The Flesh of The Orchid (14 page)

“Don’t kid yourself,” Magarth said, hitching up his chair. “They not only exist, but they’re here. They killed Steve Larson’s brother last night and they shot and badly wounded Steve.”

“I didn’t know Larson had a brother,” Kamp said, sitting bolt upright.

“If you knew everything you’d probably be President,” Magarth returned. “Larson has, or rather had, a brother: a smalltime gangster who got in bad with Little Bernie. The Sullivans were hired to kill him. Roy holed himself up at Blue Mountain Summit, but the Sullivans tracked him down. And here’s something else. A week before the Sullivans arrived Steve Larson found Carol Blandish in the wrecked truck and took her to his place. She’s been there ever since.”

“What?” Kamp roared, springing to his feet.

“Watch your blood pressure,” Magarth said, grinned at the sight of Kamp’s astonished expression. “Larson had no idea who the girl was. Roy wouldn’t let him move from the farm and he had no means of learning the girl had escaped. Apparently she received a crack on her head and has lost her memory. She doesn’t know who she is.”

“How the heck do you know all this?” Kamp demanded, sinking into his chair again.

“I found Larson and talked to him. The Sullivans showed up last night, murdered Roy and were going to take the Blandish girl with them. But Larson managed to pull a fast one, and he and the girl escaped in the Sullivans’ car; only Larson got shot as they were going. The girl left him at the Summit Logging Camp and tried to get Doc Fleming to come out and attend to him. Mrs. Fleming recognized her, and you know the rest. I have Larson up at Miss Banning’s place. He’s bad: too bad to make a statement. But when he does we’ll have enough on the Sullivans to send them to the chair—if we catch them. And think what that’ll mean. These two have committed murder in practically every State in the country. To catch them would put you and me right on the front page and right in the public eye. You wouldn’t have to worry about Hartman’s threats then.”

“My stars!” Kamp said, lifted his sweat-stained Stetson and scratched his head. “And what’s become of the girl?”

“I think the Sullivans have got her,” Magarth said, and went on to tell Kamp of his meeting with Carol, and how, when he had returned with his car, she had vanished. “They run a big black Packard Clipper.” He reached for a scrap of paper and scribbled down the registration number. “Can you start a hunt for them? You’ll be killing two birds with one stone. And one more thing. I want some protection up at Miss Banning’s place. I don’t see how they’ll get on to Larson there, but if they do they’ll come after him. We can’t afford to take any risks.”

Kamp jumped to his feet.

“O.K., Magarth,” he said. “Leave this to me. I’ll get things started. I’ll send Staum and a couple of deputies up there right away, and I’ll throw out a drag-net for the Sullivans.”

*     *     *

The Packard Clipper jolted over the rutty surface of the narrow by-road that led off the State Highway into a dense jungle of cane and brier and cypress.

The mid-day sun was hot, and the Sullivans had undone their overcoats and were sitting shoulder to shoulder in the car: Max was driving.

Behind them on the floor, under the suffocating heat of a rug, Carol lay, only half conscious. Her wrists and ankles were securely tied and a broad strip of adhesive plaster covered her mouth.

The Sullivans were now many miles from Point Breese. They had driven north and had headed for the open cotton country, avoiding the small towns; making the longer detour rather than risk detection. And now, after eight hours of furious driving, they were in sight of their destination.

Max had scarcely said a word on the journey. His mind was concentrated on Steve Larson. If Larson were allowed to talk in court, they were finished. So sure was he of his shooting ability, Max knew that Steve had been dangerously, if not fatally, injured. They wouldn’t get him to testify for some time: it was even doubtful if he could make a statement for a week or so. At all costs he must be prevented from picking them out in an identity parade. Statements and alibis could be fixed, but there was nothing so damning as an identity parade. As soon as they had got the girl safely under cover they’d have to go back and finish him. It was the only safe way.

The road—if you could call it a road—began to rise steeply, and a moment later, above the jagged mass of trees, a house lifted its gaunt bulk against the autumn sky.

In this dense wilderness, miles from the nearest town, set back a mile or so off the State Highway, you wouldn’t expect to find any building, let alone an old plantation house as big and as ruined as this one before which the Sullivans stopped the Packard.

There was a wide verandah running round the house. Practically every third paling in the verandah rail was missing, and the whole of the wooden building was bleached white by rain and sun over a period of many bleak winters and hot summers. To the right and rear of the building was a cultivated patch of ground, incongruous in the abandoned surroundings and overgrown foliage. A few apple and plum trees struggled for survival amongst the unpruned cypress groves. The red apples looked like the little balls you see on Christmas trees.

A dozen or so chickens scratched in the sandy soil near the front of the building, and they scattered with harsh squawks as the Packard came to a standstill.

As the Sullivans climbed out of the car a man appeared from the dark hall, came out into the sunshine and stood on the top step of the wooden stoop.

He was a man around sixty, tall, upright, pigeon-chested. He had a lean, weathered face, the jaws covered with a black stubble; his hair was grey and slicked back with strong-smelling pomade. He wore a pair of dirty overalls and his feet were bare. He was a strange-looking figure. From his neck down you would have taken him for a tramp: a man who had known no success, no riches, and who, perhaps through no fault of his own, had made a complete mess of his life. But to see his face, to look into his hard cruel eyes, you realized that at one time he had been something—had wielded power: as indeed he had.

Tex Sherill had been the Ring Master of the travelling circus to which the Sullivans had been attached in their circus days. Sherill had been a spectacular Ring Master: handsome, dashing, showy. He and the Sullivans had certain things in common: in particular a need for personal freedom: to be a law unto themselves. When the Sullivans left the circus, Sherill missed and envied them. He was sick of travelling round the country, forced to live a life of fettered routine, and he wanted to get out of the business; to live his own life. He had stayed with the circus a further six months, then had quit. He now ran an illicit still, manufacturing a particularly potent moonshine which he sold locally, and which provided him with sufficient funds to run the old plantation house and to allow him his much-needed freedom.

The Sullivans heard that Sherill had quit the circus and had looked him up. They decided that such a place as the old plantation house was an ideal hide-out should things ever get too hot for them. They put it to Sherill as a business proposition, and he was agreeable enough provided they made it worth his while, which they did.

And so it was to the old plantation house they had driven, deciding it was an excellent place to keep Carol until the six days had elapsed when they could, through her, control the money she had inherited, it was also an excellent place to leave her while they hunted for Larson. Tex Sherill would see she didn’t escape; once he undertook a job he did it with ruthless thoroughness.

“Hello, boys,” Sherill said, leaned against the post of the verandah and watched the Sullivans with suspicious eyes. “What brings you here?”

Without answering Max opened the rear door of the Packard, caught hold of Carol and hauled her into the sunlight.

Sherill stiffened.

“What’s this—a snatch?” he asked, took a step away from the post, hooked his thumbs in the piece of cord that was bound tightly round his waist.

“No,” Max said, swung Carol off her feet and carried her up the steps. “Where’s Miss Lolly?”

“Out in the garden somewhere,” Sherill returned, barred the way into the house. “I’m not handling a snatch, Max. That carries the death sentence.”

“This isn’t a snatch,” Max said shortly. “Let me put her down and then we’ll talk.”

“Not inside,” Sherill said firmly. “Put her in that chair. This stinks of a snatch to me.”

Max laid Carol in the old rotten basket-chair that had stood for years on the porch, exposed to all weathers. It creaked dismally under her weight, and when she tried to sit up Max put his hand over her face and shoved her back so hard the chair tipped up and she sprawled on the dusty planks of the verandah, the chair falling on top of her.

“Keep an eye on her,” Max said to Frank as he came up the steps, then he took Sherill by the arm and walked with him to the end of the verandah.

Frank straightened the chair, lifted Carol, put her in it again.

“Stay quiet, baby,” he said. “I’m your own special friend. Max doesn’t like girls, but I do. I’ll see you don’t come to any harm.” He took off his hat and ran a small comb through his oily hair, winked at her. Lowering his voice, he went on: “How would you like to be my girl? We needn’t tell Max.”

“Who is she?” Sherill was asking. “By God, Max, if you’re trying to mix me up in a snatch—”

“Pipe down,” Max said, his eyes baleful. “I’m paying you good dough for us to use this place, aren’t I? Well, I’m going to use it. It’s not a snatch. She’s escaped from a mental sanatorium.

We’re protecting her from herself. That isn’t a snatch, is it?”

Sherill shifted his eyes. His bare feet, hard as leather, scratched uneasily on the boards.

“You mean—she’s the Blandish girl?”

Max smiled: a cold, ferocious, humourless smile.

“So you’ve heard about that?”

“Who hasn’t? I read the newspapers. What are you doing with her?”

“What do you think? She comes into six million bucks in a week from today; that is if she’s not caught. She’s going to be grateful, isn’t she?”

Sherill glanced back along the verandah.

“Tied like that? Damned grateful, I’d say.”

“She’s nuts,” Max said patiently. “She won’t remember anything. You treat nuts like animals. So long as you feed ‘em, they’re grateful.” He drew off his gloves, flexed his sweating fingers. “We can talk her into anything.”

“I don’t think you know much about lunatics,” Sherill said, leaned to spit over the rail. “Well, it’s your funeral. What’s it worth to me?”

“You’ll get a quarter of whatever we get.”

“That could be too much or nothing at all,” Sherill said uneasily. “I wish you hadn’t brought her here, Max. It’ll be unsettling.”

“Aw, shaddap,” Max said, stuffed his gloves in his pocket and stared moodily across the overgrown vista.

Sherill eyed him, lifted his shoulders.

“They say she’s dangerous,” he went on. “Homicidal.”

Max laughed.

“Don’t talk soft. You used to perform in a lions’ cage. You and Miss Lolly can handle her.”

Slierill’s face tightened.

“I don’t know if Miss Lolly will want to,” he said. “She’s been acting odd these past days. I guess she’s going nuts herself.”

“She was all right when last we were here,” Max said, not interested. “What’s biting her?”

“Nerves, I guess,” Sherill said, shrugging. “She ain’t too easy to live with.”

“To hell with her, then,” Max said impatiently. “Got a room where you can lock this girl up? Somewhere safe?”

“There’s a top room. The window’s barred. You can have that.”

“O.K, then let’s lock her up. I’ve got to get back to Point Breese.

“Ain’t you staying?” Sherill asked, startled.

“I’ve things to do: a job to finish,” Max said, and for a moment he showed his pointed white teeth. “I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

He walked with Sherill along the verandah.

“Take that tape off,” he said to Frank.

Frank was sitting on the floor at Carol’s feet, his head resting on the arm of the chair. There was a smirking, far-away expression in his eyes, but he got up as soon as Max drew near, and picking hold of the corner of the tape he gave it a savage jerk, peeling it off Carol’s mouth, sending her head twisting to the right.

She gave a little gasp of pain, sat up, faced the Sullivans.

“O.K., now talk,” Max said. “Where’s Larson? Where did you leave him?”

“I’m not going to tell you,” Carol said, her voice husky. “I’ll never tell you. . . you can do what you like to me.”

Max smiled.

“You’ll talk,” he said gently. “You wait and see.” He turned to Sherill. “Let’s get her upstairs where I can work on her.”

A soft step behind them made them turn quickly. A woman, or rather a figure dressed like a woman, came towards them: a strangely startling, but pathetic-looking, freak. She—for it was a woman in spite of the long beard—was dressed in a dusty black costume that was at least ten years out of fashion; about her naked ankles a worn pair of man’s boots, unlaced, flapped when she moved. The lower part of her gaunt white face was hidden behind the luxuriant beard, which grew in soft, silky waves to a point some six inches above her waist.

Although Miss Lolly was now forty-five years of age, there was not one white hair in the beard that, not so long ago, had been morbidly stared at by thousands of people in many parts of the world as she sat in her little booth in the travelling circus that had been her home for most of her lonely life.

As she walked hesitatingly towards them her eyes, which must surely have been the saddest eyes in the world, fixed themselves on Carol.

There was a sudden tense silence, then the drowsy autumn afternoon reverberated with Carol’s scream.

Frank giggled.

“She doesn’t appreciate your form of beauty,” he said to Miss Lolly, who drew back, two faint spots of colour showing on her gaunt cheeks.

“Come on,” Max said impatiently, “let’s get her upstairs.” He bent and cut the cord that tied Carol’s ankles, jerked her to her feet.

Miss Lolly watched them drag the struggling girl into the house; listened to the scuffling of feet as they climbed the stairs.