Man on a Rope (11 page)

Amanti placed his hands on the desk top and pushed himself erect, a flush suffusing his olive skin and his dark eyes resentful.

“Your suggestion is both preposterous and insulting,” he said. “Kindly get out of my office.”

Hudson sighed heavily but without apparent resentment. “Sure,” he said and stood up and opened the door.

Barry followed him out, stopping only long enough to lean over Lynn's shoulder and tell her he'd be waiting outside in fifteen minutes. Down on the sidewalk as they got into the Zephyr he said to Hudson:

“Now that you've made the rounds, what good did it do you?”

“I planted the seed,” Hudson said. “That's all I figured on for now. There's a good chance one of 'em knocked off Lambert. So long as he's got the diamonds there's a chance he'll get tagged. I'm giving him an out. If he takes it he gets rid of the stones—and he knows I won't talk—and he gets paid for them. People'll do funny things for a hundred grand, and don't you forget it.”

“Suppose you buy them and the police grab you.”

“Then I'll start to worry.”

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

“Didn't it ever occur to you that I might go to the police and tell them what you've been doing?”

“Why should you?” Hudson said with what seemed like genuine surprise. “You're not a rat, are you? And what good would it do? I like that word Amanti uses—‘hypothetical.' I've been making some hypothetical offers. Is that illegal?”

The only reply Barry could think of was a silent no, and as the taxi headed for the hotel he seemed to realize that Hudson had been quite serious in each one of his proposals.

CHAPTER NINE

W
HEN
B
ARRY DROVE UP
in front of the Windsor with Lynn Sanford he happened to glance up at the open-air lounge on the floor above. There, at a railside table watching the endless procession of cyclists on their way back from lunch—“breakfast” was the local term—sat Arthur Hudson and the busty blonde. Not wanting to renew his acquaintance at the moment, Barry pulled his head back and thought up a quick excuse.

“We haven't eaten at the Tower in quite a while,” he said. “How about trying that room out back?”

“All right,” Lynn said. “I'd like to.”

She said nothing more during the short ride, waiting until they had ordered their lunch and the waiter had gone before she put the question Barry knew was coming.

“What were you doing with Mr. Hudson?” she said. “What did he want with Mr. Amanti?”

Because he was in love and liked to share his experiences with this girl, Barry told her what he had been doing, seeing the hazel eyes widen and the lines of doubt and disapproval working on her young mouth. She voiced this disapproval when he finished. She had never heard of such an outrageous proposition. Could Hudson really be serious?

She was worried, too, about his willingness to accompany Hudson, and this was harder to explain because he did not want to tell her about the diamond pouch buried beneath the frangipani tree. To do so, to imply that someone had tried to frame him for murder, would upset her even more, and so he replied to her comments as best he could and then digressed to speak of the things that were missing from Amanti's office.

“Do you know about the envelope that had McBride's name on it?”

“There was an envelope.”

“Amanti told Superintendent Kerby he thought there was a note in it. He said McBride had borrowed money on that amphibian he owns.”

He paused, but she was no longer looking at him. She was slowly stirring her iced tea and the frown was still biting into her brow, and so he said:

“McBride could be the guy that broke into your place last night. He wears a watch with a metal band. You said whoever it was pulled your head back on his chest. That makes him a fairly tall man; taller than Ian Lambert, who also wears a metal band. Nothing was missing but your pocketbook—”

“I found it.”

“Where?”

“In the bushes beside the veranda.”

“What was missing besides the office key?”

“Nothing.”

“Suppose it was McBride,” he said. “He has to have a key to get into the office, so he takes a chance on getting yours. Would he take that chance just because he owed Lambert some money?… What else was in that envelope?” he asked gently.

Her eyes were deeply troubled when at last she met his gaze. “I wouldn't tell this to anyone but you,” she said, “because I don't know if it's true. But I did hear Mr. Amanti and Mr. Lambert talking once just after I'd gone to workthere. They were in the private office, but the transom was open and—well, I couldn't help hearing. It was about something that McBride had done, and a man named Thaxter.”

Barry said: “Oh—” and. tried to disguise his quickening interest.

“Whatever it was had happened a year before that,” she said. “Thaxter had worked at the ranch as a sort of foreman in charge of the slaughtering and those shipments by air—this was before Mr. Lambert sold out to the syndicate…. I'm not sure,” she said, “but I think Thaxter and McBride had a system of falsifying the weights or something and Lambert finally found out about it. Thaxter went to jail for two years. He was at the Penal Settlement on the lower Mazaruni, and I know he's out because he came to the office yesterday.”

“What did he want?”

“I think he wanted to know if Mr. Amanti knew of any opening for him.”

“And McBride?”

“Mr. Lambert needed McBride. He had to have someone to make those flights. I think he got some sort of confession along with a note promising to make up the shortage.”

Barry's mind went quickly back to the night before, recalling the car that had been parked outside, the ransacked desk. His hunch said that McBride had been there. McBride had looked for that envelope, and the odds were good that he was still somewhere around the house when he, Barry, had returned. He could have been there even earlier.

“Then if Lambert wanted to,” he said aloud, “he could still have sent McBride to prison.” To himself he added the thought that such a threat could be a motive for murder. But this did not explain the missing will, or the notebook, and now he said:

“Was there more than one notebook missing?”

“No.”

“How would anyone know what notebook to pick? The stuff you wrote in it was shorthand, wasn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Does Amanti know shorthand?”

“Not that I know of.”

The reply stymied him as he offered a cigarette and a light. He signaled the waiter and put a bill on the check, his dark-blue eyes somber in his concentration.

“What else was in the notebook?” he said finally. “I mean, the draft of that will didn't fill the whole book, did it?”

“No.” She hesitated, her head tipped in thought. “There was that, and some letters, I think. And—oh, yes. There was a report—”

“A report?”

“Well, more like a résumé. An evaluation of Mr. Lambert's estate. He wanted it ready when he signed the will so he could go over everything with Mr. Amanti and the bank—they were to be co-executors. At least until Mr. Lambert was settled in England.”

“And there'd be a date, wouldn't there?” he demanded as a new possibility suggested itself.

“What?”

“When you take a letter you put a date down, don't you?”

“Certainly.”

“A man wouldn't have to read shorthand,” he said half to himself while this new excitement churned inside him, “if he knew the date.”

“Stop mumbling, darling,” she said. “What are you trying to say?”

“There was a date on that report, or whatever you call it. Who besides you and Amanti knew what date it was dictated?”

“Why—” She hesitated, brows arching. “No one, I guess.” Then, understanding now what Barry was suggesting, she gave a little gasp and said: “But why would Mr. Amanti do a thing like that?”

“There was a copy of that report in the files,” Barry said. “Amanti says it was stolen, along with the copy of the will. The original of that report was on Lambert's desk last night. I saw it. But the police found no such list.”

He went on quickly then, explaining his suspicion of Amanti and understanding how a clever man who wanted to destroy all evidence of that report might also destroy the will and the copy to confuse the issue. Amanti had told the police that the shorthand notes on the will had been taken; he had said nothing at all about the estate list which had been taken down in the same notebook.

“I don't believe it,” Lynn said. “Why should—”

“Look, baby,” Barry said, taking her hand and helping her from the chair. “Lambert was pretty rough on anybody who cheated him; look what he did to Thaxter. That estate had to be right to the last penny when Lambert went over it. Suppose your boss was a little short. Maybe just temporarily. If Lambert had lived to discover that shortage, Amanti might have wound up just where Thaxter did.”

“Oh, really, Barry,” Lynn said. “You're just guessing. How do you know there was any such shortage?”

He took a breath and looked down at her and she looked so pretty and desirable that he grinned at her in spite of himself. He took her arm and they went along the side of the hotel toward the taxi parked in front.

“Somebody broke into your place,” he said. “Somebody broke into the office and slugged Amanti when he walked in on the guy. Somebody stole a notebook full of shorthand notes, but it doesn't have to be the same man. Somebody killed Lambert,” he said. “Maybe for the diamonds and maybe not.”

He did not add that someone had apparently tried to make him the number-one suspect. “All I know,” he said, “is that I want to be on that plane next Wednesday. The sooner I get back on the job, the sooner we get married.”

She stopped to cock her head at him, her eyes mischievous. “Those are your rules,” she said, “not mine. My papers are in order, I have a visitor's visa, and a little money in the bank. I can pay my own passage. If you weren't so stubborn we could go back together—”

He laughed. He said they had been all through that. He was not going to take her to New York until he was earning a living and had found a place to live.

“You're wonderful,” he said. “I love you.”

And if it had been any other girl but Lynn he would have kissed her then and there. But he had learned that her British shyness and reserve frowned on any such public display. Even nights in the back seat of Eddie Glynn's car she was cautious with her kisses. Only when they were alone, strolling in the shadow of the sea wall or in the privacy of her veranda when he said good-night, did her inhibitions vanish. These were the times when her ardor surprised him, and it was a fine thing to remember when he was no longer with her.

“In you go,” he said as he opened the door of the Zephyr and gave her a small pat that brought forth a muffled exclamation of halfhearted protest. “Dinner?” he said as the car started and her hand stole inside his.

“Un-unh. I promised last week to have dinner with the Allenbys,” she said, referring to friends of her uncle's. “I told you.”

“That's right, you did,” Barry said. “Lunch tomorrow?”

“Love it.”

CHAPTER TEN

B
ARRY WAITED
until Lynn had climbed the stairs and disappeared into Amanti's office, and then he slid in beside Eddie Glynn on the front seat. Eddie accepted the cigarette with thanks, brown eyes curious as he awaited instructions but offering no comment as Barry planned his next step.

He knew what he wanted to do, but not until he considered the man beside him did he have any idea of how to proceed. He was very fond of Eddie Glynn, who was always neat and never overcharged. Eddie was the sort you offered a drink after he had been driving you around because Eddie accepted with thanks but as an equal.

Native born but reasonably well traveled, Eddie, at forty, had found his niche. As a youth he had been to Brazil and Venezuela and Trinidad; to Surinam and French Guiana. He had dived for diamonds and panned for gold and assisted the government geologists. He had traveled the old cattle trail in the days before cold-storage plants, making the long trek from the savanna country below Lethem to the Berbice River and then by boat to New Amsterdam and up the coast to Georgetown and the slaughterhouses.

He knew what made the economy tick and would tell you if you asked him. He would tell you that absentee ownership and neglect of the worker was what had caused the political trouble in the past and brought the British regiment to the colony. He had little sympathy for Hammonds Ltd., the tentacle-like British company which owned sugar estates, ships, department stores, factories, drugstores, timber and mining leases, and a hotel. There was even a taxi company to compete with such free-lances as Eddie, and he had once stated that Hammonds was in every business but undertaking.

“And they should be in that too,” he had said, “because at least one person dies from Hammonds each day and that way they could keep the profit in the company.”

But Eddie was never bitter. He was critical of Hammonds only because they brought too much help from England and made too few promotions of the colonials. He had married the sister of a government official, he made a good living. He was his own boss, and because of his knowledge of the local scene he was seldom idle. It was this knowledge that Barry counted on when he asked if Eddie knew about the trouble between Colin Lambert and George Thaxter.

“Only that there was trouble,” Eddie said. “The way I heard it, Thaxter was short-changing Lambert and he went to jail for it. He just got out the day before yesterday…. I used to work with him,” he said. “He was a pretty decent chap when he stayed away from the rum. He should have known better than to fool with Lambert. There was a real hard case.”