The Loo Sanction

by Trevanian

  “All right! You! Let’s go!” The dapper little man with two mouths touched Jonathan’s shoulder. “Let’s go!”

  Jonathan opened his eyes slowly. Ten or fifteen minutes had passed, but he was refreshed and his mind was quiet and controlled.

  They led him up a narrow staircase and through a door.

  He winced and held up his hand to screen away the painfully bright light.

  “Here,” Two-mouths said, “put these on.” He passed Jonathan a pair of round dark green glasses that cupped into the eye sockets and had an elastic cord to go around the head.

  Six sunlamps on stands were the source of the painful ultraviolet light, and on one of the low exercise tables between the banks of lamps was a man, nude save for a scanty posing pouch, doing sit-ups as a flabby masseur held his ankles for leverage.

  Everyone in the room wore the dark green eyecups. Looking around, Jonathan was put in mind of photographs he had seen of Biafran victims with their eyes shot out.

  “Welcome . . .” The exerciser grunted with his sit-up, and he swung forward to touch his forehead to his knees, then lay back again. “Welcome to the Emerald City, Dr. Hemlock. How many is that, Claudio?”

  “Seventy-two, sir.”

  Jonathan recognized the voice just an instant before he recalled the face behind the green eyecups. It was the classically beautiful Renaissance man he had met with Vanessa Dyke at Tomlinson’s Galleries. The man with the Marini Horse.

  “I assume you’re Maximilian Strange?” Jonathan said.

  “All right, Claudio. That will be enough.” Strange sat on the edge of the padded exercise table and pulled off the eye guards as the ultraviolet lamps were turned off. Taking his glasses off, Jonathan found the normal light in the room oddly cold and feeble in contrast to the glare of the lamps in the hotter end of the spectrum. “I regret your having to wait downstairs while I finished my exercise, Dr. Hemlock. But routine is routine.” Strange lay down on the table, and Claudio started to cover him with a thick, cream-colored grease, beginning with the face and neck and working downward. “There is a popular myth, Dr. Hemlock, that exposure to the sun ages one’s skin and causes wrinkles. Actually, it’s the loss of skin oils that sins against the complexion. An immediate treatment with pure lanolin will replace them adequately. You said you assumed I was Maximilian Strange. Didn’t you really know?”

  “No. How could I?”

  “How indeed? Do you take good care of your body?”

  “No particular care. I try to keep it from being stabbed and clubbed and suchlike. But that’s all.”

  “You make a common mistake there. Men tend to consider indifference to their appearance to be a mark of rugged virility. Personally, I celebrate beauty, and therefore, of course, I celebrate artifice. Growing old is neither attractive nor inevitable. The mind is always young. The challenge resides in keeping the body also young.” There it was again: that slight jamming of sentence structure that hinted of Strange’s German origins. The only other clue was his pronunciation, neither exactly British nor exactly American. A kind of mid-Atlantic sound that one found only on the American stage. “Exercise, sun, diet, and taking one’s excesses in moderation,” he continued. “That is all that is required to keep the face and body. How old do you think I am?”

  “I can only guess. I’d say you were about . . . fifty-one.”

  Strange stopped the masseur’s hand and turned to look at Jonathan closely for the first time. “Well, now. That is remarkable. For a guess.”

  “I’d go on to guess that you were born in Munich in 1922.” It was showing off, but it was the right thing to do. Jonathan was pleased with the way it was going so far. He was giving the appearance of holding nothing back, not even the fact that he had background knowledge about Strange.

  Strange looked at him flatly for a moment. “Very good. I see you intend to be frank.” Then he broke into a deep laugh. “Good God, man! What happened to your clothes?”

  “I fell down the side of a brick wall.”

  “How exhibitionistic. Did you have trouble with Leonard?”

  “Is Leonard this droopy-eyed ass here?”

  “The very man. But your taunts will go unanswered. Poor Leonard is incapable of banter. He is a mute.”

  Leonard watched Jonathan glassily from beneath heavy-lidded eyes. His meaty face seemed incapable of subtle expression, its heavy-hanging muscles responding only to broad, basic emotions.

  Strange climbed from the exercise table and picked up a thick towel. “Will you join me in a steam bath, Dr. Hemlock?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No, of course not. And you could use a wash anyway.” He led the way. “Few people know the proper way to use lanolin, Dr. Hemlock. It must be applied thickly just after your sunbath. Then you allow the steam to melt off the excess. The pores of the skin retain what is necessary for moisture.” He stopped and turned to make his next point. “Soap should never be used on the face.”

  “You’ll forgive me, Mr. Strange, if I find this concern for beauty and youth a little grotesque in a man of your age.”

  “Certainly not. Why should I forgive you?”

  Leonard accompanied the two of them to the tiled dressing room that separated the steam bath from the exercise area. As Jonathan stripped down and wrapped a towel around his waist, Strange informed him that his stay at The Cloisters might be a prolonged one, so they had taken the precaution of having his rooms broken into and some of his clothes brought back.

  “And while you were searching for my clothes, you had a chance to take a more general look around.”

  “Just so.”

  “And you found?”

  “Just clothes. You use a very good tailor, Dr. Hemlock. How do you manage that on a professor’s salary?”

  “I take bag lunches.”

  “I see. Ah, but of course, you are doing well on your books—popular art criticism for the masses. How dreary that must be for you.”

  The three men passed into the steam room, Leonard looking grotesquely comic with only a towel to hide his powerful but inelegant primate body. Not once, not even while undressing, had his hooded eyes left Jonathan, and when they sat on the scrubbed pine benches of the steam room, he positioned himself in the corner, protectively between Jonathan and Strange.

  The jets had been open for some time, and now the room was filled with swirling steam that eddied and echoed their movements; the temperature was in the mid-nineties. But Jonathan found no relaxation in the heat and steam. During the introductory badinage, he had recovered from his surprise at discovering that Strange and the Renaissance man were one, and now he had begun to model a cover story for himself. It covered the ground thinly, but he had no time to test it for fissures.

  Strange closed his eyes and rested back, soaking up the steam, his confidence in Leonard’s protection absolute. “You realize, of course, that this Dantesque room may be your last living memory.”

  Jonathan did in fact realize this.

  Strange continued, his voice a lazy drone. “You sought to impress me just now by dropping information concerning my past. What more do you know?”

  “Not much. I’ve been trying to track you down, and in the course of it I discovered that you were in the whorehouse business—if I may simplify.”

  Strange waved an indifferent hand.

  “I also discovered you are in the country illegally, and that you have been in one aspect or another of the flesh trade as far back as my sources go.”

  “What are these sources?”

  “That’s my affair.”

  “I think I can guess at them. You were in CII. You were an assassin—or, to be polite, a counterassassin. It is my opinion that you found out what you wanted to know about me from old contacts in that service.”

  “I’m impressed you know that much about me.”

  “I’m an impressive man, Dr. Hemlock. So tell me. Why were you seeking me out?”

  “The Marini Horse.”

&nb
sp; “What is that to you? I know something of your financial condition. Surely you don’t expect to be able to buy the Horse.”

  “I don’t even particularly care for Marini, nor for any of the moderns, for that matter.”

  “Then what is your interest?”

  “I need money. And I thought I might turn a buck out of it.”

  “How?”

  “You have to admit there were some bizarre aspects to our meeting at Tomlinson’s. You intend to sell the Horse, and evidently for more money than one would have considered possible. I naturally began to think about that and wonder what I might do to turn it to my fiscal advantage.”

  “Go on.” Strange did not open his eyes.

  “Well, my public evaluation of the statue could increase its value by a great deal. Just at this barren moment in art criticism, things tend to be worth whatever I say they’re worth.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of your singular position. A one-eyed man among the blind, if you ask me.”

  “I thought you might be willing to share some of the excess profit with me.”

  “Not an unreasonable thought.” Strange rose and crossed through the thickening steam to a large earthenware jar of cold water. He poured several dippersful over his head and rubbed his chest vigorously. “Good for toning the skin. Care for some?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t want to be refreshed. I want to relax and get some sleep.”

  “Later perhaps. If all goes well, we shall take supper together, after which you may wish to sample our amenities here, the most modest of which is a comfortable bed. What would you say if I told you that, while you were seeking to contact me about the Marini Horse, I was bending every effort to contact you?”

  “Frankly, I would doubt you. Coincidences make me uncomfortable.”

  “Hm-m. They make me uncomfortable too, Dr. Hemlock. It seems we have that in common. And yet there are coincidences here. And discomfort. Could it be that it is not particularly coincidental for two such men as we to see profit in the same thing?”

  “That could be.” This was the narrow bit. The only story Jonathan had been able to put together quickly was Strange’s own. He knew he’d be driving up the same street Strange was driving down, and he knew the coincidence of it would loom large, but at least he had been able to mention it first. He rose to get some cold water after all, and with his first movement, Leonard sprang to his feet with surprising alacrity for a man of his bulk and interposed his body between Jonathan and Strange. “Oh, relax, dummy!”

  “Sit down, Leonard. I think Dr. Hemlock is aware of the impossibility of his getting out of here without my permission. And I think he realizes how quickly and vigorously an attempt to do me harm would be punished. You must forgive Leonard his passion for duty, Dr. Hemlock. He has been at my side for—oh, fifteen years now, it must be. I’m really very fond of him. His canine devotion and extraordinary strength make him useful. And he has other gifts. For instance, he has an enormous tolerance for pain. Not his own, of course. When it is necessary to discipline one of the young people working for me here, I simply award him or her to Leonard for a night of pleasure. For a few days afterward, the poor thing is of little use in my business, and occasionally he requires medical attention for hemorrhage or some such, but it is amazing how sincerely he regrets his misdeeds and how rigidly he subsequently conforms to our rules of performance.” Strange looked at Jonathan, his pale eyes without expression. “I tell you this, of course, by way of threat. But it is perfectly true, I assure you.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment. Does he also do your killing for you?”

  Strange returned to the pine bench, sat down, and closed his eyes. “When that is necessary. And only when he’s been especially good and deserving of reward. When did you leave CII? And why?”

  “Four years ago,” Jonathan said, as immediately as possible. So that was to be Strange’s interrogation style, was it? The rapid question following non sequitur upon less direct chat. Jonathan would have to field the balls quickly and offhandedly. It was a most one-down way to play the game.

  “And why?”

  “I’d had enough. I had grown up. At least, I’d gotten older.” That would be the best way to stay even. Tell trivial truths.

  “Four years ago, you say. Good. Good. That tallies with the information I have concerning you. When first it occurred to me that you might be of use in my little project for selling the Marini Horse, I took the trouble to look into your affairs. I have friends . . . debtors, really . . . at Interpol/Vienna, and they did a bit of research on you. I cannot tell you how my confidence increased when I discovered that you had been a thief, or at least a receiver, of stolen paintings. But my friends in Vienna said that you had not purchased a painting for four years. That would seem to coincide with the time you left the lucrative company of CII. Why did you work for them?”

  “Money.”

  “No slight tug of patriotism?”

  “My sin was greed, not stupidity.”

  “Good. Good. I approve of that.”

  Jonathan noticed that Strange never raised an eyebrow, or smiled, or frowned. He had trained his face to remain an expressionless mask. Doubtless to prevent the development of wrinkles.

  “I think that is enough steam, don’t you?” Strange said, rising and leading the way back to the exercise room, where the man with two mouths was waiting with a glass of cold goat’s milk, which Strange drank down before he and Jonathan lay out on exercise tables to be rubbed down. The masseur scrubbed Jonathan with a rough warm towel before beginning to knead his shoulders and back, while Leonard performed the same service for Strange.

  Strange turned his head toward Jonathan, his cheek on the back of his hands, and looked at him casually when he asked, “Who is it you visit in Covent Garden?”

  Jonathan laughed while he thought quickly. “How long have I been under surveillance?”

  “From the evening we met at Tomlinson’s. My man lost track of you for a while there. Traffic jam. He waited for you at your apartment.”

  “Which apartment?”

  “Ah, precisely. At that time we didn’t know about the Baker Street residence. You use it very seldom. My people waited for some time at your Mayfair flat before further inquiry revealed the existence of the Baker Street penthouse. By the time we arrived there, you had left, but the flat was not empty. There was a man in your bathroom. A dead man. But you had disappeared.”

  “Hey! Watch it!” Jonathan shouted.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This steel-clawed son of a bitch is pulling my tendons out.”

  “Be gentle with the doctor, Claudio. He’s a guest. Yes, we quite lost sight of you until, a couple of hours ago, I received a call from Grace. Dear Grace is a colleague of mine. A close and honored friend.”

  “So?”

  “So I would like some explanation that puts these odd bits together. And I do hope it’s convincing. I would enjoy an evening of civilized chat.”

  “Well, I told you I was trying to gain entrée to your place here. I had no idea you were also looking for me, so I tried through Amazing Grace.”

  “Yes, but how did you know about Grace?”

  “You said it yourself. I still have some CII connections. Hey! Take it easy, you ham-handed bastard!” Jonathan sat up and pushed the masseur away.

  “Oh, very well,” Strange said with some irritation. “I’d rather cut my massage short than listen to you complain about yours. But you should really establish a routine for keeping fit. Look at me. I’m ten years older than you, and I look ten years younger.”

  “We have different life priorities.”

  Strange led the way into a lavish dressing room, the walls of which were covered with mirrors set in bronze. The reflections of the three men echoed in infinite redundancy, and Jonathan found himself a principal in a finely synchronized sartorial ballet performed by scores of Hemlocks and scores of Stranges, while scores of droopy-lidded Leonards looked on, their faces impas
sive, their heads tilted back on thick necks.

  When he saw his clothes laid out, Jonathan felt a pulse of relief. He had wondered why Strange had not mentioned finding at least one of the revolvers when his men had picked up his clothes. But these came from his Mayfair flat, not the Baker Street one. Luck was with him. But still he was walking a razor’s edge, reactive and imbalanced from the start, never sure how much truth he had to surrender to neutralize the facts already in Strange’s possession. He had done well enough so far, but he had had to turn the flow of inquisition away from time to time, with inconsequential small talk or complaining about the masseur, to give himself time to collect his balance and pick a direction. So far, he had been plausible, if not overwhelmingly convincing. But there were big holes—like the dead man on his toilet—that Strange would surely probe. And one link was still open. To close it might expose Vanessa Dyke.

  “. . . but it is a terrible mistake not to give the body the work and diet necessary to keep it young and attractive,” Strange was saying. “I know the routines are strenuous and the restrictions irritating, but nothing worth having is ever cheap.”

  “That’s funny. I clearly remember being assured by a song of the Depression that the best things in life were free.”

  “Opiate hogwash. Self-delusions with which the congenital have-nots seek to excuse their life failures and make less of the accomplishments of others. As I recall, that insipid song suggests that love, in particular, is free. My dear sir, my life’s work is founded on the knowledge that love—technically competent and interesting love—is extraordinarily expensive.”

  “Perhaps the song was using the word differently.”

  “Oh, I know the kind of love it meant. Fictions of the fourteenth-century jongleur. Friendship run riot. Pointless nestlings; sharings of tacky dreams and tawdry aspirations; promises of emotional dependency that pass for constancy; fumbling manipulations in the backs of cars; the sweat of the connubial bed. That kind of love may be thought free, and considered dear at the price. But in fact it is not free at all. One pays endlessly for the shabby amateurism of romantic love. One enters into eternal contractual obligations under the terms of which the partners pledge to erode one another forever with their infinite dullness. Still, I suppose they lack the merit to deserve more, and probably the imagination to desire more. Should I open the doors of The Cloisters to one of this ilk for a night, he would blunder about, asinus ad lyram, until he found, down in the kitchens, some sweating cook or stringy scullery maid who could be a soul mate and who would understand and care for him for all time. There we are! Dressed and civilized. Shall we take a little refreshment?”