Gun for a Gringo

Chapter III The Old Man

I let them stay right where they both were — both sound asleep in no time — just took the car-keys away from the driver and emptied both their guns, then put them back again. I could hear them still jabbering downstairs, so I didn’t try getting out the front way. I let myself down over the balcony on two sheets knotted together. I got out by a side gate in the wall, went around to where the Bugatti was, got in at the wheel. It made quite a racket turning over, but I counted on the bunch of greenery in front of the house muffling it. I lit out for downtown and the Villa Rosa.

It was about ten when I was ushered up the long marble staircase to the old man’s private office. He came in a moment later from his sleeping quarters in a dressing-gown, held out his left hand; the right had been shot off in some long-forgotten revolution.

“Well, it worked,” I said. “They swallowed the beachcomber disguise hook, line, and sinker! I told you it was better to find out what we were up against, than sit back and wait for it to happen. This way we know what to expect, at least!”

“And that,” he sighed wearily, sitting down across the desk from me, “is another attempt on my life, no doubt?”

I explained it all to him, how I’d been hired, too. “Tomorrow night, right at your own banquet table here in the Pink House,” I said. “You’d better call the whole thing off until you’ve rounded them up—”

“To do that would be to warn them that we have found out,” the old man explained immediately. “They would scatter and disappear. There is no use making the arrests until I am sure of getting them all, if one stays out of the dragnet that means the whole thing starts over again in a week’s time! I have a better idea. The banquet will take place, so will the assassination — but with blank cartridges! Then, in the darkness and confusion—” He leaned toward me, dropping his voice.

“Boy!” I couldn’t help blurting out admiringly, “no wonder you’ve stayed on top twenty years! They think you’re out of the way, and they take ever this place, give themselves away — then you come back with the loyal part of your army, surround them — and you’ve got ’em all in the hollow of your hand!”

He nodded and said: “You hurry back, now. You can see how important it is that they do not suspect you; nobody but you must be sent here to make this dastardly attempt, otherwise I am a dead man!” He placed his hand upon my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. “Señor bodyguard, I trust you, my life is in your hands!”

“You’re a brave old gent,” I told him bluntly, not being much on presidential etiquette. “But you’re not taking a chance this time, you’re dealing with a white man now! Are you sure you can count on that regiment down at Santa Marta?”

“They’re full-blooded Indians,” he said, “they’d die for me! It’s the half-breeds who are not to be trusted.”

“Then I’ll get you down to them tomorrow night, right in their own Bugatti. Y’better slip on that bulletproof vest I brought you from Chi, just to be on the safe side — and don’t let your valet see you do it.”

And going down the stairs after I’d left him, between sentinels that would sell out to the highest bidder, I thought to myself: “It must be tough to have to wait till you’re seventy before you find a man you can trust!”

I stopped in at the guard room on the ground floor and put in a requisition-slip he’d initialed for me for a round or two of blanks. They kept them there for firing salutes in the palace courtyard on holidays. Then I climbed back in the Bugatti and headed back where I’d come from. If nothing went wrong, we stood a good chance of outsmarting them between us, him and me. I’d get him safely to that loyal regiment of his tomorrow night if it was the last thing I did; what went on after that was none of my business — he was running the country, not me.

In front of 14, I braked the Bugatti exactly where I’d picked it up, right over the same gasoline-drippings. Then I went around and slipped into the grounds by the side gate, which I’d left ajar. The house was dead, the only light that showed was from the rear room that I’d left, and I could hear snores coming from there. The rope of sheets was still hanging from the balcony, like a white vine in the gloom. Getting up it wasn’t as simple as getting down it had been, but the gardener had managed it without any rope so why shouldn’t I with one?

I was winded by the time I rolled across the balcony-rail and landed on my feet. I hauled the sheets up after me and took a look in. Their Nibs were both dead to the world, sprawled there producing nasal music. One of the two electric globes had burned out during my absence and the corners of the room were in shadow. The door however was still securely locked. I removed the driver’s gun and refilled it with blanks, put it back again. Then I cracked the gardener’s, and just as I had that reloaded, I suddenly froze, bent over him.

There was a little round, cold steel mouth pressing into the back of my neck, just below the hair-line. Sort of kissing me, if you want to be poetic about it. Another one came up against me on my right side, and then a third just over my heart. There hadn’t been a sound in the room around me.

It was Torres’ voice that spoke. “I told you he’d come back. The way he left the gate down there open showed me that.”

I turned slowly, elbows out. The three of them were on top of me, and in the background was the woman who had contacted me at Filthy’s, hood thrown back now and eyes glittering with malice.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Pull your triggers!” she rasped. “You saw me with your own eyes! If he hasn’t already crossed us, he will tomorrow night! He knows too much. Are you going to let him go on living?” She meant it, too.

I was sweating like a needle-shower, not so much because I was afraid of being killed but because I had bungled the whole thing up the way I had.

Torres silenced her with his hand. “One thing at a time. If he has already betrayed us, then killing him won’t save us. If he hasn’t, it will be easy enough to silence him — for the rest of his life. Call the Villa Rosa. One of the presidential secretaries is on my pay-roll. Find out if the banquet has been cancelled or not, that will tell the whole story!”

They frisked me, but missed the leg-holster. They brought out rope and nearly broke both my arms fastening them wrist-to-elbow behind my back. They didn’t waste their time asking me where I’d been or what I’d done, just waited for word to come back.

The one who had gone to find out came running back again. “We’re safe! No orders have been given to postpone the banquet!”

“Then he hasn’t told them yet!” Torres gloated. “Well, we’ll make sure that he doesn’t! Stuff something in his mouth. Help me to get him down to the car. There’s a better way of getting rid of him than killing him here in the house—”

They all turned to look at him inquiringly.

“The House of the Good Shepherd,” he smiled evilly.

My blood froze, and for the first time I knew real fear; I was wishing now they had shot me down a while ago! I hadn’t been in the country long, but I already knew what that place meant, for all its high-sounding name. The State Institute for the Insane, a madhouse with three-feet thick walls, from which no one had ever yet been known to come out alive! I knew how they treated the insane down there, no restrictions, no experts on lunacy to make an examination. Once you were in you were as good as dead! And Torres just had pull enough to have me railroaded into that hell-on-earth, under a false name so that even the old man couldn’t get me out again. And he’d be dead by tomorrow night anyway, shot down by somebody else in my place.

I put up a terrific struggle, but all I could use was my legs, and that didn’t get me anywhere. They dragged me backwards down the stairs and dumped me into the car with my mouth gagged. “The more violent he is, the better!” I heard Torres chuckle. “He won’t last a week in that place!” He turned to the woman, whom they called “La Vibora” — the snake! “You lower your veil and come along with us. You can sign the commitment papers, as his nurse. We’ll book him as a homicidal maniac; the director there is a personal friend of mine.”

They got in with me and we started off, Torres himself at the wheel since his driver was still out. I reared violently, trying to throw myself out of the car and finish myself under the wheels, if I couldn’t do anything else, but one of them brought the butt of his gun down on my head and I slumped and went out. The last thing I heard was Torres saying, “We’ll go through with it tomorrow night just the way we intended to. Send somebody else there with the same sketches this damned gringo made; if he keeps his head lowered until he’s right in front of Savinas the old fool will never know the difference, he’s near-sighted, anyway!”

When I opened my eyes I was still in the back seat of the car, but it was standing still now, and Torres and La Vibora were missing. Greasy, age-old walls loomed near by in the dark, without a single break in them, without even a slit for a window. The House of the Good Shepherd, I remembered hearing, had been the old prison of the Spanish Inquisition three hundred years ago. And now worse things probably went on within it than even then.

A minute later they came back again, with two guards and the fat, sleepy-eyed director. “Here he is,” Torres said. “And I warn you he is a very dangerous type. His obsession is that he has been hired to kill some very influential man; sometimes it is Napoleon, sometimes Julius Caesar, sometimes — may the saints protect us — even our own esteemed beloved president! He escaped, I understand, from an asylum in his own country—”

“Well, he won’t from here!” the director promised softly, with a cruel gleam in his slitted eyes. He motioned the two guards. “Take him in — the necessary papers have all been signed by Señor Torres and the holy sister.”

I tried to hang onto the door handle with my bound hands as they lugged me out of the car feet first, and one of them promptly brought down a short leather-bound truncheon on my already aching skull. I groaned, but didn’t lose consciousness a second time.

A heavy iron door clanged ominously behind me, cutting me off from the world outside, and I was taken into the director’s office and stood up between the two guards like a mummy. He showed his true colors now that Torres and his party were gone, came in after us snarling ill-humoredly.

“Getting me up in the middle of the night like this — as though I haven’t got enough of them on my hands already!” he raged.

He sat down at the desk, banged open a huge book, yellow with age, began filling in an entry, consulting the papers those two devils had signed as he did so. “Let’s see what we have here,” he said. “John Doe, homicidal mania, eh? You better put him by himself, or he’ll kill some of the others. Seventeen’s empty, I think, since that last one hung himself, isn’t it? Throw him in there. If you have any trouble with him, give him the water cure. No knives or forks with his food, of course; pass it into him chopped up. Take away his belt and that necktie—” He threw down the pen, leaned back and yawned. That’s the way they did things.

They were already dragging me out between them, still tied and helpless. Along endless corridors they hauled me, past locked chambers of horrors where voices jabbered, laughed shrilly, or howled. All I kept thinking was, “They gotta leave that gun on me! If they only leave that gun on me—” I knew enough not to struggle, not to antagonize them in any way. There was just a bare chance that they’d overlook it.

They swung open a squealing iron door, so low that you had to stoop to get through it, hustled me in between them. The only light came from the corridor outside. One of them stood over me with his truncheon poised while the other one busied himself freeing my arms. The circulation was all gone. I couldn’t have made a move with them if I’d wanted to.

“Go get him a rig out of the storeroom,” one said.

“At this hour?” the other objected indolently. “Let him stay in his own clothes for tonight!”

They turned all my pockets inside out, to make sure I had nothing sharp-edged hidden about me, took my belt, tie and shoelaces off, then backed warily out, taking care not to turn their backs on me. My numbed right arm was already stealing lopsidedly down toward my leg, but they beat me to it; the cell door had crashed closed and the key turned in the lock before it got there. I heard their footsteps die away outside, and I was left there in a greasy six-by-four cell, without even a cot, just a pile of straw over in the corner. The door was the only opening in it, and the two small grilles at top and bottom of that — one for spying on me, the other for passing food through — were the only means of ventilation.

I stood there upright in the pitch-darkness of that awful place, quivering, tense, and I was holding something pressed to my lips with both hands, kissing it. Something that wasn’t made to be kissed — a Colt automatic, still warm from my leg. It was all I had, in that darkest hour of my life, with the noises of bedlam percolating through the slitted door from outside. It was going to get me out of there, one way — or the other. I knew if I stayed there longer than twenty-four hours I stood a good chance of going whacky myself. A place like that will do that to you.

Then I hid it in the straw. To leave it strapped to my leg would have meant losing it; they’d muffed it the first time, but they wouldn’t when they came back in the morning to put me into asylum-garb. I lay down close by it, keeping my body over it, and the long ghastly night slipped away. The horrible noises at least died down after a while, as the inmates fell asleep.

It was when they started growing louder again that I could tell it must be morning. I had no other way of knowing. A little later the murky yellow that faintly outlined the door-slits changed to gray all at once, so I knew the light in the corridor had been turned off.

The lower of the two openings had tipped me off long ago to the way they’d feed me. It was a small hinged slot that was pushed inward from the outside, without opening the door at all. To simply shoot through it and kill the guy was worse than useless; he might fall down out of reach of my arm and I’d never be able to get the key off him and let myself out. Then they’d simply gang up on me out there and it would be all over. On the other hand, if I waited until they came in to me, to get my clothes, there would almost certainly be two of them to handle. They didn’t, apparently, carry firearms, just those wooden bludgeons.

The problem solved itself without my having to decide. The door-flap suddenly cracked open without any warning, then slapped shut again long before I could get the gun out of the straw and make a move over toward it — and there was a wooden bowl of beans and bread standing there on the floor. So my only chance was when they came in here, the feeding was done too cagily to be able to take advantage of it. I stayed there motionless, sprawled on my side, my right hand buried in the straw just within reach of the gun — waiting, waiting.

Hours went by, and they didn’t come. They must have forgotten they’d left me in my own clothes, or maybe they were too lazy to bother. I hadn’t closed my eyes, but who could think of sleeping in the fix I was in? A hand abruptly snatched the bowl of junk away, thinking it was empty, then finding that it wasn’t, put it back, and I heard myself being cursed out and threatened from the other side of the door. I just lay pat and didn’t make a sound. I figured that was the noon feeding, overlooking the fact that this wasn’t exactly the Ritz. About fifteen minutes later the yellow came back again in the corridor and showed me I’d been half a day slow — it was evening already. And in a little while the banquet would be getting under way! And in a little while after that, somebody uninvited would show up at that banquet! And here I was!

I would have pitched the bowl of food out, to rile them, get them to come in to me, but the slot in the door was latched or something on the outside, I couldn’t budge it. I had a bad time after that. Suppose they didn’t come near me for days, weeks even? And then suddenly, just when I’d given up all hope, there was a tinkering at the door — not the slot this time, but the lock itself.

By the time they got it open, my finger was fish-hooked around the hidden trigger. Two of them came in together, the way I’d figured they would. One just had his truncheon ready, the other had a suit of bughouse-garb slung over his arm. The straw rustled as I shifted the gun to cover the foremost; any fool would have known which one to take first.

They closed the cell door after them before doing anything else, which was just as well. I still didn’t make a move, just lay there breathing heavily.

“Stand up!” the one with the club said.

I didn’t stir.

He swung the club back to bean me one so I’d obey him. There was no question of fair play in this, the odds were too great against me. And there was more than just my life at stake; they’d put me through a night of hell that doesn’t bear dwelling on. So I gave no warning, didn’t even uncover the gun, just blinked my eyes.

It must have seemed to them as though a firecracker exploded in the straw. The one with the club, who was the nearer of the two, opened his mouth and then dropped vertically with it still open that way. The other one turned to get at the door and get out, and I got him in the back of the head. When I peered out into the corridor, it was empty, so I closed the cell door after me and started down it. I could tell by the twittering going on in near-by cells that the gunshots had been heard, but whether the sound would carry any distance in that thick-walled place I doubted.

Anyway, I met no one as far as the turn in the corridor, which seemed miles away. I hugged the wall, in shadow half the time, and of course my hand wasn’t empty nor down at my side. Around the turn I saw a staircase. Whether it was the one they’d carried me up the night before I could no longer remember, but this was no time to be choosy. I started inching down it. My shoes, yawning wide open without laces, were a real danger, threatened to trip me at any moment. On an impulse I stepped out of them and went on just in my socks.