Chapter 3
As he drove back into Devil's Bend, Mark was almost exalted with his new purpose in life. It was as though finding someone who needed him-whether she realized it or not-gave him a fresh vitality. All this of course he rationalized into rage and indignation.
Along with his anger was the intriguing question what the hell kind of an outfit Peace Haven was. The Prophet-he sounded strictly for the birds. Some sort of a fanatic? And The Disciple? Where did he fit in?
There was also the tantalyzing riddle conjured up by Patience's statement that she had another year at Peace Haven, and that it was better than going to prison.
But as the town of Devil's Bend hove into sight, Mark put these wonderings aside and concentrated his thoughts on Sheriff Able Tate.
He parked in the same spot. The mule was gone, but Able Tate was in his chair. This time, he did not arise. He sat vaguely enthroned. As Mark got out and approached it was, from the chair's position and Tate's oddly regal bulk, like a suppliant approaching a master.
"Evening, Mr. Hanes," Tate said. "Did you pleasure yourself rambling around our woods?"
Before Mark could reply, a third man appeared. He came from between the buildings and Mark got the feeling he'd hiked in from somewhere through the wooded country that pressed hard on the limits of the town.
He was a man of decisive manner-perhaps in his early thirties-and as out of place as Mark in that he wore a clean jacket and neatly pressed slacks. He glanced quickly at Mark-a strange look of intense interest, but only momentary. Then he pointed sharp gray eyes at Able Tate and said, "May I see you for a few moments, Sheriff?" His diction and tone also put him above and beyond the ordinary Devil's Bend citizen. Also, Able Tate's elusive aura of mastery vanished as he heaved up out of his chair and walked down the street with the gray-eyed man.
Mark watched. The man spoke sharply and decisively. Able Tate listened. Obviously on the defensive in .the conversation, he shrugged his shoulders and gestured with fat hands in a manner of one who would have liked to do whatever it was the other wanted, but was helpless.
Both Tate and the stranger glanced Mark's way several times during the exchange of words. Perhaps, Mark decided, he was not necessarily the subject of the conversation, but he somehow abutted on whatever made up the agenda.
After a few more shrugs and protestations of helplessness on Tate's part, the gray-eyed man turned abruptly and disappeared between two buildings, going off pretty much in the direction he had come.
Tate returned slowly to his chair. He sat down and turned his attention to Mark, but not again quite capturing the aura of mastery which his visitor had destroyed.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Hanes?"
"I've come to lodge a complaint against three men who attacked a girl a few miles down the valley this afternoon."
"How far down?" Tate asked.
"Perhaps ten miles, I'd say."
"No further?"
"About ten miles." This was obviously a great disappointment to the sheriff. "Thought maybe it might have been outside Devil's Bend County. Then I could send you over to Sheriff Wonderly at Salem."
"But is was in Devil's Bend County and I've come to you."
"Who's the girl?" Tate asked, but in a tone that revealed a complete previous knowledge of the incident and the principals.
"Her name is Patience White. She's from Peace Haven."
"You were there? You were where the attack took place?"
"I was passing in my car."
"Then you were quite a ways away?" Tate asked hopefully.
"The bluff cuts down sharply at the spot where I stopped. I had some difficulty in getting down-"
"Then you didn't see much?" Tate spoke with the air of a trial lawyer who had scored a decisive point.
"I saw everything."
"But from where you were-that's Blue Hollow Bluff-it's a long ways down to-"
"How do you know where I was?" Tate brought his vast shrug into play. "The way you describe it," he said innocently. "Only place you could have been. I know all the roads hereabouts."
"All right. It was Blue Hollow Bluff. But in my car you'll find a pair of high-power Navy binoculars. I saw the men clearly and I can identify them."
Tate looked at Mark after the manner of a father gently shaming a son for some transgression. "So you sat there looking through your glasses at three men attacking a helpless girl?"
"I did nothing of the sort! I-"
"That's what you said."
Choking anger crowded Mark's throat. He'd come to accuse and found himself on the defensive. "Look here. It wasn't at all like you're trying to make it. I went down the bluff and got to the girl as soon as possible. She'd been savagely assaulted."
"But the men weren't there?"
"They had time to escape."
"What did they look like?" Obviously Tate knew already or didn't care a damn.
"One was tall and thin. As a matter-of-fact he resembled the thin gentleman I met here yesterday.
"Fred Kelp?"
An association dawned on Mark and he was annoyed that he'd been so slow. Kelp. He'd heard the name prior to Tate's introduction of the beanpole. Carol Rice had mentioned the name in connection with the Devil's Bend country when she'd spoken of it.
And even when Patience called the Kelps a powerful clan, his recollection still did not function.
"If you're claiming it was Fred," Tate exclaimed eagerly, "Your story don't hold water. Fred was right there in that chair all afternoon."
"I said he looked like the man. A family resemblance perhaps. Just who are the Kelps?"
"They're a big force in these parts, if you want to know."
"I heard them spoken of as a clan. I suppose that means there are a great many of them."
"A right smart bunch when you come right down to it. Brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins. Yeah, the Kelps kind of dominate this Devil's Bend country."
"That's very interesting. But let's get back to the case in hand. When can you bring the men in so that I can identify them?"
"Look, mister. Ain't you taking quite a bit on yourself? It's the girl you say was attacked. What's your sudden interest?"
"The interest any decent man would have to see justice done."
"Seems to me the girl's the one to make the complaint."
"You just don't want to arrest a Kelp, do you?"
"Ain't had no proof yet that a Kelp done any wrong."
"I'm ready to sign a complaint to the effect that three men, one of whom greatly resembled Fred Kelp, savagely attacked a girl named Patience White from Peace Haven. I'm not saying he was a Kelp. I'm saying an investigation is in order."
"I'd nave to have that complaint from the injured party, mister."
"Suppose she refuses to make one?"
Able Tate turned his fat, ham-like hands palms up. "Then there's nothing I can do."
"But there's something I can do," Mark said hotly. "I'm well able and willing to go to the State Police, and if need be to the Governor of the state."
Able Tate's encased eye narrowed even further.
There was first what Mark interpreted as a flash of fear. Then anger overshadowed and Tate bellowed: "Listen here, mister, I'd advise you to keep your goddam nose out of other people's business. You go around stirring up trouble you're going to get trouble. You come here to daub color on canvas, you go ahead and daub-no-body'll bother you. But start talking big and making complaints about what's none of your business and things might thicken up a little."
Exactly what might happen to me?" Mark asked.
"You insult the Kelps and a broken skull might happen to you."
"You are afraid of them, aren't you?"
"I said mind your own goddam business!"
"You won't accept my complaint then?"
"You're damned right I won't. You got no grounds for a complaint."
It was Mark's turn to shrug. "All right. I guess that's that."
He turned and went back to his car. As he switched on the ignition, Tate took two steps forward. "Where you going?" Somewhere deep behind the words was desperation, but he covered it well with hostility.
Mark enjoyed this minor triumph. "To see the governor maybe."
"I wasn't fooling, mister. I meant what I said."
"Then I guess we both meant what we said." Mark gunned the motor and drove off....
Half a mile down the road-a narrow dirt strip between banks of thick trees-Mark was intercepted. He saw the man in plenty of time to decide whether to stop or not. Short, heavy-set, the man smoked a pipe. While not dressed like the gray-eyed stranger, he was still set apart by his clothing. He wore knickers that were somewhat out of date-the kind Bobby Jones wore when he ruled the golfing world. His hat would not have been out of place on Sherlock Holmes, and his pipe was of the short, thick bull-dog type.
Mark braked the Thunderbird; not through bravery, because if the man had been a hillbilly he was quite sure he would have run him down or made him jump. But the man who stood in the road, one hand lifted, did not seem dangerous.
Mark eyed him with no friendliness. "What can I do for you?"
"The man walked around beside the car. He took his pipe out of his mouth. "It's what I might be able to do for you, friend."
"I'm listening."
"Perhaps introductions are in order. I'm Dr. Sanders-Frank Sanders."
"Glad to know you. I'm Mark Hanes."
"I know. You're not exactly obscure against the Devil's Bend background." He glanced at the bucket seat next to Mark. "Mind if I climb in and rest my feet?"
"Please do," Mark said politely.
"Thanks." Sanders made a production out of it. Puffing a little unnecessarly, Mark thought, he dropped down on the cushions and said, "Overtaxed myself a little, I guess. While you were having it out with Tate, I hiked down the road to catch you. Figured that this far away we'd be undisturbed."
"What did you want to talk to me about?"
Sanders had clear, blue eyes and a sensitive, thoughtful cast to his face. The blue eyes smiled slightly. "Aren't you a little curious as to where I fit into this picture?"
"Frankly, I was wondering."
"I'm the Devil's Bend doctor. The old general practitioner. I tend their ailments-jolly them through their traumas-the usual thing."
"Then you must be completely familiar with things around here that I'm aware of only dimly."
"But your damned well going to find out about them-right?"
"Right."
"I may be of service in that area."
"Okay-you'll fund me pretty blunt. Today I saw a girl ravished by three men. The girl refused to complain. I took it on myself to protest officially-"
"And you didn't get to the wickets."
"I didn't even foul off a pitch."
Sanders laughed and yet there was no indication, thereby, that he was dismissing the gravity of the situation. "I'm English as you've probably guessed. Cricket's our game, but I get your point."
"Then tell me-one, why does this situation exist? Two, as probably the most responsible man in this area, why haven't you done something about it?"
"Because it's not quite as simple as that."
"Maybe the background isn't. I'm beginning to think there's a pretty rotten mess behind all this. But getting legal justice for outrage is still possible. Or is it?"
"Yes, and no."
Mark felt a surge of annoyance. "We don't seem to communicate. Let's see if I can make it easier with a few questions. The girl who was attacked made a couple of cryptic remarks that confused me. She said she had a year more at Peace Haven and that it was better than being in prison. What did she mean?"
Sanders had been sucking his cold pipe. He took it out of his mouth. "What you're asking me for is a background and an explanation of Peace Haven. That I can give you. Peace Haven is a religious cult started by a man I personally consider a fanatic-"
"Then why not fight him on that basis and root him out?"
Sander's annoyance was more restrained than Mark's but it was still annoyance. "Old man-why not file your questions for later asking. Otherwise, we'll get nowhere."
"I'm sorry."
"Quite all right. As I was saying. I consider John Basford a fanatic. If I could eliminate him I would. But I'm only a country doctor and this situation is not surface. It's deeply imbedded in money-a rich, tenacious soil that does not yield its sick, rotten vegetation easily."
"I see."
"Basford is in his middle sixties. A strange case. He came from a fine Boston family and seemed all right until he reached middle age. Then something happened. He got involved in a couple of sex deviation scandals and his lamily paid heavily to get him out. I personally consider him a sex maniac. Back in Boston, after the sex scandals, he went off on a fantastic pseudo-religious tack. And there was even more scandal. Finally, his family could bear it no longer. They read him out as the black sheep and ordered him out of their perimeter. In short, they gave up on him."
"You say it happened suddenly-the beginning."
"From what I can discover. At the dangerous middle-age point."
"Quite an interesting background."
"Isn't it? After that he drifted here and there, expounding a religious theory he cooked up. It's basis is peace through non-resistance. He contends that all injustice of any sort is persecution and to resist even torture and death is a sin."
"A distortion of Ghandi's non-resistance principal."
"Something like that, but I prefer to call it the device of a scoundrel."
Mark reserved comment. Sanders said, "This Bas-ford, incidentally, is a very deceptive fellow. A dual personality beyond all doubt. To meet him-which you aren't likely to do-you would be impressed by his zeal and sincerity. Peace Haven too, has nothing of the slovenly about it. It is kept neat and clean and bright as a new pin. But Basford's other personality-" Sanders shuddered. "-ugh, to put it very plainly."
"As you outline it, he certainly appears to be vulnerable."
"We'll come to that, and other things, in due time. As to your specific questions. Through a structure Basford has set up-unethical judges, greedy politicians, and the like-he has access to men and women accused and convicted of crime." Sanders paused to think a moment. "Also, he has gained 'converts' to his pseudo-religion from ethical and sincere jurists who have' been impressed by his zeal."
"What is the process?" Mark asked.
"After conviction, before sentencing, Basford turns up with an offer to help whatever poor unfortunate is on the docket. Invariably these people-the ones Basford wants to help, are young and attractive."
"And female?"
"In most cases, yes. He enlists some men, but they invariably are a more hardened criminal type. They are used as Acolytes, I believe the term is. Actually, they are jailers."
"I think I get the angle. An attractive young girl is convicted of a felony. Basford shows up. He offers a period of rehabilitation at Peace Haven in lieu of a jail term. The judge, with knowledge of the conspiracy or otherwise, gives the prisoner the choice. Thus is Peace Haven populated."
Sanders, with the air of a man whose job had been completed, sat back and lit his pipe. "That's the gist of it."
"All right," Mark said crisply. "We have the problem. Now what are we going to do about it?"
Sanders turned and eyed him keenly. "You're impetuous, my young friend. You rush in. There are other phases, other angles.
"You're right," Mark said quickly. "I'm listening."
"I expected you to ask about the Kelps."
"They hadn't exactly slipped my mind. I gather they're quite powerful."
"They rule this area. Sheriff Tate, while not a bad fellow personally, is a realist. He owes his soft job to them. If he displeases them, they are strong enough to vote him out next election."
"I suspected something like that. Are they moonshiners?"
"They obtain a great deal of revenue from illicit alcohol."
"Then it's a job for the Federal government."
"Eliminate the whiskey and they would still dominate the county."
"Not if a mob of them went to jail."
Sanders sighed. "Don't think I'm being fatalistic when I say that just can't happen. They have their so-called pigeons lined up to take the rap, as you Americans say. The government has tried to get at them several times before this.
"Are you saying that we're helpless to correct this situation?"
"Nothing of the kind. I'm saying that it's forminable. I'm suggesting that you do nothing about the ravishment case, however callous that may sound. I'm suggesting that you would get nowhere in that direction. Rather, why don't you walk softly for a while? Do not underestimate the perils here. When we move, let's move from strength rather than the weakness of mere indignation."
"That makes sense, I guess," Mark admitted grudingly.
"Of course it does. And now, you should ask yourself whether a stranger who accosted you on the road has any right to your trust and confidence."
"I have been wondering why you're here. You don't look the part of the kindly old country doctor."
Sanders thought that over pensively. "I suppose that's true. I look more like the British Harley Street practitioner, I imagine. But believe me, the cancerous growths I've outlined here are by no means the sum-total of Devil's Bend County. Frankly, I love these people. I feel I belong here whether I look the part or not."
"Then I guess I'll have to take you on face value," Mark said. "I'm more inclined to like and trust you than otherwise."
"Thank you. Let's say that I'm innocent until proven guilty."
Mark was surprised at how he'd warmed to the Englishman. "Both a British and American concept," he said. "I-" Quite suddenly he stopped and frowned.
"Something wrong?"
"No. Just a weakness of mine. A wigging feeling that I've missed something-some connection. You said something a little while ago that I should have picked up as having a meaning."
"I don't quite follow you, old man."
Mark smiled. "Actually there's no reason why you should. As I said, an annoying personal failing."
This explanation apparently was satisfactory to Sanders. He stared at his ugly little bull dog pipe and said, "By way of meriting your trust, I'm going to show you something I came upon not long ago. It's a short walk from here. Would you let me impose on you a little farther?"
"It's no imposition, I assure you."
They got out of the car and walked for perhaps five minutes. Then Sanders turned abruptly and said, "There's quite another kind of traffic going on in Devil's Bend County. A product somewhat different from moonshine is being sold. Just there-" Sanders pointed. "-behind that bush, you'll find the entrance to a natural cave that being used as a warehouse. I came upon it somewhat by accident. I'll explain how later. But I'd like to have you take a look for yourself."
Mark took several steps in the direction Sanders had pointed. He stopped when he realized Sanders hadn't moved. The latter was busy tamping tobacco into his pipe. "I'll have to ask you to go in alone, old man. I just haven't got the stomach for it on a fine day like this."
He turned away and studied the sky through a break in the trees. Mark was on the point of further inquiry. Then he also turned and walked toward the bush Sanders had indicated.
The cave entrance was ingeniously covered. Mark had to stoop only slightly to enter, yet it would have been virtually impossible to find by accident. There was something like a small anteroom where outside light penetrated, and Mark saw a lantern hanging from a peg. He lit it and pushed on in.
The interior of the cave was rock-walled, dry and quite large. Holding the lamp over his head, Mark peered around and was somewhat disappointed. He had no idea what he would find, but the orderly stacks of cartons lining the walls and filling a natural table of rock against the rear wall did not look particularly dangerous. He lifted the lid from one of the boxes. Still nothing to excite him. A box packed tightly with small packages wrapped neatly in white paper. He set the lantern down and opened one of the packages. His eyes widened. The package consisted of a stack of photographs; a posed picture of two naked girls. Their position and the action the camera had caught were absolutely obscene.
Mark was stunned. The pictures themselves, while disgusting, would not necessarily have brought on this shock. It was sheer consternation at what he'd found that almost floored him. Pornography in a cave amid a setting of such natural beauty seemed to add the heinousness of the cave's contents.
He opened several more packs and found variations of the original filthy concept. One photograph was of five girls forming an incredible human structure of sheer perversion.
Mark re wrapped the photos and put the box back. Then he checked others until the task wearied him and brought him, at one point, close to physical nausea.
The cave was a warehouse for such an incredible variety of photographed rottenness that even after verifying it with his own eyes Mark could hardly believe it. There was something here to cater to every type and shading of sexual aberration. Nothing had been overlooked. Those who gloried in sadism would have been held enthralled by what some sick mind conceived in the way of inflicting sexual pain and indignity upon helpless girls. One series of photos showed only the face of the girl being tortured. But whoever took them had caught a panorama of expressions that could not help but delight the sick minds of those who revel in visualizing their own obscenity from facial expression. There was wide-eyed surprise; facially demonstrated protest; an open-mouthed scream; teeth gritted against pain; tears and pleading; and finally, slack mouth exhaustion which ended the series and would indicate to the satisfaction of those who gloat on such cruelty that the girl could take no more.
The catalogue of the cave's contents ran from the grossest, most vulgar and obscene displays to the most subtle suggestions imaginable.
After stifling a temptation to set a match to the place, Mark pushed his way out into the small, dimly lit anteroom. He opened the lantern to blow it out, and even as the flame vanished he realized that a form darker than its surroundings had been crouched just at the lip of the inner entrance and beyond his range of direct vision. He whirled around but it was too late. A weight crashed down on his head. The darkness became complete....
Mark came to with no sense of elapsed time. But when he struggled to his feet, and noted the location of the sun, he estimated that perhaps an hour had passed. He'd been lying beside his car, still parked where he left it. He spat dust out of his mouth and cursed the deceitful Dr. Sanders for decidedly unprofessional conduct.
But as he touched the lump on his head, his inherent sense of fair play returned and he realized he might be doing the doctor an injustice. He had no proof as to who his assailant had been. Perhaps Sanders also had met with violence. Mark looked around, there were no other bodies strewn about.
He turned toward the car and stopped short. He frowned. There was something wrong. For a few moments, he could not put his finger on it.
Then he realized that the car had been moved.
He looked around, studying the shaps and contours, of the immediate area. No doubt about it, this was not the same place at which he'd stopped on Dr. Sander's signal. This realization was tantalizing as he had no proof other than his own feeling of certainty. He could not actually define any change in the setting-for miles the road was a monotonous meandering strip of brown between two walls of green. In fact, he could not have again identified the original spot. Still, he knew the car had been moved.
Painfully he got behind the wheel, but did not immediately start the motor. He sat there pondering instead, the significance of the attack on him. The reason seemed so obvious that he was suspicious of it at first. Dr. Sanders had shown him a secret someone didn't want him to know about. Therefore, he'd been slugged and moved. And now, he realized, he could not again find the cave no matter how hard he tried.
This he accepted. But it struck him also that whoever engineered the attack was intelligent enough to know that his mere removal to another spot on the road would be sufficient. This convinced him that no ordinary hillbilly was at the bottom of the puzzle. It didn't identify the mystery man but it certainly narrowed the field.
Another angle occurred to him. Sanders knew of the cave's location, and Sanders could not have been fooled by waking up in another part of the forest. Had he been done away with?
Somehow, Mark doubted this. Sanders had vanished for reasons of his own. Or he had been taken away by force.
Mark debated his next step. He could go back to Devil's Bend and file another complaint. But if Sheriff Tate refused to move on an outrage against a girl, he'd hardly be likely to have a trauma over a lump on Mark's head.
Mark started the motor and drove slowly on down the road. Peace Haven, that seemed his logical goal. After all he still had his head, even though it was decorated with a painful lump. Perhaps he ought to be thankful for that and go ahead as though nothing had happened. Actually, there was nothing else he could do....
As he drove on down the valley, Mark pondered the significance of the pornographic storehouse back in the woods. What did it mean? He was somehow sure that the Kelps had nothing to do with it. They might make moonshine. They might rape and ravish helpless girls and corrupt a county. But making money from the sale of pornography just wasn't their dish of tea. They wouldn't have the outlet for the stuff in the first place. Such traffic required expert, self-effacing salesmanship. Whoever master-minded it possessed the ability to come and go under the protection of some obvious masquerade. An apparently innocent profession or trade that allowed movement would be the key. A salesman, perhaps, of an accepted commodity.
Mark remembered that a grocery salesman had come to Devil's Bend. He'd given Carol Rice a lift into the strange town. Could he be the mysterious smut peddler? Somehow, Mark doubted it. He was reaching too far.
He gave off thus wondering and turned his mind to other aspects of the filthy cache. The creation thereof. Whoever created the hideous pile of filth had access to a great many desirable women. Where were these women? The answer to that seemed self-apparent.
At Peace Haven.
All right. What new light did that throw on things? None, really. Doctor Sanders said that John Basford, the self-styled Prophet, was a vicious sex deviate. Actually, the cave and its contents at least tended to buttress Sander's sory and prove he doctor's sincerity.
But above all, it certainly made Peace Haven a place of singular interest to a visitor....
Mark reached the entrance about half an hours later. It was a rustic gate with a small, unpretentious sign hanging from its ridgepole: Peace Haven. That was all. You could take it or leave it.
Mark pulled up to the gate and waited. When passage of time proved that he wasn't going away until he'd seen somebody, a huge brute of a man with a scowl and a beard came through the gate and approached the car.
The man looked forminable; also big enough and strong enough to pick up both Mark and the Thunderbird and toss them into the brush beside the road. And from his approach, it appeared that he was going to do exactly that. Instead, just as Mark was bracing himself for an attack, the man raised a huge ham of a hand, glared into Mark's face and bellowed. "Peace, brother!"
Before Mark could respond in kind, another man appeared. He was gray-eyed and a shade hostile, but dressed differently now. He wore sandals and a gown that was a cross between a Roma toga and surgical whites. He said, "Come in Mr. Hanes. I've been expecting you...."