Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (20 page)

“Maybe you haven’t lost any bodies,” said Hildegarde Withers pointedly. “But somebody has lost one. And I’m here to find it.”

The friendliness had gone from her voice, as if in key with the change which had come over sky and sea and island.

Phyllis turned toward her and then spoke sharply. “Look out—don’t fool with that!”

Miss Hildegarde Withers had taken from her capacious handbag a small blue-steel automatic pistol, and was aiming it steadily at the pit of Phyllis’s stomach.

“I’m not fooling,” she said.

T
WISTED CACTUS AND THORN
bushes made an unfriendly, alien circle around them. Far overhead a flotilla of slate-colored pelicans beat their wings against the sea wind, convoyed in perfect flying formation by a flock of Mother Carey’s chickens. Monotonously the great combers pounded against the foot of the cliff, bringing a sense of desolation to the fat little dog, who huddled halfway between these two clashing divinities and whimpered unhappily.

“I didn’t bring you here for companionship,” explained Hildegarde Withers. “We are alone, where you can neither get away nor scream for help. You haven’t been frank with me, young lady.”

Phyllis squatted on her heels and pretended to be interested in a blade of grass. “Is that a crime?” she asked softly.

“It is not,” said Miss Withers. “But the withholding of important evidence
is
a crime. And I’ve heard that the police frown upon blackmail, too.” The schoolteacher’s blue eyes were clouded. She was finding this sort of thing harder than she had thought.

“You’d better talk,” she said. “I want to know what is between you and that movie director, and why you are shielding him.”

Phyllis seemed unworried but grave. “I’m not shielding him, particularly,” she said. “Only—nobody asked me.”

“I’m asking now,” Miss Withers pressed on.

“And I’m telling you now,” said Phyllis. “There isn’t anything between me and Tate. I tried to make him the first day, you know that. He is powerful enough to give me the chance that I’ve been praying for. I was lucky enough to get something on him, and I made a certain bargain with him which I changed my mind about when the time came. There were too many strings attached. All the same, I’m not a squealer, and I kept my mouth shut.”

“I would not be likely to agree with your ethical considerations,” Miss Withers said stiffly “In my opinion this is no time for keeping mouths shut.”

Phyllis nodded moodily “You may be right. I don’t know. I’ve always played the game according to the cards I was dealt. I told you about that the other night. But how you got to know about Tate—”

“I have my sources of information,” said Miss Withers. “But never mind that. Go on with your speech—and don’t think I am ignorant of the use of this weapon.”

“It happened on the
Dragonfly,”
began Phyllis. “You remember I told you that when Forrest got sick, Tate gave him a pull at his flask?”

Miss Withers nodded, and Phyllis plunged on: “Well, I happened to remember when I was talking to you at the Casino that there was something unusual about the whole thing. It wasn’t much—just a little difference. I got to thinking, and I remembered what it was. So I tried it on Tate, and he looked so scared that I knew I had something. I didn’t know and I didn’t care whether or not it had anything to do with the man’s being killed. I wanted a job in pictures, and I thought I might as well make use of my information. Only when it came down to it, I didn’t.”

“And what was it you saw?” Miss Withers had dropped down beside Phyllis on the cold earth, the automatic forgotten in her lap.

“I saw Tate turn the flask very carefully around before he drank himself,” said Phyllis. “And that’s, honest to God, the whole thing.”

Miss Withers stroked the curly head of Mister Jones, who had snuggled between the two women to escape the chill wind, which was freshening. She was trying to digest this latest bit of information, but without success.

“I thought maybe he had the flask fixed so that it would pour only one way,” Phyllis explained. “That maybe he was faking the drink he took.”

Whatever Miss Withers had hoped to hear, it was not this. She stared at the gray sea, which showed distant whitecaps toward the horizon.

“And that’s all?” she asked.

“That’s all,” said Phyllis.

“It isn’t very much,” said Miss Withers sadly. “I feel as if I’d gone hunting elephants and bagged a mouse.” She sniffed and then took out her handkerchief and blew her nose.

She prepared to rise. “I may as well get on with my snooping into the Indian caves,” she observed. Then, after a moment’s hesitation: “I suppose you won’t want to come with me any farther, after what’s happened?”

“Why won’t I?” came back Phyllis, cheerily.

“After I held you up at the point of a gun?”

Phyllis grinned. “Look at your gun now.”

To Miss Withers’s astonishment, she saw Mister Jones lying in the lee of a large clump of cactus, happily gnawing on the weapon which had been in her lap. She moved to retrieve it, but Phyllis was younger and quicker. She pulled the gun from Mister Jones’s strong white teeth and leveled it at the little dog.

“Look out!” shouted Miss Withers. But Phyllis pulled the trigger. A little liquid stream spurted forth to splash on the dog’s white forepaws.

“I’ve seen enough guns to know a water pistol when it’s pointed at me,” Phyllis explained. “You didn’t fool me for a minute. I knew all along that you were bluffing, so there’s no hard feelings. Here’s the gun—let’s shake and forget it.”

Miss Withers shook hands and took back the weapon. Mister Jones was sneezing, inexplicably.

Phyllis was already leading the way along the path. “Come on, bloodhound,” she called to the excited little dog. “Here is where we find the body and get a prize from teacher.”

Miss Withers lingered behind long enough to toss the pistol over the cliff. It had been loaded with spirits of ammonia, guaranteed by its maker to cause instant discomfort to marauding tramps or unfriendly dogs. She had not been bluffing as much as Phyllis thought, but she wisely kept her own counsel. She had a vague feeling that the whole thing had been foolish—a feeling which was to become stronger and stronger as the day went on.

For if Phyllis’s secret had been disappointing, the visit to the Indian remains was even more so. In the first place, the path led for more than a mile up and down the sides of such precipitous canyons that the two women had the utmost difficulty in progressing, and Mister Jones had to be lifted by the scruff of the neck across the worst obstacles. If the way from the town was anything like this, Miss Withers realized that, wheelbarrow or no wheelbarrow, no body could have been transported to these regions.

They came, finally, to a barren little plateau which hung between the sea cliffs and the canyon-slashed slopes of the mountains. To their left, a wide trail led away toward the town—a trail which they knew to be blocked in a dozen places by the slides of earth and rock. There was no mark of a wheelbarrow upon it.

The Indian remains themselves consisted of half a dozen circles of fire-blackened stones which once outlined adobe huts. Three generations of tourists had trampled everything flat, and nothing but extensive excavation could have brought any objects of interest to light.

Such excavation was immediately begun by Mister Jones, who started digging a hole near the black stones. But the soil was hard-baked and unfriendly, and the little dog soon gave it up.

“I don’t see any caves,” protested Phyllis. They pressed onward toward where the path disappeared in a tangle of chaparral. Mister Jones led the way, now and then making swift but abortive forays in pursuit of the jack rabbits which sprang up on every side.

The path led down into a canyon again, and by dint of much scrambling and tearing of skirts, Miss Withers and Phyllis came upon Mister Jones in the mouth of a narrow cave. Here it was that the exploring party made its first real find of the day—a blackened and ancient coin which was removed from between the little dog’s jaws by force.

“A Spanish doubloon!” cried Miss Withers, remembering the tales of buried treasure supposed to be hidden somewhere on Catalina. But Phyllis spat upon the coin, rubbed it against her sleeve, and shook her head.

On its face, the coin bore in relief an elliptical Ferris wheel and the date—“1893.” The reverse read “Souvenir Chicago World’s Fair!” Phyllis gave it back to the dog.

The cave was not more than twenty feet deep, and it was white with interlaced webs of spider silk heavier than cotton. A dark and malevolent blotch clung to the wall and surveyed them—a hairy black spider with the deadly red hourglass upon its belly. A smaller spider scuttled away.

“No body’s been hidden here,” Miss Withers decided. She took out her handkerchief and slapped at spider webs. Phyllis was forcibly restraining Mister Jones from making an attack upon the deadly Black Widow. They turned and came out of the cave again—but not into the sunlight.

They had spent perhaps ten minutes on the futile search of the cave—but that ten minutes in the semidarkness had sufficed for the world to change from a dim and windswept solitude to a raging hell.

The storm which had announced itself with warning whitecaps far out at sea was now upon them, howling as only a Pacific gale can howl. Scudding clouds raced by—not overhead, but along the surface of the plateau, condensing upon their faces and shutting out even the rolling crest of the mountains.

The little dog humped itself down hopelessly, shivering. Miss Withers made an instant decision.

“Bring the lunch,” she commanded Phyllis. “I’ll carry the dog. We’ve got to run for it.”

They ran for it, covering in a few minutes the tortuous path that had taken so long to come over. At last they rushed down through the canyon again toward what the captain had called “the landing.” But it was no landing now. They stood fifty feet above the rocks which had received them when they leaped from the launch, and saw thundering waves crash into the little inlet and swirl up the dry stream bed almost against their shoes. The canyon mouth was a splashing maelstrom.

Even Miss Withers did not need to be told that there was no thought of Sven the boatman’s coming back for them while this kept up. And the Pacific showed every intention of keeping it up indefinitely.

The whitecaps were gone now, and the force of the gale flattened the waves down into a wild nightmare of scudding foam. Even the far horizon, where it could be seen to the northwest, was obscured by a thousand jagged wavetops which leaped madly up and down.

“I think we’d better not try to man the boats,” said Miss Withers dryly. Still carrying the little dog, she led the way up the canyon wall again.

“This won’t last long,” she said cheerily. It was beginning to rain, great, hot drops which stung their faces. Mister Jones, who had never seen the phenomenon at first hand before, snapped at the raindrops savagely.

“Back to the cave?” queried Phyllis.

Miss Withers thought of the hairy, malignant spider whose domain it was and voted instantly in the negative.

“We can’t expect the launch in this gale,” she said calmly. “We can’t make it overland to the town, with the road crumbled away. But look—” She took out her map and pointed toward their situation. “It can’t be more than a few miles from here to the Isthmus. The map doesn’t show such deep canyons that way, either. Shall we try it?”

Phyllis looked at her. The girl had been very quiet since the visit to the cave, as if she had something on her mind which she both wished, and did not wish, to mention. Miss Withers put it down at the time to a lingering feeling of resentment at the pistol episode.

“Sure, if you say so,” agreed the girl. “This is your party. The Isthmus was where I planned to make my Sunday outing, anyway.”

“Then it’s settled.” Miss Withers turned up the collar of her light coat and ruefully surveyed her stockings. “Don’t throw away the lunchbox, we may need it.”

“I won’t throw anything away,” said Phyllis grimly. And the trek began.

True enough, the map had shown few deep canyons between the plateau with the relics of Indian habitation and the distant Isthmus. But over and over again Miss Withers whispered anathemas upon the head of that unknown map maker, for they were there, hundreds of them.

Stumbling, sliding, climbing, through mazes of cactus that seemed like a landscape on Mars, they made their way. The storm reached its climax and then kept magnificently increasing in volume, so that they had to lean against the wind whenever they came out upon open ground. Ever the pounding of the surf at their left kept them on the right track.

Miss Withers had estimated the distance between the plateau and the Isthmus at no more than six miles. When later she was to trace out the route they took that mad afternoon, she realized that it was six miles straight ahead and twelve up and down.

There was no trail. Not even the brown Indians whose territory this had been before the Spaniards came to make the world safe for Catholicism had ever set their flat brown feet upon these barren reaches.

Mister Jones made valiant efforts to keep up, but had to be rescued from thorn and cactus so many times that Miss Withers picked the little dog up in her arms again. She began to be convinced that whatever might have happened to the road from town to plateau, it could have been no worse than this. Phyllis took her turn at leading the way, uncomplaining. Her blonde hair came uncurled and streaked across her forehead. Mascara shadows formed beneath her eyes and were washed clear again. “This is more fun than I’ve had since Father patted the polecat,” she sang out flippantly.

“We must be nearly there,” Miss Withers somewhat optimistically decided. “Don’t you think the shore is bearing to the right?”

The shore bore to the right, and then left again, offering canyon after canyon to be crossed with infinite pains. They plodded on only because it was easier to keep moving than to remain in one place.

“And they call this Pleasure Island!” said Phyllis. Slowly a more intense darkness was adding itself to the obscurity of the storm. Miss Withers looked at her watch and saw that it was after six o’clock … almost sunset, and they seemed no farther toward their destination than they had been four hours before.