The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (5 page)

At the horror of feeling one of his own manacled hands attacking his face savagely as if it were itself a sensate thing, Ortiz opened his eyes. They were wide with despair.

The hand with the revolver made a sudden movement, and Bell flung his weight upon it as the clutching hand pulled the trigger. There was a deafening report.…

* * * *

The body seemed to weaken suddenly in Bell’s grip. It fought less and less terribly, though with no lessening of its savagery. He managed to get the revolver away from the hands that shook with unspeakable rage. He flung it away and stood panting.

There was a crowd of people suddenly all about the place. Staring, stunned, incredulous people who regarded Bell with a dawning, damning suspicion.

Ortiz spoke suddenly. His voice was weak, but it was steady, and it was full of a desperate relief.

“I wish to make a statement,” he said sharply. “I—I wished to commit suicide for personal reasons. Señor Bell tried to dissuade me. The handcuffs upon my wrists were placed there with my consent. Señor Bell is my friend and has done me no wrong. I shot myself, with intention.”

Bell beckoned to the ship’s doctor.

“Get him bandaged up,” he ordered harshly. “There’s no need for him to die.”

The body was writhing only feebly, now. Ortiz looked up at him, and managed a smile. Again there was that incredible impression of the body not belonging to Ortiz, or Ortiz as a sane and whole and honorable, admirable man, and the feebly writhing body with its clutching hands as some evil thing that had properly been defeated and killed.

The doctor bent down. It was useless, of course. He made futile movements.

“I wish to speak to my friend, Señor Bell,” said Ortiz weakly. “I—I have not long.”

Bell knelt beside him.

“The Master’s—deputy in Rio,” panted Ortiz weakly, almost in a whisper, “is—is Ribiera. In Buenos Aires I—I do not know. There was a man—the one who poisoned me—but I killed him. Secretly. I do not think—the Master knows. I pray that—”

He stopped. He could not speak again. But he smiled, and a few seconds later Bell clenched his hands. Ortiz was gone.

Someone touched his arm. Paula Canalejas. He stared down at her and managed to smile. It was not a very successful smile. He drew a deep breath.

“I would like,” said Bell wryly, “to think that, when I die, I will die as well as this man did. But I’m afraid I shan’t.”

But Paula said:

“The airplane can be heard outside. It seems to be moving on the surface.”

* * * *

And ten minutes later the plane loomed up out of the mist, queerly ungainly on the surface of the water. Its motors roared impatiently as if held in leash. It swung clumsily about, heading off out of sight in the fog to turn. It came back, sliding along the top of the water with its wing-tip floats leaving alternate streaks of white foam behind them. A man stood up in its after cockpit.

Bell crowded to the rail. The man—goggled and masked—held up a package as if to fling it on board. Bell watched grimly. But he saw that the pilot checked himself and looked up at the upper deck. Bell craned his neck. The wireless operator was waving wildly to the seaplane. He writhed his hands, and held his hand to his head is if blowing out his brains, and waved the plane away, frantically.

The pilot of the plane sat down. A moment later its motors roared more thunderously. It is not safe to alight on either land or water when fog hangs low, but there is little danger in taking off.

The seaplane shot away into the mist, its motors bellowing. The sound of its going changed subtly. It seemed to rise, and grow more distant.… It died away.

Bell halted at the top of the companion-ladder and saw the wireless operator, with a crooked, nervous grin upon his face.

CHAPTER III

Bell saw what he was looking for, out in the throng of traffic that filled the Avenida do Acre, in Rio. He’d seen it over the heads of the crowd, which was undersized, as most Brazilian crowds are, and he managed to get through the perpetual jam on the mosaic sidewalk and reach the curb.

He stood there and regarded the vehicles filling the broad avenue, wearing exactly the indifferent, half-amused air of a tourist with no place in particular to go and a great deal of time in which to go there. Taxis chuffed past, disputing right of way with private cars which were engaged in more disputes with other cars, all in the rather extraordinary bad temper and contentiousness which comes to the Latin-American when he takes the wheel of an automobile.

As if coming to an unimportant decision, Bell raised his hand to an approaching cab. It had two men on the chauffeur’s seat. Of course. All taxis in Rio carry two men in front. One drives, and the other lights his cigarettes, makes witty comments upon passing ladies, and helps in collecting the fares from recalcitrant passengers. The extra man is called the “secretary,” and he assists materially in giving an impression of haughty pride.

The taxi ground to the curb. The secretary reached behind him indifferently and opened the door. Bell did not glance at him. He stepped inside and settled down languidly.

“The Beira Mar,” he said listlessly.

The taxi started off with a jolt. It is the invariable custom in Rio de Janeiro. And besides, it reminds the passenger that he is merely a customer, admitted to the cab on suffrance, and that he must be suitably meek to those who will presently blandly ignore the amount registered by the meter and demand a fare of from eight to twenty-seven times the indicated amount.

The cab went shooting down the Avenida do Acre toward the harbor. The Avenida do Acre is officially the Avenida Rio Blanco, and it should be called by that name, only people forget. The Beira Mar, however, is named with entire propriety. It is actually the edge of the sea, and it is probably one of the two or three most beautiful driveways in the world.

The cab whirled past the crowded sidewalks. Incredible numbers of people, with an incredible variation in the shades of their complexions, moved to and from with the peculiar aimlessness of a Brazilian crowd. A stout and pompous negro politician from Bahia, wearing an orchid in his button-hole, rubbed elbows with a striking blonde lady of the sidewalks on his left, and forced a wizened little silk-hatted
parda
—approximately an octoroon—to dodge about him in order to progress. A young and languid person, his clothes the very last expiring gasp of fashion, fingered his stick patiently. He wore the painstakingly cultivated expression of bored disillusionment your young Brazilian dandy considers aristocratic. It was very probable that he shared a particularly undesirable bedroom with four or five other young men in order to purchase such clothing, but then,
farenda fita
—making a picture—is the national Brazilian sport.

Bell lighted a cigarette. It was not wise to regard the secretary of this particular taxi too closely, but if his face had been thickly smeared with coal dust, and if he had had a two weeks’ beard, and if he had been seen on the forecastle of the
Almirante Gomez
, one would have deduced him to be a stoker who had not used the name of Jamison.

* * * *

The cab reached the Beira Mar, and turned to take the long route about the bay. It is one of the most beautiful views to be found anywhere, and tall apartment houses have been built along its whole length to capitalize the scenery. True, the more brightly-colored ladies of the capital have established themselves in vast numbers among these apartment houses, but in their languid promenades they add—let us say—the beauties of art to those of nature.

A voice spoke from the chauffeur’s seat.

“Bell.”

“Right,” said Bell without moving. His eyes flickered, however, and he found the device Jamison had inserted. A speaking-tube of sorts. Not especially efficient, but inconspicuous enough. He stirred listlessly and got his lips near it.

“All right to talk?” he asked briefly.

“Shoot,” said Jamison from the secretary’s seat beside the chauffeur. “This man doesn’t understand English, and he thinks I’m in a smuggling gang. He expects to make some money out of me eventually.”

Bell spoke curtly, while the taxi rolled past the Morro da Gloria with its quaint old church and went along the winding, really marvelous driveway past many beaches, with the incredibly blue water beyond.

“Canalejas is out of town,” he said. “It isn’t known when he’ll be back. I met his daughter at a dance at our Embassy here, and she told me. We didn’t dare to talk much, but she’s frightened. Especially after what happened to Ortiz. And I’ve met Ribiera, whom Ortiz named.”

“I’ve been looking him up,” growled Jamison through the speaking-tube.

Bell flicked the ash from his cigarette out the door, and went on quietly.

“He’s trying to get friendly with me. I’ve promised to call at his house and have him take me out to the flying field. He has two planes, he tells me, a big amphibian and a two-seater. Uses them for commuting between Rio and his place back inland. He went out of his way to cultivate me. I think he suspects I’m trying to find out something.”

“Which you are,” said Jamison dryly. “You’ve found out that Ortiz was right at least about—”

Bell nodded, and frowned at himself for having nodded. He spoke into the mouthpiece by his head with an expressionless face.

“He’s practically fawned upon by a bunch of important officials and several high ranking army officers. Suspecting what I do, I think he’s got hold of a devil of a lot of power.”

Jamison scowled in a lordly fashion upon a mere pedestrian who threatened to impede the movement of the taxicab by making it run over him.

“Ortiz,” said Bell quietly, “told me he’d been poisoned, and treason asked as the price of the antidote. I’ve heard that the Brazilian Minister for Foreign Affairs went insane six months ago. I heard, also, that it was homicidal mania—murder madness. And I’m wondering if these people who fawn upon Ribiera aren’t paying a price for—well—antidotes, or their equivalent. The Minister for Foreign Affairs may have refused.”

“You’re improving,” said Jamison dryly. The taxi rounded a curve and a vista of sea and sand and royal palms spread out before it. “Yes, you’re improving. But Ortiz spoke of Ribiera only as a deputy of The Master. Who is The Master?”

“God knows,” said Bell. He stared languidly out of the window, for all the world to see. A tourist, regarding the boasted beauties of the Biera Mar.

“A deputy,” said Jamison without emotion, “of some unknown person called The Master poisoned Ortiz in Buenos Aires. And Ortiz was an important man in the Argentine. Ribiera is merely the deputy of that same unknown Master in Rio, and he has generals and state presidents and the big politicians paying court to him. If deputies in two countries that we know of have so much power, how much power has The Master?”

Silence. The taxi chugged steadily past unnoticed beauties and colorings. Rio is really one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

“It’s like this,” said Jamison jerkily. “Seven Service men vanish and one goes mad. You get two tips that the fate of Ortiz is the fate of the seven men—eight, in fact. We find that two men dispense a certain ghastly poison in two certain cities, at the orders of a man they call The Master. We find that those two men wield an astounding lot of power, and we know they’re only deputies, only subordinates of the Master. We know, also, that the Service men vanished all over the whole continent, not in just those two cities. How many deputies has The Master? What’s it all about? He wanted treason of Ortiz, we know. What does he want of the other men his deputies have enslaved? Why did he poison the Service men? And why—especially why—do two honorable men, officials of two important nations, want to tip off the United States Government about the ghastly business? What’s it got to do with our nation?”

Bell flung away his cigarette.

“That last question has occurred to me too,” he observed, and carefully repressed a slight shiver. “I have made a guess, which is probably insane. I’m going to see Ribiera this afternoon.”

“He already suspects you know too much,” said Jamison without expression.

“I am”—Bell managed the ghost of a mirthless smile—“I am uncomfortably aware of it. And I may need an antidote as badly as Ortiz. If I do, and can’t help myself, I’ll depend on you.”

Jamison growled.

“I simply mean,” said Bell very quietly, “that I’d really rather not be—er—left alive if I’m mad. That’s all. But Ortiz knew what was the matter with him before he got bad off. I know it’s a risk. I’m gooseflesh all over. But somebody’s got to take the risk. The guess I’ve made may be insane, but if it’s right one or two lives will be cheap enough as a price for the information. Suppose you chaps turn around and take me to Ribiera’s house?”

There was a long pause. Then Jamison spoke in Portuguese to his companion. The taxi checked, swerved, and began to retrace its route.

“You’re a junior in the Trade,” said Jamison painstakingly. “I can’t order you to do it.”

Bell fumbled with his cigarette case.

“The Trade doesn’t exist, Jamison,” he said dryly. “And besides, nobody gives orders in The Trade. There are only suggestions. Now shut up a while. I want to try to remember some consular reports I read once, from the consul at Puerto Pachecho.”