Money to Burn/Chapter 13

OR one sharp instant, as Dan wheeled upon him, the peon paused and the two men stood at gaze. The servant was a nimble-bodied black whose teeth flashed white in a surprised grin. Dan saw the hot light of the savage in that face; he read ferocity in the raggedly clad form that leaned forward ready to spring.

Without a flicker of his wide eyes, the guard reached down at last for a machete, thrust, in this instance, through the soiled sash about his middle. One blow of that frightful weapon, part knife, part cleaver, would serve any enemy.

Dan waited no attack from it. As if jumping for the ball in the decisive moment of a football game, he took a flying leap and flung himself with all his weight upon the Domingan. One fist smashed into the black face, then seized the neck; the other reached across and downward. It grasped the weapon that the peon was already struggling to draw. The Domingan's arms relaxed and came back mightily; he had the advantage of being braced against the inner wall and now, with unexpected power, he sought to push Dan away and so gain the chance to free the machete.

They wrestled in silence. Now they were locked in a panting embrace; again the peon wenched at his knife, and Stone strove to drag it away. Each fought with every muscle, used every ounce of strength.

A fear lest the peon should shout for help appalled Dan. Against that help, Stone would be defenseless. One thing was certain: it had not been this fellow who gave the call heard immediately before the attack. He was sure at last that that was meant for a warning to him. But he had no opportunity for conjecture with his life at stake.

Shifting his pressure ever so little, Dan shoved the upper part of the arm that grappled for the machete hard against the moving larynx of the peon. For a fraction of time the enemy's eye3s bulged. If only Stone could risk a trifle more pressure! But he dared not loosen ever so slightly his grip on the weapon.

The combatants' breath mingled in a cloud of steam. Dan could feel the other's beating on his forehead. His own came and went noisily.

With a twist the adversary lowered the upper half of his body and pushed again. The stone balcony was only two feet high; the drop from it to the floor of the chapel was a good fifteen feet. As they crashed to the floor of the balcony, neither releasing his hold, Dan realized that the peon's purpose was now to hurl him over the rail. He was handicapped because he must keep a grip on the machete and yet prevent a call for help that might summon the entire vindictive household, and the strength against which he was pitted seemed inexhaustible.

The peon lay beneath him. He had let go the machete, but Dan could not secure it, and with one free hand and an arm partially free, the black was actually lifting his opponent upward and outward—was lifting him against the rail—up—up

One of Dan's kicking feet caught the top of the stone fretwork. He shoved backward. He reversed their positions. Consciousness nearly left him as his head struck the balcony paving, but there was no instant to lose. With a heave that promised to be his last, he had the surprised body of the peon straddling the corrugated coping itself, where it vacillated as if doubtful which way to roll.

Dan's strength was gone, but some other force decided the issue. The Domingan, bewildered by the speed of the reversal, lying now on his back, a leg actually on each side of the rail, lost his sense of direction, rolled into mid-air, gathered momentum, flew outward and downward, and crashed headlong into the pit of the chapel, hurtling against the rickety confessional box with such force that its door was burst ajar.

Slowly and dazedly Dan struggled partially up right. He pulled himself, by the stone bars, to his knees and, still breathing hard, looked over the rail. The man who a moment since had been fighting so desperately lay very still below him.

Dan lowered himself from the balcony and dropped to the chapel floor. The Domingan was quite unconscious, but alive. Indeed, a rapid examination showed a fractured leg and a broken arm —the arm that had held the machete—but the man was not fatally hurt.

Then came a new alarm. As he listened to the faint but certain beatings of his victim's heart, Dan heard another sound. Not a repetition of that call; this was something far more ominous. It was the sound of approaching steps along the gallery above.

Had somebody heard the noise of the Domingan's fall?

There was a narrow space behind the confessional box. Stone crept swiftly into this, lying flat, but peeped cautiously around its protecting corner. Through the narrow doorway above came the horrid form of Fernando Peña.

So he had left the patient whom he had previously refused to quit! Perhaps, rocking derisively on his haunches back there, he had come to think that, after all, Dan had better be watched. Perhaps this peon who had followed Stone had first warned Peña. But, on second consideration, that was impossible. There would not have been time. No, Fernando must have started on some other errand; the hunchback had no inkling of the physician's presence here.

Some broken woodwork lay before Dan, a protecting screen. Prone, he could watch Fernando's every move without himself being detected.

Peña squeaked a great oath as he peered across the rail. Nimbly he crept over it and, his long knife between his teeth, jumped the sheer distance with a catlike agility that made him bounce toward the body of the peon as he alighted. He ran to it and leered at it. With a grin of diabolical pleasure, he drew back and, knife now in hand, surveyed the unconscious man.

“So, you thief, you have been caught by your own cunning!” His voice rang shrilly through the dismantled chapel. “No more sneaking tricks from you whenever the master goes away! No more treachery, my friend. I've been watching for just such treachery.” He laughed aloud. “You'll be the third to die here. The rest will all learn enough to keep away—or else to stay in church forever!”

The hunchback raised his knife and struck. It came up red. He struck again.

After the second blow he had to tug to release the blade. He wiped the dripping steel on his victim's shirt, walked calmly to the chapel's main door, and opened it with a great key from his belt. A blast of hot yellow sunshine silhouetted his gargoyle shape. Then the portal swung behind him and the lock turned. He was probably gone for discreet help to bury the body and repair such damage as he had observed.

Dan was alone.

The murder had happened with a swiftness beyond prevention—a swiftness that outdistanced realization itself. From leap to blow, it had not consumed a full minute.

Blaming himself for the amazement that had kept him from his late enemy's rescue, Dan crept out of hiding. He looked at the body. The fingers were already stiffening; there was here no life now left to save.

Although horror enveloped him, Stone glanced about. He was determined to see all that could be seen. When he had removed the door above, he thought only of the architecture of a crumbling chapel, which he felt such an impelling desire to examine. Now he did not even note its presence except as an adjunct to the worldly articles that tenanted the place.

Dan leaned heavily against the wall. An hour ago and this chapel would have fascinated him as a rare example of church architecture; he could see it at this moment only as a charnel house.

Only? His roving eyes were caught again by those twin machines. Even his technical ignorance recognized them for a pair of some sort of presses. More, they were plainly in daily or nightly activity—and yet there was no sign of sugar cane about them.

Shuddering a little, he glanced back at the dead peon, then, above his head, to the confessional box against which the body had struck. The impact had broken its glaringly modern lock. Dan looked within.

The interior fittings had long since been ripped out. The box was almost completely filled with neatly arranged piles of American bank notes—new hundred-dollar bills, replicas of those which he at that moment carried in his pocket.