by John Jakes
He wiped his wet forehead. Drew the LaFauchaux from his coat. The thunder boomed. The tenement actually shook on its foundations.
As the reverberations died away, he knocked.
ii
The curious rhythmic sound stopped. There was a long interval of silence within the flat. On a lower floor, a woman or a child screamed. Matt rapped again, using the muzzle of the revolver this time.
He heard a whispered colloquy. Two voices, the words unintelligible. Once more he pounded the door.
Rapid footsteps approached. They sounded light, as though someone small were coming to answer. Then he heard the gnome say, “Who is it? Herr Gruen isn’t expecting anyone at this hour.”
He disguised his voice, as best he could, lowering and roughening it. “Tell Lepp to open up. There’s trouble.”
“Who is that? Who’s out there?”
“I said there’s trouble. They know we have Strelnik. Open the damn door!”
More conversation. Matt chose an imaginary point in the darkness, approximately where he thought the gnome’s head would be, and fixed his eye on that spot. It was a wise precaution. When the door jerked open suddenly, he was prepared—looking straight at the gnome’s torso, and the nickeled revolver rising in front of it in the dim light.
Matt shoved the gnome against the doorjamb, pinning his gun hand between his side and the wood. If the little man fired in that position, he risked putting a bullet into his own ribs.
The gnome wriggled, stamped on Matt’s foot, squealed, “Colonel, it’s the American from the Rue—”
Matt jumped back suddenly. The absence of his weight threw the gnome off balance. Matt grabbed the little man’s stiff collar and dragged him outside. With his revolver he whacked the gnome’s forearm twice.
He caught the nickeled gun as it dropped from slack fingers, then laid the barrel of the LeFauchaux against the gnome’s temple, stunning and felling him in the hall. He felt only faint guilt over assaulting someone so small. He knew the gnome would have shot him if he’d had the chance.
He darted into the apartment, bolted the door. Then he caught his breath, unprepared for the cleanliness of the place, or the furnishings, or the play of soft multicolored light from paper-shaded lanterns.
Artifacts from China and Japan had become a craze in the West in recent years. Jim Whistler crammed some of his pictures with Oriental objects and costuming, and his fondness for good Chinese porcelain was practically a mania. Someone with similar tastes had decorated this hideaway. There were ornamental screens around the room, low lacquered tables, bamboo mats instead of carpet, and on the walls delicate brush paintings of gardens with willows and lily ponds and graceful bridges.
Matt was still recovering from his surprise when he heard a door open. The door was concealed by a screen standing in front of the wall to his left. The screen fell forward—pushed—and Lepp stared at him.
Matt’s belly began to ache. He didn’t see Strelnik anywhere. Lepp’s bright eyes flicked past him, hunting for the gnome. Then the Prussian darted a look at Matt’s revolver.
Lepp was barefoot and clad in a black kimono with two Oriental characters painted in white on the left breast. Through the open doorway Matt glimpsed a bedchamber where layers of sweet-smelling smoke moved slowly. The room’s sole illumination seemed to come from a metal statue of a fat little god with a cavity in his belly. Lumps of charcoal glowed in the cavity.
On a pallet, a beefy young man with blond curls and immense forearm muscles lay belly down, his head turned toward the outer room and a drowsy, half-witted smile on his face. The charcoal that made the whole flat insufferably hot put red highlights on the young man’s sweaty shoulders and biceps.
“Heaven knows how you found me, Kent,” Lepp said at last. “It was rash of you to come here, you know. Rash and stupid.”
He took a step toward Matt, his smile blazing suddenly. “I don’t believe you’ll shoot me. I don’t believe you’re the sort who can murder an unarmed man.”
Desperately Matt scanned the room again. Strelnik wasn’t here! He was aware of Lepp taking a second step but didn’t realize how close he’d gotten until the Prussian gave a hard exclamation and jumped him.
Lepp’s hands shot out. Just as he’d predicted, Matt jerked the revolver up in a protective way but didn’t fire. Lepp seized the gun, tore it from Matt’s hand and rammed his bare knee into Matt’s groin.
iii
Lepp uttered a short, self-satisfied laugh as Matt reeled backward. The Prussian pressed his advantage. He crowded the American against the wall and drove his knee in and out again, harder this time.
Matt managed to turn aside and take the third blow on his hip. He was in hellish pain. Everything around him was tilting. The paper-shaded lanterns multiplied and transparent pastel rainbows arched between them—or was that only in his dazed head?
Lepp’s kimono came undone. His naked body was hard and muscular, the body of a splendidly conditioned soldier. The beefy young man in the bedroom started asking questions in French, in a surprisingly girlish voice. Lepp didn’t answer. His attention was fixed on Matt, who was swaying back and forth, barely able to stand.
Lepp still had the revolver. With a smug smile he dropped the gun on the floor behind him.
Shouts and loud pounding came from the corridor: the gnome trying to get in. Lepp ignored that, too.
With blurring eyes, Matt saw Lepp’s guest creep across the doorway, bare butted and with his clothes in his hand. The young man vanished, evidently fleeing through some rear exit. Lepp stepped back. His bare instep came down on the revolver handle. Angered, he bent over and tossed the gun a yard away.
“I don’t need that to deal with a foolish person like you, Herr Kent. First, however, I’ll show you something.”
He paced swiftly to a corner, lifted a wooden framed paper screen aside. Strelnik lay motionless on a mat. Large bruises discolored his face.
“Oh, don’t worry. He’s breathing,” Lepp said. “We keep him pacified with a special draft concocted by a chemist we know. You came to the right place, you see.” He stopped smiling. “But you shouldn’t have.” He still had one hand on the frame of the screen. Without warning, he threw the screen at Matt’s head.
Matt tried to keep the thing from falling on him. His fist tore through the paper as he flung the screen off, unhurt.
But Lepp hadn’t meant to hurt him, only distract him. The Prussian grabbed Matt’s left wrist, whipped him around and hurled him against the wall with terrible force.
Matt shook his head and pushed off from the wall. The collision had started his nose bleeding. Something warm trickled over his mouth to his chin. He tried to focus his eyes as he turned back to face the Prussian.
Lepp was closer than he’d anticipated. The Prussian rammed his knee toward Matt’s genitals again. Without thinking, Matt caught Lepp’s leg and lifted. The Prussian was unprepared. He tumbled over, landing on his spine with an outburst of breath and skidding on a bamboo mat on which he’d fallen.
Matt staggered toward the glint of the revolver. Hardly a hair out of place yet, Lepp grinned like a white-toothed wolf and snapped over onto his belly. He grabbed Matt’s leg in a vise of two hands and used his adversary’s own tactics—a lift that sprawled the American on the floor.
The back of Matt’s head hit the corner of one of the low tables. Behind his eyes he saw patterns of light like the shellbursts in a Whistler nocturne. He groaned, extended his right hand toward the revolver. The gun was tantalizingly close, but he couldn’t quite reach it.
Lepp had regained his feet. He was breathing a trifle roughly.
“Let’s see—how you—paint—with a ruined hand—”
Frantically, Matt started to draw his fingers back. Lepp’s bare heel slammed down. He missed Matt’s hand by an inch. The impact made the Prussian grimace and scream, “Little bastard!” He leaned over, grabbed Matt’s hair, banged his head on the corner of the table. Matt’s left hand flopped out. Lepp l
aughed and stamped on it.
Matt didn’t want to yell but he couldn’t help it. He brought his hand toward his side just as Lepp hammered his heel down again. A miss. The Prussian grew even more enraged. He started stamping with greater force but less control. His knee rose and fell, the foot moving so fast he seemed to be doing some kind of mad dance. Matt managed to keep jerking his hand out of the way.
He shoved his right hand outward again. His fingers brushed the revolver’s hatched butt plate. Lepp kept slamming his heel down, crash and crash. Concentrating on the gun for a moment, Matt didn’t pull his other hand away fast enough. Lepp’s heel caught him. He yelled. Then his face contorted with rage. He extended his arm until he thought it would tear from its socket. But he caught the butt of the LeFauchaux and brought the gun back across his body and fired upward once, twice, three times.
The first bullet pierced Lepp’s left ribs. The second missed. The third tore into his groin. Shrieking, the Prussian was knocked backward. Blood poured over the flapping hem of the kimono. He sat down in a corner, shuddering violently. The light went out of his eyes the moment his spine settled into place.
Matt’s right forearm began to shake. He grew aware of voices bellowing in the corridor. Smoke from the revolver floated past his face. For a moment longer he stared at the dead man. The anger in Matt’s eyes became disbelief, then consternation.
He rolled onto his stomach and hid his head, fighting sickness. He’d never killed anyone before. And to kill a man as he had—to blow huge, grisly holes in him—God almighty, that was a vile thing, no matter what the justification.
“What’s going on in there, Colonel? Who fired that shot?”
The commotion outside wrenched him back to reality. The gnome or someone else was battering at the door. The hinges looked as if they might tear loose from the wood any second.
Matt lurched to his feet. A ringing in his ears diminished. He stowed the revolver in his belt and pushed tangled hair out of his eyes. His left hand throbbed.
In a moment he was kneeling beside Strelnik. He put his ear close to the little man’s mouth. He felt faint, warm breath.
“Sime, can you open your eyes? Sime, it’s Matt.”
He shook Strelnik’s shoulders several times and got only a slight groan for his effort. All at once he was unbelievably angry. Who was this man who dared to make him feel responsibility he didn’t want? He could have died in this room, for God’s sake! As it was, the Prussian had come close to destroying his hand, then turned him into a murderer, and he wasn’t out of danger yet. Far from it.
The door shivered, struck hard again from the outside. Wood was splintering around the top hinge. The concierge’s shrill voice joined the others, howling questions and threats. Fear quickly diluted Matt’s shameful anger.
He lifted Strelnik to his feet. Fortunately his friend didn’t weigh much. He slipped an arm around Strelnik’s waist, then looped Strelnik’s arm over his own neck and half carried, half dragged him through Lepp’s incense-laden bedroom.
He had no trouble locating the escape route the beefy young man had used. A door stood ajar—a door leading to a short hallway that in turn opened onto the landing of a rickety outside stair. The staircase was attached to the building’s rear face.
The stair swayed and sagged in an alarming way as Matt stumbled downward with his burden. Rain lashed his face and made the steps slippery. Several times he almost lost his balance. When it happened on the second-floor landing, he grabbed the rail with his right hand. Rotted wood gave and broke.
He teetered on the edge, gasping, and would have plummeted into space if Strelnik’s legs hadn’t given out. The dead weight of the little man pulled him backward, out of danger.
Finally he reached the ground. A policeman’s whistle shrilled in the darkness. To his left, lanterns bobbed in a passageway leading back to the Rue Cujas. Strident voices called for him to halt. He yanked the revolver and fired two shots over his head. The voices went silent. The forward motion of the lamps stopped.
Strelnik’s free hand plucked at Matt’s Overcoat. Rolling his head around and gulping air, the little man was waking.
The rain slacked off suddenly. “Come on, Sime, we can make it,” Matt whispered, not fully believing it.
He sank to his ankles in mud and garbage as he helped Strelnik stagger through the darkness. All at once a grim thought occurred to him. Now that “Herr Gruen” was dead, his real identity would not remain a secret, nor would that of his killer—the gnome would see to that.
iv
In the garden on the Rue Saint-Vincent, a bedraggled and badly shaken Matthew Kent accepted a glass of wine from Dolly. Leah Strelnik hugged and kissed her bruised husband. Hovering nearby with a lamp, Madame Rochambeau demanded to know what madness was being perpetrated by those who were—forthwith—no longer tenants.
Matt looked like someone who made his living by street robbery. He ignored the landlady, finished the wine and stumbled into the hall leading to his quarters. Dolly followed.
He could barely flex the fingers of his left hand, and the entire back of it was mottled with purple and yellow patches. His spine hurt. So did his arms and his groin.
Yet none of that mattered. All that mattered was the man he’d left dead in the Rue Cujas—a member of the Prussian diplomatic mission.
He made up his mind. “Dolly, pack whatever you need for travel. We’re taking the first train to the Channel.”
She stopped a pace behind him, looking as if she doubted his seriousness.
“Damn it, I told you what I did to that man! The Prussians will turn this city on its head till the police give them satisfaction.”
She hesitated only a moment longer. “All right, love. All right—we’ll go.”
He slashed the air. “In half an hour! Less, if we can.”
She nodded, slipped by him and vanished down the hall. He rested against the wall and rubbed his eyes.
The Strelniks had come in and overheard. Leah said, “You’re going to England?”
“Yes, and you’d be wise if you woke Anton and left with us,” Matt advised.
Madame Rochambeau’s lamp glowed somewhere beyond the garden door. They heard her approaching, asking her repetitious questions. Matt was astonished at Strelnik’s reaction to his statement.
“You’re right. We’ll come.”
Leah’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Now, now, no objections. Remember, I could be held as an accomplice.” He almost sounded pleased.
“Accomplice?” Madame Rochambeau repeated in an alarmed voice. “Who’s an accomplice? Me? I insist that someone inform me about the reason for all this commotion!”
But no one did; it wasn’t safe. So the landlady lurched into view and stood in the garden door, her expression rather forlorn.
Matt was surprised at Strelnik’s ebullience as well as his recuperative powers. The little man looked as if he’d been dragged through the Paris sewers but said he felt remarkably good. On the frantic flight back across the Seine, he’d gasped out the story of his captivity. Part of it remained a mystery. Lepp had refused to say how the Prussians had found Strelnik’s original hiding place. There were hints of an informant, but nothing specific.
Once on the Rue Cujas, Strelnik had been subjected to a long and severe beating interrupted by periods of questioning. He thought the questioning had gone on for three or four hours. Finally, when he continued to deny any knowledge of documents dealing with the Hohenzollern candidacy, Lepp had stepped in, slapped him a few times and contemptuously said Strelnik’s silence didn’t matter; he knew an easier nut to crack: Leah.
“My God, Matt, I thought it was a cheap bluff” was the little man’s only comment on that.
After the initial abuse, he hadn’t been treated too badly, though he had been forced to swallow endless doses of some narcotic, which kept him pacified. Now that all the horrors were behind him, he seemed happy as a child with candy.
He clapped his younger
friend on the shoulder. “I am a man who makes quick decisions in a crisis. I feel like a dead man reprieved. And I don’t care to flirt with reversion to the other state.” There was an emphatic nod of his head for Leah’s benefit. “We’re going.”
“Going?” Madame Rochambeau bleated from the doorway. Her jowly face was far less truculent now.
Strelnik sniffed. “Precisely, madame. You ordered us to do so.”
“In the heat of anger a person sometimes says—”
Dolly poked her head into the corridor, her voice overlapping. “What about your paints and things?”
For the first time, Matt thought of the Matamoras canvas. Leaving that was like leaving a part of himself, like abandoning a precious child of his imagination. It pained him to shrug. “I’ll write and ask Fochet to send everything if we get out safely.” Fochet who’d never gotten around to talking with her.
“Matt, are you sure?”
“Yes! The paints and the pictures don’t matter now.”
In truth they mattered very much. He hated what had happened tonight. He hated himself for making the choices he’d made, and he hated the necessity of making them, even though he could have made no others. That was the goddamned trouble. He could have made no others.
An uncontrollable bitterness crept in as he added, “Oh, but pack that cartoon of us that Auguste did, will you? After spending several years of my life in Paris, I’d like to take something with me—something besides a hand that may be useless.”
With a melancholy look, she disappeared into their rooms again.
Strelnik and Leah rushed away to pack. Matt stood leaning against the wall, studying his numb hand. He heard Anton wake with an anxious cry.
“Leaving,” Madame Rochambeau murmured. “I won’t have any more income.”
He listened to her heavy footsteps retreating across the garden, and her murmured exclamations over the sudden financial calamity. He closed his eyes, thankful just to rest a moment longer.