House of Cards

by Stanley Ellin

  And finally there was the terrifying thought of the shadow over Paul. No matter how de Gonde tried to close his mind to the inevitable, if Louis’ killer were someone Paul could identify, sooner or later that killer would try to get rid of this witness against him, child or not.

  But it was no use standing helplessly while events were directed to their climax by the enemy. I knew my objectives. I had to start moving toward them before it was too late to make any move at all.

  From the window, I had a depressing view of one of the obstacles confronting me.

  The window overlooked a terrace at the rear of the building. A formal garden had been laid out on the terrace, but it was arid and untended, its hedges ragged and only a few clumps of flowers showing their withered heads. There was no water spraying from the fountain in the center of the garden, the basin of the fountain was empty, and on its rim sat a couple of the Foreign Legion paratroop types I had encountered the night before, each with a rifle propped between his knees. In contrast to this warlike display, the rolling terrain beyond the garden was green with vineyards which filled the warm, sunshiny air with a fragrance of ripening grapes. Only a few straw-hatted workers could be seen among the vineyards, and these, I was sure, must be loyal members of the Comte de Laennac’s cadre of the OEI. It would be dangerous to employ others this close to headquarters.

  I went out into the hall and made a tour of the second-floor corridors, under surveillance. A guard was loitering outside my door and stayed close behind me as I went along the corridor so that it was impossible to take even one step unobserved.

  From the Gothic look of it, I surmised that the Château Laennac had been built in the Middle Ages, although it must have been restored a few times since then. The varying height and width of different passageways were clues to that, as well as the way I suddenly found myself going up or down a couple of steps to a different level on the same floor. And it had been a long time since the last cleaning up and repair of the place. The walls were all whitewashed plaster and all uniformly grimy with neglect; the wooden flooring was scuffed and dirty.

  This was in keeping with the impression I had gotten of the downstairs rooms the night before. Everything decaying with time; furniture finished with brocades and petit point so worn that their original patterns had faded beyond recognition; and cavernous fireplaces with pitifully small fires in them that couldn’t possibly take the chill out of the air. Outdoors the Côte d’Or was in the grip of early summer heat. Inside the chateau one got the feeling that no heat had penetrated these walls for centuries. Monsieur le Comte and his wife seemed used to this. The family, wrapped in sweaters and shawls, shuddered at it, and I shuddered with them.

  The final turn of the second-floor corridor I was following led to an embrasure overlooking the driveway in front of the building. From this vantage point I could see Georges, in hip boots and with garden hose in hand, washing down the Mercedes. And where the driveway entered the aisle of cypresses leading to the highway beyond was another familiar figure briskly walking along. Bernard Bourdon.

  Since these two were the only people in sight, I wondered if the driveway itself wouldn’t be the easiest route for anyone trying to make a getaway from the house. Then I saw how wrong I was about that. From behind the cypresses a dog suddenly lunged at Bernard, a snarling fury held on leash by a man who was almost dragged off his feet by the dog’s efforts to get at its intended victim. Bernard laughingly dodged away from it, and when the man shouted a command the dog immediately went down low on its belly, pulling steadily against the choking constraint of the leash, barking thunderously, but no longer trying to leap to the attack.

  The barking was answered from several directions. I saw another dog at the far end of the driveway, this one without a handler, detected at least three more slinking through the greenery on either side of the cypress avenue. A few seconds later, after Bernard had disappeared among the trees, there was nothing at all to be seen or heard along the borders of the estate; it was hard to believe there might be anything more than a few harmless rabbits in that greenery. But I knew better now. The boundaries of the estate were hermetically sealed. Even if I managed to get out of the house, there was no way of getting any distance from it on foot in one unbloodied piece.

  Could I get through that front door at all? I went downstairs and saw that the door was open, no doubt to invite some warmth into this bleak interior. A couple of men lounged in the doorway. They watched me incuriously as I came up, but when I indicated I wanted to pass by, one braced his leg across the doorway and the other patted the pistol butt in his shoulder holster in warning.

  In my mood of bottled-up violence, this temptation was too much to resist. I swept a hand under the ankle of that leg across the doorway, lifting it high so that its owner had to balance on one foot, teetering wildly and clutching at the door to keep from falling. At the same instant, I caught hold of the other man’s wrist with my free hand, jamming it against his chest so that he couldn’t draw his gun.

  It was a foolhardy thing to do—it was like grabbing a pair of ravening tigers by the tail—and almost immediately I released both men and stepped back to show that it was all in the spirit of good clean fun, no harm intended. I smiled, and after a taut moment the pair smiled back at me, the one with the gun motioning with it at the door as if to say that since I was so determined to take a look at the world from the outside, it was all right with him.

  I did step outside, so I learned my lesson the hard way. A third man was concealed on the other side of the doorway; he neatly tripped me as I went through the door, I pitched forward on the driveway, landing on my hands and knees, and, before I could get to my feet, was viciously kicked in the ribs. The impact of that heavy boot drove the air out of my lungs. I remained on hands and knees, gasping for breath, waiting for the next kick to shatter my ribs.

  All this while, not a word had been spoken. We might have been acting out a pantomime for the benefit of Georges, a one-man audience, who leaned against the Mercedes nearby, following the action without interest. The three guards and myself were performers on this quiet, sunlit stage, and Georges was plainly bored with the performance. He made a gesture, and still badly winded I was hauled upright and steered back into the building by a gun digging into my spine. The show was over. If I hadn’t grasped the point of it, Georges was telling me in effect, that would be my bad luck later on.

  While I was regaining my breath in the entrance hall, cursing myself for not resisting temptation, a small car skittered to a halt in front of the building. From it emerged a tall, lean man, gray-haired, leathery, bristling with energy, and a handsome blonde girl, hollow-eyed and exhausted. At second glance I recognized them as a couple I had met at the dinner party de Gonde had given for Charles Leschenhaut—Colonel Jesse Hardee, late of the United States Army, and his German wife—and their presence here in this OEI nest now made plain what their relationship to de Gonde was.

  The colonel marched through the door, his wife trailing behind, and one of the guards brought up the rear, their luggage under his arms. When the colonel saw me, he strode over to shake hands heartily.

  “So you’ve joined the team,” he said.

  That meant he had the impression I was an active member of the OEI cabal. I didn’t intend to waste the opportunity this offered.

  “I guess I did,” I told him.

  “Fine, fine. Claude told me you were hanging fire, but I knew you’d sign on sooner or later. What the hell’s your name again?”

  “Davis. Reno Davis.”

  “I’ll remember it after this. Look, son, you know the language, so do me a favor and tell that man to get Mrs. Hardee and those bags up to our room on the double. And tell him to have somebody from the kitchen bring her a pot of black coffee and some toast to settle her stomach. Tell him real toast, too; not a hunk of bread shoved into the fireplace on a fork.”

  After I had followed instructions, and Mrs. Hardee had been led upstairs, the colonel shook his
head commiseratingly.

  “Poor Clara won’t get that channel crossing out of her system for the rest of the day No plane departures from London yesterday, so we had to settle for the boat. What’s this hurry call about anyhow? And why here instead of Paris?”

  “De Gonde is the one to tell you about it,” I answered. “Meanwhile, how about some breakfast yourself?”

  “I could stand some. Do you think you could tell them how to make ham and eggs American style? Clara never could because she doesn’t know a damn thing about American cooking herself. You know, I’m really glad we got together this way, Davis. I’ve thought of you a few times since that party for Leschenhaut. I might have a red-hot proposition for you.”

  There was a long refectory table in the dining room with a few places set at it. I gave the colonel’s order to the servant in charge, along with the recipe for ham and eggs américain. Since I was an old hand at this—I had learned from Jeanloup at the Café au Coin what French peculiarities must be overcome in order to make a breakfast taste American—the dish presented to the colonel was an unqualified success. At least it was to judge by the way it loosened his tongue.

  He talked steadily and passionately through mouthfuls of food, and I hoped no one else would enter the dining room while he was at it. By contributing an occasional nod to this monologue, I learned that he was a leader of North American Action—the division of the Organisation d’Élite Internationale which was working to bring the light to the United States—and that my proper place was as part of this division, preferably right at the colonel’s side.

  “Well, what do you think?” he said after he had spoken his piece, and I shook my head regretfully, sure this would draw him out still further.

  “How long is it since you’ve been in the States?” he demanded.

  “About eight years.”

  “Then you’re out of touch, man. Damn it, everybody’s waking up to the fact that the ballot box is no answer for us. They’re all learning you can’t get a hog to vote himself out of a full trough. It’s coming down to firepower now, sooner than anyone dreamed it would. An armed underground that can pinpoint the enemy and get rid of him the one convincing way, with a bullet through his head. The trouble right now is that we’ve got fifty different patriotic outfits in the country that know this, but there’s no co-ordination among them. Once they see that unity within North American Action means an unbeatable force—”

  “How do you expect to make them see it?”

  “By delivering the goods. That means money, propaganda, and weapons. The weapons are the real thing, too, nine-millimeter machine guns, lightweight for easy handling, and dead accurate. We’ve got half a dozen caches of them from New York to California already, and we’ll have a dozen set up inside of a year. Show an honest-to-god, red, white, and blue patriot this kind of tool and you show him you mean business. But that’s my end of it. Your end would be the propaganda department, the written stuff. Clara’s just no good at translating some of those terrific things Leschenhaut turns out because her English is lousy, but you’d be a natural at it. You might even want to try your own hand at that kind of writing.”

  “I’ve never done any of it before.”

  “Well, you could learn from Leschenhaut. Even when his stuff is turned into Clara’s kind of English, it can make your hair stand up. And there’s something else, Davis. There’s the business of talking man to man with all those patriots back home who distrust the idea of OEI because it smells foreign to them. Let’s face it, there are a lot of backwoods yahoos among them who need a lot of convincing if we’re to organize on an international basis. You’re a hundred-percent American; you’re an ex-fighter, an ex-Marine; you’re just the kind of guy who can do a great selling job on them.”

  “Maybe, but a few machine guns don’t really add up to a movement. Now over here—”

  “Yes, I know,” the colonel cut in. “Over here is the lady friend, and don’t tell me different. Remember I was there the night you and Morillon had that fracas over her. But man to man, Davis, what does hopping in bed with any woman mean compared to your patriotic duty? And your real duty is back home.”

  “I was going to say that here is where the action is, Colonel. Back home is where only talking goes on.”

  “The hell you say!” The colonel reached into his breast pocket and drew out a sheaf of papers, tissue thin. He slapped them flat on the table, and I got a tantalizing glimpse of what seemed to be rows of numbers. “You’re thinking of eight years back, son, but here’s the OEI table of command today, and these last three pages alone list fifty unit commanders on the North American Action payroll and dedicated to its program. Fifty of them, and that doesn’t even include contacts who run outfits like rifle clubs and can be counted on when the time comes.”

  I didn’t want to appear too anxious to see those pages. I took my time reaching for them, and then a shadow fell over them, a hand covered them. Claude de Gonde was standing behind me, his lips set in a deathlike smile, his eyes cold with anger.

  “If you persist in meddling with affairs that don’t concern you,” he said to me in French, “you will have to be locked in your room,” and then shifting to heavily accented English he said brightly to the colonel, “No, no, my friend, I am afraid none of this can be of interest to the young man.” He carefully folded up the papers and handed them to the colonel, who tucked them back into his pocket, looking somewhat puzzled.

  “I thought—” the colonel said.

  “Of course, but Monsieur Davis was involved in a killing yesterday in Paris and is now on his way to South America only a few steps ahead of the police. At present, he must be considered hors de combat.”

  “A killing in the line of duty?” the colonel asked calmly.

  “Yes, but what difference does it make?” de Gonde answered. “For his sake as well as ours—”

  “I need him in the States,” said the colonel. “Have the same face job done on him that was done on Morillon—contact lenses, a few touches here and there—and I’ll get him into the country by way of Mexico with no one the wiser. Why put a man like this in cold storage, Claude?”

  “Because it must be done,” de Gonde said shortly. “He is a very careless fellow, this one, colonel. I assure you he is not the man you take him for,” and what intrigued me was the evasiveness of this, the refusal to come out with the truth about me. But I could see the reason for it. De Gonde had made a dangerous mistake taking me into his home; he had jeopardized the organization for his nephew’s sake, and he had no intention of broadcasting that. Plainly anxious to change the subject, he now said to me, “Madame Vosiers is going shopping in Dijon later today and has kindly offered to replenish your wardrobe if you tell her what you need. She’s in the sitting room waiting to make out the list.”

  “I appreciate that, but shouldn’t I speak to Madame de Villemont first? She may know what’s been done with the clothing I had in my room.”

  “I’ve already asked her about it,” said de Gonde. “She has no idea what happened to your belongings.”

  “May I speak to her anyhow? It’s not only the clothing; there are also my manuscripts. A great deal of work has gone into them.”

  “I’m sure of that, but you may not speak to her until later. She’ll be occupied for a while with business affairs. She cannot be disturbed until they are settled. Meanwhile,” de Gonde said pointedly, “Madame Vosiers is waiting. The sitting room is through that door.”

  “Too bad we couldn’t work something out, Davis,” the colonel said regretfully as I rose to leave, and thinking of that sheaf of papers in his pocket—a trump card in this deadly game if ever there was one—I couldn’t have agreed more. To get my hands on them—

  Matilde Vosiers was not alone in the sitting room. On a window seat were the little Comte de Laennac and the bulky Edmond Vosiers in low-voiced conversation. At the opposite end of the room a smoky fire had been kindled in the fireplace, and Madame Matilde, looking thoroughly miserab
le, sat on a couch beside the fireplace with a deal table drawn up before her.

  She motioned me to join her on the couch, and when I did I saw close up how shockingly haggard she was under an excess of make-up. It was as if the years had caught up with her overnight, revealing the hitherto concealed lines of her face with cruel clarity, loosening the flesh of the face itself and making it look soft and jowly.

  She took a notebook from the table and handed it to me.

  “Please look at this,” she said crisply. “I’ve already written down the essentials you’ll need.” Then her head moved closer to mine, her voice fell to an undertone. “Tor God’s sake, keep looking at it. Pretend you’re reading it carefully. Whatever you do, don’t look surprised at what I say, don’t turn around, don’t blink an eye.” Her voice rose. “I’ve marked the size of the pajamas as grand patron. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, madame,” I said, my eyes glued to the notebook.

  “As for these other garments,” said Madame Matilde, and again her voice became an undertone. “Now listen! It’s been planned that you and Anne will be taken south by car tomorrow night. There’s to be an accident on the road near Valence, so that the two of you will be found dead in the car at the foot of the mountain there. No, keep your eyes fixed on this book. Say something about the clothing you need. Say it loudly.”

  So that was why I had been allowed to remain alive this long!

  “Madame,” I said, and I had to clear my throat to get the words out, “I’ll need one other pair of shoes at least, and they should be properly fitted. If I could go to town with you—”

  “Impossible,” Madame Matilde said sharply. “Monsieur Vosiers will accompany me to Dijon and do the best he can from this list. He’s mad,” she whispered. “Completely mad. They all are. The one protector Anne had was Hubert, and now he’s turned against her, too, because of your affair with her. You must get away from here. Then it can’t be made to look as if you and Anne were running off together. It also means she herself is safe for the time being.”