Man on a Rope (18 page)

“When Lambert asked Hudson if he had the cash,” Barry said, “Hudson said he'd have it in the morning. The
Calgary Trader
had to wait outside the bar that night for the tide. It was docked by morning.”

McBride looked doubtful. “Yeah,” he said, “but—”

“If you and I were making a deal,” Barry cut in, “and I actually had the cash—not in my pocket maybe, but in my room—and you asked me if I had it, I wouldn't say: ‘I'll have it in the morning,' would I? I'd probably say: ‘Not with me, but you can have it whenever you want it.'

“It's all right to bring dollars in here if you declare them,” he went on quickly, “but taking them out is something else again. You know that. The legitimate way for Hudson to buy diamonds would be to go to Clarke & Company with a draft. But this was hardly a legitimate deal. Hudson was looking for a special kind of deal and he found it in Lambert. If he brought U.S. cash in and declared it, he would have to tell what he did with it, at least in that amount. So I say he didn't declare it.”

McBride made no reply, but his corrugated brow showed that he was thinking hard and his smile was gone. “So?” he said finally.

“To try and bring that much cash in here in a suitcase without declaring it,” Barry said, “would be taking quite a chance, wouldn't it? You can't tell where a customs man will look, can you? They're polite enough to travelers, but they're especially easy on the Canadians and Americans who come in on those ships like the
Calgary Trader
because most of the passengers are tourists taking the round trip. With a woman, the customs men are even more considerate.”

Barry hesitated, not sure how well he had put his theory but certain that McBride was impressed. He took out another cigarette, glanced back at the blonde, frowned at the cigarette before he lit it. Circumstances had suddenly forced McBride to think, and he was not used to it. The look in his pale eyes said he was almost convinced but not quite.

“Do you think she's in it with him? Hudson, I mean. Do you think she knows about the cash?”

Barry shrugged and pretended it was not important. “What difference does it make?” he said “What I'm wondering is whether, if you had any choice, you'd settle for the diamonds or try for the cash.”

McBride considered the proposition with care. It took him quite a while, but the potential was appealing and in the end a smile began to work at the corners of his mouth.

Barry enlarged on the supposition. “A hundred thousand dollars,” he said, “and the woman you used to sleep with would go with it, I guess. I can think of worse things.”

McBride wet his lips. “So can I,” he said and cocked his eye at the burning end of his cigarette. “With a hundred thousand bucks I think I'd gas up the duck and take off.” He looked up, his expression fixed. “But I don't have the diamonds. You do.”

Barry shook his head.

“You know where they are,” McBride said.

“I'm also under a lot of pressure. I'm under suspicion of murder…. Suppose,” he said, “I told you where that pouch was. How do you know I wouldn't also tip off the cops about you?” He hesitated, aware that no such thing could happen with Muriel Ransom knowing what she did about him, but wondering if McBride also knew the truth.

With no conscious effort he recalled the sedan with the license tag X-l that had been parked in front of Lambert's house the night of the murder. George Thaxter had been taken to his rendezvous with death in someone's car, and he wondered if the police had been able to trace such a car. He had an idea that a man like McBride could kill if his future or his safety was threatened, but he also understood that right now he had no evidence to support any such suspicion. Unless he could goad the man into making some mistake—

“Did you ever think about that?” he said. “Or don't you care?”

McBride stood up suddenly, no longer amused. His pale eyes were steely now and his jaw was hard.

“You're pretty cute, Dawson,” he said. “Play it your way if you want; just be sure you don't wind up holding the sack.”

Barry watched him mash his cigarette into the ashtray and stride toward the door. When it slammed behind him Barry sighed unconsciously, worry showing in his dark-blue eyes and his uneasiness expanding anew. He had proved nothing and he knew it. He also had an idea that McBride would not give up so easily. Taking chances was the big man's business, his physical potential was great, and if the stakes were high enough he would hardly be influenced by any moral consideration.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

W
HEN
B
ARRY
D
AWSON
walked into the open-air lounge of the Windsor shortly before four that afternoon he was no nearer a solution to his predicament than he had been at lunch. When McBride had left he had flopped down on the bed to stare sightlessly at the ceiling until he could concentrate no more. He had taken another shower and now, in clean clothes, he had come to the lounge for tea, a newly acquired habit which he found not only sensible but increasingly pleasant. The sight of Ruby Noyes sitting by herself at a table near the front railing changed his plans.

The lofty room was almost empty at the time, and as Barry approached her table she waved in friendly fashion. He saw then she was not drinking tea. An empty glass and a half-empty bottle of soda stood before her and she at once proved that she had little regard for the formalities.

“Pull up a chair,” she said cheerfully. “I'm on a new kick.” She tipped her blond head and regarded him openly. “What's your name? Where have you been keeping yourself?”

Barry told her his name. “What's the new kick?” he asked.

“Rum. It's different here. Why don't we get rum like this in the States?”

Barry motioned to a hovering boy. “How're you drinking it?” he said. “With soda?”

“Right … Plenty of ice, please,” she said to the boy.

Barry put his cigarettes on the table, adding that they were made locally.

“I tried them,” she said. “They taste like hay. Have one of these.” She brought forth a pack and put it beside his. “I've got plenty…. You're from the States, aren't you? You're a long way from home,” she said, not waiting for an answer. “What do you do here?”

“I'm a geologist.”

“That means you dig for things, don't it? Like in the hills and jungles?”

Barry laughed aloud, deciding right then that he liked this girl, Hudson or no Hudson. The patently artificial blondness of her hair, the artful shaping of the dark brows, and the expert treatment of the lashes told him she was a city girl, and as a quick guess he put down her profession as being related somehow to the world of entertainment.

“Sometimes in the jungles,” he said. “It depends on what we're looking for.”

“Ugh,” she said and shuddered effectively. “Aren't you afraid of snakes?”

“You don't see too many, actually.”

“One is too many,” she said and looked with interest at the fresh drinks the boy had brought.

“Bring another round in ten minutes,” Barry told him. “It will save time.”

The idea seemed to please her and she smiled her approval. “You know something?” she said. “I think I like you.”

He poured soda over the rum in their glasses. It gave him a moment to study her, to notice the sleeveless white dress with the pleated skirt which helped to accent her tan. Her legs were bare, slim legs but with a suggestion of muscular development in the calves that made him wonder if she might be a dancer.

“Cheers,” he said. “I saw you taking your sunbath. I got to wondering what you did.”

“You did? And what did you decide?”

“That you were an actress—or maybe a dancer.”

“What made you think so?”

“Are you?”

“What?”

“A dancer?”

She nodded, watching him over the rim of her glass.

“Ballet?” he said. “Tap—”

“I had a different kind of specialty,” she said, the amusement showing in her brown eyes. “I was a stripper.”

He stared at her a moment to see if she was kidding and then, remembering what he had seen, decided she was not. With the equipment she had, the routines would come easily.

“I should have thought of that,” he said, and grinned. “I guess it figured.”

“How?”

“The way you worked with that towel yesterday morning. You were real quick with it.”

“Was I?” she said, and giggled.

Her eyes remained bold in their inspection of him and she showed not the slightest embarrassment. But her cheeks were pinker now, and when the boy reappeared Barry poured the soda again and waited for her to lift her glass in salute. There was a method in his insistence because there were some things he was going to say to her and he knew the better she felt when the time came the better his chances. He said they could probably use one more, couldn't they, and gave the boy the same instructions.

“Is there any money in it?” he said as she settled back in her chair and crossed her bare knees.

“In stripping? I guess so. That is, if you get a name. The top few get two or three thousand a week and they're working maybe thirty weeks.a year.” She paused, her gaze reflective. “But there're an awful lot of strippers too, or wouldbe strippers. You wouldn't know,” she said. “They work a lot of little holes in the wall you'd never think of going to. You find them in almost every city all over the country. I've been there too.”

“Where?”

“All over the country. Starting with Buffalo when I was four and my mother made me take dancing lessons. I could get two hundred a week usually—as a stripper, I mean. Maybe only a hundred and a half when things were tough. Plenty of girls worked for less. For peanuts and tips and—well, you know—favors for a few friends. For most of us it was a tough grind, especially when you begin to get older. I was glad to get out of it.”

He wondered how old she was and thought she might be about his age. He wondered what she would look like if she let her hair grow out and forgot to mascara her lashes. He said:

“Is that how you met Hudson?”

“Yes. I was working this place in Brooklyn and he came in with a friend of mine. I saw him two or three times after that and we had some drinks and something to eat after I was through. I didn't see him for a while—I found out he was from Boston—and I was working in the Village a month or so later when he came to see me. But this time it was different,” she said.

“I could tell he was serious, but when he made this proposition about how would I like to go to British Guiana I thought it was—well, just another proposition. I didn't even know where British Guiana was. I thought it was out in the Pacific or Asia or someplace. When I told him I couldn't afford it he said he didn't mean it that way. He said if things worked out we could get married. He had some money and he'd been down here during the war and he'd heard things were kind of booming now. It might be a chance to make a killing. He was going to fly down and I could come on the boat.”

She put her empty glass aside and reached for a cigarette. “Well. 1 liked him to begin with. The job I had was only good for another week and I didn't have anything booked ahead. 1 said to myself: ‘Well, why the hell not? At least I'll get a free trip and if I don't want to marry him when I get down there I don't have to.' But I didn't tell him that. I said I'd have to think it over and then the next night he showed up at my apartment with this suitcase. He couldn't take it on the plane because of his baggage allowance, but I could bring it on the boat.”

She chuckled softly, her painted mouth a little slack now and her speech slurred as the rum did its work.

“He didn't even ask me if I'd come; he just handed me this ticket and said I had passage and a cabin on the
Calgary Trader,
that it sailed from Montreal the next week…. That told me he meant business,” she said. “Up to then—well, you get plenty of con in my business and I wasn't sure.”

“When are you going to get married?”

“Next week. I'm taking the boat back as far as Trinidad and Art's meeting me there.”

“Did you find out what was in that suitcase you brought?”

“It was locked,” she said promptly.

“If it was, you had a key.”

“How do
you
know?”

Barry waited until the boy had brought the next round of drinks and this time he paid him. He could feel the rum working on him now and he knew that Ruby was at least one up on him.

“When you travel you have to open your bags for the customs people,” he said. “You never know which ones they'll pick, and if they're locked you'd better have the key. Otherwise they'll open the bag for you.”

“Okay,” she said sulkily. “So I had a key.”

“Did you know about the money?”

She sat up slowly then, her drink forgotten and her good humor gone. “How do you know so damn much?” she demanded.

Barry pretended the whole thing was elementary. Without actually lying he gave the impression that he knew all there was to know as he explained how he had worked for Hudson in appraising the diamonds. When he told of his theory about the money he said it was obvious she had brought it in; the only question was whether she knew it or not.

“I thought you were a geologist,” she said when he finished.

“I am.”

“Well, you talk more like a cop.”

He laughed for her benefit. He poured soda into the glasses. “Forget it, then,” he said. “It isn't important…. Drink up.”

She was still sulky, but she picked up her glass. For another second or two she eyed him morosely and then, as though mollified by his explanation and his apparent indifference, she said:

“I didn't know about the money until we'd left Trinidad. All 1 knew was that the bag was filled with clothes—suits and slacks and extra shoes. The suits had a million wrinkles and I thought I'd get domestic and press them for him. 1 borrowed an iron from the stewardess and emptied out the bag so I could pack it better. The string on a pair of pajamas was caught in the bottom and I yanked at it and this lid came up and there was this package with all those new fifties in the false bottom.”