And Wayne knew it. Carr knew it. They all knew it. It was a secret only to the general public. In the downtown district and on Forty-second Street it was open knowledge. Nobody, conspicuously, had phoned or come near me for days. The more tightly the official gang closed in on me, the farther my own crowd drew away. The more they isolated me, the easier it became for the police. I could handle one pack of wolves, but not two.
There was no real evidence against me. Not yet. But neither was there any prospect that the pressure to get it would be relaxed.
I could stand that. But we had to find that damned willo’-the-wisp, and find him before anyone else did. He was the one serious threat I faced. If the police got to him first, as at any moment they might, and eventually would, I knew exactly what he would say, and what would happen.
It didn’t make sense. We had this mountain of data, and yet we were, for all practical purposes, right where we had started.
“All right, let’s stick to the facts,” Stroud told Steve. “You say this man is the key figure in a political-industrial deal. But we haven’t turned up one single political connection, and no business connections worth mentioning. Why not? I say, because there aren’t any.”
Steve told him sharply: “There are. You simply haven’t dug deeply enough to get them. I’m holding nothing back except rumors and suspicions. They’d do you no good at all. In fact, they’d simply throw you off.”
Stroud’s voice was soft and rather pleasant, but it carried a lot of emphasis.
“I couldn’t be thrown off more than I was, when you knew Delos was right in the middle of the situation, but you somehow forgot to tell me so.”
This senseless bickering would get us nowhere. I had to intervene.
“What is your own opinion, George?” I asked him. “How do you account for the fact we seem to be going around in circles? It isn’t like you to be held up so long on a simple thing like this. What is your honest theory about this business?”
Stroud turned and gave me a long, keen regard. He was what I had always classified as one of those hyper-perceptive people, not good at action but fine at pure logic and theory. He was the sort who could solve a bridge-hand at a glance, down to the last play, but in a simple business deal he would be helpless. The cold fighter’s and gambler’s nerve that Steve had was completely lacking in him, and he would consider it something foreign or inhuman, if indeed he understood it at all.
After five days of the present job Stroud showed the strain. That was a good thing, because he had to understand this was not merely a routine story.
“Yes, I have a theory,” he told me. “I believe the Delos murder and the man we want are so closely connected they are identical. I am forced to reject Steve’s idea that one is only accidentally related to the other.”
I nodded. It was inevitable, of course. We hadn’t selected Stroud to lead the investigation because of his good looks, fancy imagination, or vanity, which was colossal.
I glanced at Steve, trusting he would go on from there more sensibly.
“I follow your reasoning, George,” he said. “And I think you are right. But here is something you’ve overlooked, and we now have to consider. We know that Pauline had knowledge of this big combination. She helped to fill in the background, fragmentary as it is, of the whole thing. She would naturally follow it up if she could. Suppose she did just that? Suppose somebody caught her doing it? And got to her first. Have you thought of that?”
Stroud paused, remote and deliberate. He was just a little too keen for this.
“If this deal is for such high stakes, and if the other parties have already gone the limit,” he said, and stopped for an even longer pause, “then we’re in rough company. Our man is either in Mexico and still going south, or he has already been disposed of altogether, in such a way he will never again be found.”
“That can’t be,” Steve told him, sharply. “Here’s why. A man like this, eccentric, with a wide and varied circle of acquaintances, married and with at least one child, a responsible position somewhere, would leave a pretty big hole if he suddenly dropped out of circulation. Yet you’ve been in close touch with the Missing Persons Bureau—since when?”
“Tuesday morning.”
“Tuesday. And no one like our man has been reported. His disappearance would certainly leak out somewhere, somehow. It hasn’t, and that means he’s still around.” Stroud nodded, cautiously, and Steve went swiftly to another point. “Now let’s look at some of these other leads a little more closely. You’re still checking the list of upstate liquor licenses suspended or not renewed with the Board?”
Stroud passed a handkerchief across his perspiring face.
“Yes, but that’s a tall order. There are hundreds.” Stroud looked down for a moment of abstraction at the handkerchief, then he folded the cloth with great deliberation and thrust it slowly and carefully away. “The list is being fed straight to me. If I get anything, you’ll know at once.”
It was a strange thing to say. Of course we would.
“You’ve seen the story Newsways ran about this Patterson woman?” Steve asked, and Stroud said he had. “It’s too early for results. But our spread is going to put that woman on the map. Somebody is certain to recognize and remember that Judas picture from our description of it. Our evaluation of it as ‘priceless’ is sure to locate it. It’s my hunch the picture alone will nail our man to the wall.”
Stroud smiled faintly, but said nothing, and then they went on to other lines of investigation involving tax lists, advertising agencies, newspapers, fingerprints on a handkerchief, all of them ending in so much fog and vapor. At length, I heard Steve saying: “Now those bars, art galleries, and so on.”
“All covered.”
“Exactly. And why hasn’t our man shown, by now? To me, that’s fantastic. No one suddenly abandons his habitual routine of life. Not without some good reason.”
“I’ve already suggested he has either left the country, or been killed,” said Stroud. “Here are some more versions of the same general theory. He may have killed Delos, himself, and in that case he’s naturally not making himself conspicuous. Or he knows that he’s in fast company, knows the score, and he’s gone to ground, right where he is, so that the same thing won’t happen to him.”
I carefully looked away from Steve, and also away from Stroud. In a curious way Stroud’s conclusion was almost perfect. The room was momentarily too quiet.
“You think he may believe himself to be in danger?” Steve presently asked.
“He knows somebody is playing for keeps. Why wouldn’t he be worried?”
“And he’s keeping pretty well under cover.” Steve appeared to be groping toward something. He stared absently at Stroud. “At least, he stays away from all the places where he always went before.” Steve was silent for a moment, then he asked: “How many people in the organization, George, know about this particular job?”
Stroud seemed not to understand him.
“Our own?”
“Right here at Janoth Enterprises. How many, at a guess?”
Stroud displayed a thin smile. “Well, with fifty-three people now working on this assignment, I’d say everyone knows about it. The entire two thousand.”
“Yes,” Steve admitted. “I guess so.”
“Why?”
“Nothing. For a second I thought I had something.” Steve came back into himself, leaned aggressively forward. “All right, I guess that reports on everything. And it’s still nothing.”
“Do you think I’ve missed a bet anywhere?” Stroud demanded.
“Just bear down on it, that’s all.”
“I shall. Now that we’ve decided the killing and our particular baby are identical twins, there are a lot more lines we can follow.”
“What lines?”
Stroud got up to go. He put a cigarette in his mouth, reflected before lighting it.
“For one thing, I’ll have some men cover all the cabstands in the neighborhood
of Pauline Delos’ apartment. On the night of her death, and a few minutes after it, somebody took a taxi away from that vicinity, and he couldn’t help being rather noticeable.” He lit his cigarette, drew deeply, casually exhaled. “The driver will remember, and tell us all about him.”
My eyes went to Steve, and stayed there. I knew he understood, because he did not, even for a second, glance in my direction.
“I don’t follow that, George,” he said, in a dead-level voice. “It’s quite simple. Our subject took Pauline to Gil’s, to a number of antique shops, and to the Van Barth. Why wouldn’t he take her home? Of course he did. Our timing checks with the police timing. He took her home and then he had to leave. No matter what happened there, no matter who killed her, no matter what he saw or what he knew, he had to leave. The first and most obvious line to follow is that he left in a taxi.”
I was forced to say, “Perhaps he had his own car.”
“Perhaps he did.”
“He may have walked,” said Steve. “Or taken a bus.”
“That’s true. But we can’t afford to pass up the fact he may have done none of those things. He may have taken a cab. We’ll just put a bet on that and hope for the best.” Stroud had never lacked confidence in himself, and now it was engraved all over him. He moved toward the door. Standing there, he added, finally: “It’s my hunch we’ll discover he did take a cab, we’ll locate the driver, find out where he went, and that will close our whole assignment.”
There was a long and complete silence after he had gone, with Steve intently staring at the door that closed behind him. I thought I was reading his mind. “Yes. You’re right.”
“About what?”
“We’ll close the assignment, all right. We’re going to call the whole job off.”
“No, we’re not. Why should we? I was thinking of something else. About Stroud. I don’t like that bastard.”
“It’s the same thing. I don’t want Stroud looking for that taxi.”
There was a smoldering anger in Steve that seemed to feed itself, perceptibly mounting.
“That’s nothing. You’ll never be tied to that. Our staff is good, but not that good. What worries me is what’s holding us up? Why is it the only smart idea Stroud can dream up is one we don’t like? He’s cutting corners somewhere—but where?”
“Pull him off the job. Right now. Before he sends another team out looking for that driver. I hate the way his mind works.”
Steve’s eyes were shining like an animal’s, and as insensate. “We can’t drop the inquiry, and there’s no point in replacing Stroud. We have to go through with it, and Stroud has to deliver the goods. He has to do it a damn sight quicker, that’s all. We started with an inside track, but that advantage we’re losing, now, every hour.”
I thought of hunters stalking big game, and while they did so, the game closed in on its own prey, and with the circle eventually completing itself, unknown disaster drew near to the hunters. It was a thing ordained. I said: “You don’t know the whole situation. There have been a number of informal, really secret board meetings recently, and that dinner last Saturday—”
Steve interrupted, still watching me. “Yes. You told me.”
“Well, if this business goes the wrong way, or even drags itself out, that’s all they’ll need to take some kind of overt action. I’m certain they’ve been discussing it these last four or five days. If that should happen—well, that’s even worse than this.”
Steve seemed not to hear. He looked out at me, and upon the whole of life, deeply and steadily as a bronze, inhumanized idol. Surprisingly, he asked: “You haven’t been sleeping much, have you?”
“Not since it happened.”
He nodded, spoke with persuasive but impersonal finality. “You’re going to a hospital. You’ve got a strep throat. Forget about everything. Doc Reiner is sending you to bed for a couple of days. With no visitors. Except me.”
Georgette Stroud
I HADN’T seen George when he came home last night. He had worked late, even though it had been Sunday. For that matter, I hadn’t seen him any evening during the past week. It was nothing unusual for him to work late, either here or at the office. Some evenings he did not return at all.
But this Monday morning I knew something was different. It was not just another long and tough assignment, though that is what he said it was.
When he came down to breakfast I saw what I had only been feeling, but without knowing it. Now I knew something was altogether unusual, and I forced myself to search for it.
He kissed Georgia and myself and sat down. Always, when he started breakfast, he said something about the first dish he happened to see. Now he began with his grapefruit, and said nothing.
“Tell me a story, George,” Georgia presently demanded, as though a perfectly novel idea had just occurred to her.
“Story? Story? What’s a story, anyway? Never heard of it.”
That was all right, though a little mechanical.
“Go on. George said you would. She promised.”
“All right, I’ll tell you a story. It’s about a little girl named Sophia.”
“How old?”
“Six.”
Again there was that wrong note. She always had to coax him before he gave her right age.
“So what did she do?”
“Well, this is really about Sophia and her very best friend, another little girl.”
“And what was her name?”
“Sonia, as it happens.”
“How old?”
“Six.”
“So what did they do?”
I saw, for the first time, he must have lost a lot of weight. And when he talked to me, he was not there at all. Normally, he wrapped himself in clouds of confetti, but anyone who knew him at all understood exactly what he meant and just where he could be found. But now he really, really wasn’t there. His light evasions weren’t light. They were actual evasions. The clouds of confetti were steel doors.
It crossed my mind he had been like this two years ago, during the affair I knew he had with Elizabeth Stoltz. That one I was certain about. And there had been others before that, I had believed then, and more than ever believed now.
A wave of utter unreality swept over me. And I recognized the mood, too well, like the first twinges of a recurrent ailment. It was too hideous to be real. That, that was what made it finally so hideous.
“Well, Sophia never saw her friend Sonia except at certain times. Only when Sophia climbed up on a chair and looked into the mirror to wash her face or comb her hair. Whenever she did that she always found Sonia, of all people, there ahead of her.”
“So what did they do then?”
“So then they had long, long talks. ‘What’s the idea, always getting in my way?’ Sophia would ask. ‘You go away from here, Sonia, and leave me alone.’”
“So what did Sonia say?”
“Well, that’s the strangest thing of all. Sonia never said a word. Not one word. But whatever Sophia did in front of the looking glass, Sonia copied her. Even when Sophia stuck out her tongue and called Sonia an old copycat.”
“Then what happened?”
“This went on for a long time, and Sophia was pretty mad, believe me.” Yes, George, Sophia was pretty damn mad. Just how many years, George, did it go on? “But she thought it over, and one day she told Sonia, ‘If you don’t stop getting in my way every time I come to the mirror, Sonia, why, I’ll never get out of your way, either.’”
“So then what?”
“That’s just what Sophia did. Every time Sonia, the little girl who never talked, came to the mirror to comb her hair, so did Sophia. And everything Sonia did, Sophia copied her right back.”
No. I don’t think so. I think they both did something else. They simply went away from each other.
It can’t be. I can’t go through that horror again.
What is the matter with him? Is he insane? I can’t fall over that terrible cliff again.
/> Can he ever change and grow up? He’s been all right since the Stoltz girl. I thought that would be the last, because she had to be the last. There is a limit beyond which nerves cannot be bruised and torn, and still live. If that is what it is, I cannot endure it again.
Is he quite sane? He can’t be, to be so blind.
“I have a best friend,” Georgia announced.
“I should hope so.”
“A new one.”
“What do you and your best friend do?”
“We play games. But sometimes she steals my crayons. Her name’s Pauline.”
“I see. And then what happens?”
It was too pat, like something rehearsed and coming out of a machine, a radio or a phonograph.
The horn of the school bus sounded and Georgia jumped up. I dabbed at her face with my napkin, then followed her into the hall where she rushed for her school bag, contents one drawing pad, one picture book, and the last time I looked into it, a handful of loose beads, some forgotten peanuts, the broken top of a fountain pen.
I stood there for a moment after I kissed her good-bye and she ran down the walk. Perhaps I was wrong.
I had to be wrong. I would be wrong. Until I was forced to be otherwise.
On my way back to the breakfast room I saw the last issue of Newsways, and remembered something. I brought it with me.
“George,” I said, “you forgot to bring home a Newsways.”
He went on with his eggs and coffee and said, absently: “It slipped my mind. I’ll bring one home tonight without fail. And Personalities, just off.”
“Never mind the Newsways, I bought one yesterday.” He looked at me and saw the magazine, and for just an instant there was something strange and drawn in his face I had never seen before, then it was gone so quickly I wasn’t sure it had been there at all. “There’s something in it I meant to ask you about. Did you read the article about Louise Patterson?”
“Yes, I read it.”
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