Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (19 page)

“I’m going to snoop a little,” she told Phyllis. “Wait here for me—you might find out what it will cost to have the fat boy drive us to the Indian Burial Caves if you can find him.”

“Right-o,” agreed Phyllis. She had entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of the thing.

Miss Withers found the post office deserted, except for the postmaster in his shirtsleeves who was sorting mail in the rear. She strolled idly down the row of lock boxes, without the slightest idea of what it was that she sought. All the same, she found it. Through the thick glass in one of the last tier of boxes she saw the blue envelope!

For a long time she stood and stared at it. Somehow, she had known, deep in her subconscious, that it would be there. Patrick Mack had mailed his own envelope to himself—and the reason was something she would have given anything in the world to discover.

A plan suggested itself—a plan so daring and so daring and so simple that it staggered her. This was no time to hesitate. Perhaps she should have called in the aid of Chief Amos Britt, but that would take time and persuasion. Hildegarde Withers was strictly an opportunist.

“Here’s to crime,” she told herself and went back to the stamp window. After a few minutes’ wait, the postmaster appeared, and the usual discussion of “the temblor” occurred before she voiced her request. “It’s the one I had last year and I’d like it again if it’s vacant,” she lied boldly.

“Sixty cents for two months,” she was informed. She paid her money and was given a slip bearing a combination.

“I’ll show you how to work it if you need me to,” offered the postmaster. “But if you had the box last year you’ll probably know.”

“I do know,” Miss Withers assured him.

The man returned to his sorting, and Miss Withers went back down the hall. She spent a difficult five minutes in working the dial of her new lock box back and forth, until she had solved the problem of opening it. The glass door swung outward, and with a quick glance back at the empty office, the schoolteacher inserted her arm to its fullest extent.

As she had guessed, the back of the box was open, to allow the sorter of mail to insert letters. She fumbled for what seemed an age, stretching her wrist until it ached. At last her long fingers triumphed—and she touched the open rear door of the next lock box but one. After that it was another ordeal of stretching and anxious glances up and down before she felt the booty. Her thumb and forefinger closed around it—and then, ever so carefully, she drew the blue envelope out of its owner’s box, through her own, and tucked it swiftly in her handbag.

She heaved a deep sigh of relief. No one had seen her. Pictures of a lifetime at Fort Leavenworth, breaking rocks, flashed before her. But somehow, she knew that the risk was worth it.

She went over to the wall desk, took up a pen, and pretended to be addressing the envelope. But luckily, at this hour, the place was deserted, and the man in shirt sleeves still sorted letters.

Strangely enough, the blue envelope bore no address. It bore no stamp. Evidently it had not passed through Uncle Sam’s hands, a fact which made Miss Withers hope that her offense was lightened thereby. Perhaps it would only mean twenty years on the rock pile if she were caught.

For a moment she hesitated, and then, realizing that at any moment the inexplicable Mr. Mack might return, she decided against opening it. That would have to wait. In the meantime …

She spent a busy five minutes in the rear of a nearby stationery store, pretending to be writing a letter, and then reappeared in the post office. This time she had to wait while a woman mailed interminable postcards, but finally the coast was clear again.

She opened her box, with a deftness born of her recent practice, and reversed the laborious process of a few moments ago. She slammed the glass door again and left the building tingling with excitement. There was no sign of her having been engaged in robbery of the United States mails, for again a glint of blue envelope showed itself in the glass door of the next box but one to her own.

She had plans which were interrupted by a hail from Phyllis as she came down toward the Main Street again.

“Listen,” cried that young lady. “We’re up against a snag.”

It developed that the fat youth who piloted the red bus had vetoed any suggestion of a trip to the Indian Burial Caves. The road was in ill repair at any time, but the recent quake had shaken the hills so severely that a dozen small landslides blocked the road which led from the ball park on over the hills.

“There’s not a prayer in a whirlwind of getting through, even if we tried to walk,” Phyllis informed her. “The road is built along the side of an impassable canyon. He says it will be opened in a week or two.”

“A week or two isn’t soon enough,” said Miss Withers. “Not by a considerable sight. I wonder—”

She stopped short. Far down the street she saw the rotund yet erect figure of the freckled captain, enjoying his morning cigar. “I’ve got an idea,” she told Phyllis. “We’re not stuck yet.”

She waved eagerly at Captain Narveson, who obligingly crossed the street. “Ahoy, ma’am,” he called out. “Why the distress signals—afraid of the temblor?”

Miss Withers realized that the topic would have to be pursued to its bitter end before she could broach the subject which filled her mind.

The captain was in full swing. “That’s what yu get for sticking on land,” he pointed out. “Earth shaking every which way—houses maybe falling on yu. Ay tal yu, Ay’d rather be to sea in a full gale—”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Miss Withers quickly. “The quake has closed the road to the other side of the island. Can you tell me if it is possible to get there by water?”

Captain Narveson blinked his faded blue eyes. “Ay tank so. There’s a landing at Middle Canyon, if you catch it at high tide. But why—”

“Is that near the Indian Burial Caves?”

Captain Narveson was of the opinion that it was very near indeed to the remains of the Indian village. In fact, historians explained that the prehistoric residents of the island had used Middle Canyon as a landing for their canoes.

“Will you take us there this morning?”

Here Miss Withers was snagged again. The captain explained that his only ship was the whaler which still lingered offshore. “The
City of Saunders
couldn’t get within half a mile of that coast,” he went on. “Yu go see Sven, down on the pier. He rents boats—he fix yu up.”

Sven, it developed, was not at all eager to fix anybody up. He eyed his prospective customers with a fishy eye.

“I’ve got boats to rent, sure,” he told them. “But they don’t leave this bay. Yesterday some smart fellow tries to take one to the mainland on me.”

Miss Withers explained that she had no idea of operating an outboard motor. “We want you to take us around the island and land us on the other side,” she said.

Sven was still reluctant. Finally, upon pressure, he set a price. Very clearly he put it high enough, in his own mind, to discourage the idea. “Fifteen dollars,” he said.

“Fifteen dollars,” agreed Hildegarde Withers. She might as well be in this for a sheep as a lamb. Besides, the inspector was on his way out here, and if worse came to worst she could borrow her fare back to New York from her old friend.

Instead of one of the light, clean-lined speedboats, Sven led them to a twenty-foot launch, with an enclosed deck which smelled horribly of ancient fish.

Mister Jones leaped aboard eagerly, and the two women followed, gingerly holding their skirts away from the planking. Sven threw down oilskins for them to sit upon and busied himself in the depths of the craft for a long time. Then he reappeared.

“Tomorrow’d do just as well as today?” he suggested hopefully. But Miss Withers was firm.

“You’ve got your fifteen dollars,” she told him. He disappeared again, and finally the shuddering rumble of a motor arose. Sven cast off a rope or two, lifted Mister Jones by the scruff of the neck out of a tangle of lines and fish hooks, and then headed the launch out across Avalon Bay.

“This is real fun,” Phyllis decided. “I’m certainly glad that I didn’t go to the Isthmus, after all.”

The roar of the powerful motor drowned out her voice. They were skirting a shore which was made up of millions of smooth white rocks the size of ostrich eggs. The boardwalk ended in a clump of buildings which Miss Withers rightly took to be the pottery in which Tompkins was so much interested, and then the mountains began to press closer to the shore, looming higher and higher. They were covered with downy clumps of greenish brown, and from the water looked like pleasant hilly pastures.

Mister Jones put white forepaws on the thwart and growled defiantly at the flying fish which scurried ahead of them. Sven turned from the wheel only once, to shout back something about dirty weather after they rounded Seal Rocks. As far as Miss Withers could make out, the day promised to be fair enough, in spite of the queer gray haze which still hung between them and the sun.

They passed Seal Rocks, where a husky-voiced congregation barked hollowly and waved flippers of defiance. Mister Jones gave back the challenge with great excitement. “I didn’t know there were that many seals,” Phyllis observed.

“Properly speaking, they’re not seals, but sea lions,” Miss Withers corrected. And the launch swung in a half-circle toward the southwest.

Suddenly—so suddenly that Miss Withers caught her breath—the entire mood of the day was changed. Instead of a pebbled beach and rolling mountains of pleasant greenish brown, they were passing under cliffs frowning and forbidding, which ran straight up for two hundred feet. The very hills themselves were a dirty slate color, and instead of pleasant greenish-blue waves beneath them, the launch was bucking an angry sea of powerful and malevolent dishwater.

A big roller caught them, and only a frantic grasp by Miss Withers saved the little dog Jones from a watery grave. “He wants to be a dogfish and chase catfish,” sang out Phyllis merrily. But Miss Withers and the little dog were still sober and shaking.

“That one came all the way from China,” observed Sven gloomily. “And there’s more on the way.”

The fairy-tale summer-resort island had suddenly become a barren and unfriendly place. Here on the windward side of Catalina was no yellow beach, no fluttering green palms, no sign of habitation or of life itself except for the sea birds who flew screaming overhead and the gleaming flying fishes skittering out of the water ahead of the bows.

Miss Withers felt as if the face of a pleasant acquaintance had suddenly relaxed in an unguarded moment to show violence and savagery underneath. This then was the real Santa Catalina, the desert island of song and story. This was the island where bloody Juan Cabrillo came in 1542 to wipe out the last of the sleepy natives by a series of tortures intended to make them divulge their hordes of nonexistent gold. This was the Santa Catalina where Sebastian Vizcaino dropped anchor a hundred years later, reputedly to bury treasure sacked from a score of ravished Inca cities. The schoolteacher shivered.

“It makes you feel the way you do when for the first time you walk behind a swell movie set and see the framework and the chicken wire,” said Phyllis. “This looks like the back door to hell.”

They rolled on in silence, until at last the launch was put about by Sven so that she roared straight at what appeared to be a rocky cliff. They were almost ashore before Miss Withers made out the narrow fissure which Captain Narveson had called Middle Canyon.

Sven cut the motor, and the launch poked her nose gingerly up a tiny estuary. “Get ready to jump for it,” he shouted. “The surf is rolling in here too high for me to beach her.”

He pointed at the cliff to the left. “Up there’s your Indian caves,” he informed them. “Path heads up the canyon. I’ll be back for you in a couple of hours.”

“But I want you to wait for us,” Miss Withers protested.

Sven shook his head. “I don’t like the taste of the weather. This’ regular earthquake weather, sure enough. I ain’t going to get caught if there’s a tidal wave. You be back here by two o’clock, or the tide’ll be too low for me to get in and pick you up. Ready—jump when her bows is rising.”

Phyllis caught up Mister Jones, and Miss Withers grabbed the lunch. As Sven put the launch full speed astern to keep her from being smashed against the great rocks of the canyon mouth, the two women pressed forward, not without some temerity, and prepared to leap.

Miss Withers went first and surprised herself by landing dry-shod upon a rock. She hastily scrambled higher, out of reach of the clawing combers. Phyllis was less fortunate, in that the launch swung around beneath her feet as she took off, and girl and dog came down on all fours in a muddy wash of shells and rock fragments.

“I don’t think I’m going to enjoy this party,” Phyllis protested. Miss Withers gave her a sidewise look and nodded to herself. Phyllis was right, she wasn’t going to enjoy this. But it was too late for any turning back now. Sven and the launch were already drawing back beyond the breakers, head down the shore.

Mister Jones was scurrying delightedly up the slope of the steep path which wound along the dry stream bed. The two women followed, more and more slowly as the steepness of the grade increased.

The monotony of the climb was broken only by the discovery on the part of Mister Jones of a placid desert turtle, the size of a soup tureen, which calmly pulled in its head and legs and waited for the vocal attack to subside.

The creature bore a deep, defaced carving upon its carapace, which weather had practically obliterated. Miss Withers imagined that she could make out the first two figures of a date, “18—” but she was not sure. As the little party pushed on, at least one member very unwillingly, the ancient tortoise watched them with evil, reptilian eyes, as if, Miss Withers fancied, it was the familiar spirit of some local Sycorax.

Then at last they came out on the top of the palisade and stood lonely and awed between crisscrossed canyons and the interminable sea. The wind was fresh and chill.

“We picked a great day to go hunting Indian burial grounds,” Phyllis said at last. “I feel like the man who went out bear-hunting and came back in a hurry without his gun, saying that he guessed he hadn’t lost any bears.”