by Todd Downing
“Push ’em over here, then,” Bounty said, his mouth full. “I’ll attend to ’em. And I thought you liked hamburgers!”
Rennert complied. He also folded back the magazine to the article by Simon Secondyne, whose contents he had studied briefly while Miss Archer sought information for him.
“I think,” he said, as he laid a finger on a page which bore two illustrations, “that this is the bull-ring at the Campos hacienda. I can’t be sure, of course, until I ask Jester or Distant. But it’s the only small arena. And you notice the C.”
They were not particularly good photographs, since both had been overexposed in the bright sunlight, and one was marred on the lower left corner by the imprint of a grimy thumb. The first showed the exterior of a rude rural ring, with wooden sides like those of a stockade and an entrance gate over which had been branded a huge C; the other, an expanse of blood-soaked sand, whereupon a small black bull had collapsed to his knees. Over the animal stood a Mexican in peon garb, whose knife was about to administer the golpe de gracia—the coup de grâce—which the sword of an inexpert matador had failed to achieve. The Mark of the Beast was the caption, borrowed, doubtless, from Blasco Ibáfiez’s ideology: the real beast that roars on sunny afternoons in Hispanic countries is man, not the bull.
Bounty’s jaws worked rhythmically as he regarded the page. “I remember reading this,” he said indistinctly. “I never saw another bullfight.”
“Any idea who this Simon Secondyne is? Or was?”
“Nope. Sounds like a nom de plume, doesn’t it?” The sheriff drank milk and wiped his lips. “Hugh, let’s see if I have this straight. You know—or are reasonably certain—that the man who wrote this article used a couple of pictures taken on the Campos hacienda. You know that Jester took copies of this magazine on his trip and that everybody on the party read them. You know that David Distant recognized the arena and advised Jester to keep mum about it so that the family wouldn’t get into trouble. You know that Carlos Campos was killed in a bull-ring in Matamoros. Anything else?”
“That’s all.”
Bounty took another large bite and chewed as he flicked through the pages. He laid the magazine down and shifted his weight to one hip. “Then I’ll swear, Hugh, I can’t see how this is going to help us.”
“Did you ever hear,” Rennert asked him, “of a hunch?”
15
Tonatiuh
I
A conscientious sheep-dog must have a hard time of it, Rennert reflected as he drove northward, unless his flock is a unit. Rennert’s charges were scattered, intractable, and he was beginning to wonder whether to some of them he appeared in the role of guardian or wolf.
He paused at the entrance to Dr. Lincoln’s driveway to scrutinize a scene which, save for the tarnished moonlight, matched that of the night before. The shingled house was lighted, but the building behind it was dark.
Rennert drove in and parked. The hour was late, he knew, but his call was not a social one. The garage doors were ajar, and he ascertained that Radisson’s car was in place but that the saloon was not.
He crossed the grass to the front of the house, found the screen door latched, and rapped smartly upon the jamb. As he waited for a response he unbuttoned his coat and let his badge peep out. His mood was a rather bumptious one at that moment.
The porch light was turned on from within, and he found him-self under the suspicious surveillance of an elderly Mexican woman, who was rendered shapeless by voluminous dark skirts.
“I’m looking for Dr. Lincoln. Can you tell me where he is?”
“No.”
“Do you know when he will return?”
“No.”
He couldn’t decide whether the monosyllable held indifference or wariness.
“Is Professor Radisson in his apartment?”
She made no answer, but turned her head at a call from within:
“Who is it, Maria?”
“Tell Miss Lincoln,” he interposed, “that it’s Mr. Rennert. I should like to see her for a moment if it’s convenient.”
The woman disappeared, returned, and unlocked the door. Rennert crossed the porch and entered the living-room.
Janell Lincoln came from the rear, fully dressed, but obviously flurried and hospitable only with an effort.
“Good evening, Mr. Rennert. You’re looking for Father? He’s not here. I think he’ll be back tonight, but I don’t know when.”
“He’s out on a call?”
“No.” The girl hesitated. “He took Professor Radisson over to Tonatiuh, to the hospital there.”
Rennert felt a surge of apprehension. “Mr. Radisson’s condition got worse?”
“Yes, much worse. He was going to stay with us to-night, so Father could take care of him if he needed anything. But when Father changed the bandage he saw that the wound was in bad shape. Blood-poisoning had set in. He—he’s going to have to amputate the hand, I think.”
“To-night?”
“I think so.”
“When did they leave?”
“About three-quarters of an hour ago.”
“May I use your telephone, Miss Lincoln?”
“Certainly. It’s in the study. I’ll turn the light on for you.” She preceded him down the hall and left him in the book-lined room which he had visited twenty-four hours before, and which he would not have left so docilely had he possessed then the authority which he had now.
The telephone was on the table beside the chair in which Radisson had sat. Rennert thumbed quickly through the directory until he found Bounty’s number, with an address on a street, he noted incidentally, with which he was unfamiliar. He dialed.
His eyes made inventory of the surface of the table. Absorbent cotton, gauze, adhesive tape. Thin surgeon’s scissors. A tin of boric acid, for use as dusting powder doubtless. In the wastebasket below, a discarded bandage.
Keeping the receiver to his ear, Rennert opened a drawer and secured a sheet of note-paper. He stooped, lifted the bandage with two fingers, and laid it on the paper. It consisted of a cotton pad, discoloured by blood and medicament; a coil of gauze, with strips of tape at the edges, which had served to circle the hand; a length of soft linen cloth, its outside soiled and smeared with red, which had been looped over the thumb and fastened about the wrist. An unpleasant sight. He folded the paper about the whole and put it in his pocket.
He glanced at the door, whipped out his handkerchief, wrapped it about the boric acid tin and thrust it into another pocket. Blood poisoning, of course, might very well have set in and done its deadly work in such a short time. Radisson had shown all the symptoms of it that afternoon. But Rennert wasn’t satisfied. He wanted a chemist to examine these appurtenances to infection’s progress.
Either Bounty had not had time to reach his home or had stopped somewhere. Rennert hung up.
He returned to the living-room and thanked Janell.
“Mr. Rennert”—she stopped him as he was about to leave—“I don’t suppose I’ll see you again until next summer. Father and I are driving down to Point Isabel to-morrow. From there we’re going on a yacht cruise out in the Gulf. After that I’ll be leaving for school. So I’ll say good-bye now.” She added indifferently, “You might tell Kent Distant the same thing for me. He left in such a hurry to-night that I forgot. I’ll be too busy to-morrow to see him.”
“All right, Miss Lincoln.” Rennert was in a hurry to be off. “It’s too bad the two of you couldn’t have had more time together.”
She tossed her head. “Oh, I think we spent quite enough time together.”
Rennert indulged in a lifting of eyebrows. “Do I gather that Kent didn’t make a hit?”
“Well, yes. In my opinion, he’s an awful prig, Mr. Rennert.”
II
Normally a slow and cautious driver, Rennert was reckless as he retraced his route to the bridge. He fumed and swore at stop signs until he remembered that he was no longer a law-abiding citizen, but a law-enforcing deputy sheri
ff. Going was easier after that.
The bridge would remain open until two, he ascertained as he passed. It was the first time that Matamoros had given him the feeling of being in a hostile land. Due, doubtless, to thoughts of Angerman, “in durance vile,” and the knowledge that the same fate might await him were he to transgress any Mexican law.
He slowed down, but even so went astray in the maze of dark alleys which he had traversed with Angerman in the sunlight. Hot and dust-powdered, he emerged upon the road which led to Tonatiuh and sped over the flat desert floor.
Moonlight lay cool and milky over the sand, dappled by stagnant shadows that were depressions worn by wind and by weirdly moving shadows that were clouds scudding across the sky. Nothing inimical here, now that there was no sun, only vastness and loneliness and the hollow otherworldly sensation which comes to a man when he finds himself cut off suddenly from his kind.
A pallid yellow light burned in the shack by the gate of the sanatorium. Rennert pounded the horn. A man—a harder, larger, grimmer individual than the one who had been on duty that morning—came to the door and regarded him with unconcealed suspicion.
“What d’you want?”
Rennert wanted to see Dr. Bruce Lincoln. He was so firm about it that the other finally consented to telephone to the office for instructions. It was against the rules to open the gate at that hour of the night.
After an interminable period the Cerberus returned, with an assured insolence in his manner. “Sorry, buddy, but Doctor Lincoln can’t be bothered now. Better run on back to town.”
“Did you tell him who I was?”
“Yeah, I told him.”
Rennert got out of the car. He had at last the satisfaction of being able to flash his badge without feeling melodramatic. “Get Dr. Lincoln on the wire,” he said in as impressive a voice as he could summon. “I’ll talk to him. It’s official business.”
The guard started to laugh but checked himself suddenly, doubtless at the consideration that the tables might be reversed one of these days and that this ordinary-looking man would be formidable in a session in the back room of the sheriff’s office in Brownsville. “All right.” He used a more respectful tone. “Come on in. I’m only carryin’ out orders.”
Rennert stood in a square wooden box which held a telephone, a split-bottom chair, and nothing else save the faces and limbs of film actresses.
He heard a curt “That you, Rennert?” against his ear. “Lincoln speaking. What is it you want?”
“To talk to you, Doctor.”
“Heavens, Rennert! This is no time to talk. I’m extremely busy. If you have anything to say, see me to-morrow.”
“Have you performed the operation on Professor Radisson yet?”
The silence lengthened until he thought the line had gone dead.
“I’m sorry to tell you, Rennert, that I did not have a chance to operate. Mr. Radisson died while the ether was being administered. About a quarter of an hour ago. His heart was in a worse condition than I thought. Besides, he was in an advanced state of blood-poisoning.”
It was close to suffocation in that little box whose thin sides had been baked by the sun throughout the day. Insects swarmed about the unshaded bulb and crawled down Rennert’s neck. The eyes of the man by the door were flinty, following his every move.
“You are sure it was blood-poisoning, Doctor?”
“I shouldn’t have made that statement, Rennert, if I weren’t sure.”
“Nevertheless, you won’t object if I examine the body?”
Lincoln’s voice was suggestive of an efficient office, comfortable, equipped with electric fans and ice-water. “I do object. I don’t like your tone at all, Rennert. Professor Radisson died in a private hospital in Mexico. I see no reason why I should allow a deputy sheriff of a Texas County any privileges in that hospital. Our organization runs smoothly. Everything is being taken care of. You and your methods would produce the results of the proverbial bull in a china closet. No, I cannot permit you to come inside our grounds—at least to-night.”
“Do you intend to bring the body to Texas for burial?”
“I haven’t had time to give the matter any thought.” Rennert began to suspect that the other was enjoying this interchange. “Unless Radisson has relatives who insist that his remains be sent to the United States, I presume that the burial will be in Mexico. We make our own arrangements with the Tamaulipas authorities in such cases.”
Rennert had recourse to all his will power to remain calm. “There are special circumstances, Doctor, that I will explain—”
But a click told him that Lincoln had dropped the receiver upon its hook.
He replaced his own with deliberation and turned to the man with the eyes of flint. “Please tell Dr. Lincoln,” he said, “that I shall see him when he returns to Texas.”
16
Coup de Grâce
I
Rennert woke with a start, to blink his eyes in the warm, dazzling sunlight which flooded the sheets. Through the open window drifted the drowsy hum of a countryside coming slowly to life while some Brownsville church sent the blithe peal of chimes to die away as the currents of air shifted, then to swell out again.
But it wasn’t the chimes, he knew, that had awakened him. It was a sound from nearer at hand.
It was only a matter of seconds before a board creaked overhead, then another. A heavy individual—Matt Bettis, doubtless—was trying to walk noiselessly across the attic.
Rennert sat on the edge of the bed and thrust his feet into slippers, his arms into the sleeves of a dressing-gown. He wanted very much to go back to sleep.
At the rear of the hall a door closed softly, footsteps descended the short flight of stairs and came down the carpet.
Rennert opened his door to pick the morning paper from his threshold. “Hello, Bettis,” he said.
Matt Bettis did not scowl, but his facial expression was unfriendly, as were his eyes as they focused on Rennert’s face. He was in his shirt sleeves and carried the same plate and enameled pitcher which Rennert had seen on a previous occasion. “Hello.”
“Nice morning, isn’t it?”
“Nice enough.”
“Would you mind stepping inside for a moment, Bettis? I want to ask you something.”
The other hesitated, then walked into Rennert’s room. “Pardon the informality,” Rennert said as he closed the door. “Won’t you sit down?”
“No thanks.”
“A cigarette?”
“No, thanks.”
Rennert sat on the bed and lighted a cigarette. “I was reading an article in an old magazine last night,” he remarked. ‘“The Last Trumpet’ was the title. The author was Simon Secondyne. Ever read it?”
Bettis stared at him. His lips were slightly parted, and there was a faint twitching at the corners of his mouth. “Yes,” he blurted. “I read it. Why?”
“I’d like to know something about the author. Can you tell me?”
Bettis was as poor a dissembler as Rennert had ever seen. There was no reason at all for his smile, and his adam’s-apple betrayed the fact that he was swallowing agitatedly. “No,” he said, “I don’t know anything about him. Why should I?”
“His article was illustrated by two pictures which I think were taken on the Campos hacienda, Perhaps you can tell me.” Rennert got to his feet, took the copy of N.E.W.S. from his table and showed his caller the two photographs in question. “Do you recognize them?”
Bettis gave them but a fleeting glance then raised his eyes to Rennert’s. There was something sharply repellent about the cold shifting pupils in juxtaposition with the pubescent cheeks and the smiling lips.
“I’m not sure,” he said, “whether I recognize them or not. I was only at the place once.”
“You saw the Campos bull-ring, did you?”
“Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t. That’s too long ago to remember. Why do you want to know?”
“Call it curiosity, if you want to.
You recall the day of the train wreck at the hacienda, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“The period between twelve and twelve-thirty noon?”
“Not specially.”
“Better try to. Because I want to know where you were at that time.”
Bettis’s smile widened a little. Either assurance or bluff was coming to his aid. “That’s right. You’re a deputy sheriff now, aren’t you? I was forgetting that, seeing you there in pyjamas. Why, I was riding a horse at the time you mention.”
“With whom?”
“My brother.”
“No one else?”
“No. Campos and Wyllys were with us, but Wyllys got sick and Campos took him back to the house.”
“Did you ride near the railroad tracks?”
“No, we didn’t go that way.” Bettis turned towards the door.
“Was that you who called this meeting down at Torday’s at noon to-day?”
“No, he called it himself.”
“I suppose I’ll see you there?”
“If you go, you will.”
Rennert waited until Bettis had gone, then walked to the rear of the hall, climbed the stairs, and stood at the attic door, listening. When he heard no sounds from within he stooped and examined the lock. It was a recently patented one which, according to the advertisements, would defy any tampering.
Rennert smiled smugly, and went back to his room.
He searched through the drawers of his dresser until he found a small wash-leather case which contained a number of keys and thin steel instruments seemingly designed for no purpose at all. They were scarred, however, from years of usage. The luggage of more than one tourist had surrendered to their pressure and given up secrets from hidden compartments. This was a memento of the Customs Service which Rennert had carried away with him, with little thought that he would have a use for it.
Within three minutes he was in the attic. It was a large place, with dormer windows which let the sunlight flood over a heterogeneous collection of discarded furniture. A low cooing guided him to the eaves on the north. He stopped before five wicker cages, each of which contained a pigeon.
