I nod my head.
'Look,' I say, 'I reckon we're cleanin' this job up pretty swell. I don't wanta make you talk too much. You tell me if I'm right in my ideas. The way I look at it is this. Maybe your wife Paulette thought she was a bit stuck on Aymes. Maybe because you was sick you couldn't give her the sorta attention that a dame like she likes to have, so she falls for Aymes. OK. Aymes thinks he's on a durn good thing. He starts doin' you left an' right for your dough an' maybe the reason that you don't find it out is that your wife Paulette is lookin' after your business, an' because she an' Aymes are gettin' around together it's easy for him to pull the wool over her eyes. She don't see he's takin' you for your dough because she don't wanta see it. Got me?
'An' then the works bust. All of a sudden at the end of last year she finds you're not so well. She hears that you're a durn sick man an' that there's got to be dough to get you down here to get you looked after. Maybe she finds out that you've got an idea about what's goin' on. Maybe you even tell her that you've sent that unsigned letter to Henrietta Aymes.
'She sees she's been pullin' a lousy one an' she tells you that she is goin' back to get that dough out of Aymes if it's the last thing she does. Am I right?'
He turns his eyes my way again.
'You're dead right, Caution,' he says. 'We had a big scene. I told her what I thought about her. I said it was pretty tough for me being sick to think that she was running around with a guy who had swindled me. Well, that broke her up. I reckon she was sorry, and you know '- I see a little smile come around his lips - 'I haven't very long to be around, and I don't want to feel that I'm making things tough for anybody. She told me she'd put the job right. She told me she'd get the money from Aymes and that she was through with him once and for all, and she made good. She got it.'
He starts coughin'. I give him a drink of the water that is by the side of the bed. He smiles at me to say thank you.
'I'm a dying man, Caution,' he says, 'and I know you've got to do your job, but there's one thing you can do for me.' His voice gets weaker. 'Just you try to keep the fact that Paulette was getting around with Aymes out of this,' he says. 'I'd like you to do that for me. I wouldn't like people to know that she preferred a dirty doublecrosser like Aymes to me.'
He smiles at me again. He is a piteous sorta guy.
'OK, Rudy,' I say, 'that's a bet. I'll play it that way. It won't hurt anybody. Well, I'll be gettin' along. So long an' good luck to you.'
I turn an' I start walkin' towards the door. When I am half way I see something, somethin' that is just stickin' out behind the edge of the screen that is on the other side of the room. It is a waste-paper basket and when I see it an' what is in it, I get a sorta funny idea, such a funny idea that I have to take a big pull at myself. When I get to the door I turn around and I look at Rudy. His eyes are still lookin' straight up at the ceilin' an' he looks half dead right now.
'So long, Rudy,' I say again. 'Don't you worry about Paulette. I'll fix that OK.'
Downstairs in the hall I meet Madrales.
'Listen, Doctor,' I say, 'everythin' has been swell, but there is just one little thing I am goin' to ask you to do for me. I have got all the information I want from Benito. I got my case complete but I have got to have a signed statement from him, because he is the guy who was swindled. Can you lend me a typewriter and some paper an' if you'll just get him to sign it I needn't worry him no more.'
'But surely, Senor Caution,' he says, 'come with me.'
He takes me into some room off the hall which is like a doctor's office. In the corner on a table is a typewriter. I sit down at this machine an' I type out a statement incorporatin' everything that Benito has said. When I have finished I go out to Madrales an' we go upsrairs. It is a tough job gettin' this guy Benito to sign it. The doctor has to hold his hand because it is shakin' so much that he can hardly hold the pen, but he does it. I stick the satement in my pocket and say so long to these guys an' I scram.
As I start up the car I look at my watch. It is twenty minutes past four.
I have got one helluva hunch. I have got an idea in my head that is considerably funny, an' I am goin' to play this idea. Even if I'm wrong I'm still goin' to play it.
When I have got well away from the Madrales dump I pull up the car an' do some very heavy thinkin'. I am checkin' up on the idea that is in my head. I have got a very funny hunch an' I am goin' to play it in a very funny sorta way.
I reckon that I am goin' to take a look around at Paulette's hacienda, an' I reckon I ain't goin' to tell her either. I am just goin' to do a little quiet house-bustin' just to see if I can get my claws on somethin' that I would like very much to find.
I pull the gun outa my pocket an' lay it right by me. I reckon that if anybody else tries anything on me tonight they are goin' to get it where they won't like it.
The moon has come out again. It is a swell night. Drivin' along back on the Sonoyta road I get thinkin' about dames an' what they do when they are in a jam.
Did I tell you that dames get ideas to do things that a guy would never even think of?
You're tellin' me!
CHAPTER 11
I DON'T drive up to the Hacienda. When I get to within a quarter of a mile of it I pull off the road an' start drivin' round over the scrub. I make a vvide circle, drivin' the car slow an' keepin' in top gear so as I don't make too much noise, an' I come up two-three hundred yards behind the house.
I stick the car behind a cactus clump an' I start workin' towards the house keepin' well under cover. I work right round the house in a circle but I can't see anybody or hear anythin' at all.
Then I get a hunch. Keepin' well in the scrub, I start workin' along the side of the road that leads from the hacienda to the State road intersection, an' I keep my eyes well skinned. After about five minutes I hear a horse neigh. I work up towards this sound an' I find a black horse tied up to a joshua tree about fifty yards off the road.
It is a good horse an' on it there is a Mexican leather an' wood saddle with silver trimmin's. There is a little silver plate just behind the saddle horn an' on this plate are the initials L.D.
When I see these initials I know that my hunch is right an' that Senor Luis Daredo is stickin' around waitin' for me some-where. Way down on the edge of the road about a hundred yards away there is a patch of scrub an' cactus, an' I reckon I'll find him down there. I start crawlin' that way, an' when I get there I see I am right.
Luis has picked himself a good place. He has picked a place where the road is very bad an' narrow an' full of cart ruts. He is sittin' way back twenty yards off the road behind a big cactus. He is smokin' an' he is nursin' a 30.30 rifle across his knees.
I come up behind him an' I bust him a good one in the ear. He goes over sideways. I pull the Luger on him an' pick up his rifle.
He sits up. He is smilin' a sorta sickly smile an' he is lookin' at the Luger. I reckon he thinks that I am goin' to give him the works.
I sit down on a rock an' look at him.
'You know, Luis,' I tell him, 'you ain't got no sense, an' I'm surprised at you because Mexicans are about the only people in the world who can keep themselves one jump ahead of a very clever dame like Paulette Benito. An' I'm surprised at you because you didn't tell that guy that smacked me over the head when I was drivin' to Zoni to finish me off pronto, because I reckon it woulda saved a lotta trouble for you guys. When that old battle-axe started tellin' me that somebody had spotted me down at the Casa de Oro as the guy who took in Caldesa Martinguez, an' that she was his mother, I knew that she was talkin' a lotta hooey because I happen to know that Martinguez's
