“That’s right, Professor. By the way, would you mind showing me your ticket?”
Buche gave an inward sigh of relief that he had bought a ticket through to Washington. “Certainly,” he said.
Shapello inspected it, and handed it back. “Pity,” he said, “to have wasted all that money. Still, as they say, you can’t take it with you.”
Buche refilled the glasses. “May I ask,” he inquired casually, “what my final destination is going to be?”
“Who can tell?” said Shapello. “Could be Lima. Or then again it could be Pittsburgh. Anyway, it will be somewhere along the line ...”
Victor said an inward prayer that it wouldn’t be Lima. That was just one stop too early ...
CHAPTER 15
THREE days after my visit to Lord Robdale, he came through with the information I wanted.
“Yes,” said the manager of theKing Edward Hotel, “I have a message for you, Mr. Joel. It’s from a Mr. Herbert Jolson. It’s in a sealed envelope, and I am instructed to tell you to pick it up yourself, if possible.”
Within ten minutes of hanging up I was at the hotel. I collected the letter as quickly as possible, to minimize the risk of being recognized, and took it back, unopened, to my rooms in the Village.
I poured myself a drink and read the note:
DEAR JOEL,
The morning after seeing you I put out a discreet SOS among my yachting friends, who seemed the most likely bet. I had both your sketches (the one of Peter Ghent and of the boat) duplicated, and I think we’ve struck oil. The drawing of the boat closely resembles a converted British M.T.B. that is frequently parked off Syosset, in Long Island. What is more, the driver (I’m not very up on maritime jargon) looks like your man. If so, his real name isLoring. He seems to have a pretty impeccable reputation however (except with les girls). If he is playing a part he is doing so rather thoroughly. In fact, with the exception of the pseudonym and the fact that he is not known to Gary Brand (I checked) everything you were told about him appears to be true. He is a thoroughly tennis-playing, girl-snogging, beach-lying-about,Blue-Angel-frequenting bounder.
I have laid on a hired car at Poltz Garage on 7th Avenue. It is booked in your name (‘Mr. Joel’, that is) and all paid up for a week. All you have to do is to pick it up and not run into anything — if you have an accident or get copped for speeding the cat will be really out of the bag.
I’m afraid you were certainly right about the F.B.I. They’re after you with the accelerator jammed hard down on the floor-boards. Unfortunately you were seen near my flat, and I had a slightly tricky interview with a policeman who obviously wasn’t born yesterday, or even the day before that.
I have also had another visit, from a man who wasn’t, contrary to his excuse for coming here, selling colour television sets.
Ifthey followed you here the probability is that you are under constant surveillance; if not by the F.B.I. most certainly by your motor-boat owner’s buddies (please excuse local parlance), so try not to get followed out of town if you decide to take abutcher’s at that there launch (that’s better!).
Susan sends her love, and says for the love of Mike, be careful! And so say all of us.
It’s too risky for me to do anything more (unfortunately I have not only myself to consider), but if you need any more cash send me a blank postcard (or scribble ‘Happy Birthday’ on it) and I’ll leave some money at the Garage.
Good Hunting, O Kaa!
DAVID.
P.S. — So it looks like Long Island after all, Joel. But don’t let it deceive you; my guess is they really ‘get around’ in that there boat.
So far, so good. David had turned up trumps. There was one thing, however, that was seriously bothering me, and I knew there was nothing I could do about it. My monthly injection was now two days overdue, and although I had managed to get some sodium amytol, that drug was nothing like enough to get me out of any serious trouble. The only thing was to hope and pray that things would sort themselves out within a few days.
Meanwhile, there was the constant danger of being recognized by someone. Although my ‘hair-do’ had altered my superficial appearance considerably, photographs of me had appeared in every newspaper and if that famous barber (if ‘barber’ is not too undignified a word for this supreme artist in the medium of the Hair) near Grand Central Station got wise to my identity — as eventually he surely must — I wouldn’t stand a dog’s chance, even of getting as far as Foltz Garage.
But I had to risk it.
I packed the small valise that I had bought, paid my bill and went out into the street.
I had no doubt that I was being followed, but the man on my trail was probably a professional and I couldn’t spot him. But I thought I knew how to evade him, if he was there. I walked along the street, heading for the subway entrance.
It was getting dark, and the street lights were already on. (I had waited for dusk, because it seemed to me I would have a better chance of getting out of the New York area in the car without being spotted.) Once in the Avenue, I walked briskly to the subway, went down the steps and bought my fifteen-cent token. A number of people came immediately after me, so it was impossible to tell which, if any, was my shadower.
There are two tracks on either side of this station. On the ‘up-town’ side (that is to say, the side where you catch a train if you wish to go towards the higher numbered streets) there is one side for ‘local’ (stopping) trains, and the other for ‘expresses’, which only stop at the key places (i.e. Pennsylvania Station,Times Square, 72nd Street and so on). My plan was to wait until the express and local both came in at once, and then to switch trains just as the doors were closing. If I got into the ‘local’ and changed to the ‘express’ at the last split second it would therefore be impossible for any shadower to catch me up before I reached my desired station (42nd Street). The only snag was that I might have to wait some time for my plan to work, for it was impossible to tell when (if at all) the two trains might come in together.
I lit a cigarette, and then put it hastily out again, remembering I was in New York and not London. Instead I put a penny in a slot machine and chewed gum — well, it was better than nothing, and my nerves weren’t feeling so good. David’s note had shaken me — I had been confident that I had leftthe Ajax undetected.
Luckily the first train to come in on its own was an express; otherwise a man tailing me might assume I was waiting for a fast train instead of the local. Against this, however (since there are fewer expresses than locals), was the reduced chance of both coming in together next time.
A few people got into this train, but a dozen or so were still waiting on the platform when the express closed its doors and departed with that deafening, grinding noise special to New York subway trains. Meanwhile I tried to think how I could have been followed to Robdale’s apartment.
What had gone wrong? How could anyone have followed me out of theAjax, when that assistant manager fellow had let me out through the back way, knowing I did not want to be seen?
It was then that I realized Shapello was on their side. A little slow, perhaps ...
I was in luck. A deafening sound announced that two trains were coming in together. In London, it would have been sufficient noise for six.
I walked briskly along the platform from where I had been standing and climbed into the last coach of the local train, which stopped slightly before the other one. I waited just inside the door for the two trains to load. Fewer people got on to the express than this one, and consequently the conductor gave the signal for the express to leave before ours did.
I waited until the doors of the express actually began to close; then I dashed across and prised my way in just in time, receiving a few disapproving glares from the other passengers. For a moment I was afraid the conductor might open the doors again after my own private stampede, but to my relief the train started moving. I was sure nobody else got in after I had switched trains. Another hurdle cleared.
&nbs
p; A man sitting opposite me was looking at me in an odd way. I didn’t like it at all — it had been a mistake, I told myself, to become so conspicuous. I should have taken a taxi and gambled on evading any shadower. Damn!
It is pretty disconcerting to be stared at like that when you are wanted by the police. It sends a pricking sensation up and down your spine. Your collar feels tight. Your hands sweat. I decided to get off at Pennsylvania Station and taxi it from there.
He picked up his newspaper and started searching through it casually — too casually. I knew what he was looking for. If he found that photograph before we reached Pennsylvania Station I’d had it. Fortunately, New York papers have a lot more pages than London ones. Consequently he was getting in a dreadful muddle and dropped sheets of it on the floor. If my position hadn’t been so precarious the situation would have been funny. As it was I felt very far from laughing.
Especially when I saw that the page with my photograph on it was lying upwards on the floor. He had got so involved with the other sheets that he hadn’t noticed it yet. But there was still a good minute and a half before we could reach Penn Station, the first stop on the express line.
What was so maddening was that I could have worked the trick the other way round; if I’d taken the local I could be out in the street by now.
My picture glared up at me from the floor. He surelymust see it? I decided to take the bull by the horns. It was the only thing to do.
“Gosh!” I exclaimed, suddenly catching sight of an imaginary article. “Do you mind if I just read this a moment?” I grabbed the paper firmly and held it up with the picture towards me.
“Well, as a matter of fact there is something I would rather like to see on that page, mister,” he objected.
I chose at random from the stories printed on the offending front page.
“Did you know that Fords have turned down that offer from the union?” I exclaimed. “They must be crazy! Are you in the motor industry?”
Would this damn train never start?
“No, mister,” he said. “I am not. And would youplease ...”
He snatched at the paper. As I was holding on like a clam there was a loud tearing noise and it came in half. But by this time the lights of the station were in view and it looked as if I stood a good chance.
The train had almost stopped.
But my antagonist at this moment gave a yell of triumph. “There!” he shouted. “There you are!It’s him all right!”
At that moment the doors started closing.
But I had made a dash for it, and was half-way across the car before he could make a grab for me. Half a second later I had put those automatic doors between myself and some of the most startled-looking citizens I have ever seen.
But they weren’t through with me yet. At the moment when the compressed air gave a snorting hiss and the two doors met, someone must have thought of the emergency lever. For the train didn’t move out of the station immediately the doors had closed, as it should have done.
Any moment those doors would open again. I broke into a run, and had got three carriage-lengths away before the doors parted once more.
I knocked people flying, but I made that barrier with not a second to spare. For just after I had got through an official became aware of the hue and cry farther down the platform, and quite obviously my haste must have had something to do with the general panic.
My one chance now lay in finding a taxi immediately. And in that, at least, I was lucky. There was a cab right outside the subway entrance. Trying to conceal my haste as I reached street level, I hailed him and climbed in.
“Where to?” he demanded without turning round.
“Poltz Garage on 7th Avenue.” They were coming up the steps with a good deal of shouting. This was no time, I decided, to pretend I wasn’t in a hurry. “Step on it, will you?” I added. “I’m late at the airport; picking up a car.”
“You’re the boss,” he said, still as relaxed as ever. But we were moving now. I turned round and looked at the subway entrance. There was some frantic pointing and shouting going on, and someone stopped a private car. My God! They were going to follow.
But my luck still held. An enormous, articulated lorry had turned in from a side street, and completely blocked their way. If I could get some traffic between them and my taxi before they got clear ...
The trouble was, it was no good going straight along the Avenue, as we were going at the moment.
I leant forward. “Listen!” I said, “I want to avoid the Broadway traffic. So cut through to Eighth Avenue and then we’ll double back. Got it?”
“Always in a hurry!” he complained. “That’s what everybody is these days. Everybody acts like they’re running away from the police!”
But we turned cross-town and left the hue and cry temporarily behind us. Even so, all this wasn’t going to make it any easier to reach the tunnel and get out of New York.
The one thing that went in my favour was that they wouldn’t be expecting me to be driving a private car — even a hired one. If that car was really all set to go I could be on my way before I could reasonably have been expected to go through all the routine of filling up forms, paying deposits and arranging for third-party insurance. Everything depended on that car being ready.
We doubled back to 7th Avenue when we had cleared the theatre area and within five minutes reached Poltz Garage. I paid off the taxi and said a short but fervent prayer as I entered the garage.
“Have you got my car ready?” I asked a man in white overalls.
“You Mr. Joel?” he asked.
“Yes.” My heart was pounding like a compressed-air drill.
The man called to someone farther inside the bowels of the garage.
“Got Mr. Joel’s car ready?” he shouted.
“Take the scrapheap away!” came the cheerful answer. “Number 472, Joe.”
David had done his stuff all right. There she was, a glistening monster of shining metal, facing straight out into the road.
“Sign here, please,” said Joe, holding out a piece of board with some sheets of paper attached by a paper clip. “And here ... and here ... and that does it. Okay, she’s all yours.”
I tipped him a couple of dollars and drove out, through the concrete archway and into the great city beyond.
With luck, I should be through the tunnel within fifteen minutes.
CHAPTER 16
IN spite of having taken a sedative, on Sir George Horrocks’ instructions, Jill Crescent slept fitfully. She awoke just after midnight from a confused series of dreams that she couldn’t remember on waking.
Since she was on the staff of R7, and was therefore well versed in the Habit, she dragged herself out of bed, went into the little kitchenette and put on the coffee ...
*
Alice Redgate’s evening hadn’t gone well. Her monocled friend, whom Cy’s glamorous wife Denise had once thought was an Earl, had found it impossible not to notice that her mind was wandering somewhat, even in the exclusive surroundings of an elegant country club on the Thames. They had driven back to London in a disconsolate silence; and knew, by the time the car pulled up outside Alice’s flat, exactly what the score was between them. Monocle eventually broke the silence. “Tell me, do you think it’s true, what they’re saying about Cummings in the newspapers? ‘Working for the other side’ and all that palaver?”
Alice sat there smoking in the darkness without answering for a moment. Then she said: “Horrocks doesn’t think so.”
“Horrocks? Oh, the specialist! No, I dare say he doesn’t. But what I said was, doyou?”
“I don’t know. I had to sit and listen to Horrocks describing the personal misery that Joel went through. I realized then what an absolute bitch I had been. If only I’dknown! All those rows we had were sheer poison to him. And I poisoned him solidly for three years. What might that do to a mind that wasn’t quite normal?” Her voice was flat and unemotional; the very reverse of what she felt. “If he di
d turn traitor, then I was one of the principal reasons for it. Do you think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself if they prosecute him?”
“But is he so abnormal, in fact? I suppose I’m old-fashioned, but not so very long ago people would have said of him: ‘Oh, he’s a bit highly strung, you know; he suffers frompetit mal, gets dizzy spells and things.’ Now they have invented new names for it, but it doesn’t really make it any worse; it merely means that people understand it better. No, if he wasn’t the sort of person to turn against his country (you see, I am a bit old-fashioned, aren’t I? People never use phrases like that now — it’s like talking about the Empire: it simply isn’t done!) but if he wasn’t that sort of person before, I shouldn’t think he would be now.”
“You may be old-fashioned,” said Alice, “but you seem to have come up with the same answer as Horrocks.”
“Well, there you are! But I’ll tell you one thing, my dear: You would never have been right for your Joel Cummings — and I’m not just saying that to get my oar in — I sank long ago.”
She stubbed out her cigarette in the already over-filled ash-tray. “What makes you say that?”
“Because you haven’t got ‘blind faith’! And that is an essential commodity to people who are in love.”
“Yes; you’re quite right. But I never was like that, I’m afraid. That condemns me rather, doesn’t it?”
“There you go, sentencing yourself again! Of course it doesn’tcondemn you. It simply shows that you think with your head, and not with your heart. It’s probably an admirable characteristic; but it doesn’t help people when it is a matter of love. Or so they tell me.”
“I wonder which Jill thinks with?” said Alice thoughtfully, and added: “as if I didn’t know ...
*
Cy Harford leaned forward and switched off the late-night television. “Let’s call it quits and put the cat out,” he said. “I got a nasty looking day set for tomorrow. This guy Cummings has jammed up the works for my golfing week-end, I do strongly suspect.”
The Cummings Report Page 15
