Margie

by Howard Fast

  “Maybe they just drove her home.”

  “After they knocked Joey Montoso over? Are you kidding? In this town murder is not a misdemeanor no matter how you murder.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t know they knocked Joey Montoso over. We wouldn’t know ourselves if it wasn’t that he wasn’t blinking.”

  “What?”

  “I mean I never knew you could be so dead and look so alive.”

  “You never looked in a mirror, did you?”

  “For crying out loud, Alan, I can stand only so many of those nasty cracks. It’s not friendly and it’s not polite. I think I have an apology coming.”

  “I apologize,” Compton said. “Try the door.”

  They went up the steps and Golden tried it.

  “Locked.”

  “Then break it down.”

  “What?”

  “Break it down.”

  “You can’t just go around breaking down doors. That’s some kind of crime. That’s a felony or some kind of assault or something.”

  “It’s breaking and entering, but isn’t it a worse crime if Margie dies?”

  “What makes you think Margie’s going to die?”

  “What makes you think she isn’t?”

  “We don’t even know whether she’s in there.”

  “How can we know until we break down the door and get in there?”

  “If you’re so sure, why don’t you break in the door?” Golden demanded.

  “Do I look like I can break in that door? Or any door?”

  “I guess not. But what do I do? I never broke in a door before.”

  “Didn’t you ever see it in films?”

  “You mean you throw yourself at it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to kick it in?”

  “Did you ever see anyone kick in a door?”

  “No, but I was an awful good kicker,” Golden said. “I broke the intercollegiate record in—”

  “Hit it with your shoulder!” Compton snapped. “You know, Margie could be dying in there.”

  Hy Golden promptly hit the door with his shoulder. His shoulder was something to be conjectured with, but so was the door, and all it did was to shudder slightly under the pressure. As he stepped back for a second try, a cold voice asked:

  “No key, boys?”

  Golden turned and Compton turned—each slowly. The patrolman who had been stationed in front of the Dravinian Embassy stood on the bottom step of the stoop of the boarded-up mansion, and he regarded them with a cold and uncompromising eye.

  “Do you make a habit of this—breaking down doors on Fifth Avenue?” he asked nastily.

  “First time,” Golden insisted.

  “Look, officer,” Compton said, talking rapidly and smoothly, “this is no ordinary situation. There’s a girl in there …”

  “In there?”

  “She could be dying while we argue here,” Golden said, moving down the steps toward the patrolman.

  “So she could. So we won’t argue.”

  “You’ll go in with us, officer?” Compton demanded eagerly.

  “No, sonny,” the patrolman replied, shaking his head. “No. You are going in with me, both of you, in to the station house, where the sergeant will be happy to listen to all your stories about girls dying in old boarded-up houses—”

  That was when Golden hit him. Golden had looked up and down the street, found it properly deserted, as Fifth Avenue should be on a chilly fall day, and then had hit the officer neatly on the point of the chin. He pulled his punch, however. Long ago, when Hy Golden had been nine years old, he rolled over on top of another nine-year-old with whom he had been wrestling. They were both the same age, but Golden was twice as large and heavy as the other child, and it took sixteen minutes for the boy to regain consciousness. Ever since then Golden had avoided any sort of personal contention, and when he was forced into something, as now, he made sure to pull his punch. The result was that instead of being lifted off the ground with a possible broken neck, the policeman crumpled gently into Compton’s arms. Staggering under his weight, Compton laid him on the step and complained bitterly:

  “Now you’ve done it, you fathead!”

  “Well, what do you think—with Margie dying inside?”

  “Let’s get in there then.”

  Golden kicked the door. One single kick with the heel of his size-fourteen-and-a-half shoe did it. The door burst open, and they dashed into the house. Both big downstairs rooms—the basement, where a sickly bulb illuminated an ancient and filthy interior—second floor empty, third floor empty, but with some bandages and court-plaster strips on the floor of the rear room, fourth floor empty …

  “She’s not here! You ape, you go and slug a cop, and she’s not even here!” Compton cried.

  “You said she was here, not me.”

  “Well, she isn’t.”

  “What about the bandages and the court plaster?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, isn’t it suspicious?”

  “People are suspicious. Dogs are suspicious. An inanimate object simply evokes suspicion—”

  “Go to hell!”

  At that moment sirens sounded, not one siren, but a number of them, approaching strongly and rapidly, two run-of-the-mill police sirens and one that beeped frighteningly.

  “That’s the SS!” Golden cried.

  “It’s the new-type police siren. Let’s get out of here!”

  They dashed downstairs, found a back door on the first floor, and tumbled over the board fence that separated the house from the long, common court of the side-street apartment houses—just as Rothschild, Bixbee, Kelly, Comaday, and Cohen gathered around the patrolman, who lay stretched upon the bottom step of the old mansion’s stoop, unconscious and snoring through his open mouth.

  CHAPTER 6

  In which it is Margie to the rescue.

  MARGIE SHIVERED and wondered whether she should burst into tears. With her mother’s generation the response might have been immediate and relieving; with Margie it was a question to be decided as logically as possible, keeping in mind her maxim, slogan, and battle cry—that no nice girl gets into trouble if she keeps her head. She refrained from the tears and allowed her eyes to get accustomed to the semidarkness. At the end of the room facing her a pair of dirt-grimed windows let in a sickly flow of light. Margie estimated that the windows had not been cleaned for at least ten years—twenty would have been closer to the fact—and she marveled, as so many others have done, at the magnificent accumulation of dirt New York City provided.

  She went over to the windows, and there she rubbed away enough dirt to have some blurred vision of the outside world. The windows looked out upon a back courtyard, separated only by a board fence from the block-long court that divided the luxury apartment houses on Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth streets. Her own building was provided with a narrow and ancient fire escape, and Margie suddenly realized that all she had to do was open a window, or failing that, tap out the glass with her shoe spike, and she could escape.

  She thought about that for a moment and then set up the following sequence of conclusions:

  General Alexander was not bright but certainly no idiot.

  He believed her to be the Countess Hutsinger.

  He had provoked her anger by needlessly striking her, but it gave him an emotional reason to throw her into this room.

  Therefore, he had previously decided to get her into this room. Reason? Margie put that aside for a moment.

  She was not a prisoner. The means of escape were too obvious and simple.

  The General was not playing games. He was desperate and serious—desperate enough to murder anyone who stood in his way.

  Therefore, the stakes were high, whatever the stakes were.

  Therefore …

  There was suddenly a noise within the room, pounding at a door, kicking at it, muffled sobbing. Margie’s first response was to cry out in terr
or. One cry, and then she nodded and whispered:

  “Very interesting. Very interesting indeed, Margie Beck. Just keep your head now.”

  Kicks again, and now Margie isolated them. They came from a large, old-fashioned closet.

  “Play it by ear,” Margie told herself. She approached the closet, and the sobbing sound took on some semblance of an appeal for help. She braced herself, tried the knob of the closet door, found that it turned, and then with a deep breath and a short prayer she flung the closet door wide open.

  She let out a short yip, more surprise than fear, although she had half suspected that she would find what she found, a man lying on the floor, his mouth taped, his hands and feet tied together with strips of bandage. It occurred to Margie that it might have been rope or suspenders holding him, but she somehow had had a very strong feeling that it would be a man tied and gagged. His eyes pleaded with her, and she ripped off the tape, clearing his mouth. In Margie’s experience a man’s mouth was a safety valve; let him run off at the mouth and all his small-boy needs and fears were satisfied.

  “God bless you,” he said immediately, exhibiting a quite satisfactory British accent. Margie adored English accents, but her faith and trust in those who used them had been somewhat upset by General Alexander. As far as this one was concerned, she decided to reserve judgment. “God bless you, girl.”

  Margie nodded.

  “Be a dear woman and get me out of these devilish bandages.”

  The knots were not hard to untie. In about a minute he was on his feet, shed of his bonds, smoothing back his hair and looking quite prepossessing. He was a type Margie rather liked, middle thirties, middle height, slim, dark-eyed, with a narrow nose and intelligent mouth, if one could speak of an intelligent mouth. Margie could. She had been told once by a gypsy fortuneteller that a man’s disposition, toward good or evil, was marked on his mouth. Margie believed that; indeed, she adored gypsy fortunetellers and believed every word they spoke.

  “Shall we postpone introductions? The matter of the moment is to get out of here. There’s a devil downstairs who calls himself General Alexander. You’ll meet him.”

  “I have,” Margie said.

  “Then you agree. Stop at nothing. Out, I say. Do you agree?”

  “But how?”

  “Window. Fire escape. You look fit. Are you? There’s a bit of a drop at the bottom—eight feet or so? Can you?”

  “I can,” Margie assured him, wondering how he knew so much about the window and the fire escape and the bottom of it, invisible from the window. Anyway, it was a way out, and she was inclined to agree with his estimate of General Alexander. If he also included pinstripe one and pinstripe two and the chauffeur among his major dislikes—and she felt that he probably did—they had a wide area of agreement, enough certainly to escape together.

  “Let’s go,” she agreed.

  “Great.”

  He wasted no more words but flung up the window, stepped out onto the old fire escape, helped Margie through, and started down—but took time to notice the mink coat.

  “Beautiful thing,” he whispered. “Don’t know much about coats, but that should be tops.”

  “I imagine it is,” Margie said.

  Halfway down she slipped off her shoes and put them into the pockets of the coat. In her stockings she was sure footed and undisturbed by the swaying and creaking of the old fire escape. At the bottom he dropped to the ground first like a proper gentleman and then attempted to ease her drop. Margie did well enough and kept her shoes off while he boosted her over the fence and then scrambled over it nimbly himself. The long courtyard between the apartment houses stretched in front of them, and they had to travel half its length before they noticed an open cellar door. Her companion pointed to her stocking feet, and Margie put on her shoes. They walked into the cellar, and a porter, leaning on his broom, looked at them inquiringly.

  “Never could get the knack of those automatics. The lift dumped us off down here.”

  “You mean the elevator?” the porter asked.

  “Right, of course. The elevator.”

  “Behind you. Just press L for lobby.”

  “Couldn’t we walk out of the service entrance, now that we’re here?”

  “I guess so,” the porter agreed. “Just walk to the end of the hall and turn right.”

  It led them to a flight of iron stairs and to the street, where her companion explained, “Nothing more inspiring of trust than your coat and my accent. Suppose we hotfoot it down to Madison. We should be safe enough there.”

  Margie now noticed that he was wearing expensive brown Harris tweeds and Irish brogues. He was well dressed, but hardly in the New York manner.

  “You’re not cold?” she asked him.

  “Hardly. I walk a lot. I trust my feet to get me out of things, and these are good walking togs. You’re not afraid to walk away from them?”

  “Certainly not.”

  He set a fast pace and nodded admiringly as she kept it, and he let it take them down to the bustle of Sixty-sixth and Madison before he said, “I must introduce myself, you know. I’ve never had so lovely a rescuer—nor one so cool, but that explains itself, doesn’t it? My name is Macbain, Gerald Macbain, thirty-six, unmarried, geologist, and a Londoner out of Scottish antecedents, as you’ve no doubt guessed. And you—but of course I have guessed. You’re the Countess.”

  “By this time I am not sure I am not,” Margie said. “It is certainly more interesting to be the Countess Hutsinger than a plain old model called Margie Beck—don’t you agree?”

  “More interesting, certainly,” Macbain said, “but perhaps a little safer under the Margie Beck cover. Did it help? Were you actually incognito?”

  “Incognito? I am Margie Beck.”

  “Oh, then you maintain the cover. But I do think at this point I can call you Countess, don’t you?”

  “It wouldn’t do one bit of good to argue, so go ahead and call me Countess. Everyone else does. Why not you?”

  “Well, that’s just what I can’t understand. I mean, you walked right into this, with the news stories putting you at the Plaza and all that about your morning walk. Didn’t you have any notion of the position you were in?”

  “I did not enjoy it, if that is what you mean.” Margie nodded.

  “I should think not. My dear Countess, General Alexander is positively fictional—I mean he simply is not real. He could not be. The man is as thoroughgoing a scoundrel as ever lived.”

  “I’ll buy that,” Margie said.

  “Do you know, your Americanisms are quite engaging. The exiles of good family who grow up in Britain become frightful snobs. You’ve happily avoided that.”

  “Thank you.” Margie felt like curtsying.

  “Of course, you know Alexander’s record. The man’s a beast. Oh, I don’t mean his wartime record of collaboration with the Nazis—I suppose he could justify that, considering the rabble that have come into the driver’s seat in Dravina during the postwar period. But his personal nature, his lechery, his cruelty—the ease with which he kills.”

  Margie shivered. “That is not something I wish to recall.”

  “Of course not, Countess. You know that part of him better than I do. You know he betrayed your father?”

  “Oh?” Margie was about to begin an argument to the contrary, for as far as she knew, no one had ever betrayed her father. There was one family at Kapatuk Falls, which was only a couple of miles from Kapatuk, who had run up a bill of $372.00 and then had washed out in utter bankruptcy; but that was by no means an act of betrayal, only a case of much sickness and more bad luck, and if she had heard it once, Margie had heard her father say a hundred times that if people needed medicine, they should and must have it, even if he himself went broke. But then she remembered that she was hopelessly split into two different identities, and in this case it was the Countess whose father had been betrayed.

  Even so, she could not help asking, “Are you sure of that?”


  “As certain as I am of my own name.”

  “Well, the way I feel, I am not one bit certain of that—of my own name, I mean. And I must get out of this wretched mink coat, because that’s how it all started.”

  “It is rather warm—I mean for November.”

  “I am not talking about the weather, Mr. Macbain, but about the owner.”

  “Oh—right. Certainly.”

  He was most agreeable, but Margie doubted that he had any notion of what she meant. She was too annoyed to explain, and when he invited her to lunch with him, she said that it was quite impossible.

  “Oh no—surely not. You must eat, you know. After all you’ve been through …”

  The trouble was, Margie thought, that he had not asked her what she had been through and she had not volunteered the information. Somewhere in Alice in Wonderland, Margie recalled, Alice states that things are becoming curiouser and curiouser, which was exactly how she felt at this moment. She also remembered that she had never seen a TV crime or detective show where the entire plot would not have collapsed immediately if any of the characters had had the basic wit it or intelligence to call the police. But they never did. They preferred to get themselves shot at, looted, assaulted, tortured, murdered, blackmailed, beaten—anything rather than pick up the nearest telephone and say, “I need a policeman.”

  “But do I?” Margie wondered.

  “Oh, surely there’s no need to think that much about it,” Macbain protested. “You’re a healthy young woman, and you are hungry. Quite. One thing about the Hutsingers—none of your bleeders or doddering idiots or Hapsburg lips or any of that blue-blood nonsense. Good, sound Dravinian stock …”

  “Suppose I did?” Margie asked herself. “There’s a cop now. Suppose I went over to him and said, ‘This man I am with confuses me and maybe he is in something wrong, because earlier today I watched a man being murdered, only maybe he wasn’t murdered at all. I have no way of knowing, but my own problem is that this mink coat I am wearing belongs to the Governor’s wife, and to make it worse I have a diamond bracelet in my pocket which is worth heaven knows how much. And they think I am the Countess Danya Hutsinger, whom apparently none of them have ever seen.’”