I stopped and smiled. “Hello, Mrs. Brand. I’ve just been visiting with your husband.”
She started and looked up at me sharply, as if I was a danger. Clutching her white pocket-book tightly, she made a move to go straight on. I turned and went with her.
“You don’t remember me. I’m Peter Duluth. Chichén-Itzá.”
She still did not answer. It occurred to me that I had never heard her talk. Perhaps she didn’t understand English.
“No me recuerda…?” I began.
We were passing a Gifte Shoppe whose window was prematurely lit up for the night. The bright illumination played on her little figure. My eyes took her in, the hefty legs, the red skirt, the rather flat chest. Her black hair, under a small white hat, was stiffly waved, quite unattractive. But beneath it, the dark, Indian face with its big swooning eyes was quiet and pretty as a flower.
Pretty as a flower. The words repeated themselves in my mind, and with staggering quickness the whole world seemed to go topsy-turvy. For a moment the implications of what had come to me paralyzed me into a kind of panic.
It couldn’t be, but it was.
Once again, more drastically than ever before in this demented affair, I had been fooled to the top of my bent. The wife of the “authentic Mr. Brand, the confidant of the United States Government, the uncle of Deborah,” to whom I had just entrusted the sample of ore, wasn’t a “wife” at all.
She was a little boy in denims, a boy with a burlap sack, a boy with a bird-cage, a boy with a light blue sedan and a gun.
I wasn’t walking with any Mrs. Brand. I was walking with Junior, dressed up as a demure maiden.
I realized then why the boy with the burlap sack had seemed familiar the first time I had set eyes on him outside my apartment in Mexico City. I realized a thousand things. But most virulent was the realization that I had fallen into a trap. I had betrayed Deborah Brand, after all. I had handed over the ore to an impostor, to Junior’s employer, to the murderer of Deborah and Lena, too, the smoothest crook I had ever encountered—to the Enemy.
Junior was hurrying along, trying to keep his face from me. The need for sudden and violent action was imperative. Without it, all would be lost. People were passing by in both directions, chattering, laughing. Ahead, on the corner of the block, the two policemen were still in solemn conclave.
In a flash I knew what to do.
Junior was almost running now. I kept at his side. We crossed the street. Just as we were abreast of the policemen, I snatched Junior’s white pocket-book and sent it spinning down the sidewalk. There would be a gun in it. I knew that. Junior always had a gun.
Both the policemen swung incredulously around. In that second I grabbed at Junior’s little white hat and stiffly waved hair and tugged. They both came off in my hand, revealing his boy’s black hair beneath. I threw the wig and the hat away. Junior squirmed around me and made a dash down the side-street.
I shouted to the policemen: “Wanted man. Impersonating a woman. Carrying concealed weapon.”
I sprinted after Junior and made a dive at him. In a couple of seconds both the policemen were panting around me. I tossed Junior into the arms of one of them. The street was littered with the contents of his pocket-book. Passers-by stared, stopped and then began to crowd. In a few moments, we were completely surrounded in a chaotic, craning mob.
The confusion was just what I needed. While one of the policemen was crying: “What’s going on here?” and the other, gripping Junior, was blowing his whistle, I ducked through the crowd and started to run back towards 1462B.
Junior was safely stowed. There was no question about that. No policeman in the world would release a boy unmasked in the street as a female impersonator without taking him to the station. He could be dealt with later.
Now I could think only of the ore and “Mr. Brand”.
The front door of 1462B was ajar. I must have left it that way. Surprise and humiliation at my own gullibility had turned to anger now. I was seething with rage as I climbed the stairs.
I reached the fourth floor. I knocked. Junior had been coming “home”. “Mr. Brand” would be expecting him. I banked on that.
I heard footsteps. The door opened. The big, red-headed hulk of “Mr. Brand” stood on the threshold.
“Why, Mr. Dulu…” he began.
But he didn’t say anything more. With all my strength behind it, I shot my right fist at his jaw. It made contact with a dull thud. He blinked stupidly and, spinning half round, crumpled backwards on to the floor of the hall.
I went in and kicked the door shut behind me. I could hear his heavy, erratic breathing as he floundered on the carpet. I jumped on him and hit him, once more, twice more, until he stopped moving.
I dragged him into the living-room. He was out cold now. I felt through his pockets for a gun. I found one. I put it in my own pocket. I whipped off his necktie and tied his hands. I pulled the belt from around his waist and knotted it tight around his ankles.
I ran into the workshop. I felt a kind of dizzy exhilaration. The ore sample was still there, gleaming dully on a table by the window.
Things had happened so quickly that there had been practically no time to think. Panting from my violent exertions, I pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
The ore was safe. At least there was that. But what else was there? With a twinge of anxiety, I thought: Junior. But where had he been? He wouldn’t risk a public appearance in his disguise unless it was absolutely necessary.
Had he been to the Montedoro? While “Mr. Brand” was taking care of me, had he been taking care of Vera?
I wasn’t in a mood to reflect before I acted. I hurried into the living-room, picked up the receiver and asked for the Montedoro Hotel.
Over startled clucks from the hotel operator, I said: “There’s a woman tied up in the bathroom of Room 617. Let her out and tell her to come round to 1462B Dauphine Street at once.”
I rang off. Now that I had phoned, the danger to Vera seemed less frightening. Maybe Junior had been to her room. But she wouldn’t have been there. Surely no one outside of a clairvoyant could have guessed that she was trussed up in my bathroom.
Probably by my muddled attack on her, I had saved her life.
My spirits soared. Because, although I was still confused, I was sure now that Vera had been on the right side, after all, had been on the side of the real Brand.
The real Brand. I stood in the middle of the long, untidy room with the “false Brand” unconscious at my feet. This was Brand’s apartment. And yet the “false Brand” had been able to use it as a trap to inveigle the ore sample out of me. What had happened to the real Brand?
There was an obvious solution to that. Brand, or Brand’s body, was probably right here in the apartment.
I hurried out into the little hallway. I went down it. It led to a bedroom. It was almost dark. I turned on a dim little lamp by the bed. No one was there. A door beyond led to a bathroom. The bathroom was empty, too. I was about to go back and search the workshop when I noticed a large closet in the corner.
I went to it and tried the door. It was locked, but the key was in the lock. I turned the key and opened the door.
As I did so, the body of a man half rolled out at my feet.
I dropped to my knees, easing him on to the carpet. His hands and legs were tied. Adhesive tape had been strapped across his mouth.
I pulled the tape off. It must have been painful, but I didn’t care about that. I was thinking of a man with his mouth taped shoved in that airless closet with clothes half smothering his nostrils.
He might well have been dead. He almost certainly would have been dead if I had not come when I did. But, leaning over him, I could trace the faint sound of breathing.
And he stirred. His arms quivered. He moved one leg cautiously. In the shadows which lay across the floor I could hardly see his face. I drew him closer to the light. As I did so, he opened his eyes.
He looked at me. I looked at him.<
br />
I should have realized it by then, but somehow it came as a shock. The false Brand had, of course, been the real Frank Liddon.
And the real Mr. Brand was looking dazedly up at me.
The real Mr. Brand was Bill Halliday.
XXIV
It was eight o’clock. William Brand, Vera Garcia and I sat together in the untidy Brand living-room. The ore sample lay on the desk by the window. William Brand, whom I had known in Mexico as Bill Halliday, had recovered from his unpleasant hour in the closet. Vera, with her lightning Slavic changes of mood, was no longer full of fury. In fact, she was enthusiastic about me again. We had learned from the hotel that Junior had been to the Montedoro. Thanks to my efforts, she, like Brand, had probably escaped an unpleasant death.
A great deal had happened in a short time. Mr. Brand’s connection with the Government was impressive. An F.B.I. man had already come and removed Frank Liddon, the erstwhile bridegroom from Yucatan. The F.B.I. had also picked up Junior at the local police precinct. They were both now safely out of the picture.
Brand had told me his story, too. As I had expected, the version given me by Frank Liddon of the affair’s beginnings in Peru had been perfectly true. He had merely reversed the role played by himself and the real Brand. It had been Brand, as Halliday, who had come from New Orleans to try to protect his niece, and Liddon, as the bridegroom, who had warned her against “Halliday”, lured her to Chichén-Itzá and killed her. That afternoon when he had inveigled me here to the Brand apartment “the bridegroom” had been smart enough to realize that the true story would be the most convincing one with which to lull me into a mood of confidence where I would hand over the ore sample.
But after Deborah’s death the true story, of course, was quite different from Liddon’s, which from that point had been invented for my benefit. Not knowing Liddon by sight, “Halliday”, seeing Deborah with me at Chichén, made the logical mistake of thinking that I was the menace. He had seen us leaving on our early morning trip to the cenote and had followed. He had heard the scream and reached the cenote, not early enough to have seen “the bridegroom” killing Deborah, but earlier than the manager and I. He had just had time to pick up the pocket-book and make his escape before we arrived in the clearing.
He had taken the pocket-book, of course, because he hoped, even with Deborah dead, that he might still salvage the chart and the ore. Neither he nor Liddon had known that the chart was in a detective story until Lena’s prattle at the Reforma had made them tumble to it, and neither of them, of course, had ever had a chance to guess that Deborah had hidden the ore in the jar of sunburn cream. It was that lucky accident which had kept Liddon from searching my bathroom when he ransacked the apartment in Mexico City.
When “Halliday” found there was nothing of seeming importance in the pocket-book, although he was too cautious to throw it away until it had been analyzed for invisible writing, he was not only convinced that I had murdered Deborah, but almost sure that I had also taken the chart and the ore. He had at first completely overlooked “the bridegroom”—in his concentration on me. That was why he tried to steal my bag at the airport.
Later, in Mexico City, he had put Vera on to me. It was only after Junior slugged me at Los Remedios that he saw his mistake and realized that “the bridegroom” and “the bride” were the real Liddon and his associate. From then on he never exactly knew what I was—whether I was an independent crook working on my own or whether I was in fact just an innocent tourist who had become accidentally involved. But since Liddon and his henchman were after me, it was obvious that I was the one who had the chart and the ore which he was so desperately trying to get. I was still the key.
After the Los Remedios episode, “Halliday’s” attitude to me had become more complicated. There were two objectives for him then. One to try either by winning my confidence or by trickery to get the chart and the ore out of me himself, the other to keep me from falling into the hands of Liddon and Junior. Vera’s function, of course, had been to win my confidence. Halliday himself had concentrated on protecting me. That was why he had rescued me from Junior in the taxi and why he had played drunk in his apartment so that I should feel secure enough from him to spend the night in the only place where he knew I would be safe from Junior.
My own suspicions of him and of Vera had made everything much more difficult for them. Towards the end Vera had been almost sure that I was what I claimed to be and felt that I should be taken into their confidence. But, because of the extreme importance of the issue at stake and because she was sure I was far too suspicious of them to believe anything they said, they had decided it was wiser to keep me in the dark and still hope to get the ore from me by trickery.
It was no wonder, I thought, that I had taken it on the chin in Mexico. I thought of the hoary old gag about the pigeon caught in the badminton game. That’s what I’d been. Liddon and Junior against Vera and Halliday—with Lena Snood and me for shuttlecocks.
“If only you’d been a little dumber, Mr. Duluth,” said Brand, with a wry smile, “things would have been a lot easier. But you’d seen through me enough to be so suspicious of me that I knew it would be hopeless to try to confide in you. It was the same with Vera. Once you’d overheard her call to me, from your apartment, she knew that whatever she did you’d never trust her. So long as we were all in Mexico, we had no choice. Luckily you figured out Deborah’s Joan of Arc cryptogram and decided to come to New Orleans. Once you were here in our own territory, we felt reasonably sure of you. If Liddon hadn’t broken in here, slugged me and taken my place, I would myself have told you the truth.
I looked at him. The change in his appearance since he had declared himself was astonishing. The features, even the expressions were the same, but the bumbling, businessman’s convention act was completely gone. He looked what he was—a very intelligent, forceful man. I admired him profoundly as an actor.
“You certainly put on a great performance,” I said.
He shrugged. “I didn’t, because it didn’t fool you. Liddon was the one who was successful. He made three attempts to kidnap you, and you never suspected him. You never even recognized the boy as the ‘bride’ from Chichén-Itzá.”
“That’s something I don’t get,” I said. “Why the female impersonation in Chichén and here in New Orleans? Just to confuse the issue?”
“Oh, no. That was strictly necessary. The F.B.I. have already identified the boy at the Peruvian Embassy. He’s a notorious underworld character in Lima. In fact, right now he’s wanted by the police for murder. When Liddon decided to hire him as his trigger man, the only way to smuggle him across the border was in disguise. That’s a pretty powerful organization Liddon belongs to, you know. It was easy enough for them to fake a passport with the boy as Liddon’s wife.”
“So that’s why he never dressed up in Mexico. He only needed the red suit and the wig for crossing borders on the passport.”
“Exactly.” Brand’s face was grave now. “Well, this has been a pretty grim affair. Deborah and poor little Mrs. Snood. I feel particularly bad about her. And Joseph, too.” He paused. “The Peruvian Government is already getting ready to clean up the whole group of them. I only hope they will be in time to rescue Joseph.” He sighed. “But we mustn’t be too gloomy about it. If Joseph is right about the thorium—and he almost certainly is—the importance of this thing’s being in the right hands is incalculable. At least, after all the disasters, we have got what we needed—the ore sample and the chart.”
“The chart,” I echoed. “Then you’ve got the detective story back?”
“Oh, yes.”
“The F.B.I. man found it on Liddon?”
He blinked. “No, Mr. Duluth. I’ve had the book for several days.”
He felt in his pocket and brought out the small bright edition of The Wrong Murder. He opened it to the back page and, leaning across the desk, held it out for my inspection. The edges of the pages showed where they had been glued together. Draw
n across their centre in neat, fine pencil was a detailed chart.
“The area of the vein,” he said. “We already know the general neighbourhood. With this, there’ll be no difficulty in locating the exact position.”
I looked at him blankly. “But how could you have had the book several days. Lena had it yesterday. Liddon kidnapped her and killed her for it.”
“I’m afraid the copy Lena Snood had was not the right one.” Brand’s lips moved in a faint smile. “Remember her party at Ciro’s when I arrived in a slightly intoxicated condition? On the plane from Merida, Lena said the book she was reading had been Deborah’s, and I guessed its importance. I came to the party with another copy I’d bought downtown. When I went to the bathroom, I took the one from beside Lena’s bed and substituted the other copy.”
My admiration for William C. Brand, the actor, rose even higher. Even at his most seemingly inane, he had been on the ball. Poor Lena! After Liddon had kidnapped her, he had discovered that her book was not the right one. No wonder he had been so eager to lure me to Cuicuilco and capture me alive.
“Yes, Mr. Duluth,” Brand was saying, “I had the book. All we needed was the ore sample. Thanks to your ingenuity and—well, doggedness, we have that now.”
Everything was clear to me by then—almost everything.
“There’s one thing,” I said. “How in the world did you work that apartment on the Calle Dinamarca?”
Brand smiled at Vera. “That was easy. Vera owns a lot of real estate in Mexico. That was one of her furnished apartments that she rents. It happened to be vacant, and the new tenants were moving in the next day. She gave me the key.”
He glanced at his watch and got up, putting the ore sample in his pocket. “Well, I’ve got to be going now. I’ve a date with an F.B.I. mineralogist down at the laboratory. We’re going to check on this thing right away.”
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