House of Cards

by Stanley Ellin

  That may not have satisfied her, but it silenced her. We returned to the compartment, and now I looked hard, at the man’s hands which were knotted in his lap. When he moved them to expose the nails I saw what Anne meant. The hands were leathery, blunt-fingered laborer’s hands—the nails were conspicuously manicured and gleaming with polish.

  The monk took notice of my interest. He looked down at the incongruously pearly nails and then at me.

  “They interest you?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said flatly.

  “Ah.”

  The carpetbag lay on the floor at his feet. He reached down toward it, but I was faster than he was. My hand was on it first, and as he drew back to avoid a collision of heads, I wrenched the bag open and groped inside it for the gun I knew must be there.

  But there was no gun, only a greasy package that wafted a garlic aroma to my nostrils, a wine bottle, a cloth sack of what felt like onions, and some oddments of clothing. Too late it struck me that if the man had been carrying a gun, it would certainly be tucked beneath that robe in easy reach. A professional killer on the job would want his weapon where he could get at it instantly.

  Feeling like a complete fool, I lifted the carpetbag to the bench beside its owner as if this had been my real purpose, but he easily saw through me.

  “What did you expect to find?” he asked without rancor.

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

  He accepted this graciously. “Of course, Signore—?”

  “Dulac. Jean Dulac. And this is my wife.”

  “Ah, yes, French. And not on tour either. Not at this hour and in such wretched accommodations. Perhaps you have some employment in Venice?”

  I tried to think what employment I might have in Venice, traveling like this and looking the way I did.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m a seaman on a ship docked there now. My wife is a stewardess on it.”

  “What a happy arrangement. And I, signore, am Fra Pietro of the Minorites of San Anselmo. What I had wanted to show you was the reason for my fingers being in this interesting condition.” He lifted the bulging cloth sack from the carpetbag and hefted it before me. “Here it is.”

  “Onions?”

  “Tulip bulbs. Tulipa gesneriana. For purity of form and splendor of color, the tulip is surely among the most magnificent of God’s creations. I am gardener of our monastery in Chioggia and something of an expert on this subject, you see. In fact, a small text I prepared on it was recently published, and I was given the honor of presenting a copy to His Holiness in person. Do you know the albergo diurno beneath the railroad station in Rome where one may, for a few lire, relieve himself and wash his hands and face? Or even write a letter or have his clothing mended?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. Well, when I arrived in Rome yesterday I stopped there before meeting His Holiness, and I noticed that my nails were a disgusting sight. A proper gardener does not work in gloves, and there are chemicals to handle and other things. A fine business, I thought. His Holiness will take one look at these paws and wonder what kind of pigsty we’re living in there at Chioggia. Then I saw this woman dressed like a nurse in the albergo diurno—a horrible old crow or I would never have let the idea even enter my head—and she was very skillfully cleaning the nails of a respectable-looking gentleman. Well, I thought, desperate situations require desperate measures; she’s the one to solve my problem. But to wind up looking like this! It’s not only that His Holiness was obviously taken aback by the spectacle, there are some brothers in the monastery who fancy themselves humorists. I’m going to have a hard time with them, I fear.”

  I tried to keep my face straight but couldn’t, and Fra Pietro wagged a finger at me. “Ah, you see? You yourself find it comical.”

  Anne had been following this with blank incomprehension.

  “What’s he saying?” she whispered to me. “What’s so funny, for God’s sake?”

  The mention of the name Dulac must have been the cue for her to speak in French, and I gave her credit for quick thinking. But she didn’t intend to give me the same credit. When I translated the story of the manicure for her, she said, “And you believe him?”

  “He’s the real McCoy, chérie. Not everyone you meet is like your husband and his gang.”

  “Damn it, do you have to punctuate everything you say with that kind of remark?”

  “We’re in the presence of the clergy, chérie, so watch your language. And we’re supposed to be married. Let’s not make it one of those marriages people deplore.”

  “Of course, darling.” Anne gave me a sweet, utterly false smile. “Then do tell the clergy about nail-polish remover. He can get a bottle somewhere around the station and settle his problem before he gets back to Chioggia.”

  When I passed this on to Fra Pietro, he was cheered considerably.

  “I should have realized there would be such a thing. The world always offers us a chance to pay twice over, doesn’t it? Once for the folly and once again for its cure. How can I thank you? Perhaps if there is some way I can help you in your trouble—”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. It suggested he knew more about us than he should.

  “What makes you think we’re in trouble?” I said.

  “Your actions when I entered the compartment and when I wanted to open this bag. Also, these fingernails are more funny than frightening yet your wife seemed terrified by the sight of them. When she took you outside to describe them, you yourself returned in a state of alarm. Both of you behaved as if I were someone who threatened your safety.”

  “You’d make a good detective.”

  “Being unworldly does not necessarily mean being unobservant. You are in trouble then?”

  “Let’s say that I am. Would you be willing to help me without knowing what the trouble is?”

  “Under such conditions,” Fra Pietro said gently, “I can offer you and your wife consolation and a share of my breakfast. Beyond that—”

  “Beyond that, would you offer the signora and a child refuge at your monastery if they showed up there during the day? All I can tell you is that they are in danger and should be kept out of sight for a little while.”

  “Would this be in violation of the law?”

  “No.”

  “Then I will tell our abbot to expect their arrival, and he will see to it that they are taken to a convent nearby for shelter. Our monastery cannot offer hospitality to a woman, but the convent will do very well. The prioress is an obliging soul.”

  With this settled, Fra Pietro now opened his package of food and insisted we share it with him, so we breakfasted on tough, garlicky chicken, a chunk of hard bread, and some tepid water which, disappointingly, was what the wine bottle turned out to contain. The food raised my spirits a little, and when the rain stopped and the sunrise greeted us at Brescia, I felt fully alive again. Venice, then Torcello and Paul. Then the convent in Chioggia where Anne and the child would be safe while I attempted to knock down the house of cards built by Charles Leschenhaut and Henri de Villemont.

  At nine o’clock—it had taken five hours to make the four-hour trip—we rumbled across the causeway over the Laguna Veneta and into the Venice station.

  When we clambered out of the compartment Fra Pietro shook my hand.

  “One last word,” he said. “Change that story about being a common seaman. Your hand is strong, but it’s a bit too soft for that line of work. At least promote yourself to ship’s officer. It would be more convincing.”

  With that, he gave Anne a kindly nod, drew the cowl over his head, and trotted off toward the bus stand outside the station.

  5

  Anne was already heading toward the staircase leading down to the taxi stand on the Grand Canal when I caught up to her and brought her to a sharp standstill.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I said.

  “If you don’t intend to waste time—”

  “I don’t intend to waste it; I intend to put it to g
ood use. First of all, I’m going to the rest room and shave and clean up so everybody doesn’t wonder what the hell I’m up to, looking like this. Especially the police. Meanwhile, you’ve got some shopping to do over at that stand. Get a couple of pairs of dark glasses—we’ll go blind in this sunlight without them—and make sure to buy the cheapest they have. And something to put on your head, a babushka or whatever they call it. You can get us a pack of cigarettes, too, a local brand that doesn’t cost much. Is there anything else you can think of that you really need?”

  “I didn’t come here to shop!” Anne said explosively. “How you can stand there talking like this—!”

  Heads turned toward us as her voice rose.

  “Chérie,” I said pleasantly, “mon ange, the way I look right now, nobody would be the least bit surprised if I walloped you one for not showing me wifely respect. And that’s what’ll happen if you don’t shut up and follow orders. We didn’t get this far by being careless, so let’s stick to that policy. Odds are that Claude is in touch with his friends on the police and doesn’t know we’re across the border yet. Another fifteen or twenty minutes won’t change anything except that we’ll be able to move around without looking like a pair of freaks just in from rue Pigalle. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, let’s hear what you might need to make you neat but not gaudy.”

  “A comb. A lipstick. These stockings are torn—”

  “The comb, all right. Lipstick and stockings aren’t on the budget.” I counted out two thousand lire into her hand, trusting that the remaining five thousand would carry us to Torcello and then Chioggia. “After you’ve done the shopping,” I said, “you can freshen up in the rest room and get rid of those stockings. Do you see that table in the corner by the coffee bar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then meet me there when you’re ready. If you’re there first, keep a lookout for any of Henri’s buddies. I suppose the OEI has a big contingent in Italy?”

  “It has in Rome. I don’t know about here.”

  “Well, don’t trust any strangers, no matter how plausible they sound. And turn up the other chair at the table so nobody can move in on you.”

  When I emerged from the rest room, well-scrubbed, freshly shaven, odoriferous with the cheap, flowery toilet water Matilde Vosiers had included in my shaving kit, I found Anne waiting for me at the table. It took me a moment to recognize her. In dark glasses and with a cornflower-blue kerchief concealing her hair, she looked as anonymous as the other women around me who wore variations of sunglasses and kerchief.

  She was having a cappuccino, and there was one cooling on the table in the place next to hers.

  “Anyone bother you?” I said as I sat down to it.

  “The usual. That’s why I ordered the coffee for you. Having the chair turned up didn’t seem to discourage them. That boy standing over there by the bar especially. He’s been watching me in the mirror.”

  “Recognize him? Think he’s OEI?”

  “I don’t recognize him. All I know is he certainly isn’t a monk.”

  I looked into the mirror over the bar and found myself staring into the eyes of an Italian facsimile of Albert, the youthful gunman of the rue de Courcelles. This one, however, wore skintight jeans and a black sweater almost as tight, and there didn’t seem to be room anywhere in them for a gun. There might be for a knife. The eyes in the mirror narrowed at me, the lips twisted in a little smirk. It was no use drinking cappuccino and wondering how safe it was to turn my back on this cool customer. I got up from the table and walked over to him, hand extended in friendly greeting.

  “Well, think of running into you here,” I said jovially, and when he dazedly offered me his hand in response to my greeting I pumped it with great good will, getting a tight grip on it so that he couldn’t pull free. “How are you? And your mama and papa?”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t know you, do I?” He tried to pull free now, but I gripped harder and saw a look of anguish flash across his face. It was only raw pride which kept him from shouting with pain. “What do you want?” he gasped. “If your wife told you—”

  “She told me you recognized ‘her at once.” The other patrons at the bar didn’t even glance at us as I playfully patted the boy’s pockets and arms. There was no weapon on him. “She wondered if you were too stuck up to have a drink with us. Like one of the elite, eh?”

  His blank reaction to the meaningful word convinced me that the Organisation d’Élite Internationale meant nothing to him. All he wanted to do was get away from here as fast as he could. Who knew what a jealous husband might wind up doing? Especially a jealous husband capable of mashing one’s hand to pulp with a little pressure of the fingers.

  “I swear to you, signore—”

  I released the hand. “Then you don’t have time for a drink with us? You have to rush away?”

  “Yes, yes. Immediately.”

  He warily backed away from me, then disappeared into the crowd eddying past. When I sat down beside Anne to finish my coffee, she said, “He was harmless, wasn’t he? I’m sorry. It’s getting so that I suspect anyone who even looks my way.”

  “That’s being smart. Yes, he was harmless. Just one of those characters with an eye out for lonely tourist ladies who’d like a curly-headed guide to show them the town. Forget about him. How far away is Torcello? What’s the layout there?”

  “Have you been in Venice before?”

  “A couple of times, but I never learned my way around.” I refrained from explaining that this was not due to any lack of interest in sightseeing, but because in each case the company I brought from Rome—the first time a shapely blonde Briton, and the second time an even shapelier and blonder Swede—confined our activities to a tight little triangle whose points were the Piazza San Marco, the Casino, and the hotel bedroom we shared.

  “Torcello’s on the north side of the lagoon about five or six miles away,” Anne said. “It’s a strange place. Quiet and empty. So quiet you wouldn’t believe it. I don’t think there are more than a few dozen people living on the whole island.”

  “Where’s Madame Cesira’s house? Right on the lagoon?”

  “No, there’s a main canal that crosses the island and a few smaller ones that branch off from it. The house is on one of the smaller ones away from everything. I don’t know the name of the canal it’s on, but I’d know it if I saw it.”

  “If we get off at the landing, can we be seen from the house?”

  “I think so.”

  “Suppose we landed further away from the house. Is there any cover along the banks there?”

  “A lot of greenery.”

  “Trees?”

  “I seem to remember some.”

  “Good. Did you get me sunglasses?”

  She handed me the glasses along with a pack of cigarettes and a few coins. “That’s all the change there was.” Then she said, forcing herself to say it calmly, “There won’t be any danger to Paul, will there?”

  “Not as long as there’s no danger to your husband; and he isn’t involved in this operation. What kind of staff does the old lady keep at the place?”

  “Just a permanent caretaker and his wife who attend to almost everything. And her personal maid.”

  “No guards?”

  “Not ordinarily. But right now—”

  “Right now no one’s expecting company to drop in. The trick is to walk right in and walk out with Paul before the idea dawns on them that we’re close by.” I lit a cigarette for each of us, and Anne drew on hers with a long, shuddering inhalation that gave away the state of her nerves. “I wish to hell you didn’t have to come along with me,” I said. “If there was any way I could find the place without you—”

  “You couldn’t. Even if you could I want to be there with you. It would kill me, sitting here wondering what was happening. I swear I won’t be any trouble.”

  “Then come on,” I said. “It’s time to get moving.”
r />   6

  The taxi man was in shirtsleeves and wore a battered nautical cap on back of his head, but he had all the elegance of a young courtier painted by Bronzino. With kindly condescension he explained that the trip to Chioggia was out of the question. Torcello lay five miles to the north of us and Chioggia fifteen miles to the south. For the money I offered, the best he could do was take us to Torcello, wait while we picked up our son, and then return us to the Riva Degli Schiavoni in the city where there was a cheap public boat to Chioggia. I didn’t like the deal but I accepted it. I couldn’t offer him more than I had with me because I couldn’t afford to risk a scene wherever we docked.

  As we left our berth and made a sharp turn across the bow of a barge piled high with crates of Coca-Cola he said to me, “Where in Torcello? The Church of Santa Maria Assunta?”

  “No, the Villa Montecastellani.”

  “I don’t know where that is.”

  “The signora will show you where.”

  He grimaced as if doubtful a woman could find her way anywhere, but devoted himself to maneuvering us through the confusion of launches, gondolas, barges, and vaporetti clogging the Grand Canal. Then we steered into the narrow passage of the Riva di Noale where there was no traffic at all, the boat sending a heavy wash against the water doors of the stone buildings on each side. As we emerged into the open reaches of the lagoon and moved away from the city I had a close view of a side of it I had never seen before, a shabby, unglamorous waterfront of coalyards and barge piers and slums balding in the sunlight, a world apart from the Piazza San Marco. Even the water of the lagoon seemed to have nothing to do with the Adriatic whose tides filled it. It was slate-colored, streaked brown here and there by mudflats just below the surface.

  Coming abreast of a line of gondolas following each other in precise order, our skipper slowed down so that our wash wouldn’t disturb the gondolas. That, I knew, was an unusual courtesy.

  “A regatta out here?” I said.