Fletcher Flora - The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™ - 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!

“I’m in excellent condition, thanks. I can remember the first canto of Paradise Lost”

“Very well. Go to Ivan’s room. It’s on this floor, around the corner, and the number is six-o-eight. Say to him: Señor , you are on the border of disaster. Emphasize the word border. It has special significance for him. Have you got that?”

“I’ve got it for what it’s worth.”

“It may be worth more than you think. It may, indeed, save your wife.”

That struck the note for departure, so I departed. Outside in the hall, leaning against the wall, I tried to make sense out of it. It seemed, at best, a bit queer. And, incidentally, somewhat humiliating. A plump, little stranger who called himself Smith trying to save Carey MacCauley’s wife from a fate worse than death. Why? The question wandered around, crying plaintively, in the fog inside my skull.

Border? Let’s see, where was I? Mexico, as I recalled. North of Mexico is the United States of America. There’s a border between them... mostly a river designed for wading. Things get run across borders sometimes: Narcotics... aliens...

There was within me a guy who can be called Schizo Number One. His immediate reaction was to render a loud and raucous raspberry. But there was also another guy who can be called Schizo Number Two. He was a guy who always wanted to climb on a white horse. When he was drunk, he was a very dominating personality. Almost before I knew it, he had me galloping around the corner to six-o-eight.

The door was open, which was another queer bird in a nest of them; not far open... just cracked a little. Inside, it was pitch black. It was also silent.

I’m not one, ordinarily, to walk uninvited into another person’s hotel room at night. Now, however, double shots and odd events had made me a new man. Pushing the door inward, I crossed the threshold. The feeble light of the hall showed me nothing but a small area of carpet. The room retained its impenetrable blackness and silence... and its heat, a close, cloying stuffiness left over from the day. The heat and the extraordinary darkness obviously existed for the same reason. The large glass doors across the room, attributes of all outside rooms in this hotel, were still closed and draped against a midday heat that had long ceased to exist. They had never been opened to the air and celestial flickerings of the Mexican night.

There is a convenient orthodoxy about hotel rooms. Fumbling in the accepted area for a light switch, I found it. Might as well make it good, I thought. If I was going to practice intimidation by some esoteric mumbo-jumbo about borders, I might as well make it effective by appearing in the night like a descendent of Dracula... sudden attack... confusion and terror, the old element of surprise.

But Ivan wasn’t surprised. He displayed total indifference. If I had been the original Dracula, he would still have been indifferent. The dead just don’t give a damn.

He lay on his face on the floor. His arms were flung wide, fingers clawing at the rug. Even in that sprawled position, he looked impeccable. His white dinner jacket fitted beautifully to his broad shoulders, almost as beautifully as the blade of the knife that had killed him was fitted between his ribs. The knife had a pretty little bone handle, the color of ivory. Around the handle, like a red pupil in the great white iris of the jacket, there was a wet stain. It was an eye, and it was looking at me. The stale, hot air of the room pressed in upon me like a fetid cloud, and everything went round and round.

With sickness churning my insides, I lurched across the room beyond the body and fumbled for the opening in the drapes. The tall glass doors swung open to the night, and I stood there in the opening to the small balcony outside, my back against the jamb, and gulped greedily of the cool air blowing in from the high region of bright stars. I noticed that there was also a moon, so big and near and fantastically bright that it was most certainly a phony trumped up for the deception of romantic tourists. Then I slipped gently down against the jamb to a sitting position and forgot all about lost loves... and death... and stars... and moons... and all odd things whatever.

A long time later, I opened my eyes to the vision of a face the color of an olive just beginning to ripen. The face had large, liquid eyes filled with regret. They were nice eyes and appeared friendly, but I wasn’t in the mood for them. Avoiding their swimming inspection, I saw that the stars were still in the sky where I had left them, but some clever devil had moved the phony moon up the arc in imitation of a real one. For the tourists, Mexicans will do anything.

My head rang like a gong with rhythmic regularity. For a minute, I couldn’t understand the reason for it, and then I realized that the olive complexioned guy with liquid eyes was slapping hell out of me methodically.

“Cut it out,” I said.

He was all apologies. “My most abject regrets, señor, but it is essential that you rouse yourself immediately.”

Remembering, I roused. Twisting from my sitting position, I looked back into the room. Just inside the hall door Eva Trent, my companion in discard, stood wrapped in an ice blue robe. Farther in was Hannah. She was still wearing the gown she had worn in the lounge downstairs. He face seemed all eyes. They were wide and dry and hot, and they looked at me with an expression that was neither hate nor grief, but a kind of dumb incapacity for any emotion at all.

The apologetic slapper said, “I am Ramon Tellez of the police, señor. I implore you to rise.”

With an effort, I rose, closing my eyes on a tilting sky and a shower of spilled stars.

“Quite a gathering,” I said, opening my eyes again.

Tellez looked as if he were tempted to resume his slapping. “One must not be hysterical,” he said. “My associates will be here shortly to perform the necessary duties in this room. As for us, I think it would be beneficial to utilize another place for our business. Señorita Trent has graciously offered the use of her room, which is near. If you will please precede me.”

Ivan wasn’t going, and Hannah stood very still, as if she hadn’t heard, caught fast in her emotional paralysis. By the hall door, Eva Trent stirred, light shifting fluidly on the ice blue robe. Her voice achieved by softness an accentuation of bitter venom.

“You’ve had a busy night, haven’t you, little man? Get tired of lying down? Pretty soon you can lie down forever. After the cops get through with you. What is it down here, hanging or firing squad?”

Hannah jerked around. “No,” she said.

Tellez repeated quickly, “If you will please precede me.”

Eva Trent turned and went through the door into the hall. Hannah followed. There was a somnambulistic quality in the way she walked. Her eyes still had that wide, hot look of blindness, and her movements seemed directed by some kind of extra-sensory perception.

In the hall, two Mexican cops stood at tropical semi-attention. One of them was big, almost a giant, with a dark, pocked face. The other was short and slender, girlish-looking beside his overgrown companion. The slender one, apparently in response to a signal from Tellez, fell in behind the group and followed along. In Eva Trent’s room, he took a notebook and mechanical pencil from his pocket, and looked efficient. Probably a college boy on his way up.

Tellez cleared his throat musically and permitted his big, liquid eyes to encounter mine. They looked sad enough to break your heart.

“Now, señor , it is necessary that you talk. Circumstances, you will admit, do not appear favorable for you. Reflect, if you please. Señora MacCauley, with whom you have become estranged over the handsome. Ivan, rouses in the night, for reasons which she declines to divulge, and makes her way to Ivan’s room. The door is open. Very strange. She looks into the room and beholds Ivan on the floor, as we all have seen him. Beyond Ivan, slumped in the open doorway to the terrace, she sees her husband... you, señor . You are sitting there — how shall I say, Señor ?”