House of Cards

by Stanley Ellin

  “Yes,” she stated flatly. “It is necessary.”

  I turned to her in appeal. “But I could arrange—”

  “If Madame de Villemont is to be free to come and go,” interposed the matronly Madame Gabrielle, “you should be with the child as much as possible. And you’ll find any room you choose on the upper floor quite comfortable.”

  “No.” Madame de Villemont rose and stood gripping the back of her chair with both hands. “He’s to have the room next to Paul’s in my apartment.”

  Every face turned incredulously toward her. It was the stout Edmond Vosiers who recovered first.

  “Impossible!” he exploded. “Out of the question! I won’t tolerate it.”

  “He must be near Paul,” said Madame de Villemont. “You agreed to that. All of you.”

  “But not to having a man live right there in your apartment,” said Madame Matilde. Her voice was solemnly reproving, but her eyes, I saw, had a wicked glint of mockery in them. “What a scandal it would make. We’d never be able to face any of our friends again.”

  “Only if you choose to make something dirty of it,” said Madame de Villemont.

  “Now that’s uncalled for,” de Gonde said sternly. “And I warn you, madame, not to work yourself into a state.”

  “I am not working myself into a state. I am doing what must be done for Paul’s good.”

  “My dear, we know that,” Madame Gabrielle said gently. “But Matilde is right. The servants will gossip, and the gossip will soon reach our friends. If you intend to start living life among them again as you promised you would, you can’t afford that.”

  “And if I can’t,” demanded Madame de Villemont, “what sort of friends are they?”

  “The truest,” snarled Vosiers. “The most loyal. Your husband knew how to choose his friends. For his sake, you will not disgrace yourself before them.”

  “Besides,” Madame Matilde remarked with raised eyebrows, “wouldn’t this particular bedroom be Henri’s—if he were still with us? What do you think Dr. Morillon will make of your little arrangement? Since he’s such an expert on psychology, shouldn’t he be asked about it?”

  “He doesn’t have to be asked about it; he can be told about it,” Madame de Villemont said defiantly, but the quivering of her lips, the way she gripped the back of her chair for support showed that the defiance was hollow. Plainly, she was terrified by what Madame Matilde had said.

  As if by some secret signal, everyone in the room now looked at everyone else. It was a subtly inquiring look that went from eye to eye and was answered by a barely perceptible nod, an out-thrust lower lip, a shrug. A silent vote was being held, and charity prevailed. The mother has to be placated for the child’s sake, they must have decided, so placate her they would.

  It was de Gonde, of course, who announced the verdict to her.

  “If you insist, madame,” he said wearily, “have it your own way.”

  Now I understood the tensions in the room. That little scene alone left me feeling like an overwound watchspring.

  And what, I wondered, had the scene been like when Madame de Villemont first announced to her husband’s family that she had chosen as his son’s caretaker the bouncer of the Club Barouf?

  6

  Paul de Villemont was a strikingly handsome little boy who seemed both younger and older than his nine years. Much too small and slight for his age, he had his mother’s lustrous, darkly blue eyes and a shock of pitch-black hair spilling over his forehead, and these features were in startling contrast to the pallor of his face. A strangely disturbing face, too. For all its childishness, it was already stamped with an adult wariness.

  Following Madame de Villemont the length of the corridor to her apartment in the opposite wing of the building, I had been apprehensive about my meeting with the boy, and my first sight of him, all wariness, had increased the apprehension. But when we soberly shook hands, man to man, and I felt his fingers in mine as fragile and fleshless as the claws of a sparrow, felt the shivering tension in them, apprehension turned to pity.

  He looked up at me, measuring my dimensions with open-mouthed awe.

  “Uncle Claude told me you were once a pugilist,” he said eagerly. “A champion of boxing. Were you really?”

  “In English, chéri,” his mother said. “Remember that when you’re with Monsieur Reno you must speak only English.”

  Paul threw her an impatient look, then repeated his question to me in excellent, almost unaccented English.

  “Not a champion,” I said. “But I was a professional fighter.”

  He nodded, indicating this was quite acceptable to him. “And will you teach me how to be one?”

  “If your mother doesn’t object.”

  “Do you?” he asked her tensely, his heart in his voice.

  She hesitated.

  “Oh, please,” he begged.

  “Very well, I don’t object,” she decided. “Not if you take care.”

  “Of course,” he assured her, and then he remarked to me with a shrug, “That’s how women are, always telling people to take care.”

  He sat on the edge of his bed furiously gnawing his fingernails and staring at me wide-eyed as his mother explained my duties. Fridays were my time off, and Sundays Paul was delivered to his grandmother on Île Saint-Louis and left in her charge part of the day, but every other morning of the week was to be devoted to instruction. On hand was a syllabus for each subject prepared by the headmaster of the Lycée Monceau. Special textbooks on American history and literature had been imported from the States, and if I needed others they would be ordered immediately.

  “Those are the important subjects,” said Madame de Villemont. “Paul is an American and some day will be attending an American school. He must be prepared for that.”

  Paul’s face became darkly resentful.

  “I am not an American,” he protested. “Grandmother says I am not. She says some day I’ll go to school at Saint-Cyr to learn to be a soldier like Papa and Grandpa.”

  I saw Madame de Villemont stiffen.

  “Enough,” she said.

  “But it’s true,” Paul assured me. “That’s what Grandmother says. My father was a colonel in the paratroops and my grandfather was General de Villemont, a very great general. And my father died in action. That is the right way for a soldier of France to die.”

  “Assez! Ça suffit!” Madame de Villemont said between her teeth, and her face had drained of all color. “You know I don’t want you to talk about these things.”

  “Grandmother does,” Paul said cunningly. “And you told me to listen and be polite when she does. You told me—”

  “Now I’m telling you you’re a child and don’t understand these things.” Madame de Villemont took hold of herself with an effort. She turned to me inquiringly. “Do you know how to play baseball?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I had a ball and glove sent from New York, and I’d like Paul to learn how to use them. They must be somewhere around here.”

  She looked distractedly around the room, which was littered with toys and games and construction sets as well as stacks of books and magazines most in ragged and well-read condition. In case these failed to provide enough diversion, there was also a large television set, a radio, and an elaborate tape recorder on hand. Materially, at least, Paul lacked for nothing.

  The ball and glove proved to be under a pile of toys in a large chest. Paul finally dug them out with the air of doing everyone a great favor.

  “Very well,” said Madame de Villemont. “Now on nice afternoons, you’re to go with Monsieur Reno to the Parc Monceau and learn how to catch and throw. If you wish, you can take your football, too.”

  “Oh, Mama, the Parc Monceau is for babies.”

  “It happens to be a delightful place. And when you’re there you will not sit on a bench and read. You will practice playing ball with Monsieur Reno and do exactly as he says so that you’ll become as big and strong as he is.”
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  “Yes, Mama,” said Paul, and if I had been in his shoes I would probably have sounded just as wearily cynical.

  “And,” Madame de Villemont said to me, “when the weather doesn’t permit being outdoors you’ll take Paul to whatever museum or gallery you think worthwhile. Or, if anything decent is playing, to a movie in the neighborhood. Evenings when I’m at home you won’t have to take charge of him. There’s usually a card game going on in the kitchen after dinner, and I’m sure you’d be welcome there. If I’m not at home, you will remain in your room and look in on Paul regularly. Your room is right through here,” she said, leading me into it.

  From its size and furnishings, it was a master bedroom. A huge double bed, an armoire big enough to camp in, a dresser, and a Gargantuan chest of drawers still couldn’t dwarf it. It also had its own dressing room and bathroom. Then I saw that I had been brought here, not merely to be shown my accommodations, but to be told something in confidence away from Paul.

  Madame de Villemont closed the door between his room and mine, leaving him hard at work cramming toys back into then chest. Then she quietly turned the key in the door and wheeled to face me.

  Before she could get a word out there was an explosive crash against the door, then another—the sound of a small body being hurled wildly against it.

  “Ouvrez la porte!” Paul screamed. “Ouvrez! Ouvrez!”

  Madame de Villemont’s hand went to her forehead in a distrait gesture. “Chéri, listen to me—”

  “Ouvrez! Ouvrez!”

  The child’s voice rose to a demented shrieking. The battering at the door continued. A foot drummed against it so that it looked as if the panel were going to be splintered. “Ouvrez!”

  With fumbling hands, Madame de Villemont turned the key and threw open the door. Paul stood there panting, his eyes blazing, his teeth set. He looked like some small, disheveled animal gone rabid. Suddenly he leaped at me, swung his clenched fist hard against my leg, and before I could catch hold of him, darted back into his room. With a sweep of the arm he sent his radio crashing to the floor. The lamp on his bedside table went next. He looked around, then headed for the shelves of books against the wall.

  “Chéri,” his mother said helplessly, “please, please, listen to me.”

  Books went flying as he clawed them off the shelves.

  Madame de Villemont, her face agonized, stood rooted there. This, her manner seemed to say, was all one could do until these storms passed. I walked into the hail of flying books, clamped a hand on Paul’s shoulder, and whirled him around to face me. I squatted so that we were on eye level.

  “Didn’t you hear your mother?” I asked. “Do you really enjoy making her unhappy?”

  He struggled frenziedly in my grip, building his hysteria to a point where it seemed dangerously close to going out of control altogether, but still I refused to release that grip on him. Then slowly the struggling subsided. Paul stood spent and gasping.

  “Now answer me,” I said.

  With cool deliberation, taking careful aim, he spat full into my face.

  I stood up. He had no idea what was coming; evidently nothing like this had ever happened to him before, so he was still leering at me in triumph when I brought the flat of my hand hard against the seat of his pants. I have a heavy hand. The leer dissolved into a yelp of anguish, echoed by a gasp from his mother.

  Hands pressed to his seat, he retreated from me, step by dazed step, until he was brought up short by the bookshelves. He stood there staring at me as if unable to believe what had happened. Then, as realization dawned, his face started to work. He had too much pride to give way to tears but it took an effort to fight them down. I heard his mother’s quick steps approaching us, and with a gesture from behind my back I stopped her where she was.

  Paul finally found his voice. “You hit me,” he said accusingly.

  “I spanked you.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  I shook my head solemnly. “No, one only hits a dangerous man. One spanks a troublesome puppy.”

  “I’m not a puppy!”

  “If you behave like one, you are one. Like this.” I let out a series of shrill yapping sounds and waved my hands aimlessly in the air. “That,” I said with disdain, “is Paul de Villemont being a spoiled puppy.”

  It was a perilous moment. The darkly blue eyes narrowed with outrage at the same time those lips couldn’t help curling into a smile at the spectacle I had made. It was touch and go, and next time the hysteria might go all the way.

  The smile won.

  “You’re silly,” Paul told me, then turned to his mother. “Of course I’m not really like that,” he assured her. “Am I?” he asked uncertainly.

  “Not really.” Madame de Villemont shrugged apologetically. “But just now—”

  He didn’t like that. The storm clouds started to gather again.

  “Because you locked the door,” he charged. “You went with him and left me alone.”

  Before she could answer, I said, “There are times when people want to talk in private. You and I will have times like that. When we do, would you want someone banging away at the door?”

  Paul grudgingly shook his head. “But what will you and I talk about in private?” he asked suspiciously. “Only lessons.”

  “No.” I thought of his mother, his grandmother, his doting aunts, the houseful of maids—all the women surrounding him while the men in his life were either dead or attending to business. “Well have a lot to talk about besides lessons. Men’s affairs. Things that don’t really concern women.”

  He considered this soberly. “Yes, of course. Men’s affairs.”

  “Now your mother and I must talk in private. Meanwhile”—I looked around at the havoc in the room “—you might try to do something about this mess.”

  I would settle for this temporary victory. Quickly, before he could respond, I ushered the startled Madame de Villemont into my room, and not trying to muffle the sound at all, twisted the key in the lock.

  I turned to see Madame apparently braced for a fresh assault on the door, her face taut, her clasped hands tight against her breast. As silence prevailed, her hands slowly unclasped, fell to her sides. Still the tautness remained in her face.

  “He likes you,” she said breathlessly in a low voice. “I’m sure he does. I’m sure he’ll listen to you.”

  “I hope so, madame.”

  “No, I’m sure of it. And that’s important, because you won’t have trouble keeping him close when you’re away from the house. Do you understand? When you’re away from the house with him you must never leave him out of your sight.”

  “Of course, madame.”

  Her voice took on a sharper edge. She was becoming her old regal self again.

  “And you’re never to allow him to have anything to do with strangers. Certainly, you’re never to put him in someone else’s charge while you’re off having a quick one at some bistro.”

  Up to that moment, I had been nurturing a growing sympathy for her because of her tragic past, her inability to cope with her son, her whole neurotic state. More than a sympathy, in fact, because she was one of the most hotly glowing, most sensually exciting women I had ever come across. Now the sympathy instantly turned to chill dislike.

  “Yes, madame,” I said. “I’ll see to it that both Paul and I stay out of the bistros.”

  “Don’t try to make a joke of it,” she flashed back. “Can’t you see I’m in deadly earnest? Paul may be in danger, and you—”

  “Danger?” I said in bewilderment. “Danger from what?”

  “From kidnapers!”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “That doesn’t matter. All that matters is to see he’s protected from them.”

  My bewilderment mounted. Aside from the fact that kidnaping was one of the rarest of crimes in France—to any Frenchman it was strictly le crime américain—neither Georges nor de Gonde had even mentioned to me any threat of it against Paul.
But why hadn’t they? One good reason came to mind.

  “Hasn’t the family been told about this?” I asked Madame. “And the police?”

  “It’s not their business. No one must be told about it. No one at all!”

  So that was it. I might be lured into playing a part in this fantasy, but never the police or the family, those unkind realists.

  “All right,” I said reassuringly, “you can count on me. I’ll see to it nothing happens to Paul.”

  “I am counting on it,” said Madame. Then, to my mystification, she quickly crossed the room to the massive chest in its far corner and pulled out the bottom drawer. “Give me a hand with this,” she ordered. “Get it out all the way and put it on the floor.”

  I did so, not without an effort since the drawer was almost the size of a steamer trunk and filled with red velvet draperies that reeked of camphor. Then she kneeled down and groped deep inside the empty space left in the chest, finally coming up with a small, cloth-wrapped bundle. She undid the wrapping feverishly, and there in her hand I saw a beautifully designed pistol, a Beretta, its muzzle aimed squarely at my chest.

  “Here, take it,” she commanded, and I promptly did so. I was relieved when I extracted the clip to see it empty, but even so, the cold weight of the gun in my hand made me wonder uneasily what was going on in this grim pile of stone on the outwardly serene rue de Courcelles. Under any conditions, I decided, object number one was to keep this gun out of Madame de Villemont’s hands. And since I wanted no part of it either, the man to deliver it to was Claude de Gonde. As head of this household, he was as much in charge of Madame as I was of her son, and the deadly weapon she had stored away was his problem, not mine.

  She watched me thrust the gun into my belt. “You’ll have to get bullets for it. Do you know where to?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Now put the drawer back. You can hide it behind that drawer when you’re not carrying it.” She watched me replace the drawer, and then said abruptly, “I want you to move in here as soon as possible. Today, if you can.”

  “There’s no reason I can’t. But I’ll need some place for a load of books. Madame Vosiers mentioned the rooms on the upper floor. If I could use one of them as a study on my time off—”