The German Agent

by J Sydney Jones

  How did the police track me to McBride’s? Who could have tipped them off? he wondered anxiously to himself.

  And then it hit him, finally, what had been nagging him since the fiasco at the Willard Hotel. The clothes he had left in the locker room. Of course. They found those and somehow traced the jacket to Annie McBride. And now what? He was alone, injured and half the city was after him.

  But they would not stop him. No.

  TWELVE

  ‘Yes, sir. We are doing everything possible to catch him. No. That won’t be necessary. We’re putting all uniformed patrolmen out on the beat tonight. If he’s in Washington, we’ll ferret him out.’

  Chief Inspector Lewis choked the black phone stand in his massive left hand as he held the mouthpiece close to his lips. The earpiece was all but lost in his right hand. He frowned at Fitzgerald as he spoke to the police commissioner.

  ‘I realize that, sir. And I do not exactly like being made to look like a monkey, either. No, I’m not being facetious. I am taking this seriously. Now, just a moment, commissioner. I never said that.’

  Fitzgerald felt uneasy overhearing this phone conversation, but the call had come in the midst of their discussion back at Lewis’s office, and the chief inspector had given no sign for him to leave. Agent Niel sat next to Fitzgerald in a captain’s chair.

  Lewis now set the phone stand down, continuing to cup the receiver to his ear. He shook his head as he listened. Fitzgerald could hear the commissioner’s voice from where he sat. He and Niel exchanged glances, Niel raising his barely visible golden eyebrows and switching the toothpick he was chewing on today from one corner of his mouth to the other.

  Lewis suddenly leaned over the mouthpiece again. ‘No, I would not care for that eventuality, sir,’ he said, anger and belligerency in his metallic tones. ‘My record here speaks for itself. But if you are not satisfied—’

  More chatter came through the earpiece, high and shrill. Lewis moved the instrument away from his ear, his eyes squinting.

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  He thumped the earpiece back into its holder on the stand. ‘The bugger’s given me until Sunday to catch our man.’

  ‘And if no luck?’ Niel asked.

  ‘Then I’m off the case.’ Lewis glared across the desk at the Bureau man.

  ‘But this is absurd, chief inspector,’ Fitzgerald finally said. ‘You’ve been doing all that’s humanly possible to catch the man.’

  ‘The commissioner doesn’t want to hear of hard work. He wants to hear of success. He says the newspapers are going to give us a good beating over this latest fiasco. The preparedness boys are already screaming bloody murder. If we can’t catch one German in our nation’s capital, then what the hell are we going to do with the whole nation of them when and if we go to war?’

  He slumped back in his chair, deflated. ‘My God! That was the worst dressing down I’ve had since cadet school.’

  ‘I suggest we get on with the search then,’ Agent Niel said brightly. ‘This Damoclean sword should spur you on no end.’

  Lewis let the comment go. ‘Where the hell were we?’ He began shuffling through the mess of papers on his desk. Fitzgerald could see he had been flustered and unnerved by the call. His career was on the line with this case.

  But more than careers are at stake with this, he thought. If we do not find M soon, he may very well succeed in getting to Adrian somehow. The thought chilled him. It seems impossible, but the fellow has been resourceful enough to elude us at every turn. He is surely resourceful enough to track Adrian to Brantley.

  ‘The McBride woman.’ Agent Niel prompted Lewis back onto the course of their discussion before the commissioner’s call.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I’m not sure we’ll be able to hold her past tonight.’

  ‘She’s an accomplice,’ Niel said forcibly.

  Lewis shook his head. ‘There’s only circumstantial evidence to that effect. Nothing in her version of events can be disproved.’ He glanced down at the transcript of her interview with several police interrogators which had taken place in the late afternoon. ‘She claims that our man was posing as a South African representative to the World Peace League. One Maximillian Voetner. According to her, she believed him, trusted him even. By all accounts our M is a personable boy when not seen from the wrong end of a revolver barrel. She even loaned him some of her dead son’s clothing to attend his supposed meetings. Her first suspicions, so she says, were aroused last night when he came home stumbling up the stairs. She said she thought he’d been drinking, and it was only this morning, after reading the newspaper accounts of the attack on Sir Adrian at the New Willard Hotel, that she discovered bloodstains on the carpet of the stairs leading up to her tenant’s room.’

  Lewis stopped speaking, his eyes tracking back and forth across the page on the desk as he read on. ‘No,’ he said finally looking up. ‘Her story holds together. She reports that she discovered he’d been cut somehow, but at that moment he drew a gun on her and held her prisoner in her own house until we came this afternoon. It’s her word against ours.’

  ‘And what about when I went to the door?’ Niel said, aroused now, his cheeks red. ‘She wasn’t any captive then, I tell you.’

  ‘She says the man had a gun on her the whole time.’

  ‘She’s lying!’ It was almost a scream; the first time Fitzgerald had seen Niel lose control. He calmed himself after a moment. ‘And what about how she told us he was escaping out the back when all the time he had gone up to the attic?’

  His voice was evenly modulated again, but there was anger and a sort of childish petulance at being thwarted, Fitzgerald thought.

  Lewis smiled at him, and this seemed to fan the flames of Niel’s ire.

  ‘Mrs McBride reports that he forced her to say that,’ Lewis read. ‘Said he would have her in his sights the whole time. That he would shoot her if she told us where he’d gone.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘She did seem awfully nervous,’ Fitzgerald said. But it was more than that, he knew. Yet he held his tongue. Lewis is right, he thought. Her word against ours. And maybe I am wrong about her; maybe she really had been held captive; maybe her nervous glance toward the stairs was simply her way of telling me where M had gone, and not a guilty flicker of the eyes at all.

  ‘So you’re going to let her walk.’ Niel said it with great contempt.

  ‘Hardly that. We’ll have her followed, her house watched. Until we round up M, Mrs McBride will be under the closest surveillance.’

  This appeared to mollify Niel, who crossed his right leg over his left, hitching the pants up at the knee so they wouldn’t bag.

  ‘There’s scant little to go on from what we found in the room,’ Lewis went on after a momentary pause and more referral to the papers on his desk. ‘Nothing to tell us where M might be, who his contacts are, when he might strike again.’

  Fitzgerald was growing impatient with this discussion. Looking outside he saw that the evening had come on without him even realizing it. He would go out to Brantley first thing in the morning. For now he was hungry and tired and wanted to go home to Catherine so that she would not worry.

  ‘That’s all fine, chief inspector,’ he said. ‘But what are we doing to stop him from striking again?’

  Niel smirked at the question, Fitzgerald noticed, and Lewis gave him a ‘not-you-too’ look of semi-disgust.

  ‘We’re doing all we can along those lines, Mr Fitzgerald,’ Chief Inspector Lewis said. ‘As I told the commissioner, we have all our uniformed men out there tonight. M has got to sleep someplace. We have men turning out every flophouse in the city; every known German sympathizer will be interviewed; M’s description is being given out to each and every hotel and rooming house in Washington. Our spotters at the German Embassy have been doubled, but I don’t figure he’s dumb enough to go back there. We’ve got men at the train station and at the steamers. M won’t be able to scratch without us pouncing on him. I tell you, we’
re running the biggest sweep this city has ever seen. We’ll have him in our nets by morning.’

  ‘And what about Brantley?’ Fitzgerald said, unconvinced.

  ‘The place is like an armed camp, for God’s sake,’ Lewis said. ‘I just hope M does show up there. We’ll use him for target practice. I’m going out there myself tonight to coordinate operations. Does that satisfy you, Mr Fitzgerald?’

  ‘I’ll only be satisfied when Sir Adrian has spoken with Wilson.’

  The meeting broke up soon thereafter and Niel accompanied Fitzgerald down the stairs and through the precinct house to the street. The night was absolutely clear and bitterly cold. Orion was high in the southern sky already; Fitzgerald took a long deep breath of the chill air. It cleansed him.

  Niel pulled up the fur collar of his overcoat around his neck, took fur-lined gloves out of his coat pocket and put them on, fastidiously pulling down each finger snugly.

  ‘You’ll be going to Brantley, as well?’ Niel said.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Fitzgerald answered.

  ‘He’s floundering, you know. Lewis. Quite hopeless.’

  Fitzgerald found himself defending the man. ‘He’s doing everything possible. What else is there?’

  ‘Search out the man’s contacts. If we can’t find him, we can at least find his base of operation. No one acts in a vacuum.’

  ‘We’ve scared him off now. Lord knows where he’ll go. Besides, I get the feeling this fellow is the lone wolf sort. The maniacal type who is out to prove something; who does not want anyone else sharing the glory.’

  ‘You speak from experience, Mr Fitzgerald?’

  Fitzgerald reddened at the comment. ‘Merely indulging in amateur psychology.’

  ‘You may be right, though. Our M might just be one of those maniacs, all right. Stands to reason, if he keeps coming after Sir Adrian with all the odds against him.’

  Fitzgerald remained an instant longer out of courtesy. ‘Well, I really must be going. My wife will be frantic with worry.’

  Agent Niel touched the brim of his hat as adieu and Fitzgerald got into his Cadillac and headed toward his home. Soon the lights of Poplars came into view up the long drive off Massachusetts Avenue, and Fitzgerald shifted down to make the turn. Lights were on in the house. She’s waiting for me up there; Catherine is waiting patiently and perhaps with some trepidation. I’ll have a warm dinner and pleasant conversation with the woman I love sitting opposite me.

  He thought of the assassin for a moment: where will he be tonight? He surely cannot find refuge indoors with all of Washington on his heels. It will be a cold night for him. No warm food, no loving companionship. What must the man be thinking of? Fitzgerald wondered. What motivates him so that he will continue on this mission even after realizing that the odds are so greatly stacked against him?

  I wouldn’t be in his shoes tonight for anything, he thought as he drew up in front of his house, and the outside light went on to the right of the tall Georgian front door.

  Max crouched in the bushes like an animal. There was no place for him to go; no place to hide but here in the woods above the C&O canal. They would be scouring Washington for him; this was the safest place, he knew.

  Cold bit at his hands and feet until they had gone numb. He thought he would soon die. Darkness closed around him like a shroud and suddenly an unfamiliar smell made his nose twitch; a sort of tar-like chemical scent wafting on the freezing night air.

  He looked up out of the thick undergrowth where he was hiding. An orange glow throbbed in the sky just northwest of him. A fire. Whose fire?

  But he no longer cared. Max forced himself to his feet, standing uncertainly, and began moving out of the thicket and back onto the canal’s towpath, following the beacon of warmth.

  He knew only that he must find warmth, must defrost himself or die. And I cannot die, he thought. I have a job to do, a mission.

  In ten minutes he discovered the source of the fire. Up a narrow track north of the canal, he saw a group of men huddled around the licking flames of a bonfire. The firelight threw shadows on the faces of these men like pagan face-painting that danced and rippled as the flames moved. It was a large fire made from old creosote-soaked rails discarded along the lines, and it burned intensely and with the faintly chemical smell that had attracted Max. All around these men he could see the accoutrements of the tramp’s life: the precious cans used for cooking; the crude shelters made of cast-off wood and corrugated tin clustered around the little opening in the woods. The men were scattered about the fire, lounging in its warmth in all manner of mismatched clothing, both begged for and stolen off of clotheslines up and down the eastern seaboard.

  The men did not see him at first, standing just out of the ring of fire, but he was happy to see them. There could be safety in such numbers, he knew. Warmth, as well.

  A big man with a shock of red hair was the first to see him, looking casually at Max as he rolled a cigarette, licking the paper down.

  ‘Come on over, buddy,’ he called out, and Max moved to the fire, crouching low to it to warm his icy body.

  Following the time-honored tradition of the road, there were no immediate questions, though Max could see the men were curious, looking him up and down as he extended various parts of his body to the fire. The large one who had called to him was especially interested, he saw, in the bandage on his left hand, and in the gray suit he was wearing which was ripped at the knee and arms from his escape via the tree at McBride’s. The communal stewpot was bubbling over the flames, and Max had smelled its delicious aroma from several hundred yards away.

  ‘You got a can of your own?’ the big man said.

  Max merely shook his head.

  ‘Here.’ One was thrust under his nose, and he followed the arm holding it back to its owner’s face: a big-eyed man about Max’s own age and size who grinned quite idiotically at him.

  ‘Now you’re a real gentleman, Karl,’ the big man said ironically. ‘Karl’s the gentlemanly type, ain’t he, boys?’

  ‘Aw, knock it off, Red,’ one of the men in the shadows behind Max said. ‘Let the little German alone.’

  Max almost jumped at the word until he realized they were describing Karl as a German, not himself.

  Max took the tin can gratefully, smiling at Karl who truly seemed to be mentally impaired now that he continued looking at the man. He filled it with some of the hot broth from the big pot, and sipped it slowly, happily. Nothing had ever tasted so good before in his life.

  A half an hour later, after sitting with the men and listening to stories of great coups in begging and thievery, he was beginning to feel human again; beginning to feel at ease.

  ‘So, you don’t seem much of a fellow for the road,’ Red said finally. Tradition had been mollified; now the men would find out about him. ‘You don’t even carry a can with you; no bindle. What brings you here?’

  Max hesitated. I’ll have to give them some sort of story, he knew. If only in repayment for their hospitality. To say nothing would be an affront to their implied camaraderie.

  ‘Women troubles,’ he said.

  ‘Ooh!’ Red slapped his knee. ‘I knew it. Kicked you out for the night, did she? You’re no tramp. Anybody could tell that. Why not go to a hotel?’

  Max stared at the fire, saying nothing.

  ‘Say,’ Red said, a worried expression on his large face now. ‘You’re not wanted by the cops or anything, are you? We don’t want any trouble with the police.’

  Several of the men around Max mumbled assent to this.

  ‘No,’ Max said, taking his eyes from the dancing flames. ‘No police. I just wanted to get out in the fresh air and think things through. It got cold.’

  Red again slapped his knee. ‘Well there’s plenty of fresh air out here, buddy. You come to the right spot. Do you have any money with you?’

  Max’s alarms tingled into action. He got up suddenly, moving to the edge of the crowd of men, his back protected.

  ‘Easy, bu
ddy,’ Red said, palms up peaceably. ‘No one’s going to hurt you. It’d just be nice if you contributed something. If you’ve got it, that is. We all do our bit here, you see. This ain’t no free ride.’

  Max dug in his pocket and pulled out a silver dollar, and flipped it to Red. ‘That enough?’

  Red turned it over, examining both sides before pocketing it. ‘Great, brother. You got a name?’

  ‘Max,’ he said.

  ‘Welcome, Max,’ Red said.

  He had found a home.

  In the middle of the night, Max, bedded down near the dying fire in an old blanket the other German had shared with him, was awakened by the sounds of voices coming from one of the corrugated metal shelters. He could just make out the gruff, threatening voice of the big man, Red, and the pleading voice of the German, Karl.

  Drawing close to the shelter he heard Red: ‘I know you got some tobacco in here. Now hand it over.’

  Then Karl, whining: ‘But it’s mine. I’ve been saving it up.’

  ‘You want a crack on the head? Maybe it’d do you good, you silly son of a bitch.’

  There was the sound of scuffling and Max crawled quickly through the low opening. His eyes were already adjusted to the darkness, and he instantly saw Red crouched over Karl preparing to strike him. Max’s teeth bared like an animal’s and a sharp hiss exploded from his mouth as he lunged for Red. He surprised the big man and grabbed his right arm, twisting and pinning it in a lock grip he had learned at the Marburg training camp. Red yelped with pain and frustration as he tried unsuccessfully to break the grip, for the greater he exerted, the more pressure he put on his own arm, pinioned over Max’s forearm and locked in place by Max’s chest.