A taxi took them to the address he gave, far out in the sprawling Maryland suburbs of the capital, and it was after ten o’clock when they halted a block from Art Greenwald’s apartment.
Calculated risk, he thought.
There was a time to stand alone, and a time to call for help. He did not know if his appeal would be answered. He paid off the cab with the last of his currency and helped Corinne to the sidewalk. The girl leaned heavily against him. If the cabby was curious, he contained himself, accepted his tip, and drove off, not too fast, not too slow. The street was quiet, sunny, deserted.
“Can you walk to the corner?” he asked Corinne.
Her face was like a grotesque mask under the bandages and the make-up. Her breathing was quick and shallow, and her hand on his arm felt cool and wet.
“Corinne?”
"Yes, Roger,” she mumbled. “I’m coming, darling."
He checked a reply and began walking toward the redbrick colonial apartment house where Art Greenwald lived. A milk truck went by on silent tires. A baby wailed. He knew he should be on the lookout for an official visitor at Art’s, but it was too late for caution now.
The lobby felt cool, and when he rang the bell he leaned against the stone wall, supporting Corinne, and he did not hear the answering buzz until it was twice repeated. The Greenwald apartment was on the third floor, reached by a self-service elevator. When he helped Corinne into the upper hallway, he saw Rosalie Greenwald in the open doorway of her flat.
As the slight, dark-haired woman recognized him, surprise gave way to bright hatred in her wide brown eyes.
chapter EIGHTEEN
DURELL SUPPORTED Corinne with the last of his strength. A wave of darkness washed over him. “Help her,” he mid Rosalie.
The small, dark-haired woman looked incredulous. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve got to see Art.”
“There’s nothing here for you. Nothing you can say to Art. You tried to kill him, and he thought you were his best friend "
“Is that what Art says?”
“No, but—”
“For God‘s sake, let us in!”
Art Greenwald’s deep voice came querulously from an inner room. Rosalie bit her lip. She looked at Corinne with dawning astonishment, shock, pity. “My dear . . .”
She helped Durell carry her inside. The apartment was small, comfortably furnished, chintzy. The shades were drawn against the mounting morning heat. There was the smell of fresh coffee, of bacon and eggs; and he saw that Rosalie wore a kitchen apron on which she nervously dried her hands.
“Put her in Mother’s room. It‘s all right—she’s gone to Philadelphia. I'll call a doctor.”
“Wait until I see Art. We need one we can trust.”
“Do the police still want you?”
Durell nodded. “Corinne, too.”
“What—what happened to her?”
“Some people asked her a few questions—with gestures.”
Rosalie licked her full lips. “And you?”
“Same thing. Not so bad.”
They were interrupted as Durell helped Corinne into bed. Art Greenwald stood in pajamas, his arm and shoulder in crisp white bandages. “Sam! For God’s sake, Sam!”
Durell gave him a level stare. “I had no other place to go, Art. I need help. The girl needs care.”
“It’s all right, Sam.”
“You have a choice,” Durell said. “You can call the cops or McFee, if you feel you should. I won’t stop you now.”
“Ah, shut up!”
“I hate to bring the risk of trouble to you this way.”
“You crazy Cajun, I don’t know what you’re doing or why, but it’s all right with me. Rosalie?”
Art’s wife looked up sharply from Corinne’s limp figure on the bed. Her face was ashen, and horror crawled in her normally gentle eyes. “What kind of people did this to that poor girl?”
“People I’m after,” Durell said. “I’m going to get them. I know how to do it now. But I need help. You can help me, Art. It’s important. We can—”
“Right now you need to hit the sack.”
“I don’t think there’s time.”
“You’re dead beat,” Art said grimly. “You can use my bed. I’ll get Doc Frye to look at both of you. I’ll tell him it’s departmental and confidential business. He’ll keep quiet about it.”
Durell felt the room slowly turning underfoot. There was no further resistance in him. He heard Rosalie’s sudden cry of alarm as he slid down into a cool place of darkness that had been waiting for him. . . .
He awoke to see a stranger wearing glasses standing over him, and he felt the prick of a needle in his arm.
“How is the girl, Doctor?”
“How do you feel?”
“I want to get up.”
“The girl may be all right. Art tells me not to ask questions. But it seems to me you’ve been dealing with savages.”
“Yes,” Durell said.
“Get some sleep. You’re exhausted. Nothing else serious.”
“Is Art around? I’ve got to—”
The face withdrew, the room darkened, and he slept. He heard voices now and then, and gradually he dreamed, and he was with Deirdre in a strange place, a plain that stretched from horizon to horizon, arid and endless as far as the eye could see. At least, he thought it was Deirdre, until she turned to face him with the slow pirouette of a ballet dancer, and he saw the bloody, evil mask she wore over her face. He cried out and struck at the loathsome mask, and she laughed and ran away from him. Her laughter was the tinkling of silver bells that echoed to the wide, naked horizon. He chased her. From out of the dry, dusty earth sprang a chain of naked men and women, all masked, holding hands and barring his way as he tried to follow Deirdre. Their laughter built a wall of battering waves against him. He looked from a silver mask to a gold mask to one that dripped great gouts of blood. Deirdre was lost among all these masked, nude people. Overhead, the sun turned blue and then red and burned down upon his head with an intolerable weight. The chattering clamor from the masked people had the unreal, parrotty quality of a flight of birds. He could not see Deirdre’s mask among them. He shouted at the grotesque horrors that leered and jeered at him. Something struck him lightly across the chest. It was a whip. The lashing sting came again, and then something exploded in his eyes and his hands came up instinctively, clawing at his face, and he felt the unreality of the mask that covered his face, too. . . .
He awoke, sweating, trembling, a scream dying in his throat.
Deirdre sat beside the bed, and for a moment he was confused between the dream and reality. The room was dimly lighted. It was hot. Deirdre was not aware of his wakening, and he did not move, watching her as his mind cleared and the nightmare faded. She sat quietly in a slipper chair, hands in repose on her lap, her dark-red hair gleaming in the subdued light of the bedside lamp. She wore a print cotton suit of lime-colored twill, and a dark-green pin glinted on her lapel. She looked cool and composed, except for the small frown incised between the delicate wings of her brows. She was listening to Rosalie’s voice in muted argument coming from another room in the apartment.
Durell stirred and she looked quickly at him, anxiety at once evident in her wide eyes, in the touch of her hand on his stubbled cheek.
“Sam? You were dreaming. . . ."
“How did you get here?"
“Art called me, through Sidonie. He told me how you showed up here with Corinne this morning. How do you feel?”
“Not too bad. And Corinne?”
“Under a sedative. How did that happen to her, Sam?”
He had no wish to tell her. “What time is it?”
She looked at the small gold watch he had given her for her birthday, a month ago; it seemed as if that day and time belonged to another century on another planet. “It’s nine-thirty.”
“Nobody followed you here?”
“I was very careful. I’ve been here for hours.�
�
“I’m grateful.”
She smiled. “You’re going to make it all right, aren’t you?”
“As soon as I’ve showered and shaved and eaten.”
“The doctor says you’re to stay in bed until tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow may be too late.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, winced as numerous bruises made their presence known, and felt the pull and strain of stiffened muscles all through his body. Rosalie’s voice ended abruptly, as if she had heard the bed creak. Durell saw that fresh clothing for him had been folded over a nearby chair. “Ask Rosalie to make some coffee,” he suggested. “I’ll only be ten minutes.”
Deirdre was concerned. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
He kissed her, meaning to be brief, but her lips clung to his and her arms held him tight with a desperate embrace and he felt a trembling go through her. “I was so afraid for you,” she whispered. “Sam, darling—you drove me away deliberately, didn’t you?”
“I had to,” he said. A weight lifted from him. “It was best.”
Her eyes were shining. “And it’s all right now?“
“We’ll make it all right.”
“I want to help,” she said.
“And I need your help. Get the coffee going.”
Ten minutes later he sat in the kitchen with the shades drawn, freshly shaved, showered, dressed in the clothing Deirdre had brought for him. The sleep induced by the doctor’s sedative had helped him. He knew that the stiffness and aches in him would Work out shortly. Rosalie, at the window, watched him with a measure of reservation in her dark eyes. Now and then she looked quickly at Art, as if unable to understand Art’s unhesitating acceptance of what Durell was saying. Durell, as he told them what he wanted to do and what help he would need, felt a lift of gladness that the nightmare of outcast loneliness was almost over. He was not alone. These were his friends, who believed in What he was and had been. In Art there was loyalty; in Deirdre there was love. Not alone, he told himself. Not ever. You can put on all sorts of masks, but those who truly know you will always recognize you and speak your name to you in tones of friendship.
Art was frowning. “Sam, I don’t know how we can swing it. You know what security is like at Number Twenty.”
“I’ve got to get in there,” Durell said.
“And the missing file?”
“We get that first.”
“Suppose it isn’t where you think it is?”
“It can’t be anywhere else. I’ll need your car, Art.”
“Sure.”
“When does the night guard on the roof come on? At twelve?”
“This week, yes.” Art nodded.
“Then we have two hours. Give me the car keys.”
“Uh-uh. I’ll drive.”
Durell nodded. “Deirdre?”
“I’m coming, too.”
He looked up at Rosalie and wondered why Art’s wife said nothing. “Rosalie, will you call McFee at exactly twelve-fifteen? No sooner, no later."
“Yes,” she said.
chapter NINETEEN
ART’S CAR was a three-year-old Chevrolet sedan, dusty and worn by shopping trips and children’s restless feet. Durell sat beside Deirdre as Art drove. The road was familiar. Here was where it had started, forty-eight hours ago, on this winding Virginia country lane. Here was where he had first spotted the following car, and up there was the white barricade where the bridge was washed out. And there was the ravine, just beyond. Memory flooded back and he saw again the terror in Corinne’s eyes as they fled into the brush before their silent pursuers. Here was where it started to go wrong. Here he could begin to set it right.
The lane was deserted. Katydids sang and crickets shrilled in the treetops. Moonlight made a quicksilver pattern on the tiny stream far below. Durell got out of the car, followed by Deirdre and Art.
“This where you were slugged?” Art asked.
“A little farther down the slope. The envelope should be in the brush down there, between that clump of bushes and the bottom of the ravine. It hasn’t rained since, so it ought to be all right.”
“Jesus, I hope so,” Art said. “But we could use a dozen men to search this place and do it right.”
Each of them had a flashlight. Durell went sliding down to the clump of birches where he had been trapped. There were still traces of trampled brush and flattened grass where they had struggled. He flicked the flashlight here and there. Nothing. A white stone gleamed and his pulse jumped until he discovered it was just a stone. No envelope. He circled wider, using a pattern with Art and Deirdre. Their lights poked and prodded and swept in tight, jabbing circles. The brush was dark and forbidding. The katydids sang. Below, the creek chuckled over smooth rocks.
Nothing.
For twenty minutes he Worked his way back and forth across the steep slope, moving downward reluctantly, tracing the path he had made when he slipped and rolled down to the edge of the creek two nights ago. Here and there a broken branch, a trampled shrub showed him the path he had followed. He listened to the swift run of the creek. White water frothed at his feet. This was where he had come to and found Jones, the M.I. man, and Amos Hackett standing over him. He was sure this was the spot. And he had found nothing.
Corinne didn’t have it, Gibney didn’t have it, Hackett didn’t have it. It had to be here. But it wasn’t here.
Art came up to him, lowering his light. “Sam?”
“This is the place,” Durell said.
“Your pocket was ripped? The one you put the file in?”
“It fell out when I fell downhill."
“How long were you out?”
“Half an hour. Maybe more.”
“Could they have moved you, carried you somewhere else?”
“I don’t know,” Durell said. He pulled himself together. “We’ll keep looking. Deirdre, you and Art go downstream. I’ll see what’s up above. We’ll take another half hour. “
He knew he was groping in the dark; and he saw no light ahead.
The sound of a gushing waterfall touched him a few moments later. The steep banks of the ravine fell away and the brush thinned, revealing the gentle roll of a wide field placid under the moonlight. The waterfall was only ten feet high, and a narrow wooden footbridge spanned the creek above. Durell looked back. The probing gleam of Deirdre’s light was lost to sight. He climbed the bank, ‘feeling the cold spray against his face, and crossed the footbridge.
The figure of a man or a boy stood on the opposite bank, waiting for him. ”
“All right, mister. Stand where you are!”
Durell halted. Moonlight traced a liquid finger on the barrel of a shotgun pointed at him.
“Where are your friends?” he was asked.
“Downstream.”
“Find what you’re looking for?”
Durell drew a deep breath. “Not yet.”
“Come over here. Slow and easy. You got a gun, you better not go for it. I can pick off a crow at a hundred feet. I ain’t braggin’, because my dad tells me never to brag. It’s just a fact, mister. Be careful.”
“All right,” Durell said.
Moonlight touched the other’s face. A boy, about seventeen, in blue denims and checked shirt, a long-billed blue naval cap pushed back over dark hair. A grim, youthful face. He stood with his feet apart, balanced on a shelf of rock above the footpath. Beyond him, the lights of a farmhouse gleamed on the other side of the field.
“I been watching for you since last night, mister.
“You found my envelope?”
“It ain‘t yours," said the boy. “It’s the government’s. A rat like you, I ought to fill your belly with shot. I seen your picture in the papers. Dad saw it, too. hunky I was down here huntin’ for crows. I hunt a lot. I’m a good shot. I found what you’re lookin’ for, mister.”
“Good,” Durell said.
“You might change your mind. Put your hands behind your neck and march, mister."
“Don
‘t get excited,“ Durell said evenly.
The boy said resentfully, “I told Dad you’d show up. I told him I was bound to be right about you. And here you are.”
“Have you turned the envelope over to the police yet?”
“Shut up. Walk ahead of me.”
“Gladly,” Durell said.
The path followed a clump of oaks beside the creek, then skirted the field toward the farm that lay peacefully under the August moon. The boy trudged doggedly at his heels, and Durell did not need to turn around to know that the shotgun was aimed at the small of his back. He felt elation, suppressed it; he had been right, but he didn’t have the file yet.
The farmhouse was sprawling, with freshly painted barns and sheds across the dooryard, well-kept fences, and the smell of hay and silage in the hot night air. Lights glowed in the windows. A horse nickered in the nearby pasture. Durell paused. “Where now?”
“Inside. They’re waiting for you.”
His elation faded. “Who is waiting?”
“The government people. They came at suppertime.” The youngster grinned tightly. “What’s the matter, mister? Scared of what Uncle Sam is gonna do to you for being a lousy spy?”
“What’s your name?” Durell asked suddenly.
“Tommy. Tom Henderson."
“Your father runs this farm?”
“Sure. I told you—”
“Anybody else in the family?”
“Mom. My kid brother. I found the envelope yesterday, like I said. Dad kept it and finally called the people you used to work for.”
Durell turned in the face of the shotgun. His intense manner threw the boy off guard. “Who, exactly, did he call?”
“I dunno,” the boy muttered. “Your boss, I think.”
“General McFee?"
“I dunno, I tell you. Now get—”
Durell jumped. The boy wasn’t quite ready for it. He knocked the shotgun aside and slammed a forearm across the boy’s white face. Tommy went bowling over into the dust. The shotgun did not go off. The boy started to yell and Durell applied the pressure of a thumb against the boy’s throat and Tommy’s eyes bugged and the sound died strangling in his larynx.
Assignment - Treason Page 15
