“I’ve seen a dozen trailers,” said Briggs. “All the red ones were heading east. Nothing we wanted.”
Tony heard Briggs sigh.
Houston was not far ahead when Briggs got the report. Moira Sullivan had boarded the El Paso plane at Fort Worth, some 250 miles to the north. In Houston Savage filled the oversized gasoline tank, had the oil checked and followed the setting sun through the last of the low damp country along the Gulf Coast.
El Paso was some eight hundred miles away — long miles, lonesome miles. San Antonio, about two hundred miles farther on, would be the last city of any size. And somewhere ahead, Savage was convinced, was one trailer — perhaps two — and two men at least he must find. Larnigan and the short man with the broken nose!
Bevond San Antonio Savage took the south road through Del Rio, on the Mexican border. Savage held the wheel until ten, dozed in the front seat beside Briggs until an hour after midnight. Briggs went back in the trailer to sleep. Daybreak found Savage holding the speedometer at sixty-five on the straight stretches.
Chapter XXII
The Friendly Stranger
A wilderness of thorny mesquite stretched in all directions. Green beds of prickly pear cactus sprawled over the ground. The lush green grass of the coastal country had vanished. The tall trees were gone. This was a dry country, a harsh country, rising mile by mile toward the semi-deserts farther west. At no time during the night had a suspicious trailer been sighted.
At seven-thirty Briggs telephoned that breakfast was ready. They ate with the horizon at least forty miles away through the clear crisp morning air. A dozen varieties of cactus, Spanish bayonet, and other desert plants were visible from the trailer doorway. But no life. A little later while Savage walked up and down outside in the bright sunshine Briggs tried to get New Orleans. His voice was audible through the open doorway.
“W2ZXYZ calling New Orleans — W2ZXYZ calling W5RPLS. Are you on the air, W5RPLS?” A pause while Briggs listened, and again Briggs’ calclass="underline" “W2ZXYZ calling W5RPLS. W2ZXYZ calling New Orleans. Calling any New Orleans station. Give me an answer, any New Orleans station. I want W5RPLS, but I’ll take any station. Any New Orleans station give W2ZXYZ a call.”
Savage paused near the door as he heard a voice in Briggs’ loudspeaker.
“W5OXCT calling W2ZXYZ. What’s on your mind, W2ZXYZ, up there around New York this early in the morning?”
“Hello, W5OXCT,” said Briggs. “Thanks for coming in. I’m working a portable, in BT5 right now. I’m over here in West Texas near the Mexican border, in the middle of enough cactus to stop your Mardi Gras parade today. I want W5RPLS. How about giving him a buzz on your telephone? His name is Barton — Bill Barton, out on Fontainebleau Drive. Go ahead W5OXCT.”
The answer:
“I’ve worked Barton a lot. Always in the evening, though. I’ll give him a ring and see if he’s around. Hold it open.”
Savage spoke through the doorway.
“If you get Clancy’s office find out if the El Paso report has come in. Ask about fingerprint reports. And what about Miss Carstairs?”
The loudspeaker said:
“All right, W2ZXYZ — are you there, W2ZXYZ?”
“O.K.,” said Briggs. “W2ZXYZ waiting.”
“I got Barton on the telephone. He was at breakfast. He’ll be on the air in a couple of minutes.”
A few minutes later a thin fast-speaking voice came in from the air.
“W5RPLS speaking, W2ZXYZ. Sorry I wasn’t looking for you this early in the morning. What’s on the cuff today? I hear you made plenty of miles last night. My wife’s telephoning your office right now... Wait a minute — she’s got ’em... There’s something for you. Just a minute—”
After a pause, the rapid voice resumed:
“All right, W2ZXYZ?”
“Shoot it,” said Briggs.
“Here you are — there’s quite a bit of it. Fingerprints went off yesterday evening to FBI in Washington and to the State Identification Bureau. Answers expected today. The two prisoners were released yesterday evening. They had retained a crack criminal lawyer. Nothing was said to them about trailers. The man took the train for Memphis. The woman closed the house and boarded a California train. No one else had called at her house. Neighbors state no sign of a trailer was seen around the house. Got all that? There’s more coming as soon as I get to the telephone again.”
“Waiting for it,” said Briggs. He lighted a cigarette while he waited and looked at the doorway. “Memphis,” said Briggs. “And California. Goddard and the Teasdale dame split fast, didn’t they?”
“The Fort Worth-El Paso-California planes go through Memphis first,” said Savage. “Goddard is up to something.”
“He might,” Briggs suggested, “be heading back to Cleveland to join his fiancée.”
“Why did he leave her? The decent thing would have been to escort Miss Bellamy to Cleveland with her father’s body.”
“You had a chance in New Orleans to ask him why,” reminded Briggs.
“It would have only aroused his suspicions. I wish I’d told Clancy to send a man after Goddard, to Alaska if necessary. The fellow needs—”
New Orleans cut in: “Are you still getting W5RPLS?”
“Let’s have it, W5RPLS,” said Briggs in the peculiar and often monotonous jargon of the short-wave brotherhood.
“Here you are — Cohatchie, Florida, long-distanced the New Orleans insurance office last night, as follows: ‘Torrington, Florida, sent two bullets to FBI in Washington. Cohatchie sent one bullet out of Clark’s corpse to FBI. They don’t match. The Torrington bullets were from a .32 Colt automatic. The Cohatchie bullet was from a rifle. Torrington wanted Cohatchie to know the bullets found in accident victim’s body were not from the exploded rifle cartridges in the back seat. The automatic bullets indicate murder, instead of accidental death.
“The police here got two bullets out of the house wall and on recommendation of agency office have sent them to FBI in Washington for check against the two automatic bullets from Torrington. Miss Carstairs not yet heard from. The El Paso report says the lady got off the plane and went to Del Monte Hotel. Asked at the desk for mail, telegrams or messages, and received nothing. Apparently is asleep now. Tri-State Agency in El Paso will have further details, and are expecting your arrival. That’s all. Have you got anything? And will you be sending later today? I want to take in some of this Mardi Gras.”
“Nothing more. We’ll be in El Paso some time this evening. I’ll telephone back long-distance,” said Savage.
Briggs signed off, ducked out of the low trailer door, stretching, grinning.
“It’s old stuff by now,” said Briggs. “But I still get a kick out of putting something through from a forsaken spot like this. It’s like using the whole country for a backyard, with the cities for rooms, and one yell reaches everything.”
Tony Savage chuckled.
“You’re acquiring the soul of a poet, Briggs. Let’s get going. This next stretch of our backyard covers a lot of ground. Take the wheel while I get some sleep. I don’t want to be a wreck when we arrive.”
Briggs was a skillful and a fast driver. Time after time during the day Savage was jolted into partial wakefulness as the racing trailer slammed over some rough spot in the road. Those times Savage was aware that Briggs was driving as fast as the road would allow.
Briggs relinquished the wheel at Van Horn, Texas. The sun was hanging over the horizon. Briggs’ hands were shaking from the strain of the grueling day’s drive at furious speeds.