Gallows in My Garden Page 2

  I think I must like my women weak and helpless, for the change was more than I could take. More or less by mutual consent we stopped mentioning marriage, but though we rarely saw each other any more, we were still good friends, and I have never been able to generate for any other woman the same feeling I once had for Fausta.

  After Grace Lawson departed, I took a cold shower, had lunch at the corner drugstore, then returned to my flat and phoned Fausta at El Patio.

  “Manny!” her husky voice said. “Why do you never phone unless I send you a customer? You do not like Fausta’s kisses any more?”

  “I love ‘em like candy,” I said. “What’s the dope on this Lawson girl?”

  “She is a nice girl and her boy Arnold is very nice, too. You take good care of her, you hear? And keep it strictly business. She is much too young for an old man like you.”

  “Don’t you ever think of anything but the passes I make at other women?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” Fausta said. “You stop making passes and I will stop thinking about it.”

  “All right. What you know about the kid?”

  “Only that she and her Arnold have dinner here now and then. Also someone is trying to kill her, but I do not know who.”

  “You’re not much help,” I said, “but thanks for the business. See you later, Fausta.”

  “Wait, Manny! When will you come to see me?”

  “One of these nights.”

  “You said that a month ago,” she complained. “You come tonight.”

  “Sorry. Going to the Lawsons’ for the week-end.”

  “Then you come Monday.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll give you a ring.”

  By the time I finished packing my smallest grip, it was only two o’clock and I had nothing to do until Grace Lawson returned at six. For the next three hours I skimmed over my copy of Hamlet in preparation for my role as an English student, on the theory that most people remembered little aside from Hamlet of the classics they were exposed to in school. Then the doorbell rang.

  My caller was a tall, heavy-boned man who looked like an English lord. He stood so straight he nearly leaned backward, and held his head back even farther, so that condescending eyes peered down his nose as though through invisible bifocals. He was dressed in white gabardine, white shoes, and a sailor straw hat, and hands thrust deeply into his coat pockets pulled the cloth tightly across an ominous bulge under his arm.

  When he spoke, the English-lord effect was destroyed by a pure midwestern accent.

  “You Manville Moon?” he asked.

  I admitted I was and stepped aside to let him enter.

  “You can call me Tom Jones because that’s not my name,” he said, and drew wide lips back in a humorless grin to expose horse-sized teeth.

  Without offering his hand he placed his straw hat on the mantel and appropriated the most comfortable chair in the room.

  I said, “Excuse me a minute,” went into the bedroom, removed the P-38 and shoulder holster I had packed in my grip, and arranged them where they would be more readily accessible.

  When I rejoined the man who was not Tom Jones, he asked without preamble, “Could you use five thousand dollars, Moon?”

  “Who couldn’t?” I said.

  “Good. A plane leaves for Mexico City in an hour. You get a month’s vacation with all expenses paid, plus five thousand bucks. Better start packing.”

  “What do I do to earn it?”

  “Nothing.” He exposed his horsy teeth again. “It’s a new radio give-away program. Only instead of asking you questions, we just ask you not to ask us questions.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I couldn’t afford the income tax on five thousand dollars.”

  “Did I say five?” he asked. “I meant ten.”

  “You could mean a million and I wouldn’t bite.”

  “Then let me put it another way,” he said agreeably. “You get ten thousand and a free vacation, or nothing and a free funeral. Catch on, Moon?”

  “Sure. You’re new in town, aren’t you?”

  He gave me his humorless grin. “About a week.”

  “Then you don’t know about my double standard. You see, I divide everybody in the world into two classes—people and mugs. People include everyone who makes the legitimate economy of this country function the way it does—bankers, carpenters, scrubwomen; everyone who works for a living. Mugs are the parasites, the guys who prey on what I call ‘people.’ Some of them are undernourished pickpockets and some head vast illegal enterprises that bring in millions, but it makes no difference how important the mug is, or how much social position he has. A mug is a mug.”

  My guest’s expression had changed from puzzlement to boredom, so I cut my sermon short. “People I let call me ‘Moon,’ or ‘Manny,’ or just ‘Hey, you,’ if they want. But mugs I like to call me ‘Mr. Moon.’ “ I added apologetically, “I always explain the first time, because otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.”

  His bored expression disappeared to be replaced by a flared-nostril lord-of-the-manor expression. He surged to his feet, jerked his big, white-knuckled hands from his pockets and towered over my chair.

  “Get on your feet, Moon,” he said curtly.

  When I was twenty I decided to become heavyweight champion of the world. I only got as far as three professional bouts against tankers in the light-heavy class, all of which I won on knockouts, before the boxing commission barred me from the ring for reasons which make another story. And more mature consideration has decided me the barring did not prevent me from becoming champ, but only prevented me from becoming punchy. Nevertheless I was what the trade calls a “steady fighter,” and I still have most of my co-ordination.

  I got on my feet and let him have a left hook he didn’t even see. He spun like a top and crouched over with his rear to me. Then I employed my aluminum foot to boot him head first into the sofa.

  From the sofa he rolled to the floor, glared at me groggily, and shot one hand at his armpit. I let him look at the muzzle of my P-38.

  My reaction to the hall door opening behind me was not as quick, however. Instead of turning, I merely glanced over my shoulder. A round-headed, bowlegged little man nearly as wide as he was high pushed the door closed behind him and leaned his back against it.

  He, too, was dressed all in white, except for a contrasting black automatic gripped in one hairy hand.

  “Take it easy, bub,” he said. “Set your heater down real gentle.”

  Stooping, I laid my gun on the carpet at my feet. I straightened at the same time my first guest came erect. He took two steps toward me, wound up his right arm, and let a roundhouse sizzle at my head.

  My knees bent, pulling my head down a foot, and the tall man’s fist whistled over my hair, the momentum carrying him clear around and causing him to stumble to one knee.

  “Cut that!” the squat man said sharply. “Want all the neighbors in here?”

  The English lord struggled to his feet again and glowered at me savagely. Then he regained his sense of proportion along with his horsy grin. Drawing a hammerless revolver from beneath his arm, he wagged it at me friendlily.

  “Mr. Moon prefers the funeral to the vacation,” he told his partner. “We have to call him ‘mister,’ he says, because we aren’t his social equals.”

  The squat man ran flat eyes over me as though choosing the best spot for a bullet. “In here, or do we take him for a ride?” he asked. “Guess we could muffle it in a towel or something, couldn’t we?”

  I felt the hair rise along the back of my neck.

  The taller gunman shook his head. “He’d probably put up a fight and make noise. We better use the car.”

  “I’ve decided to take the ten thousand and the vacation,” I said. “Maybe I better pack.”

  “Maybe you better shut up,” the tall man said. “Get moving.”

  Lifting his straw hat from the mantel, he dropped it over his little revolver and gestured with the hat to
ward the door. His short friend glanced at him admiringly and tried his own hat over his gun. But the automatic was too large, so he thrust it in a side pocket instead and kept his hand on it. Then he courteously held the door for me.

  We met no one in the hall, nor on the half-flight of stairs to the street entrance. But no more had we reached the sidewalk than a long black Cadillac convertible swooped around the corner and skidded to a stop in the “no parking” space directly in front of the apartment. Two people were in the car, and my heart by-passed a beat when I saw the driver was Grace Lawson.

  At the same moment she saw me and waved gaily, the squat man whispered hoarsely, “Geez! It’s the kid! What we do now?”

  “We lose the pot,” the tall man said quickly. “Scram, and fast!”

  Immediately both turned and headed down the street side by side at a fast walk. I stared after them with my mouth open until they rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

  I approached the car and said to Grace, “Were you in the Girl Marines?”

  “No,” she said, startled. “I wasn’t old enough. Why?” “Because you’re so prompt. Early, aren’t you?”

  “A little. Arnold makes me get everywhere early.” She turned her eyes to the skinny lad of twenty-two or twenty-three who sat next to her, and her tone changed to the one radio announcers use when they say, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.” But what she said was, “This is my fiancé, Arnold Tate, Mr. Moon.”

  As we shook hands I examined him in an effort to discover what he had that gave rich and beautiful girls the blind staggers. He seemed to possess none of the traditional great-lover attributes. No bulging muscles, no Grecian profile, no silken lashes, nor golden curls. His frame was big-boned but skinny, his face long and narrow, with very black eyes, an aquiline nose, and a thin but prominent jaw. His black hair was straight and possibly had been combed, but riding with the top down had spilled it all over his forehead. He had a firm handclasp and looked like a nice guy.

  I said, “How are you, Arnold?” which he recognized as a rhetorical question, for instead of answering, he asked me the same thing.

  “I was just walking to the street with some callers who dropped in,” I told Grace. “Be back soon as I get my bag.”

  My P-38 still lay in the middle of the front-room floor. I hid it under my arm, got my grip from the bedroom, and returned to the car.

  III

  GRACE DROVE AS THOUGH she were rushing to a hospital and was afraid she would have a baby before she got there. She was a good driver, but the only times we got under fifty were at stop signs and red lights.

  I was conscious of some sort of strain between her and Arnold Tate. During the first mile of our eight-mile drive to Willow Dale neither said a word, Arnold sitting still and aloof, as though he heartily disapproved of both of us, and our beautiful chauffeur occasionally casting appealing sidewise glances at him. Abruptly Arnold started the conversation.

  “I want you to know I don’t approve of this at all, Mr. Moon,” he announced.

  ‘Of what?” I inquired.

  “This subterfuge. It’s ridiculous, when Grace’s life is in danger, to consider anything so inconsequential as unfavorable publicity. I think the police should have been called long ago.”

  “So do I,” I said.

  He flashed me a surprised glance. “Then why didn’t you recommend that procedure to Grace?” “I did.”

  “Now, Arnold,” Grace broke in. “Let’s not go all over that again. Mr. Moon is a professional bodyguard and knows all about keeping people from getting killed. Don’t you, Mr. Moon?”

  “No. I only know how to try. The last woman I was hired to protect managed to get killed anyway.”

  For a moment there was silence.

  “If it will make you feel better, I caught the murderer,” I said.

  This time the silence was longer. When it began to look as though it would last indefinitely, I said, “The two men in white you saw me with when you drove up weren’t exactly friends. They were professional gunmen come to warn me out of town.”

  Both of them looked at me sharply.

  “They seemed to know you, too, which is why they departed so quickly. But if they are the ones trying to kill you, I don’t know why they didn’t take this opportunity. They had me covered, and they could easily have taken over your car, forced you to drive somewhere lonely, and rubbed all three of us out.”

  Grace had paled, but Arnold only looked angry. “How did they know Grace had engaged you?” he asked.

  “That’s the question I intended asking you two. Who knew she was going to?”

  “No one but the two of us and Fausta Moreni,” Arnold stated positively, then glanced quickly at Grace.

  She shook her head, “I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “You can rule Fausta out,” I said. “She chatters, but she doesn’t talk. She wouldn’t pass on anything told her in confidence to her own mother. That’s why so many people tell her their troubles. If neither of you let it out, the only answer is that someone’s been tailing Grace.”

  Arnold started to twist in his seat.

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’ve been watching and there’s no tail on us now.”

  Arnold said loudly, “I’m going to call the police the minute we get to the house!”

  “You do,” Grace threatened, “and I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “Haw!” Arnold snorted. He turned to me. “Understand, Mr. Moon, I’m not objecting to your being engaged. As a matter of fact I think a professional bodyguard is an excellent idea. But I think it’s absurd not to call the police, also, or for you to attempt to pass yourself off as anything but a bodyguard. If you’ll pardon my frankness, you don’t look like a graduate student in English literature.”

  I grinned at him. “What do I look like?”

  “A prizefighter or a stevedore or an army first sergeant.”

  “You win first prize,” I said. “I’ve been all three.”

  Grace flicked her eyes curiously at my face.

  “The nose and the bum eyelid aren’t from the ring,” I told her. “I picked them up in stevedore days.”

  She flushed crimson. “I’m sorry,” she said almost inaudibly. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  For some obscure reason her embarrassment embarrassed me. I am not sensitive about my face, for it isn’t exactly ugly, but only battered. So it was not the subject of my appearance that embarrassed me, but the feeling that I had caused Grace discomfiture. Which indicates the effect she had on people, for normally I am about as sensitive to others’ feelings as a Nazi prison guard.

  As we neared Willow Dale, Grace pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.

  “Now promise you’ll behave, Arnold,” she said. “I don’t want you spoiling the week-end by exciting everybody at home.”

  “I’m going to phone the police.”

  She chewed her lip petulantly. Suddenly she smiled, threw the car in gear, and started again.

  “Go right ahead,” she said in a deliberately sweet voice. “I’ll tell them you’re crazy and I don’t know a thing about it.”

  For a few moments he examined her in silence, half exasperated and half amused. Then he shrugged resignedly. “She would,” he told me wryly, and did not speak again the rest of the trip.

  Willow Dale is not a suburb, but a section of the city. Sometimes it is called “the millionaires’ subdivision,” for the five richest families in town live there. It consists of about fifteen acres perched atop a high bluff over the river. Private gates lead into each of the five estates, and the Lawson gate was the middle one.

  The sun cast its slanting glow over perfectly kept lawns as we rolled up the graveled drive. We passed a badminton court, a tennis court, and a concrete swimming-pool. We could not see the house until we were nearly upon it, for between it and the swimming-pool was a screen of weeping willows. It appeared suddenly as we passed the weeping willows, a two-story br
ick mansion which must have contained twenty rooms.

  Grace swung behind the house and pulled into the only vacancy in a four-car garage. Two other cars were parked in the court next to the garage, and beyond the court was a small stable.

  “Uncle Doug and Abigail,” Grace remarked after glancing at the cars on the court.

  As I followed Grace and Arnold to a side door, I glanced over the outside of the house. It was of modern, but not modernistic construction. It sat about thirty yards from the river bluff, which was edged with an iron handrail to prevent strollers from falling a hundred feet to the rocky beach below. An opening in the rail directly behind the house indicated steps descending to the beach. Beyond that I had time before we rounded the corner of the house only to observe that apartments of some kind were situated over the garage, probably servants’ quarters.

  Grace turned me over to an elderly housekeeper with a rawhide complexion, a mouth like a catfish, and a faint mustache.

  “This is Mr. Moon, Maggie,” she told the woman. “He’s a friend of Mr. Tate’s from school. Give him the room next to mine.”

  My first impression of the old woman was of unbending snobbery. Her critical eye took in the cut of my clothes, the shine of my shoes, and estimated the cost of my wrist watch in a single glance. When her eyes returned to my face, her expression indicated she had reached no decision.

  I am not much of a hand with young ladies, but old ones flock to me like flies to candy. I let one eyelid droop solemnly, and was rewarded by a twinkle deep within Maggie’s frosty eyes.

  She turned abruptly and said in a soft but carrying voice, “Kate!”

  Immediately a uniformed maid appeared from another room.

  “Show this gentleman the fourth guest room,” Maggie instructed the girl.

  As I followed Kate up the stairs, I could not help noticing the excellent legs attached to her trim, straight body. And when she opened the door to my room and stood aside for me to enter, I noted she was just as decorative from the front. She had a nice figure and fine black hair, but the prettiness of her features was somewhat spoiled by the sullen cast of her mouth. I guessed her to be about twenty.