He was dressed in loose white trousers and a white tunic embroidered in black. There was a black sash around his waist and a black fillet around his forehead. His black eyes were sleepy. He shuffled over to the stool beside the drapes and sat down and folded his arms and leaned his head on his chest. He looked bulkier than ever, as if these clothes were over his other clothes.
Soukesian held his hands above the milky globe that was between us on the white table. The light on the remote black ceiling was broken and began to weave into odd shapes and patterns, very faint because the ceiling was black. The Indian kept his head low and his chin on his chest but his eyes turned up slowly and stared at the weaving hands.
The hands moved in a swift, graceful, intricate pattern that meant anything or nothing, that was like Junior Leaguers doing Greek dances, or coils of Christmas ribbon tossed on the floor — whatever you liked.
The Indian’s solid jaw rested on his solid chest and slowly, like a toad’s eyes, his eyes shut.
«I could have hypnotized him without all that,» Soukesian said softly. «It’s merely part of the show.»
«Yeah.» I watched his lean, firm throat.
«Now, something Lindley Paul touched,» he said. «This card will do.»
He stood up noiselessly and went across to the Indian and pushed the card inside the fillet against the Indian’s forehead, left it there. He sat down again.
He began to mutter softly in a guttural language I didn’t know. I watched his throat.
The Indian began to speak. He spoke very slowly and heavily, between motionless lips, as though the words were heavy stones he had to drag up hill in a blazing hot sun.
«Lindley Paul bad man. Make love to squaw of chief. Chief very angry. Chief have necklace stolen, Lindley Paul have to get urn back. Bad man kill. GmT.»
The Indian’s head jerked as Soukesian clapped his hands. The little lidless black eyes snapped open again. Soukesian looked at me with no expression at all on his handsome face.
«Neat,» I said. «And not a darn bit gaudy.» I jerked a thumb at the Indian. «He’s a bit heavy to sit on your knee, isn’t he? I haven’t seen a good ventriloquist act since the chorus girls quit wearing tights.»
Soukesian smiled very faintly.
«I watched your throat muscles,» I said. «No matter. I guess I get the idea. Paul had been cutting corners with somebody’s wife. The somebody was jealous enough to have him put away. It has points, as a theory. Because this jade necklace she was wearing wouldn’t be worn often and somebody had to know she was wearing it that particular night when the stick-up was pulled off. A husband would know that.»
«It is quite possible,» Soukesian said. «And since you were not killed perhaps it was not the intent to kill Lindley Paul. Merely to beat him up.»
«Yeah,» I said. «And here’s another idea. I ought to have had it before. If Lindley Paul really did fear somebody and wanted to leave a message, then there might still be something written on those cards — in invisible ink.»
That got to him. His smile hung on but it had a little more wrinkle at the corners than at first. The time was short for me to judge that.
The light inside the milky globe suddenly went out. Instantly the room was pitch dark. You couldn’t see your own hand. I kicked my stool back and jerked my gun free and started to back away.
A rush of air brought a strong earthy smell with it. It was uncanny. Without the slightest error of timing or space, even in that complete blackness, the Indian hit me from behind and pinned my arms. He started to lift me. I could have jerked a hand up and fanned the room in front of me with blind shots. I didn’t try. There wasn’t any point in it.
The Indian lifted me with his two hands holding my arms against my sides as though a steam crane was lifting me. He set me down again, hard, and he had my wrists. He had them behind me, twisting them. A knee like the corner of a foundation stone went into my back. I tried to yell. Breath panted in my throat and couldn’t get out.
The Indian threw me sideways, wrapped my legs with his legs as we fell, and had me in a barrel. I hit the floor hard, with part of his weight on me.
I still had the gun. The Indian didn’t know I had it. At least he didn’t act as if he knew. It was jammed down between us. I started to turn it.
The light flicked on again.
Soukesian was standing beyond the white table, leaning on it. He looked older. There was something on his face I didn’t like. He looked like a man who had something to do he didn’t relish, but was going to do it all the same.
«So,» he said softly. «Invisible writing.»
Then the curtains swished apart and the thin dark woman rushed into the room with a reeking white cloth in her hands and slapped it around my face, leaning down to glare at me with hot black eyes.
The Indian grunted a little behind me, straining at my arms.
I had to breathe the chloroform. There was too much weight dragging my throat tight. The thick, sweetish reek of it ate into me.
I went away from there.
Just before I went somebody fired a gun twice. The sound didn’t seem to have anything to do with me.
I was lying out in the open again, just like the night before. This time it was daylight and the sun was burning a hole in my right leg. I could see the hot blue sky, the lines of a ridge, scrub oak, yuccas in bloom spouting from the side of a hill, more hot blue sky.
I sat up. Then my left leg began to tingle with tiny needle points. I rubbed it. I rubbed the pit of my stomach. The chloroform stank in my nose. I was as hollow and rank as an old oil drum.
I got up on my feet, but didn’t stay there. The vomiting was worse than last night. More shakes to it, more chills, and my stomach hurt worse. I got back up on my feet.
The breeze off the ocean lifted up the slope and put a little frail life into me. I staggered around dopily and looked at some tire marks on red clay, then at a big galvanized-iron cross, once white but with the paint flaked off badly. It was studded with empty sockets for light bulbs, and its base was of cracked concrete with an open door, inside which a verdigris-coated copper switch showed.
Beyond this concrete base I saw the feet.
They stuck out casually from under a bush. They were in hard-toed shoes, the kind college boys used to wear about the year before the war. I hadn’t seen shoes like that for years, except once.
I went over there and parted the bushes and looked down at the Indian.
His broad, blunt hands lay at his sides, large and empty and limp. There were bits of clay and dead leaf and wild oysterplant seeds in his greasy black hair. A tracery of sunlight skimmed along his brown cheek. On his stomach the flies had found a sodden patch of blood. His eyes were like other eyes I had seen — too many of them — half open, clear, but the play behind them was over.
He had his comic street clothes on again and his greasy hat lay near him, with the sweatband still wrong side out. He wasn’t funny any more, or tough, or nasty. He was just a poor simple dead guy who had never known what it was all about.
I had killed him, of course. Those were my shots I had heard, from my gun.
I didn’t find the gun. I went through my clothes. The other two Soukesian cards were missing. Nothing else. I followed the tire tracks to a deeply rutted road and followed that down the hill. Cars glittered by far below as the sunlight caught their windshields or the curve of a headlight. There was a service station and a few houses down there too. Farther off still the blue of water, piers, the long curve of the shore line towards Point Firmin. It was a little hazy. I couldn’t see Catalina Island.
The people I was dealing with seemed to like operating in that part of the country.
It took me half an hour to reach the service station. I phoned for a taxi and it had to come from Santa Monica. I drove all the way home to my place in the Berglund, three blocks above the office, changed clothes, put my last gun in the holster and sat down to the phone.