The Saint lighted a cigarette.
“This murder is starting to sound like a rather family affair,” he remarked. “You said there were three scientists. What about the third?”
“His name is Dr Conrad Soren.”
“And they don’t have any assistants?”
“No. Whatever they’re experimenting with, I guess it’s something they can handle between themselves.”
“But there are other guards, besides Ingram.”
“Yup. Three of ’em. But only one of ’em is on duty at a time. They each have eight hours on and twenty-four hours off, in turn, so none of ’em gets stuck with the night shift all the time.”
“And when was the murder committed?”
“That’s one thing we got to find out,” the marshal said.
The road, whatever its ultimate destination, still stretched ahead in a straight line to the bare horizon, but Tanner slowed up suddenly and made an abrupt turn onto a narrower and even more rutted trail that was marked only by a stake with a small weathered shingle nailed to it on which could barely be read the crude and faded letters that spelled out “Hopewell Ranch.”
In less than a quarter of a mile the ranch came in sight, as they rattled around one of those low deceptive contours which can hide whole townships in an apparently empty plain. The Hopewell Ranch was in no such category of size, in fact it consisted of only two buildings: the long rambling ranch house with an attached garage, and a barn-like structure not far from it. A few palms and cottonwoods and eucalyptus trees lent some of the atmosphere of an oasis to the shallow pocket where the buildings stood, in contrast to the drab sage and greasewood and sahuaro that eked some desiccated sustenance from the arid wilderness around, but it still had a rather pathetically abandoned and defeated air that was in even sharper contrast with its name.
“Fellow from back East built it and tried to raise a few horses, but mostly it was because he had TB and the climate was supposed to be good for him,” Tanner said. “Maybe he came here too late, but he didn’t last long. Nobody else wanted the place until somebody from the Government came around shopping for a location for these scientists. Seems this was just what they wanted, perhaps because, except the way we come from, there’s nothing but desert and jack-rabbits around for fifty miles or more.”
The only visibly new feature of the establishment was a conspicuously shiny wire-mesh fence about nine feet high, which contained the ranch house in the approximate center of what looked to be a square of about two hundred yards on each side, with the barn quite close to one corner where there was a steel-framed gate to which the washboard track they were following led.
Tanner braked the truck with its fenders only inches from the gate, and Simon’s ears became aware of a thin squealing sound which he could not associate with any of the diverse mechanical protests emanating from the innards of the aging pickup. Almost immediately a man in a nondescript gray uniform came out of the barn, waved to the marshal in recognition, and came to open the gate. Another man, similarly uniformed, stood in the doorway that the first man had emerged from and watched.
“You hear that noise?” Tanner asked, and the Saint nodded.
“Yes.”
“That’s the fence. Anything or anyone comes near it, they don’t even have to touch it, but it sets up that whining. Acts like a sort of condenser. Nobody could get close enough to climb over or cut the wire without starting it oscillating. It can’t even be switched off when they want to open the gate. And it sounds loudest right inside those old stables. That’s where the guards live — the Government made it over into living quarters for ’em. And not more than two of ’em are allowed to be off the station at the same time: that way, there’s always an extra man on call besides the one who’s on duty. So even if the man on duty wanted to sneak the gate open, for any reason, he couldn’t do it without the other fellow hearing it.”
“Unless the electricity were cut off altogether,” Simon suggested.
“In that case an emergency system cuts in and also starts up a siren on top of the main building, so the whole place would be alerted.”
Tanner let in the clutch and drove through the gate and stopped again a few yards inside.
“In other words,” said the Saint, “this is the old reliable inside-job type of mystery, with the latest electronic guarantees.”
Tanner grunted.
“I guess you can call it that, if you want to.”
He shut off the engine and climbed out, and Simon stepped out the other door and strolled around to join him. The guard finished closing the gate and started towards them. As soon as he had taken two steps from it, the high-pitched wailing note that had been quivering remorselessly in the air stopped suddenly.
“Hi, Chief,” the guard said.
“This is Frank Loretto,” Tanner said. “He’s the senior guard.” With only the necessary turn of his head he went on: “You were the stand-by man on Ingram’s watch when it happened — that right, Frank?”
“Right, Chief.”
Loretto was square-built and square-faced, with wiry black hair liberally necked with white, a hard-looking man with a soft agreeable voice. He studied the Saint curiously with discreet dark eyes, but Tanner either preferred to ignore the invitation to complete the introduction or was unaware of it.
“Tell me again how it happened, Frank.”
“Jock relieved me at seven o’clock. Klein had been on stand-by during my watch; as soon as that let him out, he took off for Tucson to see a dentist — he had a toothache all yesterday. Burney had been sleeping; he got up and had breakfast with me.”
“That’s Burney,” Tanner explained to the Saint, with a jerk of his thumb towards the other guard who still stood in the doorway of the converted stables.
“The Professors got here just after eight, as usual, all together — Dr Soren and Oakridge, in Rand’s car.”
“They all three board at the hotel in town — I mean, they did,” Tanner amplified. “They only come out here to work.”
“Jock let ’em in, and then he set off to make his round,” Loretto went on. “That is, all the checks every man is supposed to make when he comes on duty. Burney and I sat around and made some more coffee. About nine o’clock Marj got here in her car, and I let her in.”
“Marjorie starts an hour after the scientists,” Tanner told the Saint, “because she usually has to work at least an hour after they quit.” He shifted his ponderous direction once again. “Okay, Frank, what then?”
“You’d better get it from Jock, Chief,” Loretto said gently. “He called me on the intercom at nine-fifty-two and told me he’d found Oakridge dead and he was staying to see nothing got moved. Then I phoned you. Being his stand-by, I had to stay here on the gate. Besides, I’m a cop too... But Burney went and had a look.”
Tanner glanced again at the man in the stable doorway — he was tall and thin, with a sallow complexion and a long pessimistic face — and hitched up his pants stolidly.
“We’ll look for ourselves,” he said. “See you later, Frank.” He turned and lumbered on towards the house, and Simon followed him.
Something was beginning to nag the Saint’s sensitive perceptions like a tiny splinter, and he had to get it out.
“Does everybody around here have some sort of complex about being a cop?” he asked. “I can’t remember when I’ve heard quite so much self-conscious talk about it.”
“Right here and now, there’s a reason.” Tanner looked at the Saint with another of his probing dead-pan stares. “Most cops would say I was crazy to bring you here. I’ve heard a lot of people say that you hate cops.”