Kavalov tapped his plate with a fork and made angry faces at the servants.
“Shut up,” he said. “Where is the roast?” He pointed the fork at Mrs. Ringgo. “Her glass is empty.” He looked at the fork. “See what care they take of my silver,” he complained, holding it out to me. “It has not been cleaned decently in a month.”
He put the fork down. He pushed back his plate to make room for his forearms on the table. He leaned over them, hunching his shoulders. He sighed. He frowned. He stared at me with pleading pale eyes.
“Listen,” he whined. “Am I a fool? Would I send to San Francisco for a detective if I did not need a detective? Would I pay you what you are charging me, when I could get plenty good enough detectives for half of that, if I did not require the best detective I could secure? Would I require so expensive a one if I did not know this captain for a completely dangerous fellow?”
I didn’t say anything. I sat still and looked attentive.
“Listen,” he whined. “This is not April-foolery. This captain means to murder me. He came here to murder me. He will certainly murder me if somebody does not stop him from it.”
“Just what has he done so far?” I asked.
“That is not it.” Kavalov shook his bald head impatiently. “I do not ask you to undo anything that he has done. I ask you to keep him from killing me. What has he done so far? Well, he has terrorized my people most completely. He has broken Dolph’s arm. He has done these things so far, if you must know.”
“How long has this been going on? How long has he been here?”
“A week and two days.”
“Did your chauffeur tell you about the black man we saw in the road?”
Kavalov pushed his lips together and nodded slowly.
“He wasn’t there when I went back,” I said.
He blew out his lips with a little puff and cried excitedly:
“I do not care anything about your black men and your roads. I care about not being murdered.”
“Have you said anything to the sheriff’s office?” I asked, trying to pretend I wasn’t getting peevish.
“That I have done. But to what good? Has he threatened me? Well, he has told me he has come to watch me die. From him, the way he said it, that is a threat. But to your sheriff it is not a threat. He has terrorized my people. Have I proof that he has done that? The sheriff says I have not. What absurdity! Do I need proof? Don’t I know? Must he leave fingerprints on the fright he causes? So it comes to this: the sheriff will keep an eye on him. ‘An eye,’ he said, mind you. Here I have twenty people, servants and farm hands, with forty eyes. And he comes and goes as he likes. An eye!”
“How about Ringgo’s arm?” I asked.
Kavalov shook his head impatiently and began to cut up his lamb.
Ringgo said:
“There’s nothing we can do about that. I hit him first.” He looked at his bruised knuckles. “I didn’t think he was that tough. Maybe I’m not as good as I used to be. Anyway, a dozen people saw me punch his jaw before he touched me. We performed at high noon in front of the post office.”
“Who is this captain?”
“It’s not him,” the sallow servant said. “It’s that black devil.”
Ringgo said:
“Sherry’s his name, Hugh Sherry. He was a captain in the British army when we knew him before — quartermasters department in Cairo. That was in 1917, all of twelve years ago. The commodore” — he nodded his head at his father-in-law — “was speculating in military supplies. Sherry should have been a line officer. He had no head for desk work. He wasn’t timid enough. Somebody decided the commodore wouldn’t have made so much money if Sherry hadn’t been so careless. They knew Sherry hadn’t made any money for himself. They cashiered Sherry at the same time they asked the commodore please to go away.”
Kavalov looked up from his plate to explain:
“Business is like that in wartime. They wouldn’t let me go away if I had done anything they could keep me there for.”
“And now, twelve years after you had him kicked out of the army in disgrace,” I said, “he comes here, threatens to kill you, so you believe, and sets out to spread panic among your people. Is that it?”
“That is not it,” Kavalov whined. “That is not it at all. I did not have him kicked out of any armies. I am a man of business. I take my profits where I find them. If somebody lets me take a profit that angers his employers, what is their anger to me? Second, I do not believe he means to kill me. I know that.”
“I’m trying to get it straight in my mind.”
“There is nothing to get straight. A man is going to murder me. I ask you not to let him do it. Is not that simple enough?”
“Simple enough,” I agreed, and stopped trying to talk to him.
Kavalov and Ringgo were smoking cigars, Mrs. Ringgo and I cigarettes over crème de menthe when the red-faced blonde woman in gray wool came in.
She came in hurriedly. Her eyes were wide open and dark. She said:
“Anthony says there’s a fire in the upper field.”
Kavalov crunched his cigar between his teeth and looked pointedly at me.
I stood up, asking:
“How do I get there?”
“I’ll show you the way,” Ringgo said, leaving his chair.
“Dolph,” his wife protested, “your arm.”
He smiled gently at her and said:
“I’m not going to interfere. I’m only going along to see how an expert handles these things.”
IV
I ran up to my room for hat, coat, flashlight and gun.
The Ringgos were standing at the front door when I started downstairs again.
He had put on a dark raincoat, buttoned tight over his injured arm, its left sleeve hanging empty. His right arm was around his wife. Both of her bare arms were around his neck. She was bent far back, he far forward over her. Their mouths were together.
Retreating a little, I made more noise with my feet when I came into sight again. They were standing apart at the door, waiting for me. Ringgo was breathing heavily, as if he had been running. He opened the door.
Mrs. Ringgo addressed me:
“Please don’t let my foolish husband be too reckless.”
I said I wouldn’t, and asked him:
“Worth while taking any of the servants or farm hands along?”
He shook his head.
“Those that aren’t hiding would be as useless as those that are,” he said. “They’ve all had it taken out of them.”
He and I went out, leaving Mrs. Ringgo looking after us from the doorway. The rain had stopped for the time, but a black muddle overhead promised more presently.
Ringgo led me around the side of the house, along a narrow path that went downhill through shrubbery, past a group of small buildings in a shallow valley, and diagonally up another, lower, hill.
The path was soggy. At the top of the hill we left the path, going through a wire gate and across a stubbly field that was both gummy and slimy under our feet. We moved along swiftly. The gumminess of the ground, the sultriness of the night air, and our coats, made the going warm work.
When we had crossed this field we could see the fire, a spot of flickering orange beyond intervening trees. We climbed a low wire fence and wound through the trees.
A violent rustling broke out among the leaves overhead, starting at the left, ending with a solid thud against a tree trunk just to our right. Then something plopped on the soft ground under the tree.
Off to the left a voice laughed, a savage, hooting laugh.
The laughing voice couldn’t have been far away. I went after it.
The fire was too small and too far away to be of much use to me: blackness was nearly perfect among the trees.