In The House Of Secret Enemies m-9

by George C. Chesbro

  "There's sickness in the country," John said weakly. "That's why we've been isolated."

  "Really? Do you know of one single individual who's come down with this sickness?"

  "I took it for granted."

  "Like everybody else in San Marino."

  Marinello put the cork back in the jug of cognac and pushed it away. "I read in the paper where a new chief had been appointed, but I didn't give it much thought. It was a new appointment, and it was made by Albert Vaicona himself."

  "There's a second Regent, Arturo Bonatelli. He's supposed to be on vacation. Can Vaicona make appointments by himself?"

  "Yes, but the Grand Council has to approve."

  "And the Grand Council approved a mafioso?"

  John shook his head. "Even if what you say is true, why would anybody want to take over San Marino? Our country is a joke to most people."

  "I don't know. But I'm convinced that the brains behind it is a man by the name of Victor Fordamp. The circus comes into it somewhere, but I don't know how. It doesn't make any sense for a man like Fordamp to take over San Marino just to give your police chief a place to hide. Petrocelli is a big gun, but I don't think he rates a whole country. In any case, the big question is why your government is going along with it."

  "That's assuming this whole plot isn't in your imagination."

  "A man was killed while he was talking to me over the telephone, from here, asking for my help. That wasn't my imagination."

  John mulled it over, then frowned. "We will have to fight."

  "A lot of people could be killed."

  Marinello flushed. "We are not cowards."

  "Of course not. But I hope you're not fools either. Fordamp and his men probably have enough firepower to outfit a battalion. They haven't used it because they haven't had to. That doesn't mean that they won't start firing if they're pressed. You can't fight bullets with your bare hands. How many guns do you have in San Marino?"

  "We have a few hunters with rifles. And the police have their pistols."

  "The men I've seen would eat you for breakfast, and all the police are playing follow the leader to Fordamp's men. Somebody has to go for the Italian authorities. It's risky, but not that bad. I got up here by walking through a vineyard. There's no reason someone can't go down the same way."

  "I'll gladly do that."

  "Not yet. We'll need more to go on than my suspicions. With the way things are in the world today, the Italian government probably won't be too anxious to send troops up the mountain unless we can prove there's a good reason."

  John's eyes were cloudy with barely controlled anger. "I will take this man Petrocelli myself. And Fordamp."

  "And you'll get yourself killed. You sit tight until you hear from me."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To look for something to back us up."

  I slipped back onto the circus grounds and headed for Nell's trailer. The door was slightly ajar. I knocked on it three times.

  "Run, Mongo! They're waiting-"

  Nell's voice was cut off by the obscene sound of metal striking flesh. I heard Nell groan, then the sound of a man cursing and running toward the door. I crouched down, my back against the trailer, and waited for him. The door burst open and I caught a quick glimpse of Nell huddled by the door, her hand pressed to a deep gash on her cheek where the man standing above me had pistol-whipped her. Nell's beard was matted with blood.

  Marshmallow Mouth started down the three steps leading to the ground. I caught him on the second step, grabbing his left ankle and lifting it. The somersault he executed wouldn't have won many diving points, but it looked beautiful to me. Marshmallow Mouth flipped and landed on his back with a delightful smack as the breath went out of him. The automatic pistol he was holding popped out of his hand and landed harmlessly a few feet away.

  He was helpless, his eyes glazed, so I didn't follow up with anything fancy; I stepped forward and kicked him in the jaw hard enough to put him on a liquid diet for about three months. The remaining lights in his eyes clicked out.

  I picked up the gun and turned to go into the trailer. I froze in a crouch as three men emerged from around the side. The tallest one had hawklike features and bright, cocaine eyes. He was wearing a four-hundred-dollar sharkskin suit that clashed with the dusty circus grounds and the bulky vest he wore beneath it. The two men on either side were wearing guns, both of which were pointed at me.

  "Drop your gun, Dr. Frederickson," Fordamp said. "You have a reputation for speed and cleverness. I assure you that my men will not underestimate you. If you even breathe funny you will be shot full of holes."

  "And have the whole circus down on your neck?"

  Fordamp didn't blink an eye. "Perhaps. But you will be dead. It will be an unfortunate situation for both of us."

  I dropped the gun and straightened up. The two gunmen flanked me. I kept my eyes on Fordamp. The expression on his face might have been a grin.

  "Dr. Robert Frederickson," Fordamp said in the tone of voice of a man who was about to give a lecture. "Mongo the Magnificent, famous circus headliner, college professor, criminologist, private detective extraordinaire."

  "You have good sources."

  "Of course. A businessman can never know too much about those who might stand in his way. I don't suppose you've come to ask for your job back?"

  "I'm here to find out why my partner sold my half of the circus out from under me."

  Fordamp smiled again. "How much would you consider taking for your half of the business?"

  "I'm not in the mood to sell out. I'd as soon stay partners with you. My guess is that this circus is suddenly going to start making a lot more money that it has been. What's the deal, Fordamp? What do you want with a circus?"

  Fordamp made a clucking sound with his tongue. "That's a disappointing ploy coming from someone with your reputation, Dr. Frederickson. I've seen the ownership papers, so I know that you do not own any part of the circus. Still, you are here. My guess is that you've come to interfere in my affairs."

  "Why did you kill Roscoe, Fordamp?"

  Fordamp absently touched the rectangular bulge in his vest, but said nothing.

  "Where's Statler? Did you kill him, too?"

  This time I got a reply of sorts; another clucking sound from Fordamp, and a gun barrel on the top of the head from one of Fordamp's goons who had slipped behind me. The pain shot like a lightning bolt from the top of my head to my toes. The ground opened up beneath me, then closed over my head.

  I clawed my way back up the sides of a hole that smelled like ether, crawled over the edge, and found myself propped up against a stone wall, staring into the grizzled face of Phil Statler. He had a dead cigar in a mouth framed by a stubble of steel-gray beard that had managed to foil every technological advance in razor blades. He had a look in his pale eyes that he usually reserved for sick elephants. I grinned.

  "Hey, Phil, how's business?"

  "Mongo," Phil growled, "you turn up in the damndest places."

  "I got a call from Roscoe; he said there was trouble, so I flew over. You can see how much help I've been."

  Phil made a sound deep in his throat. "If I ever get out of here I'm going to kill a few sons-of-bitches," he said evenly. He might have been talking about buying a new car.

  "Phil, Roscoe's dead."

  Something passed over Phil's face. He rose slowly and turned away, but not before I caught the glint of tears in his eyes.

  Now I could see the rest of the room; it bore a close resemblance to a dungeon. There was a single window with a clear view of nothing but sky, which explained why it was unbarred.

  The man standing next to the window had the soft, handsome features of a San Marinese. He had a good deal of stubble on his face, but his dress was still impeccable. He still wore a suit jacket, and his tie was neatly knotted. His gaze was a mixture of curiosity and dignity in the midst of adversity; the whole impression added up to a man used to holding public office.

&nb
sp; "Arturo Bonatelli, I presume?"

  The man smiled. Ciao," he said, then added in English: "Pleased to meet you."

  Phil eyed the two of us. "You two know each other?"

  "Only by reputation," I said. "This is a strange place to take a vacation, Mr. Bonatelli."

  Bonatelli grinned wryly. "Is that what they say?"

  "That's what they say." I grimaced against the pain, rose and shook Bonatelli's hand. "I'm Robert Frederickson, Mr. Bonatelli. What's happening here?"

  Anger glinted in Bonatelli's eyes. The emotion seemed out of place on his features, like an ink smear on a fine painting. "A man is trying to take over my country."

  "I know that. Fordamp. Why?"

  "I think he intends to turn it into a sanctuary for international criminals."

  Things were beginning to fall into place; I kicked myself for not thinking of it earlier.

  "Fordamp told us that he only wanted to use San Marino for a little while," Bonatelli continued, "long enough to make plans for getting Luciano Petrocelli out of Europe. Petrocelli has paid Fordamp a lot of money. But if it works once, why should it not work many times?"

  "That's why you're here?"

  "Yes."

  "What about the circus?" Phil said. "There ain't no money in the circus."

  "The circus is his transportation vehicle," I said. "Hiding a man in San Marino is one thing; getting him in and out is something else again. It won't work forever, but it will work long enough to make Fordamp a tidy profit. At least Fordamp thinks so." I turned to Bonatelli. "Why didn't the others resist?"

  "It isn't because they are cowards," the Regent said quickly. "It is because they fear for their country, and I did not agree with them on which was the best way to meet the threat. You see, despite the plastic souvenirs, San Marino itself is an authentic medieval treasure house. Most of the buildings are irreplaceable, and they contain countless art masterpieces. Without our churches, our art and our castles, we would be nothing more than a joke on a mountain.

  "In addition, tourists would no longer come, and our economy would be crippled. Victor Fordamp has placed dynamite charges in many of our buildings, including the castles. He carries an electronic detonator in a vest that he wears, and he has threatened to blow up everything we hold dear if we resist. If you've met him, you know that he always has two armed guards with him. It is impossible to take him by surprise."

  Bonatelli was flushed with anger, pacing back and forth in front of the window. "I, too, love everything that is San Marino," he continued. "But I do not believe we can allow ourselves to be blackmailed. Besides, I think Fordamp will blow up everything when he is finished with us anyway; such men cannot abide beauty. I argued that we had to find a way to resist. My opposition was reported to Fordamp, and I was locked up here with Mr. Statler, who refused to sell his circus."

  I nodded and walked over to the window. As I'd suspected, we were locked up in one of the castles. I leaned out the window and looked down; the tops of a grove of pine trees were a hundred feet below. As I watched, a thrush winged her way to a nest built in the crevices between the stones that comprised the tower. I tried not to think of the fact that we were sitting on a charge of dynamite that could probably blow us all over the mountainside.

  "Why do you suppose they haven't killed the two of you?"

  "I'm not sure," Bonatelli said.

  "I'm thinking he hasn't gotten around to it," Phil said around his cigar. "Besides, having us locked up here gives him a little added insurance in case he has to start threatening again."

  I turned back to Phil and the Regent. "Assuming one of us could get out of here, what do you think would happen to the other two?"

  Phil shrugged. "Things could get hairy, I suppose, but it would still be better to have one of us on the outside with a shot at Fordamp. As it is, we're simply sitting here waiting for the place to blow."

  "That's obvious," Bonatelli said. There was a trace of impatience in his voice. "But the discussion is academic."

  Phil removed the cigar from his mouth and spat into a corner. "Nothing's academic with Mongo."

  "The door is two feet thick, and it's bolted. We are more than a hundred feet off the ground. How-"

  "I think I can get out of here," I said. "Down the wall. But I'll be wasting my time unless there's some way I can convince the Italian authorities that we need them. Mr. Bonatelli, do you have anything I could show them as proof that I've been in contact with you?"

  "I have my Regent's ring," Bonatelli said. "They would recognize that I suppose, but you couldn't possibly climb down that wall. You'd fall to your death."

  "He might make it," Phil said, eyeing me. He sounded as if he might be auditioning new talent. "I've seen him do even more amazing things in his act."

  "Act?"

  "Forget it," I said curtly. "Mr. Bonatelli, may I have your ring?"

  The Regent slipped a gold, crested ring off his right hand and handed it to me. His hand trembled, and he had the air of an inexperienced prison warden giving a condemned man his last meal. I put the ring in my pocket, went to the window and climbed out.

  Balance and timing, two skills that I had once had in abundance, were essential for the descent I planned to make; I hoped they hadn't atrophied in the five years I'd spent away from the circus.

  A cold breeze was blowing off the top of the mountain, drying the rivulets of sweat that had already broken out on my body. I kept my head level, staring straight ahead at the niches in the rocks where I gripped with my fingers as I groped below me with my feet for the next toehold. Finding it, I would brace, then bring one hand down the wall until I found another handhold.

  The thrush exploded in a whir of wings somewhere below and to my right. My peripheral vision caught the faces of Phil and Bonatelli at the window above me; Bonatelli was bone white, his mouth gaping open as if the air at the top of the castle was too thin for him; Phil had the calmer expression of a man who has lived with the risks of death and maiming for a long time.

  "Take it easy, Mongo," Phil growled softly. "There ain't no net under you."

  "Wait until you get my bill for this exercise," I said without looking up. I'll be able to buy a dozen nets, all fine-spun gold."

  "You got a blank check, Mongo. A blank check. Just don't forget that I don't owe you nothin' if you get killed."

  I cut the banter short; I was going to need my breath. I was barely a quarter of the way down and already the pain was spreading from the small of my back, around my rib cage through my arms and fingers, numbing them. I'd gashed my right hand, and the blood was welling between my fingers.

  Despite the risks of slipping, I was going to have to speed my descent. Otherwise, I was going to run out of strength long before I reached the bottom, which meant that there'd be a neat, dwarf-sized hole at the base of a castle in San Marino.

  I started taking chances, accepting toeholds that felt spongy, digging my fingers into dusty pockets in the wall that could give way as soon as I touched them. One did, and for a few brief moments that felt like years I found myself dangling by one hand that had no feeling.

  Phil's soft oath wafted down to me. I kept my eyes level, sucked in my breath, and swung back again. My other hand found a grip and my feet found solid footing. The muscles in my belly crawled, as if reaching out by themselves in an attempt to grasp the smooth rocks on the face of the wall. I didn't want to move; I wanted to stay there until all the feeling left and I dropped. I convinced myself that that wasn't positive thinking; I forced myself to calm down and continue groping. Then I could see the tops of trees out of the corner of my eye. I scurried down another twenty feet and fell the rest of the way, banging into the ground with a force that momentarily dazed me.

  I half expected to hear a chorus of boos from some circus gallery. All I got was the croaking of a frog in the forest behind me. I shook my head to clear it, then took a quick mental inventory and decided nothing was broken.

  I glanced up toward the window. Bonatell
i might have been a dead man; he was in exactly the same position-with the same expression on his face-that he'd been in when I'd gone over the window ledge. Phil was standing with his hands clasped over his head.

  I got to my feet and slipped into the forest.

  It was a clear day, and I could see Italy below me, through breaks in the trees. I needed a messenger. It was only a matter of a few hours before Fordamp would discover that I was missing, and things would start to come apart. On the positive side, Fordamp obviously didn't feel that secure of his position, or he wouldn't have felt the need to cut off the telephones and seal the country.

  Regardless of what I did or didn't do, the fact that I had escaped from the castle would increase the pressure on Fordamp. I decided that I'd have to risk upping the ante some more, and hope that things in San Marino wouldn't start exploding.

  That decision was given added urgency by a discovery I made in a small glen a few yards in from the tree line. Whoever had shot Danny Lemongello hadn't even bothered to dig a hole for him. Apparently Fordamp had found out that Danny had talked to me; more probably, the boy simply knew too much. Whatever the reason, Danny's body lay sprawled on the grass. His glazed eyes were crossed, as if trying to see into the hole someone had put in the center of his forehead.

  Petrocelli didn't look exactly overjoyed to see me. His jaw dropped open when I walked into the police station. He was still fumbling for his gun when I hit him on the side of the head with the heavy glass ashtray he kept on his desk. He slumped forward and his face smacked into the desk top with the satisfying sound of cracking egg shells. I took his keys and went back into the cell block.

  Jandor was standing, gripping the bars of his cell, when I came through the connecting door. His eyes widened. He'd put on some weight since I'd last seen him, and it all looked like muscle. He was a broad-shouldered man with surgeon's hands that could flick a blade of steel and shave a rose petal at fifty feet.

  "Mongo!"

  I grinned and unlocked the cell door. "Exercise time, Jandor."

  "What?"

  "No time now to tell you how I got here, Jandor. We've got a lot of work to do, and not much time to do it in."