Chapter Two

The Attorney General’s office was a high-ceilinged, spacious room on the first floor of the huge building which housed the Department of Justice. Outside it stood two armed Marines flanking the big, brass-studded, leather-covered doors. One of them opened the doors now for the Attorney General’s private personal secretary, Miss Rowe. A tall girl, with honey-colored hair falling loosely about an oval face, her blue eyes were impish as she said to the visitor:

‘He’s expecting you.’

‘Ma’am,’ said the man.

Annabel Rowe regarded him speculatively. Tall, rangy, his broad shoulders straining the seams of the dark grey suit, Frank Angel had the look of far horizons in his eyes. Annabel Rowe knew that he was a Special Investigator for the Department; this was by no means his first visit to this office. From time to time she had seen letters and reports from him mailed in godforsaken spots out West: Texas, Indian Territory, once even Oregon. She had also seen his terse reports at the end of his assignments and knew that the man smiling as he went past her into the big sunlit office was a killer.

The Attorney-General rose and came around the desk to meet his visitor, his hand outstretched.

‘Frank, I’m glad to see you! he exclaimed. ‘How’s that arm?’

‘Good as new now,’ Angel said. ‘Little stiffness for a while, but it wore off. I got plenty of exercise down at the range.’

The Attorney-General nodded. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said, motioning to a chair, and proffered a box which contained some very long dark cigars. Angel grinned and shook his head.

‘I’ll stick to tobacco if you don’t mind, sir,’ he said. ‘The last time I smoked one of those things it took three days for my voice to get back to normal.’

The Attorney-General sniffed, and selected one of the evil-looking cigars from the box, lighting it and pulling on it, inhaling the noxious smoke with every evidence of huge enjoyment.

He let the smoke drift from his nostrils in a long, slow, luxurious exhalation.

‘Aaaah,’ said the Attorney-General. ‘Wife won’t let me smoke these in the house — damned interferin’ woman. Still, that’s neither here nor there. Now, Frank … ’

Angel leaned forward infinitesimally in his chair.

‘You’ve been briefed?

‘Prosser down in Records was very thorough,’ Angel told him. ‘Showed me the reports on Maclntyre and Freeman. Wasn’t much on Stevens.’

‘And your conclusions?

‘Hard to say,’ Angel replied. ‘Freeman, now. That could’ve been some drunken buck off the Reservation. It isn’t likely, but it’s possible. Whoever did kill Freeman had the soul of a Chiricahua, if not the blood.’

The Attorney-General nodded. ‘And so?’

‘So — no coincidence.’

Again the man behind the desk nodded. Angel waited until the cigar was relit and then the Attorney-General leaned forward, hands clasped.

‘I sent them all out there, Frank. All looking for different bits of the same puzzle.’

‘You think they were on to anything?

‘No, I think they were killed to make sure they didn’t get on to anything.’

Angel leaned back in the armchair. ‘Better fill me in,’ he said.

‘OK,’ the Attomey General said. ‘We had a few scattered reports of thieving at first. Nothing much, just a line in the US Marshal’s reports that ranchers in the Daranga area were complaining about rustling. Then another report, this time from the Indian agent at San Simon. He told us he was being offered cattle well below market price, as many as he wanted.

He had to buy them; on the allocations he gets for his Apaches, every dollar counts. But he mentioned it, and I added that information to the fact that two men named Birch and Reynolds were buying every piece of land in the Rio Blanco country that they could lay hands on, and every piece of property they could get into. They purchased the franchise for the post tradership at Fort Daranga, and we got one or two complaints that they were charging monopoly prices for goods. When people tried to go someplace else, they found the market controlled for a hundred miles around by these same two men. They pretty well bought up Daranga — the hotel, the general store, built a fancy saloon, started living it up like feudal barons. None of which was in itself illegal, but it made me curious. I sent MacIntyre to Baranquilla to check on the land office records there. Stevens was checking up on some men we’d heard were supplying stolen beef to Birch and Reynolds. Freeman was scouting the country, asking questions.’

‘And they all turned up dead,’ Angel mused. ‘Interesting.’

‘Interesting is hardly the word,’ was the harsh reply. ‘Frank, I’m worried. I have the uneasy feeling that something big is brewing down there, and whoever is behind it has access to knowledge about this Department. I can’t put a finger on it, but I smell something and I want to know what it is.’

‘Three of our men dead is enough,’ Angel said gently.

‘Damned right it is!’ snapped the Attorney-General, slapping his desk with the flat of his hand. ‘I want you to get out there and snoop around. Find out what’s going on. It stinks of politics, and I want to know who and I want to know why, Frank.’

‘All right,’ Angel said. ‘I’ll get started tomorrow.’

‘Draw two hundred dollars as expenses,’ the Attorney-General said. ‘You can account for it when you get back.’

‘If I don’t come back do I get to keep the money?’ grinned Angel. His remark brought a grim smile to the face of the man opposite him.

‘That’s not such a hell of a joke, boy,’ he said. ‘There’s someone out in that country who’s quite willing to kill without warning or mercy to protect whatever scheme he’s concocted. Tread softly, play it carefully.’

Angel nodded, his face sober.

‘How will you travel?

‘I’d say Missouri Pacific to Trinidad,’ Angel said. ‘I can head down the Rio Grande to Las Cruces and across into Arizona from there. Be in Daranga about a week from now.’

‘Good,’ the Attorney General said, rising abruptly. ‘Take good care of yourself.’ His face was set and unsmiling.

‘Always do,’ Angel replied. He didn’t smile either.