Charles Williams - The Sailcloth Shroud

“That’s right,” I said. “With the same two questions. What became of the rest of the money? And why did he change his mind?”

The doorbell chimed.

We exchanged a quick glance, and got to our feet. There’d been no sound of a car outside, nor of footsteps on the walk. She motioned me toward the hallway and started to the door, but before she got there it swung open and a tall man in a gray suit and dark green glasses stepped inside and curtly motioned her back. At the same instant I heard the back door open. I whirled. Standing in the arched doorway to the kitchen was a heavy-shouldered tourist wearing a loud sport shirt, straw cap, and an identical pair of green sunglasses. He removed the glasses and grinned coldly at me. It was Bonner.

Escape was impossible. The first man had a gun; I could see the sagging weight of it in his coat pocket. Patricia gasped, and retreated from him, her eyes wide with alarm. She came back against the desk beside the entrance to the hall. Bonner and the other man came toward me. The latter took out a pack of cigarettes. “We’ve been waiting for you, Rogers,” he said, and held them out toward me. “Smoke?”

For an instant all three of us seemed frozen there, the two of them in an attitude almost of amusement while I looked futilely around for a weapon of some kind and waited dry-mouthed for one of them to move. Then I saw what she was doing, and was more scared than ever. She couldn’t get away with it, not with these people, but there was no way I could stop her. The telephone was directly behind her. She had reached back, lifted off the receiver, set it gently on the desk top, and was trying to dial Operator. I picked up one of the Coke bottles. That kept their eyes on me for another second or two. Then the dial clicked.

Bonner swung around, casually replaced the receiver, and chopped his open right hand against the side of her face. It made a sharp, cracking sound in the stillness, like a rifle shot, and she spun around and sprawled on the floor in a confused welter of skirt and slip and long bare legs. I was on him by then, swinging the Coke bottle. It hit him a glancing blow and knocked the straw cap off. He straightened, and I swung it again. He took this one on his forearm and smashed a fist into my stomach.

It tore the breath out of me, but I managed to stay on my feet. I lashed out at his face with the bottle. He drew back his head just enough to let it slide harmlessly past his jaw, grinned contemptuously, and slipped a blackjack from his pocket. He was an artist with it, like a good surgeon with a scalpel. Three swings of it reduced my left arm to a numb and dangling weight; another tore loose a flap of skin on my forehead, filling my eyes with blood. I tried to clinch with him. He pushed me back, dropped the sap, and slammed a short brutal right against my jaw. I fell back against the controls of the air-conditioner unit and slid to the floor. Patricia Reagan screamed. I brushed blood from my face and tried to get up, and for an instant I saw the other man. He didn’t even bother to watch. He was half-sitting on the corner of the desk, idly swinging his sunglasses by one curved frame while he looked at some of her photographs.

I made it to my feet and hit Bonner once. That was the last time I was in the fight. He knocked me back against the wall and I fell again. He hauled me up and held me against it with his left while he smashed the right into my face. It was like being pounded with a concrete block. I felt teeth loosen. The room began to wheel before my eyes. Just before it turned black altogether, he dropped me. I tried to get up, and made it as far as my knees. He put his shoe in my face and pushed. I fell back on the floor, gasping for breath, with blood in my mouth and eyes. He looked down at me. “That’s for Tampa, sucker.”

The other man tossed the photographs back on the desk and stood up. “That’ll do,” he said crisply. “Put him in that chair.”

Bonner hauled me across the floor by one arm and heaved me up into one of the bamboo armchairs in the center of the room. Somebody threw a towel that hit me in the face. I mopped at the blood, trying not to be sick.

“All right,” the other man said, “go back to the motel and get Flowers. Then get the car out of sight. Over there in the trees somewhere.”

Patricia Reagan was sitting up. Bonner jerked his head toward her. “What about the girl?”

“She stays till we get through.”

“Why? She’ll just be in the way.”

“Use your head. Rogers has friends in Miami, and some of them may know where he is. When he doesn’t come back they may call up here looking for him. Put her on the sofa.”

Bonner jerked a thumb. “Park it, kid.”

She stared at him with contempt.

He shrugged, hauled her up by one arm, and shoved. She shot backward past the end of the coffee table and fell on the sofa across from me. Bonner went out.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s my fault. But I thought I’d lost them.”

“You did, temporarily,” the man put in. “But we didn’t follow you here. We were waiting for you.”

I stared at him blankly.

He pulled the other chair around to the end of the coffee table and sat down where he could watch us both. If Bonner was a journeyman in the field of professional deadliness, this one was a top-drawer executive. It was too evident in the crisp, incisive manner, the stamp of intelligence on the face, and the pitiless, unwavering stare. He could have been anywhere between forty and fifty, and had short, wiry red hair, steel-gray eyes, and a lean face that was coppery with fresh sunburn.

“She doesn’t know anything about this,” I said.

“We’re aware of that, but we weren’t sure you were.

When we lost you in Tampa we watched for you here among other places.”

Blood continued to drip off my face onto my shirt. I mopped at it with the towel. My eyes were beginning to close and my whole face felt swollen. Talking was difficult through the cut and puffy lips. I wondered how long Bonner would be gone. At the moment I was badly beaten, too weak and sick to get out of the chair, but with a few minutes’ rest I might be able to take this one, or at least hold him long enough for her to get away. Then, as if he’d read my thoughts, he lifted the gun from his pocket and shook his head.

“Don’t move, Rogers,” he said. “You’re too valuable to kill, but you wouldn’t get far without a knee.”

The room fell silent except for the humming of the air-conditioner. Patricia’s face was pale, but she forced herself to reach out on the coffee table for a cigarette and light it, and look at him without wavering.

“You can’t get away with this,” she said.

“Don’t be stupid, Miss Reagan,” he replied. “We know all about your working habits; nobody comes out here to bother you. You won’t even have any telephone calls unless it’s somebody looking for Rogers. In which case you’ll say he’s been here and gone.”

She glared defiantly. “And if I don’t?”

“You will. Believe me.”

“You’re Slidell?” I said.

He nodded. “You can call me that.”

“Why were you after Reagan?”

“We’re still after him,” he corrected. “Reagan stole a half million dollars in bonds from me and some other men. We want it back, or what’s left of it.”

“And I suppose you stole them in the first place?”

He shrugged. “You might say they were a little hot. They were negotiable, of course, but an amount that size is unwieldy; fencing them through the usual channels would entail either a lot of time or a large discount. I met Reagan in Las Vegas, and when I found out what he did I sounded him out; he was just the connection we needed. He didn’t want to do it at first, but I found out he owed money to some gamblers in Phoenix and arranged for a little pressure. He came through then. He disposed of a hundred thousand dollars’ worth for the commission we agreed on, and we turned the rest of them over to him. I suppose she’s told you what happened?”