Lazarus Key

by Gilbert M. Stack

  “You’re from Chicago,” Kit protested. “How are you going to recognize him?”

  “I’ve been around,” Charlie insisted, “and I’ve been to Cuba once or twice, and I’m telling you that is Miguel Sanchez.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He killed a few men when I was over there last.” Charlie wet his lips. “Chopped them up with a machete. Even killed a woman and her little baby. That man is pure crazy.”

  “Really?” Kit was not certain he wanted to credit Charlie Diamond. “Why isn’t he in prison?”

  “Disappeared,” Charlie explained. “No one knows where he is.”

  “Well I do,” Kit stated as he put down his drink.

  Charlie grabbed hold of Kit’s arm. “What are you going to do?”

  Kit pulled free of the fat man. “Take care of this!”

  He strode across the room to Miguel. “Are you Miguel Sanchez?”

  The Hispanic remained silent.

  “Did you kill those men in Cuba?”

  “What’s going on?” Lorali asked.

  “Just a moment,” Kit said. “Are you—”

  “Yes, he is, Mr. Moran.” Derek Sinclair slowly wheeled himself back into the drawing room. “Yes, he is and yes, he did.”

  “What’s going on?” Lorali asked again.

  “It would appear, my dear,” Derek told her, “that Mr. Moran or Mr. Diamond has recognized Miguel. He was involved in some trouble in Havana. There were some deaths—nothing you needed to be concerned with.”

  “They weren’t just deaths.” Charlie rediscovered something of the brash investigator who had tried to keep Mitch and Kit off the Lucky Lady. “He butchered those men.”

  “That was all a misunderstanding,” Derek insisted, “a matter of self-defense. And in any event, it is all well behind him. Now Miguel works for me and he avoids spontaneous fighting.”

  “That’s a rather unusual background for a servant,” Mitch commented.

  “Not so unusual in these parts,” Derek corrected him. “Miguel is very useful to me, especially since my mobility is restricted.” He motioned toward his legs beneath their blanket. “He and Joseph are all the help we have these days.

  “Now if this has been resolved I—”

  “No,” Kit insisted. “It has not been resolved.”

  He poked his finger into Miguel’s chest. “If anyone here shows up missing, even for a little while… If anyone is suddenly missing a finger, a foot, or a hand… If anything bad happens at all, I’ll come looking for you. You better make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  Miguel’s eyes tightened on Kit’s.

  Derek ordered him to leave. “Miguel, you’re clearly making my guests uneasy. Why don’t you retire for the evening?”

  Miguel continued to stare hard at Kit.

  “Miguel!” Derek commanded.

  With a sharp glance at his employer, the Cuban turned and stalked away.

  “And now, if I may?” Derek asked Kit with exaggerated politeness. “Good.” He turned to Charlie Diamond. “It occurs to me, Mr. Diamond, that you never explained why you were on the boat with my other guests.”

  Charlie retained his restored confidence, emboldened by the departure of Miguel. “I’m looking into the disappearance of Eddie Mason,” Charlie told him, looking carefully for a reaction from either Sinclair.

  Derek gave him one—a long glance in the direction of Mitch and Lorali. “Oh, yes, Eddie Mason. He was the last pretty face to turn my sister’s head. Mr. Pembroke, here, will be pleased to know that he’s already lasted a few weeks longer than him.

  “As I told Mr. Mason in my letter, I’ve never seen his son. He never arrived at Lazarus Key. And I’ve nothing further to say on the matter.”

  “That’s not what Captain Jack says,” Charlie noted. “He says he dropped Eddie off on the shore near where we came in.”

  “Does he?” Derek might have been surprised, or he simply might not have cared. “That old trespassing fool might know something. He might even have brought him here, but that doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t see him.”

  “I wonder if Miguel did,” Mitch mused, a little too loudly.

  Lorali’s eyes widened with disbelief, then she whirled away from Mitch and hurried out of the room.

  Derek’s laughter followed Mitch as he hastened after her.

  ****

  “Lorali, wait!”

  Mitch caught up with the woman he loved at the door to her bedroom. “Wait, please, I’m sorry for what I said.”

  She pulled free of his hand and flung herself into the room. Mitch prevented the door from slamming in his face.

  “Go away!”

  “I love you.”

  “You think I helped to kill Eddie.”

  “No! I don’t think you had anything to do with it,” Mitch assured her, crossing to sit next to where she had sprawled face down on the bed. “But I do think Eddie died,” he admitted.

  “You’ve got to get out of here,” Lorali told him.

  “Why, Lorali? I love you!”

  “Derek,” she whispered in the darkness, “is jealous of you.”

  “Jealous?” Mitch hesitantly tried the word, afraid of what it might mean.

  “You’re handsome and strong, able to get about in the world,” her words were reassuring for what they didn’t say. “You have to leave here. When the storm breaks, get back in your boat and go to Florida. If you stay, I’m afraid of what he might do.”

  “Come with me, Lorali.”

  “Mitch…don’t—”

  “Come with me,” he asked again.

  “It’s not going to work between us,” Lorali told him. “Your family is never going to accept me.”

  “Yes, they will,” Mitch insisted. That was probably a lie, but it didn’t have to be. Lorali was very charming and his father had always appreciated a beautiful woman. “They’ll come to love you like I do.”

  Lorali didn’t give in. “Derek needs me.”

  “You’re his sister, not his slave, and you certainly shouldn’t be anything else.” He shuddered at the thought he didn’t like thinking. “Let me take you away from here. It’s the only way I’ll leave.”

  “Mitch…”

  “You love me,” Mitch coaxed her, placing his hand on the small of her back.

  Lorali looked back at him over her shoulder as she lay on the bed. “I know.”

  Mitch lifted his hand from her back to caress her cheek. “Let me take you away from this. We can make a new home together.”

  Her bright golden eyes nearly gleamed in the darkness. “I . . . I’ll . . . I’ll think . . . I’ll consider . . . I’ll give you my answer before you sail tomorrow.”

  Try as he might, Mitch couldn’t get her to agree to more.

  ****

  “Nice set of pictures,” Kit observed.

  Reluctant to go to bed with Mitch in another wing of the house, he waited for his friend to return from Lorali’s room, wondering if it would be the sort of night when Mitch wouldn’t return to his own chamber. So Kit stood in a room across the hall and looked at Sinclair family portraits.

  “So that’s what old Robert looked like,” Kit observed. “Got to admit he was a handsome fellow. Whose this woman next to him?”

  “That’s his wife, Mr. Moran,” the one-handed servant answered—Joseph, by name, if Kit remembered correctly.

  Kit let loose a low whistle. “Attractive woman. I guess this is where Miss Sinclair gets her looks.”

  “If you say so, Mr. Moran,” Joseph agreed.

  “And who is next,” Kit asked. “The portrait is missing.”

  “Those missing pictures are being cleaned,” Joseph informed him.

  “You can’t clean them all at once? They’re all pretty dirty,” Kit noted.

  “Cleaning a painting is expensive,” Joseph told him. “Mr. Sinclair felt it was best to send out just a few at a time.”

  “Well, I’m sure Mr. Sinclair knows what he’s doing.
”

  “He certainly does,” Joseph agreed.

  “So, did Miguel cut that hand off, Joseph?”

  Surprised by the question, Joseph glanced down at the stub of his left forearm. The muscles in his wrist contracted as if he was trying to flex the non-existent fingers. He looked back at Kit as if the ex-boxer had just asked him to betray the Sinclairs. Without answering, he turned and left the room.

  ****

  Mitch woke in darkness, uncertain what had disturbed him.

  He took a moment to recover his surroundings—the strange sheets scratching his chest, the musty smell of creeping age, the painful settling of an old and failing home. His surroundings returned to him in a rush. The storm had broken and he was in his own room in Lorali’s home on Lazarus Key.

  Mitch relaxed and sank back into the mattress, dangling memories of his lover across his mind. The fragrance of lilies kissing the nape of her neck… The long ebony tresses spilling out across her shoulders… The light, almost olive tan, which warmed her skin… The golden eyes above her perfect smile . . . Could anyone be more precious?

  “Mommy?”

  Mitch stopped fantasizing and concentrated on the room around him. He could have sworn that he heard a voice in the darkness—a wail, a child crying out in the night. Crying to…

  The sheet fell to the side as Mitch sat up and swung his legs out of bed. Feeling about in the dark, he found his trousers and pulled them on. His feet were naked against the floor, describing every break and irregularity in the aging wood. He stood, paused to consider, then fumbled about on the nightstand until his hands found his derringer. Stealthy as any hunter, he padded across the room and opened the bedroom door.

  The hallway was cloaked in inky blackness, even darker than Mitch’s room, for there were no shutters to emit the silver moonlight through the cracks. Mitch took a deep breath, holding the air ballooned within his chest.

  He heard the sound again—a high-pitched mewling carrying faintly from the depths of the house. It was precisely the sort of sound made by a kitten or a cat.

  Abruptly, the absurdity of Mitch’s position struck him. He was standing half-dressed in the dark with a gun in his hand. He was prowling about Lorali’s house with a gun, and why? Because a cat was crying and his imagination had twisted the sound into human speech. And what was it he thought he had heard? A child? There was only one woman in the house. Whose child did he think it could be?

  “Mommy?”

  Mitch stopped arguing with himself. He knew what he had heard. And he knew whose child he didn’t want the voice to belong to.

  But he had to see.

  Trailing the fingers of his left hand along the wall, Mitch ventured into the darkness. The floor was cold and smooth beneath his feet, the wall slightly moist and clammy beneath his fingertips. His breath seemed to rasp past his lips and his heart thudded audibly within his chest. The only other sound was the creak of the floorboards beneath him.

  And the voice of a child crying somewhere in the darkness.

  After eight or ten steps, Mitch crouched down and felt the floor in front of him. Somewhere ahead—it was impossible to gauge the distance precisely—the floor would give way to a stairwell and a banister. Somewhere ahead, where Mitch couldn’t see…

  His eyes strained against the blackness, although closing them would not have hurt his progress for all the good that they were doing. He shuffled forward, feeling the floor before him with his fingertips.

  The floor ended at a sharp downward angle. Mitch slid his hand horizontally to the wall, then lifted it until he discovered the banister. He stood slowly, careful not to overbalance himself, then cautiously began to descend the stairs.

  The tired boards groaned beneath him.

  The landing presented a problem. He could go right toward the drawing room and the dining room where Lorali had entertained them this evening. Or he could go left toward Lorali and Derek’s rooms. The child hushed unhelpfully.

  He was about to explore the hallway to the left when the noise greeted him again—a gentle sigh or plaintive plea. He considered for a moment and decided that the noise rose behind him, where he didn’t remember seeing a door this evening.

  With nothing but his ears and the tips of his fingers to guide him, Mitch explored the wall directly to the left of the stairwell. His fingers sketched the outline of a narrow closet, and he flattened his palm against its length until he encountered the heavy latch. At first he thought the door was locked, but when he continued to squeeze mightily, the trigger-like mechanism conceded with a click. The sound echoed in the darkness as the door swung out to meet him.

  The acrid taste of rotten eggs brushed Mitch’s senses. A lightly creeping odor tinged with sulfur breathed through the open doorway and enveloped him. Mitch’s eyes began to sting and small tears welled and leaked down his cheeks. He stepped back, listening, but the child gasped again, convincing him he had found the right direction.

  Anchoring himself on the doorframe with his left hand, Mitch probed with his foot through the open space. There was no floor to greet him, but the sound of the child continued to reach out to him. Swinging his bare foot lower, he found the first step of a stairs and lowered himself onto it.

  Cold and clammy, the steps were chiseled from stone. He couldn’t say why this surprised him, but he hadn’t expected to find cellars here in the middle of nowhere, where half of the island was a swamp.

  Mitch edged deeper beneath the house. The child’s voice was clearer now, crying meekly in the darkness ahead. Crying somewhere in a cellar that smelled like swamp gas instead of flowers, as a nursery should.

  Perhaps foolishly, Mitch ceased to torment himself with practical dangers and worried over what could force a child to be raised down here in the dark. He remembered words like jealousy and wondered if he was about to discover the reason Lorali was convinced she could not leave Lazarus Key.

  Mitch turned a corner, guiding himself with his fingers and nearly collided with a set of golden-eyes.

  They were not Lorali’s.

  Cold and yet burning, the eyes grew narrower even as Mitch stared at them. A low growl issued from beneath the orbs and a lumbering mass—blacker upon black—edged forward.

  Mitch took a quick step backward, retreating around the corner. His breath caught in his throat. His eyes began to burn more fiercely. The fetid taste of rotten-eggs washed over him anew as the golden-eyes reappeared.

  Lifting the derringer, Mitch emptied his lungs, took a half-breath and held it. He’d been hunting with his grandfather since he was eight years old. He’d shot moose and elk in Canada, hunted lions in Africa and stalked game on four continents. If golden-eyes stepped closer he would plant his single bullet in its left eye, then turn and run like hell.

  The child wailed again in the darkness. Golden-eyes glanced away and growled back at it.

  Suddenly, insanely, Mitch believed he understood. He slowly retreated another step. “I promise you,” his voice calm and reassuring, “I’m not going to hurt the child.”

  Even more insanely, Mitch was certain that golden-eyes understood.

  ****

  Kit snapped awake in the darkness at the first tap upon his door. He rolled smoothly out of the bed and in three strides had crossed the room.

  “Come on, Kit.” The tapping continued.

  Yanking open the door, Kit was startled to make out a shape whirling to bring a gun to bear on him. Mitch checked his movement just before Kit’s own reflexes would have caused him to deck his friend.

  “It’s about time,” Mitch told him, pushing past Kit to get into the room. “Shut the door! We’re getting out of here.”

  Kit closed the door. Thought a moment, and blocked it with a chair to be sure. Since first meeting Mitch in the No Man’s Land between the trenches in the Great War, he had seen him in many states of mind, but this was the first time he’d seen him on the edge of panic. Yet Kit knew he couldn’t help Mitch if he didn’t know what was wrong. He tried
to sound confident and reassuring. “Tell me what happened.”

  Mitch made an obvious effort to pull himself together. It had been easier to keep a grip on himself when he was face-to-face with golden-eyes than it had been after he lost sight of it. He couldn’t get the smell of rotten eggs out of his nostrils.

  “In the morning,” he told Kit, “we are going down to the beach and doing whatever it takes to fix the Lucky Lady. We are not going to spend another night in this place.”

  That was good news, Kit believed, but he didn’t like the way he was learning it. When they arrived, all Mitch could think about was Lorali. Now all he wanted was to leave? “What about Miss Sinclair?”

  Mitch wasn’t sure he wanted to think about her. Tomorrow in the daylight would be time enough for that. The golden-eyes…so different and yet so like hers. “She comes with us if I can convince her,” he decided. “But one way or the other, tomorrow we leave.”

  “What happened?” Kit asked again.

  “I think…I think I just saw an a-cha-te.”

  ****

  There were crosses as far as the eye could see.

  Starting less than twenty feet from the house, they spread out in broken lines extending in all directions. To the east the crosses dotted the one open hillside on the key, falling down the slope until they dropped into the sea. To the north in the direction of the lagoon, grave markers lined both sides of the twisting path, stretching back in unending rows until they were lost from sight in the tangled undergrowth. Only in the south and the southwest did their numbers appear to dwindle. In the southwest the swamp swallowed the land, and the crosses, if they were there, drowned with the decaying earth.

  Most of the crosses were barren, devoid of any marking that might remind the world of the identity of the one who slumbered beneath it. A few rotted remains attested to more care, bearing fragmentary memories of a name or a date. A very few indeed were made of stone as sturdy as the day they were erected. Yet even these concealed their secrets with the growth of moss and weeds. As though even this was not enough to maintain the aura of mystery surrounding the dead, the ground itself had opened up and tumbled many of the markers into its depths.

  Lazarus Key was not a testament to new life and resurrection, but to the power of age and decay.