Miss Shumway Waves a Wand (8 page)

“Two days? Why, you’re crazy!”

Then seeing the way I looked at her she went on, “You wouldn’t kid me, would you?”

“No. I wouldn’t kid you,” I said.

She suddenly laughed. “Well, maybe I was tired. I feel kind of weak now. Will you leave me for a little while? I want to think and then I’d like something to eat.”

I got up. “Sure,” I said. “You take it easy.”

Ansell and Bogle looked at me anxiously when I got downstairs. “It’s no good,” I said.

“She doesn’t remember anything.”

“You don’t mean to say she just slept all the time?” Ansell demanded. “But what about the snake-bite remedy? What happened to that?”

“Aw, quit asking questions,” I said, suddenly sore, and I went into the kitchen to order her a meal.

When it was ready, Bogle met me in the passage as I came from the kitchen with a tray in my hands.

“Can I take that up to her?” he said, scowling at me fiercely.

“You?” I nearly dropped the tray.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Bogle demanded fiercely. “You and Dce’s been up, ain’t you? Why can’t I have a look?”

I grinned at him. “She’s not a bad kid, is she?” I said.

“Bad?” Bogle snatched the tray out of my hands. “That ain’t the word for it.” But he tiptoed up the stairs as if they were made of paper.

As I turned into the lounge, there was a sudden wild yell from upstairs and a crash of broken china.

Doc and I looked at each other in alarm and then we dashed for the stairs.

Bogle came blundering down the passage, his face white and his eyes bolting out of his head. He tried to pass us, but I grabbed him and spun him round.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” I demanded, shaking him.

“Don’t go in there,” he quavered, sweat running down his fat face. “She’s floating round the room. Floating up to the ceiling,” and shoving me aside, he continued his mad flight.

“He’s gone crazy,” I said, staring after him. “What’s he mean, floating round the room?” Ansell didn’t say anything, but I could see by his eyes, he was scared.

The evening sun had sunk below the mountains and in the fading light, the verandah was quiet and restful. A cool wind rustled the scorched leaves of the overhead cypresses and the square was deserted. Ansell and I lolled in our chairs near Myra, while Bogle sat at the table, fondling a bottle half-filled with whisky.

“Drink’s going to be Samuel’s downfall,” Myra went on. “He can’t have his D.T.’s like an ordinary decent citizen. He has to be different. So he sees floating women instead of pink snakes.”

I looked across at Bogle. He worried me. Sitting in a heap, drinking whisky steadily, he looked like a man embarking on a long and serious illness. He kept shaking his head and muttering to himself and every now and then a muscle would flutter in his cheek and his eyes would twitch.

“Now, wait a minute,” I said. “He must have seen something to get him in that condition. A man doesn’t go to pieces like that for fun.”

“Phooey!” Myra snapped. “He’s trying to be temperamental. You came in two minutes after he’d rushed out. You didn’t see me floating in the air, did you?”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here, if I had,” I said with a grin. “I’d be running somewhere in the desert.”

“Well, there you are,” Myra said. “He’s suffering from delusions.”

“Suppose you go over your story again, Sam?” Ansell said kindly.

Bogle gave a little shiver and poured himself out another drink “I’ll go screwy if I even think about it,” he said in husky voice.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Myra told him. “You’re as far gone as you ever will be. After all, there is a limit even to lunacy.”

Bogle screwed up his fists and faced us. “I don’t care what you punks say,” he snarled. “I believe my own peepers. I went into that room and there she was lying on the bed. I didn’t even have time to ask her how she was when she suddenly rose off the bed with the blanket over her and floated up to the ceiling, stiff, like she was held up by wires.”

We all exchanged glances.

“She just floated off the bed, eh?” I said. “You’ve never seen anyone else just float off a bed before, have you?”

Bogle shook his head. “No,” he said simply, “I ain’t and what’s more, I don’t ever want to see it again.”

Ansell said in a low voice to me: “Sun stroke.”

I nodded. “Now, look pal,” I said. “We’ve had a pretty hard day. Suppose you go to bed? You’ll be fine to-morrow.”

Bogle groaned. “Do you think I’ll ever be able to sleep again?” he said, pouring himself out another whisky.

Myra swung her feet to the ground and stood up. She was wearing a dark blue shirt and a pair of grey flannel trousers. The outfit certainly suited her neat little figure. She walked over to Bogle and took the whisky away from him.

“Go on,” she said. “Get off to bed or I’ll do more than float over you.”

Bogle shrank away from her. “Don’t come near me,” he said in horror.

“Leave him alone,” Ansell said. “It looks to me as if he were suffering from delayed shock.”

Myra hesitated, then keeping the whisky bottle she moved back to her chair.

I snapped the bottle out of her hand as she passed. “I’ll have what’s left,” I said and took a long pull from the bottle.

Myra sat down again. “Well, we’re right where we started, aren’t we?” she said. “We’ve spent the best part of an hour listening to Samuel’s drivel about floating women.”

“Yeah,” I said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“What I want to know,” Ansell said, sitting up, “is what happened in that hut? Did you or did you not get anything out of Quintl?”

“Of course, I didn’t,” Myra said. “I’ve told you over and over again. He put me in a hut and I went to sleep. I don’t remember a thing.”

“Well, that’s that,” I said dismally. “You can kiss your snake-bite remedy good-bye. Now Quintl’s dead no one will have it.”

“It looks like it,” Ansell said. “And yet… why was he in the hut with her? She was alone when she went to sleep, yet we find Quintl with her when we break in. There’s something behind all this.” He scratched his chin, staring at Myra with questioning eyes. “You don’t feel any different, do you?” he asked cautiously.

“You mean do I want to start floating or something like that?” Myra asked tartly. “Are you going nuts, too?”

“Maybe there’s something in what Bogle said,” Ansell went on. “Maybe he wasn’t mistaken.”

“A pair of them,” Myra said to me. “Good Lord! Put them in strait jackets.”

I stared at Ansell in alarm. “What are you getting at?”

Before he could reply a party of horsemen rode into the Square, scattering dust and breaking the stillness of the evening.

“What’s this?” Myra asked, looking over her shoulder at the dark group of horsemen. “A rodeo?”

I sat up in alarm. One of the horsemen was immensely tall and fat. That was enough for me.

“Quick, Doc,” I said. “Get inside and phone for the Federal troops. These guys are bandits.”

Ansell stiffened in alarm. “What do you mean?” he asked, sitting like a paralysed rabbit.

“Okay, okay, stay where you are. They’ve seen us.”

Myra looked at me blankly. “What are you talking about?”

“Hornets, my pet,” I said grimly, and she caught her breath in a little gasp.

From the group of sixteen men, three detached themselves and walked towards the verandah steps. The others remained with the horses, watching. One of the three men was immensely fat and tall. He walked just ahead of the other two. He came up the verandah steps that creaked under his weight.

It was the fat party we had met on the mountain road and he had a mean look on his dark greasy face as he stood under the lamp, looking at us. Particularly he looked at Myra. Then he took out a pale silk handkerchief and blew his nose. While he was doing this, his eyes remained on Myra’s face.

Myra eyed him up and down. She was in no way disturbed to meet him again.

“Haven’t we seen that fat boy before?” Myra said to me.

The fat party moved a little nearer. His companions remained in the shadows.

Bogle, suddenly feeling the hostile atmosphere, decided that he ought to assert himself.

“Lookin’ for anyone, pal?”

The fat party felt in his pocket. “Somewhere I had a very interesting notice,” he said.

“Now, where did I put it?” He fumbled again, frowning slightly.

“Try your paunch,” Myra said, lighting a cigarette and flipping the match into the darkness. I tapped her arm. “Would you mind keeping quiet?” I said pleadingly. “It’s not much to ask in these days of acute crisis.”

The fat man pulled out a crumpled newspaper and began smoothing it between his great hands. He peered at it and then at Myra. Then his face lit up and he actually smiled. It didn’t reassure me. You know how it would be if you met a snake and it smiled at you, it wouldn’t reassure you.

“Yes,” he said, “here it is. Very interesting. Very interesting indeed.”

“He seems happy enough talking to himself,” Myra said, yawning. “Don’t you think we can go to bed?”

“I have a sneaking idea that before very long we’ll get involved in his monologue,” I said helplessly. “I think we ought to be as cautious as possible.”

Bogle blinked at the fat party, muttered to himself and then eased his great muscles. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Who’s this guy, anyway?”

“I am Pablo,” the fat party returned with a furtive look at Myra. “You are strangers to this country, you would not know me.”

Ansell started as if he’d been stung.

“Pablo,” Myra repeated. “Sounds like something to rub on your chest.”

The fat party smiled again. “The little man has heard of me. Is it not so, seńor?”

I’d heard of him, too, and when Ansell said “Yes” very feebly, I sympathized with him.

“Then tell your friends who I am,” Pablo went on. “Tell them that Pancho Villa and Zapata finished where I began. Tell them about my fortress in the mountains and of the men that have been bricked up in its walls. Tell them of the excellent fellows that work under me, and of the trains we have dynamited. Come, seńor, where is your tongue?”

Ansell looked round at us and nodded his head. “That’s the boy,” he said nervously.

“If Samuel will play the harmonica, we’ll give him a civic reception,” Myra said lightly.

“After which he’ll be presented with a little flag and a string beg to keep his silly looking hat in and then, with luck, we’ll all go to bed.”

I felt she wasn’t being exactly helpful.

Pablo played with his handkerchief. “It is Myra Shumway … that is the name, yes?”

“Fame at last,” Myra said, a little surprised. “How are you, Doctor Livingstone?”

“And you, seńor, Ross Millan?”

Bogle sat up. “I’m Sam Bogle,” he said. “Please to meet you.”

“Shut your mouth, you dog,” Pablo said, his eyes boring holes into Bogle, “or I will cut your tongue out.”

Bogle gaped at him. “Well, I’ll be…!” he gasped.

I kicked his chin under the table and told him to take it easy.

Pablo wandered over to the table, drew up a chair and sat down near Myra. He moved very lightly for his bulk.

Myra drew away from him.

“There is much to talk about,” he said, reaching for the jar of wine that stood on the table. He poured the sour red wine into Myra’s glass, then held the glass up to the light of the lamp.

“Your pretty mouth leaves marks,” he said smiling at Myra. “Your kisses could be dangerous,” and he shook with a spasm of laughter.

“Mind you don’t bust your corset,” Myra said, alarmed.

Pablo crushed the glass in his hand. The wine and glass splinters spattered the table. Bogle half started from his chair, but I again touched him under the table. I could have smacked Myra. Either she was being the dumbest of all blondes or else she had more guts than I and the rest of us put together. Whichever way it was, she was making things bad for us all.

The men in the Square made a move forward. Several of them dropped their hands to their gun butts.

Pablo wiped his hand on his handkerchief and looked with interest at the cut on his palm.

“That was careless of me,” he said, looking at Myra.

“Don’t apologize,” Myra returned. “I had a cousin who was also a mental defective. He had to have cast-iron feeding utensils. I dare say I could arrange the same thing for you at a cut rate.”

“When my women are insolent,” Pablo said dreamily, “I peg them out in the hot sun on an ant-hill.”

Myra twisted round, facing him. “But, I’m not your woman, fat boy,” she said. “You can take your little bandits out of here and feed them through a sausage machine.”

I said quickly: “Don’t mind her. That’s just her sense of humour.”

Pablo wrapped his handkerchief round his hand. “Very interesting sense of humour. If my woman talks like that I cut her tongue out. She loses her sense of humour very quick then.”

I felt it was time to take a more active part in the conversation. “Tell me, seńor, is there something particular that you wish to discuss with us?” I asked, offering him a cigarette from my case.

“Yes,” he said, waving away the cigarette. “Something very important” He picked up the newspaper which he had dropped on the floor. I recognized the Recorder. “You will see why I am interested in the seńorita,” and he spread the newspaper on the table.

I knew what was coming, but even then I hardly dared to look at the splash headlines that were smeared across the front page. Somehow, this thug had got hold of the issue containing Maddox’s story of the kidnapped blonde. There was a big shot of Myra and in the biggest type of all was the announcement about the 25,000-dollars reward.

“Brother,’ I thought. “Have you got to be smart to talk yourself out of this?’

Before I could stop her, Myra had snatched up the paper, while Bogle and Ansell crowded round her.

“That’s quite a good likeness of you they’ve got there,” I said carelessly. “I always thought the
Recorder
was unreliable, but this is the end. Kidnapped by bandits indeed. That is a laugh.”

Myra looked at me over the top of the paper. There was a disagreeable look in her eye.

“Isn’t it?” she said, between her teeth. “I’m suffocating with mirth.”

There was a long silence while the three of them went through the article, then Myra folded the paper with slow deliberation and put it on the table.

“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” she said gently. “And I was going to call you by your first name!”

“But there is’ more,” Pablo said, picking at his great white teeth with his thumb nail.

“There is a man called Bastino who lives in the mountains. He is a good friend of mine. He tells me that he is to kidnap this young woman. Later it has been arranged for Seńor Millan to rescue her, but Seńor Millan says nothing to Bastino about the reward. He pays Bastino a mere three hundred dollars and Bastino feels sore about it. He comes to me and shows me the paper, so I think I had better do something about it.” He waved his fat hand. “So here I am.”