Десмонд Бэгли - Landslide

‘I mean nothing of the kind,’ said Mac. ‘Gibbons is a good guy; but he’ll need hard evidence before he as much as talks to Matterson — and what evidence have you got? None that Gibbons can use, that’s for sure.’

I said, ‘Let’s make camp and talk about it then. And not too near the cabin, either.’

We camped in a glade a quarter of a mile from the cabin and I lit the lantern and set about making a fire. My left shoulder hurt and when 1 put my hand to it, it came away sticky with blood. Clare said in alarm, ‘What’s happened?’

I looked at the blood stupidly. ‘My God, I think I’ve been stabbed!’

I left Clare and Mac to clean out the cabin next morning and drove into Fort Farrell. The wound in my shoulder wasn’t too bad; it was a clean cut in the flesh which Clare bound up without too much trouble. It was sore and stiff but it didn’t trouble me much once the bleeding was staunched.

Mac said, ‘Where are you going?’

‘To pay a call,’ I said shortly.

‘Keep out of trouble — do you hear me?’

‘There’ll be no trouble for me,’ I promised.

The feed-pump was giving trouble, so I left the Land-Rover with Clarry Summerskill, then walked up the street to the police station to find that Sergeant Gibbons was absent from Fort Farrell. There was nothing unusual in that — an RCMP sergeant in the country districts has a big parish and Gibbons’s was bigger than most.

The constable listened to what I had to tell him and his brow furrowed when I told him of the stab wound. ‘You didn’t recognize these men?’

I shook my head. ‘It was too dark.’

‘Do you — or Mr McDougall — have any enemies?’

I said carefully, ‘You might find that these men were employees of Matterson’s.’

The constable’s face closed up as though a blind was drawn. He said warily, ‘You could say that for half the population of Fort Farrell. All right, Mr Boyd; I’ll look into it. If you would make a written statement for the record I’d be obliged.’

‘I’ll send it to you,’ I said wearily. I saw I wouldn’t get anywhere without hard evidence. ‘When is Sergeant Gibbons due back?’

‘In a couple of days. I’ll see he’s informed of this.’

I bet you will , I thought bitterly. This constable would be only too pleased to pass such a hot potato to the sergeant. The sergeant would read my statement, nose around and find nothing and drop the whole thing. Not that one could blame him in the circumstances.

I left the police station and crossed to the Matterson Building. The first person I saw in the foyer was Mrs Atherton. ‘Hello there,’ she said gaily. ‘Where are you going?’

I looked her in the eye. ‘I’m going up to rip out your brother’s guts.’

She trilled her practised laughter. ‘I wouldn’t, you know; he’s got himself a bodyguard. You wouldn’t get near him.’ She looked at me appraisingly. ‘So the old Scotsman has been talking about me.’

‘Nothing to your credit,’ I said.

‘I really wouldn’t go up to see Howard,’ she said as I pressed for the elevator. ‘It wouldn’t do you any good to be bounced from the eighth floor. Besides, the old man wants to see you. That’s why I’m here — I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘Bull Matterson wants to see me?’

‘That’s right. He sent me to get you.’

‘If he wants to see me, I’m around town often enough,’ I said. ‘He can find me when he wants me.’

‘Now is that a way to treat an old man?’ she asked. ‘My father is seventy-seven, Mr Boyd. He doesn’t get around much these days.’

I rubbed my chin. ‘He doesn’t have to, does he? Not when he can get other people to do his running for him. All right, Mrs Atherton. I’ll come and see him.’

She smiled sweetly. ‘I knew you’d see reason. I have my car just outside.’

We climbed into the Continental and drove out of town to the south. At first, I thought we were heading for Lakeside, the nearest thing to an upper-class suburb Fort Farrell can afford — all the Matterson Corporation executives lived out there — but we by-passed it and headed farther south. Then I realized that Bull Matterson wasn’t just an executive and he didn’t consider himself as upper class. He was king and he’d built himself a palace appropriate to his station.

On the way Mrs Atherton didn’t say much — not after I’d choked her off rudely. I was in no mood for chit-chat from her and made it pretty clear. It didn’t seem to worry her. She smoked one cigarette after the other and drove the car with one hand. A woman wearing a mini-skirt and driving a big car leaves little to the imagination, and that didn’t worry her either. But she liked to think it worried me because she kept casting sly glances at me out of the corner of her eye.

Matterson’s palace was a reproduction French château not much bigger than the Chࣝteau Frontenac in Quebec, and it gave me an inkling of the type of man he was. It was a type I had thought had died out during the nineteenth century, a robber baron of the Jim Fisk era who would gut a railroad or a corporation and use the money to gut Europe of its treasures. It seemed incredible that such men could still exist in the middle of the twentieth century, but this overgrown castle was proof.

We went into a hall about as big as a medium-sized foot-ball field, littered with suits of armour and other bric-à-brac. Or were they fake? I didn’t know, but it didn’t really make any difference — fake or not, they illuminated Matterson’s character. We ignored the huge sweep of staircase and took an elevator which was inconspicuously tucked away in one corner. It wasn’t a very big one and Mrs Atherton took the opportunity to make a pass at me during the ride. She pressed hard against me, and said, ‘You’re not very nice to me, Mr Boyd,’ in a reproachful tone.

‘I’m not very sociable with rattlesnakes, either,’ I observed.

She slapped me, so I slapped her in return. I’m willing to play along with all this bull about the gentle sex as long as they stay gentle, but once they use violence, then all bets are off. They can’t expect it both ways, can they? I didn’t slap her hard — just enough to make her teeth rattle — but it was unexpected and she stared at me in consternation. In her world she’d been accustomed to slapping men around and they’d taken it like gentlemen, but now one of the poor hypnotized rabbits had stood up and bitten her.

The elevator door slid open silently. She ran out and pointed down the corridor. ‘In there, damn you,’ she said in a choked voice, and hurried in the opposite direction.

The door opened on to a study lined with books and quiet as a cemetery vault. A lot of good cows had been butchered to provide the bindings on those books and I wondered if they shone with that gentle brown glow because they were well used or because some flunkey brightened them up every day the same time he polished his master’s shoes. Tall windows reached from floor to ceiling on the opposite wall and before the windows a big desk was placed; it had a green leather top, tooled in gold.

Behind the desk was a man — Bull Matterson.

I knew he was five years older than McDougall but he looked five years younger, a hale man with a bristling but trim military moustache the same colour as newly fractured cast iron, which matched his hair. He was a big man, broad of shoulder and thick in the trunk, and the muscle was still there, not yet gone to fat. I guessed he still took exercise. The only signs of advanced age were the brown liver spots on the backs of his hands and the rather faded look in his blue eyes.

He waved his hand. ‘Sit down, Mr Boyd.’ The tone of voice was harsh and direct, a tone to be obeyed.