Johnson Johnson 04 - Dolly and the Doctor Bird by Dorothy (as Dorothy Halliday Dunnett

“I wasn’t holding it. But now we know where our fellow is…”
    “On the waterfall slope,” Trotter said. Johnson, who was running already toward the place of the gun flash, didn’t answer, and we both took to our heels in his wake. The gun fired again, and we could hear the howl of the shot, and the clatter of chippings from the rock face. Johnson said curtly, “Get behind those bushes, and down.”
    I saw him walk slowly forward. Ahead, the rising slopes of the dry waterfall gave nothing away. Even the sweeping light from the tower barely touched its dark corners and ledges, masked with ferns and boulders. Nothing moved. Johnson said, raising his voice, “We know you are here, and we have guns too. There is nothing at all to prevent one of us going back for the police while the others stay and keep you cornered till they come. Throw your gun down and climb out with your hands up. You know what you’re in for if you damage us with that thing.”
    The reply was a shot, aimed accurately at where Johnson had been standing; answered before the echoes had stopped by a thunderous shot from the gun in Johnson’s hand. I saw Trotter’s head turn toward me, his eyes glinting, and remembered the bulge in Johnson Johnson’s pocket when I first met him in the Buick outside my father’s that day. But I had assumed his threat just now to be bluff. Then Johnson fired again and I saw something move this time: a plant dimly shook and a figure, moving in and out of the dark, began quickly to scramble up the waterfall bed. “On the left,” I said suddenly to Johnson. “Can you pick a lock?”
    “My darling doctor,” said Johnson distractedly. “It’s a palmetto western.” But he’d got the point. He ran like a hound to the door in the cliff where I’d pointed, and in a trice had it open. In a moment more, he’d turned on the water.
    The man fell, I should think, about twelve feet when the sheet of spray hit him: the jets sprang from above and below, and interleaved in front of the gathering fall of straight water. From a fussing hiss, the falling gush began to set up a rumble. The man scrambled to his feet and turning, began to climb on all fours.
    Stumbling, sliding, his clothes glossed like PVC with the water, he scrambled across the smothering jets. The wall was high. We saw him drop back once; then he was over, and onto the Staircase. He began to race up the dark steps.
    Johnson raised his gun steadily and took aim, and Trotter knocked it out of his hand. “If you murder without evidence, sir, you’re asking for trouble. He can’t fire his own gun. We can easily catch him.”
    It sounded simple. I saw the icy flash of bifocals, then Johnson without speaking flung himself at the steps, and we followed.
    Where his gun had rolled in the darkness was not immediately obvious, but I took my time and found it before I followed, now far behind. Shadowed by the sheer wall of the gorge, the stairs were in complete blackness. It was only when I got to the top, not unpleased by the ease of my breathing, that I found Johnson and Trotter casting about helplessly in the roadway.
    The waiter had vanished.
    “He went that way,” said Johnson. “Toward the fort, I think. Or what about that bloody great tower?” For this tall white shaft with the cotton-reel top was now just beside us, its white and green light still sweeping the town. Behind it lights showed from a row of low houses. On the other side of the road was the squat triangular shape of the old fort, its door closed. No one moved on its walls: the bare grass around the tower was empty of people. On the path in front of the tower lay a few spots of water.
    We stood and listened. There was no sound. “I wonder,” said Johnson. “What sort of people live in those houses?”
    “Dahlia lives there,” I said. “Dahlia is the little girl who works the lift in the water tower.” A thin child with two fuzzy pigtails and a penchant for popcorn, who had already been