by Andre Norton
“And now I’ve come along to add to them.” Lorens could not resist the thrust.
“You are a remarkably astute young man, so much so that when I ask you that this meeting be utterly forgotten I know that it will be. And now” — he consulted his watch — “your thirty minutes are up. Rely on your head, not your heart, and you may be able to scrape through. Good day.”
So the man whose name he never knew summarily dismissed him. But safe in his coat pocket were the tickets to Halifax and the promise of further transportation beyond. Lorens had one more errand in New York, and on leaving the office of Graufrod and Son, he lost no time in hunting another place of business on a similar side street.
“My name is van Norreys,” he told the round-shouldered man hunched behind the short counter. “I believe you have finished the work I sent you — ”
The man unscrewed the jeweler’s glass twisted into his eyesocket. “Yes. It is ready for you, sir.”
Deliberately he unfolded a square of black velvet on the counter, then brought out a broken cardboard box from which he took something glittering which had to be arranged with great care before he would step away and permit Lorens to see it.
“The design, sir, whose is it?”
“Mine.” Lorens drummed his fingers on the edge of the counter in impatience. If he could have had access to the proper tools and materials himself, he would never have sent it to this dingy office.
“Is that true?” The jeweler looked at him in surprise. “But it is the work of a trained designer. I trust you will find the finished piece in accord with your specifications.” He stood aside at last and allowed Lorens to see what the product of his imagination looked like when it was reproduced in the proper metal and stones.
Plump Ganesha, the silver of his well-rounded paunch — the elephant-headed godling was never provided with a lean and hungry look — reflecting the light, grinned up at his designer. In the generous palm of each of his four outstretched hands he cupped one of the rubies from the jungle stream. Ganesha offering luck and wealth to all the world had something of the sly humor Lorens had wished him. And for the first time the present head of the House of Norreys knew the satisfaction which comes with creation. It was just what he hoped it would be.
“A pity that the stones are so poor,” commented the craftsman.
“They have association value,” Lorens returned. “But I have to compliment you, Mijnheer, upon your workmanship!”
“I liked it. It has joy, life, perhaps mischief! It was a pleasure to bring your god to life. Only one other time have I seen such a design. And that was in a ring brought to me only a few weeks ago for repair. Perhaps you would care to see it. I made a copy for my own study.”
He rummaged through a thick envelope of papers and brought out one covered with a penciled design. It was unusual, representing a spider waiting in a web for the entrance of a fly perched cautiously on the edge.
“This is red gold, and the spider in the old enamel work — red, while the fly is blue-green. I thought it was Oriental at first, but the owner said that it came from Holland, that it was the work of the House of Norreys. Norreys — but that is your name, too, sir. Perhaps you have seen this before.”
“I have,” Lorens traced the lines on the finger-marked sheet. “I saw it being made. But this ring — you say that it was here, in New York, just a few weeks ago?”
“Yes, sir. The owner thought that the little fly was loose.”
“I just heard today that the man it was made for is dead, shot as a hostage. It was intended for a special gift and would have been passed to no one else — ”
“If the man it was made for is dead — then someone else could have it. Loot, maybe.”
“What was the name of the man who brought it to you?”
“Wait a minute. I ought to have it in the ledger.” He slapped open a heavy book and flicked over the pages. “Harvey, Smith, Roberts — here it is — van Oster. Perhaps he is a relative of the man who was shot.”
“I don’t think so. And he has the ring now?”
“Yes. He was only passing through New York, he said. Too bad I can’t help you find him. He might have told you how he got it.”
“And that is what I should like to know,” Lorens returned. “Now for this clip, box it and send it along to the address I gave you — Miss Cortlandt in this city. Enclose this card.”
He gave one last look at Ganesha and his flawed ruby balls, paid his bill, and left. Carla, too, must be informed of his change of plans — when he was safely on his way. Piet and Carla, neither of them would like to hear what he was about to do.
But as he walked down the street one question only repeated itself in his head, slashing again and again through the plans he was trying to make for the future.
Who was van Oster and how did he come to wear a ring which the Jonkheer had designed for his good friend Hugo Leenders?
I will be very grateful for any news of van Oster which you can send me. His presence in the United States, his quest of me, his possession of the Leenders ring, are troublesome loose ends in my mind.
As for me — well, no news shall be good news for some time to come. I must slip out of one world into another, and I do not know, will not know, from one moment to the next, how that will be accomplished.
Write me in care of —, London, and when I can I shall surely let you know how it goes with me.
Lorens van Norreys
London, England
June, 1942
Dear Lawrence:
This is a very long letter, but I do not think that you will find it a dull one. Much has happened since I left your America for my own country. Perhaps first I should say that only for a short time will I be here. I have learned what there is to be done and what a man can do. They are but men we fight, after all, and one man’s wits and strength can match another’s. Never do I fear now that the tide will not turn in our favor. For I have seen the enemy on what he believes to be his own ground, in a land where he is the conqueror, and I have seen the United Nations in their strength — I know which will be master in the end.
How did I learn to have faith again in what we are and what we can do? I learned by going back into the wolf’s den. When I reached London two months ago I —
12
LORENS HITS SILK
Lorens had known two Londons in the past. One had been unchanged — unchanging. Life flowed in a turgid current about the branch office of the House of Norreys in the old City. He had admired some parts of London, the quiet reaches of the Temple, the little hemmed-in churches, the odd bits of eighteenth century tucked away in the back waters of the twentieth. That London had seemed as enduring as the pyramids of Egypt.
The second London was a London blasted, rocked on its age-old foundations, torn and rent each night, consumed by fire which seemed to seek out avidly both beauty and history and reduce them to ashes and wind-whirled dust. But it was a London of courage, of stubborn, dogged patience, of “carrying on,” and something in it had gone out into him so that, refugee and exile that he was, he knew the steel core of the city, the uncorroded metal of its people.
And now he came into a third London, a waiting London. This city was marking time, waiting only for the moment when the war should be over, when it could leap into work to bring into being the half a thousand plans of building and bettering which filled its head. Out of this would come a fourth London, and he only hoped, as he walked the streets, that he might live to see that day.
Maybe London symbolized the world just now. Out of death and destruction, fire and hatred, would be born something else, something better than men had hoped for in years past. Less and less would they believe that tradition, that the weight of things-as-they-are, must be dumbly endured. They would ask questions, and out of those questions would come a restlessness which must be appeased.
Much that had always been his life would — had already been swept away. The House would have to change if it would survive. Men
of the Jonkheer’s breed must trim their coats and manners to a different pattern. Sometimes he thought he would hate this new world which was coming, streamlined and rationalized into drabness. But even if his worst fears were realized, he did not wish its birth. And he was doing his part to bring that about as speedily as possible.
You couldn’t turn back the clock of time, the Nazis were going to discover that soon — if they didn’t have their private doubts already. Change was forward, not backward; that was a natural law, except that sometimes Nature wiped out civilization and started over, on another track leading in another direction altogether.
Here, what was he doing thinking about such things and walking blocks out of his way? Lorens recognized the number on the nearest building with almost a sleep-walker’s start. This was certainly no time to allow imagination free play.
The place of which he was in search was not an office, but a narrow paling of a house inside the drab fence of a terrace. The coarse lace curtains at the windows, the dubious shine of the knocker were duplicated up and down the street again and again.
A girl, as colorless and standard as the house, answered his knock and stood waiting, her eyes sliding down from his chin to fasten upon his boots so eagerly that he began to wonder if he had been tramping along with the laces untied.
“I have an appointment for ten with Mr. Necker; my name is Norreys — ”
“Yes, sir.” Surprisingly her voice was clear and quiet without accent. “The study, if you please, sir.”
She pointed out a door at the end of the narrow entrance hall, then disappeared into a side room, leaving him to his own devices. After an undecided moment he knocked at the study door and obeyed the muffled murmur which might or might not have been “Come in.”
As expected from the exterior promise of the house, the study was a narrow, inconveniently shaped room with double-shelved rows of books around its walls to add to the general impression of stuffiness and overcrowding. A minute fire made a show instead of heat in the fireplace, and pulled onto the very edge of the hearth itself were two chairs, both occupied.
“Come in, come in, sir. I see you’ve managed to find us without too much trouble.”
Unfolding his length as if he were a jointed wooden doll clambering out of a box, one of the fire worshippers arose and steered a course around two small tables and the edge of a writing desk, to come within handshaking distance of Lorens.
Not only was he awkward and loose-jointed of movement, but his deeply tanned, expressionless face and his earth-brown uniform added to his manikin aspect. A wooden soldier come to life, except that his eye held anything but the stupid stare commonly associated with the customary blue circles appearing above the round cheeks of wooden soldiers. A major’s crowns glinted on his square shoulders, but there were no hints of ‘spit and polish’ about him.
“You are already acquainted with our friend here, I believe.”
The second man had risen but made no attempt to follow his host through the furniture pitfalls. At first Lorens was about to disagree; this was a stranger facing him. Then the other spoke. “Ja, we were shipmates once. Remember, Mijnheer van Norreys?”
“Jaap Smits!”
But something in him recoiled from that recognition. The Jaap he had known on that one wild passage across the Channel had been a smiling, boyish chap, unmarked by anything but a love of adventure and a deep feeling for the sea. But this was a man whose face might have been whittled down to its present hardness by ten years of dangerous living. The sunken eyes were feverishly bright, and the lips had long been pressed from a boy’s curve into a thin line of bluish pink.
“Here I am still Jaap, so you are right, Mijnheer van Norreys. And how has it gone with you?”
Lorens shrugged. “How does it go with any of us? I got out of Java, which is more than some men were able to do. And now I am going back home — ”
“Yes” — the major pushed forward another chair — “that is what we have gathered to discuss. Shall we do so in comfort?”
Lorens noticed that once seated again Jaap crouched forward, holding out his thin hands to the spot of glowing coals as if, although it was spring, he felt the need of even such feeble heat as they promised.
“We are acquainted with your requirements, Mr. van Norreys. But I am afraid that the whole proposition is impossible — ”
“I have heard that before! And yet I am here.”
“Yes, so you are. But the mere fact of your physical presence does nothing to solve other difficulties, my boy. You want to go to Holland, we would like to assist in your journey. But we can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I shall leave the answering of that to our friend from the other side. What can you tell him, Mr. Smits?”
“That he must go elsewhere if he wants to get across the Channel. We do no more, at least not for a long time. For weeks we have suspected that there is something coming. Well, a wise man does not ride with all sails set into the teeth of the storm. This is the time to close all doors, lock them tight, and hide away the keys — until the thick-skulls have worn out their eyes watching for us to swim into their so-clever nets.
“You see, those moffens — the Nazis — have been just a little too quiet, too blind lately. We think that they know much of our system, of just how we are working now. But they have not yet sprung their trap. Why? Maybe because they want a big fish when they pull in their net, a catch which would impress the other moffens back home.”
“A big fish allowed to swim in — I wonder.” The wooden soldier’s fingers caressed his square chin. “Could that fish by any chance be you, Mr. van Norreys?”
“What!” When Lorens understood that the major was not joking, that he really meant Lorens might be considered a prize, he could only stare stupidly.
“I think you are underestimating your present importance by a good bit,” the major continued. “In the first place, you slipped through their fingers once, and they have always found the taste of even small failures exceedingly bitter. Then what you left behind was a piece of loot which had been marked down by at least collectors. And they don’t propose to overlook it, not while there is any chance under heaven of getting it.
“Third, it has become a matter of morale. If you get into Holland, pick up your package, and get it out safely, think what effect that story will have wherever it is told. They simply wouldn’t dare allow it to happen.”
“But how could they know anything about it — that I am intending to go back — that the necklace is still in existence?”
“Someone babbled. Let me get hands on the dirty, slimy —” Jaap’s voice rumbled into incoherency.
“But no one knew!” Lorens was still bewildered.
“No?” the Major asked with lifted brows. “Someone knew what you had left behind in Holland, and they may have guessed that you would be back for it, that the time was nearly up — ”
Lorens’ hand clenched on his knee. “Those who knew are dead, or they are not the kind to talk.”
“Our dear friends over the water are expert at the amusement of assembling jigsaw puzzles. A word here, a half hint there, a sentence harmless in itself heard at a third place, they gather them all in, sift them out, and patiently put what is left into a surprisingly accurate picture. That is why we must caution and drum into the ears of everyone the utter folly of repeating anything, anything at all which might carry even the most innocent war news.
“In addition there is a very definite leak somewhere in our organization on the other side of the water. That is one reason why the underground route must close down until the leak is found and stopped — for all time.”
“What about you, Jaap, aren’t you going back?” Lorens demanded.
“Ja. But you cannot go my way, Mijnheer Lorens. I must go alone, since those I travel with would not take even my brother if they did not know him. It is a way just for those of our men who are well known to each other.”
“You could vouch for m
e — ”
“Even the Queen might vouch for you and they would not do it, since they do not know you. You must wait, Mijnheer Lorens. I tell you that we can do nothing for you now.”
“How long?”
Jaap shrugged. “One month, two months, until the Nazis show their black hand, and we find that traitor who has so befooled us. The shore stations are closed. They closed behind me as I came across this time. And they will not open.”
“I have no intention of waiting one or two months,” Lorens returned calmly. “And I have every intention of visiting a point of interest in Holland in or about May fifteenth. You say that the shore stations are closed. What about the ones farther in?”
“We have not closed the marsh one. But you cannot reach that, it would be madness to try, unless you follow the proper route!”
“How far in from the coast is it?”
“Five miles. And they are building fortifications there. No one could do it without our help.”
“Supposing a man did reach there, would you pass him along then — to wherever he wanted to go inland? Now don’t repeat that he couldn’t get there in the first place, just answer that question.”
“Ja. If he was there, then we would send him along. But he won’t be there — ”
“Just what is the marsh like? Much water, sand — ”
“It is sea marsh, what was left when they started draining from the west. But that project stopped when the war broke out.” It was the major who answered.
“There is more water now,” Jaap cut in. “They let in the sea to the north, and it has come down. There is a canal for barges through it, but away from that no one but our folk dare go. If a moffen tries to stick in his nose where he is not wanted, he goes swimming, swimming with stones between his toes! Now they do not like to come near the marsh at all. There is much water, but islands, too, for the one who knows where to find them.”