Stranger in the Dark

by Nielsen, Helen

  So sure he was! So damned sure! Larry was almost grinning until the bedroom door swung open in his face….

  … He was a chubby little man with a round moon face and the evidence of a heavy, drugged sleep in his small eyes. He wore a uniform that looked as if it had been slept in for a couple of months and a pair of heavy hiking stockings where the boots should have been … the boots. It was Larry’s turn to look stricken, and McDonald’s turn to grin.

  “Mr. Willis,” he cooed in Larry’s ear, “allow me to introduce my distinguished guest, General Yukov.”

  … General Yukov! There was one terrible moment when all of the pieces, so carefully gathered and glued together with circumstantial evidence and a rival’s contempt, fell apart and went whirling through space like a disintegrating planet…. General Yukov! The foolish smile on that fat moon face at the sound of his name, the swift concern in those little eyes at the sight of an unexpected visitor—it really as General Yukov. McDonald hadn’t lied, and the incredible was true!

  “Sorry, Willis,” he said, at Larry’s shoulder. “I hate to disappoint you, and I rather liked your story. It appeals to my sense of humor.”

  It was nice to hear that Ira McDonald had a sense of humor, because it wasn’t in evidence when Larry pried his eyes away from the general and saw the gun that was pointed at his chest. All this time he’d been waiting to intercept that movement for the gun he knew McDonald had, but the shock of seeing Yukov where no Yukov could be had drained fear from his mind. But now the gun made no sense. Nothing made sense with the general really on the scene. Then Larry’s mind began to clear, and all of the swirling pieces fell back into place again with but one moon-faced alteration.

  “Then I was right about Hansen,” he said.

  “I’m afraid you were,” McDonald admitted.

  “And Valdemar guessed the truth, too.”

  “Valdemar never did like me.”

  “I can see his point.”

  Ira McDonald might be a fraud, but there was nothing phony about that gun in his hand. It gave everything he said a certain undeniable authority. “Back up against the wall,” he ordered. “Stand with your arms spread out and your palms flat.”

  “What happens now?” Larry asked.

  McDonald glanced at the clock again. “In a few minutes, everything. I don’t like running, Willis, not as a permanent occupation. A gamble’s a gamble, but death is too much of a sure thing. I knew that as soon as I recognized this seagoing hitchhiker.”

  McDonald paused to smile reassuringly at the general, but the smile he got in return was a bit on the wooden side.

  “You might have called a cop,” Larry suggested.

  “And have it noised around later that Ira McDonald deals in hot refugees?” McDonald looked offended. “I told you last night why I couldn’t go to the police. The trouble with you, Willis, is that you’re either too skeptical or too gullible. That was Hansen’s trouble, too. He wanted to go to the police as soon as he recognized that news photo. I wanted time to think out this new development.”

  “Even if you had to kill him to get it.”

  McDonald frowned. “You make it sound so cold-blooded,” he said. “Actually, I had no idea of how to keep Hansen quiet when I made that ten o’clock date. I was stalling for time. But on the way to keep it I saw him running along the street with that black sedan on his tail, and it gave me an idea. He ducked into a dark doorway after he left you and lost the sedan, but he didn’t lose me. I made a quick swing around the block and caught him when he came out.”

  With a gun in his hand McDonald didn’t have to be bashful, but the gun seemed to be troubling the general. He watched the scene with anxious eyes. Did he understand what was happening? The gun he must understand, the gun that held a man pinned against the wall….

  “Then the American Embassy is out,” Larry said, in a loud voice.

  “It was never in,” McDonald admitted. “I only mentioned it to appeal to your Midwestern instincts. Wave the flag and the Boy Scout marches out of the corn every time.”

  “And Carlsberg’s out, too. He’s just going off on a wild-goose chase.”

  “The sea air will do him good. He’s been confined to that hotel too long. I had to get rid of him some way.”

  That left only one answer. One way or another, the general had to be off McDonald’s hands before Maren Lund could go on a honeymoon, and Larry didn’t need a crystal ball to understand what he was waiting for or why he had waited so long.

  “Then you must have found a higher bidder,” he said, “or was it Valdemar who found her?”

  McDonald smiled. “I’m a fair man,” he said. “I’m willing to give credit where credit is due. I knew there must be a comrade in the cast somewhere, or that black sedan wouldn’t have been on Hansen’s tail so soon after the escape news broke, but I didn’t know how to make contact until Valdemar identified the phony widow last night. As you say, too much cognac is dangerous, particularly for a talkative man.”

  Still smiling, McDonald took a cigarette from a box on the desk and offered it to Yukov. “Be my guest,” he said, and the general smiled again. It was touching. The condemned man and the grand gesture. Apparently Larry didn’t have enough rank. He rated no gesture at all.

  “For God’s sake, can’t you see what he’s doing?” he shouted. “He’s selling you out! He’s sending you straight back to that firing squad!”

  It was wasted breath. Yukov couldn’t understand English, and Ira McDonald held the gun.

  “I said flat against the wall,” he ordered, “and shut up! I think someone’s coming!”

  There were footsteps in the hall and then a sharp knock at the door. McDonald’s eyes never left Larry. He backed across the room and reached behind him to turn the latch. “This is it,” he said. “This is where Ira McDonald collects his reward and gets rid of his big headache.”

  He was right. He was still half turning to greet the new arrival when the door swung open and exploded in his face.

  19.

  LARRY WAS PLASTERED AGAINST THE WALL WHERE ALL HE could see was the crazy way McDonald danced backward as he fell. The gunfire blast was deafening, and the shock of it like instantaneous paralysis. Only the paralysis saved him. There was time for a brief glimpse of white in the doorway, and then the door slammed shut and the hall echoed with the sound of running footsteps.

  “No, wait!” cried the general. “There is a man here—” The paralysis left as quickly as it had come. General Yukov didn’t get to shout another word of that language he wasn’t supposed to know because his mouth was suddenly full of Larry’s fist. One blow and he wasn’t even twitching when Larry left. McDonald wasn’t twitching either. He never would.

  Outside, the hall was blossoming with startled faces, but Larry had no time to explain the mess on McDonald’s carpet. The elevator had just gone down with a passenger who insisted on the ancient right of finders-keepers, and even by taking the stairs two at a time he would find only an empty cage on the ground floor. The street outside the apartment house was empty. Nobody would walk away from a job like that. But the street led to a place Larry knew pretty well by this time, a place that wasn’t empty or deserted, and for this night’s tour he needed no guide…. It was easy to get lost in the crowd at Tivoli Gardens, but not quite so easy when you knew about a fairy tale set to music. Not quite so easy when you knew about the princess with the white dress and the crown of stars in her hair….

  A was for Anna—you could read the name on one of the program posters outside the entrance, or get it off a photograph on a dead man’s desk. A was for a ballerina who danced on the stage of a Chinese-looking theater inside the gardens and picked up extra cash doing favors for an American who invited the wrong people to his party. A was for the widow Holger Hansen didn’t have…. The theater was dark by the time Larry elbowed his way through a Saturday-night crowd that didn’t want to go home. The last performance had ended long ago, but there must be someone backstage who could prov
ide an address for an insistent man. There must be a janitor, or a doorman, or a shapely blonde waiting alone by the dark stage door….

  The night was full of surprises, and A was for Anna.

  For an incredible moment, Larry couldn’t speak. He’d run all the way. His heart was beating like a tom-tom, and his breath came in gasps, but a woman who didn’t want the general back was waiting as calmly as if she’d sent out invitations. She wasn’t wearing white. She was wearing dark street clothes and an expression that turned even darker when he finally found a few stammering words.

  “Jeg kan ikke forstaa,” she protested. “Jeg kan ikke forstaa Engelsk.”

  There were a few things Larry couldn’t understand in any language, but he wasn’t going to fall for that dodge twice in one night.

  “Save your breath,” he muttered. “General Yukov couldn’t understand English either until your former employer caught a face full of lead. Who were you supposed to be in McDonald’s masquerade, Madame Curie?”

  Anna didn’t look at all scientific. “McDonald?” she echoed.

  “McDonald,” Larry repeated, “the late Ira McDonald, that is. No, don’t bother trying to look innocent, Frue Hansen. I got the whole story just before McDonald died … except for one small detail. Even a smart operator can get careless when he smells a profit.”

  Gullible, the man said! How gullible could you get? A headline general who couldn’t speak English but could yell it like a native when an assassin overlooked an unexpected witness! A headline refugee who just happened to board one particular fishing boat on one particular voyage! Add them together and they meant a funeral for any fool more interested in the top price for hot cargo than in the source of the heat. The picture was real clear now that the pieces were glued into place with McDonald’s blood.

  “It must have been embarrassing to have Yukov thrown back in your face after all the thought that went into making his escape look genuine,” Larry added. “But you couldn’t refuse McDonald’s terms, could you? That would have given away the whole plot. The only way out was to play along with him and then make the pay-off in lead.”

  “Jeg kan ikke forstaa,” she said again. She tried to shy off toward the deep shadowed shrubbery a few yards away, but Larry’s fingers were wearing grooves in her arm.

  “… In lead,” he repeated, “because a dead McDonald is just a big hero who lost his life protecting a V.I.P. ex-Commie who’s ready to bare his repentant soul to any government foolish enough to believe a word he says. But he won’t get away with it, Anna. I was in that room when McDonald was blasted, and everything I saw is going to be official when you give your memoirs to a man named Martinus Sorensen.”

  It was peculiar how quiet the night was when he stopped talking. A few hundred feet distant a carefree crowd was still strolling the lighted paths and lingering over the little tables, but in the darkness behind a theater that was closed for the night it was as silent as a cemetery. And Anna wasn’t co-operative. She might at least have looked frightened. She might at least have smothered her smile.

  Larry almost guessed the reason. “Who are you waiting for?” he demanded. “Where’s the ugly cousin with the black sedan?”

  She didn’t answer. Only the silence answered, the silence and the sound of a breaking twig. Larry whirled about, but it was no ugly cousin who came toward him out of the shadows. White. Just a glimpse of white, that’s all he’d seen in the doorway. Valdemar was right. It was atrocious taste to wear a white dinner jacket this far north.

  “Sorry, Willis,” Sheldon Garth said, “but I warned you to keep out of deep waters.”

  Once upon a time a man who knew all about tractors, and harvesters, and other harmless things, went off to a distant land and was very lonely … but never so lonely as the moment when Sheldon Garth loomed up in the darkness like a snow-capped mountain in that ice-cream coat. The gun in his hand must still be warm from the job it had just done on McDonald, and there was no percentage in silencing one man just to leave another who could speak his piece. With a girl in his arms Larry wasn’t quite so lonely, not when she stood between him and that gun. She was the cold type. She didn’t seem to enjoy this backward embrace, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the way Sheldon Garth wasn’t impressed.

  “You’ll never use a woman for a shield when the shooting starts,” he scoffed. “You’re not the type.”

  Larry knew he must be on the verge of hysteria. He wanted to laugh. Sheldon Garth, the efficient secretary! Sheldon Garth, with no concern but an old man who was careless with his money!

  “You can’t be too sure about types,” he said. “Look at Carlsberg. He hunts termites everywhere but in his own house.”

  Insults didn’t upset Garth any more than holding his girl friend in front of that gun.

  “Otto Carlsberg is a frightened man,” he said quietly, “and frightened men are the easiest to fool. They’re really indispensable to the cause.”

  “Cause!” Larry sputtered. “Don’t tell me you’re one of the dedicated!”

  “Oh, but I am,” Garth insisted. “Dedicated to me … just like everybody else I’ve met in this world. Just like Ira McDonald. Now there was a man with a real big fear on his back, Willis. Scared to death of missing out on a good thing. All I had to do was drop a few hints, and he thought the scheme to take Carlsberg for ten thousand was all his own idea…. Do you really intend to make me kill Anna, too?”

  Calm, he was. Calm as an accountant with a set of balanced books. Calm as a man who could break into a stranger’s hotel room without apology and steal the knife from a dead man’s chest while a crowd looked on.

  “Greeks bearing gifts!” Larry muttered. “I should have known you didn’t risk your neck getting my knife back just so I could help protect Carlsberg’s investment!”

  “Wrong again,” Garth said. “The old man paid for General Yukov, and I had to make sure he got what he paid for. As it turned out, I didn’t need your help. When McDonald realized what a prize he had on his hands, he started thinking for himself and he wasn’t equipped for it…. Am I boring you, Willis? Just be patient. The fireworks start any moment now.”

  If Garth was bluffing, Anna didn’t know it. Holding her in position was like trying to hold an armful of eels. Friendship didn’t seem to go far in the game these two were playing. What was another life when the stakes were so high? But that gun Garth was holding could make an awful lot of noise, and there must be one life that was important to him.

  “Are you crazy?” Larry cried. “If you shoot me here, you’ll have a crowd on your neck in ten seconds!”

  “Thirty seconds,” Garth murmured, glancing at the radium dial on his wrist. “They’re very prompt in this country…. Do you like fireworks, Willis?”

  “You’ll never get past the turnstiles! You’ll never make that yacht before it sails!”

  Sheldon Garth might have been deaf. “I’ve always liked fireworks,” he added, “ever since I was a kid and couldn’t afford any of my own. Funny, isn’t it? Now I work for a man who’s made a fortune just because some people’s dogs eat better than other people’s children.”

  There seemed to be something about having a gun in his hand that made a man want to tell the story of his life … and then Larry understood. Fireworks! It was Saturday night, and every guidebook and poster advertised fireworks at Tivoli Gardens on Saturday night! Come see the spectacle! Come see the rockets and flares and bombs bursting in air … and pay no attention to a few extra explosions in the darkness. This was what Garth was waiting for: fireworks at eleven forty-five and then a casual stroll through the turnstiles without an eye on him. A fast cab would reach the yacht in time. No need to stay for the funeral.

  But without hope caution was too much of a luxury. Thirty seconds, the man said. Not much time to make one desperate try for an old age. They were gone before Larry finished the thought.

  The first screaming rocket burst in a shower of falling stars at the same instant Larry released t
he squirming Anna. It wasn’t exactly a case of releasing her; it was more a case of hurling her at the flare-whitened face of a man who could be surprised in spite of all that iron-jawed nerve. Anna screamed, and the shot went wild. Being a guided missile wasn’t in this ballerina’s repertoire, and having a gun explode in her ear wasn’t her idea of accompaniment. Larry had no time to see where she went when Garth flung her aside, but he could tell by her attitude that they were having the next waltz alone.

  It was a fast waltz. Fast and close and set to the tempo of a gun that spoke only when the rockets spoke. Larry didn’t count the shots; he didn’t even hear them. He didn’t hear the rockets or the bombs or the approving murmur of a distant crowd that was missing the big show. All he could hear was the way a man grunted when a fist plowed into his stomach, and all he could see was the way a man’s face twisted with pain and disbelief when just another target for oblivion refused to stand still or obligingly open the door. Calm, he was! Calm as a man who knows all the answers but the big one! … How do you kill a man who’s forgotten what it is to die?

  Garth went down and the glare faded, but Larry could see the white jacket writhing in the dust. His fists found the flesh behind it. One for Valdemar, one for Hansen, one for a girl who would weep over Ira McDonald. … His foot found the gun and kicked it out of reach. One for an old man who tried to pay his debts, and a few more just for Larry Willis…. Time enough for the gun when he’d finished with this customer. Larry Willis always had liked to make a sale.

  The sky was as bright as a sunset in hell when Larry finally stopped pounding that not so white heap in the dust. He staggered to his feet, feeling a little sick now that it was all over, but not half as sick as he felt when he looked around for the gun. A pair of big feet were planted where the gun should have been. Big feet for a big man. Larry almost screamed before the gold-plated smile broke through like sunshine after the storm.