The Essential Works of Norbert Davis

by Norbert Davis

  The dust was thinner, and Janet stared with burning eyes at the side wall. It was bulging inward slowly and awfully, as though a giant fist was pushing it from the outside. The big front door was closed now, and Captain Perona gripped the collarlike latch in both hands and heaved back.

  Janet wondered dully why he didn't just open the door and get them out of here. It was dangerous. The wall was behaving in a way no wall should or could. It was coming inexorably closer. And so were the other walls now.

  The cords stood out on the back of Captain Perona's neck, and the shoulder seam of his coat split suddenly. The door moved and threw him backward, and then he had Janet's arm again, and they were outside running down the steps that slid under them like an escalator.

  Janet looked back. The old church was wavering, crumbling, slumping slowly down. And then the earth gave one sharp final heave. The church groaned under that death blow, and then it fell majestically in on itself and was no longer a building but merely a heap of rubble with dust rising over it like a pall.

  As suddenly as the noise had come, it was gone. The silence was so intense it was a pressure against the eardrums. Sensation returned to Janet like a stinging slap in the face, and she was suddenly more frightened than she had ever been in her life.

  Captain Perona seized her by both shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled. His face was dust-smeared and pallid, staring tensely into hers.

  "Are you hurt?" he yelled. "Answer me? Are you hurt?"

  "N--no," Janet whimpered, and then she caught her breath and her self-possession and was instantly angry. "You stop that! Let go of me!"

  "Gracias a Dios!" said Captain Perona reverently. "I was afraid for you. You would not speak. You would only look without seeing anything."

  "Was that an earthquake?" Janet asked.

  Captain Perona stared at her out of bleary, reddened eyes. "Was that--was that..." He drew a deep breath. "Yes, senorita. That was an earthquake."

  "Well, don't be so superior! I've never been in one before!" Janet turned to look at the pile of rubble that had been the church, and then she was suddenly frightened all over again. "Oh! If we hadn't gotten out..." She remembered, then, and looked at the split shoulder-seam of Captain Perona's coat. "If you hadn't gotten us out... Your hand is hurt!"

  Captain Perona sucked ruefully at his torn fingers. "I pulled too hard at the door. It was stuck, and I was really in a great hurry."

  "You--you saved my life."

  "Yes," Captain Perona admitted. "I did. And you are a fool."

  "What?" Janet cried. "What?"

  "I said you were a fool. Why did you not inform me about the location of that cellar?"

  "How did I know you didn't know it was there? It was your ancestor who built the church!"

  "So it was," Captain Perona agreed. There was dust even on his eyelashes. "But you should have told me anyway. Then I would have caught that devil."

  "Oh," said Janet, remembering more. "That Tio--that Bautiste person! He had a gun!"

  "Yes," said Captain Perona. "When the floor moved it threw him off balance, and I hit him with my fist." He looked at the fist distastefully. "We Mexicans do not believe in brawling and mauling at people with our fists as you people do, but I did not have time to draw my gun and shoot him."

  "Somebody shot," Janet said.

  "Yes. He did. But the dust blinded him."

  Janet looked at the church. "Where .. ."

  "I hope he's under that," Captain Perona answered grimly. "But I am afraid he is not. He is too smart and too quick. He probably has a dozen secret exits. If we could get out, so could he. If you had only told me about that cellar .. .

  "Why did that give everything away?" Janet demanded.

  "We have spent a long time narrowing down possibilities. We suspected Bautiste Bonofile was hidden somewhere near here, and we knew that if he was, there was also a cache near here because he has been selling loot. Not rifles--but other things he had stolen and hidden long ago. When Garcia came here, we were sure we were right. As soon as you mentioned that cellar, I thought that must be the cache. I tried not to show it, but he knew. He had no intention of letting me get away after that."

  "But you'd have been missed at once."

  "Yes. You, also. But he would have had time to remove some of the most valuable loot and to disappear himself if he thought he would be suspected. I do not think he would have been. He has had his position as Tio Riquez for over ten years. He is a fixture in Los Altos."

  Faintly, all around them, like some weird off-scene chorus, cries and shouts began to rise. A woman wept in wailing shrieks. The dust clouds had heightened and thinned, and the sun showed ghastly yellow-red through it.

  Captain Perona straightened up. "I forget myself! I must go at once, senorita! There must be a guard put here by this building, and there will be injured people to care for and property to protect. I must find my men. Will you go to the main square and wait? You will be perfectly safe now, I think."

  "Yes." said Janet. "Go ahead. Hurry. I'll be all right."

  Captain Perona trotted up the steep street toward the marketplace. Janet watched him until he disappeared, and then turned to stare at her surroundings.

  She felt a sort of awed disbelief. There was no real change. The squat houses were still there, just as they had been before. There were fresh cracks in the walls, and roofs sagged, and tile lay broken in the street, but there was no vast waste of desolation such as she had expected.

  And the people were there, too. Scurrying in and out of their houses like ants on a griddle--afraid to stay where they were, and afraid to go anywhere else. Janet saw a woman in her black, rustling Sunday dress kneeling quite alone in the middle of the street, praying. A man came out of the house across the way carrying a wicker bird cage with a parakeet inside. He stopped and stared cautiously in all directions and then yelled crazily and pelted up the street with the bird cage flopping and the parakeet screeching.

  "Senorita! Senorita Americana!"

  Janet turned around. A ragged little girl with a smear of dirt around her mouth was staring up at her with eyes that were as bright and gleaming as black jewels. She wasn't scared. She was panting with delicious excitement.

  "Senorita, venga usted! La otra senorita--la turista rica! Venga!"

  She seized Janet's hand and pulled at her, and Janet followed. The little girl danced beside her, gesturing with impatience. She turned the first corner into a narrow lane.

  "Aqui! Mira!"

  There was a little group of people, both men and women, standing there in the lane, and they turned at the little girl's cry, separating.

  Janet saw the blond, loose swirl of hair first, like spun gold against the dust. Her breath caught in her throat, and she ran forward and stopped suddenly. Patricia Van Osdel was lying crumpled on her side. Her profile was white and austere and aristocratic. Her eyes were closed, and a trickle of blood made a bright, jagged streak across her cheek.

  A little man wearing a faded serape knelt beside her. He looked up at Janet with sad, regretful eyes.

  "She is--died," he said in careful English. He made a shy, quick gesture with his hands. "All died."

  Chapter 7

  DOAN CAME OUT ON THE AVENIDA REVOLUCION, and it seemed to him now that the street was appropriately named. It looked as though it had just gone through a revolution or one had gone through it. Broken tile lay in windrows, and a stovepipe, canted over a wall, leered like a warped cannon. A house across the way had lost its front wall, and its owners capered around inside like zany actors in a movie set. They were making enough noise for a massacre, but none of them seemed to be injured.

  Right in front of Doan a little boy sat in the center of the street with his eyes shut and his fists clenched and his mouth wide open. He was howling mightily, and no one paid him the slightest attention.

  Doan walked over to him. "Hey, shorty. Where are you hurt?"

  The little boy turned off his howl and opened his eyes c
autiously. He looked Doan over and then saw Carstairs. His mouth made a round O of admiration. He looked back at Doan and smiled winningly. He had three front teeth missing.

  "Gimme dime."

  Doan gave him a dime. The little boy tested it with a couple of his remaining teeth.

  "Denk goo," he said.

  He put the dime carefully in the pocket of his ragged shirt, shut his eyes and opened his mouth. He started to yell exactly where he had left off.

  Doan walked on down the street. The houses, and apparently their inmates, were mostly intact. Roofs sagged, and broken glass glittered dangerously, and open doors leaned like weary drunks. Women hopped and ran and screamed, and children squalled. Men worked feverishly carrying things out of their houses into the street and then back into their houses again.

  Doan went down the steep slope to the market square. There was more noise and even less sense here. The quake had jarred the display counters and rolled their goods out into the gutters in jumbled piles. Owners--and evidently some non-owners--fought and scrambled over the piles like carrion crows.

  Doan found Bartolome sitting on top of a ten-foot heap of debris. Bartolome was slumped forward, holding his head in his hands.

  "Are you hurt?" Doan asked.

  "I am dying," said Bartolome.

  "You don't look it," Doan told him. "Where'd you park the bus?"

  "Under," said Bartolome, pointing down.

  Doan stared at the heap of debris. "You mean the bus is underneath all that?"

  "Yes," said Bartolome, dignified in his grief. "It is catastrophe beyond reason."

  "Where are the passengers?"

  "I do not know," said Bartolome. "And I do not care. Of passengers there are a great number too many--of the bus only one too less. It is unendurable."

  A thin harassed young man in a smeared khaki uniform hurried across the plaza toward them. He said to Doan

  "Dispenseme, senor, pero donde esta--"

  "I can't speak Spanish," Doan interrupted.

  "English?" said the young man. "Good. I am Lieutenant Ortega, the medical officer in charge of this district. Did you come with the party in this bus?"

  "Yes," Doan answered. "Was there anyone in it when the quake dumped all this on top of it?"

  "No. I was just across the square. All the party had left the bus before that. Will you please find them if you can? Tell them to report here and they will be taken care of. If any are injured, bring them to that white building there, and I will attend them. If they cannot be moved, send for me. Will you do this at once?"

  "Sure," said Doan.

  "You will pardon me... There are injured..."

  He trotted back across the square, pausing to bark angry orders at a pair of soldiers who were standing and gaping around them with the casual air of sightseers at a fair. The soldiers jumped to attention and then followed him at a snappy run.

  "Which way did the others go?" Doan asked Bartolome.

  "I am in a state of nervous collapse," Bartolome informed him. "I have many things on my mind. The one with the loud mouth and the stupid wife and the hellish child went in that direction. The others I did not notice."

  Doan crossed the square, and Carstairs followed, picking his way distastefully through the debris and the yowling throng that was growing in numbers and volume every second. Doan took the first side street and found Mr. and Mrs. Henshaw in the middle of it fifty yards further along.

  Mrs. Henshaw was sitting down on the pavement with her peasant skirt draped in a swirl over her chubby legs. One of the lenses in her pince-nez had cracked, and she glared narrow-eyed through the whole one.

  "I can't get up," she informed Doan. "I'm paralyzed. Call an ambulance."

  "There ain't no ambulance," said Henshaw wearily. "And anyway you ain't paralyzed. You ran out of that store like a rabbit with its pants on fire."

  "It's shock," said Mrs. Henshaw. "My nerve centers are shattered. I can feel them."

  "Baloney," said Henshaw.

  "It's your fault," Mrs. Henshaw accused bitterly.

  "What?" Henshaw yelped. "My fault? Did I think up this earthquake?"

  "You brought me here."

  "Now damn it, I didn't. It was you that brought me. You're the one that heard about Mouser Puddledip at the Ladies' Aid and insisted on seeing this anthill because he once lived here and it was full of artistic history."

  "Monsieur," Mrs. Henshaw corrected. "Monsieur Predilip. This town and its beautiful primitive surroundings were his inspiration."

  "They're a pain in the neck to me. Did you feel that earthquake we had, Doan?"

  "Faintly," said Doan. "Where's Mortimer?"

  "Hi-yo, Silver!" Mortimer screeched. He came sailing across the street carrying a pair of silvered spurs in one fist and a sombrero so big he could have used it for a tent in the other. "Look, Pop! Look what I snitched! Here. Hold 'em while I go back for another load. Boy, I wish the gang was here!"

  Henshaw took the spurs and sombrero helplessly. "Now look, you little rat! These belong to somebody!"

  "Hi-yo, Silver!" Mortimer yelled. "A-waay!" He pelted back across the street and dived into the broken doorway of a store.

  Mrs. Henshaw got up instantly. "Mortimer! You come right out of there! Don't you touch anything! Don't you dare! Mortimer!"

  "The hell with it," said Henshaw wearily. "I think I'll get paralyzed myself."

  Doan said: "When you get around to it, report back in the square where the bus was parked."

  "Was?" Henshaw repeated. "What do you mean--was?"

  "A building fell on it."

  "No foolin'," said Henshaw. "Well, how do we get back to the Hotel Azteca? Ride a mule?"

  "I won't ride one of those nasty little beasts." Mrs. Henshaw snapped. "They're dirty. Don't you argue with me, either! I won't do it, that's all."

  "Have you seen any of the other passengers?" Doan asked.

  "That bird, Greg, was ahead of us. I haven't seen him since the big shake."

  Doan and Carstairs walked on, and behind them Mrs. Henshaw shrieked:

  "Mortimer! Put that down! Don't you dare eat that horrible candy! It's got germs!"

  Doan and Carstairs detoured around a group of people busily burrowing into what had evidently been a bakery, and then a voice called:

  "Doan."

  Greg was leaning against a cracked building wall. His handsome face was drawn now, and his lips were pale with agony. He had his scarf wrapped around his right arm above the elbow. He was holding his right forearm cradled across his chest with his left hand.

  "Do you know where I can find a doctor?" he asked.

  "Back in the square. The big white building on the west side. Want me to help you?"

  "No. It's just my arm. It's broken. I fell over that damned horse trough there when the quake came."

  "Where is Miss Van Osdel?" Doan asked.

  "Who wants to know?"

  "I do," said Doan.

  "Try and find out," Greg told him, and walked back up the street, leaning over sideways to ease his arm.

  "Hey, fatso!"

  Amanda Tracy came up at a lumbering run, dragging the easel behind her. Her hair was frizzed more wildly than ever, and her eyes gleamed bright and excited in the leathery toughness of her face.

  "Some shimmy, huh? Listen, fat, I'm gonna make my fortune out of it!"

  "How?" Doan asked.

  Amanda Tracy pulled the canvas out of the easel clamps and thrust it in front of his face. "See that? That's a picture of some buildings, believe it or not. See how squeegeed and cockeyed they look?"

  "Yes," Doan admitted.

  "Well, they weren't ruins when I painted them, but they are now. Get it? The ruins of Los Altos. I got a lot more pictures just as lousy as this one. I'll sell them for souvenirs of the disaster!"

  "If you live in that house where you were when I first saw you--and your pictures are there--you'd better run up and take them in out of the weather."

  "Hah?" Amanda Tracy bark
ed.

  "You haven't got a roof any more."

  "Wow!" said Amanda Tracy. She ran up the street, whacking at anyone who was unfortunate enough to get in her way with the legs of the easel. "Gangway! Gangway!"

  Somebody poked Doan in the stomach. He looked down into the face of a little girl who had a smear of dirt around her mouth. Her eyes were black beads that goggled at him excitedly.