“Mr. Ward wants you to come back,” she said breathlessly. “Right away!”
Broken down, thought Cameron, with a sigh of satisfaction.
Ward had just finished a drink. He looked as though he still needed a second.
“Close the door,” he quavered. He slumped back into his chair. “I don’t know if this is what you wanted to do to me, but you’ve sure done it,” he said accusingly. “I’m frightened now. Good and frightened.”
“But you’re also being smart, Mr. Ward. At last you’re being smart.”
“How much time is there?”
“Enough.”
“Why did you let me waste all these past days?”
“What have I been coming here trying to do?”
Ward mopped his brow. “My God! If anything happens to her—”
“Nothing will, if you’ll just put yourself in our hands. Will you take me to her now? Are you finally willing?”
“Right now. We’ll leave right now.”
He stopped Cameron for a minute just inside the door. Took him pathetically by the sleeve. “Does she have to know? Do we have to tell her? I’ve always tried to save her from every shadow—I don’t want her to know about this.”
“We’ll do our very best to keep it from her,” Cameron promised him. “If it’s at all possible.”
It was a private house. Cameron hadn’t expected that. He’d thought it would be one of these flashy luxurious apartments in which men so often tuck away their outside loves. It was wholesome and home-like and well-cared-for; a pleasant-looking limestone front, windowpanes polished to invisibility, spruce gauze curtains behind them, window boxes with plants on every one of the upper sills. It matched the terms in which Ward had spoken of her to Cameron: not an undercover affair, the love of his life.
A motherly woman in her early fifties opened the door at their ring. A sort of housekeeper-companion evidently, though she wore no apron nor distinctive uniform of any kind, simply a neat flowered indoor dress.
“Why, Mr. Ward!” she exclaimed happily. “Martine will be delighted!”
“This is Mr. Cameron, a friend of mine,” Ward said a little nervously. “Mrs. Bachman.”
“Come in. Let me have your things.” She bustled about them. “You’re staying to lunch, of course?” She addressed the two of them alike.
“I don’t know. . . .” Ward said doubtfully, and gave Cameron a questioning look.
“I’ll run up and—”
“No. Where is she, upstairs? Let me go up and surprise her.”
“Well, let me run down and tell the cook, then. Now, you’re staying.” She put her hand commandingly on Ward’s arm for a moment. “Why, it’s already five to twelve. Do you think we’d let you go out of here? Martine will love it; it will make her so happy.”
On their way up, Cameron cautioned him, “Pull yourself together now. You’re a little jumpy. If you don’t want her to notice anything—”
“Help me,” the man said pathetically. “Help me.”
Cameron slung his arm briefly to Ward’s shoulder, then dropped it again. He felt sorry for him. He hadn’t met love much, so far. He’d heard it existed, but he hadn’t been any too sure.
Ward knocked on a door. He knew which door to knock on.
A lovely, melodious voice, already thrilling because it had guessed his presence by the very knock, said, “Come in.”
He opened the door and Cameron saw her.
The sunlight was falling on her from the front window. She’d been sitting there beside it. It made a sort of halo all around her. Or no, maybe it was she made the halo, and not the slanting sun.
She turned her face toward them. She was beautiful. So beautiful. No wonder she was the love of his life, Cameron thought. The keynote of her beauty was youthful purity. Not lush ripeness, not exoticism; the wonder and trust of the eternal child peering through just beneath the surface of the young woman.
She was looking at Ward. Cameron was right beside him, they were standing shoulder to shoulder. But it was Ward she was looking at.
“There’s somebody with you,” she said.
She was totally blind.
Cameron reported back to his chief on the measures that had been taken up to that point.
“I have four of our men right in the house with her. They work in shifts of two each, they’re on duty night and day, twenty-four hours a day. One takes the place of the furnace man who used to come and regulate the heating for the house. The original furnace man is no longer admitted, he’s been paid off. All the locks have been changed and we’re putting in an electric alarm system throughout, back and front. No delivery men are admitted. No one gets past the front door without my personal okay, with one exception: Ward. And even he’s been restricted to two periods a day in which to make his visits; he can’t just drop in any more whenever he feels like it, particularly after dark.”
He waited for commendation. He didn’t get any. “Through?” was all he got.
“Not quite. Now I also have the house under observation from the outside, or at least the street in front of it. Whatever cars come along, or if anyone should loiter about— I couldn’t get any of our men into houses opposite because it’s not a neighborhood in which they take roomers. However, I have two of them on a roof across the way, doing a fake repair job that they’ll keep stringing along until the deadline’s past. They commanded a full view of the entire street, from corner to corner. They have a two-way radio up there, they can signal down immediately. Also a pair of high-powered lights they can train down.”
“You’ll have to watch the food going in. Remember Garrison’s wife. You’ll have to watch out for mailed packages; they may contain explosives.”
“The local branch post office has been ordered to hold all mail for that address, to discontinue deliveries until further notice. The cook was dismissed ten days ago. Even though they had a woman cook, who had been with them for years, I thought it better to get her out of the way. She might, in all innocence, have had some outside male associate, or even relative, that couldn’t be vouched for. I have a policewoman in there now as cook, attending to all the buying and preparing of the food for them.”
“And what about the companion? This Mrs. Bachman the girl’s so attached to?”
“Mrs. B., as the girl calls her,” Cameron said, “is the only member of the original household I’ve left in there undisturbed.”
“You can guarantee her?”
“I can vouch for her with my life; there’s no shadow of a doubt attached to her. I’ve had a whole battalion of people checking on her exhaustively, all the way back to her original birth certificate in city hall. They haven’t missed a childhood case of measles on the way, nor what buildings she attended grade school in, nor who her teachers were. She has no surviving relatives, not even a fifteenth cousin; her husband died of yellow fever during the Spanish-American War, within a year of their marriage. She’s lived under the same roof with the girl since she was a child; I don’t even think she’s been out of the house without her for ten or twelve years. She has no life of her own; the girl’s her whole life. Even so, I would have removed her for a while, just temporarily, but I consulted with Ward about it and we both agreed it would do more harm than good; not only shock and frighten the girl unnecessarily, but even be a disadvantage from the point of view of security. The woman is so devoted to her she makes a better watchdog even than our own people. This way we’ve got one more person working for us.”
“That’s the whole set-up?”
“That’s the whole set-up,” Cameron concluded. “The outside is guarded, the inside is guarded. There’s no one at all in the house with her now except our own people and Mrs. B. I tell you, I’ve turned the place into a regular fort. No one, and nothing, can crack it.”
“So far so good,” was all he got. “Only, remember one thing: a fort’s only as good as the guys standing behind it.” And he looked straight at Cameron.
When Ward woke
up at eight—that was his usual time—on Thursday, he still didn’t know he was going to do it. Thursday was the 15th. The decision came on abruptly. Rather, it came to the surface abruptly. It had been there latent for days. It must have been. Growing stronger all the time. Day by day, hour by hour.
He shaved. He showered. He dressed. He selected a foulard tie, blue background with gray flowers. He decided against a regimental-striped silk. “I’ll wear that one tomorrow,” he said to himself. Showing that he still didn’t know he was going to do it.
He went downstairs. His breakfast was there. His wife was there. His newspaper was there. The latter interested him more than the first, and the first interested him more than the second, but he was polite enough to conceal this, giving his attention to all three in equal amounts, with the newspaper perhaps having a slight edge on the other two.
He kissed her and they made small talk. Friendly, pleasant, not very sincere. There was, at least, no animosity. There was no appeal either. They were just two well-bred people, not very interested in one another.
He left for his office. He took his newspaper, he took his briefcase with him. He said, “Good-bye, Louise,” from a room away. He didn’t know he would never see her again. If he had known, he would still have said, “Good-bye, Louise,” from a room away, in that same voice.
He still didn’t know he was going to do it.
He got into his car which was waiting for him at the door. On the way to the office he went ahead reading his newspaper.
The date line struck his attention for some reason. It hadn’t the first time. Sixteen days away. And tomorrow it would be fifteen. Why just sit here waiting for it to happen, when there was the whole world to hide in? Trapped, like a squirrel in a cage.
Suddenly he knew he was going to do it.
He rapped on the glass. The driver turned his head. Ward motioned him to pull over, then and there, and stop.
He got out, closed the door again.
“That’s all,” he said curtly. “Don’t wait.” The car was a hindrance, might be recognized, might betray him. For all he knew, he was being watched at this very moment.
The driver looked surprised, but he drove off.
Ward changed to a taxi. He drove to his bank. He went down a flight of steps to the vault. He signed for identification, his signature was checked, and he was admitted. These precautions made him doubly grateful now.
Alone in a little private booth with a safe-deposit box before him, he ransacked it hastily but methodically. Louise’s jewelry; he didn’t want that. Engraved sheaves of orange-colored General Motors stock; he cast them aside too. Too long to convert. Sheaves of chocolate-colored American Tel. and Tel. shares; too long. Goodyear. General Electric. They all went into the discard. An insurance policy for seventy-five thousand dollars, his wife Louise the beneficiary. (He shuddered, as though the very sight of it frightened him.)
Then the Government bonds turned up, underneath everything else. These were what he wanted, what he’d come here for. He pocketed them. Fifty thousand dollars’ worth. Convertible on demand, at sight, instantaneous. Good all over the world, anywhere, everywhere.
He hurried upstairs, he asked to see the bank manager in his private office.
Ten minutes later he came out of the bank again, a letter of credit for fifty thousand dollars in his pocket. Sixteen days. The whole world to hide in. When a turkey is awaiting death, it cannot get out of the coop it is penned in. When a man is awaiting death, he can flee to the ends of the earth; for he knows what death is. God gave him that knowledge.
He took another taxi. He got out at a travel agency. He gave the clerk in there a fifty-dollar bonus, with a promise of an equal amount to come. He would, however, give no name or address or telephone number, as was customary in such cases. He said he would stop in in person the following day. The clerk was to use his own name, Breuer, in whatever transactions he undertook. And though the clerk did not know it, he had then and there become a godfather.
Ward then went to his office. He canceled all his appointments for the day. He ignored all matters that were pending or current and concentrated on completing those which had already been in progress for some time or were in arrears; affairs which because of his familiarity with them he was in a better position to complete than anyone else would have been.
He worked straight through his lunch hour and half into the afternoon. Then at three he finally stopped, through sheer exhausted inability to accomplish any more. The last thing he did was lock his office door on the inside, turn on the recording machine, and talk a message of resignation to his partner, turning over his share and interest in the business to him. “. . . And God bless you, Jeff.” There were tears in his eyes when he turned off the machine. Men can get sentimental in business too.
At 3:15 he left for the day. Or rather for the rest of his life.
He was more devious now than he had been during his progresses earlier in the day, for his destination lay closer to his heart, there was more at stake. He took three taxis, and interspersed them with concealed waits in stores and such places, to break the continuity of his trip.
He had brought his briefcase away from the office with him through sheer habit and nothing more. When he first noticed this, he tried to deliberately discard it, leave it behind in the first taxi.
The driver foiled him, called after him, “You forgot your briefcase, mister,” and handed it out to him.
Had it been something that he was desperately trying not to lose, it occurred to Ward ironically, it probably would have remained in the cab undetected.
He tried again in the second cab and this time a woman, clambering in at his very heels, was the one who shrilled her discovery from the window and forced it back on him.
The third time he hid it under the seat cushion, and at last was rid of it.
The taxi let him out at Martine’s house and he hurried inside, doing his best to keep from looking fearfully up and down the street, for he realized that even were he being watched, he would have no way of discovering it. He wasn’t used to such things, and his watchers, presumably, would be.
Mrs. Bachman did her usual crowing over him, but he silenced her with whispered instructions. “I have to be with her alone. There’s something I want to talk to her about. Stay here at the foot of the stairs and see that none of them come near us.”
She nodded, always willing to champion him against outsiders.
Martine was sitting reading a book with her fingers, her head tilted at a slight angle, almost as though she were listening instead of feeling.
She wore a yellow dress, a black ribbon drawn through its neckline, and just over her ear Mrs. Bachman (probably) had cocked a pert little yellow bow.
“Allen?” she said, as the threshold throbbed his footfall. And the sun came out in her face. Not on it, but within it, shining from the outside in.
“My little Marty,” he half sobbed.
He held her to him first, good and tight, for a long time. Until she knew by that alone something must be wrong.
“What is it, Allen?” she coaxed. “What?” And caressed the outlines of his face with her knowledgeable fingertips that told her so much.
“I’m going to have to frighten you a little.”
She sat down in the chair once more, to brace herself, and he, without releasing the double clasp of her two hands within his, knelt beside her to bring their heads close so that they need not raise their voices.
“Are you leaving me? Am I going to be all alone in the dark?”
“Never; not so long as I live. That’s a pledge I gave myself years ago, and it’ll never be taken back.”
“Then what—?”
“There’s—there’s someone trying to take you from me.”
“In what way? How can they?”
“In what way could they? What is the only way? Think.”
“Death,” she breathed, appalled.
“In that way,” he admitted. “That’s the
way. The only way they could.”
She thrust her face violently forward and hid it against his bosom; pulling at the revers of his coat, at his shirtfront, as if to draw them still closer about her and hide herself further still. Her breathing was quick and frightened, and though he held his arms tightly about her and tried to calm her, he could feel her shivering in spite of that.
“No,” he kept pleading over and over, with the automatic intonation one uses in a terrified child. “No. No. No.”
“Even in the dark, life is better than—not living. Why must they try to—take even that little away from me?”
“No. No. No,” was all he could say.
“What have I ever done to anyone?”
“It’s what I’ve done, not you. And I never knew I’d done anything. But . . .”
“Who is it?” she asked presently.
“I don’t know. They don’t either. I’ve never seen him. They haven’t either. Some man—no, some murderous thing that once was a man. Some diseased affliction that needs a mercy death. He must be that; who else could hurt Martine?”
Presently she grew a little calmer; still lay there with her face upon his breast, but grew a little calmer. He left her side then, for just a moment; a glass stopper gave a chord-like pluck; then he came back again.
“Drink this. And then I want you to listen to me very carefully.”
“What is it?”
“Just a thimbleful of brandy.”
He held the minute draught to her lips.
“Now listen to me very carefully. I’m going to whisper in your ear. I don’t want anyone to hear. Wait, I’m going to lock the door first.”
He went over and turned the key. Then he unfolded a pocket handkerchief and hung it from the knob, so that even the little slit of vision the keyhole might have offered was blocked.
Then he came back to her again, crouched down on one knee beside her and put his lips close to her ear.
She began to nod her head presently.
“Yes, I do,” she murmured. “I trust you with my life. You are my life.”
Rendezvous in Black Page 19
