Murder Queen High (9 page)

John Henry braked, gassed and swung the wheel simultaneously. The Mercury bounced off Highway 99 onto the dirt road. It skidded in the soft sand, swayed sickeningly for a moment, then righted itself proudly to shoot off at right angles to the highway, fifty yards off the pavement, Conover brought the coupe to a complete stop behind the screen of trees.

Sin peeked out from behind her arms. “Johnny! What are you stopping for? They’ll — ”

“The hell with our clothes! We’ll send for them.”

John Henry seized his wife’s limp hand reassuringly and tucked it under his arm. They hastened down the wide hallway, looking from side to side for a friendly door. The rows of blank portals with discreet metal numbers were interrupted only by a stair well. At the end was a window showing the filigreed iron railing of the fire escape. “Where’s Trim’s room?” he wondered. “We might hide in there till they get tired hunting for us.”

“I don’t know,” Sin said anxiously. “Maybe we should start knocking on doors.”

John. Henry halted by the stair well, indecisive. By the window at the end of the hall, the last door opened. Sin wrapped herself around his arm so suddenly that he let out a yelp of surprise.

“Oh, Johnny — it’s
him!”

The man who stepped out into the hall was Sagmon Robottom. His white suit was natty and razor-creased. In one hand he carried a sun helmet, in the other his key. Every lean plane of his dark face went astonished as he sighted the Conovers. Then his features contorted sternly and he strode forward. The hand with the key plunged into his coat pocket and stayed there, a grim bulge at his side.

John Henry cut off Sin’s incipient scream at the first syllable. Her jerked her sideways and dashed down the carpeted stairs. Stumbling, gasping with renewed terror, she followed him in his wild flight toward the second floor. Ringing again in Sin’s ears was the screech of tropical birds. Behind them, Robottom’s flat shout trailed off and was lost in the curve of the staircase.

The second floor was exactly like the third — a deserted carpeted gauntlet of reticent doors. John Henry swung around the banister and took one heedless step down toward the lobby. Then Sin was clawing him to a stop. She backed up so quickly that she stumbled and sat down heavily.

In huge relief on the stucco wall of the landing was the shadow of a man climbing the stairs. A few more steps and the person himself would come into view at the turn of the staircase. The shadow wore a pillbox hat. It might be any bellhop. Or it might be Vernon.

With a squeak, Sin was on her feet again. John Henry hustled her along the hallway. The window at the end was a curtained view of the free outdoors.

“I can’t go any farther,” Sin panted as he half-carried her along.

John Henry had no encouraging reply. He was winded, too.

He fought the window sash up and stuck his head out. The ground, a green jungle of matted shrubbery, was a long story below. His face brightened anyway.

“Out on the fire escape, Sin. Hurry!”

She scrambled awkwardly over the sill, inevitably catching her heel in the full peasant skirt. Swearing tensely, her husband followed. She clung to him on the grillwork platform. The long iron stairway was counterweighted to remain swung aloft when not in use. Sin’s unreasoning fear of heights took precedent. She eyed the meager steps in terror.

“Johnny! I can’t go down that thing!”

“Don’t argue about it now. It’s safe.”

Her tentative foot tried it out. “But it moves!” she wailed. Down the hall, John Henry could hear Vernon’s yell of triumph as he spotted the fugitives.

Conover delayed no longer. Seizing his protesting wife, he stepped out onto the swaying section of fire escape. It creaked rustily and the far end began to float toward the verdant ground. Sin’s eyes were tight shut against her husband’s lapel. Her hands clutched each other behind his back.

There was a clank and a slight bounce. The Conovers clattered down the iron steps and Sin made thankful noises when her feet reached solid earth. Freed of their weight, the staircase soared back to the second floor.

Vernon stuck his dour face out of the window above them and immediately withdrew it.

“The car — come on!” growled John Henry. They jammed their bodies into the yielding shrubbery. Oleanders clung to them with ardent hands, scratching Sin’s, bare arms and legs.

“Do you think we’re safe, Johnny?”

“I don’t know. Let’s not stop and find out.”

They trotted along the north wing of the hotel between a square-cut hedge and the stucco wall. When the hedge

John Henry waved her silent. He was half-turned in the seat, watching what he could see of the main road through the back window. There was a furious rush of sound and the Buick sedan tore by them, its driver’s eyes fixed unswervingly on the highway ahead. Vernon was alone in the car. Evidently Gayner had given up the chase.

Only when the black car had topped another hump in the ground and disappeared did John Henry blow out his breath. He grinned at his wife and let out the clutch again. The Mercury lurched forward over the uneven road. “I think we shook him for a while,” he said. “By the time he finds out we’re not in front of him, we’ll be in safe company.”

Sin dropped her shoulders back against the leather cushions. John Henry patted the closest portion of filmy blouse comfortingly and didn’t say anything. By the time she raised a face that was white under its tan, the Bar C Ranch sprawled before the windshield.

“There it is, Sin.”

“That’s a nice house, honey,” Sin said, her voice under control again.

They whisked under the log arch, up the driveway past the tamarisks and oleanders and came to a stop in the parking area. The drove of untended automobiles had vanished from the rocky pasture. “H’m,” mused John Henry, “I hope the place isn’t closed.”

They didn’t knock. John Henry had no admittance card and he didn’t want to summon Sidney. The door opened easily, sliding silently into the dim foyer of the ranch house. The Conovers stepped in tentatively.

“I don’t hear anything. You don’t hear anything, do you?” Sin pressed the point nervously.

“It’s in a back wing. That’s where everybody is.” They crept cautiously down the long gloomy corridor and John Henry pulled aside the drape. Then he felt happier. Through the heavy arched door to the gambling salon he could hear the familiar raucous song of the juke box and the clang of the slot machine just inside.

“We made it all right, honey!” he cried joyously, seizing his wife by one hand. He threw open the big door and plunged into the casino.

They stopped short on the threshold. The juke box was lit up crimsonly and blared noise of merrymaking but the great square room was empty of gamblers. All but one of the overhead fluorescent lights had been turned out. Felt covers had transformed the roulette and faro and poker tables into squat green mushrooms.

And the two men remained of the crowd that John Henry had expected to mingle with.

“Well, look who came,” said Barselou from where he stood before the one-armed bandit. He had pulled down the lever and the machine made buzzing sounds. It stopped whirring with a click and then a flood of quarters began to pour from the metal mouth.

“Jack pot,” commented the other man and got up from his impromptu seat on a covered faro table. It was the plump waiter from the Ship of the Desert, but dressed now in a brown suit. In one fat hand he held a revolver.

“I DIDN’T expect you so soon,” Barselou remarked. Unperturbed, he scooped up the quarters with one clench of his hand.

The pseudo-waiter was ogling Sin’s tan calves. He gestured shortly with the gun barrel. “Come the rest of the way in. And close the door.”

The stupefied Conovers obeyed. A metal panel swung open on the side of the slot machine. Barselou dumped the jack pot back in, closed the panel and locked it. He pulled the key from the lock and jerked his head at the fat man. “Better check the situation, Odell.”

Odell advanced watchfully and patted John Henry’s pockets and armpits and thighs with a questioning hand. Then he looked at the girl and grinned lopsided. Sin shrank behind her husband and Conover clenched his fists.

“We won’t cause bad feeling,” Barselou told his henchman. Odell shrugged too late to be convincing. He moved away a few feet.

John Henry recovered his voice, though when he spoke it was scarcely better than a croak. “Lieutenant Lay?” he asked.

“Oh, were you expecting to meet him here?” Barselou asked suspiciously. When they didn’t answer, he said, “It doesn’t matter. He’s been gone a good hour. Lay’s a conscientious boy.”

“Too conscientious,” Odell put in.

“His bright idea was that we close down until the Anglin killing blows over. I didn’t argue the point. Sidney and the boys deserve a couple days off.”

John Henry mentally cursed himself for not heeding the warning of the empty parking lot.

Barselou waved them to the nearest circular table. “We might as well be comfortable.” As the Conovers took chairs at the green-shrouded board, he said, “You see, the Bar C is more than a place of business to me. I like to know I can get up any time during the night and watch people making money for me. This is also my home.”

John Henry couldn’t suppress an audible groan.

Barselou sat in a chair opposite. The one fluorescent light which was alive shone directly overhead, erasing shadows unless a hand moved onto the felt cover. It threw Barselou’s rugged face into high relief. Where his eyes should have been were black pits. Odell leaned against the slot machine, carefully inattentive.

“All right,” said the big man. He was not deliberately unsmiling but, relaxed, his face was a cruel passionless block. “Now suppose we talk business.”

“Okay,” said John Henry, thinking fast, “we’re willing to listen to a proposition.”

Odell grunted. He was cleaning his nails with a matchstick. The gun had disappeared into a side coat pocket. Barselou looked more as if he were not smiling on purpose. “You don’t catch on. You’re in no position to bargain. We hold the cards, Conover.”

“But not the Queen,” Sin’s small voice said from her chair.

“Don’t let this room fool you,” Barselou said coldly.

“Gambling is for people who have to. This is my place — but it’s not my way of life.” From somewhere beneath the table, his hands came up with a deck of cards. They blurred in a shuffle and then he dealt the four top cards onto the green cloth, face up. Four queens.

“You see, I don’t gamble,” Barselou said. “You’re right. I don’t hold the big Queen. But I hold you,”

“That’s a nice show,” said John Henry. “I’m still listening.

“Then listen to this — I want to know everything that went on between you and Anglin.”

“And if we don’t feel like telling?”

Barselou nearly got up. Odell moved forward from the slot machine, his hand falling into his coat pocket. Sin grabbed her husband’s tense arm and said quickly, “Wait! please wait a minute!” The men all looked at her. “Mr. Barselou, we have a confession to make.”

“You came to the right church,” said Odell.

“We don’t know what all this is about.”

Barselou laughed incredulously. The harsh sound died somewhere in the unlit reaches of the casino.

“That’s right, Barselou,” said John Henry with angry deliberation. “And furthermore, we don’t want to know. All we want to do is get out of here and forget all about it. We were going home when we got sidetracked here.”

Barselou shook his heavy head slowly. “That won’t do. Not at all.”

“Please, Mr. Barselou,” Sin pleaded. “It’s true. We’re telling you the truth. We don’t know anything you want. We don’t know anything. Please believe us!”

A vision of a pencil in a desk drawer suddenly rose in John Henry’s mind — Anglin’s Eversharp that continued the long safe combination. He sneaked a guilty look at his wife, but her beseeching eyes were holding to their host. Either Sin had forgotten the pencil or she was using her feminine guile to throw Barselou a trifle off-balance.

“So you don’t know what it’s all about,” mocked Barselou, considering them with narrowed eyes. “I don’t swallow that, Mrs. Conover. You yourself told Gayner — ”

“Please,” Sin said earnestly.

A short stillness fell while Barselou turned something over in his mind. John Henry sat motionless, nerves taut, surrounded by the implements of chance. He fumbled with the beginnings of a plan, a gesture that might get Sin out of Azure, anyway.

Barselou had reached a conclusion. “Maybe,” he said. “It’s possible Anglin didn’t tell you everything he knew. Maybe he didn’t think you’d believe the actual facts about the Queen. Or maybe you’re lying. It won’t cost me anything to refresh your memory. I want you to know what an unbelievable amount of money is at stake.”

“You go a long way around,” Odell complained.

“But I’m getting there,” his employer said. He linked heavy fingers before him on the table and leaned toward the young couple. “The story of the Queen is quite a story, Mrs. Conover. If you’ve read any California history at all, you should know it.”

Sin shook her head several times in denial. John Henry kept silent, prodding his brain. He had something to bargain with — the all-important pencil — but how to use it?

“In the year 1744, a Spanish galleon left Manila, headed for Mexico. This ship was loaded with valuables — jewels, silks, gold and other precious metals. The wealth of the Philippines, intended for Philip the Fifth. This ship was one of the Manila galleons that had been crossing the Pacific every year for almost two centuries. They came south along the coast of California and eventually arrived in Mexico — with luck. It was a hard trip, Mrs. Conover. It took several months and usually half the crew died of scurvy before they got to Acapulco.

“On top of this, there were other hazards. Pirates. They flocked from all over the world to get a crack at the Manila galleon. Sir Francis Drake, Woodes Rogers, Shelvocke, Clipperton — all of them had their try, one time or another. And there were plenty of others. They’d wait for the galleon in one of the harbors along the California coast. In 1744, this section of the country was unexplored. Then when the galleon came along the pirates would jump her. The battle was usually one-sided.”

Barselou let his gaze encompass John Henry. “So the first point, Conover, is that the particular ship that left Manila in 1744 was named
La Reina
— the Queen.”

“Okay,” said John Henry against his wife’s soft exclamation. “What does — ”

“The Queen was commanded by a Spanish officer named Arvaez y Moneada. She carried a mighty rich cargo that year. To give you an idea, old records I’ve seen put the value of the pearls alone at four or five million dollars.”

“Gosh,” Sin murmured in an awed voice.

“An English pirate named Bledsoe fired on the Queen off the tip of Lower California. But Captain Arvaez was lucky. A storm blew up about that time and he was able to dodge the buccaneers. However, to be on the safe side, Arvaez decided to take the
Reina
north, up the Gulf of California. I guess he figured on waiting a few days until Bledsoe got out of the neighborhood.

“Well, the
Reina
sailed north, killing time. According to the old Spanish charts, she had reached the head of the Gulf. But as far as Arvaez could see to the north was a great inland sea. Neither he nor his navigator, a Portuguese named Ferrelo, had dreamed of such a body of water. But I don’t suppose they were too surprised. In those days, the maps were more often wrong than right.

“Arvaez decided to explore this new sea. Ferrelo objected, according to what he said later, but Arvaez was the boss. So the
Reina
kept going north. Now and then they passed little islands but there wasn’t any signs of life. After several days, Arvaez discovered the sea was getting shallower. So he turned back to the south.”

John Henry said, “What has all this got to do with us, anyway?”

“Don’t rush me, Conover. You wanted to know details. The
Reina
headed south. Then Arvaez got the shock of his life. The way was blocked. The water had disappeared and only sand was left. Desperately, he sailed back and forth. Everywhere he went, the inland sea was drying up. At last, there wasn’t enough water to allow the
Reina
to draw. Her keel struck bottom and that was that.”

“I don’t understand,” Sin said slowly.

Barselou turned his shadowed eye-sockets on her again. “Sounds like a bad dream, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t. Here’s what had happened. There’d been heavy rains and this made the Colorado River overflow its banks. The overflow flooded this desert country, most of which is below sea level, anyway. The Queen sailed in when the flood was at its height. Then when the waters receded, she was left high and dry.” He surveyed the Conovers’ expressions of incredulity. “It’s not only possible — it’s fact. The same thing — the floods, I mean — has happened three times since that we have proof of. The last time was in 1905. That’s how the present Salton Sea got there.”

“Oh!” cried Sin excitedly. “That’s what you were doing with those maps!”

Barselou’s heavy lips curled ironically. “Brilliant,” he murmured. “But let me finish the story. When the water was completely gone, the
Reina
was stranded in the middle of the desert. Arvaez and his crew were in a bad spot for sure. Hundreds of miles from civilization, a cargo worth millions and no way to get it out. No certainty of even getting out alive.

“They did what they could. Arvaez took a sighting. Then they packed up what they could carry and hit the trail for Mexico. Only one man made it — Ferrelo, the navigator. Indians or thirst took care of the rest. Ferrelo didn’t much want to go back and look for the Queen,-but he passed on what he knew about her. So during the next sixty or seventy years, several parties searched all over this section of the country for the lost treasure ship. But they didn’t find her.”

“How come?” John Henry wanted to know with sudden belligerence. If the Spaniards had rescued their ship it would have saved him a great deal of trouble. Possibly his life, the chilling reflection went on.

“Maybe Arvaez made a mistake in his sighting. Maybe Ferrelo’s memory was bad. The important part is that the galleon stayed lost — until very recently. That’s where you folks come in.”

“You know where the Queen is now?” Sin asked unbelievingly.

“The general location, yes. From the dope I’ve gathered, I figure she’s hidden somewhere in the Badlands. That’s a section of desert between here and San Felipe Creek to the south. It’s rocky, rugged country, chopped up with a lot of sublevel canyons that twist and turn every which way.”

“If you know where it is, why don’t you — ”

“Because finding something in the Badlands is like looking for the needle in the haystack,” Barselou replied coldly. “You can find it if you’ve got the time. I thought I had the time — until you showed up.” His head tilted so that his eyes caught the bluish-white light. The pupils showed as chips of silvered glass. “Now I can’t afford to wait. From here on in, you help.”

“What about Anglin?” John Henry insisted. “Who killed him?”

Odell flipped away the matchstick. His red eyes, hooded by puffy lids, gleamed. He said, “Why, you did, Mr. Jones.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Barselou impatiently, ignoring the shocked faces across the table. “Anglin’s a dead issue. He doesn’t interest me any more.”

“Well, he interests me,” said John Henry hotly, “particularly if it boils down to a mistake in our name.”

“Which is not Jones,” Sin added.

Barselou laughed suddenly. There was no amusement to be shared in the sound. “I hired Anglin last year to find the Queen. I was to pay him so much over expenses. A week ago, Anglin said he was on the right track. The galleon was somewhere in the Badlands and he was figuring out a route I could follow through the canyons to reach her, beginning at a fixed starting point which we agreed on.”

“Oh!” Sin clapped her hands up over her mouth. The significance of the combination in the mechanical pencil had just come to her. John Henry nudged her under the table with a warning knee.

Barselou’s chilly eyes watched the byplay. “Yesterday Odell found out that Anglin wasn’t playing all his cards over the board.”

“He thought he’d play it smart,” Odell muttered and his mouth contracted bleakly.

“Anglin had wired to a Mr. and Mrs. Jones in San Diego telling them that he’d found the Queen. What exactly Anglin had in his mind, I don’t know — perhaps he intended to force my price up. Or maybe he intended to collect from two people instead of one.” Barselou’s blunt nails punched into his palms. “However, Mr. and Mrs. Conover — or Jones — I will not play parlor games.”

Sin protested faintly, “But we’re not the — ”

“We tried to get to Anglin before he saw you. We couldn’t. So we tried to bluff you out. That didn’t work either. Then — ” he looked at Odell “Anglin got himself shot.”

John Henry said quickly and desperately, “You know we didn’t kill him, Barselou. You were right behind me. He was shot in the back and fell into my arms.”

“I can’t remember, Conover.”

“If you think we killed Anglin, then turn us over to the police — ”

Barselou bared his teeth in what was meant to be a grin. “You don’t get the point, Conover. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done. All I want from you is the other half of the puzzle. Anglin had only one thing that was worth a damn — and that was the route I need to find the Queen.”

After a long silence, John Henry spoke. He said carefully, “I’m not saying we have the route, Barselou. But if we have — and hand it over to you — what next? The last guy that had the Queen information for you got killed at your door.”