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

LATIN IT TOOK ME AN HOUR TO FIGURE OUT YOU WERENT DRUNK AND DROOLING BUT YOU HIT THE JACKPOT ALL RIGHT I CALLED VAN OSDEL LAWYERS AND THEY HAD NO IDEA THAT PATRICIAS DEATH WAS MURDER AND HIRED US AT ONCE AT FLAT RATE WITH BONUS IF SOLVED AND OPTION ALL FUTURE FLY GOO BUSINESS CONGRATULATIONS AND HIT THIS ONE HARD WITH NO SHARP SHOOTING OR CHISELING.

The signature, written out in the same block letters, was:

TRUEGOLD PRESIDENT SEVERN INTERNATIONAL DETECTIVES.

Janet looked up. "But--but what--"

"Children!" Captain Perona exploded. "Pig's Latin! That criminal sent a message to his detective agency and got them hired to solve the murder of Patricia Van Osdel!"

"How could he have done that?"

"The names of his children are nothing but a code address--an accommodation address! As soon as the message was received there, it was sent to the agency!"

"But your operator--"

"He understands and reads English, but not well. And Doan deceived him. He gave the operator the message a word at a time, constantly correcting and changing it, until the operator was confused. Doan showed him how to transpose the words, or pretended to, but the operator could not do that in a strange language and send them with corrections all at once."

"Doesn't Doan have any children?"

"No! He is not even married!"

"Why, he--he told me--"

"Yes!" Captain Perona agreed fiercely. "He told you! And you told me! You, if you recall, begged me to let him reassure his family! You!"

"Well, I didn't know--"

Captain Perona leaned close to her. "Senorita, the number of things you do not know constantly amazes me!"

"Is that so?"

"Yes! After this kindly keep your ignorance to yourself and cease annoying me!"

Captain Perona whirled around and ran out the door.

"Acts like he was mad or something," Henshaw observed.

"He is," Janet agreed. "And I really don't blame him." She started for the door.

"Where you going?" Henshaw asked.

"I'm just tired of people!" Janet said. "I'm going to talk to a stone image!"

"There are sure a lot of whacks around this joint," Henshaw observed. "I hope it ain't catching."

Chapter 13

 

DOAN AND CARSTAIRS WERE ON A NARROW LITTLE street high on the mountainside above the main part of the town. They had arrived there by easy stages, wandering back and forth aimlessly among the crooked lanes, and now Doan stopped and gazed curiously at a ten-foot wall with broken glass making a faint, sinister glimmer along its top. The wall ran for a good hundred yards along the street. There were some fresh cracks in it, mementos of the earthquake, but it still looked formidably solid.

"Hoo!" said a voice suddenly.

Doan looked around and saw a little boy about ten feet behind him.

"Beeg," said the little boy, pointing at Carstairs. He grinned at Doan. He had three front teeth missing.

"Big and dumb," Doan agreed. "Haven't I seen you before somewhere?"

"Gimme dime."

"I thought so." Doan took a dime out of his pocket and held it up. "But let's you earn it this time. Ever hear of a guy named Predilip?"

"Ah?"

"An artist named Predilip."

The little boy nodded triumphantly. "Boo yet."

"Boo yet," Doan repeated thoughtfully. "Boo yet... You bet?"

The little boy nodded again. "Boo yet."

"Have it your way, then. Where did he live?"

The little boy made flapping motions with his arms and rolled his eyes piously skyward.

"Flying," said Doan. "Up. Angel? in heaven?"

"Boo yet."

"I know he's dead," said Doan. "Where did he live before he got dead?"

"Live?"

"Home. House. Shack. Domicile."

"Los Altos."

Doan sighed. "I know he lived in Los Altos. But where?"

"Los Altos."

"Okay," said Doan. "Did you ever see any of his paintings?"

"Ah?"

"Paintings. Pictures."

The little boy looked around cautiously. "You wanna buy feelthy picture?"

"No!"

"My uncle, he sell. Very good. Very joocy. Oooh, my!"

"I don't want to buy any dirty pictures. I'm talking about an artist named Predilip."

"Gimme dime."

Doan gave him the dime.

"Denk goo," said the little boy, putting the dime carefully in his shirt pocket. He spun around like a top and ran headlong down the street.

"Hey, you!" Doan called. "Wait a minute! What's behind this wall here?"

The little boy shrilled over his shoulder. "Casa del Coronel Callao! Muy malo!"

"I got part of that, anyway," Doan said to Carstairs. "It seems that our pal, Colonel Callao, lives back of this Maginot Line somewhere. Let's go have a chat with him."

Chapter 14

 

THE WEST SLOPE ABOVE LOS ALTOS WAS MUCH steeper than it looked from the safe distance of the hotel roof, and Janet began to regret her impulse to climb it before she was halfway to the rock-face. The tough, stunted brush tore at her skirt with stubborn, clinging fingers, and there was no breeze to disturb the gleeful jiggle of the heat waves.

A loose pebble got into her shoe, and she had to stop and shake it out. She breathed deeply, and the air was so thin and hot in her lungs that it was not refreshing at all. She almost gave it up then, but she thought of Captain Perona and Doan and his three nonexistent children and man's deceit to woman in general and put her head down and plodded on.

She reached the stone face at last and leaned against it, puffing. The rock pedestal, too, was much larger than it had seemed from the hotel. She looked despairingly up at the overhang that marked its brows, and then she found a series of weatherworn niches on one side.

She climbed up laboriously, flattened against the rock, fingers clutching frantically at the warm, rough stone, until her face was even with the brow. Now all she had to do was to turn around and look in the direction the stone face was looking. That wasn't easy. It took her ten minutes and a broken fingernail, and her neck began to ache abominably.

Finally she got the angle. The stone face was looking at the east slope, and Janet did, too, sighting professionally with one eye squinted shut. Miraculously the three pillars lined up for her--the big one, the medium one, and the small one. Their tops made a neat, down-slanting diagonal.

Janet sighted and calculated and figured, trying to fix the point where the line of that diagonal would hit the slope on beyond the three pillars. She thought she had it finally, and she crawled down the pedestal again and started to work her way across the slope.

The heat seemed to have redoubled, and the warmth of the sun was a sharp-edged weight against the back of her neck. Her mouth felt like it was full of absorbent cotton.

She reached the three pedestals and went on grimly past them. A stubby bush tore a jagged rip in her skirt and left a red, angry mark on the calf of her leg. She stopped and stamped her foot and swore, but she kept her eyes pinned on the spot she had marked ahead.

And then, when she got there, she found she wasn't any place. The spot looked just like the rest of the slope even more so. There was brush, and there was rock, and that was all.

Janet kicked at the brush, and a scorpion scuttled away from her feet. Janet stood still, staring after it, afraid to move. It was an ugly little horror with shiny, jittering legs that clawed at the rock surface and a sting that arched up over its back. Janet swallowed hard and looked longingly down toward the cool shelter of Los Altos.

A voice came hollow and soft from just behind her: "Yes. This is the place."

Janet whirled around. A stunted bush that was like any other bush and the rock under it that was like any other rock had turned out to be something entirely different. The rock had tilted back and up on a pivot, and the shadowed, thin face and liquidly dark eyes of the man who was sometimes Tio Riquez and other times Bautiste Bonofile looked out of the black, square hole underneath it.

"Come here," he said softly.

Janet stood braced and rigid, and she moved one foot back a little.

The long, silvered barrel of Bautiste Bonofile's revolver glinted in the sun. "I won't hesitate to kill you. I have no prejudice against killing women. I've killed a good many at one time and another. Come here."

Janet took a step and then another. Her shoe sole scraped on rock, reluctantly. She drew a deep breath.

"Don't do that," said Bautiste Bonofile. "Don't scream. I'll shoot."

"You--you don't dare--"

"The noise?" said Bautiste Bonofile. "Is that what you're thinking of? That won't stop me. You couldn't find this place, even when you knew where it was and what to look for. No one who didn't know it was here would even suspect such an improbable thing. It would be thought that someone shot you and ran off. Come here."

Janet's feet moved her unwillingly to the black hole, and Bautiste Bonofile drew back and out of sight.

"I can see you," he said. "Very plainly. Come inside. There are steps."

Janet groped down with one foot and found a square, small step cut in the rock. She went down, found another and another. The air felt cool and damp and thick against her face, and she shivered.

There was a little grating noise and a solid thump as the rock door swung shut over her, and the blackness was like a thick cloth over her eyes. She made a little gasping sound.

There was a click, and the bright, round beam of a flashlight moved up and steadied on her face. The dazzling white circle was her whole world, and she could see nothing else and hear nothing until Bautiste Bonofile said in his soft, thoughtful voice:

"How did you know this place was here?"

"I--read about it."

Fingers moved out of the darkness and touched her throat silkily. "Don't lie, please."

Janet pressed her shoulders back hard against cool stone. "I'm not! I did read it--in that same old diary that described the cellar under the church. I remembered it after I noticed the stone face from the roof of the hotel this morning. The diary told how Lieutenant Perona--not the Perona in Los Altos now, but his ancestor--had built another, auxiliary cache above the church. It was a smaller one--for emergencies. It told how to locate it by lining up the rock face with the three pillars."

"I see," said Bautiste Bonofile. "I didn't know all that. I stumbled on the place quite by accident, and I saw that it had possibilities. I didn't know it had a history. Your research must be very interesting, but twice now it has proven to be dangerous for you. Why did you come here?"

"Why,