Black Alibi (24 page)

It was nearing sundown when they arrived at the Inglaterra. She said, “Come in,” in answer to Manning’s low, confidential knock on the door, and they found her standing in the middle of the room. Her arrested posture indicated they had interrupted her in the act of pacing agitatedly back and forth, waiting for their arrival.

“At last,” she greeted them limply. “I’ve been dressed since four, and I was getting more nervous by the minute. I didn’t know whether you’d changed your plans or not, and there was nowhere I could reach you. You said tonight, so I went ahead and fixed up for the Madrid anyway, in order to be ready. Is this all right?” She backed away a step in order to let them take in a white evening gown sewn with crystal beads.

“Good. Just the thing!” Manning said approvingly. “It’ll glitter in the dark and make it easier for him to pick you out. Are you frightened?”

“I’m getting over it now by degrees,” she admitted. “But you should have seen me a half-hour ago. My teeth kept chattering every few minutes.”

“Here’s something I brought over for you.” He took a small-caliber gun out of his pocket, handed it over to her haft first. “Put it in your evening bag. Do you know anything about using them?”

“I can’t exactly say that I’ve been brought up on them, but I’ll probably know what to do with it, if I have to, when the time comes.”

“Just get rid of this, that’s the safety, and tighten your finger, and that’s all you have to remember. And, Marjorie, if you should have to, don’t just
threaten
. Use it first, and then threaten; you’re up against something that—”

“I know,” she said, quickly blinking the thought out of her mind.

“Will it go in?”

“I’ve got a bigger one here, with drawstrings. It’ll go in that. It opens faster than this envelope type, too.”

Raul had been standing politely by, listening to their unknown talk.

“Excuse me, my manners,” Manning apologized. “Miss King, Raul Belmonte. You two will have to communicate by signs.”

They bowed to one another, as though it were some sort of social function and not a death party they were about to start out on.

“Have you seen the papers? It worked!” Manning went on. “Oh, I forgot, you don’t read much Spanish. Anyway, they’ve swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. I phoned Robles at his headquarters a little while ago, and he told me there’s not a man left in the Bosque. They’ve all been sent over to the latest danger zone, over by the Hippodrome race track. He got six calls from there inside of twenty minutes, all reporting having seen it in broad daylight, under the race-track stands. Not only that, there’s a big shake-up impending, he couldn’t dare afford to ignore this sudden flood of notifications. His own sense of duty wouldn’t have let him anyway.”

“Were those your six calls?”

“I paid for seven, but one guy evidently got cold feet and absconded with the peso gratuity.”

“Did you get the other thing in?”

“It’s been in since last night. He’s read it by now, if he’s going to read it at all.

He stopped, ground his hands together a little nervously, like a surgeon about to perform an operation or a dentist about to extract a tooth. “Now, Marjorie—”

“I know; zero hour,” she said, with a facial shiver that was only partly a parody.

“You’ll have to leave here by yourself. Belmonte and I are clearing out right now, as soon as I run over this with you, so we can get set out there by the lake before dark. We can’t start out with you, because there’s nq way of knowing at just what point freedom from observation stops and surveillance sets in. It may be right downstairs at the door of the hotel. It may be out at the Madrid. It may be not until you reach the lake itself. You leave here about half an hour after dark. Take an open carriage like you did that night. At the Madrid be sure you’re given an outside table, at the very edge of the pavilion, so he can ogle his fill at you. Insist on it Keep your eyes away from the dark, don’t try to look for him, you won’t be able to see him anyway. Take all the time you want dining and sitting there. Try to avoid giving an impression of tension or restlessness. Above all, don’t let anyone tangle with you while you’re there. If he sees anyone sit down with you even for a few minutes, it may frighten him off. This is a psychological buildup as much as a visual one.”

“And then?”

“The lake and the swans, like with Sally. That’s the target range.”

“Won’t the coachman’s presence be an obstacle?”

“Was it the last time? He did something to frighten the horse away. Give him rope, stray away from .the horse and carriage, down below by the lake’s edge.”

She swallowed, held her own throat. “Manning, I’m not trying to back Out, but your mention of that detail makes me wonder. The way those swans and that horse were frightened—they must have
scented
something rather than heard or saw it. Suppose there really is a jaguar in it—what’ll I do? It’ll be a little harder to save me from that.”

“There must be a jaguar in it somewhere,” he told her bluntly. “Too much of Robles’ evidence points to that. But my contention is, it’s a jaguar and a man. In other words, a jaguar under control, directed by a human intelligence in some way.”

“You mean he—takes it with him, sets it loose upon the victims? But how can you do anything in time to help me, in that case? Those things spring like lightning.”

“I don’t know what it is or what he does. I only know it’s not a random beast. That’s what we’re trying to find out tonight. I’m asking you to have confidence in me, Marjorie. Belmonte and I will both lay down our lives rather than let any harm come to you. As long as there is a human agency involved; I feel confident we can outmatch it. I realize it’s a terrible ordeal to ask you to go through. But we’ve got to have a girl in it—it doesn’t attack men—and there ‘isn’t anyone else I know of we can ask to help us.”

“There isn’t anyone else you have to ask,” she told him. “I’m not going to lie to you and pretend I’m not scared; I’m scared sick. But it’s been understood since two nights ago that I’m going to do this, and that still goes.” Her lips were tight and thin. He touched her clenched hand and found it ice cold. He liked her all the better for that somehow.

“And how long do I stay down by the lake in case nothing happens?”

“Until you’ve found the missing locket.”

“Oh, there really is one there?”

“Yes, I bought one at the five-and-ten and planted it there myself this morning. It’s right at the water’s edge, under a few loose stones. Smoke a cigarette, for good measure after you’ve found it, if you want to time yourself. Meander along the lake shore for a short distance, and don’t forget what I told you, make sure you stray out of the coachman’s sight while you’re about it. If, by the time you’ve finished your cigarette, nothing has happened, you can be sure he’s not around, won’t show up any more tonight. Simply get back into the carriage and return here to the hotel. We’ll follow you back in a few minutes’ time ourselves.”

“The sun’s getting low,” Belmonte warned in Spanish, glancing toward the window. “It’s hit the cross on the cathedral. We’d better get started ourselves if we want to get there while it’s still light enough for us to pick our own hiding places.”

He bent gallantly over Marjorie’s hand, murmuring, “Homage to a very courageous lady.”

Manning took it in turn, shook it encouragingly in American fashion. “Here goes. Now keep cool, and put your faith in us. I looked that gun over for you myself, it’s in hair-trigger readiness. Remember what I told you: just flick off the safety and tighten your finger. And if it’s a case of real emergency, don’t take time to draw it out, fire it through your bag and all.”

Raul, unemotional for a South American, perhaps because he was so tense, stood waiting for him in the corridor outside. “Come on, Manning, we’ll never get there,” he urged in a matterof-fact voice, as though they were going to the corner for a drink.

She had reseated herself at the glass, was touching a glass perfume rod behind each ear, as he closed the door after him. “See you back here later tonight—I hope,” was the last thing she said.

“See you back here later tonight—I know,” he answered confidently.

The last glimpse he had of her face it was white as marble, even in the pink sunset glow, with the dread anticipation of what lay ahead of her. She was staring tautly at her own reflection, as at a death’s head.

The lake was deepening in the twilight, from ultramarine to indigo to licorice black, as though ink were being poured into it little by little at some unseen source. The Bosque was sinking into darkness all around it as silent and as lifeless as though it were an actual wilderness instead of a great natural park on the outskirts of a big city. All the little harmless things that sounded in it in the daylight hours, the birds and insects, were stilled now. A breathless hush hung over everything, awaiting the arrival of the greatest killer of them all: night; remorselessly tracking down day and slaughtering it, every twenty-four hours, over and over again. The eternal murder, unpunished, unprevented.

Manning squatted low on his haunches at the water’s edge, invisible from the higher ground above, tossing small pebbles in while he waited for Belmonte to rejoin him. They had separated to scout the perimeter of the lake, and he was the first one back at their point of departure. A little rounded figure there in the twilight, unimpressive; an ex-beachcomber, a discharged press agent, a do-nothing from the downtown bars, come out of the city to this place to battle the forces of death. No figure of a hero, no figure of a hero at all. Any more than the man who first submitted to the bite of a yellow-fever mosquito.

The swans hung motionless on the water, like dark floating clouds, heads tucked within their wings in sleep, disdainful of his pebble ripples after their first investigation had showed them it wasn’t crumbs he was pitching in.

Belmonte returned noiselessly along the water’s edge, bent forward so that his form wouldn’t show too much from above. He dropped down beside Manning in a similar squat.

“Find one for yourself?” the latter breathed.

“See those reeds there? I’ve chosen them. They seem to be growing out of the water, but there’s actually a flat stone in the middle of them I can squat on. I’ll be hidden on all four sides, even the lake side. How about you?”

“I’ve found a low forked tree, a peach. The trunk splits up into four elbow branches. It’s almost cup-shaped in the middle. All I need to do is pull down a few of the outer leaves around me. Made to order.”

“Can you get down in a hurry?”

“At a single bound. It’s low, it grows out crooked, slanting from the slope toward the lake. See anyone just now?”

“Not a living soul. I went halfway around to the other side.”

“No one around my way, either,” Manning answered guardedly. “I think we better get in now, without waiting any longer, while we have this in-between darkness before the moon comes.”

“Do you still think it’s a good idea to separate?” Belmonte whispered. “Once we do, we won’t be able to communicate with each other again.”

“It’s the only sensible way. We can protect her’ that much more effectively if there’s one of us on each side of her. Here—midway between us—is where she will come down to the water’s edge. She is bound to. It is the only place where the lake comes within easy reach of the roadway above. The road slowly curves off again from here on. And finally, this is the only strip of the shore that is smooth and grassy and easily accessible. It is where she and the other girl came the last time. He knows that, and it is where he will expect her to come again, if he believes she will come back looking for something she lost. We have her protected on three sides, this way. You up that way, I down this way, and the lake itself all along the third side. The waiting carriage up above seals up the fourth way. To get to her at all, he has to come up from behind one of us and go past. Probably from behind me, because the Madrid’s over my way. The thing to do is not jump him at sight; to let him get in
between
the two of us, and then we’ll have him coming and going.

“So it’s as important for us to be hidden from the back as from the front, where she is. Otherwise he’ll be frightened off before he comes within reach, and we’re liable to lose him. Now don’t leave anything on you or around you that will show. Remember, there’s going to be a moon in a little while, and one little glint in the wrong place and at the wrong time will give us away. Fasten your coat lapels up under your chin, to black out the white of your shirt front. Don’t leave anything shiny exposed anywhere on you—a collar pin or cuff links or even the clip of a metal pencil fastened to the outside of your breast pocket. Careful of any loose coins jangling in your clothes, too, at the wrong moment.”

They each took out a large, square pocket handkerchief and, without opening its folded layers, deposited their accumulated small change on top of it, twisting the ends over and repocketing it that way, in a sort of soundproof cornucopia.

“No smoking,” Manning warned. “Can you control yourself?”

“Of course; this isn’t a date with a girl. I could wait forever, I could go without food or drink, if I thought it would bring this—”

“Got your gun handy?”

Belmonte parted his coat with a single move and it peered out in his hand.

“Fast enough,” commented Manning. He held his wrist nearly to his eye, peering at his watch. “Five to eight. It’s going to be a long pull. She’s only just about leaving the hotel now. We’ll have to give it a good two hours, maybe even three.” He unstrapped it and dipped it into his pocket. “The moon may catch the crystal.”

Belmonte took his own off, after first setting it back a minute. “I have four to, but I may as well go by yours. One watch, one purpose, one hope between the two of us.”

“Well, we’d better break.”

“All right, so long,” Belmonte said curtly, gripping his hand.

“Take it easy,” the American breathed.

They turned their backs on one another, sidled in opposite directions, blended at a yard or two into the impenetrable gloom.