Fallen Sparrow

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  She shivered slightly.

  He said, “I’ll tell you what. Soon as we finish the chores, we’ll take in some of the high spots. Celebrate. I haven’t had a real night of it for I don’t know how long. What do you say?”

  Her eyes were eager, the eyes of a waif believing for one moment that the good saint would be able to remove that big golden-haired doll from behind the glittering glass window and place it in the worn stocking before the bells of Christmas rang. But the wind of reality stripped the belief from her. She said, “No, I couldn’t.”

  “Why not? You don’t want to sit around all night talking with the old folks. Let’s go dance. We’ll drink champagne. We’ll ride the stars. We’ll find that hour wherein a man may be happy all his life.” He was terribly sorry for her defeatism. He coaxed, “Come on, Toni. Say yes. Come on. Just this once.”

  She trembled with wanting it. He was determined. Returned to the dining-room he spoke to the Prince before she could. “We’re going dancing. You’ll excuse us?”

  Toni’s hands flung out. “No.” There was uneasy silence, eyes on him, on her. Det shook her head so slightly.

  Christian Skaas spoke with unctuous kindliness. “But why not, Toni? It will be good for you. You will tell her to go, Felix? Certainly.”

  The Prince wore malicious refusal on his narrow lips. His bony fingers crunched the thin shell of a pecan, one long finger nail dug at the meat. He looked up at her in the silence, barely nodded.

  Toni said, “I’ll go.” But she seemed more defeated than she had in wanting and not daring. Kit didn’t get it.

  Her voluminous cape was of ermine; it must have belonged to some Medici grandmother in legendary times. The white stuff veiling her hair was crusted in tiny pearls. Kit tried not to make audible the catch in his breath. She was like something out of a fairy tale, a princess bewitched by an ogre grandfather. She had a champion now if she’d accept him. If she were mixed up in the Louie deal, it wasn’t from choice. And if his own heart weren’t turned over to Barby, he might fall in love with her. He might not be able to help falling in love with her. Except for Barby.

  Det said, “You can drop me, Kit.” She spoke over protests from Dr. Skaas. “I’m not feeling so well, probably catching a cold.” Her eyes were reddened. The protests had been half-hearted. The Prince ignored her. He was engrossed with the nut meats, oblivious to all but the splinter of cracking shells, the picking away of the flesh, the crunching and smacking of insatiable appetite.

  The cab rolled to The George. Det said again, “No, I won’t chaperon. I’m really not well.” Suddenly and surprisingly she kissed Toni’s cheek. She wasn’t given to affection. “Enjoy it.” There was faint suspicion over her lips as she turned to him, but she bit it away. “Bless you, Kit.”

  He didn’t get that either, the sadness between the women, the sudden mist in Toni’s eyes. Plenty he didn’t get, wasn’t supposed to. But he’d make Toni forget her troubles tonight. He wouldn’t give her time to think.

  She refused Number 50. He wasn’t insistent. He didn’t particularly care to see Content’s wise little smirk as he entered with Toni Donne. Moreover, Jake’s night club wasn’t good enough for Toni, only precious things were. He’d rather take her to Tristan, or to the Boston, than to the best dancing rooms with the best music and the best champagne. But these could come another time. Tonight at least she would dance, smile, even echo laughter.

  It was after three when they entered a home-bound cab. He directed, “The Park, and go slow.” The driver winked. The slopes lay luminous white under the snow-misted sky.

  Kit said, “I’ve always found it’s easier to sleep if you take the long way home.”

  She didn’t answer and he looked at her. Suddenly the laughter had run out of her. She whispered, “What do you want of me?”

  “Toni!” He was truly startled. She couldn’t mean it one way; if he’d ever been the gentleman, it was tonight. And she had no business knowing about the other stuff. He’d absolved her tonight from all guilty participation.

  She said it quietly, “You stared at me Tuesday night at the Waldorf but you’d never seen me before. You came to Det’s Wednesday not for your mother’s hat but to see me. You didn’t ask me out tonight because your lady is out of town. What do you want?”

  He didn’t look away. Her eyes didn’t waver; he couldn’t read them but they were at least one thing, unafraid.

  He said, “I want to know about my friend’s death.”

  3.

  The darkness of her eyes should have held him but he saw the twisting and trembling of her gloved fingers. She stated at last, “You mean Louie Lepetino.”

  “Yes.”

  She quivered a soundless sigh. “I told the police all that I knew. I saw him fall as I entered the room.”

  “You were alone with him?”

  “I wasn’t with him. I went in alone. And I saw him fall.”

  He was bitter. “I knew Louie all of my life. He couldn’t have fallen from a window. Not even with the guard conveniently removed.” All his suspicion of her had redoubled. “How well did you know him?”

  He had to strain to catch her syllables. “Not well. A few meetings.”

  “Was he in love with you?”

  Her lashes lifted in amazement. “I told you I knew him so short a time.”

  He said, “That isn’t important. Louie fell in love easily.” His look was steady on her. “With someone like you he’d have been in love before he started. Louie liked beautiful things.”

  Her face in the shadow was colored. She said, “I don’t know. He was kind to me.” It was as if few had ever been.

  But Kit’s hurt and bitterness slashed. “So you pushed him out of a window.”

  “I didn’t!” She cried it. “How can you think that?” The spirit rode away from her as quickly as it had come. “I’ve never hurt anyone in my life knowingly.” She spoke without inflection. “You thought I killed Louie. That’s why you’ve come to me.”

  He broke in harshly. “Where were you Tuesday afternoon?”

  She didn’t answer at once. Then she said, “I went up to Westchester to see a friend.”

  “Where did you get Louie’s folder?”

  “He gave it to me.” She insisted he believe. “It wasn’t that night. It was the day before. He showed me the picture of you, his best friend. He was proud of you. He forgot it when he left the apartment. I didn’t know what to do with it after—after—”

  Kit said coldly, “Would you like to explain just how you knew me and knew I’d be on that particular train on that particular afternoon?”

  Her voice was faint; her eyes pitied his stupidity. “Don’t you know that someone has been watching you from the time you first set foot in New York? I had seen many pictures of you, pictures you do not know exist. I had access to information that told when you left the ranch and on which train you would travel. I could be killed for what I have just said.” Her lashes were webbed. “Please take me home now. I am very tired.”

  He pushed aside the glass, gave directions, closed it. He shook his head. “Toni—”

  She put her hand in his. “Do not think of me. You must be careful. You know?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Without warning, she bent her head, kissed his hand.

  “Toni!”

  She said, “I did not thank you for the roses before. They are very beautiful.” She added, “I did not say to anyone from whom they came.”

  He dismissed the cab at her place. He could pick up another on Broadway, late as it was. He wanted air, to walk and to think.

  At the outer door she hesitated. Her voice was a breath. “I will try to see you but it is better you do not see me.”

  She was close to him. He didn’t think. He kissed her. She was as fragile, as evanescent as falling snow. And as cold.

  She quieted his apologies. “Say nothing. And remember this: no matter what you may think again, this night has been to me a night I will never forg
et.”

  Maybe he was a fool. Maybe he’d been taken in. Maybe that was how Louie was taken in, that song of helpless fragility. If he’d made a lucky guess tonight, if Toni were not the ancient Prince’s granddaughter, she hadn’t been included in this refugee party merely for decorative purposes. She was there to perform. He didn’t like it. He didn’t want her to be one mechanized unit in a macabre plan.

  The snow crunched beneath his feet as he strode towards Broadway. One thing, he was alive. He hadn’t known how long he would be when she closed the door of her apartment, leaving him to negotiate the dim worn staircase to the street alone. His shirt was still damp from that descent; his hand still bore the imprint of the gun.

  He took a cab on Broadway, sank back against the cold leather. “Och! but I’m weary of mist and dark …” He was sad. He realized he was tired, dog tired. He was never sad unless he was tired, and he was sad for Toni Donne. If she were the Prince’s granddaughter, forced to be part of this intrigue, he was sad. If she were a highly trained tool with misbegotten ideological loyalties, he was sad. Whatever she was, he could sorrow for her. She didn’t belong in this; she was too fine, too fair.

  Wearily he waited for the elevator at the apartment. Pierre was at the control. Kit was suspicious. “You on day and night shift both?”

  Pierre closed the cage. “I have just gone on the night shift, Mr. McKittrick. The other man was leaving. My wife works nights and it’s better this way.”

  The fellow was trying to make his eyes look as if he’d been dozing but he wasn’t a good dissembler. The cage hadn’t come up to first. Pierre had not been catnapping below. Out of the unconscious and out of the past, Kit had surety. The cage had been at the Wilhite floor. He couldn’t be mistaken. That had been a matter of pride to kids waiting in the lobby, to listen for a faint digression of sound, to know from which floor the elevator was descending. It had nothing to do with mind; it was mechanical as instrument flying.

  He put his hand in his pocket “Whom did you just take up to the fourteenth?”

  The back of Pierre’s sleek head was startled. “No one, Mr. McKittrick. No one has come to your apartment tonight.” He slid the cage door and Kit’s hand was ready. But there was no one in the small hallway.

  Kit laughed. The sound made too much noise. “Don’t give me that. I’ve lived too long in this place not to know the levels. Who was it?” He didn’t move to step from the cage. He didn’t want to be left alone here in the small entrance, to open that door into the unknown dark of the Wilhite foyer.

  The man repeated as if hurt, “There was no one.”

  It could be Elise sneaking in late the front way; it could be a rendezvous between the man and the maid. Kit laughed as in knowledge. “Did my trunk get upstairs after I left?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.” The man’s head was eager. “I helped Elise take it up.” He might have winked. “She’s a pretty swell dish.”

  Kit said, “I haven’t noticed.” He couldn’t stay there in the comparative safety of the elevator until dawn. He went on talking to the man while he legged out, inserted his key, swung wide the door. “Though I don’t know what your wife would say if she heard you mention it.”

  He had the light switched on while the man tittered, “I know what she’d say, Mr. McKittrick. I don’t have to tell her to find out.”

  No one in view in the foyer. Someone hidden in shadow of the bedroom corridor, of the library? The elevator had descended. Kit had the revolver in his hand before he closed the door.

  The silence was a formless mass. He whistled a path into it. “The minstrel boy to the war is gone …” He knew better than to remove his overcoat. He needed both hands free. Long strides lighted the library. Empty … but there’d been someone in it not long ago. The pale gold brocade of the couch cushions had been too hurriedly shaped to eradicate seat marks. Someone had smoked a cigarette, the odor hadn’t been successfully dissipated; someone had lifted the Chaucerian china lid, disturbed Geoffrey’s gum drops. That wasn’t imagination. There were red ones on top; Kit had plowed them under earlier when he prospected for pink ones.

  Would Pierre dare effect entry without the assistance of Elise? Kit didn’t believe so. No one but Pierre had descended in the elevator. He could have brought another up, someone who slipped out the back way when Kit rang from below. Elise alone would not dare park herself in the living-room, eat candy, smoke a cigarette. Moreover, that would be purposeless.

  Kit strode hard to the kitchen door; soundlessness lay in the dark behind it. His hand on the gun, he made a thin wedge. No sound. Lights. “The minstrel boy …” Open the ice box, slam it. His heels laid square clacks on the linoleum. No sound behind the door leading to the servants’ wing. He left the kitchen, turned on the corridor lights, waited. Only the rustle of silence was audible. He gripped the small deadly gun in the flat of his hand. He would search.

  The same routine for each room. Dark swathe of entrance. Sudden click of light. He searched closets, jerkily beneath beds. His own rooms last. No one caught there. He wasn’t afraid, returning to douse lights. “The minstrel boy to the war is gone …”

  But in the corridor again he waited. He could feel the watcher in the dark, the spirit of him if not the bulk. Eyes watching his least move, ears hearkening to his least sound, mouths whispering behind his ignorance. He could hear the uneven slur and fall of pursuing steps. He banged the door of his room behind him, swirled; his hand was cold and quick turning the key in the lock. He stood there waiting for his breath to return. Until he waited he hadn’t known it was gone.

  He was through. There had to be some place in which he could be safe; that place must be home. Tomorrow he’d pack Elise off; he’d wire his mother for permission to give the girl her walking papers. Geoffrey wouldn’t endure a maid who snooped on his stepson, still less one who put her finger into French gum drops.

  He’d find Lotte, good old Charlotte. She was German as Goethe, as Wagner, as Budweiser; her accent was rich as her strudel; and she’d make quick shift of enemies from the old countries. With Lotte in command, his possessions would be sacred—he remembered the pack of letters he’d carried all day. His hand didn’t find them in his jacket; he recalled then, he’d thrust them into the overcoat pocket when Tobin interrupted at the station. He half rose up from the bed, sank down again. He’d funk it. He couldn’t take another trip into the dark tonight. Wearily he knew it. He hadn’t been back three days; already nerves and flesh, sound and strong under an Arizona sky, were raveling to deterioration. The sound of deformity had done this.

  What he must do, must be done quickly. Until it was accomplished, he could never hold the normal way of life again; he would remain cased in fear. The cups must be retrieved at once, passed over to Geoffrey for the Metropolitan Museum. When the treasure was no longer hidden, when it was in open custody of the Museum, he would be free. The thieves might attempt to substitute their not so accurate facsimiles for the originals, but they would never be successful; they would have to report the finality of their defeat; the mad aesthete would be forced to accept his frustration. Kit would have won the ultimate round.

  One thing stood in his way of regaining the Babylon goblets. The Wobblefoot. The wolf pack would tread Kit’s heels if he made one step towards the secret; they were watching now, snuffling, expecting just that. That meant death for him. He dared not make a move until this man was put out of the way. Until the Wobblefoot and his present accomplices were impotent to act, Kit could not set forth to dig out—literally—the treasure. And only then, and at that point of convergence, must he move quickly, before word reach the castle and new wolves were put on his spoor.

  Before he could act, he must find the man. How, he didn’t know. Perhaps Ab could help; he might have run into that sound in his investigations. And unwittingly, the accomplices should lead him. He didn’t have certain knowledge of the identity of these but José Andalusian must be one; there was no doubt now in Kit’s mind that the Wobblefoot had visited Jos
é twice on Wednesday. The two Skaases. They too must be a part of the plan. Those sticky eyes weren’t harmless. Otto didn’t appear to be anything but a nice young fellow; you’d think that if you hadn’t met him at the controls of a Messerschmitt, or behind the lines in porcine assurance of his position in a new world order. The Prince Felix—he was getting too near Toni; he didn’t want Toni to be involved. This was not the hour for inventions. Face reality. Prince Felix. He closed his eyes. And he saw what earlier he had seen but not beheld. The gold knob of a heavy cane. A cane a man could lean upon if a man could not walk in a normal way. There was a damp cold feeling his spine. His nerves hadn’t gone. He hadn’t imagined the sound of those steps; he hadn’t been wrong assuming that the Wobblefoot was in New York. Prince Felix, José was a protégé of the Prince. Dr. Skaas was a crony of the Prince; the Skaases had moved into the same apartment. All had entrenched themselves in Kit’s circle during his absence.

  He mustn’t depend on divination; he must find out. He must kill the Wobblefoot, whoever the man was. Nor must he wait until weakened by attack, he must make an offensive drive into the enemy camp. His eyes looked upon the Luger, upon its diminutive but dread companion. No, he wasn’t afraid. Neither morally nor physically. The man must die. You feared when you were on the defensive, feeling your way through the plasma of unknown terrors. There would be no more fear when you were the stalker, not the stalked.

  4

  HE GROANED, “GO AWAY.” He woke then; knocking at his door, Elise’s flat nasality, “Mr. Kit, Mr. Kit.” He yelled at her, “What do you want?” The bed clock showed eight-thirty. It had been dawn before he slept and dawn came late in wintry months.

  The maid seemed surprised that he answered. She’d evidently been rapping long enough to attain hopelessness. “A lady to see you, Mr. Kit.”

  His heart did a double twist. He had a sudden fool idea it would be Toni seeking his protection. “Be right there.” His eyes had pins in them. He splashed water; put on his plaid flannel bathrobe, brushed back his hair. The revolvers were grim on the bed table. He hesitated, slid the small one into his pocket, protected it with a protruding handkerchief. The Luger he thrust into his jacket in the closet. Just in case Elise came down with any ideas of doing his room at this hour.