The Four of Hearts (8 page)

They were roused out of a listless discussion of the picture story by a commotion outside, and near one of the hangars they came upon an ant-hill of officials and pilots and mechanics and police. They were swarming about Ty, who was rubbing his skinned hands, and Bonnie, who was seated with folded hands, paler than her own handkerchief, staring numbly at all the busy ants without seeing them.

‘My father's in that plane,' said Ty. There was a purplish lump on the back of his head; he looked ill. ‘Queen! Thank God there's one face I recognize. And Lew! Get Butch. Call Reed Island. Do something, somebody!'

‘No point in calling Reed Island first,' said Ellery to Lew. ‘That's the one place this chap
didn't
take them to. I wonder if …'

‘Took mother,' said Bonnie simply. A female attendant tried to lure her away, but she shook her head.

Ellery rang Information, then put in a call to Tolland Stuart's estate. A man with a dry, peevish voice answered after a long time.

‘Is this Mr. Tolland Stuart?'

It seemed to Ellery that the voice was instantly cautious. ‘No, this is Dr. Junius. Who's calling Mr. Stuart?'

Ellery explained what had happened and asked if Ty's monoplane had passed near the Chocolate Mountain estate. But Tolland Stuart's physician crushed that possibility.

‘Not a plane near here all day. By the way, isn't it possible that Mr. Royle and Miss Stuart merely took that way of escaping the crowds? Perhaps – it would be natural – they wanted a really private honeymoon.'

‘And hired someone to tie up Ty Royle and Bonnie Stuart and kidnap the plane?' said Ellery dryly. ‘I hardly think so, Doctor.'

‘Well, let me know when you get word,' said Dr. Junius. ‘Mr. Stuart went rabbit-hunting this morning and hasn't got back yet.'

Ellery thanked him, disconnected, and called Palm Springs. But Jacques Butcher could not be located. So Ellery left a message and telephoned Reed Island. Sam Vix was not about – he had flown off somewhere: Ellery could not clearly get his destination.

‘Then Mr. Royle's plane hasn't landed on Reed Island?'

‘No. We've been waiting. Is something the matter? They should have been here by this time.'

Ellery sighed and hung up.

The police appeared, county men; swarms of newspaper reporters descended, a plague of locusts. In a short time the field was more blackly populated than at the take-off, and it was necessary to summon police reserves. Meanwhile, searching planes from the municipal airport and the nearest Army field were darkening the sky, streaming southwestward on the probable route of the red-and-gold monoplane.

The afternoon lengthened; towards sunset a small two-seater skimmed in from the west and the Boy Wonder leaped to the ground from the cockpit and ran for the hangar.

He put his arms about Bonnie and she sobbed against his chest while Ty paced up and down consuming cigarette after cigarette.

‘Here it is!' shouted an airport official, dashing up. ‘An Army scout has just sighted a red-and-gold monoplane on a barren plateau in the Chocolate Mountains! No sign of life.'

‘A wreck?' asked Ty harshly.

‘No. It's just grounded there.'

‘That's strange,' muttered Ellery, but he said nothing more as he saw the expression on Bonnie's face. He had seen expressions like that on the faces of condemned criminals reprieved at the eleventh hour.

And so more planes were commandeered, and a small fleet rose from the airport in the dusk and preened their wings in the setting sun.

And soon, in the darkness, they were feeling their way over the San Bernardino Mountains, guided by radio. Then they followed a brightness in the hills to the south, which grew into flares on a flat, deserted plateau.

When they landed Army men challenged them with drawn revolvers. There seemed a curious diffidence in their manner, as if they were indisposed to talk in the evening under the white stars in the cold pale light of the flares.

‘My father –' began Ty, breaking into a run. His red-and-gold plane rested quietly on the plateau, surrounded by men.

‘My mother –' said Bonnie, stumbling after him.

A helmeted officer said something in a low voice to Jacques Butcher, and he made a face and instantly smiled in the most peculiar way; and he beckoned to Ellery and Lew and called out to Bonnie: ‘Bonnie. Just a minute.'

And Bonnie stopped, her face turned sideways in the ghostly light, looking frightened and yet trying not to look frightened; and Ty stopped, too, very abruptly, as if he had come up to a high stone wall.

And Ellery and Jacques Butcher entered the cabin of Ty's plane, and someone shut the door behind them.

Outside, Ty and Bonnie stood a few feet apart, two rigid poles in a mass of stirring humanity. Neither said anything, and both kept looking at the closed door of the monoplane. And no one came near them.

The sky was so near, thought Bonnie, so close here in the mountains at night.

The cabin door opened and Jacques Butcher came out with a strong heavy step, like a diver walking on the bottom of the sea. And he went up to Ty and Bonnie and stood between them and put his right arm about Bonnie's shoulder and his left arm about Ty's, and he said in a voice that hissed against the silence of the plateau:

‘The pilot is missing. Bonnie. Ty. What can I say? Jack and Blythe are in that plane …'

‘In the plane,' said Bonnie, taking a half-step forward. And she stopped. ‘Inside?' she asked in a small-child, wondering voice. ‘Why don't they … come … out?'

Ty turned and walked off. Then he stopped, too, his back dark and unmoving against the stars.

‘Bonnie. Darling,' said Butcher thickly.

‘Butch.' Bonnie sighed. ‘They're – they're not … ?'

‘They're both dead.'

The sky was so close.

PART TWO

CHAPTER 6

CHOCOLATE MOUNTAIN

The sky was so close. Because it was falling down. Down the chute of a trillion miles. Down through the pin-hole stars. Down to the gorse-covered plateau. Down on Bonnie's head.

She pressed her palms to her eyes. ‘I don't believe it. I don't believe it.'

‘Bonnie,' said Jacques Butcher.

‘But it can't be. Not Blythe. Not mother.'

‘Bonnie. Darling. Please.'

‘She always said she'd never grow old. She always said she'd live a million, million years.'

‘Bonnie, let me take you away from here.'

‘She didn't want to die. She was afraid of death. Sometimes in the middle of the night she'd start to cry in her sleep, and I'd crawl into bed with her and she'd snuggle up to me like a baby.'

‘I'll get one of these Army pilots to fly you back to Los Angeles –'

Bonnie dropped her hands. ‘It's a horrid joke of some kind,' she said slowly. ‘You're all in a conspiracy.'

Tyler Royle came stalking back, his face blank against the pale background of the flares.

As he passed he said: ‘Come on, Bonnie,' as if only he and Bonnie existed in a dark dead world.

And Bonnie turned from Butch and followed Ty with something of the other-worldly stiffness of a Zombie.

Lew Bascom came up to Butcher, who was standing still, and said hoarsely: ‘For gossakes, how do you get outa here?'

‘You grow a pair of wings.'

‘Nah,' said Lew. ‘I'm – pooped.' He stuck his fat face out over the gorse and made a sickish, retching sound. ‘Butch, I gotta get off this damn table-top. I need a drink. I need a lot o' drinks.'

‘Don't bother me.'

‘I never could stand a stiff. Are they – are they –'

Butcher walked away. Ty and Bonnie seemed to be floating in the weird aura of mingled flarelight and starshine. They merged with and were lost in the black figures about the resting plane.

Lew sank to the harsh grass, clutching his belly and shivering in the wind. After a moment he struggled to his feet and waddled towards an Army plane, its propeller roaring for a take-off.

‘You gettin' outa here?' he shrieked.

The pilot nodded, and Lew scrambled into the rear cockpit. His hat flew off in the backwash of air. He sank low in the cockpit, trembling. The plane trundled off.

In the red-and-gold monoplane a man in flying togs was saying: ‘Hijacked by a pilot who made pretty sure he wouldn't be recognized – and then this. It looks funny, Mr. Queen.'

‘Funny?' scowled Ellery. ‘The Greeks had another word for it, Lieutenant.'

John Royle and Blythe Stuart half-sat, half-lay in upholstered swivel chairs in the cabin, across the aisle from each other. Their luggage, baskets of flowers, the wicker hamper were in the aisle between them. The lid of the hamper stood open. On the floor under Royle's slack left hand lay the half-eaten remains of a ham sandwich. One of the thermos bottles from the hamper stood beside it. The empty cap-cup of the bottle was wedged between his thighs. His handsome features were composed. He looked as if he had fallen asleep.

The second thermos bottle had obviously fallen from Blythe's right hand: it lay, mouth tilted up, among the bruised blossoms of a rose-basket beside her. A wad of crumpled waxed paper, the wrappings of a consumed sandwich, was in her lap. The cup of the other thermos bottle had fallen to the floor between her feet. And she, too, eyes closed, serene of face, seemed asleep.

‘It's awfully queer,' remarked the Lieutenant, studying the still cold faces, ‘that they should both pop off around the same time.'

‘Nothing queer about it.'

‘They haven't been shot or stabbed or strangled; you can see that. Not a sign of violence. That's why I say … Only double heart-failure isn't – well, it's quite a coincidence.'

‘You could say,' retorted Ellery, ‘that a man whose skull had been dashed into turkey-hash with a sledge-hammer died of heart-failure, too. Look here, Lieutenant.'

He stooped over Royle's body and with his thumb pressed back the lid of the right eye. The pupil was almost invisible; it had contracted to a dot.

Ellery stepped across the littered aisle and opened Blythe Stuart's right eye.

‘Highly constricted pupils,' he shrugged. ‘And notice that pervasive pallor – cyanosis. They both died of morphine poisoning.'

‘Jack Royle and Blythe Stuart
murdered
?' The Lieutenant stared. ‘Wow!'

‘Murdered.' Bonnie Stuart stood in the cabin doorway. ‘No. Oh, no!'

She flung herself upon her mother's body, sobbing. Ty Royle came in then, looked down at his father. After a moment his hand felt for the cabin wall. But he did not take his eyes from that calm marble face.

Bonnie suddenly sat up, glaring at her hands where they had touched her mother's body. Although there was no mark on her white flesh, Ellery and the Lieutenant knew what she was staring at. She was staring at the invisible stain, the impalpable taint, the cold outer-space enamel of death.

‘Oh, no,' whispered Bonnie with loathing.

Ty said: ‘Bonnie,' futilely, and took an awkward step across the aisle towards her.

But Bonnie sprang to her feet and screamed: ‘Oh, no!' and, standing there, tall and distraught, her cheeks pure grey, her breast surging, she swayed and began to fold up like the bellows of an accordion. And as she crumpled in upon herself her eyes turned completely over in their sockets.

Ty caught her as she fell.

Icy bristles of mountain wind curried the plateau. Butch took Bonnie from Ty's arms, carried her through the whipping grass to an Army plane, and threw a borrowed fur coat over her.

‘Well, what are we waiting for?' said Ty in a cracked voice. ‘Death by freezing?'

And the Lieutenant said: ‘Take it easy, Mr. Royle.'

‘What are we waiting for?' shouted Ty. ‘Damn it, there's a murderer loose around here! Why doesn't somebody start tracking the scum down?'

‘Take it easy, Mr. Royle,' said the Lieutenant again, and he dived into a plane.

Ty began to thrash around in the knee-high grass, trampling swathes of it down in blind parabolas.

Ellery said to a pilot: ‘Just where are we?'

‘On the north tip of the Chocolate Mountains.'

He borrowed a flashlight and began to examine the terrain near the red-and-gold monoplane. But if the mysterious aviator who had borne Jack Royle and Blythe Stuart through the circumambient ether to their deaths had left tracks in making his escape from the grounded plane, the tracks had long since been obliterated by the milling feet of the Army men. Ellery wandered farther afield, skirting the rim of the plateau.

He soon saw, in the powerful beam of the electric torch, that the task of finding the unknown pilot's trail quickly was almost a hopeless one. Hundreds of trails led from the plateau down through scrub pine to the lowlands – chiefly horse-trails, as he saw from the many droppings and steel-shoe signs. To the east, as he recalled the topography, lay Black Butte; to the north-west the southern range of the San Bernardino Mountains; to the west the valley through which ran the Southern Pacific Railroad, and beyond it the Salton Sea and the San Jacinto range. The fleeing pilot could have escaped in any of the three directions, through sparsely settled country. It would take days by experienced trackers to find his trail, and by that time it would be stone-cold.

Ellery returned to the red-and-gold plane. The Lieutenant was there again. ‘It's a hell of a mess. We've made three-way contact by radiophone with the authorities. There's a mob of 'em on their way up.'

‘What's the trouble?'

‘This end of the Chocolate Mountains just laps over into Riverside County – most of it lies in Imperial County to the south. The plane in coming here passed over Los Angeles County, of course, and probably the south-east tip of San Bernardino County. That makes three different counties in which these people may have died.'

‘So the assorted gentlemen of the law are fighting,' nodded Ellery grimly, ‘for the right to sink their teeth into this juicy case?'

‘Well, it's their oyster – let ‘em scramble for it. My responsibility ends when someone shows up to claim jurisdiction.'

Butcher said curtly: ‘I don't know about your legal responsibility, Lieutenant, but something's got to be done about Miss Stuart. She's in a bad way.'

‘I suppose we
could
fly you folks back to the municipal airport, but –'

‘What's the trouble?' asked Ty Royle in a high-pitched voice. Ellery felt uncomfortable at the sight of his haggard face. His lips were blue and he was shivering with a cold not caused by the wind.

‘Bonnie's collapsed, Ty. She's got to have a doctor.'

‘Well, sure,' said Ty abstractedly. ‘Sure. I'll fly her down myself. My plane –' But then he stopped.

‘Sorry,' said the Lieutenant. ‘That's the one thing that doesn't leave this place till the police get here.'

‘I suppose so,' mumbled Ty. ‘I guess so.' He yelled suddenly: ‘Damn it to hell!'

‘Here,' said Ellery, grabbing his arm. ‘You're not far from collapse yourself. Lieutenant, have you any notion how far Tolland Stuart's place is from here? It's supposed to be on a butte in the Chocolate Mountains, somewhere below in Imperial County.'

‘It's only a few minutes south by air.'

‘Then that's where we'll take her,' rasped Butcher. ‘If you'll be good enough to place a plane at our disposal –'

‘But I don't know if I ought to.'

‘We'll be at Tolland Stuart's when they want us. You said yourself it's only a few minutes' hop from here.'

The Lieutenant looked unhappy. Then he shrugged and shouted: ‘Garms! Turn ‘em over.'

A pilot saluted and climbed into a big Army transport. The motors began to spit and snarl. They all broke into a run.

‘Where's Lew?' shouted Ellery above the din.

‘He couldn't take it,' Butcher shouted back. ‘Flew back to L.A. with one of the Army pilots.'

A few minutes later they were in the air headed south-east.

The brightness on the plateau dwindled to a pale blob, then to a pin-point, and finally blinked out altogether. Butcher held Bonnie, whose eyes were closed, tightly to his chest. Ty sat alone, forward, buried to the nose in his thin coat; he seemed to be dozing. But once Ellery caught the wild shine of his eyes.

Ellery shivered and turned to peer down at the black wrinkled face of the mountain slipping by below.

In less than ten minutes the transport was wheeling over a luminous rectangle lying flat among the crags. To Ellery it seemed no larger than a postage stamp, and he began uncomfortably to think of his own immortal soul.

As he clutched the arms of his seat he saw dimly a massive pile of stone and wood beyond the lighted field. Then they were rushing down the little landing-place bound, he could swear, for a head-on collision with a hangar.

Miraculously, however, the plane bumped and hopped to a safe stop; and Ellery opened his eyes.

A tall emaciated man was standing outside the hangar, shading his eyes from the glare of the arcs, staring at the plane. It seemed to Ellery that there was something peculiar about the man's rigidity – as if the plane were some Medusa-like monster and he had been petrified by the mere sight of it.

Then the man relaxed and ran forward, waving his arms.

Ellery shook his head impatiently at the mercurial quality of his imagination. He tapped Ty on the shoulder and said gently: ‘Come on, Ty.' Ty started. ‘We're here.'

Ty got up. ‘How is she?' Butcher shook his head. ‘Here. I'll – I'll give you a hand.'

Between them they managed to haul Bonnie out of the plane. Her body was flaccid, as if all her bones had melted; and her eyes were open, ignoring Butcher, ignoring Ty, fixed on space with a rather terrifying blankness.

Ellery stopped to talk to the pilot. When he jumped to the ground a moment later he heard the tall thin man exclaiming in a distressed voice, ‘But that's not possible. Perfectly ghastly. When did it happen?'

‘We can talk later,' said Butch shortly. ‘Miss Stuart needs your professional attention now, Dr. Junius.'

‘Appalling,' said the doctor. ‘And the poor child; all broken up. Naturally! This way, please.'

The Army transport took to the air again as they passed the hangar, in which Ellery noted a small, stubby, powerful-looking plane, and entered a tree-canopied path leading to the dark mansion beyond. The transport circled the field once, raising echoes from the surrounding mountain walls, and then darted off towards the north-west.

‘Careful. The path is rough.' Dr. Junius swept the ground with the beam of a flash. Watch these steps.' Silently pursuing, Ellery made out a wide doorway. Open. A sepia cavern lay behind. The flashlight stabbed here and there; then it went out and lights sprang on.

They stood in an enormous, damp-smelling chamber, heavily raftered, with bulky oak furniture, a stone mat-strewn floor, and an immense dark fireplace.

‘The settee,' said Dr. Junius briskly, running back to shut the door. Except for one penetrating glance in Ellery's direction, the doctor paid no attention to him.

The man's skin was yellowed and bland, so tightly drawn over his bones that it could not wrinkle. The eyes were clever and unfriendly. The figure was stooped, even thinner than Ellery had thought at first sight. He wore a pair of shapeless grimy slacks tucked into high, laced, lumberman's shoes, and a mildew-green smoking-jacket glazed with age. Everything about the man was old – a creature who had grown old by a process of dehydration. There was something cringing about him, too, and watchful, as if he were constantly on the dodge from blows.

Ty and Butch laid Bonnie gently down on the settee.

‘We weren't expecting visitors,' whined Dr. Junius. ‘Mr. Royle, would you be good enough to start the fire?'