Hunt in the Dark

by Q. Patrick

  Somehow, of course, we’d have to find them both again. Nikki might be only a minor cog in a vastly more important machine. But Nikki was also the murderer of Marta and my own pet personal allergy. Our mammoth task wouldn’t be complete until he, along with Garr and the others, was under arrest. But that would have to come later.

  Later! There was an awful lot that had to come later. But don’t think about that now.

  While I stood there by the Cleveland Butcher, letting these haphazard reflections waltz around in my mind, the woman with the purple hat brushed past me. I didn’t lift a little finger to stop her. I let her move on and step into the main hall.

  Was I making a dreadful mistake?

  I didn’t turn around. But I heard the click of the woman’s heels stop. I could see Nikki without moving. I saw him turn from the Spanish Inquisition and stare straight at the woman. I saw an expression of surprise on his face; then one of sudden, galling anxiety, which gave me untold satisfaction.

  There was a long hush in the Waxworks Museum of Horrors. Very casually, I started moving toward the door, taking the route which was furthest from them, keeping my face hidden. I passed a shadowy wax couple necking in the corner. I came to the Indians. I gave their scalping activities and Aloma a farewell glance. I eased closer and closer to the door, banking on the fact that in the astonishment of their meeting they would have no eyes for me.

  I reached the door. Get to Iris—my hand went out to the door. As I felt its rough wood beneath my fingers, a sound came from the vault-like museum behind me.

  It was the sound of a woman’s voice, shrill and metallic, humming the first lilting bars of The Blue Danube.

  The assignation which had been planned as the opening gun in Garr’s vast and shadowy plot was taking place—a little too late.

  First round, surely, to the Duluths. First step, surely, toward Leslie—Pine 3-2323.

  I was out in the exuberant bustle of Coney Island again, leaving heaven knew what deviltry behind me in the Waxworks Museum. Here, near the subway station, streams of exhausted revellers, trailing balloons and sagging children, were headed for home. Others—dashing night-owls—were just arriving, making for anticipated conquests on the boardwalk. I pushed my way through them, not caring about them or anything but Iris.

  I turned the corner and saw, glimmering across the crowded street, the green neon-sign: Beers and Liquors. Glancing back to make sure Nikki wasn’t following, I hurried across the street. I reached the swing door of the bar and pushed it open.

  I didn’t see Iris at first. I felt a stupid panic. Then I found her— sensibly in a dark little booth almost at the back of the gloomy bar. She was sitting there, toying with a drink. She had taken the purple hat off. It was stuffed down on the bench at her side. She couldn’t have looked more beautiful. Three or four soldiers at the bar were appreciating that fact.

  “Iris.”

  She looked up radiantly. I slipped into the seat opposite her, wanting to kiss her and restraining myself because husbands just mustn’t be that sappy about their wives. “Peter, it worked. We fooled him.”

  A waiter came up. I ordered a Scotch and soda. I needed it. Iris said, “But, tell me, the real woman with the purple hat—was she there?”

  I told her all about the real woman with the purple hat and all about the meeting between her and Nikki which had taken place after she’d left.

  “Maybe I was crazy letting them meet,” I said, “but stopping it was such a gamble. And, if you got the instructions, if we can get out of here quick, without their following us, it ought to be okay.”

  “I’ve got the instructions,” Iris tossed back her dark hair. “Nikki gave them to me.” Her mouth was ominiously set. “Nikki was quite smitten by my feminine charms. He wanted to know what I was doing next Tuesday night.”

  “I saw him leering at you, honey. If you knew how much I wanted to sock that guy! But what—?”

  The waiter came with my drink then. I paid the check on the spot so that we could make a quick getaway. The waiter went away. Iris glanced around. The admiring soldiers had given up in disgust since they’d seen me. No one was looking. She picked up her pocketbook, opened it and took something out. She passed it to me across the glass sugar shaker and the sticky mustard pot.

  “Here it is, Peter. Here’s what he gave me.”

  I had it in my hand. I stared down at it with a sort of awe. It didn’t make much sense. It was a small, pentagonal purple star. A smooth, shiny, unattractive purple star. I turned it over. On the back was a pin clasp.

  “What on earth is it?”

  “A hat ornament.”

  “A hat ornament?”

  “Yes. At least it’s Nikki’s idea of one. He pretended to pick it up from the floor. He passed it to me and said: ‘This ornament dropped off your hat, lady. Better see it’s pinned on tighter next time.’ He said that twice. ‘Be sure to keep it pinned on tighter next time.’ It must have been a sign—to tell me to pin the star on my hat. It’s to be another identification for the next meeting.”

  “But the instructions?”

  “Spring the pin at the back.”

  I unloosed the pin from its catch. The whole back of the little purple star swung open. Inside was a pasteboard card, folded in two. I took it out, unfolded it, looked at it. It was a regular advertising card for a bar. In fancy print, it said: Sammy’s Bar and Restaurant, 254A East 58th St., New York City.

  Penciled lightly into the corner were the figures: 11:30 P.M. “That’s the place, Peter. And eleven-thirty’s the time.”

  I slipped the card back into the purple star, snapped the clasp, and handed it back to Iris.

  “Two full hours. Okay. All we’ve got to do now’s to get out of Coney Island without them seeing us.”

  “That shouldn’t be difficult.”

  We got up. I said, “Better not wear the hat. It can be seen a mile off.” I picked it up and folded it inside my coat. Luckily, it was that kind of a hat.

  Iris was smiling. “The Duluths are pretty smart, aren’t they?”

  I looked at her, thinking of Marta dead, of Karl, dead too, or held in some unknown hiding place, of the shadowy Garr and the still more shadowy plot with its unknown menaces lying ahead of us. “They’d better be,” I said.

  We slipped out of the restaurant. We took a circuitous route to the subway station. The jostling, teeming crowds which had been so unkind to Marta were kind to us. We reached the subway station unseen.

  With a million and one other people who decided to leave Coney Island at that particular moment, we stuffed into a Seventh Avenue Express and squeezed into seats between a fat woman and a man reading a newspaper covered in meaningless hieroglyphics.

  The train jolted, shivered, and started out of the station. The car smelt of garlic. But who cared about that? If we’d really shaken off Nikki and the woman with the purple hat, we were past the first hurdle on the strange and dangerous road to Garr. If we hadn’t—

  Iris, from somewhere behind the hieroglyphic newspaper, said, “We’ll have almost an hour to kill before Sammy’s Bar. What’ll we do?”

  “Go home,” I said.

  “But, darling, I promised Aloma she could have the apartment till twelve for her party. I—”

  “Aloma,” I said, “will have to keep a stiff upper lip.”

  The housewife in Iris became horrified. She broached a subject which, earlier, we had declared taboo. “Peter, her husband might not like us breaking in. He might decide against us.”

  It seemed almost ludicrous now, but before we went to Coney Island, Aloma’s husband, “returned from a long absence,” had been the most important thing in our lives. Aloma had made the dread announcement that, if her husband wished it, she would have to give up working for us in favor of unbroken connubial bliss. It had been fear of losing her which had sent us scurrying to Coney Island. Now, in spite of all that had happened, Iris was bringing that fear back with her.<
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  “Darling, if we lost Aloma on top of everything else—”

  “Aloma,” I said sternly, “has become an object of secondary importance.”

  Knowing Aloma’s uninhibited tastes, my preconception of the dinner party was lurid. When we arrived home at quarter of eleven, I was preparing myself for an orgy of boogie-woogie, scarlet, knee-high dresses and gin. It was a distinct shock when, as I slipped my key into the apartment lock, no sounds of unbridled hilarity issued from within. It was even more of a surprise when we stepped into the hall, to hear the inspiring strains of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony soaring from the living room. Aloma was not by nature a classical music enthusiast. The culture, presumably, was for the benefit of the long absent husband. “Let’s sneak into the bedroom and tidy up,” whispered Iris.

  “We’re obviously not elegant enough to crash this party.”

  In the bedroom, to the poignant strains of the Funeral March, Iris rummaged around for a pair of scissors and started doing something furtive to the purple hat. I changed from my gray suit into blue serge. Ever since she had shown me the purple star Nikki had given her, I had been getting increasingly uneasy about the decision I had made in the Waxworks Museum. Why had I taken it so smugly for granted that Nikki didn’t know the locale of the second meeting? It would have been so simple for him to have opened the back of the star and read the directions to Sammy’s Bar. If he had done so, he would certainly be there at 11:30, desperately determined to warn the second agent of the hoax.

  That wasn’t a pleasant thought. And that’s why I had changed my suit. Nikki or the woman with the purple hat might have noticed it. I couldn’t afford to have them recognize me—if they showed up. Pessimism preyed upon me. There was so hopelessly much to be done; and we were so hopelessly unprepared. We didn’t even have a gun.

  I wanted to say, “Let’s call it quits. Let’s drown our sorrows in Aloma’s gin and forget.” I didn’t say it, of course. We’d gone much too far to back down now and nowhere near far enough to call Leslie at Pine 3-2323.

  Iris said: “Peter, darling, look.”

  I turned. She was standing with her back to the mirror, smiling rather sheepishly, the scissors dangling from her hand. On her head was the purple hat, or rather what was left of it. She’d cut off the fuzzy brim; she’d twisted it here and prodded it there. Gleaming in the center of the crown, blazed Nikki’s purple star— the identification for the next meeting. By all the laws of reason, the ensemble should have been an atrocity. But there’s a sort of genius to Iris. She’d managed to transform that twenty-five-cent model into something mad and alluring.

  “I had to do something about it. It was eating away my morale.” She dropped the scissors and slid her hand through my arm. “Come on, darling. Aloma must have heard us come in, so we’ll have to pay a brief social visit—for politeness’ sake. Then Sammy’s Bar.”

  When we entered our living room we were greeted by a sight of unparalleled elegance. The Seventh Symphony sighed from the Victrola. Dim lights shone on four immaculately evening-dressed people sitting around a table, playing—not pinochle or gin rummy, Aloma’s twin passions—but bridge. Seeing us, Aloma, who was dummy, swept from the table toward us, slinking in ivory satin which had once been Iris’ most successful gown. She looked magnificent, gaunt and world-weary with her coffee skin smooth against the ivory satin.

  Her measureless Negro vitality was quite obliterated behind this devastating front. I’d never seen Aloma going in for glamour before. It was something.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Duluth, how charming!” She extended an elaborately hostess hand. Then, out of the corner of her mouth, the old Aloma hissed, “Fo’ Pete’s sake, be polite to these people. They’re Society.”

  We were taken to the bridge table. Introductions came. The couple who were Society—a thin, distinguished colored man with spectacles and a haughty wife, bowed and made suitably social remarks. Then, triumphantly, Aloma turned to the other man and announced: “I have pleasure in presenting—my husband.”

  Aloma’s enigmatically resurrected husband was immense, very tall, very broad, and rather black. He must have weighed all of three hundred pounds and, unlike the others, seemed a trifle ill-at-ease behind his tuxedo. He smiled a dazzling but awkward smile, muttered, “Pleased to meet you,” and left the conversation alone to the Seventh Symphony.

  Under normal circumstances, I would have been weighing his potential sex-appeal against the awful event of his taking Aloma from us. But all I could think of now was how comforting all those three hundred pounds of him would be back of us in our fight against Nikki and Garr.

  “There’s nothing like a quiet evenin’ with bridge and good music,” cooed Aloma brazenly belying her own nature.

  “Beethoven!” breathed the wife who was Society.

  The chit-chat rippled on from there. After a suitable interval, Iris and I expressed our regrets and made our good-byes. Aloma came with us to the door. Once out of the living room, most of the elegance vanished. She screwed up her mouth in disgust.

  “Good music and bridge! I’m tellin’ you the truth, Miz Peter, good music and bridge gives me the pain. But I gotta do it, gotta entertain the right people.” She added darkly, “For the sake of my husband’s prospects on account of him bein’ so long absent from the best circles.” Her face becoming suddenly rapturous, she asked, “You like him? You like Rudolph?”

  “Rudolph’s charming,” said Iris.

  Aloma gave her own ivory satin thigh a lusty slap. “Oh, boy!” she exclaimed.

  Her face rather peeky with apprehension, Iris blurted, “Aloma, you—you are going to stay with us, aren’t you? You aren’t going to let Rudolph—”

  “Rudolph figures a wife’s place’s in the home, but—I ain’t made up my mind.” Aloma looked important. “I’m jest figurin’ for an’ against. “

  Ominous words!

  “I’m plannin’ to get rid of those wet-smacks soon.” She jerked a thumb toward the living room. “An’ then Rudolph and I maybe’ll do the town fo’ a couple hours.”

  “When will you know, Aloma?” asked Iris meekly.

  “I guess I’ll be ready for a decision fust thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  Here was yet another thing to add to our miseries—the prospect that Aloma might abandon us.

  As if realizing our woe and trying to be nice, she said, “That’s a trick lookin’ hat you got, Miz Iris. Best looking hat I seen you wear.”

  I gulped. Iris looked proud.

  Aloma said, “You gonna be out long?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, wondering rather dourly if we would ever be back at all.

  I toyed with a crazy impulse to ask her to get rid of her “wetsmacks” right now and bring the three hundred pounds of Rudolph along to do the town with us at Sammy’s Bar. But I stopped myself. If Aloma knew what nefarious things we were up to, she would definitely plump for Rudolph.

  Hand on hip, she stood at the door, watching benignly as we headed for the elevator. “Take care of yo’selves, honies,” she called. “And have fun.”

  Have fun! Those two words hummed around in my ears as the automatic elevator jerked us downward. Murder, sabotage, impersonations, lethal secret agents.

  We took a taxi to within a block of Sammy’s Bar. Our plans were set. They were simple, reduplicating our plans for the Waxworks Museum. We were to go into the bar separately. Iris, in her role as the purple hat, was to make the second contact which, with any luck, would direct us to Garr. I, in my role as any random citizen, was to sip a beer at a table near the door and watch.

  As the taxi jogged through the familiar Manhattan traffic, my uneasiness mounted steadily. I didn’t say anything to Iris. Now that it was much too late to call quits with our unknown adversaries, I didn’t want to get her worried too. But I had become obsessed with the idea of Nikki. How could I have been so dumb? Of course, he’d opened the purple star and fo
und the address. Of course, he would show up at Sammy’s Bar with the real woman with the purple hat in tow—out for Iris’ blood.

  That was to be my responsibility—at all costs to keep him from getting at Iris.

  If she shared my fears, she showed no sign of it. But then, she’s always been the Lady Macbeth of our team, taking danger and disaster in her stride. The moment the taxi dumped us on the corner of 58th Street, she melted away into the meager crowd, headed toward the neon-sign which said: “Sammy’s.” I followed anxiously. The purple hat with its brazen ornamental star would make a perfect mark for any hostile gunman. Why had we got into this? Where was the frail, forlorn little ghost of Marta Pauly leading us?

  I saw Iris tug open the swing door of Sammy’s Bar and Restaurant and disappear inside. Quicker than I should have done, I followed.

  There was nothing sinister about the interior of Sammy’s Bar. It was any Manhattan bar. Dim lights, wooden booths, a long wooden bar stretching down one side, with bottles and a bored, white-coated barman flicking drinks around for a few nondescript loungers. Beyond, there was an inner room, invisible from the bar itself and in half-darkness—a regular restaurant room, probably—closed at this hour of night. At the end of the bar, a flamboyance of scarlet and chromium, stood a jukebox.

  As I entered, I was horribly conscious of Iris and her vivid purple hat moving leisurely toward the bar. I kept myself from looking at her. I slipped into the booth which commanded the best view of the entrance and, through the glass window, of the dark sidewalk outside. I tried to look like a lonely single male with that eleven-thirtyish need of a pick-me-up.

  Snatches of bar conversation, muffled slightly by the low ceiling, hummed around me. A shrill blonde was complaining rather ginishly of the stinginess of a “sugar-daddy”; two men were tossing Roosevelt back and forth; a man and a woman held contrasting opinions of Tyrone Power. It was all so run-of-the mill, and yet in that humdrum milieu were Iris and an unknown agent of the unknown and sinister Garr, maneuvering to make their fantastic contact. Amidst those martinis and highballs and beers, there was Iris and danger!