Up for Grabs

Chapter 4

I made it a point that afternoon to be sitting out by the pool where I could see the Butte Valley Guest Ranch station wagon when it drove up. I wanted an opportunity to size up Helmann Bruno as he got out of the machine, because it frequently happens that a malingerer will give himself away by some little involuntary action before he realizes people are watching.

I saw a swirl of dust down the road, then the station wagon emerged with Buck Kramer at the wheel. The car made a wide turn and came into the parking lot reserved for incoming guests.

The man who shared the front seat with Kramer sat very still. Kramer got out, ran around the car and opened the door.

Bruno thrust out a cautious leg, than another leg, then a cane.

Kramer took one of Bruno’s hands and eased him out of the car.

Bruno stood, stiff-legged, swaying slightly, then with the cane in one hand and the other on Kramer’s arm he came slowly forward toward the swimming pool.

Kramer said, as he passed me, “This is one of the guests now, Mr. Bruno. This is Mr. Lam.”

Bruno, tall, stiff-waisted, with large, dark eyes, shifted his gaze to me, smiled, put the cane in his left hand, extended his right hand, said, “How do you do Mr. Lam.”

“Mr. Bruno,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I’m sorry to be so clumsy,” he said. “I was in an automobile accident and it left me pretty unsteady on my pins.”

“Bones broken?” I asked.

He disengaged his hand from mine and rubbed the back of his neck. “A whiplash,” he said. “At least that’s what the doctors tell me it is. It’s damned annoying. I’ve had these headaches and dizzy spells... I came here to take a good, long rest. I think just sitting out in the sunlight will do me good.”

He moved his right hand over to take hold of the head of the cane.

I noticed the ring on his right hand. A huge gold affair with a ruby in the center, the gold twisted so that it looked like a knotted rope, with the ruby in the center of the big flat knot.

“Just step this way, please, Mr. Bruno,” Kramer said. “We’ll register, and then I’ll show you your cabin. I believe you’re to have Cabin number 12. Take it easy, now.”

“It’s all right,” Bruno said, apologetically. “I’m just taking it a little slow, that’s all. These dizzy spells, they hit me occasionally.”

With Kramer supporting him they moved off toward the registration desk.

Dolores Ferrol had been hurrying toward us from the other end of the patio. She didn’t get there before Bruno and Kramer started off, but she was near enough to get the picture.

She came swinging up to me. “Get a load of that,” she said. “We’re licked. We’ll never trap that guy.”

I said, “Perhaps he’s smelled a rat. One thing’s certain — we’ve drawn a blank so far.”

She stood looking after them and there was a look of frustration in her eyes, then she said, somewhat defiantly, “Let me get him out in the moonlight, start a little seductive stuff and he’ll come to life in a big way.”

“Not in front of a motion-picture camera,” I said. “You need daylight for motion pictures.”

We sauntered over toward the registration desk. When Bruno and Kramer came out, Kramer introduced him to Dolores.

Dolores batted her eyelashes at him and let him look at the low-cut V of her blouse. “Rheumatism, Mr. Bruno?” she asked. “This is the greatest place in the world to clear up rheumatic pains.”

“Automobile accident,” he explained with tired patience. “A whiplash injury. I thought this would be the place for it, but I guess I made a mistake getting so far from my doctor. However, I’m getting all this for nothing. I won a two-week trip here in a contest.”

“You did!” Dolores exclaimed, looking at him with admiration in her eyes. “I’ve always wanted to win one of those contests but I finally quit trying. I just don’t have the brains.”

“This one was dead easy,” Bruno said, and turned to Kramer. “You’ll take my baggage over?”

“I’ll take you over, and you can lie down,” Kramer said. “Then I’ll bring your baggage over. After that I’ll go back and see if I can locate that bag that you’re missing. The plane company seemed to feel sure it would be in on the next plane, and that should be in by the time I get there.”

“Confounded nuisance,” Bruno said. “They have the latest engineering on airplanes. They put them on drawing boards, test them in wind tunnels, give you the deluxe service once you get aboard. But when it comes to handling passengers and baggage on the ground they treat you like human cattle and try to use the methods that were in existence when the Ford trimotor was the flagship of the fleet.”

Kramer laughed. “On the other hand, it’s certainly surprising they do as well as they do. People are traveling in droves and hordes these days.”

Bruno’s voice had the querulous note of the chronic invalid. “I have troubles,” he said. “I guess I see the negative side.”

He bowed stiffly to Dolores, said, “I’ll see you again,” and then he and Kramer moved over toward the cabin at the other end of the string.

“I’ve never run into one like this before,” Dolores said.

“The guy’s clever,” I told her. “Or else he’s really hurt.”

When Kramer came out, I said, “If you’re going into town after that bag that was lost, I’d like to ride in with you. I have some things I want to buy.”

“I’ll get them for you,” Kramer said.

“No,” I told him, “I’d like to pick them out myself. If you don’t have anyone coming back with you, I can—”

“Heck,” he said, “this station wagon runs back and forth all the time. That’s what it’s for, the convenience of guests. In the morning when I’m out riding with the guests, one of the other employees takes it in. But in the afternoon I make four and five trips a day at times. Come on, get in.”

I climbed in the front seat of the station wagon beside him.

“Imagine a guy like that coming to a guest ranch,” Kramer said, as he started the car. “You’d think he’d go to a sanitarium.”

“Of course,” I said, “he won a two-weeks stay here as a result of some contest or other.”

“We get them every once in a while,” Kramer said. “Guys that come here because they won a contest. It’s some baking powder company, I think, that has a series of prizes for people who can write the best fifty-word article on why this baking powder is the best. I’ve never run onto the ads, myself, but we’ve had several people here who filled out the entrance blanks and won this particular prize. I understand some of the prizes include a trip to Honolulu.”

“Well,” I said, reassuringly, “two weeks here will do this fellow a lot of good.”

“There’s one thing certain,” Kramer said, “he won’t be riding any horses. I won’t have to listen to him telling me about how he rode when he was a boy and how he once had a spirited horse that was a little more than the ordinary person could handle, then bribe me to get a little better horse the next ride. I get so fed up with that stuff. Everyone of them gets as good a horse as he can ride.

“If I’d let those guys ride the kind of horses they would select for themselves, we’d have dudes digging postholes with their heads all over the trails. Oh, well, I guess we all have our problems.”

I grinned at him reassuringly.

“How did you like that horse you had this morning?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said.

“You got along with him all right,” Kramer said. “Some fellows have too heavy a hand and the horse resents them. He starts fighting the bit and the reins and then he begins to fight the rider, so they hold him in even more, and that’s bad.”

“Pile them off?” I asked.

“Heavens no, nothing like that. We won’t let a horse on the ranch that bucks off a rider, but the horse gets restive and nervous and comes back soaking wet with sweat. The rider has been fighting the horse and he’s all sweaty and hasn’t had a good time.

“You’d be surprised how animals understand these things. These horses know that they make their living by taking dudes out over trails and while they sometimes resent a rider, for the most part they have a very definite sense of responsibility. We’ve never had one yet that would spill a dude on the trail.”

“Must be quite a responsibility, getting horses of that sort and keeping them in training, and properly exercised,” I said.

Kramer grinned. “Say, how did we get to talking about my troubles? Why don’t we talk about yours?”

“I don’t have any,” I told him.

We rode into the airport, just getting acquainted and talking around in circles. Kramer didn’t loosen up on anything except generalities. The minute I’d mention the name of some particular; guest, Kramer would dry up like a clam, then change the subject. I got the idea that it was a matter of policy never to discuss one guest with another guest.

We got to the airport and I called Bertha Cool from a telephone booth.

“Donald,” she said, “how are you coming?”

“Everything okay so far,” I said, “except the job is going to blow up.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “This guy, Bruno, is either really injured or he’s too clever to fall for anything as crude as the trap that’s been set for him.”

“You mean you can’t cut the mustard?” Bertha asked accusingly.

“It isn’t a question of whether I can cut the mustard,” I said, “it’s a question of whether there’s any mustard there to be cut. The guy probably really has had a whiplash injury. I’m going to call Breckinridge, but I thought I’d give you a ring first and let you know what’s in the wind.”

“My God,” Bertha said, “he can’t back out on the deal now. You’re there for three weeks with all expenses paid and we’re collecting sixty dollars a day straight through.”

“I’m not going to hold him to it,” I said. “I think when he hears my report, he’ll want to change his tactics and recall me.”

“Recall you!” Bertha screamed into the telephone. “Why that so-and-so can’t back out on a bargain like that.”

“Let’s not let him feel we’re that hungry for business,” I said. “We have other things we can do.”

“You let me call him,” Bertha said. “I’ll talk with him.”

“No,” I told her, “I’ve got to make a report personally. I’m just letting you know. I’ll be in touch with you.”

I hung up while she was still arguing, and put through a call to Breckinridge. I was in luck. As soon as I gave my name to his secretary, he came on the phone at once.

“Hello, Lam,” he said, “you’re out there in Tucson?”

“That’s right.”

“How’s the dude ranch?”

“Fine.”

“Getting along with Dolores all right?”

“Splendid!”

“That’s good,” he said, and then after a moment, “What seems to be on your mind?”

I said, “This fellow Bruno isn’t going to be a push-over.”

“No? How come?”

I said, “The fellow isn’t sailing under any false colors. He arrived by plane this afternoon and told everyone he was there at the ranch because he’d won a contest, that he’d been seriously injured in an automobile accident, that he had a whiplash injury and he was going to have to keep very, very quiet.

“He’s walking around with a cane, and his hand on the arm of the wrangler who handles the horses.”

“The hell he is!” Breckinridge exclaimed.

“That’s right.”

Breckinridge thought that over, then gave a low whistle. “All right, Donald,” he said, “come on back.”

“Just like that?” I asked.

“Just like that,” he said. “We’re going to pay the guy off.”

“I’m just reporting progress,” I said. “After all, he may still be faking. It may be we can catch him off first base.”

“I don’t think we’d better try it,” Breckinridge said. “I’m glad you called me, Donald. We’d better payoff. If he’s on the up-and-up, those whiplash injuries can really run into money. Just grab a plane and come home.”

I said, “Don’t be in quite such a hurry. Give me another day on the job. I want to size this situation up. I’m just reporting progress because I thought you’d like to know.”

“Splendid, Lam,” he said. “That’s splendid. I’m glad you did. Now don’t get me wrong, Lam, this isn’t going to make any difference as far as you’re concerned. We’ll adjust, with the agency, all right, on a basis of three weeks’ work, but I just don’t believe in taking chances with a genuine whiplash injury, not if we can get any decent kind of settlement.”

“You can hold off for a day, all right?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, paused for a moment, then added, “yes, we can, hold off for a day all right.”

I said “I had a chance to ride into town, so I thought I’d give you a ring and let you know what’s cooking.”

“Lam,” he said “I’m available all the time. I make it a rule to be be where I can be reached whenever anything important comes up. You just give your name to my secretary and she’ll see that a call goes through to me. Now, you call me tomorrow and let me know, will you?”

“Okay.”

“Be sure to call.”

“I surely will,” I told him, and hung up.

I went out into the airport and picked up Kramer. He was hanging around the soda counter having a chocolate malt. The piece of baggage showed up on schedule and we went back to the ranch.

I had cocktails, dinner and afterwards there was dancing.

I danced with Dolores.

She had a very intimate, seductive way of dancing without appearing to be too close.

“Been making any passes at Bruno?” I asked.

She said “The man’s an iceberg. He’s really injured, Donald. This is a new angle. I never expected to encounter one like this.

“They told me they wouldn’t send anyone out here unless they were sure he was faking. I don’t know how they could have felt sure about this fellow.”

“Perhaps they aren’t,” I said. “They may have taken a chance and got the wrong answer.”

“Are you going to be around, Donald?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“I’d hate to have you go back just when we’re getting acquainted.”

I said, “Anyone would think I was the one who was malingering the way you’re putting it up to me.”

Her eyes came up to mine. “I’m putting it up to you, as you expressed it, because I like you,” she said.

The music ended at that moment, and Dolores emphasized her remarks by pressing her hips close to mine for just the fraction of a second and making a little twisting motion. Then she was smiling up into my face and one of the other guests was bearing down on her for a dance.

“How do you keep from antagonizing all the wives?” I asked.

“It’s an art,” she told me, and turned to the approaching guest with a smile that was completely impersonal.

I watched the next dance. She was properly demure, smiling from time to time at her partner, then letting her eyes look over the other guests, sizing them up, making certain they were having a good time.

Any married woman would have caught that look and appreciated it. It showed Dolores was doing her duty.

I couldn’t be sure about Bruno, but there was one thing I could say for certain, Dolores was a remarkably clever young woman.

Activities at the guest ranch were timed so that guests could retire at an early hour.

On two nights a week they had dancing, but the dancing was limited to an hour, then the music was turned off and the guests were encouraged to get into bed early.

On two nights a week they had a campfire out in a second patio where they had chairs in a circle around the campfire. Mesquite logs gave forth flames and then burned down to coals. Cowboy entertainers played guitars and sang Western songs. These entertainers were usually a group who went from ranch to ranch entertaining the various guests.

Then occasionally they would have group evenings where two or three of the guest ranches would get together for a joint entertainment. These entertainments would be more elaborate, would include both dancing and campfire gatherings with cowboy singing.

The idea was to have enough variety so that the guests were kept entertained but to see that they got plenty of sleep.

I retired to my cabin early because Melita Doon had plead a headache and turned in, and Helmann Bruno had utilized his injuries as an excuse to be taken down to his cabin.

Someone had dug up a wheelchair for him and he was taking to this wheelchair like a duck to water.

Dolores Ferrol was frustrated but concealing her frustration amid the myriad activities of a good hostess on a social night. She was determined to get Bruno to open up.

She saw that everyone met everyone else, saw that the groups were shifted from time to time so that the guests didn’t get into groups that would in time develop into partisan cliques.

In short, Dolores was thoroughly competent and was doing a great job, but she wanted very much to talk with me, and I could see that after the formal entertainment broke up she intended to discuss the case in great detail.

As far as I was concerned, there was no case to discuss — not yet, anyway, and before I became involved with Dolores I wanted to be definitely certain about Melita Doon. There was something about that girl that bothered me.

I started toward the cabin, yawning ostentatiously.

Dolores was at my side almost instantly.

“You’re leaving, Donald?”

“It’s been a hard day.”

She laughed. “Don’t kid me, you’re one of these wiry guys who could take a dozen days like that — or are you afraid of the night?”

I shifted the subject back to business. “What about Melita Doon?” I said. “She isn’t the usual type who’s looking for adventure and romance. She isn’t a girl who’s nuts about horses and wants to ride, nor is she a shutterbug who wants to come out in the desert to get a collection of colored pictures.

“Why is she here?”

“I’ll be darned if I know,” Dolores said. “I’ve seen them all, all the different types, but this girl has me stopped.

“You’ve classified the three types who come here, all right. When they’re on the make, they’re very much on the make. The first people they meet are the cowpunchers and these gals literally throw themselves at the wranglers. The wranglers get so terribly bored with it that a woman can virtually peel off her clothes, and they’ll yawn, turn their backs and go to saddling the horses.

“Then there’s the horsey type. The wranglers get along fine with those if they don’t think they know more than they do. If they genuinely love the horses and love to ride, we see that they get good mounts and have a good time.

“Then, of course, there are the shutterbugs, the artists and the people who love the solitude and vast spaces of the desert. They can’t get out by themselves, but this is the next thing to it. They come here and they keep to themselves.”

“Well,” I said, “Melita Doon came here and she’s keeping to herself. How about the latter type? Do you think she’s one who loves the solitude and takes this because it’s the nearest approach to it?”

Dolores shook her head. “Not that girl. There’s something on her mind. She’s here for— Somehow, Donald, I feel she’s here for a purpose.”

“I get the same impression,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “she’s in the cabin next to you and this is the third time you’ve yawned prodigiously in the past fifteen minutes. I thought perhaps the expectation of... well...”

She smiled enticingly.

I said, “Somebody must have doped the coffee. I’m dead on my feet. See you tomorrow, Dolores.”

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

I faced her. “This is a pretty good job you have here, Dolores.”

“I make it a good job.”

“Does it pay well?”

“I make it pay well,” she said. “I know what I’m doing, I’m doing a darned good job. Because of me the guests leave with a lot better impression of the place than they would if I weren’t here. I charge money for that, and I get money for it.”

“And,” I said, “no one knows about this other job that you’re holding down, the one for the insurance company?”

Her eyes suddenly became quizzical. “What are you doing, Donald, leading up to a species of blackmail?”

“I just don’t like to be in the dark,” I said.

“You can have lots of fun in the dark... Go on,” she said, “what are you getting at?”

“How did you get this second job?” I asked.

“That was an idea that the Claims Department had.”

“Homer Breckinridge?”

“If you want to know, yes.”

“Then he’s been here at the ranch?”

“Yes.”

“When was he here?”

“Last year.”

“And he saw you working and got the idea for this setup, having people come down here ostensibly as contest winners?”

“Yes.”

“How many have you had?”

“I don’t think Mr. Breckinridge would like to have me tell you that.”

“Look, Dolores,” I told her, “we’re both of us working for Breckinridge. Now, this conversation is designed to keep relations harmonious and happy.”

“You’re afraid you might be poaching on Breckinridge’s preserves?”

“That’s one of the things I have in mind.”

She thought that over.

“I’d hate to do anything that would jeopardize our jobs,” I said. “They’re good jobs for both of us. Breckinridge isn’t a fool. He sent me down here on an experimental run, so to speak... Now, you’ve had other people before in my place. What happened to them?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They didn’t come back. It was a one-time proposition.”

“Exactly,” I told her. “I don’t want to be a one-time proposition. I’ll see you tomorrow, Dolores?”

She stood hesitant for a moment, then said softly, “Good night, Donald,” and walked away.

Melita Doon’s cabin was already dark. She had turned in half an hour ago. Evidently she didn’t waste much time getting into bed. She wasn’t the sort who would have a long ritual of beauty treatment before turning out the light.

I took a good long look around my cabin, exploring it. There was a porch, a little sitting room, a bedroom and a bath, a large closet, a vented gas heater and a small back porch.

The architecture suggested that during the fall and winter there were cold mornings and evenings, and that at one time there had been two wood heating stoves — one in the little sitting room and one in the bedroom. That small back porch had been built to hold a supply of firewood. Then, with the advent of gas, vented radiant heaters had been put in and there was no longer any need for the back porch or the wood box.

The distance between my cabin and the one occupied by Melita Doon was about ten feet. Her bedroom window was opposite mine, but staggered m such a way that I couldn’t see into it except for a comer of the bedroom.

Melita was evidently not only in bed but was something of a fresh-air fiend, because the window was open, and the lace curtains had been looped to the side so there would be a circulation of the fresh desert air.

I undressed, showered, got into pajamas, crawled into bed and went to sleep.

I don’t know exactly how much time had elapsed when I awoke with a start. Some noise, or something, had awakened me.

A bright light was shining into one corner of my bedroom.

I jumped out of bed and had started for the bedroom door, before I realized that the source of the light was coming cater-corner from Melita Doon’s bedroom window.

By standing close against my window, I could look into the corner of her bedroom.

I saw a shadow moving, then another shadow. Very definitely there were two shadows.

I heard the voice of a man, a low-pitched insistent rumble. I heard a woman’s voice say something, short and fast. Then the man s voice again. This time in a peremptory order.

Suddenly Melita Doon came into the corner of the bedroom and into my line of vision.

She was wearing a thin nightie with some sort of filmy fluffy robe thrown over it that was apparently sheer to the point of being diaphanous.

A man’s hand reached out and clamped around her wrist.

I couldn’t see the man. All I could see was the hand but I saw a ring. It was a heavy gold ring. There was a ruby in the center. I saw the red fire of it.

I couldn’t swear to it in the brief glimpse I had, but it looked like the ring that had been worn earlier that evening by Helmann Bruno.

The Doon cabin was suddenly dark. The lights had been on for not more than two minutes after I awakened.

I gently raised my window but could hear no sound of voices. I tiptoed to the front door and left it open so that if Bruno left the place I would be able to see him and see how he was walking, whether rapidly and with a normal gait or whether he was still groping his way along with a cane.

After some ten minutes when he didn’t come out, I tiptoed out to my back door, stepped on the porch and looked over at the adjoining cottage.

There was a back door there that was exactly the same as the one on my cabin, and the porch arrangement was the same. It would have been readily possible for him to have left that cabin by the back door, then turned to the right instead of the left so that he would have circled away from my cabin and been concealed until after he had moved over to the service road.

The service road was unpaved. It was simply a dirt road that they used in delivering furniture or provisions to the different cabins. It wasn’t particularly dusty because the soil had a lot of decomposed granite in it, but it didn’t have a hard surface.

I dressed, slipped a small flashlight in my pocket and eased out of the back door of my cabin. I surreptitiously worked my way through the shadows until I came to the service road, then I took off my coat, used it to shield the beam of my flashlight, and checked the road for tracks.

Sure enough there were the tracks of a man’s shoes going down the road in the direction of the Bruno cabin.

I didn’t dare follow them all the way but I did follow them far enough to see that the man was taking good, healthy, normal strides.

There was one thing I couldn’t control and that was my own tracks. In a road of that sort, everything that moves leaves a track, and a skilled tracker can detect those thin indentations and follow them.

I could, of course, have eliminated my tracks by brushing my palms over them and smoothing the dirt, but that would have attracted even more attention than the tracks themselves.

Cowpunchers have to track saddle and pack horses in the morning in order to find out where the stock has strayed during the night. They have to track cattle. They not only become expert at reading tracks but at noticing anything that is out of the ordinary.

I turned around and walked back along the dirt road, making no effort to conceal my tracks. I doubted very much that Bruno would know someone had tried to track him but I knew that the first cowpuncher who rode down that road on horseback would notice the tracks. If he came along in a jeep or a pickup, he wouldn’t be so apt to pick them up. I’d probably be suspected of philandering. I had to take that chance.

I worked my way cautiously around the cabins, through the shadows, back to my own cabin and went to bed.