by Todd Downing
Spahr moved his head up and down: “Yes,” he murmured through set teeth.
“Very well. Did the repetition of your actions recall to your mind anything which happened during those three minutes or so while you were in the diner or in the passage between the diner and the smoker? Anything to fix the time?”
Spahr stared at him and shook his head.
“Any incident,” Rennert went on, “no, matter how insignificant it may have seemed at the time?”
“No,” Spahr moistened his lips, “the train had already stopped, of course.”
“And the lights?”
“The lights?” there was a blank expression on Spahr’s face. “Yes. That doesn’t recall anything to your mind?”
“No.”
Rennert regarded him thoughtfully. “Mr. Spahr,” he said, “there used to be a popular song whose title was something like ‘Where were you when the lights went out?’ My question cannot be better put than in the words of that song.”
Rennert sensed rather than saw a slow tautening of the compact muscular body beside him. Spahr turned his head and riveted his gaze on Rennert’s face.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said with forced lightness.
“You don’t remember the lights going out for a second or so?”
“No, I don’t.”
“It was a minute or so after you left Mr. Searcey at the door there,”
Spahr sat for a moment, motionless, then his eyes left Rennert’s face and sought the opposite wall. They widened into a fixed stare and he sank back against the leather of the seat. His jaw tightened. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I’d forgotten about the lights. It was while I was in the diner. I remember now.”
“I’m sorry, Spahr,” Rennert said quietly, “but I don’t think that you do.”
Spahr’s fingers tightened about the baggy knees of his trousers. “But it’s the truth!” he broke out. “I’ll swear to God it’s the truth!”
Rennert looked at him steadily. “Since your memory seems to be returning,” he said coldly, “perhaps you can tell me the subject of your conversation with Searcey as you were leaving the diner.”
Spahr closed and opened his eyes, as if the effort gave him pain, then stared straight in front of him again. “It wasn’t important,” he said in a strangled voice, “it didn’t amount to anything.”
“In that case, let’s have it.”
Rennert, watching closely, saw a subtle change come over Spahr’s bloodless face. His mouth became immobile; his eyes narrowed slightly and became wary and calculative. His voice when he spoke was low and broken.
“Searcey said something to me about how much wine I’d been drinking. ‘Feeling pretty good, aren’t you?’ I think he said. I said I felt fine.” He swallowed hard. “That’s all there was to it. We went out then.”
Rennert got to his feet abruptly. “That’s all we’ve got to say to each other, then, Spahr.”
Spahr looked at him. “You don’t believe that, do you?” he demanded.
“Unfortunately,” Rennert said, “I am in the unfortunate position of not being able to believe anyone. I sincerely hope that by tomorrow morning I can say that I do believe you. The consequences of a lie would be decidedly disagreeable to you, I’m afraid.”
“Tomorrow morning?” Spahr asked dully.
“Yes, when we arrive in Mexico City. And now, if you follow my advice, you will get some sleep as soon as possible. If, in the morning, you find that you have anything further to tell me I hope that you will do so.”
A slight tremor passed over Spahr’s shoulders. “Sleep?” he exclaimed. “After all this? While we’re in the middle of the desert with a murderer in the same car with us?”
Rennert said as he turned to the door: “I think, Spahr, that you can rest easily tonight. Unless I am mistaken, the murderer to whom you refer has lost his last weapon.”
“You never can tell,” Spahr’s hollow voice was in Rennert’s ears as he let the curtains fall to behind him.
17
The Albatross (9:47 P.M.)
The Pullman was silent. Three people sat in it without speaking. It was as if each were withdrawn into a special silence of his or her own, wrapped cocoon-like in strands of thoughts and reticences and private fears that sealed the individual from the prying eyes of others.
Paul Xavier Jeanes thought as he stared into the night beyond the window: The forces of Evil have always been present in this strange country of Mexico, watered though it has been by the blood of saints. More blood must be shed before the power of the Antichrist is overthrown. Cold determination steeled him (it had passed now, that moment of heart-stopping panic when he had thought of the consequences of what he was about to do) and he went over again his conversation with the brakeman, rehearsing mentally every movement that his hands would have to make when the moment arrived. At the anticipation his muscles seemed fused with superhuman strength.
He watched Rennert enter the Pullman and walk down the aisle.…
The silence was compounded, for William Searcey, of many incipient noises that died just before reaching his alert senses. He remembered a day in Brownsville, when word had been received that a tropical hurricane was sweeping in from the Gulf, and the tense unnatural stillness which had lain like a pall upon the town as they waited, windows and doors secured against the fury of the storm that delayed in coming. He felt something like that now-not fear but the alertness which comes from a prescience of approaching danger. For him this trip had been overshadowed from the beginning with disaster, ever since the impact of a trunk against the wall of an adjoining room in that San Antonio hotel had jarred his mirror from the wall as he was shaving. (He caressed them, a few of these superstitions, with a tenacity that became more pleasurable from being concealed.) That shattered mirror had omened all that had happened since on this trip. And now this unforeseen, inexplicable delay in the darkness, which was becoming worse than the previous blind plunging forward into hinted-at dangers. The strange message which that fellow Rennert had read aloud—it bothered him. He thought: It had a meaning for someone on this car. Something is going on that none of us suspect.
He wondered, as he watched Rennert coming down the aisle toward him, just how much knowledge he was concealing behind that mild face and pleasant smile.
“Howdy!” he said when Rennert paused. “Sit down.” He removed a foot from the chair opposite.
Rennert sat down and said: “I know how a school teacher feels now.”
“A school teacher?”
“Yes, with the pupils sitting in rows before him and watching as he comes down the aisle, each one afraid that he’s going to stop by his desk.”
That offhand manner of his doesn’t fool me, Searcey thought, he’s just as worried about the stopping of this train as I am. He said with a slight laugh: “And I’m the pupil who has been reading a dime novel behind his geography?”
“If so, I haven’t caught you at it yet.”
Searcey was aware that their eyes were holding each other’s steadily, as if each were unwilling to be the first to waver. “Still trying?” he asked.
Rennert smiled. “To tell the truth, I was occupied in wondering how soon this train would start and we could all go to bed. I’m tired.”
“Same here.” I wish he’d quit this sparring and say what he’s here for, Searcey thought. “No sight of the new engine yet?” he asked.
“No, it’s taking an unusually long time to make the trip between here and San Luis Potosí.”
“Just what I was thinking.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
“Spahr told me what you two talked about as he was leaving the diner,” Rennert spoke quietly.
Searcey knew that he kept any expression from his face. (He felt that the sunburn was somewhat of a help in this. It hurt so damnably when he moved a muscle of his face.) “He did?”
“Yes, I suppose his version was correct but I thought that I’d get you to confirm it.”
Searcey waited a moment, thinking. “This sounds like the old police trick we read about,” he smiled painfully. “I suppose you let him think that I had already told you.”
“No, he doubtless knew that I would question you in case he didn’t answer.”
“Well,” Searcey crossed his legs and relaxed a bit, “I probably wouldn’t have said anything if he had kept still. I saw that your question back in the diner scared him pretty bad. I wouldn’t like to get the young fellow in trouble and I’ll admit this makes things look bad for him, unless he can explain about that cigarette holder.”
Rennert’s face took on a careful lack of expression. “Go ahead,” he said quietly.
“Well,” Searcey chose his words with care, “he had that woman’s cigarette holder in his hand as he was going down the aisle. Must have picked it up from the table where she left it. I asked him if he was going in for fancy holders. He held it up in his hand—he was a little tight—and laughed and said something about not having a pansy in his lapel yet. We went on out then.” His eyes probed into Rennert’s. “Is that the same story he told you?”
“Not exactly.”
Searcey was immediately on his guard. “He didn’t tell you about the cigarette holder?” he frowned.
“No.”
“I’m sorry, then, that I had to be the one to tell you. He must have been afraid to, afraid that it would be circumstantial evidence against him.” He asked the question which he had been wanting to ask: “You don’t think he killed the woman, do you?”
Rennert sat for a moment, as if lost in thought. “I’ll be frank with you, Searcey. I don’t know whether I think he did or not. What would be your idea?”
“I don’t know,” Searcey said carefully. “Ordinarily, I don’t think Spahr would have nerve enough to kill anyone. He’s still rather wet behind the ears, I should say.”
“What do you mean by ordinarily?”
“When he wasn’t drinking.”
“He had been drinking considerably, hadn’t he?”
“Yes, though he held his liquor pretty well.”
“Did you notice how much he drank while he was in the diner?”
“No,” Searcey couldn’t tell whether the question was a random one or not, “I didn’t notice particularly. I remember that he got a bottle of wine while the woman was still with him.”
“Did she drink any of it?”
“A little, I think. At least enough to make her sick.”
“She was sick?”
“Sick or sleepy, I don’t know which. She put her head down on the table.”
“And Spahr finished the wine?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Was there an empty bottle on the table in front of him as well as this full one which he ordered?”
“I don’t know.”
“You couldn’t see his face or the table in front of him very plainly then?”
“No, but I can’t say that I paid any particular attention to him.”
“Thanks,” Rennert got to his feet, “that’s all I wanted to know.”
Searcey’s frown deepened. “I’m still like a schoolboy. What’s that bottle of wine got to do with this business?”
“It was merely a question,” Rennert said, “of how much wine you saw Spahr drink.”
Searcey’s eyes were riveted on the side of Rennert’s face. He was puzzled….
Trescinda Talcott had been dozing. It was a habit she had gotten into during the past few weeks, when real or feigned sleep had been the easiest way to cut unwelcome shackles and to drift into gentle unawareness of time’s passing. It had become like a drug to her and she had sought it so often, letting her visions recede further into a past which she had not shared, that she knew she had been thought, toward the last, old and queer. She didn’t care. There was a feeling of almost voluptuous warmth in her tired body now as she sat with half-closed eyes, releasing one by one, reluctantly, dreams of days which she had never lived. The dark brown curls that had rested, perhaps, as her head rested now, upon that pillow. The plump little fingers that had traced painstakingly the hieroglyphics upon the woodwork that still remained after all these years. The slow careful pencil marks that spelled out in the copy book the words: “The Lord is my shepherd.” That, of course, had come later, but she remembered how they had told her that he had never been able to pronounce the letter R. Just like a little Mexican or a Chinaman, he had always said: “shepheld.”
“Shepheld,” unconsciously her lips formed the word and she stared up uncomprehendingly at the realization that a man was standing beside her chair, looking down at her.
She sat upright and brushed a hand across her eyes. The memories fled, leaving her body an empty shell.
She said: “Good evening, Mr. Rennert. I’m afraid I dropped off to sleep.”
He smiled pleasantly and said as he sat on the seat opposite: “I suppose my welcome is not very hearty, then, since I disturbed you. I wouldn’t have stopped but I thought you were awake.” He paused and she thought that his voice sounded a bit queer. “I thought that your eyes were open.”
“They were, I suppose,” she relaxed against the back of the chair again, “I often sleep that way and,” she hesitated, “I suppose I talk in my sleep sometimes.”
“I believe you did say something.” (It was, she decided, nothing but a very careful precision in his speech.)
“I wanted to tell you,” he said, “that your paper-knife has been found.”
She noticed for the first time that he had very clear and penetrating brown eyes. The gray that flecked them added a charm, she thought, which they might otherwise have lacked.
He took from his pocket the knife, wrapped in a handkerchief, and held it upon the palm of his hand.
“That is, I took it for granted that this is your knife.”
She looked at it and said: “Yes, that’s it. I had given up hopes of finding it. Where was it?”
She had the feeling that this was exactly the question for which he had been waiting.
“It was found wedged in behind the seat in the ladies’ lounge,” he said.
“Oh,” she had to laugh, “of all the places! No wonder I couldn’t find it.” Very slowly she realized the implications of his words. “But I wonder how it got in there?” she met his eyes. “I’m sure I didn’t carry it in.”
“Are you positive, Miss Talcott?”
“Of course. I left it here upon this seat.”
“Then someone else must have carried it in there and hidden it,” he said quietly.
“Hidden it?” she had the curious feeling that she hadn’t awakened completely.
“Yes, isn’t that the only logical explanation?”
“I suppose so.” All of a sudden, it seemed, her senses began to clear. “The person who hid it must have expected to have some use for it, then?” Resolutely she thrust forward, at one with herself again: “In other words, the person who murdered those three people with a needle wanted to have another weapon handy. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes, Miss Talcott, that is exactly what I do mean.” He folded the handkerchief about the knife again. “Under the circumstances I think that you won’t object if I keep this for the present?”
“Of course not. You mean because of fingerprints on it?”
“Possibly, also to prevent its disappearing again during the night.”
“I see,” she said calmly and asked: “Are you any further along with your investigation?”
“Yes, Miss Talcott, I believe so.”
She laughed slightly. “I’m afraid I haven’t shown much interest but I didn’t know anything I could do to help.” With a forefinger she pressed down a pleat in one of the starched white cuffs. “I’ve been wanting to ask you about one thing ever since you spoke to us after you had discovered that girl’s body in her compartment. You said that her death and that of the Mexican this morning were connected with a kidnapping case. There’s no doubt about that, I suppose?”
<
br /> “No, there’s little if any doubt in my mind that the kidnapper of the Montes boy—or at least someone involved in the business—is on this train, that he is the murderer of Miss Van Syle and of Torner.”
“Montes?” she frowned slightly. “I don’t believe that I recall that case. I so seldom read the newspapers.”
Rennert glanced at her with some surprise, telling himself that she must indeed have been isolated from the world. He told her of the case briefly.
Her eyes did not leave his face. They brightened and then narrowed slightly. When he had concluded she sat for a time without speaking.
Her voice, when it came, had in it an unaccustomed note of harshness. “Kidnapping is a crime more unpardonable than murder, I’ve always thought. I believe that I could myself lower a person guilty of it inch by inch into boiling oil.” She pressed her lips firmly together to check an incipient trembling. (It had been a mention of brown curls that had almost made her lose control of herself.) She said: “My attitude toward this business is not so indifferent now, Mr. Rennert, since you told me that. If there’s anything I can do to help you I hope you’ll let me know.”
“You have been of some help, however.”
“How is that?”
“About the hatbox.”
“Oh, yes. I was curious about that. It belonged to the girl back in the compartment?”
“Yes, it had been put into the Pullman by mistake. The person who murdered Torner in the tunnel this morning slipped the needle into it while the car was still in darkness. It was unlocked and bulging open, you remember. The idea probably was to recover it later, when there was no danger of a personal search. In the meantime Miss Van Syle had the porter carry it into her compartment. She probably found the needle, I’m not sure. At any rate the murderer went to her compartment to recover it. It constituted, you see, the only proof we have that the man did not die a natural death.”
“But why did he murder her?”
“Doubtless because she returned unexpectedly to the compartment and discovered her visitor.”
“I had supposed the hatbox was hers, since she was the only other woman on the car. She probably borrowed it from someone. That would explain the difference in the initials.”
