Taken ForA Ride
A DETECTIVE is menaced by physical violence much less often than Hollywood would have us believe; and during Napoleon Bonaparte’s career threat to his life had been a rare phenomenon. He had himself never effected an arrest, his custom being to fade away after having placed the keystone of an investigation into position.
Mentally alert the moment the sound of the small voice penetrated to his subconscious, he recognized instantly the thing that pressed coldly and roundly against the back of his head. He was lying on his right side, facing the wall, and from behind him the small voice continued:
“Light, Dave.”
The electric light went on. Bony blinked. He continued to lie still.
“Get up,” ordered the small voice.
Obeying, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, to stare at the round orifice of the pistol barrel, the hatchet face of Dan Malone above the weapon, and Dave Marshall who stood by the door with his hand stillraised to the light switch. Then his gaze encountered the pale-blue eyes of the North American, to see in theman anger, no emotion, only a dead cold purpose.
“You gotta chance of living,” Malone said, and Bony noted his power of speaking distinctly and yet so softly that one had to strain hearing. “If you don’t do as you’re told, when you’re told, I’ll snuff you right out. It’s up to you. Dress and make no sound.”
To comply with the instruction was to exhibit common sense. The unusual situation produced the same mental state as that created in Bony’s mind by a fighting swordfish. It divided his mind, one part of it now seeking to cope with this second “startling development”, whilst the other part was astonished by the facility with which the pistol barrel remained in exact alignment with the centre of his forehead no matter his movements. The situation was ordinary because of the entire absence of melodrama in Malone’s voice and facial expression. His threats were horrifying only through their implication. They were spoken in the calm, cold manner of the doctor stating that the patient would die of starvation if he would not eat. There was in Malone’s threats just that degree of certainty, and it angered Bony because of its affront to his dignity.
He was at last dressed in the clothes he had worn at dinner and when on his visit to Joe Peace. It was Dave Marshall who handed to him his wristlet watch, who packed his toilet things into the smaller of his suit-cases, who glanced inside the wardrobe to see there Bony’s old fishing togs and shoes. It was Malone who continued to menace him with the pistol, who did the ordering, who now said:
“Sit down at the table and write a letter I’ll dictate. There’s your writing tablet and pens and ink. Head the letter ‘Thursday night’.” Bony prepared himself to write, and Malone continued:
“ ‘DearMrs Steele. I have found it necessary to leave late this evening on very important business which I expect will keep me away for several days. Don’t worry about the account. A man in my position can’t bilk’ ”-Bony shuddered-“ ‘anyone. Please tell Jack Wilton of my absence, and ask him to hold himself in readiness for my return. Yours faithfully.’ Sign it properly. Good! Now put the letter into an envelope and address it to Mrs Steele, Bermagui Hotel.”
Bony complied with the order, and was then told to stand and face about. Malone now came to stand beside him, to slip his left hand round Bony’s right arm, to cross his right arm over his chest and press the barrel of the pistol against Bony’s right side.
“We’re going for a walk like this,” Malone said, without emotion. “We’re going to tread very lightly so’s not to wake anybody up. If you don’t tread softly enough to please me, or if you shout or play the fool, you’ll be dead afore you know it. Ready, Dave?”
Marshall was standing by the door and light switch, the large and heavy suit-case on the floor beside the small and lighter one at his feet. He nodded. The light went out and the door was opened, although Bony could not hear its movement.
Malone waited for three seconds, when Marshall flashed on a hand torch having its beam semi-masked by a handkerchief. In this subdued light Malone escorted Bony out of the room, along the corridor, down a short flight of steps, and so out into the yard. By keeping to the wall of the building they escaped treading on the yard gravel. They passed along the “drive-in”, Marshall following with the suit-cases and his torch switched off, and where the drive-in debouched on to the sidewalk of the street they were met by a third man who whispered to Malone that there was no one about, and that no sleepless guest was lounging on the hotel balcony.
Bony was conducted directly across the road to the open grassland separating the township from the inner beach, and there they walked parallel with the road, moving without sound on the grass, until they were out of the township. They were obliged to walk on the road when crossing the bridge of a narrow creek, and again when well beyond the jetty where they were obliged to cross the bridge over the Bermaguee River. After that they kept to the grass verge of the road for nearly a mile when they arrived at the junction of the Tilba and Cobargo roads well beyond the last house of the scattered settlement. There, in the deep shadow of the forest trees waited a car.
It was a new machine of an expensive make. Marshall placed the suit-cases in the luggage compartment and stepped into the rear seat. Malone and the third man squeezed Bony into the car to sit beside Marshall, and after him stepped Malone, the third man taking the wheel. Not until the machine was well away from the road junction did the driver switch on the headlamps.
With a calm he certainly did not feel, Bony said:
“Perhaps one of you has a cigarette?”
The request appeared to reduce the tension in the men either side of him, for Malone chuckled, saying:
“Give Mr Bonaparte a fag, Dave. He deserves one for being a good little nigger boy.”
“Your kindness charms me,” Bony said, cuttingly-after Marshall had held a match to the cigarette. “It would be too much, of course, to ask where we are going. As your accent betrays your origin, and your actions confirm your accent, I have authority to assume that you are, to use your own picturesque idiom, taking me for a ride.”
Again Malone chuckled, coldly and without humour.
“That’s the name for it, Mr Bonaparte, although in your case we don’t aim to stop the bus and take you for a little walk before bumping you off.”
“Ah! You have, then, another idea?”
“That’s telling,” Malone guardedly fenced. “We’re goin’ to take great and particular care of you, any’ow. Can’t have niggers like you snoopin’ around, drawin’ plans of the shipping and what not, and pinching paint-brushes when no-buddy’s around. People who stick their dirty noses into other people’s business git burnt sooner or later. Ain’t that so, Mr Tatter?”
“That is so, Captain Malone,” replied the driver in precise English.
The driver, then, was Rockaway’s butler, the fellow who often came to town on a motor-cycle for the mail and papers. Malone, however, appeared to be the leader of this party which might have no connection with the Rockaways, father and daughter. Bony hoped this was so, for he continued to feel a degree of warmth towards the man who had so hospitably welcomed him at Wapengo Inlet, who was so enthusiastically an angler, and so charmingly oblivious to the colour of his guest.
In less than half an hour of swift driving they passed through the end of a town, turning right to cross a bridge. The stars informed the alert detective that the general direction of travel was changed from west to south, and when they skirted a second town he observed that the general direction of travel was eastward. The farther they progressed the rougher became the roads until they left the made roads and followed a winding track through close-packed scrub trees.
The car had traversed this track for nearly two miles when into the radius of the head-lamps slid a large bungalow type house. The track could be seen to pass along the front of this house, and arriving at it the speed was reduced when passing it, reduced to a crawl to swing right and enter a large shed the doors of which were wide open.
The head-lamps illuminated the interior of the place, a large garage, for there was a truck, a light sports car, a motor-cycle, drums of petrol and of oil, a lathe and trade benches. The car engine was stopped, and Bony could hear the garage doors being closed. The interior electric lights came on and the car’s lamps were switched off.
“Come on, we git out here,” Malone ordered, himself first to leave the car. Bony dutifully followed-to see Rockaway leaning against the mudguard of the sports model and a lean man crossing from the double doors he had closed. Rockaway, said, conversationally:
“Well, Mr Bonaparte, we meet again in adverse circumstances. It is to be regretted, for my admiration is sincere for one who has captured a five-hundred-pound swordie.”
Bony bowed in his grand manner. Now that the situation seemed likely to develop melodramatically, he was feeling a little more at his ease. There was more warmth in Rockaway than in Malone, although Rockaway might prove to be equally deadly. Tatter went to the doors. The thin man stood beside Rockaway, and Malone took station a little to the front of Bonaparte. Marshall was lifting the suit-cases from the car.
“The circumstances controlling our first meeting, as well as this one, were not of my choosing, Mr Rockaway,” Bony said, to add grandiloquently: “You will, perhaps, gratify my curiosity concerning the reason for this remarkable conduct.”
“Certainly, Mr Bonaparte,” the big man readily assented.“A certain cause is having a series of effects. Thecause being your inquisitiveness and the effects so far being certain newspaper reports hinting that you are taking a busman’s holiday, examination of your papers proving that you have become deeply interested in the fate of theDo-me, and your abduction from your bed and escort to this place.”
“Ah! So someone did examine the papers in my brief-case,” Bony exclaimed. “It is strange, for although I could obtain absolutely no proof that the case has been tampered with, I yet was warned by a sixth sense I name intuition.”
“Yes. You see, Mr Bonaparte, during your absence from the hotel this evening, or rather last evening, Tatter, my butler, examined your personal effects, and in your brief-case saw those maps and plans and reports and statements you have compiled concerning the missingDo-me. Before your absence from the hotel presented him with the opportunity of looking over those papers he had no chance of receiving instructions from me, and so he replaced the brief-case exactly as he had found it. Having at one time been a most successful burglar, for you to have discovered any article misplaced would have cast reflection on his reputation.”
“I can assure you that his reputation remains untarnished,” Bony said, slightly smiling.
“I am glad to know that. Of course, he did quite right to leave the brief-case in your suit-case, and as Marshall has brought both your suit-cases here we will go into your papers more fully. Get me the brief-case, Dave.”
Marshall opened the larger of Bony’s suit-cases and began to tumble out on the floor its contents. Bony, watchinghim, saw first bewilderment and then chagrin on his rat face.
“It’s-it’s not here,” he stuttered.
“Oh!” Mr Rockaway said slowly. “In which case did you place Mr Bonaparte’s brief-case, Tatter?”
“In the large one,” replied Tatter, from the doors.
“Well, it ain’t here,” Marshall said.
“That’s where I put it,” averred Tatter. “That’s where I found it in the first place. I remember the incident perfectly.”
“Well, well!” Rockaway said, in his voice for the first time a discordant note. “Surely, Malone, you realized the importance of Mr Bonaparte’s brief-case and checked up on Tatter’s statement? It would have taken only a second.”
“Tatter said he knew it was in the big suit-case,” Malone answered.
“Tatter said this and Tatter said that, you fool,” Rockaway exclaimed. “Unless I am with you to guide your every step you are lost. Now, Mr Bonaparte, please assist us. What became of your brief-case?”
“It was like this, Mr Rockaway,” Bony replied easily. “On my return to the hotel last evening I had occasion to refresh my mind on a point of my investigation into your strange activities, and my sixth sense informed me that that brief-case had been tampered with. In order to secure it against another invasion, I took it along to Constable Telfer for safe keeping.”
“That’s a lie,” Marshall burst out. “You never left the pub after you got back there. Wewas watching the place from eleven o’clock.”
“Well, Mr Bonaparte, what became of the brief-case?”persisted the fresh-complexioned, suave-voiced big man. “Come, we are unable to waste time.”
“It is in Constable Telfer’s safe.”
Mr Rockaway sighed. Then he said:
“Knock him down, Malone.”
There was no delay. Malone’s iron-hard fist crashed against the point of Bony’s jaw, producing a grating sound in his ears, lights before his eyes, and a vast pain in his brain. A second blow was given by the floor of the garage, producing nausea in his stomach. He experienced an intense longing to be supported by Mother Earth, but he was dragged to his feet. The lighting within the garage appeared dim, as though a shadow fell between its illuminated objects and Bony’s eyes. Beyond this shadow stood Rockaway and the others. Malone stood nearer than they. He had let go his hold on Bony. Rockaway’s voice seemed to issue from a great distance.
“Now, Mr Bonaparte, whatdid you do with the brief-case?”
Bony blinked his eyes to banish the unreal shadow. He fought to regain mental poise. A warmth of peculiar origin was passing up his neck to heat his brain, to burn his eyes, and even then his mind was divided so that he wondered at this until he understood that it was actually mounting anger. He was astonished by the fact of being in this instance unable to control this growing heat despite his effort to discipline himself. Almost all his life he had regarded anger as the blunted weapon of the weak man to be scorned by a cultured man such ashe.
“The brief-case, Mr Bonaparte,” Rockaway said again.
“I took it…” Bony began when the self-discipline imposed over many years vanished. The heat in his brain had become too fierce for longer control, and abruptly his mother’s blood took charge of him, made him one with her and her people. That sneering brute close to him had knocked him down, had called him a nigger boy, had treated him as though he, Napoleon Bonaparte, was a nomad of the bush.
Bony actually screamed when he leaped at Malone, standing only three feet from him, wolfishly waiting the order to again knock him down. Bony’s transformed face astonished the Bluenose to the extent of delaying his defensive action for a split second, for Bony’s face had become jet-black in colour, his eyes glaring blue orbs set in seas of white, while his teeth reflected the light like the fangs of a young dog. Before Malone could act, Bony’s fingers were crunching into his throat witha strength extraordinary in a man so light of body. And like the grip of a bull-dog those hands were not to be prized away until it was too late to revive Captain Malone.
Never before in his life had his aboriginal instincts so controlled Napoleon Bonaparte to the exclusion of that other complex part of him inherited from his father and on which was based so magnificent a pride. Reason had fled before the primitive lust to destroy. He had Malone sagging, was supporting the heavy body with his two hands, when he heard Rockaway say, still casual and cool:
“Knock him out, someone. Don’t kill the fool. We must have that brief-case.”
Bony began to scream with laughter at the sight of Malone’s awful face: blue-black, tongue protruding, glassy eyes rolling horribly in their sockets. Then abruptly his laughter was cut off. A flare of flame swept across his eyes, to be followed by a night in which thought and being had no entity.