Complete works of peter.., p.87
Complete Works of Peter Cheyney. Illustrated, page 87
I sit there thinkin' to myself that the sooner I get outa this jail the better for all concerned. I am in this country an' I got to look after myself because I reckon that a Federal identification card is about as much good to me here as a raspberry sundae to an Esquimo with frost-bite.
So what. I lay down on the floor an' stretch out. This can is as hot as hell in summer but I reckon that all things come to him who waits all the things that the other guy don't want!
The sunshine is comin' through the gratin'.
While I am rubbin' the sleep outa my eyes I can see Pedro talkin' to the guard through the slot in the door. He is gesticulatin' an' wavin' his arms about an' talkin' plenty fast.
After a bit he comes over to me. He is grinnin'.
"It is all fixed up, SeГ±or Hellup," he says. "Everything is going to be very well. At five o'clock this afternoon the guard will come here, open the door of the cell and enter. He will talk to me. You will slip out. Turn sharply to your right, keep along the passage until you come to the end and turn to your left. This will bring you directly to the side door of the jail. Outside run quickly around to the back of the jail and take the small path which leads back past the estancia where we met. Beyond there is the mesa and a dozen places for you to hide until nightfall, because you must realise that it will be necessary to make some show of searching for you. After which you must do what I have already told you."
"Swell, Pedro," I tell him. "You're doin' fine."
He goes back to his bench an' starts strummin' on the guitar. I reckon I am beginnin' to like this Pedro guy. He has gotta sense of humour.
Presently the guard comes back an' brings some lousy stuff that he calls coffee. We drink this, after which I tell Pedro to wake me up in time for the big act.
Then I lay down on the floor an' go off again, because I have found that if you have not got anything else to do sleep is a very good thing an' costs practically nothin'.
When I wake up I don't open my eyes or move. I just lie there wonderin' just what is goin' to happen to Lemmy Caution when the fun starts.
After a bit Pedro comes over to me.
"Wake up, SeГ±or," he says. "In a minute the guard will be here. Prepare yourself an' do just what we have arranged. All will be well!"
"O.K.," I tell him.
I get up an' sit on the bench. In a minute I hear the guard comin' along the passageway outside. Then I hear him unlockin' the cell door.
"Now, SeГ±or!" Pedro hisses at me. "Now is the time. You must make it look like an escape!"
The door swings open an' the guard comes. He starts walkin' towards Pedro an' the way to the cell door is clear.
I don't take it. I take a jump at the guard an' swing a right hook at his jaw that woulda busted a torpedo boat in half. As he goes over I grab his gun outa the holster on his belt.
Pedro is lookin' at me with his eyes poppin'.
"SeГ±or," he starts in, "SeГ±or..."
"Cut it out, punk," I tell him. "Do you think I ain't been wise to your bedtime fairy stories about how I was goin' to get outa here? You was goin' to play the same game with me as you played with Lariat, but it ain't workin'!"
I take a jump at Pedro an' I smash him a mean one over the top of the head with the gun butt. He goes down like he was poleaxed. I grab the key off the guard, get outa the cell, slam the door an' stick the key in my pocket.
I am standin' outside in the passage. Pedro told me to run right an' take the turn to the left. Well, I am just not doin' this because I reckon they will be waitin' for me an' they won't be sayin' it with flowers either.
So I turn left, gumshoe down the passage. At the end is a sorta guard room. Over on the other side over a sleepin' bunk is a frame window. I ease over onto the bunk, bust open the window and drop out.
I am in some little patio to the side of the jail. There is a doorway in the adobe wall over on the right. I go through this with the gun ready just in case somebody wants to start somethin'.
Away in the front of the jail I can hear plenty yellin'.
Out through the doorway is a pathway leadin' to a road through the scrub. I take this an' start runnin'. A hundred yards down the road I turn an' look back. There is a guy outside the patio wall drawin' a bead on me with a rifle. I take a flop the second before he pulls the trigger, an' as he fires wriggle around on the ground an' take a quick one at him. He decides to get inside the patio again.
I get up an 'start runnin' some more. An' it's durn funny how fast you can go when you wanta.
After a bit I ease over to the left an' take a path through the scrub. In ten minutes I am in the foothills east of Tampapa with the estancia layin' away behind me on the right.
Maybe I know a bit more about this country than Pedro was wise to.
I go on for a while an' then flop down by a cactus an' listen.
I can't hear a thing.
I sit there an' get my breath. I reckon it has come off. I reckon the bozos who was waitin' for me was out on the other side of the jail.
An' they will go for the place where I told Pedro I had parked the car on the east side of the town, an' they won't find it because it's in a gully due north an' it's still goin'.
I sit there for a bit an' then I get up an' start lopin' off, workin' round to the north. I have not got any really good idea about what I am goin' to do but there is one thing that I am durn certain about an' that is that whatever I am goin' to do I ain't doin' it till night comes along. Me, I like the dark especially when there is a good chance of some guy takin' a pot at you just to see if you are one of them guys who wriggles when a bullet hits him.
After a bit I get up an' work around to the gully where I left the car. I open up the bonnet an' look under the false bottom in the tool box. I have got the Luger there an' a quart bottle of rye.
I take a drink an' then ease off about a hundred yards away where there is a clump of cactus. I lie down with the Luger between my knees just in case some guy should happen around.
I think I will get myself a piece of sleep, because maybe I'm goin' to need it.
III. SWEET MOMMA
IT is eleven o'clock when I wake up.
There is a sweet moon an' when I look around I see the cactus bushes an' joshua trees throwing funny shadows around the place. I reckon the Mexican desert is an odd sorta place at night creepy as well. I give myself a cigarette an' start doin' a little thinkin' about Pepper.
I reckon it would be a nice thing for all concerned if anybody hadda known what Pepper was playin' at. You gotta realise that this Pepper is a great guy. He is a swell agent with a heart like two lions. As well he is a good looker an' dames go for him plenty. This boy is too smart to disappear off the face of the map without some good reason unless somebody has creased him.
All the information I have got is that Pepper was operatin' in the Arizona district. He telephones through to the Agent-in-Charge down there an' says he has gotta beat on some tough stuff that is happenin' over the border somethin' hot. He says it is a helluva business an' that he would like two three weeks over there, after which he reckons he is goin' to have plenty to report. He says he ain't got time to say any more right then because things are poppin', which is a fact that tells me that whatever it was got Pepper along to the shack in the Sierra Mojada, where he ran across Dominguez, started on our side of the Line. But they got telegraphs and telephones even in Mexico an' when the Agent-in-Charge in Arizona don't hear anything from the boy he starts gettin' worried an' they send me over.
O.K. It is stickin' out a foot that if Pepper was playin' his hand as quietly as all that, there was some dam' good reason for it. That is why I have been callin' myself Mr. Hellup an' am supposed to be lookin' for a ranch for some Americanos.
I heard about this guy Dominguez. I been hangin' around the San Luis Potosi district an' workin' from there right away up to Juan del Rio across to Tamaulipas then down to Hidalgo, tryin' to get a lead on Pepper. The sweet baby I was tellin' you about, the one I met in Matehuala told me she had seen an Americano answerin' to the boy's description with this Dominguez an' a dame called Fernanda Martinas. This honeypot tells me that Dominguez is a small time bandit who will do anything for dough an' that the Fernanda jane is a woman who is stuck on Pedro but who ain't so very well known around those parts.
The thing is just how much of this stuff that Dominguez has told me about this Jamieson guy and the rest of it is true, and how much is just plain hooey. It is a funny sorta story an' it ain't the kind of tale that Dominguez woulda had enough sense to have made up, so I reckon there is some truth in it. I start thinkin' about Dominguez.
Two things are stickin' out a foot. One is that Dominguez knew that I had come inta Mexico to find out about Pepper. Directly I started talkin' to that waiter about him an' the dame he got the news. The rest was a frame-up. Dominguez had promised some bum policeman, who was short of a few dollars, some dough to get me inta that jail. Then they were goin' to pull the old one on me. The old "shot while tryin' to escape" stuff. If they'd got away with this, the U.S. Government mightn't have liked it, but what would they have done? I'd been pinched for gettin' myself inta a tavern brawl an' under Mexican Federal law if a prisoner tries to escape you're entitled to shoot him.
All of which shows you that this guy Dominguez has got some brains, because that idea he tried to pull across me about gettin' me inta the jail just so's we could talk was a sweet one.
An' that is the reason why I think that this stuff he told me was the truth. Why should he worry about tellin' me a lie when he thinks that before I have got ten yards out that jail I'm goin' to be so fulla lead that I look like a cannon-ball factory?
An' where do we go from there? I lay back there, smokin' with my shirt collar undone, because, believe it or not, it is so goddam hot that the sweat is runnin' down my face. I reckon I can do one of two things. I can go back to the car, start her up an' turn her around. I can ease back to San Luis Potosi just as quick as I can make it, see the Chief of Police an' flash my identification card. After which there will be some sweet explainin' as to why a Federal Agent has to operate in one of the Mexican districts without the knowledge of the Mexican Government an' callin' himself Mr. Hellup. You'll agree with me that this ain't so hot.
An' what is the alternative? I'm tellin' you I don't know what it is, because it looks to me like if I go on with this job I stand a very sweet chance of gettin' myself very nicely creased out an' believe it or not I'm not a guy who likes to be dead.
I start wonderin' what's happened around at that jail after I got out. Supposin' it was true what Pedro said that there wasn't many people around that jail in the afternoon, well in that case maybe Pedro an' the guard are still locked in that cell. I reckon they could bawl their heads off but nobody wouldn't hear 'em, that is unless the guard outside the guy who took a pot at me with a rifle was in on the game with 'em. But then I got an idea that he wasn't, because it stands to reason that the guard inside the jail who was in on the job woulda had to split the dough with the feller outside if the outside guy hadda known.
No, I don't reckon they told this guy. I reckon he was just standin' in his usual place on duty at the jail door an' that they expected that when he saw me ease out there he would just have taken a shot at me an' got me. Supposin' that ain't true? That he knew all about it, that he went back inta the jail an' found Pedro an' his pal locked up in the cell? Well, I got the key in my pocket, ain't I? If the Commandante, who I reckon is the guy with the duplicate key, don't come back until next morning like Pedro sorta suggested, then maybe they're still stuck there, which would be a nice break.
Here is the point I'm gettin' at. Me, I have got to do the things that Pedro will think I am not goin' to do. You will realise that I have told this guy a bundle of lies. I have told him that my car was hidden in one place which it ain't. I have told him that the carburettor was bust. He will believe this. I reckon that Pedro thought that directly I got outa that jail I started leggin' it as hard as I could over the mesa towards San Luis Potosi, because he reckons I think I'd be safe around there.
Well, he will have a sort of idea that the thing to do is to stop me gettin' there. So if he got outa that jail I reckon he got himself a horse an' is poundin' away lookin' for Lemmy Caution somewhere on the mesa just so's he can give him a coupla visitin' cards out the business end of a hand gun.
Here is the plan. Pedro told me where Fernanda's place was a little white casa in the valley. He didn't mind tellin' me about that because he thought I'd never get there. I reckon that that is the last place that guy thinks I will go to. That being so I reckon that is the way I will play this thing, because if Fernanda ain't seen Pedro since I saw this guy last, maybe I can pull a fast one on her.
I get up an' shake myself. I wonder why the hell I always get this sorta job. One of these fine days I'm goin' to have one of those sweet cases around New York or some place where dames are dames an' like you to know same, an' where a man does not have to live on chili con carne all the time an' drink this tequila stuff that seems to make everything twice as bad as it was. What the hell?
I walk back to the car an' I bust the carburettor. If I ain't goin' to use this car nobody else is either.
From where I am sittin' behind a clump of cactus I can see the casa. It is a little one-story place away down on the left of the track that leads north. There is a corral fence round it, painted white, an' somebody has made a sorta ornamental pathway from the gate in the fence up to the door of the house. It looks pretty in the moonlight.
From where I am I can see that there is a light in the room that faces the road, a room with a sorta veranda outside. Well, whoever put this place up an' it is pretty well built, Spanish fashion musta wanted a job, because I reckon there ain't any other dump for two or three miles each side of it, an' then only single shacks. Maybe the guy who lived here wanted to do a Greta Garbo an' be alone.
Now I have got here I am not feelin' quite so good about this proposition. How do I know that Dominguez ain't sitting inside there with a drink in one hand an' a hand gun in the other, just sorta hopin' that I might show up.
But then again I don't reckon he will be. Like I said this guy is probably away on the San Luis Potosi road, thinkin' I am making for there, lookin' for me.
It is as hot as hell. I get up an' fan myself a bit with my hat, after which I take the Luger outa my hip pocket an' stick it inside my shirt, because I reckon if anybody is goin' to start any shootin' it's goin' to be me.
I ease away in the direction behind the house, keepin' in the shadow of sage brush an' cactus where I can. I work round to the back of the house, get over the fence an' crawl up. I listen but I can't hear anything. I stick around there a long time an' I reckon, as there is a light in the room on the other side of the casa that somebody is up. If they are they ain't talkin', so maybe Fernanda is on her own. O.K. Here we go.
I ease back the way I have come, walk along the road, go through the corral gate as large as life right up to the door of the house. The door is pretty good, heavy oak an' Spanish iron work, stuck in an adobe wall. I bang on it. After a coupla minutes I can hear somebody movin' inside. The door opens an' some Indian girl looks out.
"Look," I tell her, "is the SeГ±ora Fernanda in?"
She nods. Her eyes are poppin'.
"Is anybody else here?" I ask her.
She shakes her head.
"O.K.," I tell her. "You get inside an' tell the SeГ±ora that SeГ±or Hellup is here an' he'd like to talk to her."
She goes away an' she leaves the door on the chain. After a coupla minutes she comes back again an' opens the door. I step inside. I am in a nice square sorta hallway. There are Mexican blankets an' things hangin' around the walls an' the furniture is O.K. While I am standin' there Fernanda comes out of a door on the right. She is smilin'.
I told you guys before that this dame was a looker, but I didn't tell you the half of it. She has got on a black lace loungin' gown an' she is wearin' a mantilla. She looks one hundred per cent good. She smiles at me, a slow sorta smile.
"You are welcome, SeГ±or Hellup," she says. "I have been expecting you."
The smile goes off her face an' she stands there lookin' sorta sad. I do a quick think about this Fernanda. I told you before that I was wonderin' why a dame who has got what this dame has, should be playin' around with a guy like Dominguez. I am still wonderin' why. Maybe Dominguez has got something on her. All these dames have a story if you can get at it as the news hound said.
There comes through my mind the idea that I might even take a chance with this Fernanda. I put my hat down an' I go across to her. She turns an' walks inta the room. It's a long room runnin' the whole length of the casa. One side of it opens on to the veranda lookin' out across the mesa towards the road. The furniture is durned good. It's all good old Spanish stuff. There ain't one piece of Grand Rapids anywhere. The place has got class.
She pushes a big chair up towards the veranda, puts a little table by it an' signals me to sit down. Then she goes across to the sideboard an' starts fixin' some drinks. I can hear ice tinklin' an' I wonder how in blazes this dame manages to get ice around here. I am also very glad to see that she has gotta bottle of rye. I watch her while she is mixin' these drinks. She is one of those dames who is pretty to watch. She moves soft an' easy like a cat, an' with her white arms showin' through the lace gown she looks a million. I get to thinkin' that I reckon I oughta bring my mind back to the job in hand, an' when I think this I pull myself together an' wonder just what I am goin' to hand out to her.
She comes over with the drink an' puts it on the table beside me. She is still smilin'.
"I expected you before, SeГ±or Hellup," she says. "Pedro sent me a message that I might expect you earlier. Did something go wrong?"
I pick up the drink an' start suckin' it down just to give myself time to think. I reckon Pedro sent her some sorta message some time when he was talkin' to the guard before I broke out, an' I reckon that he ain't been near her since. Anyhow she is probably lyin'. All of a sudden it comes to me how I am goin' to play this. I am goin' to take a chance an' do the thing that nobody would expect me to do. Maybe I will hand this dame a slice of truth mixed up with enough lies just to make the mixture right.
