Touchstone

by Laurie R. King

  Ha! Stuyvesant thought—at last. “Grey. Related to your mind-reader?”

  “His sister. But please don’t call him—”

  “Yeah, I know, he’s just another shell-shocked officer.”

  Carstairs frowned again at the end of his cigar, although it was burning just fine. “You know, Agent Stuyvesant, I am grateful to you for bringing me your question regarding Bunsen yesterday. Not only have you caused me to focus on a potential troublemaker, but in reviewing his file, I remembered Captain Grey, and realized that I hadn’t been in touch with him in some time. Honestly, I’d nearly forgotten about him, but I’d be neglecting my duty if I didn’t check on him.”

  When someone like Aldous Carstairs used the word honestly—and in a speech devoid of hmms, shall we says, or so to speaks—it might have been a neon arrow flashing at the opposite.

  “Glad to be of service. So, how does your man Grey come into this?”

  “Almost not at all, considering how much of a hermit the man has become. I gather that he and his sister—whom I met briefly, long ago—see each other rarely, although they no doubt exchange letters. However, they are in some contact, which is what brought him to mind as a potential link in your chain. What if Captain Grey were to provide you with an introduction to his sister? Would that give you enough of a foot in Bunsen’s door?”

  To this point, all they’d traded was information; now, Carstairs was proposing action, a thing that could put Stuyvesant in his debt. “It would save me days of footwork,” Stuyvesant admitted slowly. Weeks, even. “But why would Grey do that? He doesn’t know me from Adam.”

  The smile returned, but the earlier flower of warmth had been replaced by something very cold indeed. “He would do it if I asked him.”

  “Doesn’t sound to me like your Captain Grey would be that enthusiastic about it.”

  “Mr. Stuyvesant, I assume that America’s enemies are like our own, serious and without qualms. If you’re going to go all polite and ethical on me, perhaps you ought to return to New York.”

  Stuyvesant replied lightly, “Oh, it’s not being a bastard that worries me. It’s just that forcing someone to help has a way of back-firing in your face.”

  “Perhaps, Mr. Stuyvesant, you haven’t tried the correct kind of force.” Carstairs dropped the stub of cigarillo to the ground and stepped on it. “So, would you care to come to Cornwall with me and ask him?”

  Stuyvesant turned away to survey a not terribly inspiring vista, pretending to consider the offer while in fact he was composing his face. He was badly taken aback by the first honest emotion he’d seen in the man—frankly, he wished he hadn’t seen it.

  What Carstairs had shown Stuyvesant, either inadvertently or on purpose, was clear, raw pleasure. The black eyes had sparkled, his heel had nearly danced as it came down on the smoldering tobacco; suddenly, Stuyvesant was as physically aware of the man as he would have been of a dog with bared teeth; he found that he had instinctively half turned to face him rather than have Carstairs at his back.

  “You need me to be there?”

  “If you’re going to pretend to be Captain Grey’s friend when you meet his sister, you ought at least know what he looks like and how he lives. And I can see no reason, once you have met him, why I should not give you further information on him. Some of it may prove useful when you are in conversation with his sister.”

  “You could just tell me now.”

  “Actually,” Carstairs said, sounding very final, “I’d prefer that you meet Captain Grey without, as it were, preconceptions. Afterwards, I will tell you all about him.”

  Stuyvesant couldn’t imagine why Carstairs was so almighty eager to take him to see this Grey. Did the man, unlike everyone else in the city, have nothing better to do than hare off to Cornwall? There was something going on here he wasn’t too sure about, some invisible trip wire in front of his toes.

  Still, it wasn’t like he had a whole lot of other choices on his plate.

  “Okay, if you think we need to go to Cornwall, I’ll go with you. When do we leave?”

  “Ten o’clock tomorrow evening.”

  The instructions that followed made it clear that Carstairs had the trip planned out before they met. Before they parted, Carstairs handed him the case, telling him that it contained a few items about the players in their little drama.

  “One last thing,” he said, his hands still locked on the handle.

  “What’s that?” Stuyvesant asked, fighting the urge to rip the thing out of the man’s hand.

  “His sister. I would request that you make it clear to Captain Grey that his sister is in considerable danger of finding herself enmeshed in a kind of political action that has, hmm, profound consequences. If he cares for her, he must intervene.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  Carstairs relinquished his hold on the case, and strolled away into the park.

  Stuyvesant was so eager to see the papers that he walked over to the nearest bench and took out his reading glasses, then and there. He found, however, that a few items was distressingly accurate. And those were, for the most part, about Lady Laura Hurleigh and Sarah Grey, with almost nothing about Richard Bunsen. And nothing at all concerning Bennett Grey.

  He folded away his glasses and tucked Carstairs’ case under his arm, making his way back to the library he’d been using that week, wrestling with his thoughts.

  Richard Bunsen, his suspect, was a Red trained in the use of explosives. And beyond the mere fact that he possessed the requisite skills, this was a man who had occupied a distinct niche in the military hierarchy: the tightly knit world of the sappers, who labored out of sight of their compatriots, burrowing in silence through the terrible wet earth, raising their thin props against the suffocating weight overhead. Once their secret tunnel reached enemy lines, the miners themselves would draw back, leaving the field to the demolitions man, to lay his charges and breach the enemy’s defenses from the hidden depths. The demo man worked with the miners, but not only was he an officer, he was also subtly apart, slightly above those of his own rank, in the aristocracy of the trenches. He had proved himself, time and again, as a man with icy resolve, unwavering focus, and the steadiest hands on the Front.

  Richard Bunsen had been that man. And not only had he survived, he appeared to be one of those rare men who’d had a good war: Despite injury and long service, he’d come through with his wits, his nerves, his body, and, most particularly, his reputation intact.

  And now, eight years after the war ended, thirty-two-year-old Richard Bunsen, decorated officer and passionate advocate of the working man, had managed to snare the daughter of one of the highest families in the land as his mistress. On the surface, an admirable sort of fellow, as was this enigmatic Captain Grey whom Stuyvesant would cross the country to see. Stuyvesant could only pray he didn’t actually come to like either man. It had happened before, that he liked his enemy, but it always made things tough.

  And in the other corner of the ring, he thought, Aldous Carstairs: behind-the-lines Intelligence major, whose mouth suggested debauchery and whose handshake spoke of distaste. A man Scotland Yard didn’t care to acknowledge. A man who for some inexplicable reason relished the idea of using force on Captain Bennett Grey. And the man who was, apparently, to be Stuyvesant’s confederate on these shores.

  He’d met men like Carstairs before, men who came to the world of Intelligence for the power. And occasionally, for the pleasure: During the War, Intelligence meant interrogations. In the years since, Stuyvesant had done his share of questioning, hard interrogations with weighty consequences. Enemies, as Carstairs had said, who were serious and without qualms. He’d used his fists when he had to—hard men required hard treatment, and sometimes the only way to get their respect was to beat it into them. But he’d never permitted one of his interrogations to descend into outright torture.

  And he’d never taken any pleasure from the process. He’d never enjoyed seeing a man broken. He’d never felt
bigger or happier or fulfilled when his opponent gave way.

  However, he’d seen men who did. Law enforcement, especially Intelligence, could provide a haven for such men.

  Men like Aldous Carstairs.

  In a lifetime of having to overlook the means in the interest of the end, he couldn’t remember ever having less enthusiasm about a colleague.

  Chapter Five

  THE INVADER CAME UP THE HILLSIDE TRACK, contemptuous of the mud clinging to its flanks and the fresh crumple in its left fender, souvenir of an encounter with the close-laid rock wall. Wheels that had begun the morning pristine from a garage-hand’s cloth wallowed through muck-filled ruts; a crack was spreading from the lower edge of the driver’s side wind-screen.

  The walls grew higher, the track narrower, every minute. An onlooker—say, someone standing before the lonely white building where the track came to its end—might think the motorcar headed for a final resting place, like a cork down the neck of its bottle: primitive green Cornwall tightening around this incongruous black manifestation of the Jazz Age.

  As though confirming the suspicion of its fate, the car vanished behind some trees. For a time, the only signs of life on the ancient green patchwork of fields were three ambling cows and a two-legged figure in red, moving rapidly down a slope half a mile away. The fitful sea breeze dropped; the eternal grumble of the nearest tin-mine workings emerged from the hush, punctuated by a snatch of sweet-voiced birdsong and the bawl of a calf.

  The verdant countryside into whose maw the car had apparently dropped was just about the end of the world as far as England was concerned—maps showed Land’s End proper a few miles to the south, but the track’s goal would meet the description for anyone but a surveyor: a small whitewashed stone cottage and its outbuildings, nestled into the breast of the last hill before the Atlantic.

  The whitewashed cottage was a very long way from anywhere.

  After a moment, the breeze picked up and the motorcar reemerged, shaking itself free of the copse. The carnivore growl of its engine noise deepened as the driver faced a steep bit, and smoothed out as the rise was breasted.

  Then came a particularly tight corner, following boundaries laid two thousand years before, which seemed a likely candidate for the rustic bottleneck to claim this shiny cork. The intruder spent a long time there, inching ahead and falling back, tires spinning, engine revving in futility. Finally, the passenger door opened with a crack against the stone wall and a tall figure in brown forced itself out, clambering over fender and stone to take up a position of guidance in front. Arms were waved, shouted instructions dispersed on the gentle breeze, as the motor inched first forward, then back, then forward again. Finally, with a roar of the engine and a screech of metal audible a mile away, the car muscled itself through the angle. As it crept alongside the brown figure, the passenger yanked open the door, paused to scrape one foot against the grassy verge, and folded himself back inside. The car started up again, closing on the cottage.

  Not until sixty feet from its goal did the rock walls finally drop away. The machine leaped ahead, eager as a lover, then slowed with an air of satisfaction at the lane’s end. A panicked chicken darted across the open yard. The motorcar braked, settling back on its wheels. Its engine shut off.

  All was still.

  The passenger flung open his door and climbed out, looking relieved. He walked over to survey the countryside, which the stone walls had hidden as they climbed the hill, and gave an admiring whistle at the long sweep of green on which civilization was thinly spread. “Damn. I never get tired of the views this country has to offer.”

  Three hundred miles from London, but it might have been three thousand—Cornwall was a different world. Harris Stuyvesant was a city boy by birth and by nature, Bowery-born and Manhattan-centered, but frankly, he was just as glad to be away from the English capital. He’d remembered liking it just fine on his way home from the Front back in ’19, but at present, London was little more than a drab, smoke-stained warren of angry, frightened people. The pedestrians were all grim and edgy, the men eyeing each other, the women’s laughter high and brittle. Even before Friday’s brawl with the demonstrator, the back of Stuyvesant’s neck had tingled with the expectation of sudden violence.

  On the other hand, this patch of countryside at the far edge of England, which under normal circumstances he’d have dismissed as empty space in need of a soda fountain and a good movie house, had a certain something. Even that penny-ante town of Penzance, walking along the sea-front while his companion had a shave (and calmed down—Jesus, the man’s tongue, verbally peeling flesh from the garage man when he found there was a car but no driver!), had seemed a genial human place of cobblestones, fishing masts, and grubby, grinning infants, as if it had never heard the word strike, never seen a coal miner, never been introduced to the idea of a union. He’d breathed in the clean reek of fish and seaweed, and felt his bunched muscles subside for the first time in weeks.

  Until he’d had to climb into that car with Aldous Carstairs.

  Now Carstairs got out, too, studying the farmyard until he was satisfied that his quarry was not there before he went to join the American.

  It was one of those bright spring days when the green of the new grass almost hurts the eyes, and the darker green of tree and hedgerow comes as a welcome relief. In the nearest field, each brown blade of the winter weeds stood out in sharp detail; the wind-blown daffodils blossoming in the protected lee of the stone wall might have been spatters of yellow paint.

  Stuyvesant traveled a slow circle, replacing the oppressive air of the motorcar with the fragrant, fresh stuff that flowed merrily into his lungs. Freed from the uneasy atmosphere of the car, he completed his circuit and was again facing the farm buildings: small, square stone house with fresh white surface and moss-heavy slate roof; a larger shed or small barn, bare of paint; and between them a clothes-line with two dish-cloths, a wood pile with a well-used chopping block, and a wired chicken-run. In the background, strips of freshly turned earth marked the beginnings of this year’s vegetable garden.

  The American lifted his sights past the walls to the middle view, studying a series of low rollicking shapes in the nearby field, half buried under grass and winter-dead brambles. “Looks like once upon a time there was a hell of a house over there,” he said, in the bumptious American manner he’d worn since Friday. “Although that must’ve been a while and a half ago, to leave only those foundations.”

  He never knew what the other man might have responded with, because the answer came from nowhere, and everywhere:

  “It is a city of the dead.”

  Chapter Six

  AS THE MOTORCAR CAME UP the rough track, the small man stood motionless in the shadow of the barn. He’d been uneasy all morning, aware of the world around him trembling like a soap bubble, about to wink out of existence; now he knew why. His nostrils flared as the chemical stink of the machine cut through the thick fragrance of spring, the sharp smell of chicken droppings from the bottom of his right shoe, and the warm animal odor trickling out of the little window overhead, ghostly reminder of the cow housed there ten years earlier.

  His ears told him the motor had been well maintained, although one of the pistons was firing a fraction late, and a part of the car’s fender was scraping a tire in the right-hand turns. He could also hear the distant distress of Jenks’ cow, which had encountered a motorcar on the road three years back and been nervous about them ever since. His own three chickens were scratching and clucking unconcernedly around the chopping block, not having yet noticed the intruder, but he’d heard the feral cat abandon the saucer of drippings at the back door to creep through the gap in the garden wall, where it could spy on the farmyard without being seen.

  His eyes told him nothing, since the motor was not yet in sight—but he did not require vision to know who was coming. He’d felt the pressure building for weeks now, and had known it was only a matter of time. If he’d been truly psychic, as the man c
oming for him wished, he’d have known the day before and quietly slipped away. Now, with the danger so close, flight seemed an outright declaration of cowardice.

  His grip tightened on the handle of the axe he had been using when the sound of the motor reached his ears, his fingertips reminding him of the growing weakness in the wood, straining fibers where a crack would eventually develop. He must replace it soon.

  If…

  He stayed in the shadow of the building until the sleek motorcar with the Penzance number plate oozed into the yard like honey laced with poison. The moment it appeared in the lane, the small man’s eyes went to the passenger, lumpish in appearance but betraying a very sensible, and commendable, mistrust of the man behind the wheel.

  The passenger, dressed in brown, was the first to emerge, his door flung open, a loud voice ringing through the small yard between white cottage and moss-covered shed. “Jesus H. Christ!” it exclaimed, in an accent as unmistakably American as its sentiments. “Haven’t these people ever heard of the automobile?”

  The man might have been chosen to illustrate the word Colonial. In his prime at about forty, he stood well over six feet tall, with shoulders to match his height. His movements were quick for a large man, suggesting restlessness beneath the surface. He looked at the world through a pair of cheerfully cynical blue eyes set in a face that was more interesting than handsome, with hastily assembled features—big nose, broad forehead, a pugnacious jaw offsetting his responsive mouth. Little dark dots along the left side of his face testified to an experience with shrapnel, and the line of his nose took one or two more turns than Nature had designed. His coarse light brown hair, untamed by oil and uncovered by hat, showed no trace of gray or of thinning. He hadn’t shaved that morning, although the stubble was pale; most eyes would have had to be close to see it.

  The American thrust his bare hands into the pockets of his tweed overcoat and walked off to look at the view, letting fly a sharp whistle. “Damn,” he said. “I never get tired of the views this country has to offer.”