“Oh, but that was lovely! And now, do tell me what it means, that song in English.”
He should have remembered that Madeleine did not understand English. He could compose long speeches in Tamil and Gujarati when he tired of Arabic; but he should not expect her to have his gift of language. So he translated.
“The words are lovely, too,” said Madeleine. “And you really do love me that much?”
“Ever so much, and your pale hands also,” replied Lawton, as he kissed her fingers one by one.
“And you won’t ever leave me, you incurable wanderer?”
Lawton smiled, and his eyes spoke the lie that his lips could not achieve. Then a somber fancy possessed him, and he recited:
“When I am dead, open my grave and see
The smoke that curles about thy feet;
In my dead heart the fire still burns for thee:
Yea, the smoke rises from my winding-sheet.”
“That is beautiful,” observed Madeleine. “Only, just a bit ghastly. You have the strangest fancies, my dear.”
“Nothing strange about that,” murmured the Gray Goddess to Lawton. “Very appropriate. You love her to distraction. And she’s sold you to the enemy, and then showed you the price of your head. Only you won’t be in your grave when she opens it. But she did get a good price for digging it, didn’t she? One of those rolls would have been enough…”
Lawton watched Madeleine stuffing the notes back into the handbag, and saw her smile at his audible words.
“That was clever,” whispered the Goddess at Lawton’s side, “getting all that money as the price of your head. They couldn’t possibly have known how much your head is worth…that’s our secret.
“Maybe,” continued that fine, thin voice, “maybe they just wanted to make an example of you.”
“The chances are,” suggested Lawton, “that they suspected I’d completed a rather brilliant plan to lead Abd el Krim’s troops all the way to the sea, and drive the French out of Morocco. They must have known I had perfected my plan while I was pretending to be working on the Communists to collect funds for Abd el Krim. Shrewd fellows, to know that I was squandering all that money as a blind, and pretending to sit around the cafes, everlastingly drunk…”
“But you shouldn’t blame her too much,” murmured the fountain of wisdom. “Think of the temptation! All those thousands of francs! Anyway, she knew you were clever enough to escape.”
“But I object to the principle of it!” protested Lawton.
Through the swirling hazes before him, Lawton saw the sparkle of a bracelet.
“She’s sold me out, and I’m not ready to leave. Abd el Krim won’t understand that I spent all that money as a subterfuge…”
Madeleine was clinging closely to him, now, and her eyes were very dark and lustrous. She was so near that he feared she might after all sense the presence of the Goddess, and be annoyed; so he cut short the conversation, caressed Madeleine’s hair, and kissed her full on the lips. But he couldn’t take too much time from the oracle that murmured in his ear.
No, it was Madeleine who murmured amorously as she caressed him.
“I’m not the least bit sleepy, sweetheart,” he replied. “Well, then…but I’ll have another drink first…”
With exquisitely precise gestures Lawton blended the final potion. That last one would give him the power to cross the Border and peer through ethereal vistas deep beyond reckoning. He would see with a keenness he had never before achieved. Then She would reveal the final secret.
Madeleine stood there between the parted draperies, all shimmering in an apricot-colored negligee. She paused for a moment to smile at him as she drew the drapes together. And then the Gray Goddess resumed her speech in a voice somewhat louder, now that they were alone.
“Lawton, you are still terribly stupid! In just another moment she’d have charmed you out of your senses, this fascinating girl who sold you to the Sûreté. Think, Lawton, you will face a firing-squad unless you leave by sunrise.
“But go into the next room,” taunted that thin, clear voice, bitter and vibrant. “You love her to distraction. Wake her and sing once more of the pale hands you loved…
“Of all the pale hands,” concluded the Gray Goddess with venomous emphasis.
“No, by God! I’ll not sing. I’ll choke her!” retorted Lawton, stung by the memory of all his follies. “They’ve been my damnation all these past dozen years.”
“But you can’t change,” murmured the Gray Goddess with a softness more enraging than the previous sardonic piping. “So leave quietly. Don’t wake her, or her arms will hold you until Joubert comes in the morning to arrest you.”
“No, Gray Goddess,” replied Lawton solemnly. “For once you are wrong. This is the first one to take the price of my head. And this time I shall redeem myself.”
His glance roved up and down the wall, and in the ruddy glow of the floor lamp he saw the picture he had once hung for Madeleine. Lacking wire at the time, he had used a cord of hard-spun silk, a relic of old days in Asia. Madeleine had shuddered as he told its history, and showed her the swift gesture used by Indian dacoits in their stranglings.
“Look, Gray Goddess, how simple it will be.”
But she mocked him for a braggart as the drapes closed about him. Then she followed him, lest his courage fade before the loveliness asleep in the moonlight that streamed in through the drawn curtains and caressed the curved throat.
As Lawton knelt beside her, Madeleine stirred slightly and her shapely arms twined about his neck to draw him to her.
“Pale hands,” mocked the Goddess at his side. “They will hold you for Joubert in the morning…”
A whiteness of searing flame swept through his brain as the hard-spun cord cut short the kiss that sought his lips.
“You have proved yourself, Lawton,” exulted the Gray Goddess as they emerged again into the sultry glow of the floor lamp. “And there in that mesh bag is the price of your head. It will redeem you and your broken faith in the eyes of Abd el Krim. Now hurry, Lawton, hurry!”
The Goddess led him into a gray world. Lawton strode triumphantly down rue Port Neuf and past the deserted plaza, and across the bridge of Saint Esprit. Dawn was almost at hand. In the distance he heard the whistle of the express that would take him across the border of Spain.
Lawton heard footsteps behind him. Perhaps it was Joubert coming to the station to assure himself that Lawton was leaving on time. He turned; but it was not Joubert who faced him. He stared for a moment, perplexed by the familiarity of the man who confronted him. Then he saw that it was Mahjoub, the right-hand man of Abd el Krim. No wonder that for a moment he had not recognized Mahjoub attired in European clothing, and without his long beard.
“Joubert didn’t fail me,” said Mahjoub. “By Allah! But I had to do it! You made such an ass of yourself. Abd el Krim gave me full authority; so I solved it my own way.
“Too bad it took that girl so long to learn to win,” continued Mahjoub, ignoring Lawton’s puzzled frown. “My heart stood still when I saw her take the winnings of the first play and stake them all on single zero. But she won!”
“What was that?” said Lawton, enunciating very slowly, like a mechanical toy that has just achieved speech.
“She won enough thousand-franc notes to stuff a saddle-bag. But…”
Mahjoub paused, and made a gesture of stroking his beard, then remembered he was clean-shaven.
“But I guess it was just as well that I did tell the Sûreté…”
“You told the Sûreté?” demanded Lawton.
His voice rang in his own ears as from a great distance.
“By Allah! Of course I did. Then I told your friend Joubert to scare you out of town. But Abd el Krim loves a good soldier, so he’ll forgive a worthless secret agent.”
“Then she didn’t
sell me?” Lawton’s voice was husky and trembling. Exultation fought with despair, so that he could barely pronounce his question.
“No, she didn’t,” replied Mahjoub. “Nor did I. That was just the only way to get you out of town before Abd el Krim’s wrath overcame him. If he had told the Sûreté…
“Mafeesh!” concluded the old man with a gesture of finality. “Finish for you.”
The express was pulling into the station. But Lawton had turned, and was walking toward the bridge.
“Forgotten of Allah!” cried Mahjoub. “Where are you going?”
Lawton halted, faced about, but made no move to retrace his steps.
“I’m going back to town,” he replied. His voice was strong and steady now, as though he commanded troops. “And my salaam to Abd el Krim!”
Then he turned and strode toward the bridge of Saint Esprit.
“Gray Goddess,” he said bitterly, “you have mocked me. Her life is on my hands.”
“Repentance is vain,” murmured that sweet thin voice of the enchantress. “And you acted in good faith. So swallow your misery and your regrets. Be a man. Catch that express. Abd el Krim will give you a high command when he sees that money. You had reason to believe she betrayed you.”
“Gray Goddess,” replied Lawton, “I refuse to betray what little good there is left in me.”
As he passed the second span of the bridge, his right hand swept out in a wide arc. A thick bundle of thousand-franc notes soared high into the morning light, fell into the river, and was sucked out of sight by an eddy. Then, as with lengthening stride he marched across the bridge, he sang in his rich, deep voice:
“Pale hands I loved, beside the Shalimar,
Where are you now…”
It was but a short walk to Joubert’s house.
“Georges,” said Lawton to his astonished friend, “place me under arrest. And tell the Prefect of Police to call at 34 rue Lachepaillet. He will find her with a cord about her throat. I thought that she sold me. But I met an old man at the station, who told me…”
“I understand,” replied Joubert, as he heard the final whistle of the express clearing the yards for Spain.
LIVE BAIT
Originally published in Alibi, April 1934.
Davis P. Barrett’s mother, who had died when he was six, doubtless thought that he was a beautiful child; but then, she was his mother, and something like thirty odd years may have changed little Davis. Mrs. Barrett’s youngest son’s face was now the Rock of Gibraltar done in that shade of bronze which comes from long exposure to the breath of blistering deserts and tropical jungles. His broad mouth was a thin, straight line no wider than the edge of an officer’s dress-sword, and somewhat harder. His blue eyes glowed with ominous, volcanic mirth as they watched two perfectly barbered, tailored, and manicured gentlemen whose tables were at the corner of the tiny dance floor, and to Barrett’s left.
The two racketeers were inseparable friends. They had assumed—somewhat erroneously, as it later developed—that their being at Club Martinique was pure coincidence, and they had agreed to combine their tables when their feminine companions arrived.
A waiter was bringing a note to the gentleman whose table was nearest Barrett: Guido Pichetti. Barrett’s shaggy, reddish brows rose just perceptibly. His chin, which he fingered abstractedly, was thrust forward. There was something tense and expectant about Barrett, as though he were a panther about to spring. His interest seemed centered on the note, rather than on the perceptible bulge of the left breasts of the nicely fitted dinner jackets of Messieurs Pichetti and Spud Malone.
Club Martinique was a mirthful madhouse of blatant music, alcoholic laughter, and tinkle of ice against the sides of many tall glasses. White arms and shoulders, and whiter shirt fronts stared spectrally through the bluish glare of the spotlight that made the shifting bands of smoke seem like phantom serpents writhing in the warmth of a ghostly sun. The reek of gin, perfume, cosmetics, and unextinguished cigarette butts was the odor of gaiety to most of those assembled: but to Davis Barrett it was the exhalation of death, and the end of a story…
Guido Pichetti had opened the note. His swarthy features flushed with rage, then bleached sallow as he leaped from his table. What he said to Malone, and what Malone replied was not audible above the blare of the music; but Barrett’s expectancy was not in vain. There was an almost simultaneous flashing of hands to shoulder holsters—
Barrett’s lips relaxed enough to reveal a glimpse of his teeth as two pistols blazed into the satanic bluish moonlight, and their roar, almost a single, prolonged report, bellowed above the brazen clang of the orchestra. Barrett ignored the ensuing uproar and confusion as a glance, before the crowd became too dense about the fallen, assured him that the theretofore bosom friends had killed each other. He sighed deeply, slouched against the back of his chair, and for the first time realized how highly keyed he had been for the past half hour.
Justice that was beyond the power of the law.
Vengeance…and the end of the story…
* * * *
A burly, red-faced, grim mouthed man emerged from the gaping, babbling, hysterical crowd that pushed in as close as it could to the double X’s that marked the respective spots where Guido Pichetti and Spud Malone had become public benefactors. In his hands he had a letter and an envelope, both of which he thrust before Barrett.
“Dave,” he demanded, “what do you know about this? One look tells me it’s fishy as kippered herring—even if Damon and Pythias were too dumb to realize it.”
Barrett regarded first the envelope, then the letter, then John Healy, Chief of the Detective Bureau, who was beginning to understand why he had received a tip to be present, though unseen, at Club Martinique.
“End of the story, John. It’s been a strain, figuring out ways of making these rats kill each other.”
Healy grunted, nodded, then said, “Pretty good, Dave. Only, it’s not the end of the story by a big damn sight! You’ve not finished something, you’ve started something. Watch your step.”
Mrs. Barrett might have been right, some thirty years ago. Her lean, broad shouldered son, while far from handsome, in his lighter moments had a pleasant smile, and an engaging friendly manner.
“Thanks, John,” he said quite affably as he rose from his seat. “Come out to the house some night soon. I have some mighty interesting jig-saw puzzles.”
And a few moments later, Barrett was at the wheel of his Issotta, driving up Saint Charles Avenue toward Audoubon Place. He was smiling to himself at the gullibility of two dear friends whose lurking suspicion of each other had been detonated by the note Barrett had prepared and planted.
Two days later—thirty-six hours, to be accurate—Barrett’s smile vanished. What he had called the end of a story had become the beginning of a longer and grimmer tale. His blue eyes were hard as sword points as he paced up and down the wine-red Boukhara rug in his library.
“Marie,” he demanded abruptly as he halted and faced the girl who sat buried in the depths of an over-stuffed chair, “are you sure Lee hasn’t just left town suddenly on urgent business?”
Marie Simpson shook her blonde head and dabbed her tear-reddened eyes. She had never learned the art of effective weeping.
“No, Dave. He’d have wired or phoned me by this time.” She swallowed a sob, then said pointedly, “And I don’t think you believe he’s left on a business trip, either.”
Barrett’s features tensed. Vengeance was bearing bitter fruit.
“Suppose you run along home,” he suggested with a gentleness that seemed out of keeping with his rugged features and the usually incisive snap of his voice. “You know I’d go through hell and high water for Lee. And if there’s anything off color about his being missing for the past twelve hours, I’ll tear the roof off.”
As he spoke, he helped Marie Simpson with her coat.
“Dave, do you think—”
“I’m not thinking anything,” he evaded. “But I’m going to see. Now run along, and pull yourself together.”
As the door clicked closed behind Marie Simpson, Barrett’s eyes flashed to the half opened desk drawer. During the brief interview he had feared that his very effort not to think of what the drawer contained, not to let his eyes stray toward it would betray him to Marie’s intuition. His hand halted midway as it reached for the envelope.
“Jackass!” he said aloud. “Healy was right.” Barrett’s bitter thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of John Healy. He indicated the chair that Marie Simpson had left but a few moments ago—or how long had it been that he had stared at that desk drawer?
“What’s new and good, John?”
“About Lee Simpson, and it’s not good,” said Healy as he selected a cigar from Barrett’s humidor and jammed his bulk into the spacious chair. “You’re his number one friend. Where is he?”
“God knows,” replied Barrett. “And I will if I live long enough. Has his wife—”
“Uh-uh. Run me ragged,” interrupted Healy. “But no sign of him.”
“Where do I come in?”
“Simpson’s not got two nickels to click together,” answered Healy. “And no enemies. The way I got it doped out, someone is getting at you for that job you pulled at Club Martinique. Somebody took a tumble.”
Barrett flinched as at the thrust of a red hot iron.
“Right, John. I’d rather face a machine gun than this.”
“Don’t worry. You probably will, before it’s over. Have you gotten any demands for ransom or the like?”
Barrett shook his head.
“You’re a damn liar,” declared Healy with the license of friendship.
“Have it your own way. And if you’ve any dope, pass it along. I’m on the job myself.”
“No good, Dave,” said Healy with a peremptory gesture. “That’s the trouble. You’ve been on the job too much. You smoked out so many of these rats—and now they’re pulling your teeth by snatching Simpson.”
E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates Page 57
