The Last Trumpet

by Todd Downing

  The bustling young businessmen who have made the sands of the Rio Grande to blossom and pay dividends looked at him askance as a picturesque but slouchy remnant of a past which had gone the way of the Texas Rangers. The Magic Valley was urban now, and its law enforcement should be taken care of by a product of the schools of crime detection, who would join their civic clubs and whom their wives could ask to dinner and to bridge.

  Bounty was an imperturbable, mildly sensuous man of slight but wiry build. There was something feline about the indolent movements of his body, which always seemed clad in the same blue serge, worn thin and shiny on the seat, the elbows and the shoulder-blades. His virile, finely featured face and sleek flaxen hair, too oily, gave him an illusory appearance of youth. His eyes were a baffling blend of blue and hazel. They were slightly glazed this afternoon, as if by digestion, and betrayed nothing at all of what he was thinking as he perched on the end of his spine in a padded swivel-chair and gazed across a cluttered desk at Rennert.

  Rennert had been talking for some time. He finished, settled down on the end of his spine in a chair which wasn’t padded, and said: “There are the cards. It’s your game, not mine.”

  He was immensely relieved to be rid of responsibility. Although heretofore he had exchanged less than a dozen words with Bounty, his liking for the sheriff had been instantaneous. On the occasion of their first meeting, at the Customs office, he had known that the man was (Rennert would have had to use a Spanish word for which the English has no equivalent) simpático.

  Bounty ruminated on the end of a match. His voice was slow and rich: “Um-huh. Partly my game. I’m sheriff of Cameron County, not Mexico. If any citizen of this county comes to me and asks for protection I’ll see that he gets it. All these men know that. Why don’t they come?”

  “Most of them don’t realize that they are in any danger.”

  “Torday does.”

  “Yes, and my guess is that he will be appealing to you now that he knows I’m not going to work for him.”

  “Mind telling me just why you turned down his offer? That’s a valuable orange grove. The hurricane last fall didn’t hurt it much.”

  “I wasn’t at all sure just what I’d be letting myself in for.”

  Bounty’s lids drooped and rose.

  “Is that hedging it or isn’t it?” he demanded of himself.

  “It isn’t. It’s an exact expression of my feeling.”

  “Maybe I was hedging then.” Bounty looked at him. The glaze was leaving his eyes now. They were hard and clear, and the muscles about them were tight. “Do you believe Torday’s accusation against Angerman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The swivel-chair rocked a bit. “What sort of a woman is Mrs. Torday? I’ve never seen her.”

  “I saw her for perhaps three minutes.”

  “That’s enough.”

  “Banked fires.”

  “That’s bad. How well banked?”

  “Deeply. By religion, for one thing. Her church doesn’t sanction divorce.”

  “That’s worse. I was wondering why she didn’t divorce Torday. Thought maybe it was pity.”

  “That probably plays a part.”

  “Are she and Angerman lovers?”

  “In the sense you mean, no. I saw them together for thirty seconds.”

  Bounty had an extremely pleasant smile. “If we keep on like this we’ll be psychic, Rennert, and can set up a private inquiry agency of our own.”

  “I’ll give you another reason why I refused Torday’s offer. I don’t like sadism. I don’t like contact with it. I’m afraid it might be catching.”

  “Sadism.” The sheriff considered this as he swayed the chair back and forth with a regularity which would become irritating in time. “Wouldn’t you say that Angerman is the sadist rather than Torday?”

  “No. It was Torday who told the story of that flogging and gloated over it. I’m not defending Angerman. He may be brutal, although I confess he doesn’t seem so. His acts would be those of an animal, lamentable but not perverted. It’s when man begins to refine on the animal that I get disgusted. And, I don’t mind admitting, afraid. That’s the reason, I think, why I came to you.”

  Bounty spat out a sliver of wood. “I judge you think I ought to do more than give protection to these men if they ask for it?”

  “I do. I hope that doesn’t sound as if I were trying to tell you how to run your office.”

  “Not at all. These murders and attempts at murder that you’ve been telling me about. How would you describe them in the terms you were using just now?”

  “I can’t decide. That’s what worries me. I’d be inclined to say that it’s cold and purposive work. The mind of the man who’s doing it may be warped or it may be as clear and logical as yours and mine. He seems to adhere to a schedule that I can’t see rhyme or reason to.”

  “A schedule?”

  “Yes, he’s active only at the Christmas season.”

  II

  Bounty gave a low whistle. His chair gyrated slowly toward the sunlight which was pouring in the window behind him. He spread out his legs and stretched them, as if getting a voluptuous pleasure out of the warmth on his thighs and loins. A sleek and graceful leopard sunning himself upon a rock….

  “It can’t be a coincidence,” Rennert pursued, “that all these crimes have been committed then. Two years ago, you recall, Charles Bettis was killed on Christmas Eve. Last year Torday had his escape on Christmas night. Yesterday was Christmas again. Campos was killed. Radisson was shot.”

  “Odd.” Rennert thought that the sheriff’s tone was concessive. “I remember the evening we brought Charles Bettis’s body into town. The radios playing Silent Night. The lights and firecrackers and bells. The tinsel and the stuffed Santa Clauses in front of the stores. The kids. I love kids, Rennert. A bunch of ’em saw us take him out of the car. They got scared and cried. And the poor fellow had been cutting down a mesquite bush to use as a Christmas tree when he died. His blood was on it.” Bounty shook his head. “It got me. It got Jester too. We went and had a drink together afterwards. He put into words just what I’d been thinking. That it was against nature. A sort of judgment on Bettis to go out like that, at that time. I don’t put much stock in religion myself, Rennert, but I’m not an out-and-out atheist like Bettis was. You didn’t know him, did you?”

  “No.”

  “You wouldn’t have liked him.” Bounty fell silent, frowning. He hitched his thumbs about his wide belt, and his finger-tips plunked at his abdomen as if it were a sound, ripe melon.

  “I’d like to know more about Bettis’s death,” Rennert said after a moment. “I’m asking purely out of curiosity.”

  Bounty spoke slowly: “I was eating supper, I remember, when Rolf called me. Just after sundown. He and Matt had been out looking for Charles and found the body. Matt stayed with it while Rolf came in to town. I got hold of the county doctor; we picked up Rolf at the hotel and went out. Bettis had been shot through the head with a high-powered rifle. It was deer season, and the brush was full of hunters. A stray bullet had killed a Mexican about a month before that. The only thing that made me a little suspicious was this Matt Bettis. He was so darned positive that it was an accident. Kept wanting us to go and quit talking. Acted nervous. It was hard ground there, but it seemed plain that there weren’t any footprints near except Bettis’s. And Doc McHenry said the shot had come from a distance. I let it go at that, but got to inquiring around later. Matt Bettis didn’t gain anything by his brother’s death. No insurance. A lot of debts. And Matt had been at the hotel at five o’clock, there wasn’t any doubt. When Charles fell, his wrist-watch was smashed on a rock and the hands stopped at about five. That corresponded with the doctor’s finding as to the time of death. Charles had a revolver on him, but it hadn’t been fired. And it couldn’t have been suicide anyway, because the wound was on the wrong side of the head—the right. So the verdict was accidental death.”

  Rennert was p
uzzled. “I don’t quite follow that. About the wrong side of the head being the right. Unless—oh, my God! Bounty, was Charles Bettis left-handed?”

  “Yes, I should have mentioned that. If he had shot himself, of course, the wound would have been on the left side.”

  Rennert was staring at him. “Bounty,” he inquired softly, “what percentage of people would you say were left-handed?”

  “Search me.”

  “Three out of ten. A larger number than usual, I’d say.” Rennert sat up. “It’s time to go quietly crazy now. There were ten witnesses to that railway wreck, weren’t there? Well, three of them were left-handed. Those three were Charles Bettis, Carlos Campos, Dr. Torday.”

  “Torday is left-handed?”

  “Yes, I noticed that to-day. If you want something thrown in for good measure, Professor Radisson was wounded in the left hand.” Rennert picked up his hat. “A railroad accident. The left hand. Christmas. Multiple murder. I’m going to a movie, Bounty. Sorry you have to stay here and figure it out.”

  But the sheriff waved him back into his seat. “Don’t be in such a hurry. I want to think. That movie will wait. That’s about all you’re doing now, isn’t it? Going to movies?”

  “That’s about all.”

  Bounty, too, was sitting up now, as if galvanized, and facing him. “First, Rennert, I want to make a confession to you and an apology. When you came in here I thought this was some monkey business of Torday’s. He’s slick as an eel, and I suspected that he was trying to make use of me and my office in some way. I soon saw that wasn’t it, that you were here on your own account. Then I decided you were letting your imagination run away with you. I apologize. There is something rotten in Cameron County. Rotten as hell. I’m going to get to the bottom of it. Now I know my own limitations. I’ve never come up against anything like this before. I want you to help me, Rennert. I’m not giving you any spiel about your duty or anything of the sort. Though you might consider that. I’m asking it as a personal favour. You and I talk the same language. Going to stick by me?”

  “Of course I’ll do anything I can.”

  “Good.”

  The sheriff swung out of his chair, lounged to the window, and stood with his back to Rennert and his hands jammed into his pockets. He began to teeter on the balls of his feet and to whistle The Eyes of Texas, dirge-like:

  “Do not think you can escape them

  From night’til early in the morn …”

  Bounty wasn’t at his best, Rennert had to admit, viewed from the rear. The sunlight against which he was silhouetted glossed the blue serge too brightly at the spots where his muscular body had constant contact with a chair.

  He wheeled about suddenly and smiled at Rennert. “I ought to be booted for not thinking of it sooner!” His voice was happy. “Why don’t I appoint you a special deputy? No salary, of course, but you’ll have authority and a gun and, by God, I’ll stand by you if you have to use them!”

  Rennert started to laugh and settle back in his chair. Instead he set his feet squarely on the floor, his elbows on the desk, and said: “Well, why don’t you?”

  9

  Death on the Left

  I

  The deputy sheriff’s badge was of nickel. It was large and heavy and, now that the novelty of its possession had passed, Rennert was inclined to think it ostentatious. Since the weather was too warm for a vest, he wore it pinned to the inside of his coat, where it made his lapel sag conspicuously. He had half a mind to take it off and consign it to a pocket. Instead, he buttoned his coat and straightened his shoulders. “Leave it on,” Bounty had admonished him. “It will make you feel snug and confident.”

  Rennert got out of his car and walked toward Professor Radisson’s door.

  The latter’s quarters, he judged, occupied the entire upper floor of the old carriage house and shared the lower with the garage. A glance had told him that the linguist’s battered dust-grey coupé was in place but that Dr. Lincoln’s familiar black saloon was not. Rennert wanted to see both men.

  He pressed a bell, but had to wait several moments before he heard footsteps within. Radisson opened the door, smiled wanly and did his best to make his welcome a hearty one. The slight primness which usually characterized his exterior was altogether lacking. He was in his shirt sleeves and wore no tie. He looked a wretchedly sick man and Rennert was concerned at the deepened ravages of fever since their meeting that morning.

  “I stopped to see how you were feeling,” he said, “and to have a little talk with you. But perhaps I’d better not come in.”

  “No, no. Come on in, Mr. Rennert. I’ll be glad of your company. Maybe you can brighten things up. I’m rather distraught this afternoon.”

  As Rennert passed him he caught the tang of whisky and decided that his host had been drinking rather heavily.

  He found himself in a large, nondescript, thoroughly masculine room, with dark paneling and walls of dark green beaverboard. A staircase rose at the rear. There was a great deal of bulky old-fashioned furniture which might have seen service in Dr. Lincoln’s home. Mexicana was everywhere: colourful Saltillo sarapes, pottery and basketry, some clay images which looked ancient and doubtless were.

  Radisson indicated a comfortable leather chair. “Since you’re a bachelor yourself, Rennert, I’m not going to apologize for the helter-skelter state of my house. It’s more or less a pied-à-terre, anyway, where I store things I’ve picked up. I’m only here a few weeks out of the year, but I like to have roots somewhere.”

  “I appreciate your feeling. I’m looking forward to getting settled myself. I’ll be satisfied when I get this much of an air of comfort and permanency.”

  “You’re probably referring to the soft chairs and the cushions. Out in the mountains a burro is my usual means of transportation. I’m just recovering from a three weeks’ ride.” Radisson paused by a table on which were a siphon and a bottle. “Let me give you a whisky-and-soda, Rennert? I’ve had to have recourse to it several times to-day myself. I’ve needed bucking up.”

  “I’ll have one, yes. But let me fix it.”

  “All right, if you will.” Radisson sank into a chair. There was a brittleness about his manner which spoke of overwrought nerves as well as the excitation of liquor. It rather bothered Rennert because it was so at variance with his former taciturnity.

  “You haven’t told me about your hand. You don’t mind my saying that you look feverish?”

  “I seem to have a bit of fever.” With set lips Radisson adjusted his bandaged hand upon his lap and pressed delicately upon the left forearm and elbow.

  “The arm hurts?” Rennert inquired as he set a glass within the man’s reach.

  “It hurts abominably. Pains began shooting up it about noon.”

  “Has Dr. Lincoln looked at it since morning?”

  “No, he dressed it then, but didn’t seem to think that I’d have any trouble with it. He’s not at home now. As soon as he returns I’ll have him take a glance at it.”

  “You want to watch out for infection.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s that. Lincoln would have noticed it.” He forced a laugh. “I’m not a tractable invalid, I’m afraid. I’m making much ado about nothing. What really worries me is the possibility of being laid up here. I’ve got to get back to my work. That’s all that matters to me.”

  “Is it nearing completion?”

  “Completion?” There was something of his old shortness in Radisson’s manner. “Good God, no, it’s not nearing completion! It will take another ten years at least. Ten years of solid application. There ought to be a dozen men doing it instead of one. Here’s to you, Rennert.” He drank long and deep.

  Rennert followed suit, then said: “Mr. Radisson, I’d like to talk to you about last night’s shooting. Officially or unofficially, as you choose.” He was on the point of unbuttoning his coat and displaying his shield, but refrained from that bit of melodrama. “Sheriff Bounty has appointed me a special deputy” sounded
modest enough.

  “A deputy?” The stare was blank and unreadable, but Rennert was afraid for a moment that Radisson was going to laugh. “I don’t believe I understand. You can’t mean this injury of mine was important enough to warrant that?”

  “Not in itself. But we”—Rennert stressed the word—“believe that your wound is not an isolated incident. You were one of the persons who witnessed the wreck in which Dr. Paul Torday was crippled. Are you aware that two of those individuals have been killed and that you are the second to meet violence?”

  “You refer, I take it, to the brother of this Bettis at the hotel, Torday himself and Carlos Campos.” A bit of acerbity crept into his speech. “A gambler, a quack doctor, a bullfighter. Fine company to find myself with!”

  “You know, then, what has been happening?”

  “Yes.” Radisson continued to study Rennert’s face for a moment then sank back and gazed at the wall. “Mr. Rennert”—although he gave care to his syllables they emerged thickly—“I’ve felt bewildered ever since Lincoln told me last night of his suspicions. Bettis was almost a total stranger to me, since our paths seldom crossed after his visit to the Campos hacienda. I knew of his death, but assumed that it was an accident, like everyone else. I saw Campos killed yesterday. It was a shock to me, since I knew the boy rather well. I dislike bullfights intensely, but I went to see him in his first public appearance. I took it for granted that the mirror had been used by some mischievous boy or by some follower of a rival matador. I must say I gave it little thought. When you saw me last night I was in no condition to concentrate on the question of who had shot me. Then, as I said, Dr. Lincoln told me that he was convinced that the National Railways of Mexico were trying to intimidate these witnesses. I—well, I’ll be frank with you—I was inclined to laugh at his suspicions. But to-day, I dare say because I’ve felt so rotten, it all seems perfectly plausible. I’ve kept a grip on myself, but it would be easy to let myself get into a panic.” He hesitated. “A stranger came to the door this afternoon. He rang and rang, but I didn’t answer. Silly of me, I suppose. And I admit I looked from a window at you before I answered your ring.”