Man on a Rope (7 page)

“Thanks, Eddie,” he said. “I may want you in the morning.”

“I'll be around, Mr. Dawson,” Eddie said. “Good night, sir.”

Barry stood where he was until the Zephyr turned the corner and was gone. By then he knew that the adjacent houses were also dark, and he hoped the occupants were asleep as he turned into the path and started up the steps.

Lynn's bedroom, he knew, opened on the veranda at the right, and he started toward this, walking lightly but not on tiptoe. His knock sounded discouragingly loud in the otherwise quiet night and he glanced over his shoulder at the house next door. A high hedge served to screen the lower part of the windows and this fact reassured him somewhat and he knocked again.

“Lynn!” he said in a loud whisper. “Hey, Lynn!”

Once more he knocked and this time he rattled the knob, a curious tension beginning to pluck at his nerve ends as his thoughts expanded and his apprehension grew. Then he heard the rattle of the key in the lock and it was a wonderful sound to hear. He leaned close as the door opened a tiny crack.

“Lynn,” he said. “It's me.”

The soft “Ohhh” that followed held a connotation of relief and he could hear her catch her breath. “All right,” she whispered. “Just a minute.”

“I have to talk to you,” he said. “You don't have to turn on the light.”

He did not know whether she heard him or not, but a few seconds later the door opened silently. He pushed in on tiptoe and closed it behind him and then the room was aglow from the bedside lamp and she was standing beside it, her light-brown hair caught in a ribbon like a little girl's, her slender form wrapped tightly in a figured robe.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Why, yes…. Yes, I'm all right.”

And suddenly he was embarrassed. Grateful, but embarrassed too because he had come busting in here with the wind up, maybe scaring her, and for what? He wanted to take her in his arms, to touch her hair, and he was afraid she might not understand.

“I'm sorry,” he said as he tried to frame some apology. He would have said more if his glance had not strayed to the table and fastened on the little automatic pistol beside the lamp. “What's that for?” he asked. “Did I frighten you?”

She sat down on the edge of the bed before she replied, huddling slightly over her knees, her bare feet close together. “Someone else did, darling,” she said, and then she was talking fast, the words tumbling out in staccato whispers.

He listened without interrupting, glad now that he had come and a certain pattern shaping up in his mind, so that when she finished he said:

“All he took was your handbag?… Was the office key in it?”

“Why—yes.”

And so it was his turn and he told what had happened at Amanti's office, forgetting in the beginning that she did not know there had been murder, that Colin Lambert was dead.

She sat very still as his story unfolded, her shadowed eyes wide open, the mobile lips parted. He had never seen her quite like this before, and even as he tried to explain the night's events a part of his mind was reserved for thoughts of her, and as it came to him once more how much he loved her he marveled again that such good fortune could happen so quickly….

He had met Lynn twice at small parties during the weeks before he started his diamond venture and while he was studying the rudiments of the business at Clarke & Company. He had thought her attractive enough, but at the time the idea of love was farthest from his mind. He had recently been in love and found it a singularly shattering experience from which he had not yet recovered.

He had been familiar with the so-called “Dear John” letters that had come to acquaintances in Korea, and the one he received in Surinam was similar in content. The girl he had planned to marry when he returned to the States from his tour of duty had decided she could never be happy married to a geologist, even one with a new Stateside assignment coming up and the promise of home-office work in the future. She was sorry. She was sure he would understand and she hoped they would always be friends.

Barry had read that letter in the air-conditioned bar of the Palace Hotel in Paramaribo. He was nearing the end of a four-month survey, and he had come out of the bush for a week-end of civilization after forty straight days during which he had worked with an Indian foreman and an eighteen-man native crew, living under a tarpaulin and mosquito net and eating rice and beans and canned goods, fish when it was available, an occasional piece of fresh meat when his men were lucky in their hunting. The thought of that week-end with its clean sheets and showers and quiet drinking had kept him going, and, coming as it did, that letter had disastrous effects on his plans and his hopes.

In retrospect he was ashamed of himself and his inability to cope with his loss in an adult manner. Better men than he had suffered similar disappointments. In his case, anger and resentment crowded out any chance of a more philosophic viewpoint and as his bitterness festered he gave in to his resentment.

Before he left for camp on Monday morning he had cabled his resignation. He had another three weeks' work to do before the survey could be finished; three weeks in which to brood about the injustice of life and the moral dishonesty of women. He was sick of his job, sick of the country, and indifferent to the future.

Because Georgetown was like a metropolis compared to Paramaribo in Dutch Guiana, he had come here to continue his brooding, and the emotional scar was a long time healing. He slept late and drank too much. He borrowed some clubs from a friend and played some golf, a game scorned by the Dutch fathers below the Courantyne River. But such inactivity finally sickened him, and having heard of others who had found the search for diamonds profitable—the exception rather than the rule, since the average price per carat mined was exceedingly low—he made his agreement with Colin Lambert.

In the end he discovered he had worked very cheaply, but by that time the catharsis was complete and he was emotionally sound. Somehow women had again become desirable and he knew it was time for him to knuckle down and get on with the work for which he was trained.

He had met Lynn again at a tennis party and, once more in the proper frame of mind, had persuaded her to have dinner with him. Two days later he learned a “Dear Lynn” letter from a man in the Royal Navy was partly responsible for her being here.

The letter had come at a time shortly after the death of her mother—her father had passed on years earlier—and while she was trying to pick up the pieces that remained of her well-ordered existence she had received a note from her uncle, asking her to come to Guiana and spend some time with him. A check for her passage had been enclosed, and because at the time she wanted most to turn her back on the life she had known, she accepted.

But as with Barry, the enforced idleness, the easy way of living began to pall. Her uncle was often away. The cocktail and tennis parties became too demanding. She was not yet ready to go back to England, but she was an experienced secretary and when the chance came to work for Louis Amanti she took it gratefully—

He was aware that his explanation was finished and that she had spoken. As he brought his mind to focus she repeated her question.

“Why would anyone go to Mr. Amanti's office? What could he want?”

“Amanti says whoever it was took the rough draft of the will and the carbon. He doesn't know why. Do you?”

She shook her head slowly, the shadowed eyes still wide. “Do you think it has something to do with—the murder?”

“It begins to look that way…. Look, baby,” he said, “are you sure you don't know who broke in here and grabbed you? Haven't you any idea?”

“All I know was that he wore a wrist watch with a metal band. I felt it when he bent my head back against his chest.”

“Maybe something else is missing at the office,” he said. “Will you look? Will you let me know what Amanti says, and tell me at lunch?”

“But—Barry. You don't think Mr. Amanti—”

“I don't know what to think,” he said. “I don't even want to try. All I want is to be on that plane next Wednesday so I can get back on the job and get cracking.”

With that he stood up and told her she had better turn out the light before he opened the door. “And be sure and lock it,” he said.

When the darkness came he turned the knob quietly, glanced along the veranda, and eased through the opening. As he was about to close the door a whispered command stopped him and he saw the vague outline of the figured robe and knew she was standing on the threshold. An instant later her hands fastened on his lapel. She pulled gently, at the same time coming up on tiptoe, her lips searching for his until they found them, then clinging a long moment before she stepped back and became a shadow once more.

“Good night, darling,” she whispered. “I'm so glad you came.”

Barry Dawson's hotel room was in a one-story wing, its three windows forming a bay which overlooked the landscaped grounds. The bay itself was shaped like half of a hexagon, and a seat or shelf had been built here to extend from one corner to the other, serving Barry as a convenient catch-all for magazines and newspapers and anything else he might want to discard temporarily. The only semi-permanent fixtures were two potted shrubs which flowered at certain seasons, though not during his occupancy. Two large and shiny tins that at one time may have held five gallons of something or other provided the pots and now stood at opposite ends of the planked seat.

Just why he happened to consider them on this particular night he was never quite sure. He had never paid much attention to the shrubs and did not even know what they were called. He neither watered nor pruned, but now, at twenty minutes after one, his nerves were still a little jumpy, his senses still alert, and he was perhaps more conscious of little things than was his custom. He was more restless than sleepy and when he had slipped off his jacket he stood in front of the window seat with a cigarette; that, may have been the reason why he noticed the specks of dirt scattered on the folded newspaper which lay uppermost on the pile.

He saw at once that the specks were not dust but dirt.When he bent down he had the impression that a larger lump had been crumbled there. Because of his still latent emotional tension the association he made with those specks of dirt was swift and certain.

He looked first at one can and then the other, his gaze darkly troubled. To his unschooled eyes there was nothing out of the ordinary about either of them, or the dirt that filled them. But because he was already susceptible to suspicion, he turned and picked up a pencil from the table-desk behind him and started to prod the point down among the roots, pushing into the soft dirt with thumb and finger until the pencil touched bottom. He repeated the procedure a half-dozen times and then attacked the can on the left. It was here that he found the oilskin pouch three inches below the surface.

He spilled a lot more dirt getting it out because his hands had begun to shake and his fingers were clumsy. He could tell at a glance that the wax seals Colin Lambert had put there were unbroken. After that he had but one thought in mind: to get rid of it.

He did not stop to consider who might have put the pouch here. He thought he knew why. Someone intended to frame him for Lambert's murder, and unless he got rid of the evidence he might well end up shaking hands with the hangman.

At least that was how he felt as he stood there stiff-legged with that pouch in his hand and glanced desperately about for someplace to put it. But even then he seemed to know that the room itself offered no real hiding-place. There were only the two chairs, the bed, the desk, a chest, the wardrobe which contained his bags and his suits; the bath off the entrance offered even less hope.

Certain now that his best chance was in the grounds outside, he pushed open the center shutter and leaned out. The ground was no more than four feet beneath the sill, an easy matter for almost anyone to gain entrance to the room, and extending along the wall in both directions was a line of bushes. A young frangipani tree stood a few feet farther out in the lawn, and when he saw the edged circle of dirt which surrounded the trunk he made up his mind.

Because of the recent shower he knew the ground would be reasonably soft, and when he had turned off the light he let himself through the window, dropping gently to the ground. In another second he was on his knees, working both hands with a single-minded purpose of a dog digging up a bone.

In less than a minute he had a proper cavity. He fitted the oilskin pouch in and covered it neatly. He scraped the excess dirt from the edge of the grass, and because he did not want to tamp the dirt with his fingers and leave telltale marks, he took the wallet from his hip pocket and used it as a rake to level the loose dirt. In the morning it would be dry and no one would ever know; no one could even suspect the tree had been tampered with.

This is what he told himself to help still his tingling nerves as he climbed back into the room and drew the shutters. With the light on and his sense of security growing, he spread a newspaper on the window seat and shook out each magazine and each paper, making a funnel of the first one and channeling the loose dirt into the can where the pouch had been. To even things up he took a handful of dirt from the other can, transplanted it, and lightly smoothed the tops of both.

When, finally, he was satisfied, he stepped back and swallowed the dryness in his throat. He took a deep breath. He wiped a sleeve across his shiny forehead before he remembered his hands, and now he hurried into the bathroom and washed them clean. He had dried them and was just unbuttoning his shirt when he heard the tapping on the door.

It was a strangely brittle sound, not loud but sounding so in the otherwise quiet room. When it was repeated in the same staccato, measured beat, Barry took one last look about the room and stepped up to turn the key. Conditioned as he was by the things that had happened, he was only mildly surprised to find Superintendent Kerby standing there looking as neatly groomed and as wide awake as ever. At his shoulder the light-brown face of Inspector Cantrell stared impassively back at him.