Fallen Sparrow (23 page)

The telephone jangled. He answered before Elise could reach it.

Content said, “Kit.”

He felt good. He said, “Where’ve you been, lady?”

She repeated, “Kit.” She found it hard to speak. “Kit, you mustn’t go to dinner at Prince Felix’s tonight.”

He laughed. “Why not?”

“Kit. You mustn’t. I can’t tell you now. But trust me. Don’t go tonight.”

He said, “I promised Toni.”

“Kit!”

“Not jealous, baby?”

Her voice was desperate. “Kit. I heard José—”

He didn’t want to know. She had no business disturbing him this way. He wasn’t afraid; he knew what he was doing even if he couldn’t tell her. He laughed again, “See you there,” rang off.

He sat quietly, pressing down the phone. He would do it. He would give Toni this opportunity to save him from the trap if she so wished. She would be at the shop yet; she could speak without directions. He called. “Toni, I’m going to have to run down to Washington tonight. It will mean leaving the dinner early if I come.”

She could postpone it; she could call it off. She didn’t. She said without inflection, “But I’ve planned everything, Kit. You can’t do that.” She suggested, “We could have dinner early.” It was a laugh; all the girls but Toni trying to keep him safe.

She would make it really early, a bit past six. It didn’t matter after all. Postponement wouldn’t be solution, only delay. He must go through with it. It was better this way.

He showered in stinging cold; it braced his backbone, cleared his head. He wouldn’t dress; he had the Washington excuse. The Luger could be, not hidden, but less prominent in the deep pockets of his tweeds than in a dinner jacket. He wouldn’t leave it in his overcoat tonight; he wanted it at hand. And it must be the Luger which would kill Wobblefoot; return to the man what he had given. If by any mischance it was taken from him, they wouldn’t know about the little fellow in his armpit. Torch in his other pocket.

Young Arsenal calls on His Girl. She wasn’t his girl. For all her fine abstract speeches on peace and beauty, she was willing to set him up as target. He whistled dolefully. “The minstrel boy to the war is gone, In the ranks of death you’ll find him.” He wasn’t a bit sad. He wouldn’t be entering any ranks of death. He’d thrown away his wild harp. Sober bullets were better than song, better than proud soul, better than love and bravery.

He was ready. He went to the library, reached high for the book of poetry. Elise entered the hall as he opened the pages and removed the folder. He asked with deliberate swagger, “Want to see a picture of me?”

She drew back.

He pointed it under her eyes. “That’s me and my best friend. His name was Louie Lepetino. And that’s a letter I wrote him from Spain. Did you know I was in prison in Spain for more than two years?” He put the folder in his pocket. “It wasn’t much fun.”

The second floor bay window was alight. Someone was standing there watching. The shadow glided to invisibility. Sister Anne was announcing the news. He took a deep breath and he turned back to Duck. He said, “Drive around the block before you park. I don’t know how long I’ll be but wait.”

His fist was cold against the door. Toni opened it. Her voice said, “I’m so happy you could come, Kit.” Her eyes were deep circles. She took his hat and coat and he followed her. There was a rock, a cold one, somewhere in his middle. But there were no strange faces. The strangeness was the lack of faces. Only Dr. Skaas; Content, her face whiter than her dress; José. There was the one blazing absence.

Kit inquired.

The scientist’s thick sweet voice said, “My poor friend Felix. This afternoon he is sudden ill. He cannot be with us.”

Toni’s throat was steady. “His heart can stand no strain. He is in the hospital.”

Kit knew the identity of the Wobblefoot now. The man who was never present. Cold courage quieted Kit’s nerves. The Prince had never seemed real. He would be easy to kill. For his enslavement of Toni if for nothing else, he deserved death.

Skaas turned sadly to Toni. “I am hungry. Must we wait longer for the others?”

She protested, “We are so few. Det sent a message that she couldn’t make it.”

Kit guffawed. “I vote we eat. Barby probably had a half dozen cocktail parties to drag Otto to. She’s never on time for meals, particularly not for an early dinner.” He spoke his apology for not dressing. “It was good of you to change the hour for me.” He didn’t explain the protruding gun. They were supposed to guess that Washington would be a dangerous place for him.

Skaas stated, “We shall eat now.” José wheeled him to the dining room.

Kit could be as unsuspecting as any at the table. He could discuss headline history with Christian Skaas, music with José. He could ignore the terrible silence of Content, the wraith of Toni. To Dr. Skaas’, “What business is it takes you to Washington?” he could fling the folder on the table, the soiled letter protruding. “I’m trying to find out what caused the suicide of a friend of mine. Here’s a picture of him taken when we were young fellows. He was working for the government when he died.”

“You are working for your government?”

He could brazen, “I hope to get a crack at it soon.”

He was on his toes, without fear, but he could be wary. He didn’t touch his Babylon goblet. Drugged wine would be too easy a way. There could be a new pattern for him. Content wouldn’t believe their plausible explanation of too much to drink but she was too little to fight. She couldn’t keep one of them from taking him home, removing him from the face of the earth.

Dr. Skaas concluded the meal as he had ordered its beginning. He said, “Fill the goblets once more, José. We drink now a toast.” He lifted his, savored it in his fingers. His sticky eyes touched Kit. “To us. Success in the new world.”

Kit raised his cup to the ambiguity. But he coughed and spluttered the first mouthful. He swallowed none. Toni said, “The dishes will wait. We will have music and song as my grandfather planned until Kit must leave us.”

She made a rite of lighting candles, leaving the lamps darkened. It could have been beauty out of the past. Simple songs, peasant melodies from an old, old world. Joy and sorrowing of the ages. They sang together. Kit sang with them full-throatedly, as if he were a child who knew no better.

He sang and waited, waited until Christian Skaas said, “Now you will sing joost one special song for an old man? Joost one?” The brown eyes licked Content.

Kit watched her grow rigid, certain of the request to come. He too was certain; his signal would be given during that music. Suddenly he was frozen with fear; he had never known such a degree of fear in his life. It wasn’t a shivering cold; it was electric; it was the cold of Northern lights over a continent of ice. He had never killed a man of his own volition; soon now would be the time.

Dr. Skaas urged, “Joost the one. How you call it—Tsigane?”

Content’s eyes moved in a wide frightened arc to Kit. He didn’t glance at her; he turned his head, formed a deliberate fatuous smile on Toni.

Content whispered stiffly, “No.”

Rose madder burned on José’s cheekbones. “Yes! Tsigane!” His hands hovered in the air. “Yes. Yes.”

Content said, “No.”

He was infuriated. “Always I must coax you for this. You will do the little things but this—the masterpiece I have teach you—you say ‘No.’” He mimicked sullenly, “‘No.’” He twisted his shoulders. “‘No. No.’”

Kit spoke with clarity above the argument. The fear went out of him with the words, only the cold sureness remained. “Yes, Content. Tsigane. For Dr. Skaas.”

Her eyes met his, the eyes of an innocent condemned to be an instrument of destruction. He couldn’t reassure her by the least flicker of understanding. There was no way to inform her that this requiem was not for him.

“Joost this one favor for the old man.” The lips were thick, not the lips of an old man. The voice was like the eyes; somewhere beneath the treacle there was amusement, an unclean and brutal amusement.

Content’s shining head drooped. Tonelessly she began the chant. Kit waited, tensed, the electric coldness moving surely through his veins. It tingled in the tips of his fingers. He didn’t wait long. Toni’s ghost fingers touched his shoulder. Silently he followed her out of the shadowed room, through the darkness of the dining-room into the small kitchen. Content might have felt him move; she couldn’t watch, she had been maneuvered out of position or she had turned that she might not view this ultimate defeat.

Toni whispered, “Up these stairs. It is the back apartment. I have left the door on the latch.” No warmth came from her; she blew cold as shadow. In the half-light thrown from the tower windows of the apartment off the drive, he could see the glow of the moonstone between her breasts.

He demanded from her the lie, “It’s safe now?” She gave it. “Yes, it is safe.” He hesitated, and then he kissed her quietly, raising the pale blur of her face. She didn’t withdraw but her lips were no more warm than they had ever been to him. He heard beneath her breath, “God go with you,” as he slid silently into the darkness of the back stairs. He didn’t use the flash; he went softly, feeling his way against the wall. He didn’t know when he might meet the prelude to death; it might be waiting at the head of the stairs; he wouldn’t show a light for flame to spurt at. The back door moved sibilantly to his touch. Within he closed and fastened it. He repeated the Scottish ghoul’s cackle, “Now we’re locked in together.” Better this than to be surprised from the rear. He showed the torch, covering it with the red glow of his hand.

Without sound, his ear drums strained with listening for breath, he crept through the mean rooms, even poorer than the apartment below. The front was the study. He lifted his warm fingers from the eye of the torch, circled it. The place was empty. He made a light then, the small lamp on the old-fashioned secretary. The torch he replaced in his pocket. There were papers sprawled on the desk. There was a limp black leather brief case containing others. He emptied it, laid it on the floor. He could take his time; he must take his time, give the plan its opportunity to materialize.

His breath caught at the importance of the first few sentences he read. Prince Felix must be certain of success to allow Kit to lay eyes on these. They branded these refugees as more than part of the plan to obtain the Babylon goblets, that was a mere sideline; this information was smeared with the worst treachery of an enemy spy. Here were names, meetings, full data on the projected destruction of American defense strongholds.

He stiffened to sound. A thump; then silence save for the wild echoes of the Tsigane from the rooms below. He kept his back turned to the door; he wouldn’t be shot down, he was of no value dead. To win he must play his part, seem unaware until the man appeared, then behold the amazed light when he, the weak prey, became the strong. He waited.

Sound. Awareness stifled him. No hireling had been sent. He could hear the deformed slither, reaching the head of the stairs, attempting to traverse the corridor without giving warning. Cautiously his head turned. He waited, his teeth set, his fingers cramped on the butt of the gun. He knew he was afraid; he didn’t attempt to cover over his fear with braggadocio now; he was afraid as he’d been afraid in prison; he was quivering and there was sickness in the pit of his stomach. His fingers were in a painful clutch on the gun. He could shoot without drawing, the way the old Westerner had taught him. Thud … silence … the dragging foot. … Shoot to kill.

The front door swung open soundlessly. Christian Skaas stood there, the sirupy smile evil on his face.

Kit hadn’t known. He’d been a fool not to have known but he hadn’t; he’d been the fool. He had been so certain it would be the old and decadent one; he had strengthened his hand with reasons why the Prince should die, the uselessness of age in a new useful order, the enslavement of Toni. Momentarily his certainty was thrown off balance. Why should Dr. Skaas be his victim? Sanity returned. No matter what the shell; this was the Wobblefoot. He had not planned to kill a man out of personal grudge; his death was ordered for what he threatened.

The man wobbled forward painfully, closed the door behind him. He said, “You are interested in what is in my desk, yes?” His voice was soft as the belly of a snake.

Shoot now—to kill.

“It is too bad—yes?—that you will not be allowed to tell your friends in Washington these things what interest you?”

He couldn’t do it. His fingers uncramped slowly in his pocket. Skaas knew he couldn’t do it. His hand came out, empty. Within him he was scalded with the shame of weakness, the helplessness of civilization. He couldn’t kill a man in cold blood. Not even this man.

He watched Dr. Skaas lay down one foot and another with that nauseous lurch. Skaas said, “You have a gun, yes?”

Kit didn’t answer. He had a gun, yes, and he couldn’t use it. He wasn’t gun shy; he hadn’t lost nerve. It was something he could never explain to this man; something he wouldn’t have had to explain to Louie, to Ab. He couldn’t shoot down a man as he would a wild beast. Even if the hairline of difference was so slight as to be negligible, he couldn’t do it. He must wait his chance, make the break from here; the agencies of the government must do the rest. It wasn’t in him.

Skaas said, “You do not reach for it, no. Joost be most careful you do not reach for it. This ring on my finger, see?” He held up his thick fingers, not on the hand of an old man. The large forefinger ring was translucent. “I have release the safety catch. Before you draw the gun I give a touch and the gas comes. A most deadly gas, my friend, Mr. McKittrick. Most deadly. You will not be able to shoot me if it is release. It is not a gas you know of. The Dr. Skaas whose name I take can not as yet manufacture it in quantity for the war. But the samples we have—most deadly they are.” He smiled. “Me, I will not suffer by it.” He raised pinched forefinger and thumb to his nostrils. “Here I wear the filter what protects me. When you fall; I put on the gas mask.” From the table drawer he removed one, dangled it on the arm of the chair. “Thus I am safe.”

Kit said slowly, “You don’t dare kill me.”