Mr. Moto Omnibus

by John P. Marquand

  In the beginning he had entertained a technical fear, which she had expressed in their room upstairs, that her approach might have been too obvious. It had been necessary for her to move fast but, at the same time, Big Ben was a clever man. There was always the question, in such encounters, as to the exact moment when intellectual objectiveness could be discounted. He realized, as soon as he saw them dancing, that Ruth Bogart must have considered this matter also. There was that saying that the desire of woman is to be desired, and a woman could instinctively estimate a man’s desire. Rapid though the interplay had been, and obvious as it had seemed to Jack Rhyce as an observer, from what he could see as he stood watching Ruth Bogart had been right about Big Ben. They were a handsome couple on the dance floor. He was certain now that she was something new in his experience. It was certain that he would not forget. Those things did not take long when certain instincts were in the balance.

  In its essence, jazz was not happy music. It was restless and lacking in order, reflecting very accurately the spirit of the era which had brought it into being. The world was unhappy and Jack Rhyce was in a better position than most of his contemporaries to know because it had been his business in many places to observe and deal with violence. All his generation had been born and nurtured in an age of discontent, but he was not able to explain the reason for it, unless that a system or a way of life was approaching dissolution. Logically there were less reasons for unhappiness today in any part of the world than there had been fifty years before. The cleavage between wealth and poverty had been greater then, and the voice of social conscience had only been a whisper. Communication and industrial advance had been negligible compared with the present, and so had public health and expectancy of life; yet back in that harder day the world had been much happier. There had been security then in that everyone knew what to expect. There had been strength and order, which perhaps were the attributes that mankind most desired. What was it that had palsied the hand of the political system which had ruled the world at the time of Rudyard Kipling, in as benign and enlightened a manner as many political thinkers were attempting to rule it now? What was it that had opened the Pandora box and the floodgates of discontent? What was it that had allowed minorities to give such a loud voice to their grievances that they could upset the lives of persons ten thousand miles away? And what was the basis of the nationalism that made all nations truculent? Why, in fact, was it that individuals all over the world were disturbed, overpopulating the mental institutions, rebelling against conventions, filling the streets with juvenile delinquents? Why was it that no firm hand could any longer quell a social riot? He knew it had been different once, before his time, and he knew that the answer to these questions lay in what was known as the phenomenon of change.

  The same questions must have arisen when the Roman Empire was falling. They had been asked also in the briefer and turbulent dynasties of China, and in eighteenth-century France. Volumes had been written about the course of the disease, but its cause was still in doubt. There was no doubt at all, however, regarding the ultimate result, and in the world as he saw it, both in the East and in the West, the result was just around the corner, eager and waiting. Anarchy might rule for a while in North Africa, Egypt or Persia might upset the near East balance. Neutralism might reign in India, but still the result was just around the corner, just what it always had been—the ruthless oppression of absolute rule. It was now called “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” but its end was the old dictatorship. The proletariat, with their agitators and their discontented, would be whipped back to their places, and order would be restored more merciless than the order of the Pax Romana or Britannica. And again there would be discontent, simply because man was a discontented being. The cycle would go on.

  He realized that it was not the time or place to think of such things, but at least these thoughts made him a part of the stream of history. He and his generation were children of discontent. The drives of discontent had put him where he was, watching the dancers, and at the same time looking at the dark hotel grounds in order to memorize the shadowy places and the plan of the lighted paths. It was curious to think that the same drives which had placed him there had acted in such a different way upon Big Ben, who was still dancing with Ruth Bogart. Given different childhoods and different backgrounds, he and Big Ben might easily have swapped places. Tolerance was one of the troubles of the present. You knew, or you thought you knew, so much about human motivation that, in the end, you could not blame anyone for anything. And in the end rules and laws lost meaning. Perhaps it was this universal tolerance that was weakening the hand of order.

  He looked into the night again. The cottage called Chrysanthemum Rest was completely visible. Though its shades and curtains were drawn, he could see that its rooms were lighted, as was the path that led straight toward it from one of the hotel verandas. But if one were to follow another path up toward the greenhouses, there would be shadow and concealment. He could not plan the full approach from where he stood. He would have to improvise after he had started. A glance at his wrist watch told him it was time—10:20 already. Ruth Bogart had been right in believing that it would look better if they walked out into the shadowy grounds together, and it was time to start now. He moved across the room to where she was dancing with Big Ben.

  “Okay, Baptist,” Jack said, “time for the praying colonels to go the showers—the half is over.”

  “Aw, gee, coach,” Big Ben said, “nobody’s even blown the whistle. Well, thanks a lot, honey. And how about us all meeting in the bar in a while? I’m going there right now to drown my frustrations, honey.”

  Ruth Bogart giggled appreciatively.

  “I don’t know whether Jack has frustrations or not,” she said, “but whatever he does have, he always seems to be all for the drowning process. We’ll be there whether I like it or not, won’t we, darling?”

  “Oh, come on,” Jack said. He put his arm playfully around her. “You’re going to have ginger ale, sweet. We’ll see you down there, Ben.”

  “We’ll dance a few minutes first,” Ruth said, “and then I want to go out and get a breath of fresh air. It’s awfully hot in here.”

  Big Ben laughed uproariously.

  “And I bet you’re getting a headache, too,” he said. “How come? You didn’t want fresh air when I asked you three minutes ago, honey? Well, no hard feelings. So long, troops.”

  They danced for a minute or two without speaking.

  “He’s gone all right,” Jack said, “and he hasn’t gone outside, either.”

  “That’s so,” she said. “I think you’re right. I don’t believe he’s on to us at all.”

  “What makes you say that?” Jack asked her.

  “Oh,” she said. “Girls can tell about those things. If you want to know—from the way he tried to make me. It was an all-out and very clumsy effort, darling.”

  “It could be that we’re barking up the wrong tree,” Jack Rhyce said. “It could be that he’s just a lonely soul on an airship. The world is full of them these days.”

  “It could be,” she said. “But there was one queer thing about him.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “He hadn’t been dancing, had he?” she said. “But he was all in a glow, wringing wet with perspiration, darling. Did you notice him dust his hands and wipe his forehead when he came in. Whatever he was doing, he was exercising.”

  “Maybe he was playing Tarzan in the trees,” Jack Rhyce said.

  “His hands are so damned big,” she said, “and his palms were sweating.”

  “Well, he’s gone now,” Jack Rhyce said. “Let’s go out and look at the moon.”

  “Oh, Jack,” she said, and the music had stopped so that everyone around could hear her, “who told you that there was a moon?”

  13

  THEY WALKED outside and toward the greenhouses, laughing and talking softly, only one of a number of other couples who were wandering about the grounds. While they
walked they examined Chrysanthemum Rest from all angles. There was a clump of bamboo by its door, which was the only cover near it. Still talking softly, they examined the taller fir trees near the greenhouse. Jack was as sure as a fallible human being could be that he had missed nothing, having reconnoitered too many places not to be intensely aware of atmosphere. He had been able to tell for a long while, from his own physical reactions, whether or not a place was being watched. There was always a sort of tenseness in the air and an awareness of other people. He could swear that Chrysanthemum Rest was clear. They sat for a while close together on a bench in the shadow of an old cryptomeria, two lovers in case anyone should notice.

  “Does it look all right to you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “There’s only one offbeat thing. We’ve been out here for fifteen minutes, and have you noticed, no one’s moved inside the house? Not a shadow against the curtains—nothing, perhaps he isn’t there.”

  “He’s being still,” Jack said, “because he wants it to look as if he weren’t there. Bill’s a smart operator. Anything else?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think we’re being watched.”

  All that was left was the unavoidable danger that someone, by sheer inadvertence, might notice them entering Chrysanthemum Rest, a calculated risk which the bamboo thicket by the door would minimize. If they walked affectionately past the cottage, the thicket would conceal them from anyone standing higher up from the hill, and its shadow would partially protect them from anyone who would be looking from the hotel windows. Of course the door would be unlocked. There would only be the crucial second when they crossed the threshold. Nevertheless, he delayed for a while, with his attention glued on the Chrysanthemum cottage. It was a white frame building of European style, similar to the cottage annexes that surrounded summer hotels at home. It stood peacefully at the foot of the slope of lawn that led from the tree under which they sat. He wished he could be sure that Big Ben was in the bar. He even thought of making a check, but his feeling that the cottage was not under observation made him dismiss the idea.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” he said. “We’ll know a lot more after we’ve talked to Bill.”

  The brass of the dance orchestra blared across the lawn, interspersed with its drummer’s beat. They were only a couple returning to the dance as they walked to Chrysanthemum Rest. His arm tightened around her waist as they reached the bamboo thicket.

  “Follow me quick,” he whispered.

  They were inside the house in a twinkling, because they were both trained operators; the door was closed behind them without a sound and without a fingerprint on its knob, either. The place, as he had observed, was fully lighted. They were in a small entrance hall furnished with a European umbrella stand and a row of wooden pegs for coats and hats. A single open door showed a lighted room, comfortably furnished with wicker easy chairs and a couch. There was a Chinese rug on the floor and gay Japanese prints decorated the walls. The room, to Jack Rhyce’s surprise, was empty; so they stood for a moment, breaths held, listening. He could detect no sound except the blare of the dance music. He raised his eyebrows and gestured to Ruth Bogart. She understood his signal and they moved along the wall so that their shadows would not show on the drawn curtains. It never paid to hurry.

  Later, he never could recall what it was that made him sure that something was wrong at Chrysanthemum Rest.

  “Bill,” he whispered. What with the noise of the music, he might have spoken aloud, but in any case he already had the conviction that he would not be answered.

  The bedroom door was also open. The lights were on there, too. He tiptoed to the doorway with Ruth Bogart just behind him. Bill Gibson, in a clean pair of shantung silk pajamas, lay beneath the covers of his bed, eyes closed, head resting on his pillow, his clothes neatly folded on a chair at the end of the room. A glass, a half-empty bottle of whisky and a pill bottle stood under the lamp on the bedside table. His restful posture gave every indication that he was sound asleep, but he was not breathing. Bill Gibson was stone dead.

  “Okay,” Jack Rhyce whispered to her. He felt in his pocket and drew on a pair of gloves. “Better go through his suitcase, Ruth. Look for anything. Anything.” But even as he spoke he knew there would not be anything they wanted.

  While she moved noiselessly about the room, he stood still for a minute gazing at the body of Bill Gibson, trying to estimate the strengths and weaknesses of this new situation in much the same way a bridge player might assess the possibilities in dummy when the cards were on the board. Now that Bill Gibson was dead, a whole new line of action was required. He was still in the grip of shock, but he was able to see at once that he was looking at a professional, almost a classic job of elimination. If Bill Gibson had been breathing, Jack Rhyce himself would have thought that it was an overdose of sleeping pills, and after all, suicide due to strain or melancholia had always been a factor in the business. The only trouble was that they had come too early. Bill Gibson should have been discovered in the morning for the job to have been perfect, and doubtless that had been the intention. This was an encouraging thought for Jack Rhyce, in that it showed as plain as print that no one knew that Bill Gibson was there for a meeting. It meant as clearly as a certified document that he and Ruth Bogart were not suspected yet.

  There was another plain fact. The decision must have been made some time previously that Bill Gibson should be put out of the way, since the whole job was one that had obviously required meticulous planning. It also betrayed an anxiety to keep things quiet which was completely understandable to anyone in the business, where violent ways of taking out a man, no matter how carefully worked, always offered embarrassing complications. On the other hand, the danger of complication at Chrysanthemum Rest was very small indeed. Success only required that the body be discovered in the morning. Without his being familiar with Japanese medical procedure, Jack Rhyce did not believe that a doctor called in the morning would make more than a perfunctory examination with the evidence before him; no doubt if a more thorough examination should be made this contingency would have been provided for. He picked up the pill bottle, which still held three yellow capsules, a very pretty touch in itself when added to a glimpse of the cork which had fallen to the floor. A drunken man had accidentally taken an overdose of sleeping pills. From the color of the capsules, and without reading the label he could guess that the drug was one of the better-known barbiturates of American manufacture, and he could guess from a minute abrasion at the corner of Bill Gibson’s mouth that a lethal dose was safely in the stomach. There were several ways to make reluctant people swallow.

  Jack Rhyce set down the pill bottle and sniffed off Bill Gibson’s lips. There was the requisite odor of whisky to explain the half-empty whisky bottle on the table. The whisky had been applied overliberally to the lips, but no one would have noticed in the morning. Professionally it was a job which had only one unavoidable drawback, and even this presupposed the presence of another professional, which indicated again that he and Ruth Bogart were not suspected yet. Like every killing in the business, this one had its signature, and this was ridiculously easy to decipher once you knew it was a killing. The job presupposed enormous and expert strength. It had required someone who could take care of Bill Gibson as gently and effortlessly as a nurse might handle a baby, and Bill Gibson was no weakling. He touched Bill Gibson’s hand softly. The body was still warm. He slipped his hand under the head. The mark of a hypodermic was barely visible in the hair at the base of the neck. If one had not known exactly where to look, the mark could easily have gone unnoticed. He lowered the head very gently because it was all a very private matter in which he and his opposite numbers shared the same anxiety to keep it quiet, to keep it clean, to keep it above suspicion.

  Ruth Bogart was looking at him from across the room and he nodded slowly in answer to her unspoken question.

  “Yes,” he said, “Ben was here all right. I wish I could have the privilege of polishing off
that son-of-a-bitch. I always thought a lot of Bill.”

  “Yes, so did I,” she said.

  But when you were gone you were gone, in the business. His attention turned to the neatly folded clothes. Even the shoes by the chair were in meticulous alignment. The bedclothes were carelessly disarranged just as a man who was drunk might have moved them. The folded clothes were an error, or still better, an oversight. Bill Gibson must have folded them himself. He must have planned to meet them in pajamas and a dressing gown. Jack Rhyce peered into the bathroom. A burgundy silk dressing gown was hung from a hook on the bathroom door. He examined the back and sleeves. There was a slight tear at the right elbow, and the silk was scuffed and a few tiny hairs of woolen lint were mingled with the fabric. It was the blue piling from a carpet, and the Chinese carpet in the living room was blue.

  Ruth Bogart had finished with Bill Gibson’s baggage and with the contents of his pockets. She shook her head when he nodded to her—but then, Bill Gibson would have been careful to have nothing on him except cover identification.

  “Where did it happen?” she asked.

  “The living room,” he said. “He must have grabbed Bill right by the front door. I’d like to polish off that son-of-a-bitch.”

  He walked gingerly to the living room and she followed him. Of course there had been a struggle. How was it she had put it—that Big Ben had been all of a glow, and he hadn’t been dancing? Yet the signs had been eliminated, and nothing had been broken. However, the impersonal orderliness of the room told its own story of rearrangement. He could reconstruct what had happened as though it were going on now before his eyes—Big Ben in a noiseless bound, towering over Bill Gibson, the jolt in the solar plexus that knocked out the wind. Strangulation was not necessary if you knew the trick. Big Ben’s arms wrapped around the smaller man’s gasping body . . . the fighting for breath . . . the expert hands lowering the struggling man to the floor . . . The sleeping pills with the suitable label would have been in Big Ben’s pocket.