Murder Queen High (14 page)

He stopped suddenly. “Shock can certainly produce a variety of comical expressions,” Trim said with a final chuckle. “And yours rank with the finest in my collection. First, however — ” his voice turned sharper “ — gently toss that .45 back to me, Conover.”

John Henry made his paralyzed hand reach for it.

“Gently. Not that I trusted you with a loaded gun — but, on the other hand, you might now be tempted to club me with it.”

Carefully, John Henry lobbed the automatic to the other man. Trim snatched it deftly from the air and put it in his belt. Without shifting his gaze, he pounded his wooden pistol down sharply on the saddle horn. The painted toy shell shattered. He peeled the broken pieces from around a short black revolver and flung them to the canyon floor. “No need for masquerade any longer, is there?” he commented. The trigger of the revolver had been the only portion protruding from its gaudy camouflage.

Sin finally found a tremulous portion of her voice. “Then you’re not really a G-man, at all?”

Trim smiled sparingly and shook his head. “Let’s say that I’m really — ” he touched the cocked hat “ — a pirate. That’s closer to the truth than my other personalities.”

The moon slipped past the jagged edge of the canyon above them and the little man became a malevolent shadow against the gray gloom of wind-carved stone.

“Just one thing I want to know,” said John Henry. He sagged wearily in his saddle. “Then I’ll shut up. Where did you have that combination? We searched you.”

“Not very thoroughly,” said the shadow. “You missed the pistol, for one thing. But the combination wasn’t there. The combination was here.”

“Where’s he pointing?” asked John Henry, straining forward.

“His mouth!” cried Sin.

“That’s right,” chuckled Trim. “My dentures are false. No one thinks of that. Whoever heard of owning a set of false teeth that look worse than real ones? No self-respecting dentist would make them. Everybody assumes that they must be natural — but they’re as false as that story about Mr. Robottom, which I consider pretty adequate for the spur of the moment.” He peered to see the extent of the Conovers’ chagrin and drew back satisfied. “Enjoy the sweep of the joke,” he commanded. “Others among my foes have been fooled and appreciated it.”

“Mr. Trim,” said John Henry earnestly. “We are not your foes. From the beginning, we’ve only — whoa, Nightmare!” The horse wanted to carry him forward but Conover felt he was close enough to the other man.

“No,” said Sin.

“Nonsense. You’ve been a complication since Saturday night — although a curious one. It was an accident that Barselou learned we were in the game at all. But then to have you gullible innocents mistaken for us — I call that highly amusing. Wouldn’t you?”

“No,” said Sin.

“We? Us?” questioned John Henry tentatively.

“My daughter Faye and I,” replied Trim blandly. “My name is Jordan — if names mean anything. But don’t break the habit of a week end, I beg you.”

“Oh!” gasped Sin. “Then she — then we — ”

“Haven’t you noticed the family resemblance — the Jordan nose? It’s turned up at the world — pushed into that position by generations of well-applied thumbs. Yes, it was Faye who insisted the cottages be switched so she could go through your belongings for this precious combination while they were being moved. Gayner, poor fumbler, didn’t suspect a thing — he was that eager to search your stuff himself. But he searched the clothes after Faye had finished and it was he who mussed them so deplorably. And spilled your peppermint, Mrs. Conover.”

Sin trembled with rage. “You killed him! And you can remember that silly peppermint in the same breath!”

“Relax, honey,” said John Henry uneasily.

“Yes,” chortled their captor, “you might frighten Barselou. Though he’s probably so busy chopping into chests of pearls and emeralds that he douldn’t hear Judgment Day. I hope he’s saving me the trouble of the heavy work.”

John Henry sensed that his wife was shivering, although the dark of the new day was not chilly between the protective canyon walls. He edged his horse closer to hers so that their legs touched comfortingly. “Let’s move on,” said John Henry and his voice was tired. “Let’s get it all over with.”

There was enough light for him to see Trim raise the short fat revolver menacingly. “No rush,” was the amiable reply. “I prefer to board the Queen by daylight. Barselou is an excellent shot.” He settled back on his steed luxuriously. His proud voice said, “Faye’s taking you to the Bar C in the first place was impromptu, Conover — but it shows her flair. That way she was able to separate you from your wife and go through the only clothes of yours she hadn’t inspected — the clothes you were wearing the night before.”

“Then it was Faye, after all. I thought Barselou — ”

“Barselou wasn’t even aware that you were at his ranch at all. Oh, Barselou is unaware of many things.”

The chuckle out of the darkness was malignant.

“And I let you rescue me from Vernon and Gayner!” cried Sin in disgust.

“Merely protecting my investment,” Trim assured her smoothly.

“Just how,” asked John Henry, “did you know Anglin had wandered into our cottage in the first place? If you were watching, why didn’t you catch him outside?”

“Careless Anglin,” clucked the man with the gun commiseratingly, “baffled by so little. Faye was waiting for him in the cottage next to yours. When she saw you turn on all your cottage lights, curiosity got the better of her. She crept over and — behold! — Anglin had left his signature by your front door. A handprint in blood. She immediately phoned me in the bar. By a stroke of fortune I was chatting with that voluble Loomis woman who told me all about your quiz contest. My mind leaped instantaneously to the obvious — I would gain entrée to your company by being the Bry-Ter Tooth-Paste man. If you had checked closely, you’d have found that Bry-Ter pays its bills from Los Angeles and does not provide a St. Christopher for its travelers.”

Sin shook her red hair unbelievingly. “You must be insane!” she whispered. Then the rashness and the truth of what she had said caught in her throat.

The little figure under the pirate hat stiffened and John Henry felt his flesh prickle coldly. “No,” said Mr. Trim softly. “Merely irreverent.”

In a gayer voice he said, “Faye is adept. She went to the Bar C Ranch tonight to discover the starting point for the route I gained from Gayner. It was no error — her releasing you two. We didn’t suspect you knew Walking Skull was the point and we were through with you. But what I commend her for is the way she waited, lurking in the shadows, guessing I would come along eventually and need her.”

“No!” said Sin. “She couldn’t have — ” A vagrant memory chilled her mind. Just the night before, when they were only on the edge of this whirlpool, she had sighed lightly to her husband, “That Jordan girl’s crazy.”

“Yes — my daughter. She removed Odell at the proper moment.”

“She couldn’t!” said John Henry, almost angrily. “I tried that longbow — she isn’t strong enough!”

“Does an arrow necessarily connote a bow behind it? Odell was stabbed with the arrow — not shot with it.”

Sin put her hand over her mouth to hold back the unbelieving sobs that wanted to come.

“Don’t, honey,” said her husband. “It doesn’t help anything.”

“No, nothing can be changed for most people,” Trim said briskly. “Only for an aggressive handful.” He peered up at the jagged streak of sky. It was lightening, with faint points of gray and pink. “Forward march!” he commanded cheerfully. “But this time we’ll reverse the order. You, Conover, will go first — and I will bring up the rear. After you, please.” He reined the bay horse aside to allow John Henry to pass. “I am counting on you, Conover. I count on you to realize that your first foolish move will send a bullet through your wife’s spine.”

“I get you,” John Henry said and the sickly hope of a galloping escape among the twisting canyons died within him.

“Left here,” Trim murmured.

The smoke was strong now. The horses lifted their heads. From near at hand sounded a soft whinny.

“Right at the next one,” the wizened pirate ordered.

They were shields for him, Sin realized. If Barselou were at the galleon and aroused, his first shots would find helpless targets. She prayed impotently that some providence would intervene.

They clip-clopped around the last corner. A few yards away, a brush fire had been built in the lee of a great boulder. The smoke eddied up lazily over the rock and drifted in a lazy thread down the canyon toward them. Two horses stood near the rock, their forelegs hobbled. The roan threw up his head and whinnied again softly in greeting.

The trio rode slowly forward, the only sounds the crackle of brush and the ring of hoofs. This final canyon had a wide sandy floor. Trim held his short revolver poised, eyes snapping from cliff to cliff. He spurred forward as they came abreast of the mammoth boulder. Then he reined his horse up and leaned both arms on the saddle horn, the gun dangling casually from one clawlike hand. His thin-lipped smile was triumphant.

A man lay beside the fire, his big body swathed in a blanket. The regular rise and fall of a bass snore betrayed the depth of his sleep.

“There is Mr. Barselou,” Trim said, his bad teeth a gleeful display. “Signed, sealed and delivered.” He gestured with pistol, up the canyon, toward the shadows. “And there is the Queen.”

AT FIRST, Sin couldn’t see it. Then, as she lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the bright embers of the campfire, she could discern a shadow darker than the rest. “Is that it, Johnny?”

“Don’t ask me,” John Henry muttered. “I can’t see a thing.”

Mr. Trim held his eyes on the sleeping Barselou but motioned with his head. “Look up, Conover. It’s in the sky. Another
Flying Dutchman.”

John Henry followed his advice. The jigsaw line of sky seemed to brighten with sudden effort and the outline of a wooden hull slowly took form against the rosy glow. The
Reina
had not come to rest on the canyon bottom. Rather, the galleon was wedged between the rock jaws of the chasm, almost two hundred feet above their heads. Either the ground had eroded beneath her keel in the past two centuries or some convulsion of the wasteland had dropped her below ground level into the great gap. The Queen was earthbound, as in some gigantic dry dock. Her timber sides gripped the sister cliffs, but her round belly scorned the earth and rested on air alone.

The dawn clicked to a shade of yellow and the aloof Queen seemed to pose in the fresh light.

Awestruck, Sin murmured, “Poor lonely thing. There’s not much left of her.”

She was right. The sails and masts and most of the high stern had rotted away, exposing three layers of deck to their gaze. Below the galleon, near Barselou’s temporary camp, was a pile of rubble that had fallen over the years. The heap was overgrown by the octopus vines of a green succulent, but here trailed a rusty length of chain and there jutted a crumbling plank from the rudder.

“There’s enough to prove she used to be a treasure ship, anyway,” Trim’s jubilant voice cried.

His gaze sharpened. The sleeping form on the ground stirred, moaned and raised itself on its elbows. “Good morning, Mr. Barselou!” Trim greeted him. His voice was climbing back to the octave the Conovers were more familiar with.

Barselou scrambled to his feet, still half-fettered by the heavy blanket. His jet-black hair stood in tangled spikes and his pale eyes were heavy with sleep. He wore whipcord breeches and a heavy brown shirt. His boots had not been removed for his rest, but the tops were partially unlaced.

His eyes widened, then narrowed at the three mounted figures above him in the dawn. One hairy hand twitched toward the carbine that lay on the ground and Trim said, “No.” Barselou halted, warily motionless, and looked at the pistol muzzle while the blanket slipped to a crumpled mass about his feet.

“Rude to awaken you like this,” Trim pattered on. “Particularly to the noise of a dream castle crumbling about your ears. But that’s the picaresque life, isn’t it?”

Barselou shifted his colorless gaze to the Conovers and his shoulders hunched grimly. “Odell,” he gritted in a voice charged with venom.

“You won’t have to worry about Mr. Odell,” Trim said. “Mr. Anglin, Mr. Odell, Mr. Gayner — all gone. And that young bellhop is being closely questioned by the police. Calamity has come.”

Barselou sagged visibly. His rugged face turned gray and he leaned for support against the boulder beside him. His colorless eyes, which seemed suddenly deeper in their sockets, glinted weakly at the Conovers. “It was you — ” he began hoarsely, then stopped as if the effort were too much.

“No,” said Sin earnestly. “We’re here by accident. Don’t you understand?
He’s
Jones.”

“Or Trim. Or Jordan,” said the little man gaily. “Yes, don’t give these two credit for my adventuring. The Conovers were brought because they knew of Walking Skull and for company through the night. And principally — ” his voice gained metallic edges “ — because they stumbled onto one of my last resorts in my wallet. Something I didn’t care to have publicized. I suppose a lot of their knowledge is dangerous.”

“Jones,” said Barselou dully.

“A mailing address only.” Trim chuckled merrily. “It’s comical that you took it for more than that. At this point, there’s no harm in telling you that my real name is Jordan, widower, age fifty-five, one daughter, and racing interests on the coast which return me enough to indulge my hobby of seeking out the exotic in life. We’re both members of the sporting world, Mr. Barselou, though we’ve never met. Quite a while ago I owned a couple of casinos in Las Vegas. Homer Anglin once worked for me.

“Anglin,” he mused and shook his head. “A borderline case of ingenuity. He remembered my penchant for the odd and hurried to me with news of the Queen which you hired him to discover. I knew he was selling to both sides, but he thought he held the reins secretly. His blunder was to disregard my instructions to communicate by mail when all was ready. He was in such a big hurry that he telegraphed.”

Barselou lifted his head. “I was pressing him.” Color began pouring back into the fierce face. “So you guessed I saw the wire.”

“I couldn’t ignore the chance, considering the hold you had in Azure. I generally include a female companion in my exploits — they kick up such a blinding dust. And in this case it was a sort of celebration. My daughter Faye had just been released from — ” Trim halted abruptly to glare at the pale couple on the horses beside him. “She was held illegally. Her only illness was over-originality!

“Forget that carbine!” he snapped, twisting back toward Barselou. The unmounted man shrugged and dropped his hands. Trim continued pleasantly. “So we had to separate for the time being, as you were expecting a pair of Joneses. The cottage had been reserved for a week, but with no mention of number or sex. All arrangements had been made for an appointment with Anglin there — except the day. When he wired instead of writing, Faye was forced to occupy the cottage alone, while I took a room. We didn’t dare to bear the least resemblance to a Mr. and Mrs. Jones of San Diego. To make a quick story of it, Anglin made a stupid mistake over the cottage number, thought I had reneged on the deal, and turned to you in desperation. I couldn’t catch him, but I stopped him.”

Barselou rubbed his palm under his rough chin. “And I blamed Odell — ”

Sin and John Henry sat silently, detached. They were watching a play on which the curtain would fall soon and they could applaud this magnificent little performer who smiled and nodded birdlike while he explained the murders of three men. But now Trim glanced overhead quickly. There was a tinge of gold on the cliff edges that reared ten feet or so above the imprisoned galleon.

“Light enough to work by,” he said happily. “I presume that’s what you slept away these precious hours for, Mr. Barselou. Well, shall we join the lady?”

Lieutenant Lay tossed the statement on his desk and said, “Run through it again.”

Sagmon Robottom pulled his swollen head up from his hands. His sun-browned skin was mottled with pallor and the crop of silver hair still stood up haphazardly. He sat on a hard wooden chair beside Lay’s desk in the cubbyhole that served the homicide chief as an office.

“I did the wrong thing,” he said hoarsely. All the hard planes of his face were broken. Lines that had been stern now seemed confused an ineffectual.

“I got that right here.” Lay tapped the statement. “Run through those bare facts again.” Leaning against the closed door, Thelma Loomis brushed ashes from her blue patrolman uniform.

Robottom cleared his throat. “I’m an archaeologist, Lieutenant. I first told the story of the lost Spanish galleon to Barselou more than a year ago. Naturally, I was eager to locate it. So was he and — well, we pooled our talents.”

“Sounds like a queer combination to me.”

“As time passed, I discovered that Barselou regarded the ship almost fanatically. I knew that it was the
Reina’s
jewels rather than the relics. I made myself overlook his personal motives. But believe me, Lieutenant, I didn’t realize how far he’d go!” His colorless voice pleaded as best it could.

“Go on,” said Lay inflexibly. “I don’t know anything yet.”

Robottom stared with gray unseeing eyes at the floor. “I supplied him with maps and what knowledge I possessed. He hired a man named Anglin to do the exploration and promised to sponsor an expedition later. A week ago I hurried here from Los Angeles. Anglin had found the ship.”

“You certainly hurried,” Thelma Loomis put in.

Robottom looked momentarily surprised and then went on, “Barselou phoned me Saturday night that the expedition was upset. A man and a woman named Jones, masquerading under the name of Conover, were trying to beat us to the
Reina.”
Robottom squirmed on the hard seat. “Lieutenant, those relics would have doubled my reputation. I had to discover them first!”

“All right.”

“I thought I might be able to bluff the Conovers out. I talked to the woman and thought I had succeeded. I was wrong. I found that out when they killed Gayner and made their getaway. By this time, I was very frightened. I hadn’t bargained for murder.”

“So you went out to the Bar C to talk things over with Barselou,” Lay prompted.

“I’ve told everything.” Robottom’s face flushed slightly. “I was looking for him in the ranch house when I heard horses gallop away toward the south. When I went out to the stable, I discovered that Odell too had been murdered — but apparently by the Jordan girl. I tried to remonstrate with her and — well — ”

“You got slugged,” Miss Loomis said, enjoyably.

“ — and your policewoman rescued me.”

The homicide chief glanced her way and passed it off with a “Sure.”

“What about this Faye Jordan, anyway?” Lay pressed. “I understand you know her pretty well, Robottom.” The blonde woman cocked her head.

“I met her once — this morning. That’s all, Lieutenant. We talked for a few minutes and I gave her a card to Barselou’s — ah — ”

“Casino,” said Lay evenly. “I know about it.” He consulted Thelma Loomis’ skeptical expression and then turned again to the man across the desk. “You might be in pretty hot water now, you know that? Conspiracy, possible accessory to a murder, intimidation — ”

Robottom attempted to straighten the creases of his soiled white trousers but his strong hands were shaking. He raised his tired face finally. “What are you going to do to me, Lieutenant?”

“What’ll you do if I let you go?” No hopeful shade crept into Robottom’s eyes. His dull voice replied automatically. “Why — I’ll go home — my wife — ” Lay nodded and made a gesture of dismissal. “Lieutenant — do you — ”

The police officer said, “Recognizance and this statement will do me for the time being. Just keep in touch.”

Sagmon Robottom stood up abruptly and the wooden chair clattered against the confining wall. Thelma Loomis moved away from the door.

The archaeologist looked from one to the other, tried to say something and then went out abruptly. The sound of his footsteps along the corridor died away. “Poppycock,” the woman said at last. “Don’t you think he’ll run all the way home to Myra?”

“Sure — right now. He’s had the scare of his life. But it won’t last.”

“You ought to read valentines instead of divorce rates,” Lay said mockingly. “If we’d told him who you are, he wouldn’t have even had Myra.” Fingers of sunrise were reaching across his desk. He got up and squeezed around it.

“Damn mess!” he said with sudden harshness. “I got a hunch the worst part isn’t over.”

“What about the girl?” Thelma Loomis asked curiously.

“We agree she’s nuts. I’ll check the asylums. I don’t think she just cracked — she’s been cracked before. Maybe there’s relatives.” He plucked his hat off a battered filing cabinet. “I can’t make answers out of her cat talk but at least she definitely places the Conovers at the ranch last night.”

Thelma Loomis opened the door and they stepped out into the cool dimness. At the end of the corridor, the dawn was a pale glow. “So the next step is to find the Conovers,” Lay said softly. “They think they’re sitting pretty. Well, they don’t know it, but they’re in a tight spot.”

It took them a half hour to climb the two hundred feet up to the suspended ship. Anglin had done his work well. A rough ladder of deep steps had been chipped in the soft stone of one cliff, leading up to the stern of the Queen.

John Henry, Barselou, Sin, Trim with his revolver — that was the order. Sin had never been so frightened in her life. The armed maniac was terrifying but unreal. There was no denying the actuality of being twenty-five, then fifty, then a hundred feet in the air with a gun at her heels and the hard ground a grim distance below. Sin clutched at the crude stone steps and kept her eyes as nearly closed as she dared. Then suddenly, to one side, was a rotting balcony of sand-covered wood. She grabbed for it and John Henry pulled her onto the deck of the galleon.

They huddled in the exact center of the platform, neither caring to look down the way they’d come.

“No wonder I couldn’t spot it from the air,” Barselou muttered. This topmost deck was heaped with sandy dirt and small rocks. Sagebrush, mesquite, a few struggling wild flowers had taken root. From above, it would seem a piece with the surrounding Badlands.

The masts were three broken stumps that barely poked through the small dunes on the main deck below them. Near one rail, the pocked back of a cannon still showed above the sand. John Henry looked nervously at the rock walls which held the Queen in place. Then he scanned the ground level a few feet over his head.

Trim interpreted the glance and chuckled. “No, Mr. Conover. Down into the hold. That’s where the chests will be.”

They were standing on the high stern deck. Barselou led the way lightly, butat every step the timbers beneath him creaked and groaned. The four picked their route gingerly across the towering deck, down a rotting flight of steps, and into the low waist of the galleon. Part of the decking had fallen away here, exposing the deck below and forming a sloping incline that joined the two levels. Barselou slid down the slope and landed with a heavy crash on the next platform. The
Reina
shuddered under the impact.

“Careful, damn you!” snapped Trim, his voice betraying the first sign of strain. “I don’t want this thing to collapse while I’m here.”

John Henry eased himself down the splintering boards. Then he extended a hand back to Sin. “They crossed the Pacific in this little boat?” she asked.