Man on a Rope

by George Harmon Coxe

  “You mean, what did he give me?”

  “Yes.”

  Ian hunched forward in his chair, shoulders bunched and his gaze sullen. “My father never liked me. He treated me mostly like a hired hand. About a month ago he told me he was going to get married. He has a brother in England. Sir Eric Lambert. He’s a sick man. My father was going back to live in the family home and wait for his brother to die. What he gave me he didn’t want. Amanti can tell you. He drew up the assignment.”

  “I’d rather hear it from you,” Kerby said.

  “A three-room house he owned in Lethem,” Ian said. “An old jeep that went with it. A couple of trading shacks. Two batteaus with outboards, the lease that Dawson worked. To my sister he gave twenty-five hundred dollars so her husband could pay off a note on his schooner.”

  Kerby nodded and looked at Muriel. “Mrs. Ransom, did you know about this will?”

  At the sound of her name the woman, who had not stirred in the past five minutes, looked up. “What did you say?”

  “I asked if you knew about the will.”

  “Yes,” she said, an odd note in her voice that made Barry regard her with new interest.

  For he was at once aware that something had changed in her face. The mouth was still tight, but it was purposeful now and her dark eyes had a smoldering, angry look, no longer reflecting the tragedy of a woman who had lost a lover or a fiancé but showing instead the bitterness and resentment of a woman who suddenly realized she had been robbed. This, he understood, was exactly what had happened. In a week’s time she would have had a certain wealth, position, a future that promised luxury and ease; now she had nothing. He also understood that the one who had killed Lambert might have something to fear from Muriel, for it seemed to him that this woman could be vindictive if she put her mind to it.

  Kerby said no more about the will, but turned once more to Ian Lambert. “Albert tells me you came to see your father this evening some time before nine. He overheard you quarreling. What was that about?”

  Ian grunted softly and his voice was soft but flat. “If Albert knows so much, get him to tell you.”

  “I’d rather hear your version.”

  “Not tonight, Mr. Superintendent.” Ian shook his head. “My father and I have quarreled for years. Let’s say it was a personal matter.”

  Kerby looked annoyed, but he did not argue. “Where were you during the shower?”

  “On Chris’s schooner.”

  “Chris? Who’s Chris?”

  “Christopher Holt, my brother-in-law. His schooner’s in port.”

  “Was he with you?… Was anyone?” Kerby asked when Ian shook his head.

  “I came to see Chris and got trapped by the shower. When it stopped I went looking for him. I found him in a bar,” he said, and mentioned a Water Street address.

  “Mr. Amanti,” Kerby said, “were you at home during the shower?”

  “At my office.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kerby glanced at Inspector Cantrell to make sure he was putting all this down, and now he focused his gaze on McBride.

  “Albert tells me that Lambert telephoned you after Ian Lambert had left.”

  “Albert was a busy boy tonight, wasn’t he?” McBride said.

  “Unfortunately for us, too busy. He had his work to do and all he can tell us is that he heard Lambert speak your name.”

  “That’s right,” McBride said. “He called. Said he wanted to see me. I told him I’d come up later if I could make it.”

  “You didn’t come?”

  “No.”

  “Where were you?”

  McBride was sitting back in his chair, his legs crossed, his big body at ease. “I went to the Tower for a drink.” He tipped one hand. “After the shower I went home. I was still there when your man came.”

  Kerby turned to face Muriel. “You had dinner with Mr. Lambert,” he said. “Would you mind telling us what you did then, just for the record?”

  “I left here about eight thirty,” she said woodenly. “Possibly a few minutes later. I got out of my clothes and washed and set my hair. I was reading in bed when the officer came and—and told me Colin was dead.”

  As her voice trailed off Kerby stepped past her and when Barry turned he saw Arthur Hudson standing in the doorway, his sharp-featured face expressionless and suspicious glints in his small gray eyes as they darted about the room and counted the roll.

  Kerby introduced himself. He thanked Hudson for coming and quickly explained that Lambert had been shot twice in the chest.

  “I understand you were here this afternoon,” he said.

  Hudson nodded, and as Barry watched he saw the man’s glance knife toward the desk and the open top of the safe.

  “You hired Mr. Dawson to appraise some diamonds Lambert had.”

  Hudson leaned his hips against the oblong table. He was chewing gum, and now he took an American filter-tip cigarette from his pocket. He took time to look at Barry before he said:

  “That’s right.”

  “A hundred thousand dollars’ worth?”

  “More or less.”

  “You intended to buy these stones?”

  “Did I?”

  Kerby ignored the challenge. “Albert was given to understand that you would pay cash for them tomorrow.”

  “Who’s Albert?” Hudson said.

  Kerby indicated the big Negro. “You have this cash?” he asked. “You declared it when you entered the country?”

  “I declared what dollars I had in my pocket,” Hudson said. “I wasn’t carrying any hundred thousand.”

  “But you told Lambert—”

  “Maybe. But what I had in mind was the equivalent of cash. I’m expecting a draft on a U.S. bank.”

  Barry knew that this was a lie. He had overheard too much of the discussion between Lambert and Hudson to believe any such thing. “I’ll have the cash tomorrow,” was what Hudson had said, or words to that effect. Now he was waiting for Kerby to challenge the statement and it seemed to him that Hudson’s manner and patently indifferent attitude suggested that he had been questioned by police experts before.

  “Did it occur to you,” Kerby said, “that such a transaction might be illegal?”

  “No.”

  “And what did you intend to do with the stones once you had purchased them?”

  “I hadn’t made up my mind.” Hudson parked his gum in one cheek and blew smoke into the room. “What happened to them, anyway? Somebody bag them?”

  “Bag them?” said Kerby with some bewilderment.

  “I mean, did somebody steal them?”

  “It would seem so. On the face of it”—he made some silent signal to Cantrell—“Lambert might well have been murdered because of them. When we locate them we may know more about it.”

  He gave an impatient rap with the swagger stick and chewed the edge of his mustache, his frustration beginning to show.

  “I guess that will be all for now,” he said. “By morning we may have more facts. We’ll want signed statements from all of you,” he added as his gaze made a slow circuit of the room. “We’ll be in touch with you.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LYNN SANFORD had no idea what time it was, or how long she had been asleep. In fact, her first thought when she found herself on her back with her eyes wide open was that she had not been asleep at all. She felt quite sure it was still early—she had turned out the lights at ten minutes after ten—and it was only when she remembered some formless and incomplete dream sequence that she knew she must have slept for a little while.

  For another moment or two she lay as she was, hearing nothing but the distant yapping of dogs and the still more distant barks which seemed to come as a chorus in answer to the others. It had always amused her—except in those instances when sleep was slow in coming—that the dog population of Georgetown, which must number many thousands, could be so silent in daylight and so vociferous at night.

&
nbsp; But it was not the sound of dogs which had wakened her, and now, her mind beginning to function, she became aware of some odd intuitive pressure she could not analyze. Slowly then, as this insidious tension began to build inside her, she turned her head. Because she no longer bothered with mosquito netting she could see the vague outline of the shuttered windows, the door which gave on the veranda, the darker rectangle of the open door which led to the living-room. Because she could not quite conquer her uneasiness she turned on one elbow to reach for the clock on the bedside table, her groping fingers knocking the glass ashtray aside as she did so. She turned the clock and saw that its hands pointed to eleven twenty, and it was then that she heard another sound which seemed to come not from outside but from somewhere in the living-room.

  She seemed to know at once that the sound was real and not the creation of her imagination. She could not identify this thing she had heard, but she remembered what her uncle had told her. She remembered, too, the little automatic pistol he had left for her, and now, her resolution mounting, she opened the drawer and took it out.

  Noise and light was what she needed; that was what her uncle had said. Here, the prowlers were mostly amateurs, ready to take off at the first sound of alarm, and with this in mind she slammed the drawer and turned on the bedside lamp. She swung her legs off the bed and felt for her mules. She stood up, blinking hard to clear her vision. Because she was still afraid, she had to tell herself that she was not; she had to force herself to walk toward the living-room. What kept her going was the thought that she could not possibly go to sleep until the sound she had heard was explained and she was sure she was alone.

  At the doorway she hesitated, aware that there was no electric switch near by. Because she would have to take three steps to reach the nearest lamp, she listened hard while she held her breath. She took a tentative step. When she heard nothing but the pounding of her heart she took another. It was then that she sensed rather than heard the whisper of movement in the air beside her, and now it was too late.

  Something hard hit her wrist, knocking the gun from her grasp before she could yank at the trigger; simultaneously a blanket of cloth enveloped her head like an enormous blindfold.

  She did not cry out. There was no time. As she felt one arm clamp round her shoulders, she reached up frantically to free herself, clawing at the hairy hand and feeling now the wrist watch and the metal band. For another instant her head was bent back against a muscular chest. Then she was spun violently about and, with the pressure suddenly removed, she fell sprawling, her head still enveloped in cloth.

  Dazed and shaken but unhurt, she came to her knees and snatched at this thing which had blinded her, knowing now that it was a tablecloth from the dining table at the end of the room.

  She heard the front door slam as she staggered erect, but it took her a moment to get her bearings, to find the lamp cord and turn on the light. By the time she reached the door and stepped out on the veranda the street outside was quiet and empty and she moved back inside, relocking the door and then, as her nerves steadied, making a slow circuit of the room to see what was missing.

  The forced shutter at the dining end of the room told her how the intruder had entered, and when she had completed her mental inventory she knew that only her hand-bag was missing. This did not bother her greatly because it had contained very little money and she would miss most a favorite compact and lipstick. When she had recovered the automatic she turned out the light and went back into the bedroom, worried not so much by her loss as by the damage done to her nervous system. She knew she would not go to sleep immediately, but she snapped off the light nevertheless while her mind began to wonder why, having broken in, the prowler had not taken the silver that was in the unlocked sideboard cupboard.

  Barry Dawson sat at the cellar bar of the Windsor nursing a final highball while the lone barman went about the business of locking up. He had been there ever since he had come back from Lambert’s place, nursing other drinks that served only to sharpen his thoughts and increase his uneasiness.

  He was still ashamed of his earlier conduct. As matters stood he must remain a suspect in the murder of Lambert until the guilty one was caught, and he understood he would be a much more likely suspect if it were known how and where he had discovered the body and how he had fled. Someone had bagged, as Hudson put it, the diamonds and this suggested that the one who had killed Lambert had first forced him to open the safe—or did someone besides Albert know the combination had been penciled on the desk drawer?

  There was no answer to this, but as his mind went back over the things which Superintendent Kerby had brought out, he understood that there could be other motives. The diamonds were gone, obviously stolen, but certainly there were others who would benefit as much or more by Lambert’s timely, or, from Muriel Ransom’s point of view, untimely death. This thought stayed with him while the lights around him went out, leaving only the single bulb over the back bar.

  Apologizing to the patient barman, he put down his empty glass and climbed the inner stairs to the deserted lounge with its wicker chairs and tables. In the cubby behind the desk the night clerk slept, and because Barry’s mind was by now too wide awake for sleep, he strolled to the railing which overlooked the street.

  Only one taxi remained opposite the entrance to the bar. This bore no sign, but Barry recognized it and a moment later he saw the driver standing in the shadows talking with the barman as he locked the outside door. A soft whistle caught the driver’s attention, and as he saw Barry and moved below him, Barry said:

  “Have you got time for a little ride, Eddie?”

  “For you, Mr. Dawson,” came the cheerful reply, “any time.”

  Eddie Glynn drove his own Zephyr, which he washed every week and polished once a month. Barry had known him quite a while and always used his car when he needed one, not only because Eddie was a cheerful and co-operative soul, but because, having been everywhere and done everything in the colony at one time or another, he had a fund of knowledge that was encyclopedic and often valuable.

  Now, as he slid into the leather-upholstered front seat next to Eddie, Barry knew he was acting on an impulse born of alcoholic stimulants. This impulse, such as it was, told him that Louis Amanti, as Lambert’s attorney, might be the key man in the case. Not because he felt that Amanti was guilty of any complicity, but because of his knowledge of Lambert’s affairs and the people involved. At this hour—it was eleven thirty-five—he was not too optimistic about finding the lawyer still up, but the idea appealed to him and he felt that even if he failed the ride might do him good.

  “You know where Louis Amanti lives?”

  “Yes, sir,” Eddie said. “Out beyond the playing-fields.”

  He stepped on the starter, but as he shifted gears, Barry recalled that Amanti had been at his office earlier that evening. Maybe, in the light of what had happened, Amanti had returned to his work.

  “Let’s try the office first, Eddie,” he said. “It’s closer.”

  Eddie cramped the wheel and they rolled along Main Street, taking the jog near the center of the city that brought them to High. Here the street was divided by grassy strips and a narrow canal, across which the government buildings were located. Beyond them, on the right, Eddie stopped the car in front of a two-story wooden building that had an outside stairway leading to the second floor.

  When he first stepped from the car, Barry thought the office windows adjacent to the second-floor landing were dark, and then, as he moved ahead, he saw the cracks of light behind the lowered shutters of the room on the left. Thus assured, he mounted the wooden stairs, at the same time visualizing Amanti’s suite with its private office on the left and the outer room where Lynn Sanford worked and through which one entered.

  The door to this was wooden. The lettering on the upper panel said: LOUIS J. AMANTI—BARRISTER, though at the moment darkness made the letters unreadable.

  Barry knocked once and reached for the knob. When it turned
easily, he opened the door and stepped forward into the blackness beyond. Only then did he understand that something was wrong, and now he stopped in his tracks, his back stiff and a sudden coldnes gripping his spine. It was not the silence, nor even the darkness of the room that startled him, it was the fact that the room beyond—he could make out the open door diagonally ahead of him—was also dark.

  Before he could call out or retreat he heard the clicking sound. At the same instant, light exploded in his eyes, half blinding him. It was all over in another second, but even then he knew that the light came from a conical desk lamp that had been swiveled in his direction. He could see the vague figure beyond it, but most of all he saw the protruding hand which held the gun.

  “Hey!”

  It was the only word he could think of, and he yelled it instinctively as his muscles recoiled and sudden fear flooded his veins.

  “Hey!” he said again, looking right down the muzzle but calmer now that there was no shot. “Take it easy, will you? Is that you, Amanti?”

  Beyond the lamp the gun wavered and a man sighed heavily. The metal reflector swiveled to focus downward and now the rest of the room took on size and shape. Barry swallowed and began to breathe again, but as reaction struck at him he felt the surge of anger.

  “What the hell is the idea?” he shouted. “I saw light in your office. I come up here and knock at the door—”

  “I’m sorry,” Amanti said, his voice thin. “There was someone here before you. Someone waiting when I came. I thought he had come back.” He pushed back in his chair. He laid the gun on the desk—the typewriter desk that Lynn used. “Come in,” he said. “Close the door. There is a light switch beside it.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WHEN BARRY DAWSON had obeyed his instruction and the dome light in the ceiling was on he saw that Amanti had a bruise on his forehead. He also noticed that the drawers of the four-decker filing cabinet stood part way open, the top one forcibly bent near the lock.

  “Why did you come here?” Amanti asked.

  “I wanted to talk to you.”