Seconds later I saw my chance. A short man next to the chauffeur moved away, blazing an anxious trail to the men’s room. I squeezed between two tables and grabbed the spot.
My man glanced incuriously at me. I smiled politely. “Hello.”
“Hi.” He turned his back, rapping the counter top and beckoning the bartender in very mangled French.
I noticed his chauffeur cap lying under his right elbow like a squashed animal. As he shifted his weight on the bar stool, he unwittingly moved the cap down the counter toward me.
“Excuse me.” I held the cap up to him. “You don’t want to lose this.”
“Thanks,” he nodded, smiling briefly.
I jabbed my forefinger at him. “Bet you drive that big Rolls out there!”
“Yep.”
“Man, I always wanted one of those buggies.”
“It gets you around.”
“I’ll say! Hey, you sound like a Yankee!”
His jaw stiffened. “American, yes. But not Yankee. Huntsville. The name’s Jim Culhane.”
“I might’ve known!” I pumped his hand. “Jack Warnick. From Charlotte.”
“Nice place,” he grunted.
“Well,” I yelled above the roar of the crowd, “what brings you over here? From the States, I mean. Whoever owns that Rolls must have a lot of dough.”
“It belongs to Mr. Ryker.” He drained the last drop from the shot glass. “He lives up in the mountains not far from here.”
“Must be a pretty easy job.” My left hand eased toward his right coat pocket.
“It pays well enough,” he shrugged, shifting on the stool. My hand brushed against the pocket. Empty. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought.
“Sure,” I drawled expansively. “Just look at the people in this bar.” The chauffeur turned around. “Oh yeah,” I grunted, my right hand delving in his left coat pocket, “the people here are prosperous enough, but they’ve still got to beat their brains out for everything they get.” The pocket was empty. “So you come over here and make real easy money just because you’re an American. I wouldn’t knock it, Jim.”
He toyed with his glass. “There just isn’t a hell of a lot to do.”
“Can’t have everything.” My hand reached for the edge of his right front pocket.
“Guess so.” He raised his arm, looking down the counter. “Hey, Armand! Another double!”
My fingers, probing his pocket, felt the cold brass of his key chain. The bartender came up to us with the double scotch. The shot glass slid in front of the chauffeur as his keys slid from his pocket into mine.
Culhane caught the eye of the bartender. “Let’s have a beer for my friend here, too.” His hand went for his right front pocket.
“No, no! Allow me!” Before he could protest, I passed a ten-franc note to Armand, who nodded and slipped unobtrusively away.
“That’s mighty kind of you, Warnick.” He reached for his wallet. “But maybe I should pay you …”
“Think nothing of it!” I beamed. I could’ve sworn I felt my knees knocking as his hand withdrew. “… it’s not often that I get to talk with someone from the States …” My eyes suddenly went vacant and I snapped my fingers. “Christ, I just remembered. I think I left my lights on.” I shoved away from the counter. “Save my place, will you? Be right back.”
Shoveling like a snowplow through the crowd, I stepped out the exit. In the yellow light I sorted through Culhane’s keys. Only one out of seven on the ring was of any use to me—the key with the RR crest.
I took a last look around. Not a soul in sight. In one swift motion I grabbed my case from under the rear wheels, then unlocked the trunk.
I set the case near the spare tire, then eased the trunk lid down so it wouldn’t latch shut.
Culhane hadn’t moved. But a new shot glass sat in front of him. I hoped drunken driving wasn’t a habit of his.
“Sorry I took so long,” I said, slapping his shoulder and dropping the keys back in his pocket. “The damn lights were on.”
“Good thing you checked.”
My hand beckoned the bartender. “Another Carlsberg, please.” I grinned at Culhane. “I think I deserve it.”
Two hours later I knew more than I cared to about the life of Jim Culhane. Apparently Hennessey Four-Star hit him like truth serum. I eyed my watch.
“Well, Jim, I must be off.” I amiably shook his hand. “Glad to have met you.”
He grinned, weaving a little on his feet. “You, too, Jack. Thanks for the drinks.”
“My pleasure.” I stood by the door. “Good night.”
I waited until the door shut behind me, then walked down to the Rolls, opened the trunk, and scrambled inside. I reached up and shut the lid.
As the trunk closed, the inside light blinked out, making it as dark as the inside of a cat. I squirmed into the fetal position and waited.
It didn’t take long. Heels clicked to the rear of the car, moving around to the driver’s side.
The engine whispered to life and we were off.
According to the lore of automobile enthusiasts, the noisiest part of a Rolls Royce is the clock.
Don’t believe it. I can testify, from personal experience, that the loudest part of any Rolls is the trunk.
The luminous face on my watch read 12:25. Jan would be waiting on the soft shoulder not two miles away.
Minutes later the Rolls eased to a stop. Shoes scuffed dirt at the side of the car.
“Hi, Jim.” The muffled voice sounded like Ryker’s gatepost guard. “How’re things in the village?”
“Slow,” Culhane replied. “Met some gabby fellow who wanted to talk.”
After a long silence the limousine accelerated. I felt myself sliding toward the rear as the Rolls twisted uphill to the château.
Tires snuffled over the courtyard cobblestones. The Rolls braked sharply, then glided for several feet and stopped.
The silence was broken by a grating roller skate noise. It stopped for a moment and footsteps faded away.
Of course! An electric garage door that Culhane shut behind him.
From what I could hear, I was alone in the garage. My palms reached up for the lid and pushed. I tottered out onto the cement floor, grabbed my case and slammed the trunk shut.
As my eyes dilated, I saw a dim rectangle of light behind the Rolls. It was a tiny window cut in the garage door. One bright spotlight shone across the courtyard from the château, casting complex patterns of light and shade across the cobblestones.
The only thing that saved me was a glimpse of the cobblestone shadows vanishing under a second source of light. I lunged away from the window, barely escaping a flashlight beam.
Two pairs of lungs panted rapidly on the other side of the door.
The guard muttered, “Nothing here, boys. Let’s go.” Sharp toenails scratched the cobblestones, accompanying his retreating footsteps.
Dogs. I sighed faintly, wiping my brow. Fast breathers. Dobermans, maybe?
Dobermans or not, they were an unwelcome surprise. How long between rounds? Fifteen minutes at most. Damn little time.
I took my penlight from my vest pocket and searched along the rim of the garage door for the switch. Rumbles and squeaks. Before it could make more noise, I cut it off.
There was barely a foot clearance. I got on my belly, sidled under the garage door, snatched the briefcase after me and stood erect.
Except for the single spotlight, the great gray bulk of the château lay in darkness. I dropped to one knee and laid the briefcase on my leg. Opening the lid, I extracted a collapsible grappling hook and nylon cord. My hands worked as if detached from my body, smoothly threading four inches of the cord into the open end of the hook.
Whirling the hook above my head, I got a good idea of its weight. I backed away ten paces, gazing speculatively at the wood shingles capping the peaked roof of the garage.
Slowly, then rapidly, I spun the grappling hook over my head. Glittering in the moonlig
ht, the hook arched over the garage roof as the cord flashed through my palm.
I tiptoed to the side of the garage and pulled the cord. It slid, then slid some more. Chagrined, I tugged harder. Now the hook caught. I gave it all my weight and it still held.
I took a deep breath, grabbed the cord with both hands and pulled myself up ten feet to the edge of the roof. Puffing like an old war horse, I yanked myself over. On my hands and knees I followed the path of the cord over the crown of the roof and down the other side.
A moving dot of light flashed in the corner of my eye. The guard patrol was back.
He passed underneath, paused, then wandered on. I waited until the last glimmer of his flashlight had gone, then sat up.
Mont Blanc and Mont Dolent glowed distantly under the moonlight. Closer at hand, chestnut and fir trees whispered and chuckled among themselves in the night wind. It was, I estimated, a good five hundred feet from the château down to the forest.
Folding the cord and the grappling hook back in my case, I gingerly crept down the far side of the garage roof. The jump down to the bedrock looked to be about fifteen feet. I hit the ground in a loose roll, landing on my butt and feeling rather foolish. I stuck close to the garage, following it around to where it met the mortar flanks of the château.
I was able to follow the slope of the mountain another twenty yards before it ended at the cliff. Perched on the edge, I watched the tips of trees beneath my feet.
Thank God the architect of Le Château de Montreux had a flair for ornamentation! Beneath the windows was a ledge sculptured in bogus Roman scrollwork. A design horror, but very useful to me.
It was about seven inches wide—barely enough to stand on. With a mental shrug I jumped up for the ledge. I groaned and cursed under my breath, pulling myself up.
Red-faced and sweaty, I barely managed to mount the ledge. I spread my arms to keep balanced and stayed there, arms outstretched, trying to catch my breath.
The ledge seemed sturdy enough. I checked the case under my arm. No damage that I could see.
Hugging the wall in a clumsy embrace, I moved the right foot. Then the left. They both held. Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot, I said to myself, inching along the edge of the wall.
I passed beyond the cliff face. The trees below didn’t look like a very good cushion if I fell.
Don’t think about falling. You’re a circus performer on the high wire. You’ve done this for years. The crowds are cheering and the safety net is below.
The ledge came around a curve, and I knew I’d reached my destination—the windows of Ryker’s sunroom. With all the lights out they were blackly opaque, like slabs of tar.
According to the blueprints of the château, Ryker hadn’t bothered installing alarms on the windows facing away from the mountain. The glass cutter ground into the left edge of the window. Like a fingernail scratching a blackboard, it cut a small half circle.
I pried a thumbnail between the crack and worked the piece loose. My hand carefully reached through the razor-edged hole and pulled the latch.
The window slid aside smoothly. I grabbed the frame and stepped through. Ryker would be sleeping next door, trapped in his iron lung. And Fräulein Slote would be hovering nearby, ready for any emergency. Culhane and the domestic servants were quartered downstairs.
All in all, a good twenty-five people rattled around this mausoleum. I hoped no one sleepwalked.
The door from the solarium was locked—fortunately from the inside. It opened onto the empty corridor. The old masters on the wall slumbered in the low amber glow of bracket lamps. Ryker’s office was the first door to my left.
A strip of plastic the size of a credit card is a wonderful pass key. I slipped the edge of the plastic into the door crack, found the bolt and pressed gently. The edge of the plastic caught the curve of the lock and slid it back. I stepped through and shut it behind me.
Commanding a central position in the office was a hulking walnut desk and high-backed leather chair. Two gray metal filing cabinets hugged the wall on either side of the desk.
I set up the equipment with the smoothness of an assembly-line worker. Laying the case on Ryker’s uncluttered desk, I pulled out the tripod and stood it up behind the desk chair, where it tottered like a spindly giraffe.
I screwed the Beaulieu 8-mm camera into the tripod head, testing the tilt and swivel controls. It seemed steady enough.
The little lamp I removed from the case and clamped to the camera’s side didn’t have much punch, but it would serve at close range. I tilted the reflector to cast a white oval of light over the top of the desk. The lamp also provided enough light to see the four desk drawers, each with its own lock. Within a minute the plastic card had jimmied all four.
My first target was the long drawer directly under the blotter. Upon examination it revealed two manila folders, besides the usual quota of paper clips, rubber bands, and stubby pencils. Each folder contained about twenty typed sheets.
I rolled the chair aside and shoved the tripod in close so the camera lens pointed straight down at the desk surface. I set the zoom lens to photograph a neat rectangle encompassing the entire blotter, then kicked the aperture control off automatic and manually reset it between f-8 and f-11.
I sighed in relief after making the last setting. Now I could get on with the real job.
Placing the first manila folder beneath the lens, I fingered the twenty sheets in my left hand. As my right hand brought the camera chattering to life with the remote control, I flipped loosely through the pages, making sure each sheet was fully exposed.
The time from cover to cover was slightly less than one and a half seconds. Among the twenty-six 8-mm frames were twenty-three full-face photos of the papers. When run frame-by-frame through my movie projector, they should reveal readable copies of the original.
The amount of files and documents in the desk was staggering, but the camera made short work of them. For almost thirty minutes I settled into such a smooth pattern of piling the files on the desk, rifling through them in front of the camera, and returning them to their original location that I barely glanced at the pages flashing past me.
Done. I shut off the lamp. God, but my back was sore! I slipped the film out of the camera and arched my spine.
The doorknob rattled. Lights flashed on and Lisl Slote stood in the doorway, gun in hand.
I didn’t have time to think how she’d heard me. I hit the floor, dodging the bullet yowling overhead.
Lisl, I’m glad to say, was a lousy shot. Before she could pull the trigger again, I rolled behind the desk. My hands grabbed the tripod legs and slung the camera toward the door. I heard a crackle of broken glass and bone as the Beau-lieu hit Fräulein Slote’s jaw. She keeled over backwards, pumping slugs into the ceiling as she went down.
I rose from behind the desk, my nose wrinkling with the gunpowder smell. Lisl lay sprawled in the corridor, tangled amid tripod legs and smashed lenses. She wasn’t moving. I grabbed the grappling hook from my case and took off.
Lisl had plenty of friends. Judging from the alarms wailing outside, her pals, both human and canine, would be arriving any moment.
Everything was a blur as I ran down the hall toward the solarium. As I reached the windowsill, footsteps trod behind me. My elbow jabbed the window and it cascaded outward in a great screaming crash. Hanging the hook on the window-sill, I perched myself on the edge, grabbed the rope and swung free. My hands streamed red from broken glass, but I didn’t feel a thing.
Hand over hand. Concentrate on the rope. Ignore the forest below or Ryker’s guards or your aching arms.
Something dark loomed beside me. The top of a fir tree. I braved a look down. Still over a hundred feet to the ground.
I heard a voice above. “Look! Over here! This hook!”
Slowly. Don’t panic. Forty feet to go.
“Get some dogs down by the road.”
Thirty feet. Twenty.
The cord suddenly slack i
n my hands, I fell to the ground, landing flat on my back.
I lay there stupidly, blinking away stars, then moaned and groaned my way upright. Each vertebra throbbed as if beaten with a night stick.
Dogs barked in the distance. The high neurotic cries of Doberman pinschers. Their whining echoed among the encircling trees.
I tried to get my bearing. The mountain sloped to my left. Turning and running, I hit a tree trunk.
The thick blanket of chestnuts and firs cut off the moonlight. Arms outstretched before me, I ran downhill, stumbling my way between the branches.
A yellow star winked in the corner of my eye. A flashlight.
“Don’t see him,” a voice said hoarsely.
“He’s there,” a companion answered. “The dogs have the scent. He hasn’t got a prayer.”
I kept on running, air burning my lungs.
Leaves rustled behind me.
“Down, boy, down!”
“Ah, let him loose! He’ll tear that guy to pieces.”
Sweat dripped down my eyes. Not far to go.
Car headlamps lit up the snow between the trees. It was Jan in the Fiat. Maybe fifty yards away.
The barking was louder. Whipping off my jacket, I wrapped it around my right arm.
The light from the car cast shadows through the forest. From the darkness red eyes lunged.
The pinscher jumped me, attacking my arm. Long white teeth cut through my jacket into the flesh. Snarling gums. Hot panting breath.
He pushed me on my back, straddling me—shaking me like a piece of meat. My fingers grappled over the ground, squirming, grasping for a stone or stick.
My hand curled around a potato-sized rock.
Teeth slashed for my throat. The stone in my hand hit the dog behind the ear with a sharp crack.
With a shrill whimper the Doberman shuddered and died. I pushed him off me, smelling animal sweat and the last of his rotten-meat breath.
The guard’s flashlight searched for me through the trees. Jumping to my feet, I threw away my tattered coat and sprinted for the car.
Two more dogs barked behind me, not far away.
Peeking down through the trees, I saw the outline of the Fiat, parked at the soft shoulder.
The Memory of Eva Ryker Page 10
