Thumbing quickly through the first, flimsy book which had been issued by a local bank he saw that most of the checks had been drawn to cash, with now and then a voucher made out to local merchants. The second was a product of a New York bank and he just started to examine its vouchers when, unaccountably, he stopped, head up and breath suddenly held.
Why?
This is what he asked himself and there was no answer beyond the feeling that somehow something had changed. He had not been aware of any such change but the feeling remained that it had happened.
He stood stock still, head cocked as he listened to the crunch and slap and swish of the breakers outside. There was no other sound, yet some intuitive strain was pulling at his nerve-ends as though to warn him something was wrong. When that intuitive pressure continued he closed the drawer and stepped back. It was then that he noticed a draft in the room where none had been before, a swirling of cool air that touched his ankles and spiraled up his calves.
Turning then, he faced the hall door. On tiptoe he moved silently towards it, breath still held. He stepped across the threshold, turned right, then stopped, every muscle tense.
Waldron stood waiting just inside the living room, his tanned face tight and one shoulder lowered slightly. His left hand was in his jacket pocket, the thumb showing. His right held a small automatic that was pointed right at Scott’s belt line.
For two long seconds they stood that way, silent, rigid, staring; then Waldron’s shoulder moved and he stepped back into the light of the living room.
“Well, what do you know,” he said. “Come in, pal. Come in.”
Scott let his breath out and felt his muscles go loose. He could almost feel his body sag as he walked slowly forward. Waldron backed to the desk and slid a thigh across one corner, the gun still in his hand.
“I figure I’m going to grab me a native thief,” he said, “and it turns out to be you.”
“So?”
“So they put people in jail for stunts like this, even guys like you.”
“On what grounds?”
“Breaking and entering.”
“The door was unlocked. I was looking for you. I walked in.”
“That’s right, it was. The door I mean. Now tell me the lights were on when you came.” “They were,” lied Scott.
The reply made Waldron think. His deep-set eyes narrowed behind the dark-rimmed glasses as he considered the possibility that someone might have been here before Scott. For another second he hesitated, gaze bright and steady, his mustache stiff-looking on his upper lip. Abruptly he slid off the desk.
“Wait here!” he said.
He walked past Scott, the automatic swinging down. He went into the bedroom and for a moment or two there was the sound of drawers opening and closing. When he came back he resumed his perch on the desk and this time when he spoke his city-bred voice was harsh and demanding.
“What the hell do you want?”
“I’ve been wondering why Julia was in such a hurry to get in touch with you last night.”
“Maybe she liked me. Let’s say she wanted a date.”
“Not last night. She had a date. Crane.”
“You think I killed her?”
“Just wondering.”
Scott sat down and pulled out a cigarette. While he lit it he studied Waldron. Someone had said he was shrewd, was no fool, and Scott found himself agreeing. He also sensed that this was a different Waldron from the one he had talked with before. Here, under some pressure and with no need to make an impression, he reminded Scott of men he had seen hanging around corners on Broadway or Seventh Avenue; the gamblers, the sharpshooters, the idlers with no visible means of support.
Waldron had picked up some polish since he had been away but underneath he was the same person. Scott also felt that deep down there was something hard and com-passionless in the fundamental character of the man, that he would do what he had to do to protect himself and his interests regardless of the consequences. For all of this, Waldron no longer worried him.
“Why do you think she came here?” he asked.
“To put the bite on young Lambert for as much as she thought she could get in a hurry. Why else?”
“That’s what I’ve been wondering about. I’ve got a theory.” Scott paused, grinned crookedly and made up the theory as he went along. “Julia divorced Lambert too soon. She cut herself off from a lot of money, and it was her own fault. I think the more she thought of it the more bitter and frustrated she became. I agree that she came down here to throw a bluff and try to collect but I’m wondering if there wasn’t more than one string to her bow. Considering her frame of mind, if there was anyone else she could collect from or blackmail, I think she’d take a crack at it.”
“Me for instance?”
“Possibly. You or Crane or Gardner; maybe Farrow for all I know. After all, who knows anything about you except what little you’ve told. Maybe Julia knew a little more.”
“Okay.”
Waldron nodded and his lips thinned out. Heretofore he’d had himself in hand. Scott did not know whether the change came because there was some truth in what had been said, or whether it was a simple resentment that anyone might feel when someone pried into his personal affairs. Whatever the reason, anger began to show through, in the voice which until now had been flat and untroubled, in the glint of his eyes.
“You’re looking for trouble, hunh?” he said. “Okay, I’ll give you some. You’re pretty nosey, Scott. I don’t like nosey guys. Let’s get the cops up here and you can tell them your story. Then I’ll tell ’em mine.”
He glanced at the telephone and Scott waited, saying nothing, hoping he seemed unimpressed as Waldron continued.
“Maybe I can’t make a breaking and entering complaint stick but they have other laws in this place. I read the paper and I know they got a thing like unlawful presence on private property. Keeps the native prowlers in line. You could be tapped for that. You don’t have to break and enter, just being on someone else’s property is enough. You go before the magistrate and he fines you and if you don’t like it you can wait for a higher court.”
“All right.” Scott ground out his cigarette. “When the police come you can tell them about that automatic.”
Waldron glanced down at it as though he had forgotten he still held it.
“According to customs it’s illegal to bring a gun in. That looks like an American gun to me. Let’s both go before the magistrate, hunh?”
It was a good bluff. He made it sound convincing and he could almost see Waldron’s mind grappling with the challenge. When nothing was said he stood up, straightened his jacket. Still bluffing he walked to the door, opened it, and stepped onto the porch without a backward glance. As he went down the steps he heard the telephone ring.
Scott sat in his car for a few seconds after he had started the motor. Now that he was alone he felt weary and discouraged and a little annoyed with himself because he had been trapped like a common thief. He had accomplished nothing and knew very little more about Waldron than he had in the beginning. A hunch had brought him here and the only encouraging aspect of the incident was that somehow that hunch remained; if anything Waldron’s manner and reaction had served to strengthen it.
He was in no hurry as he backed round and turned into the hard-topped road. He took it easy all the way to Highway 7, braked for the stop sign, swung left. What he did not know was that, halfway to town, a car came up behind him, dropped slowly back and then proceeded to follow at a safe distance through the almost deserted downtown section and out along the road to Esther Kane’s dance.
CHAPTER 14
HAD IT not been for the music which rocked the lodge hall where Esther Kane was holding her dance, Scott might not have found it. The directions Abe had given him were sufficient to put him in the right neighborhood, but it was only when he stopped at an intersection to put his head out the window and read a road sign that he heard the orchestra and was reassured.
This part of Bridgetown was unfamiliar to him even in daylight. Now it was as though the character of the city had changed with the coming of night. Landmarks were obliterated. The neighborhood stores were shuttered and dark and the overhead lights on an occasional corner served only to make the unlit places more confusing and obscure. He had turned right off Roebuck and climbed a winding hill, wheeling right near the top to come to this section of small, squarish shacks that stood in tightly packed and darkened rows. Now, guided by the music, he saw the lighted porch ahead and pulled to the side of the road to park the little sedan.
The music came to him clearly when he cut the motor and he stood beside the car a moment, listening to the solid calypso beat and, for some reason he could not explain, having no enthusiasm for the assignment he was about to undertake. This was not the white man’s part of town and this was not a white man’s dance. Even though there was no color line on the island he understood that his presence would probably be resented and it was only the thought of Luther that made him go. Somehow it seemed important that he talk to Luther this very night and the only way to do this was to go where Luther was.
The sight of the two constables standing together under the corner arc-light beyond the hall was reassuring and he wondered again about the uniform they wore at night. In daylight, when anyone could see, they wore spic-and-span white jackets and white pith helmets; at night with visibility obscured, especially when one drove a car, they wore their blue-black trousers, thick and wooly-looking, with hip-length capes of the same material, and garrison-type caps, also blue. This dark monochrome of clothing together with their dark faces made them almost impossible to see until one was nearly upon them and it always surprised him that the authorities did not recognize the danger when these foot constables patrolled the roads.
This time one of the two had a bicycle and as they separated he rode off to the right while his colleague started down the highway towards Scott but on the other side of the street. Then Scott was in front of the one-story, white-painted building, starting up the steps to the porch and the open double-doors beyond.
The porch was moderately crowded. Men sat on the railing or leaned against it while other men and women stood about in small groups, their talk and laughter battling the orchestra on even terms until they noticed him. Then, one by one, the groups grew quiet. Scott could feel their stares as he stopped in front of this woman who sat behind a table placed by the doors, a plump woman in a candy-striped dress who watched over a box of tickets on one side, a box of money on the other. The mouth which had been twisted in laughter a second or two before turned sullen as Scott put his dollar down in front of her and her dark gaze was suspicious.
“They’s nothin here for you, man,” she said, giving the word man its characteristic broad accent.
“I don’t expect to dance,” Scott said. “I’m looking for a friend.”
She considered the statement a moment, one eye on the bill. Finally she swept it into the box and tossed a yellow ticket on the table. A tall Negro standing just inside the doorway took it away from him, tore it in two, returned half; then Scott was inside, looking bewil-deredly about this long low room that was hot with the smells of rum and fried food and cheap perfume and perspiration.
On his left stood the two bars, as advertised. Made from planks stretched across saw horses, which in turn stood on boxes to give them height, the food bar came first, and as Abe had said, he could see the platter of pork chops, no longer full, the slabs of bread, the ribs, the mound of breaded pieces of meat or fish which he could not identify. It was slow going to avoid the dancers and pick a careful path through or around the bystanders, but he came finally to the liquor bar with its cases of soft drinks stacked behind it and the dark bottles of rum on the table which served as a back bar.
Two bartenders worked here, laughing and talking to their customers until they noticed Scott. His presence quieted them and he could almost hear the word being passed from drinker to drinker as they turned to look over their shoulders at him, not insolently but with studied care. The bartenders did not look at him directly after that, but from the corners of their eyes, and he kept his place until finally one of them stepped up and asked if he wanted something.
“Rum and water.”
The man served him with dispatch: a paper cup-surprisingly enough—the rum, the water.
“A shillin for the rum,” he said when Scott asked. “Thruppence for the cup.”
The money in hand, he ignored Scott. His grin came back as he turned to his regular clientele and presently all the talk and laughter came back, as though, for all they were concerned, Scott did not exist.
With his back to the wall near an open window, he sipped his rum and looked for Luther. This proved to be a difficult task because the hall was crowded with dancers and there was so much to hold his attention. The orchestra was a six-piece outfit and made up in volume what it lacked in finesse. The cornet was shrill and brassy, the clarinet stuck mostly to the high register. These two carried the ball against a background of piano, guitar, bass and drums, the dancers loving every note of it.
There was no accepted pattern to the gyrations of the couples on the floor. A few danced as one might do at home to a fox trot, others were locked in tight embrace, some weaving and bobbing, some shuffling steadily with a minimum of movement. By far the greatest number, at least on this particular piece, jumped about with joyous abandon in what to Scott seemed like a combination of the jitterbug and polka that had the floor shaking.
And all the time the pattern of his search kept repeating itself. He would start to concentrate on finding Luther and then some particularly acrobatic display would catch his eye and he would watch. It amused him to be here but it was disconcerting too to find himself the object of an almost continuous scrutiny as more and more dancers became aware of his presence. He found himself constantly avoiding the fixed stares, of letting his glance rove, always conscious of the colorful dresses of the women which ran to striped and figured cottons with here and there a plain color, usually vivid. Many of the men wore hats, even when dancing, and it bothered him that he found the glistening faces so much alike.
When the dance ended he still had not seen Luther and he waited right where he was, sipping his drink, lighting a cigarette as others were doing, never staring at anyone if he could help it. The crowd grew around the bar. The floor never emptied but some went through a back door to some open space beyond.
Minutes passed and as his impatience grew he moved slowly around the perimeter of the room, scanning faces without appearing to. He glanced out back and saw the yard there and the trees and the fence which opened at one side on a narrow alley. He came back towards the bar and there in the front was Luther. He wore a tan drill suit and a necktie. He seemed to be weaving slightly on his feet and one arm was loosely draped about the waist of a slender, brown-skinned girl in a blue polka-dot dress.
By that time the customers were lined up three-deep so Scott stood off to one side and waited for his chance. He was still waiting when the band kicked off on a one step. He saw Luther and the girl push through the outer rim of drinkers and step onto the floor, and because he was afraid to elbow his way too forcibly through the press surrounding them he was unable to reach Luther in time.
But having located his man, he kept his eye on him. When the first piece was over and the crowd stood clapping, he reached Luther’s side and touched his arm.
“Luther,’ he said. “I’d like to see you a minute.”
Luther, it seemed, was quite drunk. He did not even glance round. “Don’t bother me, man,” he said. “I got some dancin to do.” And with that he whirled his girl away as the band opened up.
Had Luther been sober Scott might have held him there; had he been a white man he would have done the same thing. As it was, common sense told him to keep his patience and await another chance. It came a little later, between encores, when another man came along to claim Luther’s partner. By the time Lu
ther reached the bar, Scott was only a step behind. He moved in close and touched his mate’s shoulder.
“Luther!”
He watched the man’s head come round and saw the dull eyes try to focus. It was an effort but Luther made it.
“Mr, Scott,” he said, straightening his shoulders as best he could. He grinned loosely and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “What you doin’ here?”
“Looking for you,” Scott said. “I want to talk to you a minute.”
“Yes, sir. Soon’s I get my rum.”
He waited as his order was placed in front of him and brought out a handful of bills and silver from which he found the proper change.
“I stopped by your house but your wife didn’t know where you were so I tried a few bars,” Scott said. “They told me at the Palmetto you might be here.”
“That’s right.” Luther grinned. “Good place the Palmetto.”
“They said something about your going to B. G.”
“Might have said so.”
“You meant Trinidad, didn’t you?”
“B. G.”
Scott was standing fairly close to Luther and he was conscious of the jostling as others tried to pass behind him. Now a man moved in between him and Luther, shouldering in such a way that Scott had to brace himself or step aside. He glanced up irritably and what he saw was a big man in a double-breasted jacket that was too wide in the shoulders and three inches too long. Under the straw hat the heavy, coarse-featured face seemed muscular rather than fat and the man’s attention seemed centered on the bartender.
Scott felt himself forced aside by the weight of the other’s body, so he stepped round and edged in on the other side of Luther.
“What’s this about B. G?” he asked. “You mean British Guiana?”
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