The Mark of Merlin

CHAPTER ELEVEN

With fingers which fumbled from cold and frustration I threw on clothes, stamped into boots, and threw open the door. The major was leaning against the jamb, a pleased expression on his face. I could have slapped him.

“Better put a few logs on the fire while you’re at it. Warm the room up for later.”

I glared at him, tapped my foot and, seeing my irritation only amused him further, I whirled and slammed some logs on the grate. Of course, then I had to sweep up the scattered coals and clinkers.

“Haste makes waste,” he chanted from the door. I raised the fire tongs menacingly and gasped as he instinctively crouched. He strode across the room, his eyes flashing, and jerked the tongs out of my hand.

“That’s just enough of that, young lady.” He gripped me at the elbows and gave me a hard shake. “I’ve put up with your bad temper, your moodiness, your insolence because I’ve been sorry for you. Honestly sorry. But enough is enough. You keep that temper under control or I’ll turn you over my knee. Do I make myself clear?”

I was scared of him. And ashamed of myself. I lowered my eyes and swallowed hard.

“I’m truly sorry, Major. I’ve behaved abominably and I do apologize.”

He gave me another little shake, accepting my penitence.

“All right then. Your father saw fit, God knows why, to make me your guardian. As you say, you’re nearly twenty-one so our association will be brief. I’d rather it was as pleasant as possible because it is my intention to discharge my duties to the best of my ability. In spite of you.”

I still couldn’t look at him. He was absolutely right. I had been a self-centered, childish, irresponsible brat. He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a rush, holding out his right hand.

“Now, let’s call a truce.”

I put my hand gratefully in his and he covered it with his left, pressing it in a friendly way. Then he tipped my face up so I had to look him in the eye. He regarded me seriously for a moment and then smiled slowly.

“You’ve got pretty eyes, brat,” as if he had just noticed I had eyes at all.

He put one arm around my shoulders companionably and led me downstairs.

Turtle and DeLord had cleared the kitchen table and placed the army locker on it. We went through the footlocker, and the lieutenant and I checked through the three albums carefully.

“There’s nothing in here. I don’t see stamps that are particularly valuable,” I said.

The major who had watched for a while decided to make coffee. As he opened the canister he started to swear.

“That tears it. No coffee. Okay, ration stamps everybody.” Turtle flushed. “Left mine with my sister-in-law, Major. Didn’t expect to be here so long.”

“I’ve some,” the lieutenant said.

“Mine are upstairs but you don’t need stamps for coffee,” I exclaimed, turning back at the door.

“I need them for meat and sugar, Carlysle. And I’m not making a trip into Orleans for just coffee. I didn’t plan on so many guests.” His grin belied any inhospitality.

I dashed upstairs for my ration cards, throwing aside last night’s disordered clothing as I rummaged through my suitcase for the folder. My hand crumpled some paper. I remembered the two sheets in the German album. I retrieved the lists, jubilant. They must mean something and possibly DeLord would know. I did remember to snatch up the ration books and came triumphantly back downstairs.

“I’ve got something,” I babbled, pressing the ration books in the major’s hand for he was all dressed to leave. I waved the sheets in DeLord’s face, crowing in triumph.

“At ease, at ease,” laughed the lieutenant, unable to see why I was excited.

“If I don’t get started now, I’ll never go,” the major said.

“Explain to me later.”

“Go, go, go,” I crowed as the lieutenant took the sheets from me, frowning at first and then beginning to smile.

“This is it. These are the lists of the first trap your father set. The reason I was in Paris and doing the rounds of the stamp merchants was to see if some valuable stamps and old books known to have been appropriated by four high-ranking German officers had turned up yet,” DeLord said. “I ran into your father in a little store near the Plaza Athenee. You can imagine my surprise at seeing someone from the suspected regiment in a stamp shop.” DeLord rolled his eyes expressively. “It didn’t take me very long to realize your father was not the looter.”

“I should hope so.”

“Well, remember, he had both the knowledge and the opportunity. Now, these particular stamps and the rare illuminated books should have been ‘liberated’ when we erased the Falaise-Argentan retreat alley the Germans managed to keep open so long. A lot of kraut baggage transports were captured and the stuff should have turned up. And the unit which came on the transports first was the One Hundred and Fifteenth.”

“Yeah,” and Turtle looked off into the middle distance, remembering. “Yeah. That figgers, I remember.”

“It does figger, doesn’t it,” DeLord agreed gravely, “and the Third Battalion overtook that train, too.”

Turtle continued to nod as though more pieces of the puzzle were fitting together.

“Yeah, I’m remembering a lot now,” and his face twisted into an ugly expression of distaste. “Yeah. And Major Warren was so - set on inspections to keep looting down to a minimum in his regiment. He even snaffled me with a

” he stopped as he caught the lieutenant’s glance. “Christ, Lieutenant, spoils of war! But, when I think of the angle that lousy - bastard worked, so high and - righteous .” He pulled his head between his shoulders belligerently and cracked his knuckles sharply as if he wished they were Warren’s neckbones. “Yeah, he knew - well we wouldn’t question him! And - part of it is, we didn’t. We thought that - bastard turned everything over to regimental when they came around on pickup.” Turtle’s laugh was ugly. “Christ, but I’m glad I .” and he broke off, blinking, and looked around at me with a basilisk stare.

I don’t know what he intended to say but I know he felt he had said too much already. The lieutenant had not been paying attention for he had been deep in his own ruminations. He slapped the sheet he held.

“Help me with this list, Miss Carla. Those stamps must be somewhere in this locker. Bailey, remember when you caught the colonel coming in from a recon near Baesweiler?”

Turtle nodded.

“Well, we’d just planted the stamps on an abandoned baggage lorry which Recon had spotted on an aerial sweep. The colonel planned to do a thorough search of anyone who got near it. I thought the trap had failed because I remember Warren pulled a search before we could. And he made such an issue of sending the stuff back to HQ. The call that Colonel Murdock got just as he ordered me to go get Warren was to tell him that the planted bait had not reappeared at HQ. He called me back and we both went to get Warren. Only, at the time, I thought the colonel had finally made up his mind to transfer Warren out of the line. And, of course, we never got to Warren.”

Turtle cursed under his breath.

I bent hastily over the German album, straightening a stamp in its treads. This particular album was made with strips to retain the stamps in place without gummed tabs. As I fooled needlessly to cover my inner pain, I pushed it to one side and disclosed the stamp carefully inserted behind it. The second stamp was not a duplicate. Furthermore it was one of the violet-orange 75-centimes French-Chinese stamps and as valuable as it could be! The 75-centimes was inverted! Information was triggered in my mind and I didn’t need any Scott to remind me this little piece of pretty paper was worth several thousand dollars. In fact, the French at that time seemed to have a problem with the 75-centimes stamps all along the line and the inversions were as valuable as they were rare.

“Look!” I gabbled excitedly. “Here’s our proof. Here’s one of them. See, the seventy-five-centimes is inverted. They’re priceless. All by themselves.” I had difficulty keeping my fingers careful as I discovered more of the rare inversions. And, sure enough, amid some perfectly unexceptional French Egyptian stamps were some of the valuable carmine-and-purple handstamped Tchongking of 1900.

“Gawd,” I exclaimed, spreading the finds out delicately on the table for them all to see, “Dad must’ve just died to find these. Oh!” I closed my eyes against the pain of that imbecilic idiom.

“What are these paper-wrapped packages?” DeLord asked evenly.

I forced myself to see what he held. “I haven’t looked yet.”

The lieutenant undid the string. Pushing back the paper, he whistled in amazement. I glanced up and my eyes widened with surprise. That was no album.

“Whatinhell’s that?” Turtle growled.

Reverently, the lieutenant opened the heavy tooled cover, exposing the first illuminated sheet with its elaborate and beautiful titles, red, black, and gold. Even the borders were in gold. There were about eighteen or so lines, arranged in one column on the page, framed by those magnificently intricate, monk-conceived borders.

“Confessio Santo Fulgentii

” the lieutenant read hesitantly as he deciphered the ancient script. He whistled again, carefully turning the next page of heavy but brittle-looking vellum. Some of the gold in the border on this page had faded and the green background showed through.

“That’s one of those Books of Hours or something,” I said in an awed voice.

“No wonder the MFAAC had me assigned to find out what was happening.” The lieutenant’s eyes were wide. “This thing is priceless.”

“Can’t even read it,” Turtle remarked dourly.

There were two other wrapped packages which we lifted out with great reverence. One was quite small but rather thick for the leaves were heavy vellum. The illumination was even more elaborate than the “Confessio,” purple bands, gold lettering, the most intricate initials and borders. Pictures in many colors with silvery borders. Just beautiful and so old, so lovingly, meticulously crafted. The lieutenant and I decided it must be the Gospels, although between the unfamiliar calligraphy and our rusty Latin it was difficult to tell.

The third was unquestionably a Bible, two columns of the black Latin script on each page. The capitals were gold and red, the titles daintier in design than the others. Lots of vines in the borders and much gold with more varied colors than the other two had boasted so the effect was more brilliant.

When I learned later what they actually were, I felt I had blasphemed even to gaze at them. The last one was an eighth-or ninth-century book of Gospels, stolen from the Bibliotheque de Tours. It had been used when the monarchs of France took their oaths as honorary canons of St. Martins. The smallest one was also dated in the ninth century and also Gospels, but a bedside copy.

The “Confessio” was, again, ninth century, done at St. Germain des Pres. I guess it was the brilliant golds and colors that attracted Warren and made him think they were valuable. They were but he could never have sold them. The Germans, of course, hadn’t worried about selling them. They just wanted to have them.

“Those things look like money,” Turtle remarked after we had carefully rewrapped the old books and put them back in the footlocker. “But these things?” and he picked up one of the “trap” stamps, a 75-centimes inverted.

“They’re a fine investment,” DeLord assured him, collecting the squares carefully. As he reached for a transparent envelope his leg brushed against one of the cartridge boxes we had put to one side. It fell and the sound it made striking the floor drew our attention.

Fascinated I stared down. One of the shells had lost its lead tip and two gemstones winked up at me.

“Chrissake!” Turtle gasped.

We grabbed up the shells and when we had finished opening them, a glittering assortment of jewels lay before us. The second box, apparently not even sealed, contained heavy gold and gem-encrusted crosses of ancient design.

“Willya look at that!” Turtle said as we lined up the impressive array of wealth.

The lieutenant was shaking his head slowly from side to side.

“The man was clever. I’ll give him that. We’ve been looking for these since the Cotentin. They’re why PM assigned me to the case. Tell me, Miss Carla, let’s suppose Warren did call on you. Did bring up the subject of the footlocker. I suppose he could have inquired whether you got your father’s things back safely. He might even have inquired what was returned. Would you have been likely to turn over to him the gun and the cartridge boxes?”

“Well,” I said with a heavy sigh, “probably yes. You’re not supposed to keep a service Colt and he’d know I know it. Yes, I probably would have handed him over a fortune in gems and the gun that killed my own father.” Pure hatred flooded me.

“But those books? How would he have got them back?” DeLord grinned at me. “I only just found that out myself. Let me backtrack a bit to where we left off before the navy landed. What had puzzled us was how the missing valuables were getting out of Europe. Even when I knew that Warren was the only possible suspect, and I didn’t know that until I’d planted my own trap, I still didn’t know how. I felt I was close to the solution when the colonel got wounded at Aachen.”

Turtle’s laugh was very unpleasant.

“I told my superiors my suspicions and a very close check was kept on Warren’s movements, contacts, and mail, while he was recuperating in the hospital. We arranged to have him transferred stateside, knowing he would have to lead us to the loot eventually if he was to realize any profit. By then, one or two items had turned up in pawnshops and in respectable antique shops. When Warren inquired when the next shipment of casualties’ effects was being made, we had our first real break. He tried to arrange his passage on the same ship but we switched him to another at the last moment.” DeLord’s eyes danced maliciously.

“But, wait a minute, Dad’s footlocker came in four weeks ago and Warren wrote me only on the twenty-sixth.”

“Ah,” the lieutenant said, “but when was your first burglary?”

“Oh,” and there was my theory blown up in my face. “About two days after it arrived. But I was in the hospital.

What if I had gone through it -“

“Did you?” asked the lieutenant quietly. “I couldn’t bear to.”

“Exactly. And I’m sure Warren counted on this. Shock alone would keep you from examining it very closely.”

“Wait a minute, you mean you knew something must be among my father’s things?”

DeLord shook his head. “Not exactly but your father’s footlocker, being a colonel’s and being his, would not be inspected closely, if at all. Remember, even the gun was at the bottom. The albums, the legitimate ones, were carefully on top of the illegal Bibles. It wasn’t until I realized that Warren, in addition to ‘keeping the looting down,’ also handled the effects of fatalities that I knew how he was getting things out. Then I had to find out how he recovered them.”

“Chrissake, and the colonel put him into Headquarters Company to keep him out of trouble.”

“Mmmm,” and DeLord hurried on. “After Julich I realized he added things to packs. This meant someone had to intercept on this side.”

“Marian Warren,” I exclaimed. “You know, I thought it was awful strange that she’d bother to call on those families in the Boston area. Do you mean she was picking up loot? How would she know? How did she do it?”

“Well, we started intercepting letters from him to his wife or anyone else he wrote.”

“You mean he told that harpy right out -”

“Oh, no, he was discreet enough. Just suggested she go visit so-and-so’s family. He had a code worked out, too, because we noticed he’d use several phrases over and over. ‘He was a fine soldier,’ ‘he died bravely,’ and ‘I shall miss his leadership qualities.’ When the provost marshal over here got with it and did some checking, they tracked down quite a pack smuggled through. The really valuable items, a few fine rings, a silver communion chalice dating from the fifteenth century, some very rare stamps, all came in in officers’ packs. They also connected several burglaries with the arrival of footlockers. Nothing had been disturbed in the house, nothing apparently was missing. But there had been burglaries just after shipments.”

” ‘Miss his leadership

’” I gasped in outrage. “But he said in his letter to me something about Dad’s ability to command. Ye gods.”

“Repeats himself, doesn’t he.” DeLord chuckled. “At any rate, we have it pretty well lined out now; opportunity, motive, modus operandi, but we haven’t caught him with the goods and we have to or our case won’t stand up.”

“And why not?” I demanded indignantly. “He murdered to protect his racket.”

DeLord shook his head patiently. “Circumstantial although we know now he had a motive for killing your father but, Miss Carla, until last night I didn’t know your father had been murdered.” He shot a significant look at Turtle.

Turtle’s face drained of blood and he spun away to the stove to pour himself a cup of coffee.

“All I was out to catch was a thief who was causing some bad feelings with our allies.” DeLord’s voice dropped to a quiet sad tone.

I sighed deeply, shook off my apathy.

“All right, why don’t you take the jeep when the major gets back and get that gun traced?”

DeLord nodded. “I’ve the slug that murdered your father, too,” and he touched his breast pocket briefly. “I’ll run a ballistics check on it as well. We’ll maybe have conclusive proof.”

“You mean I can’t help trap Warren?” I felt cheated.

Merlin growled at that point and we all turned to look at him. He continued growling, his head cocked towards the front of the house.

“Now what?” Turtle demanded wearily. “The Marines?”

“No,” I cried, jumping up with relief. “The vet the gob promised.”

I raced to the front door, vowing to think more kindly of the Coast Guard from now on. I pulled the door open and stopped. Two cars had pulled up. One of them was an army jeep, an officer and two burly MPs filing out. The other car was Beatty’s and there was a self-satisfied expression on his face as he plowed back up the swath he had cut through the snow that morning.

“What’s on your mind?” I snapped.

“You’ll find out soon enough, Miss Murdock,” and he made the formal title an insult. His voice, brash and loud, reached Turtle’s ears.

Before I realized what it was all about, Beatty had pushed me roughly back and waved in the two MPs who entered, revolvers drawn.

“There’s your man!” and he pointed straight at Turtle.

Turtle went into an instinctive crouch. I think he would have tried to make it out through the kitchen but, unwittingly, the lieutenant stepped into the doorway, blocking his retreat. Turtle straightened. The MP lieutenant came up to him.

“Name, rank, and serial number,” he asked formally.

Turtle rattled them off, defeat written in his posture.

“You’re to accompany me to Camp Edwards, Sergeant.”

“For the attempted murder of Lt. Col. Donald Warren,” sneered Beatty.

Someone screamed and it must have been me as I ducked around Beatty and flew to Turtle, my arms around him in a futile effort to protect him.

“You can’t, you can’t. He served my father for twenty-eight years!”

“Sorry, miss.”

“Here’s the AWOL list,” Beatty offered too helpfully. “Resisted arrest at Aachen and disappeared. Only they thought he was still in Europe. I never forget a face.”

“May I see it?” DeLord’s voice, steely and authoritative, cut across Beatty’s abusive triumph.

“You can’t arrest him. You can’t. You’ve got to prove it,” I screamed.

“Bit, knock it off,” said Turtle, disengaging my arms from his neck.

I looked up at him. I read the truth which I had before only happily suspected. He had shot Warren. But Warren had deserved to die. Warren had killed my father. It was too damned bad Turtle had missed.

“Thank you,” DeLord said, his face grim as he returned the incriminating sheet to the smug policeman. “If you’ve no objection,” and DeLord flashed his own identification, “I’d like to accompany Sergeant Bailey. I have evidence to present.” His hand brushed his breast pocket.

“As you wish, DeLord,” the MP said. “Get your things, Sergeant.”

I had to watch as they stood over my Turtle Edward Bailey while he shrugged into his outer clothes. I had to witness the gloating expression on Beatty’s face. Why did he have to show up at all, with his petty informer’s nature and goddamned good memory? I had no conscience about the moralities involved in Turtle playing executioner. I was only sorry Turtle had failed. My horror was that Turtle might have to pay too dearly for that rough disposition of justice.

It was intolerable to watch Beatty delighting in the scene. I stalked over to him stiffly.

“You get out of here, you hear me.”

He glanced down at me, as if surprised I dared approach him at all.

“I’m talking to you, Beatty. You have no warrant to enter this house and no business in it. Now get yourself out of here or I’ll call my dog on you for trespassing.”

“Your dog’s too sick to move,” he sneered, slowly, insultingly.

“I’m not,” DeLord said, moving me gently to one side, facing Beatty. His body was poised lightly on his toes and in his hands he held the bolstered forty-five Colt. Beatty would have no way of knowing it was unloaded but he would appreciate that DeLord was in a fighting mood. “Miss Carla asked you to leave and if you do not leave

” He did not complete the threat.

Beatty shot a hurried glance behind Robert DeLord. What he evidently saw in the faces of the MPs was enough to know that they would not support him. They had come for their prisoner on his information but they didn’t think very much of Police Officer Beatty.

Beatty backed out of the house, his angry eyes and set lantern jaw boding no good for me. I didn’t care.

Turtle was ready and he was marched out of the house, eyes front. Beatty stood to one side of the stoep to watch Turtle positioned between the two MPs in the back of th$ jeep. DeLord gripped my arm, gave me a reassuring squeeze.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ve got some talking to do to Colonel Calderone. Tell Laird I’ll see about the gun’s issue, too.” The lieutenant squinted down the road anxiously. “He ought to be back soon. Don’t worry, honey.”

I stood helplessly as he, too, climbed into the jeep. I watched as the wheels spun in the snow, as it turned and slid up the road. Then I realized Beatty’s car was still there and he was standing near me.

“I said get out.”

“All your protectors are gone now, girlie,” he laughed nastily, striding back up the stoep.

A vicious snarl at my side caught him midstep and he backed hastily, his eyes wide. Merlin stood there, spread-legged, snarling, no question of his intention. I don’t know if Beatty would have drawn the gun he started for. I think he would have and Merlin might have died in the attempt but Beatty would, also. But Regan Laird, his jeep skidding to a snow-spraying stop, changed the odds in our favor.

“I’ll be back, girlie,” Beatty warned me again and walked quickly to his car while Laird watched from his jeep. Once certain Beatty was on his way out of Pull-in Point, the major jockeyed the jeep up into the garage. He slammed out of the car and to me on the double.

Despite his ferocious attitude, Merlin was barely able to stand, his side bleeding from exertion. I supported him as best I could until Regan Laird reached us and tenderly lifted the dog up.

“Whatinhell happened, Carlysle? Why were DeLord and Bailey in an MP jeep?” he asked as he gently pressed new gauze pads on Merlin’s bleeding side.

I explained as lucidly as I could, trying to control both temper and tears although I was so stunned by the rapid succession of events I didn’t think I was making much sense.

“They arrested Turtle and DeLord went with him to see what he could do. Said he had something to explain to the C.O.”

“Beatty’s favorite reading always was government mail posters. I guess he’d added AWOL notices as his part of the war effort.”

I stared stupidly at the major. “But they arrested Turtle for attempted homicide .”

“Whose?”

“Warren’s.”

He didn’t seemed surprised at the victim.

“That explains the AWOL then. I thought Master Sergeant Edward Bailey had changed character. The regiment always meant as much to him as it did to your father.” Accidentally he pressed too hard against Merlin’s side and the dog let out a cry, turning his head to lick the major’s hand as if he realized the hurt was unintentional. Laird stroked the dog’s ears apologetically. “I wish that vet would come. He’s torn open the sutures DeLord made.”

I knelt beside Merlin, stroking the muzzle he immediately buried into my lap.

“But what I don’t understand, Major, is how they could know Turtle shot Warren?”

The major rocked back on his heels, looking me squarely, in the eyes.

“Warren could have seen Bailey aim at him. To be honest, Carlysle, I knocked Bailey’s gun up once when he’d a bead on Warren.”

“Oh, no.”

“It was just after your father’s death when we had moved up on Setterich. Bailey and I were the only ones that knew your father had been killed by a forty-five slug. Bailey had been bitter enough at Warren when Emsh got killed and he took the colonel’s death very hard. I thought he’d go out of his mind when DeLord came in with your dad. Christ, the heart went out of all the men. Bailey acted as if Warren were the Jonah for everything, from the losses of the Third Battalion at Bois de Collette to the beetfieids right up to and including your father’s death. But I checked Warren’s side arm myself and it wasn’t even clean, much less fired recently.”

The major’s eyes turned cold and bleak.

“I myself find it very hard to forgive Warren a few things. D’you know, he actually tried to assume command the next morning after we got back from the cemetery? Oldest in grade, logical choice. Ha! I got through to Division and Gerhardt and scotched that.”

I don’t think I heard all he had been saying. I was so torn by the despair that had driven Turtle, in loyalty to his colonel, to desertion and attempted homicide. And his apprehension.

“How could Turtle get back here to the States? He had no travel orders or .”

Laird gave a mirthless chuckle. “After twenty-eight years in the army do you think a little thing like proper travel orders would stop Bailey? He probably forged them. And did a good job, too, I’ll bet.”

“It’s awful, it’s just awful,” I muttered hopelessly. I felt limp, bereft, numbed, not even angry anymore.

He took me by the shoulders, only this time he held me gently and bent over to look in my face.

“I think I’d rather have you ranting and raving than woebegone like this, Carlysle,” he said quietly. He tipped my head back, his eyes searching my face. “Damn it, girl, I can’t keep on buoying you up with booze and knocking you out with seconal.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “But you’ve been clobbered good and often. As a guardian I’m doing one helluva poor job of it. Whereas you, short of mucking about with my socks,” his voice quickened, “and, young lady, don’t ever let me catch you doing that again; a laundress I don’t need.” He sounded forceful. “Is that straight?” and he gave my chin a punch. I jerked my head away.

“Yeah.” His manner demanded an answer.

“As I said, you’ve been doing a pretty good job of taking care of me. Now, I brought in supplies and I think the best thing that could happen to what’s left of this squad is to feed it. Right? I did go after coffee and food before this latest skirmish.”

He paused at the door.

“C’mon, Carlysle. Lend a hand.”

He said it in a way that precluded disobedience. My legs moved of their own volition and I followed him out to the jeep.