Jerry Burke was sitting erect when I paused after telling how Leslie Young rode away from the Martin cabin hell-for-leather after seeing the millionaire spying on his wife.
“You shouldn’t have let him go like that,” he said gravely. “You could have phoned me...”
I squirmed under his boring gaze, and poured myself another drink. “I know I should have done something,” I admitted unhappily. “But I’ll be damned if I know yet what it would have been. You know Young. You know how much good it would have done to argue with him.”
Burke nodded, rubbing his square chin. “It’s difficult to reason with Young,” he admitted. “I’m not blaming you, Asa. Go on.”
I related how I had packed my things to leave the cabin, and then suddenly decided to take a walk up the canyon. He listened without a flicker of expression on his face until I described the man I met just before coming on Young’s dead body.
“Good God!” he exclaimed. “That sounds like...”
“It was,” I interrupted him. “Rufus Hardiman. The Washington diplomat who is visiting Dwight.”
“That’s bad.” Jerry was staring past me, shaking his head. “Leslie hated Dwight’s guts and suspected that Hardiman was conniving with him to force some sort of a settlement from Mexico in connection with Dwight’s oil claims. Leslie was a fanatical champion of Mexico’s expropriation program. He wouldn’t have stopped at anything to break up a deal of that sort.”
“How about the letter Young had in his pocket?” I asked excitedly. “How do you suppose that hooks up?”
Jerry shook his head doubtfully and brought the folded sheet of paper from his pocket. Spreading it out on the table, he read it aloud while I stared at the fateful symbol that had reappeared on Leslie Young’s cheek in death.
“It doesn’t make much sense,” he commented as he finished reading the note, “but we mustn’t forget the telephoned warning for Leslie to stay away from the hacienda tonight.”
“That name!” I interjected, repeating the mouthful of syllables, “‘Michaela O’Toole.’ What sort of a phony would you call that?”
“I’m not at all positive it’s a phony,” Jerry said soberly. “The Mexicans have a way of adding an a to a masculine name to make it feminine.”
“A feminine Michael O’Toole? She sounds interesting.”
Jerry nodded, taking his cold pipe from his mouth and jabbing the stem of it at the double-barred symbol on the letter:
“I’ve seen that two-barred cross before. Leslie Young had one about two inches high, hammered out of pure silver by a native artisan. He showed it to me one night in a box full of souvenirs he had brought back from Mexico. And that same evening, Asa,” Burke went on impressively, “he spun me a yarn about a certain Mike O’Toole he’d known in Tejuantepec years ago.”
“In connection with the cross?”
“I’m not certain. I have a vague hunch that seeing the cross reminded him of O’Toole in some way... though he didn’t say so. O’Toole was a renegade Irish sergeant, a deserter from the Fifth Cavalry while on patrol duty down in the Big Bend. He’d gone native, as I recall Leslie’s story, though I don’t remember any mention of a daughter.”
“But that sort of explains the wording of the note,” I pointed out. “Michaela O’Toole says Young doesn’t know her, but that she knows much about him. An old friend of her father’s would fill the bill.”
Jerry Burke frowned and knocked out his pipe, refilled it thoughtfully. “We’ve got too damned many leads,” he grunted. “With some sex stuff on the side. I wish I knew more about the Laura Yates Mrs. Young mentioned.”
“And Mrs. Young said it was a woman’s voice over the telephone this noon warning her husband to stay away from Mexico.”
Jerry glanced at his empty glass and I refilled it. He read the note again and muttered: “It says that no one at the hacienda knows Leslie Young...”
As his voice trailed off, I took up the thought: “It would be a fair guess to presume that the person who warned him to stay away will be there. If she carried out her threat... it would be disconcerting for Leslie Young to appear in the flesh.”
He nodded stolidly. “A clever man might learn something of importance at the Hacienda del Torro tonight by keeping his eyes open and his mouth shut. A man who might conceivably pass for Leslie Young.”
I said: “That’s one of the things I do best, Jerry.”
He nodded. “I wondered if you’d volunteer. I’d try it myself but I’m too well-known along the Border... and I haven’t quite the right physique. Still, I shouldn’t ask you...”
“You can’t give me the run-around,” I argued. “I’m already in this thing up to my neck. I’ll take that note for identification and pass myself off for Leslie Young until I meet someone who knows Leslie Young hasn’t any business being up and about tonight. Then we’ll have our murderer, Jerry.”
“It sounds simple but it’s likely to be dangerous.”
I didn’t try to laugh that off. I’m not the type to plunge into danger for the fun of it. But the idea of going across the border and posing as a dead man intrigued me. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. I told Burke so.
He nodded glumly and got up. “I’ll be somewhere around to keep an eye on you, but don’t bank on me too much. Mexico is foreign territory and I don’t pull a lot of weight over there. God knows what you’ll run into at the hacienda.”
“But I can’t,” I told him as lightly as I could manage it, “pass up a chance to meet a damsel named Michaela O’Toole.”
“I suppose not,” he grunted, “but you’ve got to remember you’re a family man,” with a glance toward the Scotties lying quietly in their corner.
“I’ve got you down in my will to inherit Nip and Tuck,” I told him. “So that’s all right.”
They came trotting forward when I spoke their names. Burke and I went to the door together and down the walk to his car, with the Scotties staying sedately at heel. Somehow, they seem to know when grave matters are afoot.
At his car, Jerry shook hands with me soberly. “Watch your step tonight, Asa. Pretend not to recognize me if you see me across the line. I don’t know how close I can get to the hacienda nor what I can do if you hit a snag, but I’ll be somewhere close.”
I told him that would be swell, and watched him drive away. Then I whistled to the pups and took them across to the park for a run.
5
A murky bank of low hanging clouds was moving in over Mt. Franklin when I got back to the house. There was a flurry of cooling rain, then one of those drenching downpours that come in from the desert and sweep on down the valley.
The heavy clouds and a drizzle stayed on after the rain passed over the city. I killed time by opening a can of corned beef hash, heating it in the oven with strips of bacon across the top, poaching an egg to complete a one-man meal.
By seven o’clock I’d killed all the time I could. I was nervous and edgy. I wanted to get on with the evening’s work. I wanted, by God, to meet Michaela O’Toole.
The name held a peculiar fascination for me. With a slug of brandy in a cup of black coffee, I spread the sheet of orange notepaper out and read it two or three times, spending a lot of time studying that inked cross with its two bars. What the hell did it mean? What did the message mean? What was the connection between it and death in the afternoon?
It was seven thirty when I drained my coffee cup and refolded the note. I wondered what the correct attire would be for an evening appointment with a femme named Michaela O’Toole at a Mexican hacienda. It didn’t sound like an occasion for tails... which was lucky, for I didn’t have any.