Barney said, “—what I have to do, trying to cover up—”
Mutter, mutter, from O’Shea.
“Tonight of all nights! You should have—”
More muttering.
Barney’s voice was lowered; he was telling off O’Shea about something, for the answering murmur was unmistakably sullen.
Then the deep voice said, quite audibly, “You hear me? Back they go.”
“Have it your way.” Mr. O’Shea seemed to be capitulating, but against his will.
And then, after a long indistinguishable colloquy, the word “ice” emerged aloud, at the end of a sentence.
Obsessed with my own solar plexus, I construed this as a new treatment. “No,” I croaked imploringly, “no ice—on me. Too cold. I’m—getting better—”
They broke off, suddenly aware that the word had been audible; and then, for some reason, gave way to amusement. A subdued chuckle came from Barney, and a kind of snort from O’Shea. Barney left him, and came to bend over me.
“Cameron,” he said, “I’m sorry—sorrier than I can express. That knockout was my fault, clumsy ass that I am. I was only trying to—to protect you, pull you out of sight, but we tripped each other somehow and went down together in a heap.”
“Nice—you meant—well. What—what was—”
“It was only Colly,” he reassured me. “I—I didn’t know that, of course. I was afraid that Jay or Fingers—you can see how it was, I couldn’t stop to make sure. You were in full sight at that window.”
“Colly?—Where—from?”
Barney waited a second too long before answering. Then he said, “He came up the fire ladder. He’d been down below, looking around.”
I lay silent, struggling to bring back memory. Surely that dark form I had seen was at the end of the platform, far beyond the ladder? And wasn’t it bent double, as if climbing in or out of somewhere? But if I believed that mental picture correct—it would mean that someone was lying.
The certainty filled my mind. Barney was holding something back.
But wasn’t I on his side, and didn’t I feel safe while I was with him? I’d ignore that contradictory picture, push it firmly away from me.
“Well, thanks,” I gasped. “But—something like—sack of cement in my stomach—”
“That was my head,” said Barney with some asperity, and I gave a painful moan which had started as a laugh. “You’re sure you’re not hurt anywhere else?”
“No. No, I’ll be all right.”
“I thought I’d killed you. The fact that you weren’t—actually in danger made it worse.”
Now I could draw breath enough for a sentence. “I guess you just don’t know your own strength.”
“It isn’t my practice,” he said with humility, “to butt ladies in the middle.”
“I suppose not.” I was able to sit up at last. “But if you don’t mind, next time just touch me on the shoulder. I’ll fall flat on my face at once, I promise you.”
“The occasion,” said Barney, “will not arise. You’re going back into your apartment. I was an idiot to let you come in here.”
“At least,” I said, painfully scrambling to my feet, “you’re even with me now for laughing about the water in your face. Like as not you arranged this on purpose.”
Mr. O’Shea, almost forgotten in the gloom behind us, giggled again. He spoke with an unpleasant softness. “If he does nothing worse than that—”
“Colly.” Barney’s voice cut across the sentence, deliberate, cold with a paralyzing lack of expression. “That—will—be—plenty.”
I found myself frantically hoping that that tone would never be used on me.
O’Shea made no answer but a step forward. The very ease of his movement had the indefinable quality of anger. He was ready once more to mutiny; but something held him in check.
It was a domination invisibly, silently expressed, that came from the still figure beside me like a shock from electrified wire. The other man began to speak again, and stopped on the first word. Slowly, slowly, the flame of anger was beaten down. I knew almost the exact moment when it died.
“I’ve done my best for you, haven’t I?” said Barney quietly. The level voice took victory for granted. “You don’t see it that way now, but later you will.”
“Perhaps you are right.” The thin man was regaining his suavity.
“No reprisals, then. You’ll keep your promise, as I’m keeping mine.”
“I will keep it. For tonight only, you are calling the moves.”
“Okay. I’ll see you later,” said Barney, and with a light touch on my arm urged me toward the window.
I wasn’t going to think any more, nor try to figure out any of the inexplicable things I’d heard. Somehow, Barney must have acted for the best; believe that, forget everything else. Presumably he’d achieved the purpose of his visit, to check up on a doubtful ally.
I crawled shakily out to the fire escape, and stood once more in my own apartment. Barney stayed by the window for a moment, and seemed to be listening. No sound came to my ears, but he appeared satisfied, for the window went down.
I groped for the lamp and turned it on, blinking in the flood of light. His eyes went over me from head to foot. “Honestly, you’re not hurt?” he repeated.
“Oh, of course not. Didn’t I tell you it was all right? Just wash it out.”
He gave me a brief grin. “You’ll do to take along, Cameron. I guess you could always be counted on, to be a good sport.”
Next to “wholesome,” “a good sport” is the most damning summary of a woman that you can make. Probably I hadn’t yet got over the technical knockout, for physical shock and a lifelong irritation combined to loosen my tongue. “Yes,” I said, turning on him with involuntary violence, “I’ve spent years earning that reputation, in default of anything better. Good old Ronnie—good pal—good sport!”
His brows drew together. “Pitch into me if you like,” he said mildly. “You have every right. But keep it quiet.”
The irritation faded, and left me feeling ashamed. “I don’t want to pitch into you. Sorry it sounded that way. And I know I oughtn’t to shout, and—turn lights on. You meant this room to be dark, didn’t you?”
Barney stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at me with an unreadable expression. “It would be better, as a matter of fact; but I thought—”
“I don’t want to spoil anything more.” The dark, I reflected as I snapped the light button, might be soothing to jangled nerves.—Sit down, Cameron, and compose yourself. Complaining, at a time like this! As if you hadn’t said enough already, out in the kitchen!
But this darkness had the wrong effect. Something in the room felt different; I was uneasy and couldn’t define the reason. Once my pupils were expanded, I could make out the dim shapes of furniture. Barney had moved to the far side of the room. He was sitting in the hard armchair, quite silent.
“You’re still—waiting for something to happen?” Even my subdued murmur was startlingly loud in the black quiet.
“Still waiting,” he said after a pause.
“It couldn’t have come off while we were in the next room? What time is it?”
“Not two yet.” He was silent once more.
Did he think he could get away with this? After that cockeyed melodrama next door, just to sit down quietly and say nothing was like being dropped twenty feet. If he’d only talk!
“You’re asking too much,” I burst out suddenly in a stage whisper. “I can’t take everything in my stride.”
“What’s bothering you now?” Barney asked remotely.
“Plenty. O’Shea, for one thing. It’s because I don’t know anything about him that he’s frightening. Can’t you see that, Barney? You tell me half a story and then stop dead and expect me to be satisfied. Why can’t I be told what lies behind this affair? There’s something more, of course.”
He stirred in the darkness. “So you’ve guessed that.”
“
How could I help it? You called the enemy ‘unknown,’ but you talked as if you knew him—knew more than you’ve told me, anyway.”
“Maybe I do,” said Barney, “and maybe not. There’s a chance that he doesn’t exist at all, that somebody just dreamed him up, and Jay and Fingers used his name for the kidnapping to throw Cleveland off the scent; but somehow he seems real to me.”
It was just as I’d thought. The minute he started to talk, the tension slackened. I wanted to hear the story, but more than that I wanted to feel comfortable again, to regain that feeling of easy comradeship into which we had slipped by such imperceptible degrees.
“Go on,” I said. “What about that chain of circumstances that forced his hand?”
“Yes, I’ll go on,” Barney said, getting to his feet. “I’ve hinted too much already, haven’t I? You might as well hear about the other thing. In a way, it’s bigger and more serious even than the kidnapping.”
“More serious?”
He began to wander slowly up and down the length of the room. I could barely see where he was. From different points in the dark his low murmur reached me like spirit voices at a séance.
“Maybe kidnapping is the worst crime you can think of. Everyone hates it, everyone feels for the child and the parents, but personally it doesn’t affect more than a very few. And the thing behind this doesn’t sound like much. No one but the staff of the Eagle has got very excited about it. It’s in the background, but—look at it this way: the crime against the Clevelands is like a play that wouldn’t have been put on at all without that backdrop. That’s a feeble metaphor, but I can’t think of a better. It stems from another crime, and that from—from something that doesn’t look like a crime at all.
“I didn’t tell you this earlier, because it’s the darnedest story you ever heard. You’ve been believing what I told you, haven’t you? Yes, because it hangs together; you can see me, you know the baby was here, you read the news item about Mrs. Ulrichson.
“But I’m afraid you won’t believe this.”
I said, “You know what the White Queen used to do before breakfast?”
“Believe seven impossible things, wasn’t it?” He chuckled faintly.
“Six. I think that after she’d got past the first one, the other five were comparatively easy.”
“Okay, Queen, I’ll try you out,” said Barney. A match flared, stamping his face in yellow light on black shadow. He lit his cigarette, and gave me one while the flame lasted. Then the glowing coal, waxing and waning, suspended six feet in the air, wandered about the room as if the spirits had gone into Technicolor as well as sound. Occasionally when he drew on it I could see his face, but you can’t gauge a person’s expression from so brief a glimpse.
He said, “Let’s begin with a spot of catechism. What makes the biggest news these days?”
“The war.”
“Right. And—in America?”
“That’s not so obvious. Defense, maybe? Aid to Britain?”
“Right again. What newspaper do you read?”
“Either of the big morning dailies, when I happen to buy one. That does not send you twenty-five dollars and a set of the Britannica.”
“That’s too bad,” said Barney. “I mean, that you don’t read the Eagle. This would be easier if you knew something about the Cork.”
“But this way,” I pointed out maliciously, “you get a chance to tell me all about it.”
“Look here,” he said hotly, “if you think I’m in the habit of talking for hours on end—who asked for an explanation, anyhow?” I drew on my cigarette. He broke off, laughing. “Oh, Lord—ribbed by an expert. Just for that I’ll tell you at length. Doesn’t the word Cork convey anything to your mind?”
“Life belts,” I said obligingly. “Ferdinand the Bull. Cigarette tips.”
“You’re miles off.”
“Wine bottles—”
“Getting warmer. If you’d said bottlenecks, now, you’d have been right in there.
“You know how newspapers are. They hold out for picturesque speech at all costs, and that title was one of their little inventions. The Eagle’s public likes that sort of thing. They’ve been following the stories on the Cork as if he were Superman.”
“Well, who is he? A sort of mythical hero?”
“No,” said Barney, “I wouldn’t call him that.” He paused for a long moment. Then he went on:
“About three months ago, the Eagle got a hot lead. Being a labor paper, it had inside channels of information. The story was exclusive, too, because nobody else would touch it. It was too fantastic.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said, “I know what comes next. They found a wild-eyed man with a strong German accent and a bomb in his hand, creeping around the training camps.”
“I wish they had. It would have been something definite, and the F.B.I. would have done the investigation. As it was—there wasn’t anything you could put your finger on, only a crazy yarn that a reporter brought in.”
* * *
...The reporter’s name was Mangam. He’d been given a running assignment on Labor in defense; and, since he was passionately convinced of the essential patriotism of Labor, he required lots of proof before he’d believe any rumors of sabotage.
Strikes, he thought, did not come under this heading. They were openly conducted, and in a time of big contracts and rising prices they were all but inevitable. It was a theory of his that a gradual slowing of production was more serious in the long run than a stoppage of work which could be arbitrated. With the rest of the country, however, he realized that production was not up to schedule.
There were a few isolated cases that bothered him, cases where a time lag could be traced directly to one dissatisfied or incompetent person. Workers in big industries sometimes talk bitterly of being only cogs in a machine. A faulty cog can be easily replaced, but the replacement causes delay.
Mangam began a survey, tracing as many of these cases as could be reached. What was causing them, accident or design? If the latter, were the workers aware of it? He was ever their friend, and he couldn’t help fearing that they might be persuaded or fooled into dangerous indifference.
Up to the end of the year he’d made little progress; the individuals proved elusive, and, when run to ground, vague in their statements. Then the Government began to let contracts for the new shipyards across the Bay, and Mangam was in at the start of a project. He had no concern with the slow untangling of government red tape. He went straight for what he knew, the human element; and he began to find some indications that puzzled him.
There was, for instance, the truck driver who had such bad luck with tires; they seemed to attract long spikes. His engine gave lots of trouble, too, and twice during the winter rains his truck bogged down on a soft shoulder of the highway. Each time the load that he carried was vitally needed; each time there was a delay of several hours.
There was the mistake in copying blueprints, which was discovered almost at once; but before a new set of prints could be made, the yard construction was delayed three days.
There was the case of a stenographer, discharged for small inaccuracies in transmitting orders. In her former job, she had been thoroughly trustworthy. She was reticent about her work in the shipyard office, but finally let it be known that her seeming inaccuracy had been the fault of careless dictation, and the blame had been meanly placed on her. That was her story, but her mistakes had caused irritating delays—and she had a new fur coat.
(At this point I sat up, my skin suddenly prickling.)
One small instance followed another, and in every one the same word cropped up with what seemed to Mangam an ominous persistence. Delay: delay of a few hours, delay of two days or a week—he added them up once, allowing for overlaps, and the total frightened him. He knew all too well that in these days a war might be lost because help came a few months too late. That five-letter word became almost an obsession with him, as it was with the heads of the Defense Commission; but he fe
lt that in his small investigation he was dealing with something as fundamentally important as their problems of production. Little by little he became convinced that there was a single cause for the delays on the shipyard project; the cases were oddly similar in their innocent appearance and their insidious danger...
* * *
“Wait,” I said. “Wait just a minute. That’s the new shipyard in Oakland, the one that’s building cargo vessels for Britain?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t by any chance know who the contractor is?”
“A man named Flaherty, I think.”
“Holy Moses in the bulrushes!”
“What is it? Do you know Flaherty?”
“I think—I believe it was that stenographer who got me in trouble!” I had the thrill that comes with the sudden solution of a mystery. “No wonder they said it was so important. No wonder the Smith man got excited! Why of course, I can see it now. She could destroy the original order—spill ink on it or something—and type another, with that error that seemed so natural; but it was done on purpose!”
I was jabbering elliptically, as if Barney knew all about it. The thing had finally to be explained, and he came and stood beside me, listening with close attention.
Somehow Roger’s part in the episode was minimized. It was mean of me, but I told myself that it was beside the point.
“I see,” Barney said when I’d finished. “It’s touched you too—only that one little manifestation, but you can see how it works. The mistake was cleared up, you say? How much time was lost?”
“Over a week.”
“Uh-huh. There it is. Once or twice it could happen; but when there are so many cases—and it’s not as if the shipyards were the only instance, there have been dozens of others. Well, Mangam got his cockeyed story.”
* * *
...Someone talked. He wouldn’t say who, nor was that important, but the story was that these delays were fabricated, not by the persons immediately responsible, but by another person who hired them. The risks were small. The worker seldom lost his job; criminal intent could not be proved, nobody was hurt or endangered by his act; he was a hundred dollars or so to the good—and above all, he would be most unlikely to disclose that he had been bribed into this brief disloyalty, whose consequences might be so far reaching.
The 9 Dark Hours Page 9