The Mark of Merlin
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Mark of Merlin». Краткое содержание книги:
I grabbed up the gun, replaced the albums and the tray, and closed and locked the trunk. I eased the top locker back into place, more because I was used to putting everything back the way I’d found it than because I wished to hide the fact I’d been inspecting it.
I was halfway across the dining room when I heard Turtle roaring in a voice that could have penetrated armor plate. “Proof? Christ, what d’ya need proof for? Who else could have done it?”
“Proof to stand up in a court-martial, damn it, Bailey,” I heard the major’s equally incensed voice reply. Outside the house, Merlin barked, a sharp punctuation to their dispute.
“You can’t be judge, jury, and executioner, Bailey,” the major continued urgently. “And don’t try it again.”
Merlin barked again and I heard someone let him in. Then he scratched at the corridor door in front of me, sensing my presence even if the men did not.
“Major, if you think I’m going to let that murdering
“
“Can it, Bailey,” Regan Laird warned curtly. Before I could move, he had jerked the door open. Merlin, delighted, wove around me, crooning, nosing my dangling hands. Regan Laird, his face stern, his eyes narrowing slightly, looked down at me accusingly. Wordlessly, he pushed the door wide for me to enter.
His face flushed with anger, Turtle was standing stolidly in the center of the room. Merlin circled me nervously, whining a demand for reassurance in the midst of the taut silence.
“Who’s a murdering so-and-so, Turtle? What kind of proof do you need? For whose court-martial?”
Turtle’s face closed down implacably.
“Where did you get that?” the major snapped, snagging the bolstered revolver out of my hand. The cryptic conversation I’d overheard had put it out of my mind.
“From Dad’s footlocker.”
Turtle looked as if something had caught him a solid blow in the solar plexus. As the major drew the gun from its holster, Turtle poised as if he wanted to grab it out of the major’s hands. Laird broke open the gun. The cylinder was empty. He flipped the gun to the ceiling, squinting up the barrel. He and Turtle looked at each other over the weapon. They were both angry and disturbed.
“That’s not my father’s gun,” I exclaimed, puzzled.
“No?” The major looked sharply at Turtle for confirmation. Reluctantly Turtle took the Colt, turning it in his hand to expose the handle.
“That isn’t Dad’s,” I repeated, firmly. I knew the gun well, I’d cleaned it often enough, and the major’s dubiety was irritating. “The right side of the handle was cracked. Here.” I pointed out where the flaw should have been.
“She’s right, all right, Major,” Turtle stared at the gun as if it were evil. He dumped it back into the major’s waiting hand as if he couldn’t get rid of it soon enough. “Besides, I turned the colonel’s Colt in to Ordnance before the corporal picked up his locker to take it back to Division.” He stopped, his eyes widened, then he snapped his mouth shut.
Very slowly the major reholstered the gun as if he, too, found contact with it distasteful.
“If it isn’t my father’s gun, whose is it and why do you both act as if it were poison or something?”
I glared at Turtle but he returned my stare, his eyes stubborn, his lips set in a thin line. I grabbed Laird’s arm as he made to turn away.
“You’ve got to answer me. I demand to know!” I cried.
Laird looked down at me, the left side of his face towards me, his expression both pitying and angry.
“The gun is poison if it’s the one that killed your father.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Christ, Major,” Turtle groaned in a hoarse voice, his face drained of all color, “she didn’t have to know.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, dazed. I felt unreal. The words he had just said were not making any sense. My father murdered? He’d been killed. Killed! Not murdered!
The major put the gun on the mantelpiece before he looked at me again. When he did, his face hadn’t changed. He had meant what he just said.
“No, Bailey, she should know because she’d find out anyhow.” He sighed heavily. “Your father was killed by a forty-five slug.”
“A forty-five slug?”
He nodded. I glanced, bewildered, at Turtle. Gray-faced, the sergeant confirmed it.
“No. No! No!” I cried, turning from both of them, hugging my arms to my sides. Merlin whined urgently and I thrust him away, whirling back to the men. “I just won’t believe it. It doesn’t make sense. I could see someone shooting Warren. God knows he was hated but not my father. Not Dad. The men loved him. He ran a good regiment. No one ever complained about Dad, did they, Turtle?”
Turtle nodded slowly.
“Maybe it was a sniper got hold of a forty-five?” I suggested frantically. “It was a mistake? It wasn’t murder!”
The major took me by the shoulders and gave me a hard shake; his eyes were compassionate but I hated him.
“No, Carlysle, it was no sniper. It could have been a mistake,” he admitted slowly, heavily, as if he wished wholeheartedly he could accept that. “DeLord was driving your father to Warren. It was late. God knows but Bailey and I now have reason to think it was murder.”
“I don’t understand,” I cried, trying to twist away from the major, wanting to go to Turtle who stood so immovable, so silent, his stricken eyes dominating his white face. “I just don’t understand.”
My eyes lighted on the gun.
“Why did you say that gun killed my father?”
“I didn’t. I said it might have. Now listen to me. Your father was still alive when DeLord brought him in. We got the medic but there wasn’t anything he could do. But a Colt, particularly at short range, makes a recognizable
” he broke off, struggling to make this horrible recitation easier on my feelings. “It was a forty-five, not a rifle, not a German handgun. After your father died the slug proved it.”
“Turtle, you know who killed Dad. Who was it?” I shrieked, struggling to break the major’s grip.
“You’re as trigger-happy as he is,” the major bellowed, his eyes blazing, his hands like bruising iron grapples I couldn’t shake. “Now you listen to me, Carlysle. I’m just as anxious as you two to get your father’s killer but I’m not so much the fool as to take matters into my own hands. With a little patience, I can get the law to do it. That Colt may be all we need to do it legally, properly. War doesn’t give license to settle private quarrels.” He glared significantly at Turtle.
“Why not?” I cried, one part of me white-hot for vengeance, the other shocked at such hysteria. “Why didn’t you settle things then and there, the night Dad was killed? Why wait four months? Why let the murderer get scot-free?”
Laird gave me another bone-jolting shake.
“We had a war on!”
The cliche brought me up short. I hated it for one thing: It had been used as the excuse for so much inefficiency and stupidity. Right now it was so revoltingly trite it made me nauseous. Yet I knew what he actually meant by the phrase and I was too army to ignore the significance. Sensing the change in me, Laird let me go.
“Now, sit down. You, too, Bailey, and we’ll attempt to talk about this sensibly. There’ve been quite enough half-ass actions and assumptions.” The major pinned Bailey with a withering stare. He looked back at me and saw my rebellion getting a second wind and pointed peremptorily at the couch. “Sit!”