Longarm 241: Longarm and the Colorado Counterfeiter (19 page)

Ashton said, coldly and lowly, “You go to Hell, you sonofabitch.”

“My, my, my. I'm surprised your momma taught you to talk like that.” Longarm stood up, picking up his revolver as he did. Holding it in his right hand, he went around the table and picked Ashton up by the collar of his shirt. He marched him toward the door leading out of the office. Lei Chang was backing up, preceding them while he bobbed and bowed.

The little man said, “You see by and by. You see boss makey monies. Lei Chang show in kitchen.”

He led them into the library, into the big hall, into the dining room, and then through the swinging door into the kitchen. Longarm kept hold of Ashton by the collar, using his left hand. He had the revolver in his right hand, but he didn't have it pointed in any one particular place. Ashton was mumbling and cursing, and Longarm reminded him that Lei Chang was maybe doing him the biggest favor he had ever had in his life.

Longarm said, “Maybe you like pain. I don't know, but I'll tell you the truth. You are going to break before you die. You'd have shown me. If Lei Chang is showing me, he's doing you a big favor.”

“That dirty heathen sonofabitch. I ought to kill him. He's been with me too many years. He's crazy.”

“Let's just see if he's crazy. Maybe you're the crazy one.”

Now, they were in the kitchen. It was dark, and Lei Chang lit a lantern, and then another, so that the shadows danced away from the comers.

The little man said, “I show you money.” He walked across the room to an ordinary-looking door that could have been a pantry, and opened it. Ashton gave a muffled cry. Longarm walked over and looked behind the door. There seemed to be nothing there. He gave Lei Chang a questioning look. “What is this?” It was just a small room that, indeed, could have been a pantry if it had shelves.

The little man said, “You watch. Watch this.” He pushed on one of the walls, and it swung away like a door and turned into a set of stairs going down into the cellar. Lei Chang was very excited. He was nodding and giggling and pointing. He said, “You see, in cellar. Catch money in cellar.”

Longarm said, “Well, I'll be damned. It is. You two go ahead.” He pushed the Chinese man down first, and then guided Ashton on his way down the steps.

The counterfeiter was cursing and flailing around with his free hand. Halfway down, he stopped, turned around, and looked up at Longarm, saying, “My damned hand hurts, you sonofabitch. You shot my finger off.”

Longarm gave the man a shove. “Go on down there, Ashton. Let's see what we've got.”

Ashton said to the Chinese man, “You damn Chink. I'm going to kill you for this.”

“I don't think you're going to kill anyone, Ashton,” Longarm said. “Let's just see what we have down here. Lei Chang, strike a light. Make it light in here.”

The little man was already at the bottom of the cellar. He bobbed his head, and the next thing Longarm knew, two lamps had been lit. The room came into clear view. It was not an unusual-looking room, except that it was composed of concrete walls and a concrete floor. On one side of the room was an ordinary-looking printing press. Longarm walked over to it, and he could see the remains of where something about the size of eight United States currency bills had been printed at each revolution of the machinery. He didn't know much about it, but he knew that the plates or the things that had made the impression were not on the machine. Over in the comer, he could see a wooden box. Inside was what appeared to be bluish-green paper. He went over and touched the paper. It felt very much like money.

He turned and looked at Ashton. “So you weren't in the counterfeiting business, huh? What do you reckon this is?”

Ashton gave him a sullen look. “Damn it, my hand is hurting. You have to do something about my hand.”

“I don't have to do a damned thing about your hand. What I have to do is have those engraved plates.”

Ashton stared at him. “I just wouldn't know where they are.”

Longarm said, “You'd better go to thinking very hard where they are.”

He turned and looked at the Chinese man. He said, “Lei Chang, where do the boss keep big important piece of steel?”

The man nodded his head vigorously. “Oh, yes. Me catch. Very important for paper. Very important for monies. Yes, me catch.”

“Where the hell are they?”

Before the Chinese man could answer, Ashton said,

“Look here, whatever your name is, my hand is killing me. It's throbbing. You aren't getting any more cooperation out of me until I get some more laudanum and brandy. I need something to kill this pain.”

The Chinese man said, “In safe, Boss. Very good shiny money-make stuff in safe.”

Ashton fixed him with a look. He said, “You yellow sonofabitch. I'm going to chop your head off.”

Longarm said, “Where is the safe, Ashton? Show me where it is.”

Ashton glared at him. “It won't do you any good. You can't open it, and I'm not going to until you get me some relief.”

“Just show me where the damned safe is.”

But instead of answering, the Chinese man came shuffling forward and went over to the far corner, almost underneath the stairs. He pulled back a cabinet door. There, set in concrete, was the steel front of a heavy-duty safe. It was not the sort of safekeeping device that you were going to blow open with a stick or two of dynamite. You'd have to blow up damned near the whole house to get the door of that safe open.

Longarm said, “Ashton, that's a combination lock. I want you to go over there and open it.” He pulled out his revolver and cocked it. “If you don't, I'm going to start shooting toes off. It'll make a mess out of those fine shoes you are wearing there. I ain't seen a man on this big a ranch wearing those kind of shoes in my life. That's enough to make me shoot those toes off of you as it is.”

Ashton's lip trembled, but he still said, “No, no, no. I won't open. Not unless you get me some laudanum right now. I'm telling you, the pain is so bad, I near can't bear it. I have to have some help.”

Longarm thought a moment. You can't very well hurt a man who is already hurting to the extreme. He turned to the Chinese man. “Lei Chang, catch laudanum and brandy for boss. Bring catch down here. Chop, chop.”

Lei Chang nodded. “Very good. Lei Chang catch and bring down here.”

At that, the Chinese man set off up the stairs with his stiff-kneed trot. Longarm looked at Ashton and said, “I don't know why you want to give yourself such a hard time about this, because you are going to give in, one way or another. If I have to keep on hurting you, I'm perfectly willing to do that. I can prove right now that you are a counterfeiter with that press over there and that paper. But I want those plates out of circulation. I want that to be the little trophy I carry back to my office to show that I could do a job that I wasn't supposed to do.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here if this ain't your job?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Longarm said coolly. “I guess because the Treasury Department had better sense than to come up against forty gunmen.”

“But you didn't?”

“It looks like apparently I didn't.”

“Well, if you hadn't cannonaded us with rocks and hadn't used enough dynamite on us to have dug a mine, you'd have never gotten on this property. Those men weren't afraid of a dozen devils with guns, but those explosions in the middle of the night worked on their nerves. You're to be congratulated, Deputy Marshal.”

Longarm said, “Let's just you and me step over here and take a closer look at this safe.”

He shifted his revolver to his left hand, took Ashton by the arm, and guided him to the area right in front of the safe next to the stairs. The safe was about three feet high and four feet wide. It had a big combination lock right in the middle. Longarm said, “You'd better start remembering that combination, Ashton, because you're going to need it in just a few minutes. When Lei Chang brings you that laudanum and it kills the pain, you are going to think you are out of the woods and that you ain't got nothing to worry about. But all I'm going to do is make you hurt all over again. This time, I'll put some hurt on you that nothing will help.”

He squatted down and brought his eyes to the level of the dial of the safe. He noticed that it was made by the Mosler Company, which was famous for its secure safes. Many a bank robber had been frustrated trying to get inside one with a clerk who wouldn't open it. But Longarm had a clerk who was going to open it or who was going to get shot to pieces.

As he studied the safe, he became aware that somebody had come down the stairs. He didn't glance up, knowing it was Lei Chang. But then, he heard a curious hurrying sound. It came, again. It was an unusual sound that made the hair rise on the back of his neck. He took a quick glance to his right, and was shocked to see the little man charging straight toward him with a huge sword uplifted over his head in both hands.

Longarm had no time to pause, no time to think. All he could do with his revolver in his left hand was fire across his chest. The bullet hit the little man high on the shoulder, but stopped him and spun him around. Longarm rapidly cocked the pistol and fired again, this time hitting the Chinese man in the side. He went down in a heap, the big sword clattering against the hard concrete floor.

It was a second before Longarm's ears could clear from the loud blast in the concrete room. He slowly rose and looked at the shriveled figure of the little Chinese man. He glanced up at Ashton. “Did you know he was going to do that?”

Ashton gave him a cold look. “I had hopes that he would.”

“He was going to go up against a heavy-caliber revolver with nothing more than a sword?”

“You have no idea what he could do with that sword. If you had been a half second later, you'd have probably been twins.”

Lei Chang had left the brandy and the laudanum on the landing at the top of the stairs. Longarm went up and fetched it, and then poured Ashton a glass of half-and-half. The counterfeiter wolfed it down, and then asked for more brandy. Longarm was only too happy to help him.

After Ashton had finished drinking, Longarm said, “Now, in a minute or two, you are not going to be hurting, and that's when you're going to decide that you won't open this safe. I'm not going to tell you what is going to happen then. I'm going to let you figure it out yourself.”

Vernon Ashton drew himself up to his full height, which brought him only to Longarm's shoulders. He said, “You have no right to make me open that safe. You have no warrant to be in this house. You are overreaching your authority, and I demand that you leave right now.”

Longarm stared at him in disbelief. “Are you drunk or what? You must not have noticed that I shot your finger off and that I really don't much care what I do to you.” He stared a moment longer at Ashton. “I don't understand you, mister.” He turned and looked at where the Chinese man lay like a little heap of rags. “There is that Chinese fellow. Got himself killed for you. There are three or four others upstairs that are dead on account of you. There's your foreman, Early. He's out there dead on account of you. There are how many others who are dead on account of you. Who the hell do you think you are? You know, I'm near about to get sick of you. Do you understand me?”

Ashton said, “You can't tell me—”

He got no further. Longarm suddenly said, “Oh, hell. I'm sick of this.” He shoved his revolver in his holster and reached out and grabbed Ashton by his injured hand. With a twist of his wrist, he shoved the man's arm up behind him, high enough that Ashton had to go up on tiptoe to keep something from cracking. He got his face down next to Ashton's ear. “Now, you feel that? You're screaming a little bit already. A little more, and I'll lift you off the floor with this arm. You'll either come off the floor or something is going to break, or you can open that safe. Now, you can make up your mind which it's going to be. I'm tired of fooling with you. I'll break you up little by little.”

Longarm curled his left arm around Ashton's neck, pulling his head back. With his other arm, he forced Ashton's right arm up between his shoulder blades. It was as if he was trying to make Ashton touch the back of his head with the back of his hand. Ashton was emitting a loud scream that grew in intensity and tenor with every passing instant. Longarm was wasting no time. With his head down and his ear next to Ashton's shoulders, he could hear creaking and crackling sounds. He figured the man's shoulder or elbow or something would go any second.

Then Ashton yelled out, “All right! All right!”

Longarm eased off the slightest bit. He said, “What?”

Ashton's voice was still high-pitched and full of a scream. He said, “All right! I'll open the damned safe. Don't hurt me anymore.”

Longarm slowly let the arm down to about halfway. He said, “I'm going to give you a chance. But if you don't open that safe immediately, if this is some method of stalling and thinking that you can get it to stop hurting for a little while, it ain't going to work. If you don't open that safe, I'm going to grab you right back up and jam this arm of yours into the back of your head. I'm going to break it clean in two. Do you understand?”

Ashton panted and made whimpering sounds.

“I said, do you understand?”

Finally, Ashton said, “Yes, yes. I understand. I'll open the safe.”

Longarm shoved the man down to his knees in front of the big heavy strongbox. He said, “Then get busy.”