All the Colors of Darkness
Page 21
“Fine. You know, then, about our identifying one of the disguised women in the Brussels Terminal. My assistant followed her to Paris and back to Brussels, and when she apparently started for Paris a second time I managed to go through the transmitter right behind her. We came out in what proved to be a basement room. There were three men present, two of them, unfortunately, with excellent reflexes. I arrived off balance, which put me at a slight disadvantage. Some very few minutes later I was neatly tied up and lying on a heap of coal.
“I was tied up so well that it took me nearly three hours to work free. When I finally managed it I found only one man in the room with the transmitter. I dealt with the one man and smashed the transmitter thoroughly. I unwisely made a noisy job of it, others came to investigate, the odds had swollen to six to one, and I ended up back on the coal heap, much more expertly tied and under guard. That’s the story of my life for the next few days, though later that first day I was transferred from the coal bin to a room that was merely filthy.
“I believe it was on the sixth day that I was moved upstairs to a bedroom, still under guard, and we began our negotiations.”
“Negotiations?” Watkins asked blankly.
“It wasn’t possible for me to wire for instructions, gentlemen. I had to assume binding authority in your behalf, and you’re stuck with my action whether you like it or not. Here was the situation: Their transmitter was smashed, so they couldn’t engineer any more disappearances. They had me on their hands, and even if they decided to do away with me—and I don’t think they ever considered it—they had no idea how much my associates knew, or how close we were to a full exposure of their activities. They had to avoid an exposure at any cost, but on the other hand, so did Universal Trans. If word about the disappearances got out, the company would have suffered an unavoidable loss of public confidence.
“That was the situation as I saw it, and eventually they agreed with me and I was able to negotiate a settlement—they to cease and desist from harassing Universal Trans, and Universal Trans to make no further attempt to identify and punish its harassers. There remained the fact that Universal Trans had suffered no small inconvenience and considerable expense because of that harassment, and I insisted on indemnity in cash. The only really sticky point in our negotiations concerned the amount. I asked for half a million—”
“Good heavens!” Watkins exclaimed. “Surely you didn’t have the nerve!”
“You’ve never played poker with him,” Arnold said.
“I asked for half a million, and they said that was ridiculous, and they offered five thousand, and I said that was ridiculous, and we tossed figures at each other for days. I wish I’d known you were going to that much expense to find me—I might have done better. Anyway here’s a bank draft for the settlement, made out to the corporation. Twenty-five thousand.” He passed it to Watkins. “Case is closed. Any questions?”
“Yes,” Watkins said. “Who are ‘they’?”
“We don’t know, and we’re making no attempt to find out. That’s the position I negotiated. Say it’s someone whose interests are not precisely identical with those of Universal Trans, and keep your suspicions to yourself. I am.”
“How’d they get their transmitter from New York to Brussels?” Arnold asked.
“I never thought to ask. Air express, at a guess. They had plenty of time between the New York and the Brussels disappearances—nearly twenty hours. Does it matter?”
“Not especially. What I’d really like to know is how they got hold of the transmitter in the first place.”
“Again, I never thought to ask. But if you’ll make a thorough check, I’ll give you odds you’ll find one missing.”
“It’s possible. We had a lot of them smashed by that malfunction that bothered us for so long. Some were repairable and some weren’t, and in the mixup of rebuilding them and shifting them around and getting our operations started, it’s possible that one could go astray without our missing it.”
“There’s one more matter to be disposed of,” Darzek said. “I’m accustomed to dealing with confidential matters, and I make it a practice to furnish a written report only when one is specifically requested. In this case I strongly recommend against it.”
“I agree,” Watkins said. “If a written report were submitted to me, I would destroy it as soon as I’d read it. So why bother to prepare it?”
“Thank you. That’s all I have to say, gentlemen.”
Darzek leaned back and lit a cigarette for himself, marveling again at how good it tasted.
Watkins was on his feet, repeating his congratulations. “Have we a motion to accept the situation as it has been reported—and negotiated—by Mr. Darzek? A second? All in favor? Passed unanimously. There remains only the matter of Mr. Darzek’s fee, and I would suggest, since he negotiated the settlement himself, that we merely endorse this draft over to him.”
“Twenty-five thousand sounds a little steep for a couple of weeks’ work,” Darzek said. “Even for a couple of weeks of Darzek’s work, though I don’t know what expenses have been incurred during my absence, or even how much money you’ve already advanced.”
“Come in and see me tomorrow,” Watkins said. “We’ll go over the figures. May all of our problems end on such a happy note—solved entirely to our satisfaction, at someone else’s expense. Have we a motion for adjournment?”
Ed Rucks and Jean Morris were waiting in the outer office. Jean whooped, and fell into Darzek’s arms. “It’s him,” she said. “But what has he done to his hair?”
Darzek gently pushed her away. “You might as well learn now to keep her in her place,” he said to Arnold. “I’m going home. I want to see if the old place is still there.”
“You mean you haven’t been home yet?” Jean demanded.
“I have not. My devotion to duty interferes with my material comforts.”
She backed off, and examined him critically from head to foot. “You have lost weight. Of course you’ve been home.”
“Of course I haven’t.”
“What about dinner?” Arnold asked. “Shall we throw that party?”
“Suit yourself.”
“I’ll telephone you.”
“I’ll be in all afternoon,” Darzek said. “And maybe even for the rest of the month.”
CHAPTER 24
Ron Walker called for Darzek in a limousine.
“Have you gone off your rocker?” Darzek demanded, as the chauffeur closed the door. “I’ve heard of padding expense accounts, but this is ridiculous.”
“I wish you and Arnold would stop harping on my expense account,” Walker said. “You know I have to write a four-page memorandum before I can collect for a subway ride. This evening’s transportation was arranged by Thomas J. Watkins.”
“What does he have to do with it?”
“He heard about the party, and made himself first vice president in charge of finances and arrangements. You’ve got to admit that he has a certain style. He’s an awfully nice guy, and he pulls limousines and private dining rooms out of his sleeve with such a smooth touch that you forget he only does it with money. Incidentally, he’s also invited himself, and after we’d agreed to let him pick up the check we didn’t have the heart to turn him down.”
“Who else is coming?”
“Watkins is bringing Ed Rucks. Arnold is bringing Jean. I’m bringing you. Just three happy couples.”
“Did you know about Ted and Jean?”
“I knew it before they did. Your absence threw them together. It’s a good thing for both of them—I think.”
“You’re probably right, but don’t quote me. Where are we going?”
“Some private club I never heard of. Watkins had that up his sleeve, too.”
The chauffeur ceremoniously delivered them to a stately old mansion on Riverside Drive. A uniformed doorman prostrated himself and then handed them over to a monkey-suited butler, who escorted them to a small dining room on the second floor.
Watkins greeted them smilingly, a waiter floated a tray of drinks within reach, and they found themselves gathered around a magnificent stone fireplace that housed an air conditioner. Ed Rucks pumped one of Darzek’s hands and managed to knock the drink from the other. The waiter calmly supplied another drink, and cleaned up the mess.
“Victorian Club?” Darzek said, glancing about the room.
“Named after the founders,” Watkins said, eyes twinkling. “Six men named Victor. Originally membership was limited to Victors, but there was some difficulty in finding enough to fill the rolls, so the club was opened to Toms, Dicks, and Harrys. Ted and Jean—here they are. Shall we start?”
“Take the head of the table, Jan,” Walker said. “And remember that a guest of honor has obligations, as well as privileges—such as leading the community singing and tipping the waiter. Jean—”
“Right beside Jan,” Jean said. “I’m not letting him out of this room until I find out what’s happened to his hair, and why he’s going around telling barefaced lies.”
The others regarded Darzek with interest. “What’s wrong with his hair?” Arnold asked.
“That’s what I want to know,” Jean said.
“I mean—it looks all right to me.”
“It doesn’t look all right to me, and you were standing right beside him this morning when he told that lie.”
“If you must third-degree me,” Darzek said, “you might at least have the courtesy to let me sit down first.”
They arranged themselves around the table, Arnold and Jean Morris on one side, Walker and Rucks opposite them.
Arnold gallantly stood by to assist Jean with her chair—no minor operation, since the chair was backless—but she ignored him; and as Darzek seated himself at the end of the table she leaned over and snatched the wig from his head.
“There!” she exclaimed, waving it triumphantly.
While the others sat paralyzed with astonishment Darzek calmly regained possession of the wig and returned it to his head. “I’m glad this happened, Ted,” he said. “I was much too polite to tell you what a hell-cat this female is, but since she has chosen to exhibit her fiendishness in the presence of witnesses, you can’t say you weren’t forewarned.”
“What happened to your hair?” Jean demanded. The others continued to stare.
“Not only does she expose my most secret shame with calloused disregard for my feelings, but she has the colossal nerve to expect me—”
“What happened to your hair?”
“If you must know, I was smoking in bed, and I fell asleep. Happily my guard smelled the smoke and came to my rescue, but not before my beautiful hair was devastated. My captors did not want me to go around creating an impression that they had tested me with fire, so they took my passport photo and had this wig made. And a very good job it is, if I do say so myself.”
“It looks better when you have it on straight,” Jean said.
“Thank you,” Darzek said, adjusting it.
Jean seated herself resignedly. “It doesn’t sound like him, but I suppose it could have happened that way, and if it didn’t I know that’s the only explanation I’ll ever get. What about the lie?”
“What lie?” Darzek asked, helping himself to a roll.
“You told me this morning, in the presence of witnesses, that you hadn’t been home yet.”
“I’ll repeat it in the presence of witnesses. At that time I hadn’t been home yet.”
“Then how do you account for the fact that you disappeared wearing a light tweed sport coat, dark gabardine slacks, a green-tinted shirt, and a bow tie—not to mention those atrocious Argyle socks and brown shoes; you were confined in Brussels all the time you were gone, and you came back wearing that old sharkskin suit you should have given away years ago, a white shirt, black shoes, a necktie you borrowed from my brother and never returned, and a pair of socks I gave you last Christmas. Just explain that. I dare you!”
“You’ll never make a wife of this woman, Ted. At best she’ll only be a married detective.”
“Nevertheless, it seems like a very interesting question,” Arnold said.
“Et tu, Brute! Very well. The tweed sport coat and gabardine slacks were subjected to trial by combat twice, on a cement floor yet, and I did not win either time. Between trials, and afterwards, I shared a small room with several tons of coal. By the time my relations with my hosts had taken a turn for the better my clothing was beyond salvage. During our negotiations a messenger had to make several trips to New York for instructions, and at my request he picked up a change of clothing from my apartment. His taste was atrocious, but I refuse to accept the responsibility for that. Any further questions?”
“Jean,” Arnold said, “you owe him an apology.”
“I doubt it,” Jean said. “But there’s no point in spoiling a dinner party. I’ll apologize now, and tell him what I think of him when I write my resignation.”
“Shall we begin?” Watkins asked, and nodded to the waiter, who wheeled a cart into the room and began to serve them.
The dinner proceeded with normal gaiety until they began to discuss desserts with the waiter. Darzek asked for the largest ice-cream sundae the establishment was capable of assembling, and Jean, after making her own selection, sweetly informed the waiter that Mr. Arnold was on a diet and could not eat desserts.
“I wish I’d known that this morning,” Darzek said. “I wouldn’t have shared that blueberry pie with him.”
“Ted!” Jean wailed. “You didn’t eat a piece of pie!”
“Not a piece,” Darzek said. “A pie. Half of one, anyway.”
“Mr. Arnold will not have any dessert,” Jean said firmly, and the waiter moved on.
“Traitor!” Arnold muttered.
Watkins chuckled, and said it seemed as good a time as any to be offering congratulations to Arnold. “She’ll make a new man of you,” he said. “When’s the wedding?”
“We haven’t decided,” Arnold said. “I don’t want to be a new man. By the way, Jan, we had a deuce of a mystery happen while you were gone. If you’d been here, I’d have put you to work on it.”
“I gather that you managed without me,” Darzek said with a grin. “Which means it couldn’t have been much of a mystery.”
“Oh, we didn’t solve it. We’ll never solve it. It only happened day before yesterday at the new Moon base. Perrin went in to start the day’s operations, and found the transmitter sabotaged. The President and a mob of bigwigs were waiting at the Cape for a Moon excursion, and we couldn’t make contact. Talk about embarrassing moments!”
“Sabotaged how?” Darzek asked.
“That’s a mystery in itself. Circuits were switched around fantastically, and rewired, and unwired, and cross-wired, and generally hashed up. Perrin knew the President was due, and his only idea was to get it operating again—fast. I wish now he’d taken the time to draw a diagram of what had been done to it. A few of the things he remembered made sense, in a weird sort of way. It was almost as if someone with unorthodox ideas was trying to—well—improve the thing.”
“That certainly would be an unorthodox motive for sabotage.”
“But who could have done it? There were only two men at the base, besides Perrin, and both of them swore they hadn’t touched it. I believe them, because the person responsible had more than a rudimentary knowledge of electronics, and they haven’t. A few people would like to blame the Russians, which is absolutely ridiculous. Also, if someone wanted to sabotage a transmitter, you’d think he’d just swing a hammer and get out of there—not take the time to take it apart and rewire it. Perrin swears there was a mysterious stranger in the vicinity, which might be interesting if anyone could explain how he
got there and where he went afterwards. Mysterious strangers on the Moon quickly become dead strangers, unless they have a well-established base of operations. No, this is one mystery that not even Darzek could solve.”
“Thanks a lot, old man, but I couldn’t care less,” Darzek said. “I get my full quota of mystery on Earth.”
“Am I correct in assuming that this is not for publication?” Walker asked Arnold.
“You are.”
“Damn you!”
“USSA may release something in a day or two. I told them they should change the name of that Abenezra crater to Crater of Mystery. First there’s an explosion that leaves no traces, and then our transmitter is sabotaged by a nonexistent mysterious stranger, and now they tell me things have started to disappear up there. Anyway, there won’t be any more tampering with the transmitter. We’ve put up a metal hut that can be locked.”
“What’s that about an explosion?” Darzek asked.
“That’s ancient history. There wasn’t any, only several people saw it, and—Ron, dig up some old papers so Jan can read about the explosion.”
“We have a file at the office,” Jean said. “But he wouldn’t have read about it even if he’d been here. Current events on the Moon don’t interest him.”
The waiter served the desserts, and Darzek, gloating over his enormous sundae, paused with his spoon in mid-air. “Oddly enough, the other night I did have a dream about the Moon. I was there, looking up at the Earth. It was very realistic. The Earth was a beautiful, glowing crescent. I wasn’t aware that the Earth had phases, just like the Moon.”
“I don’t suppose there’ve been more than a million photographs of those phases published,” Arnold said.
“Have there? I never paid any attention. Anyway, it struck me as a remarkable discovery.”
“At least your astronomy has improved since the last time you dreamed you were on the Moon.”
“How’s that?”
“You told me you dreamed you were looking down at the Earth. This time you say you were looking up. That’s a radical change for the better.”