Deadlier Than the Pen (5 page)

Stunned, Diana ducked out of sight behind a large gentleman and his wife. Had she been wrong? Had Bathory been her attacker, after all? Had he stolen the notebook? Or gone back for it later?
Nonsense! She told herself she was imagining things. Hadn't she just reasoned everything out and decided she had nothing to fear from this man? He was not her attacker. He was the wrong shape. The man in the alley had been broader in the shoulders and much shorter than Bathory.
She hesitated too long. He left the churchyard heading away from his hotel. Her expression grim, Diana set out in his wake. She was no longer sure what she would do when she caught up with him, but following Damon Bathory seemed to have become a habit.

*Chapter Five*
When Diana finally ran her quarry to ground, Damon Bathory was standing on the roof of the Equitable Building with his back to her, apparently contemplating the panoramic view of the Narrows, Staten Island, the North and East Rivers, and most of Manhattan and Brooklyn. This observation area at the weather station, run by the War Department's U.S. Army Signal Service to gain up-to-date information on storms and temperature, welcomed visitors at any time, but no one else seemed to be in evidence today.
Diana debated giving up and going home. Her jaw was throbbing, as were other assorted aches and pains she'd acquired by landing so hard on the ground in that alley. Moreover, the blister on her heel had opened again. She was having second thoughts about warning Damon Bathory of Foxe's suspicions, now that she knew he had possession of her notebook. But most of all, she'd begun to be afraid. When she'd followed him up here, she hadn't anticipated finding herself alone with him.
An instant before she could turn and flee, he swung around to face her, fixing her with his steady, compelling stare. His smile contained neither warmth nor humor, but his deep, resonant voice and hypnotic gaze held her still for his approach.
"You've been following me, Mrs. Spaulding."
Denial came automatically. "I haven't -- "
"Shall I enumerate all the places you've turned up since you failed to get what you wanted from me in my hotel room? Later that day, you lurked outside an art gallery while I was inside. Yesterday, you dogged my footsteps to a candy store, the barber shop, and other places too numerous to mention. Last night you all but pressed your nose to the window while I supped at the Everett House. I could see you, only half-concealed by the shadows, peering in at me like a starving waif. I thought about asking you to join me," he added in dulcet tones, "but I decided you deserved to suffer for your impertinence. Then we both attended the same play."
"It is my job to review plays," she protested, but the game was up. At least he did not seem to know that she'd also followed him to Bellevue. For some reason that eased her mind. She did not think he'd be happy to hear she knew of his visit there.
"Your job," he repeated. "Yes. I see. And I am just another of your assignments."
Diana could rationalize that her need for an interview required her to stay, but she knew there was more to what she was feeling than that. More than she wanted to think about just now. Reminding herself she was not powerless, that she could run if she had to, she stood her ground.
Why did this man affect her so strongly? Whenever she encountered him, she felt she should beware of him; yet she did not seem to be able to heed the warnings flashing through her mind and simply walk away.
"Let's start again." The hard glitter in his eyes belied his reasonable tone of voice. "You followed me all day and evening yesterday, and the afternoon before that, and trailed downtown after me again this morning."
Reluctantly, she nodded.
He said nothing about Poke. She dared hope that meant he had not noticed the watch she'd posted. That presented her with another problem, however. How could she get him to talk about the man he'd accosted in the park, the man he'd given money to?
"You meant to follow me after the play, but I slipped away from you."
Again she nodded. Remembering the notebook, she knew she should be frightened. She should run, but a strange lethargy had crept over her, sapping her of any desire to escape.
He came closer, his tantalizing mouth at eye level. She'd not noticed before how perfectly formed his lips were. They parted, revealing strong, white teeth, and a delicious warmth stole over her like a down coverlet. Without thinking, she took a step in his direction.
"I hid from you, Diana."
Her gaze flew upward to meet the consuming sensuality of his expression, but the use of her first name startled her enough to bring her to her senses.
She did not have to ask him how he knew it. She always wrote both her name and her address in her little cloth-covered notebooks.
"I thought about confronting you outside the theater," Bathory said. "I changed my mind."
In spite of all the unknowns, she believed him. The shivers running through her body did not come from fear. They had another origin entirely.
"Do you think I attacked you?" he asked. One gloved finger caught her chin and lifted her face until she was forced to meet his intense gaze once more. "Is that why you tremble?"
The unexpected touch, so close to being a caress, sent sensations rocketing along every nerve ending. Her mouth felt dry as dust, but she managed to choke out a question of her own. "How do you know about that? There's been nothing in the newspapers."
"There was talk in the neighborhood. I heard of the incident, though not who'd been involved, in the barroom of the Hotel Hungaria. That's where I went to hide, Diana. In a dark corner with a whiskey."
His free hand lifted to touch the bruise on her cheek, his sharp eyes discerning it through her face powder. Diana flinched but did not retreat.
"Do you think I attacked you?" he repeated.
"I do not know what to think."
"Then you were either very brave or very foolish to have followed me here."
When he released her, she licked parched lips, then wished she hadn't. The innocent gesture provoked a new flare of heat in his eyes. It was gone again in an instant, but not before she'd recognized it for what it was. An answering awareness bubbled in her veins. Damon Bathory reached into the inner pocket of his coat. When he withdrew his hand, it held her notebook. "Yours, I believe."
Although she'd known he had it, and had believed herself prepared to stay calm, the reality of the stained and dirty green cover brought back all the horror of what had happened to her in that alley. She felt her face blanch and when he extended the notebook towards her, expecting her to take it, a sudden panic made her retreat a few steps.
"I found your notebook well after midnight," he said in a gruff voice, pressing it into her hands but stepping away immediately. "On my way back to my hotel."
If he'd not retreated, Diana might have bolted. Somehow, putting even that little distance between them caused her nervousness to abate. She was able to think clearly again.
She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Your story makes no sense," she said to his back. He stood by the railing that closed in the weather observatory, staring down at the city below. "The way from the Hotel Hungaria to the Palace Hotel does not pass anywhere near the ruins of the Union Square Theater."
"I took a walk around the park. Mild exercise before bed can be a good inducement to sleep."
Diana said nothing. He sounded sincere. He might even be telling the truth. An iron fence surrounded the three acre park. She thought it was locked at night, but she supposed Bathory could have circled it on the outside. That did not explain, however, why he'd venture across the Rialto or why he'd decided to explore the pitiful remains of the Union Square Theater.
As if he heard her silent question, Bathory answered it. "There was talk in the bar of a woman accosted in the alley next to the ruins."
"And you thought of me?" Asperity tinged Diana's question. With his back to her she was no longer swamped by his powerful personality. She had regained her composure. He became just an ordinary man again. And her assignment.
"I was curious enough to take a look." He turned. "I found that in a pile of refuse."
"I want to believe you."
He leaned back against the railing. "Why?"
"I ... I don't know."
But she did, and so, she sensed, did he.
For a moment, the look in his eyes made her think he meant to kiss her. She could all but see him closing the distance between them, taking her into his arms, and bending his head to touch his lips to hers. He would not let go, even if she struggled. And when he angled his mouth to give him better access, her resistance would slip away.
Lost in that imagined embrace, she was startled when a gust of wind buffeted her, lifting the hem of her dark blue coat and causing the wool to flutter at the top of her low boots. She blinked rapidly, coming to her senses.
"I ... this ... Mr. Bathory, I..."
His smile devastated her senses. Had he mesmerized her?
"Come," he suggested. "Share the view with me while we discuss how matters stand between us. From this height, the cable cars crossing the Great Bridge to Brooklyn look like ants."
She stepped away from him instead.
He laughed. "Do you think I mean to pick you up and throw you off the building?"
"Certainly not. It is simply too cold up here." She hoped he would accept that explanation for her shaking hands and uneven voice.
"Let us go indoors, then. To the Savarin? We can dine there, too."
That cafe, Diana knew, was on a lower level of the Equitable Building. "Yes. Fine."
_Remember the interview_, she lectured herself as he took her arm to lead her to one of the hydraulic elevators. She was not looking for a lover, only for copy for a newspaper column. She must ignore the frisson of awareness emanating from the point of contact between her arm and his hand.
* * * *
Ten minutes later, Diana was seated across from him at a small table in a restaurant where white mahogany, onyx, and bronze dominated the decor, and expensive marble covered the floor. She had brought her wayward imagination under control and prevented her hands from trembling by keeping them tightly clasped in her lap.
"I had already reached the conclusion that you were not one to give up," Bathory said, after they'd ordered. "I tried to frighten you off with my ring at Heritage Hall. I attempted to use insults to drive you away when you came to my hotel room. Then I made a futile effort the next day, after I noticed you following me again, to bore you into abandoning the chase. Nothing has worked and I am left with only one course of action."
"And that is?" Her voice did not shake. Diana took that as a good sign.
"Why, to agree to your interview, of course. But only if you will tell me something about yourself first."
Cautious to begin with, Diana slowly relaxed. In the course of the next hour, she avoided revealing anything personal, but she did regale her dinner companion with a lively account of how the relatively new Savarin had lured its steward away from a more venerable restaurant, Delmonico's. By the time they'd finished the appetizers, she'd related a favorite anecdote about a runaway camel on Broadway. Over the entree, she told him the story of Jim, the big trick cat who, until the fire, had made his home in the Union Square Theater.
"He was rescued unscathed, although he did get sopping wet in the process." The memory made her smile. "As soon as he had been thoroughly dried out, the Union Square's manager hosted a reception in his honor at the Criterion."
"The _cat_ was given a party?"
She started to confirm this but he waved her off.
"I don't know why I'm surprised. My mother has a cat she dotes upon."
Her smile broadened into a grin. "I'm sure she would approve of Jim's present whereabouts then. He has a suite at the Hotel Hungaria."
"Had I but known," he said with a surprisingly boyish laugh, "I could have bought him a drink."
Reminded that he'd been hiding from her there less than twenty-four hours earlier, Diana put down her fork. She'd been so caught up in conversation that she'd scarcely tasted the pheasant or the asparagus spears or the French bread. She had all but lost sight of her purpose in being with this man in the first place. And she had completely forgotten to be wary of him.
"Enough about me," she said. "You promised me an interview."
"There is a condition."
The lightheartedness vanished with startling speed. He was once again the dark, brooding man whose goal in life was to strike terror into the hearts of others. The transformation made Diana uneasy. Which was the real Damon Bathory? Or was he, like Dr. Jekyll, possessed of two separate and distinct personalities?
"Name it." The quiver in her voice was back and Diana despised herself for it, but it did not seem to be anything she could control.
"You must henceforth stop trailing after me like a bloodhound."
Offended as well as embarrassed, she forced herself to apologize. "I am not usually so bold."
"No. Just hell-bent on writing scandal. You'd do better to try humor. If those stories you just told me are anything to judge by, you have a flair for it."
Surprised by the comment, she took refuge in buttering a slice of bread she did not really want. She needed time to compose her response. By the time she looked up, he was staring at her with disconcerting intensity.
"I must earn a living, Mr. Bathory," she said in a quiet and blessedly level voice. "At the moment, in order to keep my job, it is necessary for the _Intelligencer_ to entice readers away from rival newspapers. My editor, Horatio Foxe, believes you are the key. People will buy one paper over another if doing so enables them to learn things about you that they cannot find out any other way. In spite of what you may think, I have never invented an anecdote for my column. I may have speculated in the past about the inspiration for your writing and indulged in a bit of innuendo, but I do not make things up out of whole cloth."
"How reassuring."
Hearing skepticism in his voice, she sighed. "I cannot guarantee what my editor may insert into one of my columns. If I offer him some tidbits juicy enough, however, he will be inclined to print only my words. The content of the story will thus be my choice, not his. Your choice, in fact."

"Some might argue that is but a trifling distinction."
"I endeavor to write only what is true."
"As you see it."
"I am entitled to my opinions on plays and books."
"Is that why you were attacked, Diana? Did your column offend someone?"
Should she tell him or not? She did not pretend to understand this complex, compelling man, but after the last hour with him, she found it impossible to believe he could be a murderer.
"The entire incident may have been staged," she said bluntly.
In concise sentences, she gave him the gist of Horatio Foxe's theory and what few details she had about the two women murdered along the route of Damon Bathory's tour.
"Why are you so certain I'm not the one who attacked you?" he asked. There was no expression at all in his eyes.
Omitting any mention of the doubts she'd entertained because she knew he'd given money to a man in the park, she explained her reasoning.
"Your editor has composed a remarkable piece of fiction," he said when she completed her tale.
Diana frowned. Somehow, she'd expected more reaction from him. After all, she'd just accused him of killing two women, maybe more.
"If Foxe speculates about this in print, the story could well cause people to stop buying your books. You might be taken in for questioning by the police."
"He's not likely to go ahead with the story once you tell him you know I wasn't the one who dragged you into that alley."
"He could say you hired someone. To stop me from following you."
One sardonic brow lifted, but he said nothing.
Flustered, she began to fumble in her leather bag for a fresh notebook. Only when she'd opened it to the first pristine page did she look at Bathory again.
"Ask your questions." He sounded amused. "Let us see what minor scandals you can unearth to replace the one your Mr. Foxe is so intent upon inventing."
Diana had to clear her throat before she could begin. "Where is your home?"
"Buffalo."
The answer came too pat, just as on that earlier occasion when he'd assured her that Bathory was a real name. Real, she thought again, but not necessarily his. As for Buffalo, she had her doubts about that, too. His speech pattern was all wrong. And earlier he'd accused her of following him "downtown." People from upstate New York tended to say "downstreet."
She declined to challenge him. After all, he might live in Buffalo now but not be a native.
"Where do you get your ideas?" she asked.
"Everywhere."
"From family stories?"
"You are thinking of the Blood Countess." He fingered his jade ring. "The Bathorys have an ... interesting history."
"I knew you deliberately tried to frighten me that night. I realized it as soon as you disappeared behind the curtain."
The wickedness of his smile disconcerted her. "No nightmares?"
The sudden memory of her dreams and their content brought a flush to Diana's face. Ducking her head, she quickly changed the subject.
"Where were you going in such a rush on the day I came to your hotel room?"
"I went to Bellevue," he admitted after a moment's hesitation, surprising her with his candor. "A brief visit, but an illuminating one."
"Research for a new story?"
"I suppose you'd prefer to hear I was once confined there as a lunatic and visited the place for old time's sake?" He took a sip of post-prandial coffee.
"Were you?" Her heart had begun to pound so loudly that she was afraid he would hear it.
"No, but I do visit madhouses every chance I get."
The peach cobbler the waiter had brought for their dessert forgotten, Diana stared at him. "Why?"
"In the hope that doctors in one of them will someday develop a better way to deal with the insane." Strong emotion banished the earlier blankness from Bathory's face. "I saw one man at Bellevue who had been living on the street. He suffered from delusions of persecution. Heard voices. From the look of him, he'd once been a strapping brute. He probably had a family ... a life he enjoyed ... before he was reduced to an emaciated shell. Because one of the voices he heard told him to strike a man who'd only wanted to help him, the doctors considered him dangerous, a threat to himself and others."
"Why would he obey ... a voice?" She did not know very much about madmen and wasn't sure she wished to.
"Some patients think the orders come from God. More likely from Satan." Bitterness tinged his words.
"Is there no treatment?" She'd stopped taking notes, affected by his passionate intensity.
"Most such patients are simply given massive injections of morphine and chloral. This calms the hysteria but produces intolerable side effects. Thirst is the least of them."
"Horrible." Diana shuddered in sympathy.
Bathory did not seem to notice. "Every doctor I've talked to about the care of those who suffer blackouts, hear voices, or are subject to fits of rage insists the only safe place for such poor souls is an institution. To be locked in, kept away from all contact with sanity -- there is the real path to madness. We must find better solutions, even for those individuals too deranged to be let loose on an unsuspecting community."
The problem of what to do with the insane clearly affected him deeply. Uneasiness stealing over her, Diana wondered why.
"What other choice is there?" she asked. "Surely you do not mean to suggest that the families of such people lock them in their attics?" That was in the best tradition of sensational fiction.
"Better _that_ than the insane pavilion at Bellevue. And Bellevue is one of the better facilities." He picked up her discarded notebook and pencil and thrust them at her. "Write that Diana. Say that all madhouses are the same. Inhumane. Unenlightened. Often the doctors know less than the inmates."
"I sympathize with their plight, but it has already been written about."
"Old news?" The bitterness was back. "Yes. I've read Miss Bly's account. And some reforms were instituted afterwards. But once the public outcry died down, the patients and their illnesses were forgotten again."
"I would like to help," she told him, resisting the urge to reach for his hand, "but the only way I can put any of this in my story is if you provide some reason why it interests you particularly."
"I see. It would help, then, to say I have a mad wife locked up at home?"
His voice was so deadly serious, she did not know whether to believe him or not. "Do you have a wife?"
"Does it matter, so long as you have scandalous details for your column?" The disappointment in his tone made her wince. He had no reason to trust her, just as she had no reason to trust him, but she had thought there was a rapport developing between them.
They had finished their meal. Bathory called for the check and Diana took that as a signal that the interview was over. She put her notebook away.
They left the restaurant and walked back towards his hotel in silence. She'd leave him there and go home. Spending time with Damon Bathory was even more exhausting than chasing after him.
He noticed her limping and hailed a cab. When he'd climbed in beside her, he gave the driver her address.
"I can invite you in," she told him, "but only into the parlor and there will be a chaperone present. My landlady is most strict about gentlemen callers."
"You said earlier that you need this interview in order to keep your job." His most winning smile was firmly in place.
"Yes, but -- "
"And if what you've already learned from me isn't enough, your editor will make something up out of whole cloth. Is that correct?"
"I fear so, yes."
"Then I've a proposition for you." He lowered his voice to a level that vibrated with sincerity. The effect of such charisma was difficult to escape and Diana was not inclined to fight it very hard. "If you promise not to follow me after I take you home, I swear I'll do nothing more exciting tonight than return to my hotel room and get a good night's sleep."
"All right, but -- "
"Then, when we're both well rested," he continued, cutting her off, "we will meet again. Tomorrow, if you like, at whatever hour and place you say. Why, we can spend the entire day together, and in the evening go to a play. Shall we sit together in an audience for a change?"
"Most theaters are dark on Monday nights," Diana reminded him, beguiled by the wistful note in his voice.
He thought for a moment as their cab came to a stop in front of the house on 10th Street. "Will you allow me to take you to the circus instead? Eighty-six acts in three rings, or so the advertisements say."
A delicious sense of anticipation coursed through her at the prospect of spending more time with him. His lighthearted tone heightened the feeling. So did the appreciative look in his eyes. The admiration of a man for a woman he desired shone there. He made no attempt to hide it. Responding female to male, Diana forced the last of her doubts into a dark corner of her mind and smiled back at him.
"If we go in the afternoon," she said, daring to tease him a little "I can write a review of the opening performance."
"Done. How early shall I come for you? Interview first, I think. Business before pleasure."
Diana's smile abruptly dimmed.
"What is it?" He sounded genuinely concerned.
"I have an early appointment, but it shouldn't take long. Why don't I meet you in the lobby of your hotel at nine."
"A new story?" he asked.
"An old one. Unfinished business."
Diana was relieved when he did not press her for details.
Neither did he linger over farewells. When he'd gone, she drifted to the window and stood concealed by the lace curtains to watch him climb back into the waiting cab. She stayed there until it was out of sight, her fingers toying idly with the brooch at her throat. She listened until the last clip-clop of the horse's hooves had faded away. Only then did she turn away and, frowning, make her way upstairs to her tiny, solitary room.
She did not know what the morning would bring, but the last time she'd felt this edgy, this full of hope, she had been about to elope with Evan.
That had been the beginning of the most exciting time she'd ever known. It had also been the worst mistake of her life.