Man on a Rope (19 page)

“What did Hudson say when you told him?”

“I was sore,” she said. “I didn't like the idea of being his pigeon and maybe winding up in jail, and he said it was the only way he could think of of getting the cash into the country. He said you weren't allowed to bring American dollars into the country and even if I'd been caught it would be his loss, not mine. He said he trusted me and—well—”

She took a swallow of her drink and lapsed into silence, as though she was tired of the subject and no longer interested. Barry did not bother to tell her that there was no restriction about bringing dollars into the country so long as they were properly declared, but he appreciated the cleverness of Hudson's plan. It was resourceful and well thought out, and in picking Ruby Noyes as his messenger Hudson had known exactly how to handle her. He had promised much and he would deliver only what was necessary to complete the transaction.

“Hi,” Ruby said.

Barry jerked his thoughts back to the moment and looked at her. By the time he knew what she meant he saw Arthur Hudson standing beside him, eyes obscured by the ever present dark glasses but his mouth mean.

“It's a little early to tie one on, isn't it, Ruby?” he said coldly.

“What do you mean by that?” she said, bristling a little. “Who's tying what on?”

“You are,” he said. “A couple more of those and you'll be plastered. You're a little gassed right now.”

“Who says so?” she demanded indignantly but slurring the words. “And anyway I'm on a vacation, ain't I?… Sit down,” she said. “Just take a deep breath and relax.”

By that time Barry was on his feet, and as he got ready to retreat he saw Muriel Ransom move into the lounge from the direction of the front stairs. She stopped when she saw him and gave a small nod.

Hudson was pulling out a chair now, still intent on Ruby, and Barry mumbled something about how he had enjoyed talking to her. She gave him a big smile as he backed away and she remembered to thank him for the drinks. Deliberately ignoring Hudson, she flipped a hand at him. She said it was fun.

Muriel Ransom was dressed as if she were going to a tea party. She wore the Paisley print he had seen that first afternoon, a wide-brimmed black hat, white gloves. She was waiting just short of the desk; and the smile Barry had put on for her benefit went quickly away when he noticed the vertical lines that grooved the “bridge of her nose, the determined gleam in her dark eyes.

“I think we should have a little talk,” she said.

“Sure, Muriel.”

“In your room would be better,” she added when he looked round for a convenient table.

He got the key from the rack and led the way to his room. When he closed the door she moved over to the window seat and sat on the edge of it, handbag balanced on her knees while he stood in front of her, not knowing what came next but instinct telling him that trouble lay ahead. She came to the point immediately.

“What are you going to do about the diamonds?”

“I haven't decided.”

“Maybe I can help you.”

“Oh?”

“If you're determined to cheat me I might as well make you sorry you did,” she said. “I think it's time I had a frank talk with Superintendent Kerby.”

She paused to see if he would reply, but by then Barry had no ready words, only a growing dryness at the back of his throat.

“I'll have to tell him that Colin phoned me. I'll tell him how I hurried there after the shower and saw you come out of the bungalow and run down the street. I'll say I didn't understand it until I stepped into the living-room and saw Colin lying on the floor.

“In those first moments of shock,” she said, “I didn't know what had happened or what to think. As I rushed up to him I thought I saw a hand twitch. I dropped to my knees and called to him and tried to rouse him as he lay there on his side, and then I saw his lips move. I bent over him. I asked him what it was. He did not open his eyes, but the lips moved again and this time, by leaning close, I heard him say: ‘Dawson … Dawson did it.'”

An icicle slid lightly up Barry's spine and left the back of his neck cold. He swallowed.

“But that's not true,” he said.

“It's close enough,” she said coldly. “He was dead when I found him. He didn't say anything, but I'm the only one who knows that. For all I know, you could have killed him. I never thought you did and I'm not sure why except I didn't think you were the kind that would do such a thing. But I think Kerby would believe me, don't you?”

Barry eased down on the arm of a chair, understanding instantly that this woman had the capacity to do exactly what she threatened. There was a singleness of purpose here that was frightening. For this was not the dutiful and loving wife—he recalled the picture she had drawn for him the night before—of a young English engineer who married her and took her to Belize. This was the woman who had battled relentlessly against the rawer aspects of life as a hostess and B-girl in Miami and Havana and Panama.

The thought that she had been cheated had now become a complex. To her only the diamonds were important and whoever thwarted her would have to pay. Kerby would most certainly believe her story, at least in the beginning, and unless there was some small miracle to clear him Barry would most certainly stand trial for murder.

He did not say anything as his thoughts moved on. He was looking out the window, seeing the branches of the frangipani tree, aware that Muriel was waiting motionless, giving him time to understand exactly how he stood. That noon he had told Lynn Sanford that he had a tiger by the tail; he had wanted time to think. Now there was no more time, and the trap was closing and—

Like that his brain picked up a hitherto unknown fact, tiny but enormously significant. Then, suddenly, as his mind focused inward, the pressure of his thoughts produced a small kernel of hope. There was no time now to nurse it properly, but because a chance was offered where none had been before, he knew what he had to do. He looked back at her, still thinking furiously.

“Suppose I deliver the pouch,” he said, his tone clipped. “How do I know you still won't go to Kerby with that phony yarn?”

“I want the diamonds, not revenge.”

“Yeah.”

“Once I get them I'm not going to worry about you. I'm going to worry about hanging on to them, and I'll be sure you won't talk either—because if you do I can still tell my story.”

“Okay.” Barry rose, his mind made up as his new-found idea began to take shape. “But you'll have to wait until after dark.”

“After dark?” She came to her feet, the upward-slanting eyes puzzled and suspicious. “Why?”

“They're out there.” He jerked his head to indicate the expanse of hotel grounds. “I've got to dig and I can't do it in daylight, can I?”

She accepted this, and deep down in her eyes excitement stirred.

“How about ten o'clock?” he said. “Shall I bring them to your place?”

She thought it over. “Boyd's.”

“So he's in it with you.”

“Possibly,” she said with an air of detachment. “Does it matter?”

“Not to me, it doesn't. But did it ever occur to you that you might be running away with a killer?”

She eyed him gravely, her head tilted. “It occurred to me,” she said finally, “but I don't believe it.”

“He was there. He searched Lambert's desk.”

“He told me why. But that was after you had left. If Colin was dead then, he was dead when Boyd got there.”

“Unless,” Barry said quietly, “there was a time before that he forgot to mention.”

Her shoulders moved in a faint shrug. “But who said I was going away with anyone?” she asked. “I'd rather you came to his place because it has more privacy than my flat…. Ten o'clock,” she said. “And come alone, Barry. I'm not fooling.”

He opened the door for her. He said he knew she wasn't fooling. “Neither am I,” he called softly as she started along the hall.

In his room again with the door closed he began to pace. Ten paces to the window seat, ten paces back, brows knotted and the muscles tight along the angle of his jaw. For an excitement all his own was firing his brain and there were still some things he wanted to do before the afternoon ended. When a glance at his watch told him that it was nearly five o'clock, he opened the door again and hurried down the hall.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

L
YNN
S
ANFORD
had finished typing the letters Louis Amanti had given her and was just checking them for mistakes when Superintendent Kerby opened the door of the outer office and politely removed his cap. Impeccable as always in his freshly cleaned shorts and jacket, he offered a small smile, brought his heels together lightly, and asked if it would be possible to see Mr. Amanti.

“I'm sure it will,” she said. “Just a moment and I'll ask him.”

The door of the inner office was open and she stopped just across the threshold to announce the visitor. Amanti frowned for a moment while things happened behind his bespectacled eyes and then he jumped to his feet.

“Of course, of course,” he said, coming around his desk. “Come in, sir,” he called from his doorway. “Come right in.”

He stood aside to let Kerby pass before him and then closed the door. Because the transom was open Lynn could hear the rumble of their voices and by listening she could follow the conversation rather well. At first she tried deliberately not to and went about the business of folding the letters and stuffing the envelopes. Her watch said that in twenty minutes she would be through for the day and when she had stamped the envelopes she leaned back in her chair and glanced at the closed doorway, beginning to wonder about the Superintendent's call in spite of herself but not actually listening until she heard Barry Dawson's name mentioned.

Instantly then all the worry that had begun at lunch when she knew the truth about Barry's position came back to increase her uneasiness. She could not hear all the words, but she heard Kerby say something about diamonds. She heard Amanti reply, heard the word “estate.” Finally, because she could stand such uncertainty no longer, she did something she had never done before in her well-bred young life.

On tiptoe as she eased to her feet, she moved silently over to the door. She bent her head, her ear no more than inches from the panel. Then, with no further thought about propriety or the ethics of the situation, she began to eavesdrop, finding to her delight that it helped enormously to be so close. The voices took on character and she could tell who was speaking.

“Just wanted to check with you, you know,” Kerby was saying. “I felt quite sure that if you'd had any word on the diamonds you'd be in touch with us.”

“I've heard nothing,” Amanti said. “Nothing at all. I take it you feel that they are the key to the murder?”

“I don't know how else to look at it,” Kerby said. “Most everyone admits he knew that there were diamonds being withheld, but we can only be certain about two—aside from Lambert, that is—who actually knew they were in that desk safe the night of the murder.”

“Hudson and Dawson.”

“Exactly. We searched Dawson's room the first night, though we hardly expected to find anything. A hotel room doesn't offer many hiding-places; a man would be a fool to try.”

“Quite,” Amanti said. “If Dawson had them he'd have to hide them somewhere outside the room. But I suppose you've already considered that possibility.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, as I understand it, the diamonds were in a pouch.”

“I believe so.”

“A pouch could be buried, couldn't it? And wouldn't the hotel grounds offer a likely place? Somewhere under one of those shrubs or small trees perhaps.”

The words shocked Lynn and she nearly cried out in protest. At that moment she hated Amanti for suggesting the possibility even though she knew it could be nothing more than an idle guess. She offered a silent prayer that Kerby would ignore the suggestion and waited with held breath for him to reply. When it came she was suddenly weak all over.

“I've been wondering the same thing myself,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I'd been toying with the idea of getting a crew together and doing a bit of prospecting outside Dawson's window; Hudson's too. If those stones don't turn up before morning—”

The scrape of his chair startled her so she lost the rest of the sentence, but she was back in the chair pretending to be busy when the door opened. After that she did not look up until the outer door closed, but sat there outwardly occupied but shaking inside.

She heard Amanti go back into his office, the creak of his desk chair, but all she could think of was Barry. There was not the slightest doubt in her mind that the police would find the diamond pouch in the morning; nor was there any doubt that, once it was found so close to his windows, he would be arrested. The only way to prevent this from happening was to make sure the pouch was not there when the search began. And suddenly a strange determination that was born of fear and desperation seized her and she knew what she had to do.

It was no longer enough that she warn Barry and urge him to take the pouch from its hiding-place. He still might be caught trying to dispose of it. If such a thing happened he could never convince the police of his innocence. But if she took them—and why couldn't she dig them up, since she knew where they were?—the danger to him would be gone….

Her thoughts bogged down at that point. Already in fancy she had the pouch, but what then? She couldn't keep it; there was no one she could trust. She couldn't just walk into Police Headquarters and say she had found it. Such a thing, done anonymously, might turn the trick, and having accepted this much, she put her mind to work on ways and means. The answer that finally came seemed a bit fantastic, even to her, but when she understood that she could hurt no one but herself by trying she stood up and walked into Amanti's office.