Man on a Rope (16 page)

“No,” Barry said. “It's in British Honduras, isn't it?”

“And like this in a way, only worse. Hot and humid and swampy, at least where I was. But Bill was a wonderful guy. He helped make up for the country and he helped me forget I'd been a tramp. I met his friends and I paid attention. I watched my language. I must have done all right because he never gave me any trouble. When he was transferred here a year and a half ago I was practically a lady. If only that God-damned jeep hadn't tipped over and killed him!” she said with sudden vehemence.

Barry knew about the accident. Although he had not been here at the time, he knew that Ransom had been in charge of constructing a small power station at Tumatumari Falls, but the accident had happened on the road from Atkinson Field when a blowout flipped the jeep over and broke Bill Ransom's neck.

He said he had heard about the accident and watched her finish the rest of her rum. When she put the glass aside he poured a slug for himself and washed it down with water.

“Bill had a daughter in England,” she said. “Did I tell you he'd lost his wife in an air raid?… Well, he had one goodsized insurance policy and it was payable to her. I got his personal things and the money he had in the bank here. It wasn't much. The English don't overpay their engineers. I moved into the hotel here because I couldn't stay in the bungalow we'd had…. I didn't know what I was going to do,” she said. “I didn't want to do anything. And then I met Boyd McBride. I found this flat where I am now and he helped me move and get straightened out. I saw a lot of him. I fell in love with him, even though I knew he'd never be the steady sort that Bill had been. I said we had an affair; we did. If you want to know the truth, I'm still a little in love with him.”

“But you were going to marry Lambert.”

“And I've been trying to tell you why. I'll be thirty on my next birthday. I know what it's like to be a tramp. I know what it's like to be in love and have fun and chase around. If I could have that and what Colin could offer all in one man I'd take it, but I'm not kidding myself I'll get that sort of break. I know enough to make a halfway decent wife for almost any man when I put my mind to it, and I was ready to do just that. Romance I'd like, but I can do without it. With Colin I'd have all the money I'd need, and position, and an estate in England, the sort of life I've never known.

“I know all about his past,” she said. “But he was older when I knew him. I think he'd changed. I think it would have been all right,” she added with some defiance. “Maybe I was cold-blooded about it, but that was what I wanted. I—I only wish it could have happened,” she said, her eyes suddenly bright with unwanted tears.

Watching her now, seeing the way the lamplight molded the curves and angles of her face, he knew that much of what she said was true. Here, he knew, was a woman who could be deeply stirred by passion, but there could be coldness, and calculation too, when her happiness was threatened. The facts of life as she knew them had left their mark, and he sensed that her needs would govern her actions. She had wanted the things Lambert could offer and she had been willing to pay for them; her very frankness indicated that she had been ready to accept Lambert's terms.

“You know about the will he was going to make,” she said. “That shows how he felt about me. He wanted me to have everything I needed. I had bought all my clothes, my trousseau. He was going to pay for that too. And then”—her voice faltered and her chin sagged—“I never had the chance. Maybe what I did was wrong; I suppose it was. All I could think of when I saw him there on the floor was that I'd been cheated. There would be no England or money or anything else.

“Maybe it's a horrible thing to say,” she continued, “but after that first shock, knowing he was dead and that no one would help him now, I thought about myself and what I'd lost and how unfair it all was. I don't know how I happened to remember the diamonds, but when I did it seemed to me that at least I should have that much. I didn't stop to think of the consequences or what I would do with them. Maybe I didn't think at all. All I know is that I took them and ran. I don't believe I was in that room more than a minute or two.”

“Yeah,” Barry said grimly, the spell of her words shattered by this new pressure of reality. “And when you got scared you planted them here so that if the police found them I'd be the one—”

“No,” she cut in hoarsely. “That's not-true. I didn't tell the police the truth about you, did I? I thought you'd be the last to be suspected.”

“What made you think of me at all?”

“It was only partly that,” she said. “You see, I had this room for several weeks after Bill died. I'm the one who asked the manager to get me these big cans. I planted those shrubs. They're tuberoses. They're almost too big now, but—”

“Ohh—” Barry said, for the first time beginning to understand the part coincidence had played in her plan.

“After we'd been questioned I began to get scared,” she said. “I was afraid the police might come and search my place—and they did, you know? Just after midnight—and I thought if they found the pouch they'd think I was the one who killed Colin. I had to hide them,” she said.

“Sure.”

“And I didn't know where, and then I thought about you and I remembered the plants and it seemed a perfect place. I never dreamed the police would come. I didn't want them to; if I had, I would have told the truth. I don't even know why I didn't, but I didn't. I didn't care about you then; I wanted the diamonds. Can't you understand that?”

Barry nodded. He said he was beginning to understand. “Did you come in here the same way you did tonight?”

“Yes,” she said, her tone wooden now, her shoulder slumping as though the effort to make him understand had tired her. She started to reach for the rum bottle and then checked herself. “Have you another cigarette?”

He gave her one and a light, and she said: “I came through the archway under the lounge. There's hardly ever anyone around this place after eleven o'clock and I didn't see a soul. I hadn't been home more than five minutes when the police came.”

“They came here too,” he said and watched her lean slowly forward, her dark gaze intent.

“Who came?”

“Kerby and the Inspector.”

“When?”

He told. her. “They had a warrant,” he said. “They took a good look. They said I was the last stop.”

“Did they—” She broke off, her glance darting to the flower can, a note of awe in her voice.

“Yes, they looked there. Kerby poked all over the place with that swagger stick of his.”

She drew the proper conclusion an instant later. “You'd already found them,” she breathed. “How? Why should you—”

“Lucky, I guess,” Barry said. “Or maybe it was because you weren't very neat. I'd just had a session with Louis Amanti I didn't understand too well and my nerves were jumpy.” He rose to tighten his robe and moved over to the window seat. “I saw the specks of dirt you'd spilled, and when I saw those two cans I got scared. I took a look.”

“Then you know where they are now?”

He came back to his chair, poured out a little rum, and took a swallow of water.

“Where?” she said.

He looked back at her, deliberately silent now and seeing the narrowness working in her eyes.

“They're not yours, you know,” she said.

“That's right. And they're not mine to give…. How was Lambert going to get those dollars out of the country?” he added in swift digression. “Or was he going to deposit them here and have pounds transferred to London?”

“He didn't want pounds,” she said. “He wanted something hard—that was the way he put it—dollars or bolivars or Swiss francs. That's why he wanted to sell the stones to Mr. Hudson for cash.”

“Amanti said Lambert had chartered McBride's plane for Monday.”

“We were going to Trinidad and Caracas and stay overnight. We both had passports and visas because we'd made the trip before. We couldn't go by way of Atkinson because of the customs, but with Boyd's amphibian it would be easy…. What about the diamonds, Barry? What are you going to do?”

He thought a moment longer about Lambert's plan to convert the dollars through a Caracas bank and knew that it could probably be managed. It explained the ten-per-cent bonus he was offering, since it would be worth it to a man who preferred dollars to pounds.

“I don't know,” he said, answering her question.

“You don't dare turn them in to the police, do you?”

“Not until I find out who killed Lambert. The way Kerby's got it figured, I not only could have murdered Lambert but Thaxter as well …By rights,” he said, “they should go to the estate.”

“If Colin had lived I would have had the estate, not Ian or the daughter or that brother in England. The diamonds are only part of it. Don't you think I'm entitled to something?”

Barry did not know what to say. He admitted it as he came to his feet once more. This time the woman rose with him, as though there was little more to be said. She adjusted her scarf and tightened the knot under her chin and then stood close, the points of her breasts touching the front of his robe so that he was again aware of her full-blown body.

“I'll help you—I've already helped you—if you'll help me,” she said.

He knew what she meant, understood how she felt. She had lost a promised husband and a potential life of ease. About this she could do nothing, but because she was a realist she wanted badly to salvage what she could and she was no longer concerned with the ethics of the situation.

And this was a lot of woman. The truth about her past did nothing to dispel her allure and when she asked for something it was hard to say no. It took an effort on his part even to temporize.

“I don't know, Muriel,” he said as he stepped back. “I'm in a spot too. I've got to think it over.”

“All right, Barry,” she said. “If that's the best you can do, I'll wait a little longer.”

He asked if she thought she should leave the way she had come or take her chances getting past the desk unseen. When she turned toward the window he snapped off the light and helped her through. He waited a full minute before turning on the light again, and now there was nothing left but the faint smell of her perfume and the empty glasses lightly smeared with lipstick.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

B
ARRY
D
AWSON
slept late the following morning and when he'd shaved and had his shower he rang for the maid and ordered some breakfast in his room. He knew this was the day that services were being held for Colin Lambert, and the account in the
Daily Chronicle
the evening before had stated that the body was to be sent back to England on the first ship for burial in the family plot. But no one had asked him to the services, so he lounged in his room for another hour or so, glancing from time to time at the frangipani tree outside the window and wondering how much longer he could walk a tight rope.

Some time after eleven he went to the downstairs bar and ordered a beer. He was sitting at one of the metal tables near a window that looked out on the drive and the street beyond when a man in a blue suit and a tan pith helmet rode up on a bicycle. When he leaned it against the building, Barry stuck his head out the window and asked if he was from the cable office.

“Yes, sir,” the man said. “Cable for Mr. Barry Dawson.”

“Good,” Barry said. “I'll take it.”

“You're Mr. Dawson?”

Barry nodded and signed the book and gave the man a shilling. When he came back to his table he hesitated a moment, grateful for Walt Lanning's co-operation and mentally crossing his fingers to encourage his luck. He tore the end from the envelope and unfolded the message; then he was reading:

Three arrests but no indictments Hartford job. Benny Meyer and Al Haney suspect but still missing. No loot yet recovered but one hundred thousand in fifties traceable if spent. Case still wide open. Why? Repeat. Why? Lanning
.

He read the message three times before he tucked it into an inside pocket. He had heard that criminals wanting an alias frequently chose names with similar initials. Al Haney—Arthur Hudson. A possibility when he realized that it would not be difficult to get a false birth certificate. A passport would be harder to come by, but no passport was needed for British Guiana, or Trinidad or Panama or Guatemala. Just proof of citizenship and a card that could be issued by the airline offices.

This was no more than pure speculation and he was well aware of this as he rode in Eddie Glynn's Zephyr to pick up Lynn Sanford outside Amanti's office and ask how she would like to have lunch at the Seaview.

The Seaview, which stood just back from the sea wall where the highway straightened out for its run to Berbice down the coast, was called a night club, but it also served as a hotel of sorts and Barry had often wondered why it was thought necessary to combine the two. The basic layout was like the Murray Hotel's, but here the similarity ceased. The Seaview stood proudly on its multiple concrete pillars, and on the first floor—the second if you counted the open area beneath it—was the dining-room with its dance floor and orchestra stand. Above this were the rooms, though Barry had never seen them.

They found a table overlooking the sea, brownish here like the river and, with the tide as it was, barely covering the flats that extended out to deep water. When the waiter came Barry said he needed a drink. Lynn refused, saying she had to go back to work, and Barry said she'd better take one.

“You may need it,” he said. “I've got a lot of talking to do.”

Reluctantly then she ordered a whisky-and-soda and when it came Barry began to talk. He had to talk. He had known from the first he was going to. Too much had happened and too many possibilities existed for him to keep any order in a mind already cluttered. Lynn was the only one he could trust and he had to talk to her, not so much to get her opinion but to use her as a sounding-board, to watch her reactions, to hear how the things in his mind would sound when spoken aloud.