Эрл Гарднер: The Case of the Buried Clock

“I doubt it,” Strague said. “Sis is staying down there so in case there are any sounds of life under the car she can tell the injured driver help is on the way. If you want to go down, I’ll run up to Beaton’s place and we’ll join you within a half hour.”

“All right,” Harley said, “I’ll start just as soon as I get on my coat and take a look at the fire.”

Harley went back to the kitchen and closed the dampers on the stove. He returned to the front room, turned off the gasoline lantern, belted his heavy overcoat about him and took the precaution of locking up. He slipped a flashlight in his pocket and started down the roadway.

As he descended into the little draw, it became measurably colder. Occasionally he used the beam of his flashlight to guide him through some shadowed twist in the road. Then, almost before he knew it, he was at the intersection with the main road... If a car had gone off, it must have been right at the turn, about ten yards below... A two-tone blue job. That certainly sounded like Jack Hardisty’s automobile.

Raymand switched on his flashlight, holding the beam down in the road, looking for tracks. He found, without difficulty, where the car had gone off. The tracks were plain, once you started looking for them, although he certainly hadn’t noticed them when Mr. Blane had driven him up to the cabin... In a way, he shouldn’t have left that cabin. And yet, if this should turn out to be Jack Hardisty’s car, and—

“Yoohoo,” a feminine voice called from the darkness down below the bank.

“Hello,” Harley called. “Are you Miss Strague?”

“Yes.”

He saw her, then, standing about halfway down a steep declivity, her shoulder resting against a tall pine. “You hadn’t better try coming straight down,” she warned. “You can go down the road about twenty or thirty yards and work your way down a little ridge. Even then you’ll have to be careful.”

Harley said, “Your brother and the man he went to get should show up soon. I’m from the Blane cabin up here... How far is the wreck from where you’re standing?”

“It’s directly below me, thirty or forty feet. I don’t think anyone’s in it.”

Harley walked down the road and found the sharp ridge the girl had mentioned. Even with the aid of his flashlight, it took him several minutes to get down to join Burton Strague’s sister.

She was tall and slender. He could tell that much about her, although he couldn’t see her features distinctly, much as he wanted to. Courtesy demanded he keep the beam of his flashlight from her eyes. Her voice sounded cultured, the voice of a young woman who is well poised and very certain of herself.

Harley Raymand introduced himself. He tried to avoid mentioning his military service, but he felt the searching gaze of her eyes. Then she said suddenly, “Oh yes, you’re from the Army. I should have known. You’re the man we read about in the Kenvale paper.”

Harley tried to detour the subject by moving over to where he could inspect the car. It was Jack Hardisty’s car beyond question. It was lying on its top, the wheels in the air, the body jammed down between huge boulders.

“I haven’t heard the faintest sound,” Lola Strague said. “If anyone’s in it, he must be dead... So you’re the Harley Raymand I’ve been reading about!”

There followed ten or fifteen minutes during which Harley found himself answering polite, adroit, but pointed, questions. Then they heard the sound of an automobile on the road above, the slamming of a car door. Someone stumbled, and a little rock rolled and clattered down the steep slope to plunge with a rattling escort of loose gravel to a final resting place in the canyon.

“Cease firing,” Lola Strague called with a laugh. “Did you bring an ax?”

Burt Strague’s voice sounded from above. “I brought an ax, a flashlight, and a rope from the house. I couldn’t get Rod. There’s a note on his door saying he’s gone to town for the evening. I waited five or ten minutes, hanging around the place, hoping he’d show up... Did Mr. Raymand find you?”

“I’m here,” Harley Raymand called.

“Well, I think the three of us can do the job. I’ll double the rope around a tree and slide down it. Look out, here I come. I — wait a minute, I think I hear a car coming.”

They listened, and could hear the sound of an automobile coming rapidly up the grade. Then, after a moment, they saw the reflections of headlights shining against the tops of trees, shifting from the bank on the left of the grade to the dark abyss of blackness which marked the canyon. A few moments later the headlights steadied, to send a stream of brilliant illumination flowing directly along the road above. The motor abruptly changed its tempo. There was the sound of brakes and then Burt Strague’s voice calling, “I wonder if you can give us a hand. There’s a car down here and—”

Masculine laughter boomed from above. There was the sound of a car door slamming, then a deep bass voice said, “Well, don’t be so damned formal about it.”

Lola Strague said, parenthetically, to Harley Raymand, “That’s Rod Beaton now. He must be coming back from town.”

A woman’s voice said, “Why, hello, Burt.”

“Hello, Myrna.”

Lola Strague added, “Myrna Payson,” and with sudden bitterness, “our local glamour girl.”

From the road above there drifted down low-voiced conversation, the boom of Rodney Beaton’s heavy laughter. Harley Raymand caught also the tinkle of Myrna Payson’s light laugh. Standing in the darkness, apparently forgotten by those above, Harley had an opportunity to appreciate the significance of what Lola Strague had said. Myrna Payson’s presence seemed to distract the attention of both men from the car at the bottom of the canyon and the people who waited there.

Lola Strague made no further comment, but in the rigid formality of her seething silence, Harley Raymand could feel her anger.

For what seemed almost two minutes, the little group up on the roadway chatted and laughed. Then Harley Raymand saw a broad-shouldered giant silhouetted against the illumination of the headlights. Rodney Beaton, standing on the edge of the embankment, looking down into the darkness called good-naturedly, “What have you got down there?”

“A wrecked car,” Lola Strague said crisply, and added nothing whatever to those three essential words.

At the tone of her voice, Rodney Beaton seemed suddenly anxious to make amends for his apparent neglect. He became instantly the energetic executive, assuming complete control.

“All right, Burt, you say you have a rope. Let’s double it around this tree. I’ll slide down it and you can follow. Then we’ll pull the rope down after us... You’d better stay here and watch the road, Myrna.”

Beaton’s voice was quietly authoritative. He somehow had the knack of getting things done. The scene almost instantly became efficiently active.

Rodney Beaton came down the rope first, sliding and slipping directly down the steep declivity, sending a shower of loose gravel rattling on ahead of him. Burt Strague followed, and Myrna Payson came to the edge of the roadway to stand outlined against the illumination reflected back from the car’s headlights.

Harley Raymand had a confused overlapping of impressions: the young woman standing up on the side of the roadway; the headlights faintly silhouetting her figure through her clothes, an attractive young woman who might not have been entirely unaware that the illumination was turning her skirt into a shadow gown — Burt Strague, slender, seeming somehow inefficient as he floundered and scrambled down the rope, his feet shooting out from under him on two or three occasions — Rodney Beaton, a good-natured giant, making every move count... Then Lola Strague was performing introductions and Harley’s hand was gripped by Rodney Beaton’s powerful fingers.