She misinterpretated. “I… I don’t know very much about such things.”
“I was beginning to suspect that,” he said.
Her voice was so low now as hardly to be made out. “I was spoofing when I told you I’d had lots of beaux.”
“I kind of guessed that too.”
It was then she set him back. She said, “I realize I’ve been too prim for a man like you, Quentin. If… well, if you wish to stay, after… after the party.”
He stared down at her. Marylyn Worth? Was he getting this correctly? Or was it just his naturally evil mind?
“Why Marylyn!”
He could feel her body retracting, growing smaller right there in his arms, and was immediately contrite. It hadn’t been easy for the girl to say that.
“Listen, pet,” he told her. “You think about it a bit more. You want to be awfully sure about these things.”
“I’m… I’m pretty sure.” Her body shivered in his hold. He let go of her and turned to lead the way into the other room.
Quint said, “You didn’t tell me if everyone was already here.”
She had evidently regained composure. “I think they are. It was rather difficult, even with Mike’s and Ferd and Marty’s help, to decide just who had been at their party. They’re so, well, madcap.” She looked up at him and smiled brightly, as though to reassure him. “Could I get you a drink?”
“I’ll find it,” he said. “You’ve probably got hostess duties.”
He made his way to the improvised bar, on a large Castilian type table, and began to pour himself a stiff brandy. He remembered in time and cut it short, and then added ice and water. Let the others get swacked tonight, he and Mike had to be careful.
Jose Garcia’s voice said next to him, “Well, chum, any developments?”
He turned to the Spaniard. “I just got here, Senor Garcia.”
The other looked at him, his mouth twisted ruefully. He said, finally, “Joe, to you.”
Quint hadn’t expected that. He scowled at the smaller man. Garcia said, “Look here, Quint. The world is changing, and changing fast, and largely for the better. What new changes take place in the next ten years, who can say? If we don’t blow ourselves up, in the meantime, it should be a rather good world in another decade or two. Fewer people starving, more people feeling secure about the future. All that. Some parts of the world are moving faster than others, but things are developing on both sides of the Iron Curtain and…” he twisted his mouth again “… even in such countries as Spain. Maybe in my country things aren’t moving as fast as a lot of us would like—including me. But moving they are, and the speed is accelerating.”
It was Quint Jones’ turn to be rueful. “Okay, Joe, take that I’m sorry we’ve been ruffling each other’s fur. And good luck to you… and your country. In a way, I’m sorry to be leaving it.”
“I’m sorry to see you go,” Garcia said. He hesitated. “Actually, its not in my hands. That persona non grata thing. Perhaps in another couple of years or so…”
“I’ll be back,” Quint said.
Without further word, the Spaniard turned and left.
Quint didn’t have the time to speculate about the other’s words. Joe Garcia wasn’t as bad as all that, he supposed. But then, few people are, when you get inside them.
He drifted from one group to another. Most of them were talking about the killings. Rumors were sifting through Madrid, in spite of all police efforts to hold the lid on. An apprehension was obviously growing. The story was leaking through that the bodies of the murdered had been brutally mutilated.
He listened to a group Dave Shepherd was talking to. The expatriate homosexual was breathless. “You’ll never believe this,” he said. “But my dears, I’ve heard that…” he held his breath dramatically for a moment “… Martin Bormann is suspected of being here in Madrid.”
One of the others, already tight, and in a voice that Quint thought he recognized from the party at Dempsey’s, slurred, “Who the hell’s Mart Bordeom?”
Shepherd squelched him with a look of disdain. “Bormann!” he said. “Hitler’s right hand man.”
“Oh Hitler, for christssake. Damn shame we killed that guy. We could use him now. Fighting the damn reds.”
“Oh, shut up,” a feminine voice said.
Quint wandered on. He wasn’t going to learn anything from Dave Shepherd’s group. They were hardly at the beginning of things.
Mike Woolman had evidently tried to get a controversy going by bringing up Nicolas Ferencsik and the fact that he had disappeared and the further fact that he had been an authority on organ transplanting. He tried to get them talking about the possibility that the mutilated corpses and the controversial Hungarian might be connected, but it didn’t seem to get through with only hints. He would have had to club them over the head with a flat out statement.
However, Quint stood there for a time and listened. One of the other guests was a Rumanian refugee and the talk evolved into a discussion of Anna Asian and her Vitamin H3. The Rumanian was quite excited about the experiments in the old age clinics.
Doctor Asian brought this senile vagabond in off the streets. The man must have been at least ninety. They had no records of him at all. His mind was gone beyond the point where he knew about relatives or friends, or even what town he had come from. Doctor Asian began her injections and other treatment Within a month, his gray hair had begun to turn black. He was able to feed himself and take care of his bodily needs. In two months he was walking without a cane, through the hospital grounds. Eventually, they threw away his glasses. He didn’t need them. And, most unbelievable of all, they had found a job for him, in industry, and he was leading a normal life.”
Somebody said in great disbelief, “A normal life of a man how old?”
The Rumanian threw up his hands in a gesture more Gallic than Balkan. “Of a man perhaps sixty. He even had a sex life.”
Still someone else growled, “But it doesn’t seem to work on everyone.”
Quint drifted on, his face in scowl. It brought back something to him. Early in this affair he had scoffed at the idea of Hitler—had he still been alive—being a menace any longer. He would have been too old. But if this Doctor Asian in Rumania had succeeded in retarding age, and even turning it back, why couldn’t that have been done to Hitler, or, more likely, Martin Bormann? Why indeed? Professor Ferencsik had hinted that he knew how to keep his projected superman in all but everlasting youth.
He spotted Albrecht Stroehlein standing alone. Somehow, the ex-Gestapo man found it difficult to draw companionship—not to speak of friendship.
Quint came up to him, and the other turned as though happy to have someone to talk to. He held a large glass of punch in his hand.
Quint said, in the way of greeting, “How was Berlin?”
The other’s eyes popped. “What! Vot did you say, eh?”
Quint sipped his drink and said easly, “Berlin. Don’t get so excited. Your accent gets worse. Mike Woolman was telling me the other day. You weren’t so prosperous before you went up there. Obviously, you were given some sort of job.”
The German blinked at him, moistly apprehensive.
Quint yawned as though it wasn’t important. “We figured that either Digby or Brett-Home had hired you to finger Bormann or Doktor Stahlecker for them. You knew them both, back in the old days, didn’t you, Herr Stroehlein?”
“Ja. I knew them. From way back I knew them.” The German’s eyes shifted about the room, evidently not knowing whether to attempt to elude this prying American or not.
The columnist nodded, as though they were in mutual agreement. “We figured that was why the Dempsey party was set up. Brett-Home and Digby thought that with Nicolas Ferencsik attending, Doktor Stahlecker would show up. You’d be present and recognize him.”
The German had begun to frown. Quint quickly reviewed his words. Had something come out wrong? He was making a pretense to the other to be knowledgeable about the whole t
hing. He didn’t want to scare the weepy ex-Nazi off.
Stroehlein said cautiously, “Suppose you are right, eh? What are you coming to, eh?”
Quint shifted his shoulders. “I just wondered if you could have been fooled. Perhaps Doktor Stahlecker was there the other night. And possibly here tonight.”
The plump German at least had the gumption to be irritated at the suggestion that he was incompetent to play his role. He said, “Neinl If Doktor Stahlecker had been there at the other party, I would have recognized her. If she were here tonight, I would recognize her!”
The creature that had once been a man, squatted, huddled, in its hiding place. It was cramped, but not overly conscious of being uncomfortable. He—or it—had already lost the capacity for discomfort in such situation as this.
It waited. Knowing faintly, distantly, that before long it would be called up. The master would unleash its strength. At the dim thought it mewled pleasure deep in its throat. Tonight it would feel the good feeling again. It had been several days since it had felt the good feeling. It liked the good feeling. To feel its clawed hands sink deep…
It squatted in its hiding place and waited, and through its mind, so far away as to be all but gone, traced memories of yesteryear which it could not quite understand.
The packed hordes of brownshirted men in the Konigsplatz, shouting, shouting. And over and over again, that same word, that same cheer. Vaguely he tried to place it, and could not.
The birds flying over, endless and endless and endless flights. And something there was about them to fear, though that was hard to know now, and the creature shook its head. It no longer knew fear. Perhaps they were not birds that flew overhead.
The ruins of the cities. And through them, the men in dark strange uniforms. Not the field gray of the Wehrmacht—what was the Wehrmacht? it couldn’t quite remember—but a darker color. And the helmets too were strange. The men ran, bent almost double, short weapons, with large circular clips, in their hands, as they ran, ran through the ruins. He hated them, but his dim mind did not know why he hated them.
The living in the deep cement bunker. And the noise. The always booming noise that went on above. And day in and day out. The noise. He could remember then knowing fear. Though he couldn’t remember now how fear was.
He stirred. Soon the master would come and tell him what he must do.
He mewled deep in his throat again.
It was pleasant to do things for the master.
Chapter Nine
Quint was staring at the other man. “You’ve got your genders mixed,” he told him. “He, not she.” Albrecht Stroehlein mustered sufficient courage to sneer in superiority. “Ah, my American friend, you are not so knowledgeable as you would pretend, eh? You do not even know that Doktor Grete Stahlecker is a woman, eh?” He tapped himself, on the upper part of his belly.
“I have known Grete Stahlecker since 1921, eh? It was I who introduced her to the Führer. I, Albrecht Stroehlein. No one else, nicht? Even then she was noted in her field. Even then, a great scientist. If she had been a younger woman, Hitler himself might have taken her to bed, eh? Instead of finally that wishy-washy, as the British say, Eva Braun. I tell you, if Grete Stahlecker was here tonight, I would know Grete Stahlecker.” He snapped pudgy fingers. “Like that.”
Quint Jones felt dazed. He didn’t know why. It had just never occurred to him that the misty doctor was a woman. There was no particular reason. He muttered some excuse to the German, and went seeking Mike Woolman.
Mike was standing, glass in hand, listening to Ferd Dempsey and some American air force officer who were arguing bullfighting. Neither of them knew what they were talking about. Quint, come to think of it, had never met an American who knew anything about bullfighting with the possible exception of Johnny Short, who was a novittero.
The American columnist took Mike aside. “Listen,” he said. “This Doktor Stahlecker is a woman.”
Mike looked at him as though he had slipped his clutch. “So what?”
Quint stared at him. “I thought she was a man. I mean, that he was.”
Mike patted him on the arm. “Look, friend. Why don’t you go easy on the sauce? Of course, Doctor Grete Stahlecker was, or is, as the case may be, a woman. She was Adolf’s personal surgeon. She saved his life.”
“Okay,” Quint said. “Forget it. Nobody bothered to tell me.”
Mike shrugged hugely and went off for another drink, saying over his shoulder, “This whole idea flopped. The party’s beginning to break up. How long should we stick around?” But he was gone before the columnist could answer.
Quint looked down into his own glass, knocked the drink back and decided to get another. The idea had flopped was right. He had half a mind to hang one on.
Marty Dempsey wavered up to him, her glass so full that she was spilling the drink on Marylyn’s carpet. Quint winced. The Dempsey’s didn’t give a damn about spilling drinks on carpets. Either their own, or anyone else’s. The difference was they could afford to buy new ones. He doubted if Marylyn could.
Quint said disgustedly, “Pet, you aren’t Grete Stahlecker, are you?”
Marty closed one eye carefully. “Dahling, I’ve never seen you so stoned. Never. Look real close. I’m… don’t tell me. I’m Martha. Martha McCarthy. That’s who.”
“Don’t look now,” Quint said. “But you’re Martha Dempsey. Remember? You married Ferdinand about twenty or thirty years ago.”
“Oh, yeah,” Marty said vaguely. She took him in suspiciously. “You’re not as stoned as you act.” She concentrated for a moment then said, “I gotta go to the little girl’s,” and wandered off.
Quint looked after her, wondering why he associated with these people. What in the hell could the likes of Ferd and Marty Dempsey possibly do for him?
Some of the guests were leaving. It never had developed into much of a party, in spite of Marylyn’s shining-bright efforts. She just wasn’t cut out to be hostess for this type of a gang. Besides, they had all evidently come expecting some sort of excitement. That had been the rumor Mike and Quint had spread around. On the face of it, the excitement hadn’t developed. The party was melting.
Ferd Dempsey, swaying—his once heroic proportions, now gone to fat, threatening to collapse—held high his glass. “We’ll all go tasca-hopping!” he proclaimed. “Go bar hopping, pub crawling, saloon slinking. We’ll all go on down to Chicote’s and stan’ in front, out on the street, and I’ll give ’em a recitation.”
Ferd, Quint decided cynically, was at the stage where he was going to render Omar Khayyam. To render means to tear apart. And sure enough. Here it came. “And, as the Clock crew, those who stood before The tavern shouted—’Open then the Door!’ You know how little while we have to stay, And, once departed, may return no more.”
Quint Jones could just see Ferd and the rest standing in front of Chicote’s shouting quatrains from the Rubaiyat. Come to think of it, though, there was a certain appropriateness about it all. Omar Khayyam, the patron saint of the hedonist. All over again, Quint Jones wondered what he was doing associating with this crowd. How had he ever gotten into this rut?
Ferd’s idea grew on the rest A tasca crawl was in order. Carry the party onto the town. The remaining guests sought their things.
Mike Woolman was one of the last to leave. His eyes went from Quint to Marylyn, who was seeing someone out, and then back again. He said, “So, you’ve finally made it, eh?”
Quint scowled at him. “Come again?”
“Never mind,” Mike grunted. “I suppose it’s got to happen to her some day. Why not you?”
“Get lost, Buster,” Quint growled at him.
“See you around,” Mike said without inflection. “Good old Joe Garcia wants to talk to me about something.”
“He probably wants to know what, if anything, we found out at this party.”
“Well, I’ll tell him we found out a nice round zero.” Mike muttered. He turned to leave.
So
mething was churning in Quentin Jones’ brain. Something brought to mind by Ferd. The last two lines of his quatrain went over and over through the columnist’s head… how little while we have to stay, and, once departed, may return no more.
He wandered back to the bar and poured himself another short brandy. Actually, he hadn’t drunk much tonight. He had kept himself sober, so that his mind would be keen enough to pick up the slightest hint of a clue. Much good it had done him.
Marylyn said, from behind him, “They’re all gone, Quentin.”
“Oh? Oh, yeah. I was just thinking.”
She sat on the extremely large divan which dominated one side of the room. “Gracious! They drank so much. And were so loud. Thank goodness no one lives below.”
He put his glass down, untouched, and sat beside her. Still thoughtful. How little time we have to stay, and, once departed, may return no more.
“What were you thinking about… Quentin?”
He looked at her. “A lot of things. For once, what a worthless gang this is. Except for Mike, and yourself, who among them works? Do any work at all? Who among them has an iota of ideal? Who has a dream, an ambition—beyond getting over a hangover so he can start hanging a new one on? I think I’m a little disgusted with myself for remaining in this atmosphere as long as I have.”
She said, urgently, “That’s what I’ve been telling you, Quentin. You’re a man of destiny. I knew it from the first time I met you. Even before, when I read some of your columns. I don’t agree with all of them, of course. Perhaps not even most. But you haven’t found yourself yet. When you do…” She had run out of breath in her earnestness.
Quint looked at her ruefully from the side of his eyes, then stared unseeing into a corner of the room. “I got a letter today from a new political party starting up in the States. They call themselves the Liberal Party.”
“Liberal Party.” Marylyn made a face.
He looked at her. “What ever happened to the liberals in the States? Back when I was a kid, during the depression, everybody was a liberal. There were darn few brave enough to call themselves conservatives, and to be a reactionary was like being in cahoots with the devil.”
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