The Parson crossed the hall to the door through which Carl Blue had appeared, and looked in. On the floor in the middle of the room lay a suitcase. It looked like Tex Kent’s bag. The lid was open.
The Parson moved over to it. His nape bristled, his eyes narrowed and he threw a hard angry stare back of him at the open door. This was Tex Kent’s suitcase all right. His initials were burned into the leather. Floor boards creaked under the Parson’s feet as he knelt down and peered more closely into the bag.
It was crammed full of currency in little packages, spilling over with thousands — hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He heard a furtive footstep behind him. He whirled, caught a glimpse of a short-statured gorilla-like man, arm out-flung toward him. The man was strangely silent, furtive, red-eyed like a harbor rat. The arm had flung a sap, attached to a leather cord. The Parson ducked but not enough.
He sprawled, legs and arms outflung, but he never knew when he hit the floor. All he knew was that he was hurtling through space with blackness cascading down upon him. He heard a scream — it was the Dutchess: “They’re back! Oh God, they’re back!” Revolver shots thundered. And then there wasn’t anything.
Coming to, the Parson lay motionless for a moment or two, conscious of severe pain in his head. Then he sat up. There were voices in the next room. Stiff British voices. “After all that shooting, there should be at least something besides a man stabbed to death.” Cops! The Parson got to his feet. He remembered the bag suddenly and stared.
The bag was no longer there.
The Dutchess, Carl Blue, that little child, the man with the sap — all had pulled a fade-away.
He heard the cops moving about in the next room. He sped silently for the door. He would have to get out. Cordite fumes still hung acridly in the air. The door led to another room in which there was an open window. The Parson slid through it into the night.
Cariba’s finest hotel was the Queenshaven. It was laid out like a park with golf courses, tennis courts and private swimming pool under nodding palms, and a host of little white stucco and red tile cottages. The Parson occupied one of these cottages, number six, but he did not go to it. Instead he went to one marked number two. It was only an hour since he had quitted the twisting streets of the Puerto and his head still ached.
He came in with a cigarette between his lips, however, and a droll half-smile hovering on his mouth.
“Well, I’m back, Linny,” he said.
The man he called Linny stood up from a wicker easy chair, surveyed him with alert gray eyes, his heavy leonine head held almost to one side. Presently he too began to smile, slyly, jovially.
“Same old Parson. It that a bump on your head or are you parting your hair in a new way?”
“Both. It’s a bump and I’ve got to part my hair around it.” He dropped into a chair facing the other man, blew smoke toward the ceiling. “Want to hear about it?”
The man called Linny was a striking, distinguished figure of a man with aggressive features, graying hair. He sat down again, nodded. “Let’s have it all.”
The Parson rapidly sketched what had happened at the house in the Puerto. “That’s what we got to go on,” he finished complacently. “Riddles.”
“It’s a mess. I can’t understand the Dutchess. Far as I can see we’re not closer but further from our object.”
“And don’t forget that bagful of money!” the Parson said warmly.
“Yes, that certainly complicates matters. So does the presence of the child. I’m going to a lot of trouble to sew this case up. It would be too bad if the thing got out of hand.”
“Things moved fast,” the Parson agreed.
Linny shook his head impatiently. “You see, we’re moving forward on a hunch. There are strings attached to this we have absolutely no control over.”
The Parson shrugged. “Want to chuck it?”
“How can I — now?” The older man’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “You can, though, any time.”
“You know I wouldn’t do that.”
“Thanks, Parson.”
A tall man with smooth dark hair and dark eyes idled into the room, hands in his pockets. Almost imperceptibly the Parson tensed. Force of habit as well as the urge of precaution made his hand creep toward his gun.
The movement was not lost on Linny. He laughed. “Parson, this is Ed Clancy. He just arrived from New York. I had him come down in case you might need help. Ed, this is the Parson.”
The men nodded to each other. “I don’t need help,” the Parson muttered. “I work alone.”
“I know, boy. But in a case like this you never can tell. Anyway. Clancy will be here any time you need him. Are you going?”
“Uh-huh. It’s home and bed for me.”
When the door had closed on him, Clancy said: “Chief, I don’t altogether approve of this. The Parson’s a notorious gunman and a crook. How can you trust him in such a delicate case?”
“You don’t understand. The Parson’s a peculiar sort of crook.”
Jerry Lord, special investigator for New York’s D.A., swung in his chair, pushed back his emptied plate and drained his morning coffee. This was another day, cheerful and serene, with blue sky and golden sun benevolently bright overhead. Lord was a square-built, stocky man with bright whimsical eyes, a frank broad face, an easy engaging grin. He watched his Chinese boy place food deftly before the Parson, said:
“Clung, if I want you again I’ll ring.”
“Very good, master.” The boy padded out, closed the door.
Lord said, “Don’t let that bump on the head spoil your breakfast, Parson.”
The Parson pushed the food away from him. “I’m not hungry. Besides, it’s not the bump; it’s knowing all those people were there and all that money.”
“You did your best. And anyway think of my position. I send you to get the cuffs on Judge North, and he’s not even there.”
“I didn’t see him,” the Parson corrected. “He may have been there. Anyway, somebody else was there. The Dutchess.”
Lord grunted. He lit a cigarette, took three quick drags, spoke through the smoke. “What kind of a guy is her new husband, this Carl Blue you told me about?”
The Parson shrugged. “Just another guy, I guess. Cold, though, like a fish. You can feel it just looking at him. Good looking. Perfect features. Maybe too perfect.”
Lord got up, went to the window and peered out. After a minute he came back to the table solid-heeled and sat down, eyes clouded and bemused. He looked up at the Parson.
“Boy, I can’t make this out. Not yet. You’re likely right when you say you frightened Tex Kent into running to the Judge’s hideout with a bagful of money, if the Judge was really there. But what the hell is the Dutchess doing here? She bailed out of the rackets two years ago, a few months after Cig Wolfe was killed.” His hands balled into fists and he repeated forcefully: “Why should the Dutchess be in Cariba?”
The Parson said, “And that kid. Somehow I think that kid is the whole story. You say you heard about that kid?”
Lord waved his cigarette. “Well, there were rumors that she and Cig had a little baby girl they were keeping under wraps, away from the seamy side of life. But I never saw it and I never met anyone who had. It was all very vague.”
“Tell me more about the numbers racket,” the Parson said. “When Cig was torpedoed, somebody else took over the trade, didn’t they?”
“Well, yes. The Frankie Moore mob from Jersey City stepped up to the big time. But by then, Linton, my boss, had his sleeves rolled up and was breaking things up fast. So Frankie Moore never got to earn the big important dough that Cig Wolfe had rolled in. In fact, before he got started, Frankie Moore was out.”