«Up here on business, Mr. Evans?»
«I’m not sure. I got a call, but I haven’t made a contact yet. A confidential matter.»
He nodded. His eyes were thoughtful. They were deeper, colder, darker than they had been.
«I’m stopping at the Indian Head,» I said.
«I don’t aim to pry into your affairs, son,» he said. «We don’t have no crime here. Onst in a while a fight or a drunk driver in summertime. Or maybe a couple hard-boiled kids on a motorcycle will break into a cabin just to sleep and steal food. No real crime, though. Mighty little inducement to crime in the mountains. Mountain folks are mighty peaceable.»
«Yeah,» I said. «And again, no.»
He leaned forward a little and looked into my eyes.
«Right now,» I said, ’You’ve got a murder.»
Nothing much changed in his face. He looked me over feature by feature. He reached for his hat and put it on the back of his head.
«What was that, son?» he asked calmly.
«On the point east of the village out past the dancing pavilion. A man shot, lying behind a big fallen tree. Shot through the heart. I was down there smoking for half an hour before I noticed him.»
«Is that so?» he drawled. «Out Speaker Point, eh? Past Speaker’s Tavern. That the place?»
«That’s right,» I said.
«You taken a longish while to get around to telling me, didn’t you?» The eyes were not friendly.
«I got a shock,» I said. «It took me a while to get myself straightened out.»
He nodded. «You and me will now drive out that way. In your car.»
«That won’t do any good,» I said. «The body has been moved. After I found the body I was going back to my car and a Japanese gunman popped up from behind a bush and knocked me down. A couple of men carried the body away and they went off in a boat. There’s no sign of it there at all now.»
The sheriff went over and spat in his gobboon. Then he made a small spit on the stove and waited as if for it to sizzle, but it was summer and the stove was out. He turned around and cleared his throat and said: «You’d kind of better go on home and lie down a little while, maybe.» He clenched a fist at his side. «We aim for the summer visitors to enjoy theirselves up here.» He clenched both his hands, then pushed them hard down into the shallow pockets in the front of his pants.
«Okay,» I said.
«We don’t have no Japanese gunmen up here,» the sheriff said thickly. «We are plumb out of Japanese gunmen.»
«I can see you don’t like that one,» I said. «How about this one? A man named Weber was knifed in the back at the Indian Head a while back. In my room. Somebody I didn’t see knocked me out with a brick, and while I was out this Weber was knifed. He and I had been talking together. Weber worked at the hotel. As cashier.»
«You said this happened in your room?»
«Yeah.»
«Seems like,» Barron said thoughtfully, «you could turn out to be a bad influence in this town.»
«You don’t like that one, either?»
He shook his head. «Nope. Don’t like this one, neither. Unless, of course, you got a body to go with it.»
«I don’t have it with me,» I said, «but I can run over and get it for you.»
He reached and took hold of my arm with some of the hardest fingers I ever felt. «I’d hate for you to be in your right mind, son,» he said. «But I’ll kind of go over with you. It’s a nice night.»
«Sure,» I said, not moving. «The man I came up here to work for is called Fred Lacey. He just bought a cabin out on Ball Sage Point. The Baldwin cabin. The man I found dead on Speaker Point was named Frederick Lacey, according to the driver’s licence in his pocket. There’s a lot more to it, but you wouldn’t want to be bothered with the details, would you?»
«You and me,» the sheriff said, «will now run over to the hotel. You got a car?»
I said I had.
«That’s fine,» the sheriff said. «We won’t use it, but give me the keys.»
SEVEN
The man with the heavy, furled eyebrows and the screwed-in cigar leaned against the closed door of the room and didn’t say anything or look as if he wanted to say anything. Sheriff Barron sat straddling a straight chair and watching the doctor, whose name was Menzies, examine the body. I stood in the corner where I belonged. The doctor was an angular, bug-eyed man with a yellow face relieved by bright red patches on his cheeks. His fingers were brown with nicotine stains, and he didn’t look very clean.
He puffed cigarette smoke into the dead man’s hair and rolled him around on the bed and felt him here and there. He looked as if he was trying to act as if he knew what he was doing. The knife had been pulled out of Weber’s back. It lay on the bed beside him. It was a short, wide-bladed knife of the kind that is worn in a leather scabbard attached to the belt. It had a heavy guard which would seal the wound as the blow was struck and keep blood from getting back on the handle. There was plenty of blood on the blade.
«Sears Sawbuck Hunter’s Special No. 2438,’ the sheriff said, looking at it. «There’s a thousand of them around the lake. They ain’t bad and they ain’t good. What do you say, Doc?»
The doctor straightened up and took a handkerchief out. He coughed hackingly into the handkerchief, looked at it, shook his head sadly and lit another cigarette.
«About what?» he asked.
«Cause and time of death.»
«Dead very recently,» the doctor said. «Not more than two hours. There’s no beginning of rigor yet.»
«Would you say the knife killed him?»
«Don’t be a damn fool, Jim Barron.»
«There’s been cases,» the sheriff said, «where a man would be poisoned or something and they would stick a knife into him to make it look different.»
«That would be very clever,» the doctor said nastily. «You had many like that up here?»
«Only murder I had up here,» the sheriff said peacefully, «was old Dad Meacham over to the other side. Had a shack in Sheedy Canyon. Folks didn’t see him around for a while, but it was kinda cold weather and they figured he was in there with his oil stove resting up. Then when he didn’t show up they knocked and found the cabin was locked up, so they figured he had gone down for the winter. Then come a heavy snow and the roof caved in. We was over there a-trying to prop her up so he wouldn’t lose all his stuff, and, by gum, there was Dad in bed with an axe in the back of his head. Had a little gold he’d panned in summer — I guess that was what he was killed for. We never did find out who done it.»
«You want to send him down in my ambulance?» the doctor asked, pointing at the bed with his cigarette.
The sheriff shook his head. «Nope. This is a poor county, Doc. I figure he could ride cheaper than that.»
The doctor put his hat on and went to the door. The man with the eyebrows moved out of the way. The doctor opened the door. «Let me know if you want me to pay for the funeral,» he said, and went out.
«That ain’t no way to talk,» the sheriff said.
The man with the eyebrows said: «Let’s get this over with and get him out of here so I can go back to work. I got a movie outfit coming up Monday and I’ll be busy. I got to find me a new cashier, too, and that ain’t so easy.»
«Where you find Weber?» the sheriff asked. «Did he have any enemies?»
«I’d say he had at least one,» the man with the eyebrows said, «I got him through Frank Luders over at the Woodland Club. All I know about him is he knew his job and he was able to make a ten-thousand-dollar bond without no trouble. That’s all I needed to know.»