The Mouse in the Mountain by Norbert Davis (detective books to read TXT) 📕

longer to do it if I shot you in the stomach.”

Janet backed slowly and woodenly away from the two of them, back and back, until the stone wall felt cool through her thin dress. She put out one arm and pushed at the pivot stone. The stone moved reluctantly, and as if in protest the earth growled and grumbled deep within itself.

“Don’t move,” Tio Riquez warned sharply. “It is just an earth tremor. We have many of them here. It is nothing.”

The earth rose to make a roaring denial of that. The floor rocked sickeningly, and Janet saw a crack widen and run down the crumbling wall like a quick black snake. Dust swirled in a blinding cloud that thrust stinging fingers into her eyes.

A shot plopped out dully, dwarfed by the greater uproar, and then Captain Perona’s voice shouted:

“Janet! Run! Run outside!”

There were more shots, like a string of small firecrackers in the distance, and the stone floor heaved and moaned in its agony. Janet staggered away from the wall, and a rafter swung down slowly in front of her and shattered into ancient shards. She had lost all sense of direction, and she cried out weakly and breathlessly.

Captain Perona’ s arm whipped around her waist and dragged her forward. She could hear his short, sharp gasps for breath. He was swearing in Spanish.

The floor stretched like the loose hide of an animal. Janet fell and tripped Captain Perona. Dust smothered them, and a piece of armor rolled and clanged brightly past.

Captain Perona was up again, staggering drunkenly. His fingers dug into Janet’s arms. He thrust and pulled and bunted her with his shoulder, and then they were in the tiny vestibule.

The dust was thinner, and Janet stared with burning eyes at the side wall. It was bulging inward slowly and awfully, as though a giant fist was pushing it from the outside. The big front door was closed now, and Captain Perona gripped the collarlike latch in both hands and heaved back.

Janet wondered dully why he didn’t just open the door and get them out of here. It was dangerous. The wall was behaving in a way no wall should or could. It was coming inexorably closer. And so were the other walls now.

The cords stood out on the back of Captain Perona’s neck, and the shoulder seam of his coat split suddenly. The door moved and threw him backward, and then he had Janet’s arm again, and they were outside running down the steps that slid under them like an escalator.

Janet looked back. The old church was wavering, crumbling, slumping slowly down. And then the earth gave one sharp final heave. The church groaned under that death blow, and then it fell majestically in on itself and was no longer a building but merely a heap of rubble with dust rising over it like a pall.

As suddenly as the noise had come, it was gone. The silence was so intense it was a pressure against the eardrums. Sensation returned to Janet like a stinging slap in the face, and she was suddenly more frightened than she had ever been in her life.

Captain Perona seized her by both shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled. His face was dust-smeared and pallid, staring tensely into hers.

“Are you hurt?” he yelled. “Answer me? Are you hurt?”

“N—no,” Janet whimpered, and then she caught her breath and her self-possession and was instantly angry. “You stop that! Let go of me!”

“Gracias a Dios!” said Captain Perona reverently. “I was afraid for you. You would not speak. You would only look without seeing anything.”

“Was that an earthquake?” Janet asked.

Captain Perona stared at her out of bleary, reddened eyes. “Was that—was that…” He drew a deep breath. “Yes, senorita. That was an earthquake.”

“Well, don’t be so superior! I’ve never been in one before!” Janet turned to look at the pile of rubble that had been the church, and then she was suddenly frightened all over again. “Oh! If we hadn’t gotten out…” She remembered, then, and looked at the split shoulder-seam of Captain Perona’s coat. “If you hadn’t gotten us out… Your hand is hurt!”

Captain Perona sucked ruefully at his torn fingers. “I pulled too hard at the door. It was stuck, and I was really in a great hurry.”

“You—you saved my life.”

“Yes,” Captain Perona admitted. “I did. And you are a fool.”

“What?” Janet cried. “What?”

“I said you were a fool. Why did you not inform me about the location of that cellar?”

“How did I know you didn’t know it was there? It was your ancestor who built the church!”

“So it was,” Captain Perona agreed. There was dust even on his eyelashes. “But you should have told me anyway. Then I would have caught that devil.”

“Oh,” said Janet, remembering more. “That Tio—that Bautiste person! He had a gun!”

“Yes,” said Captain Perona. “When the floor moved it threw him off balance, and I hit him with my fist.” He looked at the fist distastefully. “We Mexicans do not believe in brawling and mauling at people with our fists as you people do, but I did not have time to draw my gun and shoot him.”

“Somebody shot,” Janet said.

“Yes. He did. But the dust blinded him.”

Janet looked at the church. “Where .. .”

“I hope he’s under that,” Captain Perona answered grimly. “But I am afraid he is not. He is too smart and too quick. He probably has a dozen secret exits. If we could get out, so could he. If you had only told me about that cellar .. .

“Why did that give everything away?” Janet demanded.

“We have spent a long time narrowing down possibilities. We suspected Bautiste Bonofile was hidden somewhere near here, and we knew that if he was, there was also a cache near here because he has been selling loot. Not rifles—but other things he had stolen and hidden long ago. When Garcia came here, we were sure we were right. As soon as you mentioned that cellar, I thought that must be the cache. I tried not to show it, but he knew. He had no intention of letting me get away after that.”

“But you’d have been missed at once.”

“Yes. You, also. But he would have had time to remove some of the most valuable loot and to disappear himself if he thought he would be suspected. I do not think he would have been. He has had his position as Tio Riquez for over ten years. He is a fixture in Los Altos.”

Faintly, all around them, like some weird off-scene chorus, cries and shouts began to rise. A woman wept in wailing shrieks. The dust clouds had heightened and thinned, and the sun showed ghastly yellow-red through it.

Captain Perona straightened up. “I forget myself! I must go at once, senorita! There must be a guard put here by this building, and there will be injured people to care for and property to protect. I must find my men. Will you go to the main square and wait? You will be perfectly safe now, I think.”

“Yes.” said Janet. “Go ahead. Hurry. I’ll be all right.”

Captain Perona trotted up the steep street toward the marketplace. Janet watched him until he disappeared, and then turned to stare at her surroundings.

She felt a sort of awed disbelief. There was no real change. The squat houses were still there, just as they had been before. There were fresh cracks in the walls, and roofs sagged, and tile lay broken in the street, but there was no vast waste of desolation such as she had expected.

And the people were there, too. Scurrying in and out of their houses like ants on a griddle—afraid to stay where they were, and afraid to go anywhere else. Janet saw a woman in her black, rustling Sunday dress kneeling quite alone in the middle of the street, praying. A man came out of the house across the way carrying a wicker bird cage with a parakeet inside. He stopped and stared cautiously in all directions and then yelled crazily and pelted up the street with the bird cage flopping and the parakeet screeching.

“Senorita! Senorita Americana!”

Janet turned around. A ragged little girl with a smear of dirt around her mouth was staring up at her with eyes that were as bright and gleaming as black jewels. She wasn’t scared. She was panting with delicious excitement.

“Senorita, venga usted! La otra senorita—la turista rica! Venga!”

She seized Janet’s hand and pulled at her, and Janet followed. The little girl danced beside her, gesturing with impatience. She turned the first corner into a narrow lane.

“Aqui! Mira!”

There was a little group of people, both men and women, standing there in the lane, and they turned at the little girl’s cry, separating.

Janet saw the blond, loose swirl of hair first, like spun gold against the dust. Her breath caught in her throat, and she ran forward and stopped suddenly. Patricia Van Osdel was lying crumpled on her side. Her profile was white and austere and aristocratic. Her eyes were closed, and a trickle of blood made a bright, jagged streak across her cheek.

A little man wearing a faded serape knelt beside her. He looked up at Janet with sad, regretful eyes.

“She is—died,” he said in careful English. He made a shy, quick gesture with his hands. “All died.”