Tender to Danger

by Eric Ambler

  There were not many diners. Kusitch demanded a table at the far end, and shepherded his companion forward. The waiter drew the table out a little to make the banquette accessible, and Andrew moved to take the seat. Kusitch intervened.

  “If you do not mind, I prefer the banquette,” he said. “I am always in danger from draughts. Even very small draughts. It is my lumbago.”

  So Kusitch sat with his back to the wall, and his sharp eyes searched the room, inspecting the patrons, examining every new arrival, and once again, in an unguarded moment, there was a mystery in his eyes that might have been fear.

  He talked. He professed to like his new trade. It gave him freedom. It enabled him to travel. Much as he loved Yugoslavia, much as he approved the policies of Tito, he was essentially a man of the world. Rome, New York, Paris. If only he had an art shop in Paris, he would never go back to Yugoslavia.

  “Why go back anyway?” Andrew demanded. “You have knowledge. You say you are an expert. Aren’t there any of your old friends who would help you?”

  “Haven’t I told you that I have a wife and child in Dubrovnik?”

  “You mean that they…?”

  “Are in Dubrovnik, Herr Doktor,” Kusitch interrupted firmly. “It is all quite simple. I think we should have another bottle of wine.”

  For a moment or two, Andrew’s mind toyed with the possibility that perhaps “it” was all not merely quite simple but a trifle over simple. Then he put this unworthy thought away. In any case, simple or complex, “it” was none of his business. He got on with his dinner.

  They had the second bottle of wine, and Kusitch called for the bill. Andrew insisted on paying his share, and Kusitch yielded. They went on to a crowded and noisy cafe for coffee and cognac. Kusitch concentrated on the cognac, and, after several glasses of it, began to grow a little thick in speech, heavy of eye, and sombre in mood. He talked of painting: of Picasso and Matisse and Dufy and Rouault, but what he said of them meant little to Andrew. He had the impression that Kusitch himself was only half aware of its meaning and that there were other anxieties on the little man’s mind.

  It was nearly midnight when they returned to the Risler-Moircy, and Kusitch was almost asleep on his feet. Andrew tried the hot water and took a bath. By the time he had dried himself, Kusitch was snoring. When he slid back the bolt on Kusitch’s side, he pulled the door open and glanced in; wondering if the other had undressed. He had. The little man was lying on his back, tucked up to the chin. The pistol on the bedside table glinted dully in the light that spilled out from the bathroom. Andrew closed the door silently, repeated the action on his own side, and went to his divan.

  He had been very tired, but the bath had freshened him up. He tried to read a pocket edition of a spy story, but his mind would not stay on the printed page. The gunplay of fictional characters in a battle over secret papers was poor stuff compared to that unfired pistol in the next room, and every reference to papers reminded him of the packet that Kusitch had slipped under the carpet. Half dozing, he fitted the packet into a fantasy of his own, and somehow the girl in the plane came into it. Her objective was that packet under the carpet. She had followed the desperate Kusitch across Europe, and it was possible that she was now in this hotel, awaiting her opportunity to act. Naturally she had scorned the approach of the handsome young doctor. Duty must come before pleasure. As soon as Kusitch was asleep

  …

  The snoring of Kusitch sounded through the wall and the two closed doors of the bathroom. It went on monotonously, loudly. Then, suddenly, after a long gurgling that ended in a gasp, it stopped. Kusitch must have turned on his side.

  In the new silence the lift whined and clanged. Next there was a creaking from the window. Andrew rose wearily and padded across the carpet. A breeze was getting up outside, and the French window swung on its hinges. He had opened it earlier on, ignoring a request from Kusitch to keep it shut. Now he fastened it and went back to bed.

  Kusitch began to snore again.

  Andrew read, yawned, thought of that impossible girl, read again, dozed, roused himself to reach for the switch at his bedside, then dropped down into darkness.

  When he came back to consciousness with a start, it seemed that he had slept for a long time. It might have been an hour, or two hours, but he never knew.

  Even in the moment of waking he was sure that a sound from the next room had disturbed him. He described it to himself as a stifled shout, a cry from Kusitch in his sleep. It could have been something in a dream, but it had seemed very real, and he sat up, listening intently in the silence.

  Then he remembered the little man’s warning about his restlessness, his fear of falling out of bed. Perhaps he really did fall out of bed.

  At last he heard confirmatory sounds: the creaking of bedsprings, a shuffling, a muffled imprecation as if Kusitch had got his head tangled up in the bedclothes. That was it. Kusitch was struggling to free himself. The springs complained again as he tossed about, but were quickly relieved of his weight. The struggle ended in a thud. A weighty thud. The double bed had not saved Kusitch. He had fallen out of it.

  Andrew laughed silently. It was callous. The poor fellow could have hurt himself. On the other hand, he could always call for help if he needed it.

  Andrew waited. There was no call for help. He heard a grunting forced by a laboured effort. There was more shuffling. The springs creaked, and it seemed obvious to Andrew that Kusitch had crawled into bed again. He lay back on his divan and pulled up the bedclothes, hoping he would get to sleep before the snoring was renewed.

  He did. He slept undisturbed until eight o’clock. The day was sunny, the room bright with morning light. He sprang from his bed, unfastened the window and did his breathing exercises.

  Next he tried the bathroom door but found that it was bolted against him.

  He called, grinning to himself. “You in there, Kusitch? How did you sleep?”

  No answer. He waited. There were none of the familiar sounds from the bathroom; only silence.

  Andrew snorted irritably. This was what happened when you had communicating doors. This was the result of sharing a suite with a careless foreigner.

  He knocked loudly and shouted. “Hi! Kusitch! If you’re not using the bathroom, unbolt the door!”

  He knocked more loudly, waited, shouted again.

  Damn the man!

  He put his raincoat over his pyjamas and padded out into the corridor. He hammered on the bedroom door, but no answer came from within. He grasped the doorknob, intent on making it rattle. He turned the knob, and the door opened.

  The room was empty. Kusitch’s underclothes had gone. So had his hat, his coat and his composition suitcase. Except for the tumbled bed and the bedclothes trailing on the floor there was nothing to show that the room had even been occupied.

  Three

  Andrew’s first thought naturally was that the man had dressed and gone downstairs to wait for him. It was not, perhaps, an action in the character of the clinging Yugoslav, but you might as well believe in Santa Claus as look for consistency in human beings. Scots excepted of course. Andrew shrugged it off, went to the bathroom, slipped back the bolt and followed his morning routine.

  It was not until he was putting away his toilet things that a new thought about Kusitch came to him. The man hadn’t used the bathroom that morning. The articles he had deposited untidily on shelf and washbasin were just as he had left them overnight: the tube of toothpaste uncapped, the toothbrush lying across the aluminium soap container, the shaving brush held to the razor case by a wide rubber band. The soap was dry; the shaving brush, too. He had said that he was going to shave in the morning.

  Perhaps he had gone down to the street to find a barber? Then why had he taken his valise with him? And, if he had packed up to continue his journey to London, why had he left these things in the bathroom? All his other possessions were gone, including the various bottles of pills and lotions from the dressing table. Where the pistol had rested
on the bedside table, the key of the room now lay. Kusitch had finished with it.

  Andrew picked it up and locked the door, returned through the bathroom to his own chamber, dressed hastily, took the key down to the desk and made inquiries about Kusitch. The reception clerk had not seen him. The porter shook his head and suggested that he might have gone in to breakfast.

  Andrew went in to breakfast. There were only a few persons in the restaurant and Kusitch was not among them. Andrew sat facing the entrance, watching every arrival. He ate a brioche and drank his coffee. There was not much time left then.

  He hurried back upstairs, hoping that Kusitch had returned, that he might even be waiting in the corridor outside the locked doors.

  The corridor was empty; the doors were still locked.

  Andrew threw the forgotten possessions of Kusitch into his own bag, descended to the foyer again, ordered a taxi, surrendered his key and asked for his bill. While he waited, he watched the entrance door. The lift came shuddering down and stopped with a crash. He turned in the direction of the machine as a solitary passenger issued from the cage, carrying a light valise. It was not Kusitch. It was the girl with red hair, the girl addressed as Miss Meriden by the air hostess of the plane from Athens.

  Possibly it was the surprise of seeing her here that made him start, yet there could be nothing logically surprising in the fact that she, too, had stayed at the Risler-Moircy. He had, indeed, allotted her a room here in his little fiction of the night.

  She stared straight at his left ear as she came towards the desk, but gave no sign that she had ever seen him before or that she was seeing anything of him but his ear now. She looked almost aggressively healthy and self-sufficient. “Smug” was the word that came to Andrew’s mind. A clerk appeared to attend to her as if he had been waiting all his life for this opportunity.

  “My bill, please!” she demanded, and one felt that the Queen of Sheba would have been less imperious. “Miss Ruth Meriden. And I have to catch the ten o’clock plane. Will you get me a taxi right away, please?”

  “Certainly, mademoiselle.” He snapped his fingers and a porter came running.

  Here was a chance for a good deed that a Boy Scout would have jumped at. “If you don’t mind sharing, I have a taxi already waiting to take me to the air terminal.” With a slight bow, of course.

  Andrew kept his lips together grimly. He watched the girl in the mirror behind the counter. She might be tiresome, but she was undeniably beautiful. She turned her head and for an instant, through the mirror, their eyes met. At that moment his bill arrived.

  He looked at the amount, and it was more than he had expected. It gave him a scare. He wondered if he had enough money left to meet it. He had not budgeted for any possible delays, and, after his expenditure on dinner with Kusitch, he was down to a few franc notes and his last traveller’s cheque. After the first scare came something like panic. He thought of asking the clerk if he could take a cheque on his London bank. He was pulled up by the further thought that this would be a contravention of the currency regulations. He looked at the bill again, almost incredulously; and then he understood what had happened.

  “This is made out for the suite,” he said. “I just want the bill for my room. I have nothing to do with Mr. Kusitch. He will pay for his own room.”

  “I’m sorry, sir! It is not the practice to separate the rooms in the accounting. The suite was engaged in the names of yourself and your friend.”

  “Very well. I’ll pay half. You can collect the rest from Kusitch.”

  “Pardon, sir. Your friend seems to have gone on ahead of you. You yourself handed in his key. We assume, of course, that you will make yourself responsible for the full amount.”

  “I’m not responsible for Mr. Kusitch in any way.”

  “But you occupied the suite, sir. The amount is not much more than our usual tariff for room and bath.”

  “No doubt it’s reasonable, but I don’t know how much money I’ve got left.”

  It was ridiculous. The girl at the counter was listening, taking in the whole farcical scene, no doubt with a smirk of amusement on her smug face. He did not dare to look into the mirror. He knew his face was getting redder, and part of the hot blood was a rising indignation at the behaviour of Kusitch. It was clear enough now why Kusitch had skipped, but he wasn’t going to get away with it, by heaven! The amount of the whole bill might be insignificant, but he’d exact the full half of it from Kusitch. Policeman, was he? Well, we’d soon see about that!

  He was turning out his pockets like a boy in a sweet shop, putting the money on the desk in front of him-francs, some paper drachmas, his lucky penny. The whole lot didn’t amount to a half of what was needed.

  By now the other clerk was there with Miss Meriden’s bill, and she, too, was putting money on the counter; but from a well-stocked wallet. He was within the range of a delicate perfume that probably came from something in her open handbag, a perfume that would have cost her more per ounce than the whole amount of this wretched hotel bill.

  He surveyed his collection of currency and pulled out his pocketbook, and then, as he opened the worn pigskin, he sighed with relief. Instead of one, he had two traveller’s cheques left, and they were plenty. He signed them, and the polite clerk took them to the caisse.

  The girl was still at the counter. He kept his eyes lowered. He caught a glimpse of her hands moving beside him, reaching for her receipt, tucking it away, closing her bag. And her hands were something of a shock to him. They were fine hands, strong and capable, but they suggested a worker rather than one who lived in decorative idleness. They were cared for, obviously, but were marked by cuts and scars. The right thumb wore an adhesive bandage. The left forefinger had a blue bruise under a broken nail, as if it had received a whack with a hammer.

  He had, perhaps, two seconds to notice these curious details. Then the hands were withdrawn, and he was aware that she had left the counter. He looked up and saw her back, a receding image in the mirror, followed by the porter with her valise. A mirror on the opposite side of the foyer returned a reflection of her approach, and he saw her serene face again with its corona of red-gold hair. He continued to stare after she had gone, seeing himself reflected back and forth. The place had more mirrors in it than the Palace of Versailles. Someone must have had a mania for…

  He remembered suddenly the doubly-reflected picture of Kusitch stooping in the corner of his room, shoving the manila envelope under the carpet. He hoped Kusitch hadn’t forgotten that envelope, because it probably contained his money and the man was going to need it to pay his share of the confounded bill.

  “Your taxi, monsieur.”

  He followed the porter. He saw Ruth Meriden again as her cab drove away from the hotel, and in another moment his own cab started as if in pursuit.

  There was quite a crowd at the terminal building. He checked the number of his plane and found the official who was dealing with the passengers. Flight 263-that was the designation. The girl was the fourth person ahead of him, and there was still no sign of Kusitch.

  Andrew was still the last in the line when he reached the desk. He asked about Kusitch.

  “Kusitch?” The official looked at his passenger list. “I’ve no one of that name.”

  “But you must have,” Andrew protested. “It’s the ten o’clock plane to London, isn’t it?”

  “Certainly, sir. Flight two-six-three.”

  “Then Mr. Kusitch is a passenger. We travelled together from Athens yesterday. We reserved seats for this morning as soon as we heard the night plane for London was grounded. Kusitch must be on your list. He has the seat next to mine.”

  Andrew became vehement. The official shook his head, then hesitated.

  “Perhaps there has been a cancellation,” he suggested. “Just a moment. I’ll find out.”

  He picked up a telephone, pressed a button, and made his inquiry. He spoke to Andrew, holding a hand over the receiver.” That’s right, sir… P. G. Kusitc
h. He cancelled his reservation. The seat has been given to Major Bardolph.”

  Andrew felt anger rising. What sort of damn-fool game was the fellow playing? Skipping out of the hotel with his bill unpaid, leaving his things in the bathroom.

  “When did the man cancel his seat?”

  The official passed on the question and transmitted the answer to Andrew.

  “Last night, sir. He telephoned.”

  “But that’s impossible. I’m sure he never left his room. He was in bed, asleep.”

  “Nevertheless…”

  Andrew began to feel a little sick. He pressed a hand on the desk before him. “Please,” he said. “Can you find out the time your people got the message?”

  The official put through the additional inquiry. There was a short wait. Then he announced: “Our record says twenty-two thirty-three hours. Monsieur Kusitch telephoned in person.”

  “Ten-thirty!” Andrew shivered as if a blast of cold air had touched him. “At ten-thirty I was with Mr. Kusitch in a cafe, drinking coffee and cognac. He definitely did not telephone.”

  “But surely, sir? He has not come to claim his seat. That proves that he must have cancelled it.”

  Andrew gazed at the man incredulously. He had a queer feeling in his stomach and icy fingers seemed to be pressing him in the small of the back. He put both hands on the desk and leaned heavily.

  “I was with Kusitch all the evening,” he asserted. “From seven o’clock on he was scarcely out of my sight. We left the hotel together and did not get back till after midnight. Kusitch never went near a telephone in that time.”

  “Possibly he had someone pass on the message for him?”

  “No. He never had the slightest intention of giving up his seat in the plane. He was anxious to get to London as soon as possible.”

  “Then where is he, sir?” “I don’t know. The last I saw of him, he was in bed…”

  He broke off, suddenly recalling the sounds in the night. He had interpreted them so amusingly. He had imagined the comical figure of Mr. Kusitch falling out of bed and climbing back again. That was a laugh, a good laugh. He heard the bedsprings creaking. Again he felt the cold touch at the bottom of the spine. He had known fear more than once in his life, but this was a different kind of fear. He pulled himself together, shaking away the sickness, and in the instant he knew what he had to do.