Murder Queen High (13 page)

“Jealous?”

“Sagmon’s quite a hand with the girls. It’s been going on too long but now Myra’s gotten tired of it. Last week — the old last straw. Sagmon dashed down here without explaining and Myra’s sure there’s another woman involved. She’s pretty upset but if there’s to be a divorce it’s to be Myra who gets it. So here I am.”

“What have you got?”

“Nothing that’ll stand up in court — yet. But I’m getting warm. There’s a gal here at the hotel, name of Faye Jordan, that Glamor Boy thinks is hot stuff. She’s playing him on a line right now. But it’s just a question of time.”

“At twenty bucks a day. God, women!” said Lieutenant Lay scathingly. He opened his eyes again and rubbed his unshaven jaw.

“I was looking for Robottom when your men put the arm on me. It’s my guess that he’s off somewhere with the Jordan dame.” Thelma Loomis uncrossed her legs. “Now that I’ve shot square with you, Lieutenant, how about giving me a break and letting me go back to work?”

Lay got up. He smiled bitterly. “You’re about as square as a tennis ball — all you private cops. But go ahead, get back to your keyhole.” Thelma Loomis grinned and nodded thanks, no trace of resentment in her impassive face. “Oh, by the way,” Lay added, “since you’re looking for Robottom — ” He paused tantalizingly.

“You know where he is?” the blonde asked eagerly.

“The man I got in the lobby says he grabbed a taxi this evening and said something about going out to the Bar C Ranch.”

“Good.” Thelma Loomis rubbed her white gloves together “Good.”

Trim moved a hand to the horn button and turned off the car lights. Then they rolled slowly down the incline toward the rambling shadow of the Bar C Ranch. Beyond the gallows-like archway, the low ranch house showed no lights.

“Looks like Faye’s still here,” Sin said, speaking in an unnecessary whisper from the back seat. The Mercury still lowered inanimate before the house. The only cloud in the sky had floated mischievously before the moon, a cottony mask.

Trim coaxed the sedan to a quiet halt. He ceased listening to night sounds from the surrounding desert. “Still want to go through with it?” he inquired.

“Sure,” Sin said, pretending she meant it.

They opened the doors and got out. John Henry caressed the automatic pressed against his stomach. He tried to remember which button was the safety. He recalled too distinctly his most embarrassing army habit — during the one or two practices he’d undergone with firearms — of pressing the safety catch and watching the magazine plummet to the ground. Wisely, John Henry merely patted the gun butt and left it alone.

Trim led the way across the graveled lot. The cloud chose to drift from in front of the moon and the three furtive figures seemed to spring into focus. Sin was regretting her insistence on the expedition. Her white blouse made a distinctive target under the gleaming moon.

When John Henry veered toward the front door, Trim caught his sleeve with a quick hand. He shook his head. “Never mind stirring up trouble we don’t have to. Where are the horses?”

“The stable, I suppose.”

“Can you two ride?”

“Well — we’ve ridden.”

“Lead the way,” said the Federal man and stood aside. Hoping he was going in the right direction, John Henry tiptoed cautiously along the front of the silent house and turned the corner. The boxlike building, a half-story higher than the house, loomed in sharp outline a hundred yards away.

Trim nodded approval and brushed a finger across his lips. The trio started the long, exposed march from house to stable, pausing every other step to inspect the ranch house and listen for alien noises. As they entered the square black shadow cast by their goal, Sin let out a shivering sigh of relief.

“Now,” Trim began, “if we can — ” He made a convulsive movement. His boot heel landed on John Henry’s toe, and Conover doubled over groaning. Sin froze next to him, wide-eyed.

Something white fluttered in the gap between the sliding doors of the stable.

“Everybody just stand where they are,” Odell said, “and don’t make any sudden moves.”

He came plodding from the dark slot, the barrel of his .32 shiny over his fist. John Henry forgot his bruised toe.

“Imagine,” Odell said pleasantly. “Mr. and Mrs. Conover, back again. Who’s this?” He swung the revolver toward the little man.

“My name is Trim.”

Odell wasn’t impressed. His plump shoulders shook with inner laughter. “I figured somebody’d be along, just as soon as I heard Gayner got his.” The evening was not cold and he’d taken off his coat and tie. The white shirt seemed disembodied above the brown trousers. “Looks like I was right.”

“Where’s Barselou?” John Henry asked. “There’s some questions — ”

“Forget it. But let me tell you, Junior, I’m mighty happy you got back before he did. I wasn’t looking forward to explaining that rope trick, believe me.” His blood-shot eyes canvassed Sin. “I’m glad you came back, too.”

“Johnny — ” Sin’s voice shook.

Odell gestured with the gun. “Okay, turn around and put your hands on the back of your head.” He peered at Trim. “What the hell kind of hat you got on, anyway? Go ahead — turn around.” They faced the ranch house. Behind them Odell’s voice said, “Now start walking. Not too fast.”

The three head-clutching figures began to walk slowly back across the moonlit yard. Sin shifted her head enough to see her husband’s tight-lipped profile. “I’m sorry, Johnny,” she murmured.

“Keep moving,” Odell said. “And cut the talk.” He coughed.

They marched forward quickly in silence. Nearly to the ranch house, Sin glanced quickly to either side of her. Trim and John Henry were intent on where they were walking. But strain her ears as she might, Sin couldn’t hear any footsteps behind them. Maybe that was because of the sandy ground. She wondered if she dared peek around. Gritting her teeth, she lowered her hands cautiously from her neck, braced for a possible blow.

Nothing happened. Emboldened, she looked back. Then she whirled, grabbing at the two men. “Look!” she cried. “There’s no one following us — ”

“Where’d he go?” asked John Henry, astonished.

“Let’s get out of here before he comes back!”

Trim’s small arm clutched her in mid-flight, held her back. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Conover. He’s not coming back.” His finger pointed. Just outside the stable’s square shadow was a mound of dark and white. Something like a furled pennant stuck up from the sprawled figure.

John Henry ran toward it. Trim and Sin followed. Nearly there, Conover checked, turned and pulled his wife against his chest. “No. Just look the other way for a while.” A moment later, Trim rejoined them. His humpty-dumpty face was grave in the moonlight.

“Dead,” he said quietly.

“But how did it happen — no noise — ” Sin gulped.

“He was hit in the neck by an arrow. Death must have been almost instantaneous. Paralyzed him, maybe.”

Sin remembered Odell’s cough and shuddered. John Henry’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “Pretty lucky for us,” he said soberly, “though I guess that’s a kind of horrible thing to say.”

Trim said, “Save your sympathy. He didn’t deserve anything better.” He glanced at Sin’s trembling form. “Think about the otherwise.”

“Where — who could have shot the arrow?” she asked.

“There’s an archery range around at the other side of the house,” John Henry said. “Saw it this afternoon, coming out of the cellar.”

“That’s where it came from, then,” Trim ruminated. “Want to take a look?”

“I guess so,” said John Henry reluctantly. “What’ll we do with Sin?”

“Not a thing, Johnny. Where you go, I go.”

“Stay a little behind us, honey.” He pulled out the .45 as if he knew just what to do with it.

The archery range was empty. Nobody lurked out on the sparse brass behind the targets. Far off, a coyote howled.

Trim opened the coffin-size box against one side of the ranch house. “Unlocked,” he said. “Could have been anybody.”

The arrows were loose in felt-lined canisters on the floor of the outdoor closet. One space was empty in the rack that clamped the unstrung bows against the wall.” Someone had leaned the last weapon carelessly within the archery cabinet and its cord was still taut from tip to tip.

The agent lifted it out and tested the pull idly. It was a hickory longbow, taller than he was. “All longbows,” he commented. “Try that.”

John Henry took it and plucked at the cord. To bend the bow slightly required most of his strength. “I guess Barselou’s a pretty powerful guy.”

“I guess somebody else is, too,” said Trim and replaced the bow. The coyote howled again.

“Let’s get away from here,” Sin quavered.

Disturbed, the three hurried back to the stables. Sin gripped John Henry’s fingers and managed not to look at the crumpled body mercilessly floodlighted by the moon.

The horses in their stalls were restless. They tossed their heads and reared and neighed when the men approached. Sin huddled on a bale of hay by the doorway while Trim and her husband first pacified and then saddled three mounts. John Henry had a good deal of trouble subduing his steed, but the wizened FBI man proved surprisingly adept at the job and finished two saddlings while John Henry struggled with one.

Trim carried the last of the saddles and bridles into the feed room and banged the wooden door to behind him. Then he wedged the huge rusty padlock shut and jammed it with one blow of an old stirrup iron. “That’ll slow up anybody who’s going our way,” he remarked, his smile satisfied. He tossed the stirrup iron down and dusted his hands.

They swung silently onto their horses and moved out into the moonlit yard, the erect little pirate leading. Sin’s white blouse had lost all crispness and a shoulder seam was threatening to part. Her bright full skirt was wrinkled. It kept hitching above her knees ever time she changed position on the saddle. John Henry’s sport clothes looked no better.

The crunch of hoofs on the sandy ground was the only sound, but at the archery range Sin reined in and reached out a hand toward her husband. John Henry halted his horse. “Huh?”

After a minute she put on a faint smile. “It’s all right. For a minute there, I thought I heard a sound — like somebody trying to call.”

Her smile faded and she kicked her horse in the ribs. “Too much imagination, I guess.”

“THIS IS WALKING SKULL,” said Trim. “And that’s the start of the Badlands.” He gestured into the night.

The Conovers looked it over. Walking Skull was a rough bowl-shaped depression in the desert, several hundred yards across. It was littered with huge boulders and dotted with a few stunted palms.

“Why?” Sin wanted to know.

“Good thing the Bureau made me into a guide book before I came down,” Trim said. He explained that a weathered skeleton had been found leaning against one of the rocks years before, looking as if it were still trying to take the few steps that separated it from the tiny water hole. Of course, the bones were all gone now — carried home as souvenirs by tourists. But the skull had never been discovered. “The legend is that the skull still roams these parts at night searching for water.”

“Oh, no!” Sin said.

“You shouldn’t have told her,” was John Henry’s reaction.

To the south and to the west, the smooth desert had been carved into a twisted labyrinth of narrow, deep canyons, writhing snakes that turned here and there, joining and separating and losing themselves in the night shadows. A single canyon cracked the side of the rough bowl on the southwestern edge.

“I can see why you’d need a combination to find your shadow in a place like this,” John Henry observed. “I feel lost already.”

“That one canyon that cuts into Walking Skull — that must be the starting point. From then on it’s up to your wife.”

“How about it, Sin? What’s the first move?”

Sin wrinkled her tan forehead and concentrated, summoning the long list of R’s and L’s up before her eyes. On the ride from the Bar C Ranch, they had all agreed that these must stand for right and left and the number indicated the canyon to be followed.

“R dash one,” she announced triumphantly.

Trim nudged his horse forward, the Conovers followed. At the mouth of the canyon that led from Walking Skull into the Badlands, the pirate hat was outlined briefly and ludicrously against the sky for a moment. Then Trim disappeared between high sandstone pillars into the shadowy chasm. His voice echoed back, over the clip-clop of horses’ hoofs. “We turn right at the first cross-canyon. You still agree?”

The Conovers agreed in an echoing chorus. The dark jagged walls rose higher and higher on both sides. They rode down an incline until the sky was a crooked slit of comparatively pale blue overhead, then the canyon floor leveled somewhat.

“You still all right, honey?” Sin called over her shoulder. John Henry lurched in his saddle while his horse missed its footing temporarily. He hung onto the saddle horn and said, “Just dandy.”

“Here we are,” Trim announced. “I’m turning right.”

Sin’s eyes were becoming more accustomed to the reduced light. She could see the bay rump of the lead horse as the little man reined it into the first side canyon. Vegetation was sparse and scrawny in the gully they traveled. The floor was sand and smooth stones of all sizes. At the sides leaned great sheets of shale that had evidently crashed down from above. She looked up nervously. “How do we get back out?” she yelled to the man ahead of her. “Follow our own trail.”

“Can you see Barselou’s tracks?”

“I can’t see much of anything,” Trim replied cheerfully. “But three horses kicked things around more than one.

And we’ll be coming back by daylight. What’s the next turn, Mrs. Conover?”

It came to her easier this time. “Left three.”

John Henry bumped along reflecting on the sandstorm that might obliterate their return trail. Trim had requisitioned their only canteen from Barselou’s stable. Three emaciated bodies lost in the tangled canyons … vultures … whitening bones …

He grimaced and tried to forget the legend of Walking Skull.

Thelma Loomis turned her spotlight up on the timber archway and read the twig letters carefully. Then she clicked off the spot and urged the car forward up the curved driveway. The Bar C Ranch house was dark, a somber bulk in silver moonlight. She braked the automobile in front of the door. On the parking lot were two cars — a convertible coupé and a gray sedan.

Miss Loomis moved quickly. From her big plain purse, she dug out a snub-nosed silver revolver. Expertly, she flipped the cylinder out and examined the shiny brass shells protruding from every socket. Satisfied, she eased out of the car and stuck the revolver in the wide belt of her policeman uniform.

Her flashlight beam probed over the other two cars, then swung back to the gloomy house. Thelma Loomis walked the length of the low porch slowly, her practiced feet making only the faintest noise on the tile. Above her hung dark stalactites of bridles and branding irons. Nothing stirred.

“Uh-huh,” she murmured and clucked her tongue thoughtfully. Ignoring the brass knocker, she punched the button beside the door and stood listening to the distant loneliness of chimes. When the last tone had died, she tried the latch. The heavy door swung away from her on oiled hinges. Her flashlight cut a round hole into the blackness beyond. Lightly, she stepped after it and closed the door behind her.

John Henry squinted at the luminous dial of his wrist watch. It was nearly four hours since they’d left the Bar C Ranch. The moon was directly overhead now, melting the shadows at the bottom of the tortuous canyons.

He stood up in the stirrups and tried to find a more comfortable position.

Sin twisted around on her horse, her tired face pale in the moonlight. “Something wrong, honey?”

“I was just wishing this horse and I would have a meeting of minds,” he called. “We’ve met every place else.”

Beyond her, Trim halted his horse and said, “Not so much talking, please. If Barselou hears us — ”

John Henry lapsed into moody silence. The constant prospect of sheer canyon was monotonous. He punched a knee into his horse and it stopped. “I meant gid-dap, Nightmare,” he said wearily and tried a heel. He came up alongside the other two riders.

“You do think we must be nearly there, don’t you, Mr. Trim?” Sin was asking anxiously.

The Federal agent was indefatigable. He sat erect and alert in the saddle, apparently as fresh as when they had ridden away from the ranch house. His narrow shoulders shrugged under the blue buccaneer coat. “I hope you can answer that better than I can, Mrs. Conover. How many more numbers are there?”

Sin pushed her eyes shut and put her hands to her cheeks. She felt wrung dry. “I don’t know,” she confessed finally. “Two or three, I guess. They just seem to come one at a time.”

Trim pushed his cocked hat back farther on his bald head and grinned encouragement. “Didn’t mean to hound you. Guess I’m getting a little worn down myself. I keep worrying over what the office would say if they could see me now. What’s next?”

“Right one,” Sin replied automatically.

Trim flicked his reins and began to move toward the next gap in the high stone corridor. The Conovers trailed after him. Sin drooped in the saddle, her hair bouncing at every lurch of her horse. Her husband put over a comforting hand and stroked her shoulder. She lifted her head and smiled wanly at him.

For a while after they made the turn into a new chasm, there was no sound except the clip-clop of hoofs and the occasional swish of a tail. A spark enlivened the gloom now and then as an iron shoe glanced off rock. The walls, oddly-carved by the wind, towered almost a hundred feet over their heads.

Trim reined in. He tilted his pug nose upward, sniffing. Sin whispered, “What is it?”

“We’re getting close,” Trim muttered.

“How come? Whoa, Nightmare!”

“Do you smell anything?” The Conovers sniffed tentatively. “I caught a whiff of smoke just then. Campfire.”

“Barselou?”

“Maybe.” Trim sucked air over his teeth. “Or Mr. Jones.”

John Henry’s sleepiness disappeared as excitement hit him like a cold shower. Sin’s eyelids quit drooping. “I’m scared,” she said needlessly.

“The horses make noise enough. I don’t have to warn you two to be quiet from now on.”

“I’ll say you don’t.”

The FBI man straightened in his saddle. “What’s the next one, Mrs. Conover?”

Sin squinted studiously. The number seemed to elude her. “Left — left — two,” she said doubtfully.

Trim’s horse plodded forward.

They passed the first gray mouth of a canyon on the left. Sin caught her first scent of burning wood. Despite the danger it presaged, the familiar fragrance abated her nervousness. There was other human life in all this desolation.

She frowned suddenly. They had passed the second left-hand canyon. Sin cupped her hands beside her mouth and called after the little pirate softly. Trim wheeled his mount around and rode back. John Henry caught up with them once more.

“What is it, Mrs. Conover?”

“You’ve made a mistake,” Sin explained. “We passed the second canyon just then.”

“Oh, that,” deprecated Trim. “You were the one who made the mistake — not I. Your memory’s phenomenal, Mrs. Conover. But that last direction should be ‘left three,’ not ‘left two.’”

He dropped his reins on his saddle horn and opened his fist. Lying in the palm was a strip of oiled paper, a narrow curling strip of directions which began, R-1, L-3, R-2 …

Sin’s lips moved but no sound came out. John Henry’s mouth hung open loosely.

With his other hand Trim plucked the wooden pistol from his belt. He let John Henry stare at the cork on a string that was stuck in the muzzle. “Please be sensible, both of you. The cork is laughable but it comes out — followed by a very real bullet.”

John Henry saw his world reeling around his head. He spoke and didn’t know what he said. “Mr. Jones,” he croaked, “I presume?”

There wasn’t a soul in the house. Thelma Loomis was ready to stake her professional reputation on that.

But somewhere there had to be people. The evidence of the two cars pointed that way. Of course, Lieutenant Lay might have been wrong about Robottom. Or he might have been pulling her leg. He was the kind of guy who’d think it was funny.

She opened the back door and let herself out into a little patio, where galvanized-iron trash cans and an electric garbage disposer kept silent vigil. Outdoors was brighter than ever after the inky interior of the ranch house.

Miss Loomis went around the corner and headed for the higher boxlike building a hundred yards away. Suddenly, she stopped short, her hand fumbling for the snub-nosed revolver. Midway between the house and the other structure, something dark huddled on the ground, something that might have been a man. A darker blob crouched beside it.

“Good God!” she ejaculated. The second shadow had moved. Thelma Loomis was staring at the outline of a huge cat, its ears erect, its eyes gleaming brightly at her. Her hand shaking, she tried to level the muzzle of her .32 at the giant animal.

“You nearly surprised me,” the cat purred. “Not quite. Nearly.”

Miss Loomis took a firm grip on herself to keep from breaking and running. She forced her legs to carry her forward, up to the cat.

“Nice kitty,” she said unsteadily. The cat stood up on its hind legs and stretched.

Moonlight poured over the face of Faye Jordan and the blonde woman began to understand the cat disguise. She had forgotten that she, too, was in costume. Her nerves unwound slightly and she chuckled softly.

“You’re a policeman,” Faye Jordan remarked.

“That’s right.” Thelma Loomis felt her smile slackening as she scanned the other, the unmoving shadow, with professional interest. “You certainly surprised me. Both of you.”

“It’s pretty fur, don’t you think?” Faye said and preened the woolly material of her costume contentedly. “It zips down the back so I can get out. But I don’t want to get out. I want to wear it all the time.”

The other woman kneeled on the sandy ground and looked at the man huddled there. He was short and plump and dead. From the back of his neck the feather-tipped shaft of a long wooden arrow protruded. Blood had gushed forth sparingly, to dry in rivulets on his neck and his white shirt. He had been dead for some time, she decided.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Faye rubbed the back of one black mitten under her round chin. “I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

“Who killed him?”

“I did,” the girl said carelessly, her round eyes shiny. Thelma Loomis got up slowly, the revolver ready. “I have claws. Not everyone has claws as sharp as mine.” The girl crooked her mittened hands and scratched languorously in the air.

The blonde inspected the too-bright eyes, the vacuous pretty face with its tip-tilted nose and jaw now slack. “Why?” she asked softly.

Faye Jordan looked reproachful. “I hope you’re not going to ask all those questions, too.”

“Who else asked you questions?”

The girl assumed a mysterious expression and prowled away toward the stable. Thelma Loomis followed her into the shadows, her gun butt damp in her hand.

Faye was swinging on the wooden gate to one of the stalls. It creaked rustily back and forth like a badly tuned violin.

Miss Loomis lanced the gloom with her flashlight. The bright beam wavered. On the straw of the stall lay another form, a loose white sack of a man with arms and legs limply extended. The dark hawk face was relaxed and babyish. The man’s head was lopsided with swelling under one half of the mussed silver hair. By Sagmon Robottom’s ear rested a discarded stirrup iron.

Faye’s gate swung in slow tortured rhythm.

“What happened here?” the blonde woman asked gently. Robottom’s chest rose and sank regularly and an eyelid twitched.

“He didn’t believe I was a cat.” Faye crouched on the stable floor and the creaking came to a halt. Her mouth contracted viciously but the rest of her face was puzzled. “I think he said I mustn’t use my claws. I don’t like people who order me around.”

“Would you like to go for a ride?” Thelma Loomis suggested soothingly. “Just the three of us. I know somebody you’d like to talk to, Faye. A man.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea.” Faye bobbed her head excitedly. “I like to talk to men!”

Mr. Trim howled with laughter. His mouthful of irregular teeth was a wide circle and his shoulders shook. But the sound was thin, not carrying far enough to spawn an echo from the rock walls. Though his merriment was deep, neither his damp brown eyes nor the corked tip of his disguised pistol wavered away from the Conovers.