Fallen Sparrow (13 page)

He put his hand in his pocket “Whom did you just take up to the fourteenth?”

The back of Pierre’s sleek head was startled. “No one, Mr. McKittrick. No one has come to your apartment tonight.” He slid the cage door and Kit’s hand was ready. But there was no one in the small hallway.

Kit laughed. The sound made too much noise. “Don’t give me that. I’ve lived too long in this place not to know the levels. Who was it?” He didn’t move to step from the cage. He didn’t want to be left alone here in the small entrance, to open that door into the unknown dark of the Wilhite foyer.

The man repeated as if hurt, “There was no one.”

It could be Elise sneaking in late the front way; it could be a rendezvous between the man and the maid. Kit laughed as in knowledge. “Did my trunk get upstairs after I left?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” The man’s head was eager. “I helped Elise take it up.” He might have winked. “She’s a pretty swell dish.”

Kit said, “I haven’t noticed.” He couldn’t stay there in the comparative safety of the elevator until dawn. He went on talking to the man while he legged out, inserted his key, swung wide the door. “Though I don’t know what your wife would say if she heard you mention it.”

He had the light switched on while the man tittered, “I know what she’d say, Mr. McKittrick. I don’t have to tell her to find out.”

No one in view in the foyer. Someone hidden in shadow of the bedroom corridor, of the library? The elevator had descended. Kit had the revolver in his hand before he closed the door.

The silence was a formless mass. He whistled a path into it. “The minstrel boy to the war is gone …” He knew better than to remove his overcoat. He needed both hands free. Long strides lighted the library. Empty … but there’d been someone in it not long ago. The pale gold brocade of the couch cushions had been too hurriedly shaped to eradicate seat marks. Someone had smoked a cigarette, the odor hadn’t been successfully dissipated; someone had lifted the Chaucerian china lid, disturbed Geoffrey’s gum drops. That wasn’t imagination. There were red ones on top; Kit had plowed them under earlier when he prospected for pink ones.

Would Pierre dare effect entry without the assistance of Elise? Kit didn’t believe so. No one but Pierre had descended in the elevator. He could have brought another up, someone who slipped out the back way when Kit rang from below. Elise alone would not dare park herself in the living-room, eat candy, smoke a cigarette. Moreover, that would be purposeless.

Kit strode hard to the kitchen door; soundlessness lay in the dark behind it. His hand on the gun, he made a thin wedge. No sound. Lights. “The minstrel boy …” Open the ice box, slam it. His heels laid square clacks on the linoleum. No sound behind the door leading to the servants’ wing. He left the kitchen, turned on the corridor lights, waited. Only the rustle of silence was audible. He gripped the small deadly gun in the flat of his hand. He would search.

The same routine for each room. Dark swathe of entrance. Sudden click of light. He searched closets, jerkily beneath beds. His own rooms last. No one caught there. He wasn’t afraid, returning to douse lights. “The minstrel boy to the war is gone …”

But in the corridor again he waited. He could feel the watcher in the dark, the spirit of him if not the bulk. Eyes watching his least move, ears hearkening to his least sound, mouths whispering behind his ignorance. He could hear the uneven slur and fall of pursuing steps. He banged the door of his room behind him, swirled; his hand was cold and quick turning the key in the lock. He stood there waiting for his breath to return. Until he waited he hadn’t known it was gone.

He was through. There had to be some place in which he could be safe; that place must be home. Tomorrow he’d pack Elise off; he’d wire his mother for permission to give the girl her walking papers. Geoffrey wouldn’t endure a maid who snooped on his stepson, still less one who put her finger into French gum drops.

He’d find Lotte, good old Charlotte. She was German as Goethe, as Wagner, as Budweiser; her accent was rich as her strudel; and she’d make quick shift of enemies from the old countries. With Lotte in command, his possessions would be sacred—he remembered the pack of letters he’d carried all day. His hand didn’t find them in his jacket; he recalled then, he’d thrust them into the overcoat pocket when Tobin interrupted at the station. He half rose up from the bed, sank down again. He’d funk it. He couldn’t take another trip into the dark tonight. Wearily he knew it. He hadn’t been back three days; already nerves and flesh, sound and strong under an Arizona sky, were raveling to deterioration. The sound of deformity had done this.

What he must do, must be done quickly. Until it was accomplished, he could never hold the normal way of life again; he would remain cased in fear. The cups must be retrieved at once, passed over to Geoffrey for the Metropolitan Museum. When the treasure was no longer hidden, when it was in open custody of the Museum, he would be free. The thieves might attempt to substitute their not so accurate facsimiles for the originals, but they would never be successful; they would have to report the finality of their defeat; the mad aesthete would be forced to accept his frustration. Kit would have won the ultimate round.

One thing stood in his way of regaining the Babylon goblets. The Wobblefoot. The wolf pack would tread Kit’s heels if he made one step towards the secret; they were watching now, snuffling, expecting just that. That meant death for him. He dared not make a move until this man was put out of the way. Until the Wobblefoot and his present accomplices were impotent to act, Kit could not set forth to dig out—literally—the treasure. And only then, and at that point of convergence, must he move quickly, before word reach the castle and new wolves were put on his spoor.

Before he could act, he must find the man. How, he didn’t know. Perhaps Ab could help; he might have run into that sound in his investigations. And unwittingly, the accomplices should lead him. He didn’t have certain knowledge of the identity of these but José Andalusian must be one; there was no doubt now in Kit’s mind that the Wobblefoot had visited José twice on Wednesday. The two Skaases. They too must be a part of the plan. Those sticky eyes weren’t harmless. Otto didn’t appear to be anything but a nice young fellow; you’d think that if you hadn’t met him at the controls of a Messerschmitt, or behind the lines in porcine assurance of his position in a new world order. The Prince Felix—he was getting too near Toni; he didn’t want Toni to be involved. This was not the hour for inventions. Face reality. Prince Felix. He closed his eyes. And he saw what earlier he had seen but not beheld. The gold knob of a heavy cane. A cane a man could lean upon if a man could not walk in a normal way. There was a damp cold feeling his spine. His nerves hadn’t gone. He hadn’t imagined the sound of those steps; he hadn’t been wrong assuming that the Wobblefoot was in New York. Prince Felix, José was a protégé of the Prince. Dr. Skaas was a crony of the Prince; the Skaases had moved into the same apartment. All had entrenched themselves in Kit’s circle during his absence.

He mustn’t depend on divination; he must find out. He must kill the Wobblefoot, whoever the man was. Nor must he wait until weakened by attack, he must make an offensive drive into the enemy camp. His eyes looked upon the Luger, upon its diminutive but dread companion. No, he wasn’t afraid. Neither morally nor physically. The man must die. You feared when you were on the defensive, feeling your way through the plasma of unknown terrors. There would be no more fear when you were the stalker, not the stalked.

H
E GROANED, “GO AWAY
.” He woke then; knocking at his door, Elise’s flat nasality, “Mr. Kit, Mr. Kit.” He yelled at her, “What do you want?” The bed clock showed eight-thirty. It had been dawn before he slept and dawn came late in wintry months.

The maid seemed surprised that he answered. She’d evidently been rapping long enough to attain hopelessness. “A lady to see you, Mr. Kit.”

His heart did a double twist. He had a sudden fool idea it would be Toni seeking his protection. “Be right there.” His eyes had pins in them. He splashed water; put on his plaid flannel bathrobe, brushed back his hair. The revolvers were grim on the bed table. He hesitated, slid the small one into his pocket, protected it with a protruding handkerchief. The Luger he thrust into his jacket in the closet. Just in case Elise came down with any ideas of doing his room at this hour.

Content was alone in the foyer. She was just standing there; she looked small as a doll in her gray squirrel coat, gray squirrel blobs on her little girl’s beaver hat. She’d worn a hat like that when they took her to dancing school; it had ribbon not fur on it then.

He was truly surprised. It wasn’t Content’s hour of day. She lifted her face out of hat shadow and he was more surprised. Weeping had swollen her eyes to shapelessness. He started to her, shocked words in his mouth.

Her lips were not steady. “Ab’s dead.” She tried to say more but she couldn’t; she began to sob wildly, painfully. He held her against him. Her hat fell to the floor, her yellow head was far below his chin. He held her, not able to think, not understanding.

Ab was dead. He waited long until the spasm passed. She quivered, “I’ll tell you now.” She took the clean handkerchief he proffered, pressed it against her face.

He led her to the living-room couch. “Want a drink?”

She shook her head, blew her nose. “No. I won’t cry any more. I’ll tell you.” Her voice was husky as if her throat hurt. She said, “I tried to call you last night when Merrill phoned me. After the club. They called him and he called me. I tried to reach you.”

He let her tell it her own way. She’d tried to reach him, at two-thirty or three o’clock; he hadn’t been home. She’d wept all night alone. Little Content. He hadn’t known she’d loved Ab that way; he had known; she’d idolized her cousin always, he had been her big brother. Maybe when she grew up he’d been more than that but he didn’t know it. Ab would never have realized it.

Kit restrained the cry, “What happened?” Let her tell it.

“I thought you wouldn’t mind if I came to you. I didn’t want to be alone. The family’s in Florida.”

He put his arm around the narrow shoulders of her black dress.

“It’s in the papers.”

He saw where she’d left them on a chair in the foyer. Let the papers tell him. He walked to the black and white blur.
The Times
and
Herald Tribune.
It was on the front page, Ab’s young serious face. Abner Hamilton committed suicide in a Washington hotel room. The Hamilton pedigree. No explanation offered. Abner Hamilton shot and killed himself in a Washington hotel room. Clear case of suicide, fingerprints on the gun, correct angle of the bullet. No reason for it. The hotel story. Possibly happened Wednesday night. He hadn’t been seen since Wednesday night. He put in two telephone calls to New York early that evening. Between them he went out. His return not noted. A Do Not Disturb sign on the door all the next day. The night chambermaid, learning the room had not been done all day, opened the door on a passkey at eight-thirty
P.M.
Thursday. She found the body. An artist’s sketch of a figure sprawled on the floor.

Kit returned slowly to the living-room.

Content said, “He didn’t do it, Kit.”

“No, he didn’t do it.” He dropped the first section to the rug. If it had been any other way. They hadn’t known how Ab felt about a gun. Even if he’d been drinking heavily, he wouldn’t handle a gun. They’d made a small mistake. Would it be possible to convince the police of that, to employ their research and highly trained facilities to trap the man who murdered Ab? Or was it another job for Kit alone?

“He was in danger, Kit. He was more in danger than any of us knew.”

“Yes, Content.” He was trying to think, what to do first. Why had Ab been killed? What had he found out that made him an imminent menace? Trace it back. Why had he gone to Washington? That was the first question to be answered. The department in which he worked should know that.

She was sitting there staring at the small white hands in her black lap.

“Did you get any sleep, Content?”

“I don’t know. I must have slept a little. I’d been asleep when I decided to come to you.”

He put his hand over hers. “You can sleep now. I’m starting out. You’re going to bed.”

Without protest she went with him to his room. He opened a drawer, flung blue silk pyjamas across at her. “Undress and go to bed.” He pointed to the twin. “That one’s not been used. I’m leaving to find out some things.” He took his clothes into the bathroom.

Get Lotte first. He’d been with his mother to the sister’s cottage in Jersey. A suburb of West Orange. He could find the street. It meant time but it was necessary. If he intended to move Content in here—and he did—he’d need Lotte more than ever. He’d lost Ab; he didn’t intend to risk Content. She might know as much, more than Ab. She herself had said that everyone talked in front of her, didn’t think she caught on. But suppose they decided she was catching on? Suppose it was something she had repeated that had sent Ab to Washington?

He knocked on the bathroom door.

She said, “Come on out.” She was perched on the bed, a waif in the oversized pyjamas.

He said, “Can you sleep or shall I get something for you?”

“I believe I can sleep.” Her eyes were enormous. “Kit, why do you carry a revolver in your bathrobe pocket?”

She’d seen it after he’d removed the handkerchief. He said, “Good a place as any.” He transferred it to his jacket. He could leave the Luger here with Content in the room. He crossed to her, bent and kissed her head. “When I leave, lock yourself in.”

She began, “Is that why you—”

He interrupted. “Don’t worry about angles, love. I’ll take care of things now. Be back soon as I can.” He waited outside until he heard her turn the key, proceeded to the foyer closet for his overcoat and hat.

The letters were gone. He’d thought they would be. They’d turn up again. They weren’t very important. He wasn’t trying to play safe now; he was moving into the open. He rang for Elise.