Donald Hamilton - The Menacers

THE RESTAURANT of the Beautiful Beach Motel was a smallish, unpretentious room across the lobby from the bar, with six or eight tables served by a single waitress, a pretty little girl in a fullskirted cotton dress who seemed to love her work. At least, something made her happy enough to sing, and after she'd taken our orders and brought us some beer to drink while we waited, we could hear her out in the kitchen, twittering like a bird.

"But I don't understand!" Carol said abruptly. "What in the world is chloral hydrate, anyway?"

I said, "It's vulgarly known as a Mickey Finn. Knockout drops, to you."

"You mean… you mean Mrs. Henderson was drugged?"

"Uhuh," I said. "The pink polka dot men from Mars are real tricky little fellows. They apparently slid down a ventilator or something, put the lady to sleep, and planted an incendiary bomb to keep her company. Then they were teleported or rematerialized back up to their hovering space ship, the one that looked like half a marble on top of a fifty-cent piece. At least that's what Henderson would like us to believe. Of course he undoubtedly hoped that, in a backward community like this, nobody'd spot the fact that his wife had been fed a chloral cocktail before she was incinerated."

Carol gulped. "What you're saying is that Henderson murdered his wife and made up the flying saucer story to cover up."

"First being careful to get himself mildly scorched to make it look good. That's the general idea."

Priscilla looked bored, as if she'd had all this figured out hours ago. Maybe she had. She asked, "What put you onto it, Matt?"

"Well, the guy himself wasn't too convincing, was he? And the camper had obviously burned from the inside. The outside, in several places at least, was bright and clean. Of course, the hypothetical UFO could have shot an intergalactic napalm missile or something down through the roof, but there wasn't any hole that looked as if it had been made from outside. Everything had blown out, not in."

"What about the bomb? If Henderson did it, what do you think he used?" Priscilla asked.

I said, "Well, if I were doing it, I'd just put a big saucepan of gasoline on the stove, over a low flame, and run like hell. Sooner or later-probably sooner- the fumes would reach the fire and go boom. What our Greg actually used is for the experts to decide. Probably he was fancier than that. Murderers tend to be more complicated than necessary."

Carol said, rather tartly, "For a public relations man, you seem to know a lot about bombs and murder, darling."

She was needling me, not entirely in fun, and I wondered what I'd done to annoy her. Then I realized that Solana must have mentioned that he'd cleared the dinner invitation with me, and no girl really likes to be passed from hand to hand, or man to man. Still, it was a childish reaction under the circumstances. She might have been bright enough to realize that I wasn't just getting her out of the way so I could make passes at another woman.

I said, "Oh, we image-makers get around. Anyway, it looks as if Henderson felt guilty enough about something to run out."

"But why did he do it?" Carol asked.

"You mean, why did he kill her?" I shrugged. "You heard the medical report. The lady was apparently in her late thirties, a good ten years older than her handsome husband. It makes a picture, doesn't it? Presumably she had money, money enough to buy him a fancy boat and camper rig, anything his virile young heart desired, but he preferred to have her dough without her company. Maybe he had somebody younger in mind to share the wealth with."

Carol shook her head dubiously. "Matt, you're just guessing!"

"Sure, but I'd bet on most of it. And it was bound happen, with all these fatal UFO incidents being played up by the press. Somebody who wanted to get rid of somebody was bound to get the bright idea of ostensibly having them knocked off by a homicidal flying saucer. At least that's one possibility." I paused. "The other possibility is that he didn't just have the idea; that it was given to him."

There was a little silence. Carol frowned, not really getting what I was driving at. Priscilla started to speak, but was stopped by the arrival of the waitress with our food. We all waited until the little girl 'had served us and danced away, humming to herself.

"What do you mean?" Priscilla asked then, sharply. "Given to him by whom?"

I said, "Hell, I don't know. But it comes to mind, doesn't it? Suppose somebody picked this guy who had a wife he could do without-picked him and helped him to come down here and do The job, on condition that he blame it on a mysterious flying machine of a certain description. Why, it's a natural! Everybody gains, nobody loses, except Edith Henderson. Gregory gets rid of his marital encumbrance, and the Mexican-flying-saucer myth gets another boost for the benefit of whoever's promoting it."

"Myth?" This was Carol, sounding offended. "Matt, you keep talking as if you didn't really believe in-S--" I said, "I know, I know. You and I saw one once, with a couple of other witnesses along, all sober and reliable. Okay, but do you believe in this one? Do you believe in Henderson's Folly, and its whooshing weapon that sets things on fire from the inside, simultaneously pumping rich ladies full of chloral hydrate? And if this one is a phony, doesn't that make you kind of wonder how many other of these recent 'sightings' have been rigged? I may believe in flying saucers as a general proposition, but these particular Latin-American UFOs are going to have to put on an air show where I can see them, if they're going to convince me. I'm not buying any more second-hand reports from anybody."

Priscilla frowned. "What about that red-haired girl in Mazatlбn? Do you think she actually saw-" I coughed, and glanced significantly towards Carol. "I don't know what you're talking about, doll. You must be thinking of that other guy you keep getting me mixed up with, the super-spook character."

Carol grimaced. "Don't mind me, kiddies. Just go right on playing your cute little security games. But if this is all a hoax, who's doing it and why?"

"That," I said, "is the big question. Or perhaps I should say those are the big questions. And I can't answer them. Maybe Gregory can. And I find it rather suggestive that he's no longer available, don't you? He's out in the dunes somewhere, being chased by Solana's men, and ten will get you twenty they don't bring him back alive."

There was a little silence. Carol had a shocked look on her face. "Matt, what are you hinting at? Surely you can't suspect Mr. Solana-"

"Shhh!" said Priscilla quickly. She was facing the door. "Shhh, here he comes now."

We turned to watch him approach. It was dark outside by now, and he'd discarded the big sunglasses, but tonight his face looked no less remote and foreign with them off. There are times when you can kid yourself that men of all races and nationalities are basically identical; and then there are the times when the differences count for more than the similarities.

Tonight, obviously, Ramуn Solana-Ruiz was a Mexican official on Mexican soil, and we were a bunch of lousy Yankee interlopers, a different and inferior breed of cattle. But he was still Latin enough to take a moment out for courtesy.

"I apologize again for being forced to desert you, Mrs. Lujan," he said to Carol. "I hope you had a pleasant dinner."

"Very nice, thank you," Carol said. "Mr. Solana, what about Gregory Henderson? Have you found him yet?"

Solana regarded her for a moment without expression. "There is a certain problem as regards Mr. Henderson. The gentleman seems to be armed. In making his escape, he shot to death the man I had left to watch him. One shot, seсora, in the back. It was careless of the guard, of course, but at the time Mr. Henderson was not technically a prisoner."