Vultures in the Sky

by Todd Downing

  Rennert, standing alone before them, felt a singular alertness of the senses, as if his body were tautened by the heavy silence that was crowding in upon the steel sides and brightly lighted windows of the train. He thought of the train as a projectile suddenly deprived of movement in its journey through space and poised stationary in unfamiliar elements. He found himself listening, for sounds that were not the sounds from the engine; these had receded now into a special category of their own. He thought, as his ears sought to sort out the tiny night sounds: This is the eventuality which I have feared more or less consciously all day. Its implications make insignificant the danger from the individual on this train who has struck today like the desert rattler and like the rattler withdrawn his fangs until danger threatens him again….

  “What’s the trouble now?” King’s voice was high pitched with alarm.

  “The engine again,” Rennert watched him descend the steps. “They’re having to send on to San Luis Potosí for another—the one which failed to meet us at Vanegas,” he added, knowing that he was underscoring the words.

  King stepped to the ground beside him and glanced nervously in the direction of the front of the train. “What was that shot I heard a minute ago?”

  “Merely one of the soldiers shooting at a rabbit.”

  “Are you sure that’s all?”

  “Yes,” Rennert studied the man.

  His whole manner bespoke his nervousness. The fingers that held a cigar to his mouth were trembling. He turned to stare out into the desert and shivered visibly.

  “I just wondered,” he said, drawing his coat together to button it, “if there’s any danger from—well, from bandits? One hears so many stories about things that happen down here in Mexico. Miss Talcott was telling this afternoon about an experience of hers when a troop of bandits piled logs on the track and raided the train she was on. She says that only a few years ago trains kept their blinds pulled down when going through this country for fear of shots.”

  “There’s always the possibility, of course,” Rennert admitted, “but I’m sure it’s very remote nowadays. Mexico is as safe today for traveling as many parts of our own country. Miss Talcott is speaking of the days of the Revolution. As for the shots from out of the darkness—” he checked himself at the realization that he was talking more to reassure himself than the little man before him.

  “Well?” King queried.

  Rennert laughed. “A Mexican with a gun in his hand is often like a boy with a slingshot. Didn’t you ever have a temptation to aim a stone at a plate glass window?”

  “Not that I remember. But what’s that got to do with it?”

  “That,” Rennert said with a grim smile, “explains the shots that used to be fired at train windows while trains were still a novelty.” He knew better than to try to explain the peculiar inverted psychology of a people who would appreciate the humor of being a target-like a plate glass window.

  King drew upon his cigar so that it illuminated his gray face. “I wish,” he said, “that I were back in Texas. From the minute I entered the station at San Antonio and heard about the strike down here I haven’t had a minute’s peace.”

  “Speaking of San Antonio,” Rennert studied King’s face, “there is a question which I’ve been intending to ask you, something else about the man whom you saw fall there.”

  “Yes?” King asked sharply. “Still on that subject?”

  “Yes, Mr. King, I am still on that subject. Did both you and your wife see the man fall?”

  King stared out into the desert and his fingers twitched at his necktie. “Well, no, she didn’t see him fall. She had gone back into the station for something.”

  “And you didn’t accompany her?”

  King cleared his throat. “Only as far as the gate,” he said.

  “And you waited there for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then both of you got on the train?”

  “Yes, yes, as soon as it was open.”

  Rennert was becoming increasingly certain that he understood Jackson Saul King much better than the latter thought he did. He wanted to tell him that he saw through the pitifully weak and despicable little fiction which he had tried to build up around himself. He decided, however, to wait until they reached San Luis Potosí. There was always the chance, of course, that he was mistaken.

  He asked instead: “Your errand in Mexico must be very important, then, since you came on in spite of the strike?”

  “Yes,” Rennert noticed the relief that crept into the man’s voice at the change in subject. “As I told you, I’m with the King & Dysart Cotton Mills of Fort Worth. The depression has hit us pretty bad and I’m going down to try to open up a market in Mexico. We believe that we can put out inexpensive cotton clothing such as the Mexican peon wears much cheaper than the Mexican mills. There’s the tariff question, of course, to be considered. That’s why I’m going down—to find out what the attitude of the new government is likely to be on that.”

  There was an interval of silence.

  King looked toward the lighted windows of the train. “Think I’ll go back to the smoker,” he said. “Electric lights look good to me right now.”

  “Thank you, Mr. King, for your information,” Rennert said evenly.

  “Perfectly all right, Mr. Rennert.” King turned his back.

  Rennert followed him up the steps. As he gained the top he saw him disappearing into the door of the Pullman.

  Rennert stopped outside the door of Miss Van Syle’s compartment, undecided. He was wondering if that hatbox were important. He couldn’t get rid of the idea that it was. He remembered now that it had been old and battered, incongruous beside the new and shining luggage which he had seen in the compartment. And then there was the question of the initials. O. W., Miss Talcott had said they were. Innocently enough explained, of course—a borrowed piece of luggage—but in combination with all the rest…

  He knocked lightly upon the door, waited a moment and knocked again. Still there came no response.

  He walked away, glanced into the Pullman and saw Miss Talcott, King, and Jeanes in their seats. He went forward to the diner and found it empty. He realized afterwards that it was the feeling of apprehension which had been growing upon him all day that made him retrace his steps and knock again, more loudly, upon the door of Coralie Van Syle’s compartment.

  When no answer came he tried the door, found it unlocked, and pushed it open. He switched on the light and saw her.

  Spahr choked, straightened himself from the stooped position in which he had been standing with his hands braced against his bent knees, and dried his lips with a handkerchief.

  He thrust the handkerchief into his pocket and leaned against the closed door for a moment until the walls of the little room should steady themselves. The train had stopped, he knew that, yet the floor and the walls seemed to be pulsating with movement.

  The air in the tiny inclosed space seemed all at once stifling and he felt sickness coming over him again. He stood away from the door, braced himself and opened it. He stepped into the smoker.

  Two men were sitting upon the leather seat, facing him. They were Radcott and Searcey. Spahr thought that another man had been sitting with them when he had come bolting in but he couldn’t be sure.

  He made his way to the first lavatory and turned on the cold water faucet. He let the basin fill, then leaned over and splashed water over his face.

  “Sick, fellow?” it was Searcey’s voice that spoke through the stillness.

  “Urn-huh,” Spahr murmured through the folds of the towel. “A little.”

  He straightened up and dried his hands, tossed the towel into the receptacle below the lavatory. He surveyed himself in the mirror. His face was chalk-white and his eyes bloodshot.

  As he pushed through the curtains he heard Searcey laugh and say to Radcott: “They always do it as soon as they get across the border—fill up on liquor.”

  Liquor! Spahr made his way do
wn the passage, one hand running against the wall. The damn fool, talking so confidently about liquor making him sick. It hadn’t been that. It had been the peculiar ungraceful way in which she had slumped forward onto the floor, on her knees, with her forehead resting upon the carpet, hands thrust out on either side of her like broken wings….

  He came to the door and walked unsteadily down the steps. The night air struck his face with welcome coolness and he stood for a moment upon the lower step, breathing deeply. It helped to steady his vision, to diminish the alternate pounding from side to side in his head. He lit a cigarette and stepped to the ground. He walked forward a few steps and sank down upon the sand beside the tracks.

  The windows of the train cast faint rectangles of illumination against the ground but on all sides of him was silence. A telegraph pole loomed in stark black outline against the horizon where the sun had sunk.

  Spahr stared at this pole for a moment, startled.

  Perched upon the crosspiece were three huge birds, gaunt and motionless, their naked heads craned slightly forward, as if their eyes were fixed upon him.

  He picked up a stone and threw it with all his force. It crashed against the pole and the birds rose with a flapping of wings, hung in the air for a moment, then sailed off into the darkness.

  Spahr drew in deeply upon his cigarette, letting its smoke trickle slowly through his nostrils as he tried to think. The apparitions upon the pole had startled him more than he realized.

  What had possessed him to do as he had done—to yield to the sudden nausea which had come over him, to close the door behind him and hurry to the smoker? He hadn’t even stopped to make sure that she was dead, he hadn’t done anything except stare down at her in that strangely cramped position on the floor.

  He should, he realized now, have called someone, have said that he had merely gone to her compartment and found her like that. No one would have suspected him if he had told a simple straightforward tale like that. But now …

  Suppose he went back into the Pullman now and told them that Miss Van Syle was dead on the floor of her compartment. They would want to know why he had not said something sooner, why he had closed the door and left her, why he had come like this out into the night and smoked a cigarette. They would think (his right hand rubbed a groove into the dry hard ground) that he had come out to bury something, to throw something away. They would think, that meant, that he had killed her.

  The only thing to do now was to keep still. They would find her sooner or later and there would be nothing to connect him with her death. Unless—

  A sudden spate of panic swept over him as he stared into the utter loneliness of the desert.

  —Unless they found his fingerprints upon the handle of her door.

  12

  Death Leaves Yellow Flowers (7:20 P.M.)

  Rennert rose and pushed the door shut with his foot.

  He let his eyes wander purposefully about the compartment upon whose floor Coralie Van Syle lay in a crumpled heap. They took in the ordered arrangement of everything that had belonged to the dead woman—the brightly jacketed books stacked in a neat pile upon the table; a few articles of clothing carefully folded; the two expensive-looking traveling bags of brown grained leather. Everything betraying a tidy methodical nature—everything except the three discordant notes: the battered hatbox that lay flat upon the floor, its contents strewn about it; the black and white beaded bag which yawned open upon the table; the withered yellow flowers that should have been put in water.

  He walked across the room and knelt beside the hatbox. Upon the top, beside the handle, the initials O. W. were stamped in gilt that had begun to crack. He sorted out the contents with practiced lingers. Two facts struck him as significant: the box had been filled with the odds and ends of wearing apparel that always remain at the last minute of packing and—this apparel was brand-new. Half a dozen frothy lace handkerchiefs, evanescent underwear, a pair of silk mules, a comb, a bottle of bath salts, even (Rennert’s eyes narrowed) a toothbrush in virgin cellophane. He felt of the lining of the box then closed it and got to his feet.

  He turned his attention then to the contents of the beaded bag which had been poured recklessly upon the surface of the table. There were a few coins, an unopened package of English cigarettes, a fountain pen, a long manila envelope.

  He picked up the envelope. It bore the imprint of the Mexican Consulate in San Antonio and was addressed to the Immigration officials at Nuevo Laredo. He opened it and took out the oblong card which it contained. This certified that Miss Ollie Wright, age 36, by profession a school teacher, of a small town near Fort Worth, was authorized to visit Mexico as a tourist for the period of six months. Rennert stared at the card thoughtfully for several minutes before replacing it in the envelope. He returned the contents to the bag, snapped it shut and laid it upon the table.

  He cast a glance at the books. They were copies of recent fiction and popular biographies and looked as if they had never been opened. Beneath them was a slim leather volume. He pulled this out and opened it. It was a diary and upon the flyleaf was written in ink the name of Coralie Van Syle. The name had been copied, with flourishes, over the entire page. Rennert turned the pages of the book, read a line here and there. As he read, the lines of his lips grew a bit grim and there was an odd far-away look in his eyes as he closed the book. He held it in his hands for a moment, undecided. Then he slipped it into the pocket of his coat. (The next day, very deliberately, he burned it.)

  He inspected next the two traveling bags, both of which were stamped with the initials C. V. S. The clothing in them was also new and expensive and had been carefully arranged so as to conserve as much space as possible. No evidence here of hurried, last-minute packing.

  He rang the bell for the porter and stood staring down at the body before the door. The jade cigarette holder lay beside it, empty. He felt a faint twinge of self-reproach at having let the woman lie there while he conducted his search of her belongings, but he thought: She is fortunate that Mexico has taught me as much as it has of that calm acceptance of death which passes at first for callousness and which is far, far kinder to the dead than the futile squirmings nourished in my race by fear of oblivion.

  His hand rested upon Coralie Van Syle’s diary and his eyes upon the withered yellow flowers as the porter knocked at the door.

  Rennert opened the door with his handkerchief. (It would be upon the inside, not the outside handle that any traces of the murderer’s fingerprints would remain, since his own grasp had doubtless destroyed those upon the latter.) He motioned the Mexican inside.

  The little man’s eyes riveted themselves immediately upon the body and remained fixed there as Rennert spoke to him. This time, however, there was a slow downward sagging of the muscles in his face and his brown fingers moved slowly back and forth like the legs of a spider. He kept his eyes averted from Rennert’s face as he backed out of the door.

  He returned in a few moments with the conductor and one of the soldiers.

  They stood, a silent trio, as Rennert told them of his discovery of the body. A bulging seemed to be going on inside the head of the conductor; his eyes protruded behind the lenses of his glasses, his tongue looked as if it were about to force itself from his mouth and perspiration stood out upon his face. The soldier, who must have been a pureblooded Indian, stood motionless as his eyes rested without expression upon first one and then another of the little group.

  When they had placed the body upon the berth, Rennert stooped and picked from the floor the jade cigarette holder.

  “When was the last time you saw this woman?” he asked the conductor when the latter stood before him again.

  The man swallowed and began to rub the palms of his hands upon the sides of his trousers. “In the diner, señor, after the train had stopped.”

  “How soon after?”

  “But a minute. I passed through on my way to the steps and she was there.”

  “Were there others in the d
iner at the time?”

  “I think—” the conductor stood in thought for a moment, “yes, there were four men in the diner. One at the table with her, two across the aisle and the other, I think, at a table by himself. All of them were passengers from the Pullman.”

  “And did you go back through the diner when you left me at the steps?”

  “Yes, señor, but there was no one there then.”

  Rennert consulted his watch. The train must have stopped, he estimated, at six fifty-five or thereabouts. He had left Miss Talcott in the Pullman, descended the steps and stood for several minutes upon the ground alone, before engaging the porter in conversation. The conductor must have preceded him out of the car, walked forward to the engine and returned to meet him at the steps. After a few words the conductor had returned to the train. Rennert had talked then to King, had gone to the door of Miss Van Syle’s compartment, to the Pullman and to the diner before opening her door. Twenty minutes in all had probably been consumed. It was now seven thirty-five.

  He looked at the porter. “Where were you when the train stopped?”

  “On the observation platform, sir,” was the ready response. “You saw me there.”

  Rennert studied his face, remembering the whistle which had fallen from his hand. “Why had you gone there?”

  The sagging of the facial muscles had stopped now and his whole countenance seemed to have settled, as plaster settles in ever hardening forms.

  “I was watching, señor.”

  “Watching what?”

  The man’s shoulders rose in a slight shrug. “The country on each side of the track. I do not like the desert.”

  “How long did you stay there after I talked to you?”

  “But a moment. I went then through the Pullman and the diner to the kitchen.”

  “Who was in the diner then?”

  “Two gentlemen—one at a table by the door, the other in the center.”