The Good Old Stuff (24 page)

“A story to frighten children.”

“You are free to leave.”

Van Hosen walked to the door. He placed his hand on the knob and opened it. Then he turned back and looked at Saxon. He licked his lips. “Suppose that I contend that you have endangered my life by telling lies to Wend. Suppose he is not well balanced. Shouldn’t I have the protection of the police?”

“I told you that I have nothing on which to hold you. I refuse to hold you.”

“Then imagine the absurd eventuality that these lies that you told were true. Suppose that I could provide you with the lists and the proof you demand. Suppose I were a criminal. What guarantees could you give such a man for turning over the information?”

“None whatsoever, except the one already stated. The protection of the Bureau from the revenge of your fellows.”

Again he turned toward the door. He asked a last question, his voice hoarse. “Where was Wend phoning from?”

“The January Club. He knew that you were here with me. That is about five minutes distant by taxi. You have talked for five minutes.”

I held my breath as Van Hosen stood with his hand on the doorknob. The phone rang again. Saxon picked it up. “Saxon
here.… Oh, Mr. Wend again.… Yes, he’s just leaving. You wish to talk to him?… You wouldn’t?… I understand. You want him to go back to the club with you? I’ll tell him that you are waiting downstairs.”

He hung up. Van Hosen walked away from the door. He held his knees stiff like a man who is hurt and weak. His face was twisted. He walked over to Saxon, and his voice broke as he said, “You monster! Look what you’ve done to me! It’s all true and he knows that it’s true. I can’t leave this room. He’ll kill me before I can tell him. Maybe he’ll kill me when you try to take me away from here. Get more men! Get me strong guards!”

“If it’s true, Van Hosen, why shouldn’t I force you to go? Why shouldn’t I save Ceylon the expense of your trial?”

Van Hosen clutched the arm of Saxon’s chair. “I’ll give you what you want. I’ll give you the lists. I’ll tell you of everything, of the hidden supplies, of the men who will lead the people. How O’Dell killed the American who suspected us. How I came here with information from Tokyo about Kaymark’s ancestors. How Wend drowned the girl and cut Kaymark’s throat. We came in here together to see that fool.” He pointed at me. “We found Kaymark tied up. He swore that he hadn’t talked, but we knew how much he valued his pretty face. He hadn’t been badly hurt. We couldn’t chance it. Wend cut his throat—slowly. It wasn’t pretty to watch.”

Saxon pushed his hands off the arm of the chair. “Be quiet while I write.” Van Hosen sat on the bed and trembled while Saxon printed in block letters on one of the sheets in his notebook. There was no sound in the room except for Van Hosen’s hoarse breathing and scratching of the pencil.

“Now I’ll read this to you before you sign. It says: I, Van Hosen, confess that I operated as a Japanese agent in Ceylon during the war. I have arranged to smuggle arms and ammunition into Ceylon which is now stored at secret points which I will name. I will also name the leaders of the people in a planned revolution. My principal assistants were Clarence O’Dell, Guy Wend, Constance Severence, and Peter Kaymark. I ordered O’Dell to kill an American officer named Daniel Christoff. He did so, under circumstances planned to make
Christoff subject to censure. I ordered Wend to drown Miss Severence. He did so. I saw Wend cut Kaymark’s throat.”

He handed the notebook to Van Hosen. He scribbled his name hurriedly and handed it back. Saxon took it over to Colonel Rith-Lee. The bulky man signed as a witness. So did I and so did Saxon.

“That should stand up until we can arrange a more detailed confession, Van Hosen. Now, every police officer enjoys telling of his own cleverness. What made you assume that I had Wend on the phone? I instructed one of my own men to call this room, and then to call back five minutes after I hung up. Your imagination betrayed you, Van Hosen.”

The little man gave Saxon one wild look and then leaped at him, his arms stretched forward as though to grasp Saxon’s throat. The tall man flapped one hand indolently at Van Hosen’s face. It hit with a sound like the crack of a pistol. It knocked Van Hosen back onto the bed. The native picked Van Hosen off the bed and shook him. The little man relaxed. He stood looking down at the floor, his shoulders sagging and the brave beard in disarray.

Colonel Rith-Lee hauled himself out of his chair and stuck his hand out to Saxon. Saxon took it shyly.

“Don’t be too hard on a stupid British officer, Saxon. Imagine I’ve been pretty blind. Wonder how many other things I’ve missed.” Then he turned to me. “You mean to say, Garry, that you kited all the way over here just to clear up a little criticism of a friend of yours?” I nodded. “Damn foolishness. Glad you did. Stirred up this mess. What do you want me to do, Saxon?”

“Just take over the Intelligence aspects from here, sir. I can handle the straight murder angles. We can take mutual credit for the arrest.”

“Very generous. How about you, Garry? Anything I can do for you after you finish making out the long bloody statements for my bureau and Saxon’s outfit?”

“Yes, sir. Write an official letter to the War Department, Washington, D.C., that will clear Christoff of any blame. Give me a copy, and give a copy to the consulate. Then I can go back home.”

Two weeks later I stood at the rail of a small freighter as we pulled away from the great wooden wharves of Melbourne Harbor, headed for the Golden Gate. I had the precious letter buried deeply in my jacket pocket. I knew what it was going to be like to tell his people, to tell his wife. I felt a small shiver of anticipation, and I reached my hand into my pocket and touched the edge of the letter. They had let me live, and I had cleared him. I thought of what would be in Dorothy’s eyes when I showed her the letter. I wondered if maybe, after she had another year alone, if … I stretched and decided that it wouldn’t hurt me any to try walking around the deck a couple of thousand times.

H
e looked
like a fat child as he walked gingerly down the beach. He winced, sat down, picked a wicked little sand burr from the pink pad of his foot. For a time he sat there, pouting and petulant, his fat tummy and thick shoulders an angry pink from the midafternoon Florida sun. A porpoise, chasing sand sharks, made a lazy arc a hundred yards out. The Gulf was oily and torpid. The fat man wore spectacular swimming trunks. He was semi-bald, with rimless glasses pinched into the bridge of his soft nose. He sat and looked dully at the small waves, tasting again the sense of utter defeat that had been with him these past two days on Grouper Island. Defeat. Everything gone. Not much more time left. How would it be to wade out and start swimming? Swim until there was nothing but exhaustion, strangling, and death.

He shivered in the sun’s heat. No.

Slowly he stood up. Sweat trickled down through the gray mat of hair on his chest. He walked back toward the house of his odd host, toward the gleaming-white terraced fortress of the man called Park Falkner.

Twenty feet farther along he angled up across the dry sand. He saw her, bronze, oiled, and gleaming in the sun. She lay on a blanket, her hair wrapped, turban fashion, in a towel, her eyes covered with odd little plastic cups joined together with a nose band. She was in a hollow in the sand, her scanty bathing suit hiding little of her firm, tanned flesh.

The hate for her shuddered up in him, tightening his throat, making him feel weak and trembling. She had done this to
him. She had lost everything for him. He knew it was useless, but he had to plead with her again, plead for her silence. He remembered the last time, remembered her evil amusement.

“Laura!” he said softly. “Laura, are you awake?”

She didn’t move. He saw the slow rise and fall of her breathing. Asleep. The wish to do her harm came with an almost frightening suddenness. He looked at the big white house three hundred yards away. No sign of movement on any of the terraces. They would be napping after the large lunch, after the cocktails.

He moved close to her. He knew, suddenly and with satisfaction, that he was going to try to kill Laura Hale. But how? There could be no marks on her throat. No bruise of violence. He squatted beside her. Her underlip sagged a bit away from the even white teeth. Her breathing merged with the husky whisper of the sea. A gull wheeled and called hoarsely, startling him. Sandpipers ran and pecked along the sand.

Methodically, as though he were a fat child playing, he began to heap up the dry white sand, removing the shell fragments. He piled it on the edge of the blanket, near her head. Sweat ran from him as he worked. The conical pile grew higher and higher. The widening base of it moved closer to her head. He stopped when it was over two feet high and again he watched the white house. So far he had done nothing. He forced himself to breathe slowly. He held his hands hard against his thighs to steady them.

Laura slept on. The plastic cups over her eyes gave her a look of blindness.

It had to be done quickly. He went over every step. The pile of sand towered over her face. With an awkward, splay-fingered push, he shoved the tiny mountain over and across her face, burying it deep. He followed it over, resting his chest on the pile that covered her face, grabbing her wrists as they flashed up. He held her down as she made her soundless struggle. Surely she knew who was doing this thing to her. Surely she cursed her own stupidity in sleeping out here alone before the ultimate panic just before death came to her. Her hard, slim body arched convulsively and her hips thudded down against the blanket. She writhed and once nearly broke his grip on her
wrist. Then her long legs straightened out slowly, moved aimlessly, and were still. He lay there, pressed against the sand that covered her head, feeling an almost sensual excitement. He released her hand. The arm flopped down as though it were boneless. He squatted back and watched her for a moment. Then, with care, he brushed the sand from her face. Grotesquely, the eye cups were still in place. The sand stuck to the lotion she had used. She did not breathe. The white teeth were packed and caked with sand, the nostrils filled.

Filled with a desperate exaltation, he glanced at the house, sleeping in the white sun glare, then took her wrists and dragged her down to the sea. Her feet made two grooves in the wet sand. He dragged her through the surf and into the stiller water. Her weight in the water was as nothing. He yanked the towel from her head, and her long black hair floated out. He tied the towel around his neck. The sand was washed from her dead face. It was unmarked. He worked her out into deeper water, got behind her, and wrapped his thick arms around her, contracting her lungs and then letting them expand, contracting them again. They would fill with seawater. There would be sand in her lungs also. But that would be a normal thing for one who had died in the sea. If they found her.

He floated and looked at the house again. Safe so far. He wound his hand in her black hair and with a determined side-stroke took her on out, pausing to rest from time to time. When he thought he was far enough out, he stopped. He let her go, and she seemed to sink, but the process was so slow that he lost patience. Her face was a few inches below the surface and her eyes, half open, seemed to watch him. He thrust her down, got his feet against her body and pushed her farther. He was gasping with weariness, and the beach suddenly seemed to be an alarming distance away. As he tried to float a wave broke in his face. He coughed and avoided panic. When rested, he began to work his way back to the beach. He scuffed out the marks of her dragging feet, walked up to the blanket. The eye cups lay there. He spread the towel out to dry, picked up the eye cups and then the blanket, to shake it. He shook it once and then it slipped from his fingers. Her bathing cap had been under the blanket. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He trembled.
He picked up the blanket again, shook it, put the eye cups on it next to the bottle of sun lotion.

With the cap in his hand, balled tightly, he walked back to the sea. He swam out, but he could not be sure of the place. When he knew that he could not find her, he left the cap in the sea and swam slowly back.

He walked to the showers behind the house and stood under the cold water for a long time. He went up to his room, meeting no one. He stripped, laid a towel across himself, and stared up at the high ceiling.

He cried for a little while and did not know why.

There was a feeling of having lost his identity. As though the act of murder had made him into another person. The old fear was gone, and now there was a new fear. “I am Carl Branneck,” he whispered. “Now they can’t do anything to me. They can’t do anything. Anything. Anything.”

He repeated the one word like an incantation until he fell asleep.

Park Falkner was awakened from his nap by the sound of low voices, of a woman’s laugh. He stretched like a big lean cat and came silently to his feet. He was tall and hard and fit, a man in his mid-thirties, his naked body marked with a half dozen violent scars. He was sun-darkened to a mahogany shade. A tropical disease had taken, forever, hair, eyebrows, and lashes, but the bald well-shaped head seemed to accentuate the youthfulness of his face. The lack of eyebrows and lashes gave his face an expressionless look, but there was rapacity in the strong beaked nose, both humor and cruelty in the set of the mouth. He stepped into the faded tubular Singhalese sarong, pulled it up, and knotted it at his waist with a practiced motion. Except for the monastic simplicity of his bed, the room was planned for a Sybarite: two massive built-in couches with pillows and handy bookshelves; a fireplace of gray stone that reached up to the black-beamed ceiling; a built-in record player and record library that took up half of one wall, complete with panel control to the amplifiers located all over the house and grounds; an adjoining bath with a special shower stall, large enough for a platoon. The four paintings, in lighted niches,
had been done on the property by guest artists. Stimulated by a certain freedom that existed on Falkner’s Grouper Island, they were pictures that the rather prominent artists would prefer not to show publicly.