City of Brass (8 page)

“She sighed a bit. “Ten years of it now. That’s a long time for anything. I’ll bet even Adam and Eve got tired after the first ten years. That’s probably why it was so easy for the serpent.”

“I didn’t think anyone ever tired of money. Baine must be worth a cool hundred million, and it’s family owned—no stockholders to get in your hair.”

The warm breeze caught at her hair and pulled it free behind her, billowing out in a beautiful way I remembered from the first time I’d seen her. She was still a pretty girl, though some others might have now considered her a beautiful woman. She was Mrs. Foster Baine … I searched my memory for her first name and finally came up with it.

“Betty.”

“What?”

“Betty Baine. They go together.”

“Yes,” she answered seriously, “I suppose they do.”

“Tell me about it?”

“What is there to tell? He was charming, rich, and in love with me. I was past twenty-five and beginning to look over my shoulder at my youth. One night I just sat alone in my room thinking about it, and I guess I decided to marry the first man who came along. Foster Baine was that man.”

“Too bad I didn’t come back.” I didn’t really know if I meant it, but it was something to say.

“You’re married now?”

I nodded.

“Children?”

“No. Shelly—my wife—well …” I stumbled to a lame halt. There was no reason to discuss personal matters with Betty Baine. She’d only been the briefest of shadows in my past, a girl whose very name I’d had trouble remembering.

“Where did you meet her?”

“Out west. In a little town called Gidaz. It’s a long story. That’s where I met Simon Ark too.”

“That strange man who was with you last night …Who is he?”

“So many times people have asked me that question, and to tell you the truth I still haven’t got the answer. At least I haven’t got an answer that satisfies me. He’s a man, a wanderer, a searcher. Perhaps in a way he is all men, seeking the ultimate truth that can never be found.”

“Only fools seek truth,” she said. “Others are content with appearances. Life is too short.”

“It has been longer for Simon Ark,” I said. “He has the time to seek truth.”

She turned down a narrow street that seemed to be leading out of the city. Gradually the houses grew further apart and soon here and there a farm appeared on the landscape. A cow grazing in a field of high grass, the stalks of corn just beginning their annual spurt of growth …

“What’s your interest in Cathy Clark?” she asked suddenly.

“No interest in the girl personally. I only met her once, very briefly. But I’ve known Mahon for several years.”

“He’s got money,” she said. “So’s his wife. The Clarks were a wealthy family once, and Jean got it all.”

“You know her?”

“Not really. She’s a bit under my age group, you know. But of course I’ve heard of her. The whole city knows how she trapped Henry Mahon into marrying her.”

“They seem happy.”

“She is a beautiful, wealthy, intelligent girl. He has no complaint.”

“What about Cathy? I understand she got shortchanged on the money end.”

Betty Baine gave a slight shrug. “Her sister took good care of her. She always got everything she wanted.”

It was all country now, with acres of rolling farmland in every direction. I’d always admired upstate New York for this virtue—it could be agricultural when it wanted without the intruding glare of wheat fields by the mile that were so typical of the midwest.

I was beginning to get restless, though, riding like this toward nowhere with a woman I hardly knew any more. “Would you mind telling me where we are going?”

She half turned her head toward me. “If it was anyone but you I couldn’t do this. But I feel you’ll understand.”

“Understand what?” Was she about to seduce me?

“Foster—my husband—has a great many problems, personal problems. I think it would kill him if they were made public.”

“I’m not interested in making trouble for your husband, Betty.”

“You’re interested in Cathy Clark, aren’t you? And in Professor Wilber?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“And don’t you realize that in a city like this all roads of scandal lead directly to our doorstep? Don’t you realize that if Cathy Clark’s killing involves Professor Wilber it also involves Foster Baine and me?”

“You’re worried about the scandal? You’re apparently not worried about being seen driving around town with an old boy friend.”

“That kind of talk never worried me,” she answered smugly, and turned the car onto a bumpy dirt road. “Hang on, we’re almost there.”

“Almost where?”

“To the Baine family secret. The skeleton in the closet.”

“Does your husband know you’re taking me out here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Some things have to be done. You want to know about Professor Wilber’s work and I’m going to tell you. Maybe then you’ll be convinced it doesn’t concern Cathy Clark’s killing.”

I sat back in the seat, trying to relax, and presently we topped a ridge to look down on a rambling old house that might have been something out of Hawthorne or Dickens. Certainly it was a house from the past, a house that had seen a good century of life and death. Yet some small attempts had been made to modernize it—a bright brick chimney contrasted sharply with the drabness of the faded gray sideboards. We passed a single wooden name sign bearing the simple word
Baine,
and this too looked somehow old and faded.

“The family homestead?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Foster was born in this house.”

“But his parents are dead, aren’t they?”

She pulled up and parked behind a black Ford, the only other car in sight. “Most people think so. You lose track so easily of widows after their famous husbands pass on.”

“You mean Foster Baine’s mother is still living in there?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. She was already out of the car, heading up the front steps with quick, sure strides. I followed, a bit uncertainly.

The door was opened to her ring by a dumpy, middle-aged woman who could only have been a cook. “Hello, Gerta,” Betty Baine said. “How is she today?”

The woman shrugged. “The same. She’s always the same.”

“Has Father Fox been here today?”

“Sure. He comes every morning, sometimes before I’m up.”

I’d figured Mrs. Baine for some rare illness, but this mention of a priest threw me for a loss. What type of illness required the daily ministrations of a priest?

“We want to see her,” Betty said. “Just for a moment.”

The woman called Gerta eyed me suspiciously. “Does the mister know about
him
?”

“It’s all right. I’ll take full responsibility.” She turned to me. “Come on, this way.”

I followed her toward the front of the house, until we reached a locked door. Betty motioned to the woman and she produced a key from somewhere, inserting it in the gleaming lock that was like a sleeping eye to the heavy wooden door. Inside, all was semi-darkness. Blinds were tight on the windows and there was only the dim glow of dying embers from the fireplace to cast a flickering fire over the room. But my eyes went first to the woman who sat upright on a straight-backed chair in the very center of the room. Her eyes had been closed, but now she opened them, gazing out at us from a wrinkled yet strangely peaceful face. She was not a young woman, and I would have guessed her age at near seventy-five. That was Foster Baine’s mother I had no doubt—the face bore the Baine look, as little of it as I’d seen.

“Hello, mother,” Betty said. “I brought you a visitor.”

The old woman focused her eyes on me. “Who?” she asked, nothing more.

“Just a friend, Mrs. Baine,” I answered. “You don’t know me.”

A shadow seemed to pass across the face and the old head nodded a bit. Then her eyes flickered shut. “She’s sleeping,” Betty Baine said.

“What’s this all about, anyway?” I asked her.

“Look.” Betty walked over and opened one of the blinds a bit, so that a ray of sunlight fell across the room and onto the woman’s sleeping figure. Then she came back and reached for the two wrinkled hands lightly clasped in Mrs. Baine’s lap. I bent over to see what she was trying to show me.

In the palm of each hand was a dark area, like a wound yet somehow different. I’d never seen anything like it before. “What is it?” I asked.

“Stigmata. The wounds of Christ.”

“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard her clearly.

“Mrs. Baine carries the wounds of the crucified Christ on her body. On her hands, her feet, and her side. In addition, she subsists solely on Communion given her each morning by Father Fox. She has eaten nothing in over five years.”

I let out my breath in a low sigh. “That’s fantastic.”

“Nevertheless, it’s true. Foster Baine’s mother is a living saint.”

“And you keep her here like this, locked up in this room?”

“There’s no room in Baine City for a saint, especially when she happens to be Foster Baine’s mother.”

“You’re Catholics?”

She shook her head. “No, but Mrs. Baine was—is.”

“And this Father Fox—what does he say about all this?”

“Nothing. He comes, every morning, to give her Holy Communion, but he never talks about it. I get the impression he doesn’t believe his own eyes.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“Only her family doctor has seen her since it started. He’s at a loss for any normal explanation. And Professor Wilber, of course.”

I’d forgotten about Wilber. “What’s his connection?”

She closed the blinds again, leaving us with only the fireplace glow. “He’s investigating it. He has been out here and carried on several experiments.”

I had to admit I could see no connection between this sainted woman and Cathy Clark. But why would Henry Mahon have thought this shocking? Odd, curious, fantastic—yes. But shocking? There was still something—many things—I didn’t understand.

The old woman stirred again in her chair. Her eyes opened and focused on me. “Are you a friend?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“They keep me here. I am alone with my God.”

“Are you a prisoner?” I asked, and caught a sharp look from Betty.

“A prisoner, yes. I must go out, into the world, to spread the word of God. She waved her hands with their ghastly wounds.

“Come,” Betty said, urging me out. “We must leave now. She’s getting excited.”

There was nothing more I could do. But I knew that Simon Ark would be most interested in this strange woman with the wounds of Christ on her body. I followed Betty out of the room, and we drove back to Baine City in tight-lipped concentration. Very possibly Betty was beginning to regret her action in showing off the family secret …

Surprisingly enough, Simon Ark was sitting in my hotel room, staring at the city. He turned as I entered and smiled a greeting. “My friend, the pieces of the puzzle are now complete.”

“That’s what you think, Simon. I’ve got a whole new bag of puzzles—enough to baffle even you.”

“Oh?”

“Did you learn anything about Professor Wilber?”

He nodded. “I learned the nature of his experiments.”

“So did I.”

This seemed to surprise him. “About the animals?”

“Animals? No, this is something else.” And I quickly told him about my visit to the country house of Mrs. Baine.

When I’d finished I saw that he was profoundly moved by the events I’d narrated. “You actually saw the markings on her hands?” he asked. “There was no trickery with the lighting?”

“They were there,” I insisted. “What point would they have in faking it? No one ever sees her.”

“Stigmata is rare, almost unheard of in this country,” he mused. “And yet—perhaps …”

“What about the animals, Simon? What did you learn?”

“That can wait,” he said. “We have much to do before morning.”

“I’m tired.”

“There will be time to rest later. Right now—we may still be in time to prevent another murder …”

Then we were in Professor Kane Wilber’s laboratory once again, with the afternoon sunlight filtering through high windows. He’d been surprised to see us again, and now he was cautious—a man at bay, backed against one of his own monkey cages.

“What is it this time, gentlemen?” he asked.

“You work long hours on a holiday,” Simon observed.

“There is much to do.”

“With the animals?”

He looked away. “That and other things.”

“We know about old Mrs. Baine, Professor,” Simon said quietly.

“You do?” He made no effort to hide his surprise.

“What we want from you now is an account of these experiments we’re told you carried out.”

He was still on the defensive but he’d advanced from the cages now. “That information you’ll have to get from Foster Baine. I can tell you nothing.”

“You can tell us nothing about Cathy Clark, either?”

“Nothing.”

Simon moved a step closer, until he towered over the man. “You know much about this matter, Professor. You are too deeply involved.”

But Wilber only shrugged. “I can say nothing.”

“Very well,” Simon said. “Perhaps then I must release to the newspapers the information about the exact nature of your experiments with those apes.”

Wilber’s eyes narrowed. “You’re bluffing.”

“Am I? Should I mention the name of Mirza Ali Akbar to you?”

Whatever the name meant, it had its effect on Wilber. He seemed to shrink a bit inside. “Very well,” he said. “What do you wish to know about Mrs. Baine?”

“Is she really a stigmatic?”

Professor Wilber shrugged. “I have discovered no other explanation. They called me in some time ago to investigate the thing, but of course it’s a bit out of my field. I do know that she bears strange wound-like markings on her hands, feet and side. And she apparently needs no food or liquid nourishment to live. I have conducted careful searches of her room for any hiding places where food might be kept, but I have found nothing. It would appear to be a supernatural thing, from start to finish.”

Simon Ark was growing more interested by the minute, and I figured he’d already forgotten the Cathy Clark case and his promise to Quinn to reveal the murderer in the morning. Now he was filled with an excitement I’d rarely seen before, and as quickly as we’d arrived he was ready to depart.