …” Jennifer said, almost choking, “… but you sent her out. Why would you—”
“Of course I didn’t kill Sara,” he said back, his tone quite ugly. “I sent her to bring you, I wanted to make quite sure that a theory I had developed was the true one. It would account for all of the—” He broke off to glance sharply at Mr. Coulter, who was sliding his hands along the rim of the little table. Mr. Coulter turned rigid; his hands stopped moving and behind the bifocals his eyes seemed glazed with embarrassed fright. The light from overhead gleamed on a frost of perspiration that had come out of his skin.
“What theory?” she managed to ask.
“About Bax. About Bax’s little plan, about what he hopes to accomplish with this …” He motioned widely as if to include her and Mr. Dunavan with Mr. Coulter and the outmoded and crowded parlor around them. “He’s not the watchful friend he pretends to be. He has another motive. I intend for you to tell it to me. As I meant to get it out of you that day you were in the apartment. Thanks to poor Sara’s clumsiness….” He moved restlessly, walking a few paces back and forth in front of the door. “… but first, now, I want to know how you caught her off-guard, got behind her, tricked her in such a way that she allowed you to use one of these—” He held out the wicked weapon. “—on her.”
“You’re a fool,” said Mr. Dunavan, “if you think that Miss Hamilton could use a thing like that on anybody.”
Mr. Dunavan’s remark had no effect other than that Mr. Fallon brushed it away with a shake of his head. “You saw Sara, she came for you. She was, after all, found in the arcade, the route we’d planned. It must mean that she got you that far before you managed to attack her.”
“I didn’t. I couldn’t have—”
He held up a hand to silence her. “Don’t protest, don’t cling to the lie. It’s quite useless. I will admit, you had me quite confused. You did seem, on the surface, to be a naive and perhaps innocent young person who was doing Bax’s dirty work for him without actually knowing what it was. Sara argued with me, she claimed that you were not at all what you pretended to be, that there was an … uh … irregular domestic establishment …” His eyes flicked to Mr. Dunavan. “Of course Sara had gone to investigate and knew what she was talking about and at last I let her convince me. She was to bring you to my apartment and we were to talk. You would not have been harmed. There was no need for you to murder her.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t.” How weak, childish, foolish she sounded, Jennifer thought with despair. And of course he wouldn’t believe her.
“I want to know Bax’s motive. I want to know what he’s after. You are going to have to tell me now, Miss Hamilton—and no more protests—or I shall have to use this—” He paused again, turned swiftly, stared toward Mr. Coulter. Mr. Coulter’s hands had met in front of the rim of the little table. A drawer was opening under the urging of a thumb. “What are you doing?”
A moment of utter quiet clutched them all, such silence that Jennifer’s ears stung with its impact. She seemed to hear her own pulse, a thudding deep inside, suffocating, thick, tormented. Then Mr. Coulter’s quick fingers had dipped into a small drawer, a gun had jumped into his hand like a rabbit into a conjurer’s fist, and the gun was leveled at Mr. Fallon. “Do stand quite still,” said Mr. Coulter. “This gun is loaded and I am a very accurate shot. I am perhaps ignorant when it comes to locks, and don’t know enough to put on a good one that would keep out a cat, but I am expert in the use of a pistol.”
Mr. Fallon’s mouth got pinched for a moment; he seemed tired, haggard, there in his baggy tweeds with his pukka sahib mustache. He lifted his glasses with his free hand and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I had no real intention of hurting anybody.”
“You killed Shima with that thing and now you intend to kill me,” Mr. Coulter said in his hoarse old-elf’s voice. “I am calling on these two young people as my witnesses. Shima had blackmailed you for years, just as he had me, and you finally had enough.”
“I have never used the Needle in my life,” said Mr. Fallon, and tried to toss the weapon into a chair, but before he could complete the gesture the small gun in Mr. Coulter’s hand spoke. There was a sharp explosion, much more noise than Jennifer would have expected. There was an odor of gunfire.
Mr. Fallon still remained standing. His mouth twitched. He fumbled with one hand across the breast of the tweedy coat, and then he stumbled and sat down, folded at the knees; and then he fell for-ward on his face.
Jennifer was out of the chair; she was against Scott Dunavan and screaming her fright out against him, her screams muffled by his clothes, and he was holding her as if he meant never to let go.
Now they would never get out of here alive—
“Jennifer! Jennifer! Listen to me. Please listen.”
“Y … yes …”
“Can you hear m
e?”
“Yes.”
His hand was stroking her hair. He felt strong and solid as she clung shivering. After a minute he took out his handkerchief and brushed at the tears she had shed. “I think Mr. Coulter will let us go. He shot Mr. Fallon in self-defense, but he wouldn’t have that justification in killing us.” She understood then that Scott was talking for Mr. Coulter’s benefit. He sounded logical, reasonable, and after a moment she brushed the last of the tears away and peeped at Mr. Coulter past the edge of Scott’s sleeve. Mr. Coulter was still pointing the gun, but not at them. He looked thoughtful and considering.
She thought to herself, really Mr. Fallon hadn’t been threatening Mr. Coulter; he’d been threatening her. Mr. Coulter had said that Mr. Fallon was going to kill him—but Mr. Fallon hadn’t spoken a threat, nor made a threatening motion. Then she understood that Scott had been quick-witted enough to speak up, putting into words the idea he hoped would save their lives.
“We are his witnesses, as a matter of fact,” Scott Dunavan added. “Providing he’s going to stay here, and needs us.”
Behind Mr. Coulter was a long window draped in red velvet and gold braid, and the window pane must have been raised because Jennifer noted a movement of the drapery, a slow puffing and swelling, and then a trembling motion as though someone might have brushed it from the other side.
“I don’t think I’m going to need you as witnesses,” Mr. Coulter said finally in a dry, patronizing croak. “As a matter of fact, I have been making certain plans. Bax isn’t the only one who keeps close track of what goes on in Nueva Brisa. I have always had my own sources. I was always prepared for any eventuality. I knew some time ago that the General was going to be set free. Not exactly when—but I also knew something that Bax may not have known, though perhaps he did—that the General has been completely wrecked in body and mind by his years in prison. He has a month or so to live, and that’s why he was let out. After what they did to him, even the De la Cruzes can’t be mean enough to let him die in prison.”
He laughed, shortly, scornfully, and it seemed to Jennifer in that moment that she was looking at a long scroll, a series of pictures, the complete story of the General’s life, from his beginnings as an illegitimate child of a poor Indian girl, to his choosing of his own name, Lucero, Morning Star, because he’d had such confidence that fate meant to lift him to the top, to his joining the Army, a poor recruit no one had ever heard of, to being chosen for some reason to put down a revolt, to putting it down so well that he was given other and bigger responsibilities, to his coming to the notice of the De la Cruzes, which in his country was like being noticed by God. To his final and supreme responsibility, which had been to make his country safe for the wealthy families who owned, ruled and exploited it.
And then the tumble, she thought, and her eyes fell unwillingly on the sprawled body of Mr. Fallon, and she shuddered.
Now the General, aged and sick, was being let out to die by the great favor of the people who had put him into prison. She won-dered what the General thought now of his destiny.
“Not needing you for witnesses, therefore …” Mr. Coulter took a firmer grip on the gun. Scott Dunavan swung Jennifer so that he was between her and Mr. Coulter. “That really won’t do any good,” Mr. Coulter snickered. “Once you’re dead you’re down. And then where does that leave the little lady? I admire your courage and willingness to die—”
Someone grunted, “So do I, buddy,” and then the heavy velvet draperies swelled forward to swallow up Mr. Coulter. He went into the red morass with arms waving, eyes bugged out, a faint screech coming from his throat. He slid to the floor, still screeching, still holding the gun, and the red velvet swelled over him and took him up.
After what seemed only a moment Mr. Coulter, half out of his fancy smoking jacket, came jet-propelled from the recesses of the velvet and into a chair, the special chair he’d been sitting in before Mr. Fallon’s appearance. The Needle lay near Mr. Fallon’s outstretched hand and for an instant Mr. Coulter looked at it with aching desperation. Then he forced himself to look away. He looked with dread at what was coming toward him from the window. The window was open, and the figure striding through the draperies was a big, blowsy dissipated-looking man in a rumpled tan suit.
The blowsy man glanced at Jennifer in passing and muttered, “Sorry, baby. Sorry for everything. Didn’t dream you’d have all this trouble.”
And she could only stammer, “Uncle Bax!”
Scott Dunavan took Jennifer over to the door, but she wouldn’t leave the room now; she clung to the edge of the doorway.
“A nasty sight,” Uncle Bax was saying in a sort of whisky bass. He had Mr. Coulter’s gun. He knelt beside Mr. Fallon and felt his wrist for a silent moment. He didn’t say whether Mr. Fallon had a pulse; he stood up and stood there as if thinking. “Poor devil,” he said finally. “Of all of the bunch, I somehow respected him the most. He was the unflappable one. There at the border, with all hell breaking loose and the General’s men practically with their bayonets up our—” He broke off with a startled look at Jennifer. “—between our shoulder blades, he was the cool cookie who saved the damned day by hijacking their train. I’ll take my hat off to you, you old buzzard.” And he gave the fallen man a half-salute with a cocked forefinger. Then he turned to the cringing Mr. Coulter. “So you were going to shoot my niece?”
“I was only f … fooling,” screamed Mr. Coulter.
“What about upstairs? Is that fooling?”
“You … you’ve dared invade my privacy, my—”
“Oh, stow it,” said Bax disgustedly. To Jennifer he said kindly, gently, “Baby, you deserve to know what the caper was all about. It was about money. Some money which disappeared down in Central America. Part of the money was a foreign aid loan from dear old Uncle Samuel. The rest, and a great big chunk it was, belonged to an outfit called the De la Cruzes. I guess by now you know who they were—”
“Yes,” she whispered, and then added, “Please don’t kill him.”
“Kill him?” Bax pretended vast astonishment. “Why, honey, this little bug don’t represent any danger. He’s a mouse, a grasshopper. In our little shenanigan of long ago, he was just the lookout man. He kept track of things by scr—uh, acting loving around the De la Cruzes’ cook. That’s what his level of command was. The kitchen. The bedroom behind it, where he could overhear what the De la Cruzes were planning in their fancy patio. Nah. I wouldn’t kill that.”
“Please don’t.” Her voice was shaking, she was hanging on to both Scott Dunavan and the door frame, her head was whirling with thoughts she couldn’t look at. There were a million questions she wanted to ask. But most likely Bax wouldn’t answer them anyway.
“Howsoever, now, if this little cricket decided to go for that Needle his foot is kinda inching out toward—”
Mr. Coulter’s foot streaked back to the shelter of his chair.
“—if he was to threaten, even in a mild way, you or me or your young gentleman friend there—and I hope, by the way, that what I’m seeing here tonight with you two comes to something. Because, baby, that’s sure a rotten apple you’ve got back in that apartment.”
She blushed, cringed, and would have freed herself from Scott; but he wouldn’t let her go. He held her closer than ever, and stroked her hair some more, and whispered comforting things in her ear.
“—this here cricket makes a move like that,” Uncle Bax said, taking up his threats, “I’ll have to punish him. Now, getting back to the story of the money—I followed you two out here all the way from your apartment and that café, keeping out of your sight and the sight of Fallon, too, which wasn’t hard because I know how to do it, and while you had your chats with Coulter and Fallon downstairs here, I did a sneak upstairs to see what was to be seen, and baby, you never in all your days saw such a collection of beautiful gilt-edged Banco de Mexico paper.” He threw a kiss into the air with his free hand. “For which, I shall collect a lovely reward from the De la Cruzes
and the government of that miserable country. Maybe I’ll even be allowed to see the General. He can’t be holding a grudge after all these years—”
“Don’t go, Uncle Bax! Please, I know something awful will happen! Please don’t go back!”
Scott spoke. “You can’t really trust a bunch like that, sir. They sound to me as if they’d slit the throat of their own grandmothers if the idea seemed profitable.”
“Got to go, kids. I’ve planned this for years. In fact, I guess I started planning it after I came out of the daze when she died, and found out the money had disappeared.” For a moment Bax’s mask of flippant menace was dropped, and she sensed that there was another story, one she hadn’t guessed, of his love for the General’s wife, perhaps a real love; and perhaps the woman with the regal grace had had someone with her, there at the end when she felt she had to die, who did truly love and cherish her.
“I won’t be back in this country, at any rate,” he said. “Now I’ve got the money. I’m sorry I had to ring you in on it baby. I didn’t dare risk delivering those letters myself. It would have put the thief on guard. I had to stay in the background and see who panicked and ran. The one who dug the money out of his hidey-hole and ran was the one I needed. The rest of what happened in Nueva Brisa was politics, buried long ago. The De la Cruzes have made and broken half a dozen strong men in the years since. But they never forgot their money and they’ll be damned glad to get it back.”
“What about him?” Scott asked, indicating Mr. Coulter.
Bax shrugged. “He’ll have to scramble out of here. If he involved you in any mess, being witnesses to what he did to Fallon, I would have to come back. And then what would happen to him wouldn’t be exactly pretty.” Bax walked over, turning his back on Coulter, and took Jennifer’s face between his big hands and kissed her gently first on one cheek and then the other. “Sometimes in years to come, baby, think of your old Uncle Bax, off somewhere that’s not even on a map, raising hell …”
That Poor Blacksheep Brother of Mine … Her mother had loved this black sheep very much, the brother who was wild, who wouldn’t behave, who had to roam and get into trouble and bring disgrace upon them all. She was crying hard now; the tears ran down upon Bax’s hands. “I’ll never know what’s become of you.”
The Baxter Letters Page 17
