JOHN HENRY moaned and opened his eyes. Gray light, like a shower of pins, stabbed them and he shut them again. A slow fire was baking one side of his face; the other was ice-cold.
“Johnny, Johnny!” he could hear Sin’s voice near him. “Darling — please wake up — oh, please — ”
He was lying on his side with one cheek pressed against dank concrete. He tried to sit up but his arms wouldn’t come out from in back of him, and the exertion created bright pinwheels before him in the darkness.
“Oh, darling!” Sin breathed from somewhere in back of him. “Thank God! I was so scared — ”
His head began to clear. They were in some sort of dim vault under a low ceiling. Cardboard boxes of all sizes were stacked against the opposite wall. Down the center of the room a row of wooden pillars and, at eye-level above the cartons, were three small grimy windows. John Henry decided this must be the cellar under the Bar C Ranch. He sniffed the damp musty air and was sure of it.
“What happened?” he managed.
“How’s your head, honey?”
John Henry moved it gingerly to and fro. “God!” he complained. “What a headache!”
“Try to sit up. Maybe you’ll feel better.”
He discovered when he tried it that his arms were asleep. They were bound in back of him. His legs, too, felt numb and a moment’s careful focusing showed him his ankles had been tied together and then his legs doubled back. A rope connected his wrists with his ankles, this preventing any motion except wriggling.
He wriggled to a sitting position, groaning en route. There was something sticky on his lips. He touched it with his tongue and tasted the peculiar saltiness of dried blood. John Henry wormed around to look at his wife.
Sin had been similarly hobbled. Her red hair was mussed and her bright eyes had obviously held recent tears. She leaned one shoulder against the rough concrete wall, trying to take the pressure off her doubled-up legs.
John Henry groped for memory. “Sin — what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in Brawley?”
“Your poor head, honey!” Sin exclaimed, ignoring the question, her eyes fixed on the lump which showed through the matted brown hair.
“Never mind me,” he commanded, endeavoring to work some feeling into his arms by flexing his muscles. “What time is it, anyway?”
“I think it’s been a couple hours at least since they brought you down here. Did they hurt you much, darling?”
“Just tell me what all happened.”
Sin obediently repeated the gibing explanations she had gotten from Vernon when he had added John Henry to the basement prison. Vernon claimed the Conovers hadn’t fooled him at all. When they had turned the Mercury toward Barselou’s ranch, it had just saved him the trouble of an open fight. The bellboy had followed them quietly and listened outside the casino door. When Sin came out, he had shoved a gun into her spine and a cloth over her mouth. A few minutes later, she had been left, trussed, in the cellar — where she had been ever since. Vernon had then driven Faye Jordan’s coupé around the drive and a short distance down the road to persuade John Henry that Sin had actually left.
The story didn’t help John Henry’s head at all. He sighed. The near future was as gloomy as the cellar. Barselou might be keeping them locked up to prevent further interference. Or he might have other, and far more unpleasant, plans for the Conovers. John Henry was not cheered by the thought that he had not only set his own feet purposely in the danger zone, but he had also dragged his wife along with him.
Sin’s thoughts strummed the same funereal note. The basement was too much like a tomb. “What do you think’s going to happen to us, Johnny?” she asked fearfully.
“I don’t know, Sin,” he admitted gloomily. “It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t thought I could do better than the police — ”
“It’s not either all your fault,” Sin said bravely, trying to control her trembling lower lip. “If I hadn’t followed Gayner to the restaurant — ”
“I should have left Faye Jordan alone. Then we wouldn’t have come back here to the ranch.”
Sin didn’t argue about this. John Henry wriggled around a bit and whistled a noiseless tune between his teeth. He thought about Faye Jordan. “I don’t think she knows anything about this ship business,” he said suddenly.
“I can’t see why you think that.”
“I’m sure of it, Sin, the more I think about it.”
“Well, then who was it that put something in your drink and searched you?” Sin demanded stubbornly.
“I thought it was Faye, all right. But why couldn’t it have been that bartender of Barselou’s? I thought it was Faye before I found out who owns this place.”
“Why’d they let you go then, honey?”
“I didn’t have anything. Barselou still wasn’t sure we were the right people,” said John Henry. “All that happened before you got caught with Barselou’s maps. That put a clincher on our guilt. It made Barselou sure.”
“But we didn’t know anything,” Sin protested.
“We had the route to the ship — that’s enough evidence for him. It just goes to prove that there’s somebody else mixed up in this race for the Queen, all right.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Jones?”
“Sure, Sin. I don’t know where Robottom fits in but he thinks we’re the Joneses. Barselou thinks we’re the Joneses. Anglin was looking for them when he stumbled into our cottage by mistake. Now who was he looking for?”
“Faye Jordan!” said his wife promptly.
“Look, baby — admitted that Faye isn’t bright. Admitted she’s wild. Admitted she’s a lot of things. Okay. She hasn’t done a single thing that makes us think she’s tangled up in this murder, has she?”
“I don’t like her. My feminine intuition tells me so.”
“Let me make a point,” said John Henry, after a pause. “There are two sides. Barselou on one and the Joneses on the other. Anglin was playing on both teams and didn’t score anywhere. Barselou didn’t kill him. So who did?”
Sin looked around at the shadows fearfully. “Honey, what does it matter, anyway? Can’t we talk about something else?”
“Who killed him?”
“You want me to say the Joneses.”
“Uh-huh. So the next big question is the Joneses. This is damned important, baby. Are they man and wife or a team of acrobats or what?” His charging sentences betrayed the struggle in his mind. “That’s what we have to figure out. Fast.”
“But, Johnny, what good is — ”
“Sin, look. This is the point. Barselou thinks we’re them. Our only chance in the world is to convince him that we’re not. So start thinking, honey.”
The fear she had been repressing broke from its hiding place with one dry sob. “Johnny — you make it sound more serious than — ”
“It’s liable to be, Sin. But don’t think about that part of it.” He tried to smile the worry off his own face. “Let’s put that memory of yours to work in a good cause.”
Sin nodded, bravely determined, and knit her heavy brows together. Only random scraps frolicked across her mind, visionary odds and ends. Faye Jordan in her white knit bathing suit. Bry-Ter Tooth Paste. Thelma Loomis with her notebook. The sickening moments in the elevator. Sagmon Robottom’s dripping wet body. Vernon’s mournful eyes. Arvaez pacing the deck of La Reina while the water disappeared under his treasure ship. Who was Jones?
John Henry was staring blankly at the opposite wall. As if summing up a series of thoughts, he said softly, “It darn near fits.”
“Did you think of something?”
John Henry pulled his eyes back to his wife’s wildly hopeful expression. “Look, Sin,” he said, “Jones can either be a man or a woman. Or both, I guess. Or several of either. Whoever it is has to be living at the Las Dumas, because Angling was supposed to meet him there. It has to be somebody that isn’t working for Barselou. Therefore, we can eliminate Vernon and — ”
He stopped. A scratching noise came from one of the high windows in the cellar wall across from them.
Sin gulped a couple of times and whispered, “What is it, honey?”
John Henry shushed her gently and kept watching the ground-level window on the other side of the basement. A shadow blocked the remnants of sunlight on the dirty glass. The scratching noise came again.
Sin’s face tightened and she gave a little moan of despair. She tried to wriggle closer to her husband for protection.
The window was being shoved firmly from the outside. It stuck for a moment, then screeched inward and upward. John Henry’s mouth dropped open and he bumped his head in surprise against the concrete behind him. Sin gave a horrified yelp.
Crouched on the window sill, peering in at them curiously, was an animal. Behind a malevolent head with pointed ears, the creature’s body filled the window. Its size made it impossible for the huge beast to be what it was.
A gigantic black cat.
“Stand still — ” Odell gritted between clenched teeth. The horse, intractable, shied away from him, flinging its head high and flashing the whites of its huge eyes.
Barselou laughed. “Give it to me,” he demanded, taking the saddle from his henchman. “You got to know how to talk to them.” He stroked the brown-and-white mare on the neck with one big hand and spoke soothingly in her ear. “There, there, Fern — nobody’s going to hurt you.”
Odell retreated across the stable and sat down on a bale of hay. From this safe point he lit a cigarette and watched Barselou skillfully slip the saddle over the mare’s back and cinch it tight. He envied his employer’s way with animals and wondered why he didn’t have it.
“Throw me those saddlebags,” Barselou called over his shoulder. Grunting, Odell pulled the empty saddlebags from their peg on the wall and plodded over to Barselou. The big man was leading another horse, roan-colored, from one of the stalls.
“You’re being smart about a gun, aren’t you?” Odell asked. Barselou smiled and pointed to the carbine scabbard lashed by the saddle horn. Then he squatted to cinch the saddlebags under the roan’s belly. Odell walked to the sliding doors of the stable and looked out. A hundred yards away the ranch house was still and peaceful under the late afternoon sun, which now neared the Santa Rosa peaks. “Took too long getting your gear together.”
“Oh, I’ll find her in the dark okay.” Barselou bridled the roan and led the two horses to the wide door of the stable. “I’m not riding blind with this.” He slapped the watch pocket of his whipcord breeches. “And I’ll be back some time after dawn — with souvenirs.”
“How about those souvenirs in the cellar?”
“Just keep them on ice till I get back. But don’t touch them, Odell — understand?”
“Don’t worry.”
“They better be in good health and able to talk when I get back. If they’ve given me the right dope, there’ll be time enough then to shuffle them off.”
“They’re not going anywhere,” Odell stated levelly. “But what if they’ve thrown us a curve?”
“We still got them, haven’t we? Second inning, maybe we can persuade them to shoot straight.”
“One thing,” Odell said. “Let me have the girl, huh?”
Barselou put his foot in the stirrup and swung up to the saddle. He bent over and grabbed the reins of the pack horse. Then he straightened and stared down inscrutably at the plump man. “Okay,” he said finally, “but women are going to be the death of you yet, Odell.”
“Can’t think of a better way to die.”
Barselou grinned. “Walking Skull, here I come.” He touched an unspurred boot heel to the mare and the horses began to move off in a slow trot. At the top of the rise south of the archery range, Barselou turned in the saddle and waved a hearty hand. Then he jogged out of sight. Odell took a final drag on the cigarette and pitched it out into the yard. He began to walk slowly back toward the ranch house. When he thought of the redheaded girl in the cellar, he started smiling.
The mammoth black cat poised on the sill and leaped lithely through the window to light on the concrete floor. Sin was drawn back against the wall as far as she could go, throat contracting in horror. John Henry blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to clear the monster from his vision.
Then the cat stood up on its hind legs. Without moving its jaws, it said, “For goodness sakes, what are you doing here?”
Sin commenced making incoherent little noises. The cat stepped closer and put a paw up to its nose. John Henry grasped confusedly at a realization that the black fur wasn’t fur at all but some kind of fuzzy cloth. The cat lifted its face off and the puzzled face of Faye Jordan took its place.
“Faye!” John Henry almost shouted. Sin gasped shudderingly and collapsed against the wall.
Faye Jordan said, “I didn’t know you were going to come back, Johnny. I would have stayed if I’d known.”
“Quick! Get a knife, Faye!”
“Where is that policeman and all the cute people?” She peered at the dark corners of the cellar.
“Don’t waste time with questions!” Anxiety split the the seams of John Henry’s voice. “Find a knife somewhere and cut us loose, will you?”
Faye said to Sin, “He wasn’t very nice to me this morning. Do you know what he did?” Sin shook her head mutely, green eyes fixed on the other girl’s face expectantly. “He put something in my drink!”
“Oh, no!” groaned John Henry.
“You did too! And when I woke up in a closet somebody had searched me.” Faye giggled delightedly.
Conover looked at his wife. His lips formed inaudible words: “She’s — still — drunk.”
Sin’s expression was baffled as she considered the girl in the light of John Henry’s mouthing. She murmured, “I don’t know.”
“I do!” exulted Faye. “And you should be ashamed of yourself, Johnny!”
“I am, believe me,” John Henry said sincerely. “But now, Faye, please forgive me and cut us loose, will you, before — ”
“How do you like my costume?” Faye asked, surveying herself contentedly. The big black ears flapped grotesquely. “It’s for the ball tonight, you know. Are you coming?”
John Henry remembered then how Vernon had come to the cottage with the invitation to a costume ball — “come as what you’d like to be most,” it had said. When had that been? Just last night?
“For crying out loud!” he shouted. “Turn us loose!”
Faye leaped back and Sin glanced angrily at her husband. She jammed a knee into his back and spoke soothingly to the girl. “How did you come to return to the ranch, Faye?”
“Taxi,” said Faye and sat back on her haunches. “I’m glad you reminded me. I was trying on my costume and I decided to go for a drive, a fast one — to see what an ocelot felt like.” Her face got unpleasant. “Then my car was stolen. Right off the hotel parking lot, too. I thought it might be here, so I took a taxi and hurried out to see. And do you know what?”
“What?” asked Sin fearfully.
“It’s right here — just where I thought it would be!” Faye’s short upper lip curled in triumph. She got up. “Where did you say those stairs went?”
“Faye, wait! Where are you going?”
“I’m going to find who stole my car — and then I’m going to kill him.”
John Henry leaned an aching temple against the cement wall. Sin hunched forward and her voice was calm only by desperate effort. “That’s exactly what you should do, Faye. But I’ve a good idea. Why don’t you untie us and then we can all look for the thief who stole your car?”
John Henry held his breath while the bright-eyed girl thought it over, afraid that a single movement on his part might turn the decision against them.
“That’s a good idea!” Faye said after a minute of consideration. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. Here.” She ran forward and kneeled at Sin’s side. John Henry started to breathe again, but softly.
Sin gave a little cry and brought her arms around in front of her, free of the imprisoning ropes. Faye was unloosening the cords that bound her feet together. A few swift movements later, Sin pulled herself up. She swayed dizzily.
“How are you, honey?” John Henry asked anxiously.
“My fingers won’t feel,” replied Sin. “Just a second and I’ll let you loose.”
Faye Jordan was slinking around the pillars, a cat in every respect except that she prowled on two legs instead of four. She cocked the big ears to one side, listening. “I think I hear footsteps,” she hissed. “I’ll stalk them.” She glided up the concrete steps, opened the door that led into the ranch house proper, and she was gone.
“Hurry up, baby,” John Henry said nervously. “Barselou might come down here, especially if that screwball kicks up a rumpus.”
“I’m hurrying as fast as I can,” Sin whimpered, her fingers fumbling among the knots behind his back. “What’s wrong with Faye, anyhow?”
“She shouldn’t drink. There!”
John Henry brought his hands to the front and rubbed his wrists, trying to restore circulation. Then he brushed Sin aside and began to work his feet free. Sin went to the foot of the stairs, waiting nervously for some noise in the silent house above. John Henry got to his feet. Hundreds of black dots danced in the air. He shook his head and most of them went away.
He reached out and caught his wife in his arms for a brief hug. “We’re all right now, honey! Keep your chin up,” he whispered and urged her toward the window in the opposite wall. The grim-encrusted panes still swung half-open where Faye Jordan had left them.
“Can we get out that way?” Sin doubted. “It’s pretty high.”
“I can’t see going up through the house again. We’re taking the high road.”
By piling the cardboard boxes against the wall, they achieved a perilous platform that threatened to collapse if they breathed wrong. John Henry scaled it first, wriggling painfully through the window and bumping his sore head on the frame. He scouted carefully. The window opened on the east side of the house, facing a small orchard of grapefruit trees. To the south were round, brightly colored targets on easels — an archery range. To the north was the front of the ranch house and the parking lot. The afternoon shadows were long all about, but none of them moved.
He reached a hand down to Sin and pulled her awkwardly through the opening. She got up, straightening her peasant skirt and pushing her hair into place. North of the orchard, the barbed-wire fence was only about fifty yards away. Beyond that, cultivation ceased and sagebrush and scrub oak promised protective covering.
“Let’s go!” cried John Henry and clasped Sin’s hand tight.
They ran like mad for the fence, expecting a bullet in the back.