Warren Murphy: Lords of the Earth

This had brought a rare, unaccustomed smile to Smith's face. The world was working well. He was getting rest in St. Martin, the world's problems seemed to be under control, and he even surprised his own lemony critical nature by not worrying about why the gendarme had come to pick him up.

He picked up the attache case that he had purposely made to look old and beat up, something that might be carrying dirty laundry rather than access to the world's greatest collection of evil secrets.

Harold W. Smith's nature was that he could wear checkered Bermuda shorts and a yellow T-shirt and look perfectly natural carrying an attache case. He always looked as if he should have some sort of briefcase, even when he slept.

Downstairs, the small Citroen police car sat in the dusty alley between the white beachfront homes. The gendarme opened the door for Smith. Unlike American police cars, there was no protective screen between driver and passengers. The only thing that made this bouncy little Citroen a police car was a reflective light on top and a French-national-police label on the side, the symbol of a torch.

As they pulled out into the streets of Grand Case, so narrow that one car had to pull over onto the curb whenever a vehicle came in the opposite direction, the gendarme asked very casually the one question that could send Smith into shock.

"Pardon, sir. Do you know a Barry Schweid?"

"Is he all right?" Smith asked.

"Somewhat," the gendarme said.

"What happened?"

"He gave us your name."

"Yes, I know him. I employ him. I have an import-export business."

"Do you know that he is a dangerous man?"

"Barry?" asked Smith. The boy was as mild as milk. In fact, the only thing a really thorough investigation of Barry's past had revealed was a kindergarten incident where he wet his pants. The boy filed his income taxes on time, once reporting a twenty-dollar bill he had found on the street. He had had five dates in all his life, and on one of those, when the girl had gone into the bedroom to get into something comfortable, Barry had fled, thinking it was a reflection on him and the entire evening. If she were comfortable with him, he reasoned, she ought to have been comfortable in her clothing.

Barry Schweid had been kissed on his twenty-second birthday when friction stopped the spinning motion of a bottle at a party his mother gave for him.

Barry had been seeing a therapist for three years because of his fear of raising his voice. In fact, he had once got to Curacao because he had been afraid to tell the stewardess that he had blundered onto the wrong plane.

"What on earth has he done?" Smith asked.

"He has violently assaulted a market woman at the docks in Marigot."

"That sounds impossible."

"While she was coming to the aid of a gendarme." At Rue Charles de Gaulle in the steaming small port city that was the capital of the island's French side, Harold W. Smith spoke to the prefect of the island police.

He assured the prefect that he knew the young man, knew his background intimately, knew the family. It did not hurt that Smith spoke French fluently. In World War II, in the old OSS, he had parachuted into France. While by nature, he never discussed such things, in this case he allowed it to get into the conversation. He also shrewdly let the prefect know that he was saved by the underground and that if it had not been for the French, Smith would have been a dead man.

To hear Smith talk, one would have believed that the French had liberated America during the war and not vice versa. The prefect saw before him that rare American who was a gentleman. He allowed as how the law did not have to be as formidable in the Caribbean as it was in Paris.

Smith offered amends to both the gendarme and the market woman, though he was mystified as to how Barry Schweid could have started a commotion. He offered a thousand francs to the woman and two thousand American dollars to the officer. "For their trouble," he said.

The prefect knowingly put a palm on the back of Smith's hand.

"One thousand American dollars is enough of a salve for his dignity, monsieur," he said with a wink. And thus justice was done on Rue Charles de Gaulle between two old allies, who embraced warmly. With the money paid, Smith got Barry released. Smith could overhear men in the police headquarters commenting on how they were bringing out "the monster" and everyone should be wary. Sidearms silently came out of holsters. One burly officer gripped a lead-weighted stick.

In the main police room, between two large gendarmes, waddled a frightened, very pale and somewhat pudgy young man whose hair looked as if it hadn't seen a comb since the crib.

Barry still wore a flannel shirt and long pants and was sweating profusely. He had been afraid to go outside in a new country and so had stayed in the air-conditioned apartment, working. Smith had vainly tried to get him outside, saying he had promised Barry's mother the boy would get some sun.

"I will. A little bit later," Barry had said. "But not now." Smith did, however, get Barry to bathe and brush his teeth each day. And he did promise to comb his hair, but somehow his work always seemed more important than the seven seconds hair-combing would take.

Now he stood, five-feet five, semishaven, very meek and quite frightened, between two large French policemen.

"Hello, Barry," said Smith.

"Hello, Harold," said Barry softly.

"Are you all right, Barry?"

"No, Harold."

"What's wrong, Barry?"

Barry Schweid extended a finger and motioned Smith to come closer.

"You want to whisper it, Barry?"

"Yes, Harold."

Smith went over to the young man and asked that the guards move away a bit, then bent down to hear the complaint.

"I see, yes," said Smith. "Who has it?"

"I think him, Harold," said Barry. He nodded to a gendarme behind a large flat desk with the picture of the French premier behind it.

"Just a minute," said Smith and went over to the gendarme, who looked at him suspiciously.

Smith whispered in French.

"Did you take away a piece of soft blue cloth when you arrested Mr. Schweid?"

The gendarme said that he didn't quite remember, just as the prefect entered to make sure his compatriot, Harold W. Smith of the Second World War, was properly taken care of.

"You want a piece of cloth? Garbage?" asked the prefect.

As soon as he heard the word "garbage," the gendarme at the desk remembered. Schweid had been clinging to a piece of blue cloth when he was arrested and they threw it away.

"Could you get it again?" asked Smith in French.

"It's in the garbage," said the gendarme.

"Shh, not so loud," said Smith.

"What are you all whispering about?" screamed Barry, and three gendarmes drew pistols and aimed them at Barry's chest. Barry collapsed in the corner, covering his head with his arms and screaming.

"Get the cloth, damn it," snapped Smith.

"Go, go," ordered the prefect.

"It's all right, Barry," Smith said. "They're getting it. They're getting it."

But Barry only screamed and kicked his legs uselessly in the air. The computer genius was having a tantrum.

Guns returned to their holsters. Gendarmes exchanged puzzled looks in the station on Rue Charles de Gaulle. The prefect assured his American ally that Schweid had been a most dangerous adversary on the docks. In fact, the market woman who was injured weighed 220 pounds and was perhaps the strongest person on the island, including the Dutch side, where they had many large, uncivilized people.

Smith nodded. He did not know what had happened, but when they got the cloth, he would then be able to talk to Barry and find out. He assured the noble prefect that most certainly the incident would never happen again.

"If Mr. Schweid must commit that sort of mayhem," whispered the prefect, "and we do know a man's nature is his nature after all, there are places for it. There is, after all, the Dutch side of the island. You understand."