by George Baxt
Stupid fucking bitch, I’ll do her for this.
“… Hallowed be thy name…”
“Mr. Hitchcock?”
Rescue!
“Mr. Hitchcock, do you hear me?”
“Yes!” cried Hitchcock.
“Do your best to remain calm and do not panic. Listen to me, follow instructions carefully, and I should have you out of there in just a few moments. Ready?”
“Yes!” He was afraid to speak, afraid to do anything for fear that any sound, any movement might send the car deeper into the pit. He heard a cranking noise of machinery desperately in need of oiling.
“I am lowering the hoist. I have tested it. It’s still in workable condition. While I’m doing this, I want you to open your car door very gently. I know there’s not too much space there, but there should be more than enough for you to tie the rope around your waist, gently move out of the car, and leave the rest to me.”
Hitchcock blinked his eyes as gently, very gently, he found the door handle and maneuvered it open. The car rocked slowly. Hitchcock wet his lips and slowly pushed the car door open as the rope appeared. He reached for it carefully, fingers extended, hungry for its touch, hungrier than a lover in need of a caress. He felt the rope and then slowly worked his hand around it until it was firmly in his grasp. He pulled the rope in and like an oversized woman struggling into a girdle, passed the rope around his waist. At last, he had it firmly tied.
“How are you doing?” asked his rescuer, the voice very warm and comforting, very masculine and decidedly with a trace of a continental accent.
“I’m ready,” said Hitchcock.
The car moved slightly.
His rescuer said, “Now move out of the car quickly and when you do, grasp the rope with both your hands as tightly as possible.”
Hitchcock said, “I’m not very athletic.”
“I’m not asking you to do a back flip. I just want you to hold on tightly to the rope and leave the rest to me.”
How self-assured the voice sounded, like a hack writer reciting a plot he’d freshly plagiarized.
He’d called him by name! Mr. Hitchcock. The man knew him. Dear God, what if he was one of them; what, God help him, if he was the man in the Indian suit?
The floor groaned beneath the car.
The hell with it, thought Hitchcock; if he was the enemy, he’d leave me to plunge to a certain doom. Mustering courage and strength, both freshly minted by a strong will to live and be reunited with his wife and child, Hitchcock moved out of the car. It was a tight squeeze, but he made it. As he grasped the rope for dear life, the car shuddered and the floor beneath it gave way. Hitchcock shut his eyes tightly, waiting for the worst. The car must have plunged at least a hundred feet downward. The noise of its destruction was ear- and heart-shattering, the black clouds of dust it sent upward almost blinding Hitchcock. He could hear his rescuer coughing and prayed it didn’t cause him to lose his grip on the hoist’s manual handle.
When the dust settled, the man shouted, “Are you all right?”
“Pull me up!”
For several moments nothing happened. A touch of fear began to envelop Hitchcock in its awful embrace. Then the cranking sound blissfully kissed Hitchcock’s ears, and he felt himself slowly rising. It was a slow, tortuous procedure. Overhead, the beam to which the hoist was attached was agonizing under Hitchcock’s weight. Dust in slow trickles began to descend from the beam. Herbert looked up and saw the beam showing signs of a crack. Whistling nervously between his teeth, he looked down and saw Hitchcock was just a few feet from safety. He continued cranking, his feet dug solidly into the earth. He could hear Hitchcock breathing heavily. He could also hear the wooden beam beginning to crack. He had Hitchcock almost over the top and out of the pit.
The beam, he realized, could break in two in any moment, sending Hitchcock plunging to his death. He came to a quick decision. He abandoned the crank and leapt toward Hitchcock, grabbing him tightly around both wrists. Hitchcock yelled when he felt the rope slacken, but Herbert was in excellent shape. He pulled Hitchcock to safety and the fat man lay on his back with his eyes closed, gasping for breath while managing to whisper, “Thank you, thank you.”
The beam cracked and the hoist plunged into the pit, causing the old granary to tremble as though it had been hit by an earthquake. Herbert quickly helped Hitchcock to his feet and guided him outside to his car. Hitchcock leaned against the car, still gasping for breath.
“Take it easy, old man,” said Herbert.
Hitchcock exhaled a huge sigh of relief and then turned to his rescuer. “Oh, my God,” he said. “Oh, my God!” Herbert had left his dark glasses and black cap on the car seat when he went to Hitchcock’s rescue. “You,” said Hitchcock softly, his eyes blinking, his heart pounding, “it’s you.”
Herbert was the man with the disfigured face, the man who had been skulking about the studio in Munich, the man who had argued with Anna Grieban in the restaurant the night she was murdered. “Ah! So you haven’t forgotten me,” said Herbert wryly. “My name, Mr. Hitchcock, is Herbert Grieban, and I think we’d better get the hell out of here.” He held the car door open for Hitchcock, and after he was settled, Herbert shut the door and went around the other side and got in behind the wheel. The engine purred and then roared, and they pulled out of the driveway. Behind them, with a great crash that must have aroused the countryside, the old granary collapsed into a magnificent wreck.
Hitchcock turned and looked out the back window. “Pity,” he said softly, “that would have made a magnificent shot.” He settled more comfortably and watched as Herbert placed the sunglasses back on his face and then put the cap back on his head. “I wish to thank you again, Mr. Grieban. You’re a very brave fellow.” Grieban, he thought. Anna Grieban. Of course. He and Alma had conjectured correctly. He had been Anna’s husband. “You’re Anna Grieban’s husband.”
“Widower.”
“Yes. That was an unfortunate tragedy.”
“She was very careless. And so was your Nancy Adair.”
Nancy Adair! “Good Lord!” exclaimed Hitchcock, “I’ve clean forgotten about her! Have you any idea where she’s disappeared to?”
“I do indeed,” he said with a smile that must have enchanted the ladies before the awful accident to his face. “She was abducted. I saw her being taken somewhat reluctantly into the circus lorry that was trying to run you off the road. “
“Why? Was he trying to catch us, thinking we were responsible for the murder of the man with the tic? Oh, sorry. You don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Oh, yes, I do. I was at the circus. I saw the murder. The evil little midget is quite a marksman.”
“Then it was Cupid who did it!”
“Unfortunately for Oscar, an unloving cupid.”
“Who’s Oscar?”
“The victim. The man with the tic.”
“Friend of yours?”
“A nodding acquaintance. We’re both in the employ of British Intelligence. That is, I still am. Poor Oscar, he was a magnificent musician but a very chancy operator. That tic was always dangerous, a dead giveaway.” He chuckled. “No pun intended.”
“Then why wasn’t he retired?”
“He was too good in the field. Anyway, sadly enough, this was to be his last assignment. He’d had an offer to join Ray Noble’s Orchestra. Oh, well, another victim of the fickle finger of fate.”
“In this case, the fickle arrow. Where are you taking me?” asked Hitchcock.
“To Harborshire,” announced Herbert.
“You know all about me, I assume. This awful mess I’m in.”
“I’ve been on your tail since Medwin, thanks to Miss Farquhar.”
“You know Miss Farquhar?”
“Oh, God, yes. Bigmouth and I have known each other since the war. I was interned after being captured and that’s where my face was botched up, not that there was much one could do with it after the shell exploded in front of me. Miss Farquhar was
my nurse. It was she who recruited me.”
“Imagine,” said Hitchcock with awe, “imagine recruiting such easily recognizable people as a man with a tic and a man with a… a…”
“Shattered face.”
“Please do forgive me.”
“Why? It’s not your face that’s shattered. Why not recruit us? Is it any worse then recruiting a woman like Miss Farquhar who suffers from diarrhea of the mouth? Does May 7, 1915, mean anything to you?”
Hitchcock thought for a moment. “I’m afraid not. Hard for me to think. I’m still recovering from my narrow scrape with death.”
“That is the date of the sinking of the Lusitania.”
“Indeed? So what?”
“Miss Farquhar.”
“Miss Farquhar? You mean she caused…”
“… that ghastly tragedy. Blabbed away over drinks with Sir Rufus Derwent, who promptly sold the information to the Germans, and of course you know now that this was the cause of his downfall.”
“Dear God, if this information were made public today…”
“Nobody would believe it.”
“Marvelous idea for a movie, I’m filing it away for future consideration.”
“You know, Mr. Hitchcock, spying is not the romantic adventure you depict in your films. It’s very tiresome work. Days and weeks can go by when nothing happens. That’s why it requires people of infinite patience. People like our poor lamented Oscar and myself. I’m a very patient man. My poor wife was impatient, so she’s dead and I’m alive. That’s why Rudolf Wagner is dead. He was impatient. When he created his magnificent and so far unbreakable code… La-la-la-la… la-la-la… recognize that?”
Hitchcock groaned. “It’s as implanted in my memory as ‘God Save the King. “
“It’s why Rudolf was murdered. The Germans wanted that code, so did England and the Americans and the Russians.”
“That simple little melody? How did they all know of its existence?”
“By a very complicated process understood only by those of us experienced in espionage. Believe me when I tell you that when a new product comes on the market, word swiftly gets around and countries send their emissaries to do the bidding. At times it gets a little rough. Agents tend to knock each other off in their anxiety to get there, as they say in America, the firstest with the mostest. So you see, there was Rudolf Wagner at the studio tinkling away, giving a sample of his wares to anyone in his vicinity who was in the market to purchase. What wasn’t known, you see, was that I had already won the prize. I was the highest bidder for England. We concluded the deal that day your wife saw me hiding behind the scenery. Unfortunately for you and your wife, Mr. Hitchcock, it was thought in the field that you were spies in on the bidding because Mrs. Hitchcock fell so in love with the melody!”
“Well, I’ll be damned!”
“You almost were.”
“It was also assumed that Anna was in on the deal. Which is why she was murdered. Frankly, if the opposition hadn’t killed her, I would have had to do the job myself.”
Hitchcock said, “The argument in the restaurant.”
“Precisely. Anna was living a dog’s life. Very poor, so often hungry, so often between jobs. When she thought I was dead, she turned to the streets, but she was such an inadequate whore. Or so I was told. Anyway, she was thinking of selling out to the Russians, who in ‘25 were beginning to strengthen their espionage activities now that they had a better cash flow. She suspected Wagner had sold the code to me and tried to prise it out of me. Of course I insisted I didn’t own it yet, but she got hysterical and we argued. Impatience. It can be deadlier than a terminal disease. Anyway, she’s dead, and then Rudolf was murdered for having sold the code to me and not to the fatherland, like a good patriot ought to have.”
“So they thought we were spies! What a typical Hitchcock situation!” Herbert had turned on the headlights. Hitchcock’s stomach grumbled.
“Why else do you think you were being wooed so arduously by Fritz Lang’s wife, Thea von Harbou?”
The film of memory in Hitchcock’s mind was winding backward. He and Alma were in the restaurant with the Langs, and Thea who was trying to persuade him to remain in Germany with promises of a great future in their film industry. “So that’s what it was all about that night.”
“Poor Lang. How he despised his wife. Well, he’s safe now in Hollywood.”
“And she?”
“Oh, she’s a very good Nazi. Still writing film scripts. Still heil-Hitlering it all over the place, an aging cockatoo.”
“The circus is a nest of German spies, isn’t it?” Herbert chuckled. “So the penny’s dropped at last.” Hitchcock was very disgruntled. “Well, if that is so, why aren’t they rounded up and imprisoned?”
“In the first place, it’s heavily infiltrated with our own people. And there are others with the circus who are quite innocent of its clandestine operation, you must understand. “
“Of course.”
“Poor Oscar was freshly placed there yesterday. We were a long time getting him into the orchestra. Anyway, why they aren’t exposed? We keep hoping they’ll lead us to the man who heads this whole network in Great Britain. Otherwise, they’re no great threat to our security.”
Hitchcock exploded. “But they’ve been touring the coast where there are naval installations!”
“That’s right. But they see only what we permit them to see. They’ll be rounded up soon, though, let me tell you. They’ll soon be of no value to us whatsoever.”
“Why was the man in the lorry sent after us?”
“To catch Nancy Adair.” He chuckled. “And they’ve got her.”
“Well, I must say, if she’s in a precarious predicament, I’m quite sorry for her, but I don’t quite see what the problem is other than the fact that I think she’s a bit of a fraud.” He thought again, and the blood rushed to his face. “Well, I am the damnedest fool in the world! Of course she’s a fraud! Trying to tell me she was South African when I knew she was continental. The continental lilt in her speech was impossible to disguise despite her perfect English. Is she a Russian spy?”
“No, she’s with the Nazis. We should stop for some dinner. I’m getting very hungry.”
“She’s with the Nazis! Then she was assigned to me because they thought I was a spy. And Alma was kidnapped for the same reason.”
“Mr. Hitchcock… by the way, may I call you Alfred?”
“Call me idiot.” He paused. “Call me Hitch. Only Alma calls me Alfred, and that’s only when she’s about to pick a fight.”
“Hitch, the answer to Nancy Adair is right under your nose. You’ve known her for years, or at least you met her years ago.”
Hitchcock emitted a yelp of self-anger. “You’re not telling me Nancy Adair is Rosie Wagner!”
“That’s right. Rosie Wagner. Rosie murdered her father and my wife. Few would have guessed the shy little mouse was a ferocious tigress. Now she’s in trouble with her own people. She was supposed to have murdered you.”
Sixteen
Herbert,” said Hitchcock, “my blood has just gone cold.”
“Her people are stupid. They should have sent her out to pasture when she suffered her breakdown, remorse over killing her father, though she professed to despise him. Still, that should have been the warning right there. In espionage, sentiment is the Achilles heel. But Rosie’s lover convinced them she’d continue to be an asset once she was fully recovered and assigned to the field. Actually, she’s done some very nice work for them these past ten years, and I say that begrudgingly. “
“Who was Rosie’s lover? She was so unattractive a girl.”
“She kept herself deliberately looking homely. It was a good facade. Just like Nancy Adair became a good facade.
But underneath that mouse’s exterior there seethed a sexual volcano. Didn’t you lay her last night at Miss Farquhar’s?”
“Good God, no! I could never be unfaithful to Alma!”
“Probab
ly that’s what delayed her killing you. Had you fucked her and been inadequate, she’d have cut your gizzards out.”
“Really, Herbert, this is most embarrassing.”
“So you’re a man of the cinema, but not a man of the world.”
“I’m a good husband, a good father, a good Catholic”— and he drew himself up—”and a perfectly magnificent director.”
“Nancy Adair has fallen in love with you.” He heard Hitchcock’s intake of breath. “That’s why she couldn’t kill you.”
“How do you know this? Or are you just taking a wild shot?”
“Oh, no. When you had your palm read or whatever you were doing with the knife thrower’s widow, I kept my eye on Adair. She spoke to the man in the Indian costume, and I went over to his stall ostensibly to inspect the junk he was hawking. They spoke in German, so it was easy for me. I caught snatches and what I could piece together is that he was chewing her out and she said she couldn’t, that someone else would have to do it. When she saw you coming out of the tent, and she ran to you, it was to hurry you away from the circus.”
“She did try to do that, I must give her that. But it was Cupid who intervened!”
“Deliberately. He was sent to lure you to the freak tent. They had taken it upon themselves to kill you, but the Indian-suited person didn’t want you murdered on the premises, for obvious reasons. That monster of a midget took it in his own hands to kill you, but he was a lousy shot.”
Hitchcock’s eyes widened. “Are you telling me the arrow that killed your Oscar was meant for me?”
“That’s right.” Hitchcock’s mouth was agape as Herbert emitted his familiar chuckle. “Anybody who can miss a target like you has to have his eyes examined.”
“You know,” said Hitchcock quietly, “I recall the sound of that arrow whistling past my ear.”
“I’m sure you did. Then of course, when you set up that hue and cry, Nancy had to get the two of you the hell out of there as quickly as possible. There was danger at the circus, and she wasn’t about to face a police interrogation because— this above all you must keep in mind—she was still out to save her own skin.”