The Mouse in the Mountain by Norbert Davis (acx book reading TXT) 📖

cannot possibly have gotten out of Los Altos."

"I'm so sorry," Lepicik contradicted. "But I'm afraid he has. He is very clever."

"No," said Captain Perona. "He is here somewhere, no matter how clever he is." He hesitated. "I can understand how you feel, and I sympathize with you, but I cannot allow you to remain at large unless you give me your word you will not attempt to find Greg or to harm him."

Lepicik merely smiled.

Captain Perona shrugged. "Then I am forced to place you under technical arrest."

"It will be quite useless for you to do that," Lepicik told him. "I will find Greg sooner or later."

"But not in this district while I am in charge of his safety. You will be placed in my quarters under guard. You will be comfortable there."

"Thank you," said Lepicik.

Sergeant Obrian came part way down the stairs. "Captain, didn't that old artist doll say she was gonna flop here? She ain't around now."

"Amanda Tracy!" Captain Perona exploded. "Where is she?"

"Now how do I know?" Timpkins asked drearily. "I was sleepin' peaceful as a baby--"

"Somebody want me?" a hoarse, wheezing voice asked. "Well, here I am. What's left of me."

The soldiers shoved and squeezed in the doorway, and Amanda Tracy staggered past them. One side of her frizzed hair was matted into a crusted tangle, and blood lay like a red, glistening hand across her cheek. She braced herself on thickly muscular legs and swayed back and forth, staring blearily at Captain Perona.

"That fella Greg," she said. "You wait until I get my mitts..." She groped out vaguely with bloodstained hands. "Goes and socks a lady with a rock just because she says hello.... You wait--"

She fell forward as swiftly and suddenly as a tree toppling, and her head clunked solidly against the floor.

Mrs. Henshaw decided to scream and did so, frantically and senselessly, holding on to Mortimer so tightly that his eyes popped.

Captain Perona barked an order over his shoulder, and one of the soldiers in the doorway ducked away into the darkness. Captain Perona dropped to his knee beside Amanda Tracy and felt for the pulse in one of her thick, tanned wrists.

"She is alive," he said, breathing deeply in relief. Carefully he parted the matted, blood-soaked hair. "Ah! It is here! A blow like the one that killed Senorita Van Osdel, only this one glanced and cut instead of striking deep." He looked up. "Do any of you know anything of this?"

"Greg did it," said Henshaw. "Didn't you hear her? Greg smacked down Patricia Van Osdel and Maria and this one, too. Just find him and everything is solved."

"How do you know?"

"I deduced it," said Henshaw.

"Keep your deductions to yourself after this."

"Okay," said Henshaw. "But don't come around and say I didn't tell you--"

"Be quiet!"

Timpkins cleared his throat. "I was kind of muzzy-like from sleep first off... Seems like I remember--"

"What!" Captain Perona barked angrily.

"Here now," said Timpkins indignantly. "Not so rough, if you please. All I was gonna say was that she was complaining about the bedding I gave her--without no reason at all, you may be sure and she said something about goin' over to her place and diggin' some of her own out of the wreckage."

"Why didn't you stop her?"

"Arr?" said Timpkins. "Me? Stop her? Oh, no. I've had a brush or two with her before this."

"I warned you all to stay in the hotel!"

"Now, Captain," said Timpkins. "Naturally, she thought that just applied to these here tourists--not to old residents like me and her."

The soldier came back, panting heavily, with a rolled-up stretcher over his shoulder. He and an other soldier unfastened the straps, opened it out, and put it on the floor beside Amanda Tracy.

"Cuidado!" Captain Perona warned.

The soldiers lifted Amanda Tracy's thick body gently and put her down on the stretcher.

Captain Perona stood up. "You see now--from this--that it pays to give attention to my warnings. I do not talk to you merely for the pleasure it gives me. The rest of the night you will all stay in this hotel. I will leave soldiers to see that you do. If the man, Greg, returns he will be arrested. If he does not return, we will find his hiding place and very soon. I will take Senorita Tracy to the hospital now. Senor Lepicik, you will come with me, please."

"Certainly," said Lepicik. "Mr. Doan, will you take care of my umbrella for me, please?"

"Sure, pal," said Doan.

"You will be careful of it?"

"Indeed, yes," said Doan.

Lepicik and Captain Perona followed the soldiers carrying the stretcher out the door. Sergeant Obrian came down the stairs ahead of more soldiers.

"Don't none of you birds try to fly this coop," he warned. "Some of us will be outside, and we're feelin' nasty." He counted the soldiers as they filed through the door, nodded once meaningly, and followed them.

"Now I don't care for this!" Timpkins snarled. "Not a little bit! Turning my hotel into a jail and a slaughterhouse. I'm tellin' you, and you all hear me say it, no more of this hanky-panky or out you go. Right into the street. Captain Perona or no Captain Perona, I know my rights. I'm a British subject, and I'll protest to the ambassador."

He marched out the back way, his bony bare feet slapping on the floor and his nightshirt fluttering indignantly behind him.

"I'm going to bed," said Henshaw. "I got to snag old Timpkins for a bathroom tomorrow, and I can't sell good unless I get my sleep."

He went upstairs, and Mrs. Henshaw, trailing Mortimer, followed him.

Doan was examining Lepicik's green umbrella cautiously. "I wonder how this works."

"Why, just like any umbrella," Janet told him. "Let me show you."

"Ah-ah," said Doan. "No. Get away. I've got it now."

There was a sudden loud pop.

"Reminds me of champagne," said Doan.

"Did the umbrella make that noise?" Janet asked curiously.

Doan nodded. "Yeah. It also made that." He pointed toward the bar.

There was a bright sliver of steel, about the size and half the length of a knitting needle, stuck deep in the hard wood.

Janet stared. "It--it shot that?"

"Yes. It's an air-gun. A dandy, too. I'd hate to have somebody pop one of those pins into my eye. I bet it wouldn't be very healthy. Let's see. It should pump up here somewhere... Ah!"

The crooked handle turned and slid out six inches, revealing an inner sheathing of oiled metal.

"Sure," said Doan, working it experimentally. "Just like a bicycle pump. Throws air pressure into this cylinder and holds it until you release this catch and then blows it--and the steel pin--out through the length of the barrel. Very neat. I'll bet it's damned accurate at close range, too."

While Janet watched him he went over and started to work the steel needle loose from the bar.

"I thought air-guns were toys," Janet said.

"What do you think now?" Doan asked.

"Why--why, that's a murderous thing!"

"I'll bet it is, at that," said Doan. "This needle is stuck in here two inches. It's got a leather washer here on the reverse end to hold the air pressure..." He stopped working at the dart and looked over the bar. "I think it's about time Doan should have another drink."

Carstairs sat back on his haunches and yelled. There was no other word to express the sound. It was a cry of sheer animal frustration so loud that its reverberations rattled the lamp chain and set the shadows to dancing again.

"All right!" Doan said, when he could make himself heard. "You spoil-sport! You blue-nose! If you feel that badly about it, we'll go to bed instead!"

Chapter 11

 

IT WAS MORNING, AND THE SUN WAS gleaming and grinning generously, regardless of earthquakes, murders, or even Hitler. Janet sat on the parapet that circled the roof of the Hacienda Nueva Inglesa and kicked her heels against the rough plaster, relaxing luxuriously. There was just a slight breeze, and the air felt dry and gentle touching her face.

Los Altos spread away under her--crooked little streets jogging between red, scarred roofs--each detail clear and perfect in miniature. People were splotches of color--serapes and rebozos and white sombreros--moving busily about their affairs like jerky, self-satisfied bugs. Occasionally she could hear the faint overtones of their voices--the thin chittering of words in the mass.

Far on down below, beyond the borders of the town, the Canyon of Black Shadow was like a blue, crooked vein laid against the pink flesh of the earth. So clear was the air that Janet could see the toylike soldiers working around the jagged needle of the bridge support on the far side. A heliograph near them blinked a constant barrage of bright signals at other soldiers on the near side.

Janet breathed deeply, enjoying it all. She turned after a little to look the other way, up the slope of the mountain. The houses above frowned down on her like white, dull faces.

Off to her right, west of the town, the slope stretched upward in a brown, tangled sweep, and Janet looked across its waste absently until her eyes caught and came back to an upthrust of queerly shaped rock. She studied it casually until she could make out a blocky, rough-cut profile. It was as though some giant had taken an oversize ax and cut out nose and mouth and bulge of brows with three expert blows.

Janet turned to her left, still lazily indifferent, and looked up the east slope. They were there--three square, stone monuments in a line like the three bears, big and then medium and then small. Janet smiled a vague greeting at them and wondered how she knew they were where they were. She decided she would have to think about the matter some time when she was more industrious and less comfortable.

From somewhere far off there came a faint, humming buzz. It had no direction at first. It resounded in the whole limitless vault of the sky. Janet stared, shielding her eyes against the glare with a cupped hand.

The buzz deepened to a drone. It localized itself toward the north, faded away, and then swept down with redoubled strength, coming closer with incredible rapidity.

At last Janet's eyes found it--a blurred, black dot moving across the blue of the sky. The drone blended into deep, smooth thunder, and the dot picked up stubby little crossbars on either side.

Heels made a sudden racket on the rickety steps that led up to the roof's trapdoor, and Captain Perona popped breathlessly into sight.

"Pardon, senorita. But this is the best place... Where is it--the plane?"

Janet pointed. "There."

The black dot heeled over and became a stubby cross as the plane swerved and dipped down toward the canyon. The heliograph flickered at it.

The engine roared in a sudden blast of power, and the plane climbed steeply and then came down over the town in a smooth, careful glide with the engine punctuating it in nervous blurps. Janet could see now that it was a short-winged, short-bodied military pursuit ship with an enormous barrel of an engine.

"Yes!" Captain Perona shouted triumphantly. "It is Enrique!"

"Who?" Janet asked.

"My brother. He is a lieutenant--a pilot. He is bringing medicine--anti-tetanus vaccine for Lieutenant Ortega. Watch! Watch now!"

The plane dipped over the plaza, very low, like a swiftly dangerous bird of prey, and blurred little blobs fell out behind it--one, two, three. They