House of Cards

by Stanley Ellin

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s been badly upset by the crisis you brought about. Dr. Linder, who is attending him, would never permit a meeting with you that could mean new emotional problems.”

  It was a neat way of telling me that he knew as well as I did that Paul was the major piece in the game, and he had no intention of allowing me the smallest chance of capturing that piece.

  “Who said anything about meeting him?” I retorted. “All I want is one good look at him to make sure I’m not playing a sucker’s game.”

  “I don’t see how that can be arranged,” Leschenhaut said flatly.

  “There must be some way. Wait a minute—” I counted very slowly to ten. “Do you know the Metropolitana system?”

  “No.” His tone was wary. “I don’t travel by subway here in Rome.”

  “I’m sure you can find someone to show you how.”

  “Perhaps. What then?”

  “Just a short trip on the Metropolitana for you and the boy. You’re near the E.U.R. station. Take the first train to the city after twelve noon and stay near the door of the last car so Paul is in plain sight from any station platform you pass. I’ll be keeping under cover on one of those platforms, never mind which one. If I’m satisfied with what I see, I’ll call you again at six and tell you where to pick me up for the trip to Venice.”

  “And if you’re not satisfied?”

  “I’ll take my chances on getting away without your help. And I’ll guarantee, Leschenhaut, you can dredge that barene around Torcello for the rest of your life without ever turning up what your friend Cimino left of Anne de Villemont.”

  “You have an ugly way of stating things, Monsieur Davis.” He was stalling for time, studying the pieces on the board. “Do you know what your chances are for getting overseas without my help?”

  “As good as your chances of producing evidence in court of Anne de Villemont’s death without my help. And you’re wasting time, Leschenhaut. Is it the Metropolitana at noon or not?”

  Again that brooding silence. At last, Leschenhaut said with finality, “I’m sorry. The boy is being made ready now for a trip abroad to help him recuperate. The air flight is scheduled for this afternoon. I don’t see how—”

  “Too bad you don’t. Good-bye, Leschenhaut.”

  “Wait!” I could hear him breathing hard. “All right, have it your way.”

  “Good. I’ll call again at six.”

  I flung open the door of the booth to fill my lungs with fresh air, but the sense of suffocation choking me remained.

  Anne yielded her place to me behind the wheel of the car.

  “Did he agree?” she asked tautly. “Is Paul all right?”

  “Yes.”

  She went limp with relief at that, but when I gave her the gist of the conversation with Leschenhaut she stiffened with fresh apprehension.

  “Air flight this afternoon?” she said fearfully. “Do you see what that means? If anything goes wrong—the least little thing—Paul will be a thousand miles away by tonight and God knows where.”

  I couldn’t dispute that. It was exactly what Leschenhaut had let me know in his devious way, and I believed him.

  The Metropolitana is like a toy subway system, neat, clean, and orderly, with small trains and only ten stations altogether. It runs from the Termini south to Stazione Laurentina, just past the E.U.R. but only the first few stations after the Termini are underground. One of these is the Colosseum station, and that was the one I picked for the job at hand.

  The dashboard clock marked noon when I parked the car at the corner of the Via dei Fori Imperialii just across the street from the Colosseum and within a few steps of the subway entrance. A short block away was the Via degli Annibaldi which led north to the center of the city.

  I pointed it out to Anne.

  “That’s the shortest way to the Via Veneto,” I said. “Do you know where the American embassy is?”

  “Yes. But you’ll be with me, won’t you?”

  “Once Paul is in the car you get to the embassy as fast as you can, whether I’m with you or not.” The face she turned toward me was like death. “And don’t work up any big scene about it,” I said harshly. “Odds are I’ll be with you. If I’m not, you’ll have to handle everything by yourself.”

  “I love you. Don’t you understand? You’re as much a part of me now as Paul is. Do you think I could go off and leave you here, not even knowing what was happening to you?”

  “You’ll do what has to be done. For God’s sake, Anne, you’ve been holding up fine so far. This is no time to come apart at the seams.”

  “I won’t. I swear I won’t. But I love you.” Bypassers stared openly into the car as she fiercely clung to me. One gangling youth, his arm around a fat-rumped girl friend, whistled with admiration at the scene we made. “If anything happens to you—” Anne whispered.

  A few minutes later, I walked to the subway entrance. Before descending the stairway I couldn’t resist looking back to see her keeping tense watch on me. To the unknowing eye, the scene would be Rome at its loveliest. The timeworn stony ruins of the Colosseum outlined against the bluest of skies, the traffic almost playfully skittering by on the broad avenue, the beautiful girl in the front seat of a parked car rather fixedly smiling a farewell at her husband or lover who was preparing to enter the subway—then my view of her was obscured by a bulky tourist, flagrantly American in sunglasses and Hawaiian shirt, with cigar in mouth and camera slung around his neck, who took up a position between us to aim his camera at the Colosseum.

  I closed my mind to what I was leaving and plunged down the stairway. At the stand I bought a copy of Il Messaggiero and a token for the subway stile. I pushed through the turnstile and walked toward the end of the platform where I judged the last car of the train would come to a stop.

  Leaning against the wall, I studied the length of platform over the edge of my open newspaper. Of the few people in sight, none was conspicuously the OEI killer type. But I wasn’t under-estimating Leschenhaut. Between Stazione E.U.R. and the Termini were only seven platforms to cover so it would be easy for him to assign a man to each platform. Not for murder this time, but for my protection. In fact, if I ran into any trouble with the police while waiting here, it was likely some OEI agent would instantly move in to help me get away. It was a sweaty spot for Leschenhaut. I might be worth fifty million francs to him, and until he knew whether I was or wasn’t, he had to make sure nothing drastic happened to me.

  A train roared into the station and slid to a quick stop. No sign of Paul or anyone who might be accompanying him. The doors slammed shut; the train took off as if it were jet-propelled. Of the handful of people who had been waiting on the platform, only one had not boarded the train, a gray-haired, scholarly-looking man, soberly dressed, holding a book with his forefinger in it to mark his place. As the train disappeared into the tunnel, he glanced at his wristwatch, turned to peer hopefully at the empty staircase, then, with a headshake of irritation, went back to his book. An OEI man? It didn’t seem possible. Yet it hadn’t seemed possible for the gentle, moon-faced Fra Pietro to be one either.

  Another train came through, again with no sign of Paul aboard. Still the scholarly-looking man remained close by, sunk in his book. But now I had other problems to consider besides him. What if Leschenhaut had decided at the last minute not to gamble for the fifty million? What if he really couldn’t produce Paul? If Louis’ killer had caught up to the child—

  The station was full of noise as the third train raced into it, and as its doors jolted open all my terrors vanished on the spot. Facing me through the open door, just as he had faced me through the open door of Louis’ room when I had last seen him, was Paul. Or at least, the pallid, huge-eyed, skinny little ghost of the Paul I had last seen. And as I flung the newspaper aside and moved toward him I saw, frozen into tableau, his primly bespectacled Aunt Gabrielle holding his hand, the ruddy, bull-necked Leschenhaut with an arm draped over those sligh
t shoulders, saw the venomously pretty face of Bernard Bourdon and the thin-lipped, narrow-eyed face of Albert, the youthful gunman. And around them, other faces, tough OEI faces.

  I heard Gabrielle de Gonde scream as I caught Paul up and burst out of the car holding him tight against me, heard Leschenhaut bellow. As I cleared the door, a pair of arms almost locking around my knees sent me staggering off balance onto the platform, and Paul’s arms clasped my neck in panic as I made the effort not to go down full length. The scholarly-looking man was braced for me on the platform. Coolly, deliberately, he jammed the edge of his book into my belly with one hand, and with the other grasped Paul’s jacket. Gasping for air, I wrenched Paul free and raced for the stairway.

  “It’s all right!” I assured him as he violently struggled against me now. “It’s Reno! It’s all right!” but halfway up the stairs, voices shouting and footsteps thundering right behind me, I knew it wasn’t all right, knew I would never make it to the car this way without risking his life along with mine.

  At the head of the stairway, avid hands grasping at me, I tore the child’s grip loose from my neck and roughly shoved him onto the sidewalk in the direction of the parked car.

  “Run!” I shouted. “Your mother’s there! Run, damn it!” and at the same instant pivoted around, blindly swinging my fists to block off the pursuit of him. I hit someone, I don’t know who, and then was hit myself across the side of the head with what felt like an iron bar. The impact was stunning. It sent me lurching weak-kneed across the sidewalk, and then I saw, leaping at me from out of the crowd of astounded spectators at the subway entrance, the wiry figure of Albert, the steel blade glinting in his hand.

  I was too dazed to fend off the blow. I felt it on my shoulder almost like a friendly thumb jabbing me there, and then felt the searing pain of it flame through the shoulder. He would settle for that one thrust. Lips twisted in a leer of triumph he turned to run, but he was too late. A hefty arm caught him around the throat; a hand gripped his wrist and snapped it back and up. As the arm broke with the sound of a branch snapping, Albert screamed and went limp, sagging in the man’s grasp. Blurrily, I realized with wonderment that the man was the same American tourist who had obscured my last view of Anne. There was no mistaking that Hawaiian shirt, that fat cigar still clenched in his teeth.

  “Police!” he shouted furiously. “Polizia!”

  Then the police were there, miraculously sprung from the ground, pistols in hand. A couple sprinted after a tall, lean figure, one of those I had seen near Paul in the train. Another collared Leschenhaut, who was clumsily running in the opposite direction. Others trotted down the subway steps, whistles shrilly blowing.

  Through all this it was impossible to see if Paul had reached the car safely, if Anne had gotten away. The crowd was as thick around the scene now as it might have been in the Colosseum when gladiators met there. Suddenly, my arms were wrenched behind my back; I felt the cold steel grip of handcuffs, heard them click shut around my wrists. I was swung around and shoved toward a car, a familiar, dusty blue Citroën, pushed unceremoniously into it. Two men sat in the front seat. When the driver turned to look at me, I saw he not only wore a gray straw hat, but that his face had a gray, lackluster quality; his eyes were sleepy with apparent disinterest. Anne’s gray man.

  Leschenhaut, his hands also locked behind him in steel cuffs, was thrust into the car. The American tourist climbed in after him and dropped heavily into the seat between us, his stout thighs and fat buttocks crowding us.

  “Ça gazouille,” he said in good, hard-boiled, idiomatic French. “A neat job. Now let’s move before we’re all in the newsreels.”

  4

  The car moved, the driver bearing down on the horn to clear a way through the mob surrounding us. I leaned forward, searching through the window for a glimpse of Anne or even the parked Fiat, and the big man in the Hawaiian shirt twisted his fingers in my hair and dragged my head upright.

  “Je ne suis pas à prendre avec des pincettes,” he said jovially. “I’ve got a mean streak. Don’t try anything that might stir it up, chum,” and now I was sure he was no more American than Leschenhaut himself.

  “Who the hell are you?” I demanded. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll find out.” He pulled a couple of pairs of motorcyclist’s goggles out of his pocket. “Here, try this on for size.”

  “I’ve got a pair of my own in this jacket.”

  “These are more stylish.”

  He got a hard grip on the nape of my neck with those sausage-like fingers and snapped the goggles over my eyes. I discovered they were as completely opaque as if they were coated with black paint. It was impossible to see even a flicker of light through them.

  “Now you,” he said to Leschenhaut.

  I took what joy I could from the fact that Leschenhaut was as much a captive as I was. The body of the snake still writhed dangerously, but, at least, the head was out of action for the time being.

  The car stopped, started, turned a corner, then reversed itself. In a few minutes I didn’t have any idea where we were or in what direction we were heading. All I could tell from our slow progress and the racket of traffic around us was that we were somewhere in the heart of the city.

  The pain of the knife wound in my shoulder was getting steadily worse. It felt, after a while, as if someone were probing an inch deep into it with a dull scalpel. Then I became aware of a warm wetness trickling down my arm and into my palm.

  “I think I’m bleeding,” I said to Hawaiian Shirt. “I was stuck in the shoulder. You’d better take a look there.”

  He made a snorting sound through his nostrils, but peeled my jacket and shirt halfway down my back.

  “You’re leaking blood, all right,” he said grudgingly. “Looks like an ice pick was used on you. In one side and out the other. But you’ll live to have your head chopped off. Don’t worry about that.”

  The car must have been equipped with a first-aid kit. I felt a cold spray of liquid numbing the wound and then a cloth being bound tightly and expertly around it. My shirt and jacket were pulled up and neatly buttoned.

  “Thanks,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “You can call me A. That guy driving is B. The one next to him never told us his name. A real mysterious type, that one.”

  “Now, look—”

  He gripped my shoulder over the wound and increased the pressure until I groaned.

  “Get the idea?” he inquired amiably, and eased the pressure. “You just be a good little birdie and sing only when you’re told to.”

  The car came to a dead stop and from the squeal of tires against a curb I knew it was parked.

  “All clear,” someone in the front seat said, and I was hustled out of the car and across a pavement into a building. Close behind me, I could hear Leschenhaut cursing under his breath when he stumbled over the doorstep.

  There was a flight of stairs to navigate, a few steps across a creaking wooden floor, and then a door slammed shut. When the goggles were removed from my eyes I saw I was in what looked like the dining room of a third-rate pensione. A long, narrow room with a few small tables in it and with all its shutters tightly closed. It was lighted by some unshaded bulbs dangling by loose wires from a battered brass chandelier.

  Behind a table in the middle of the room sat a man in shirtsleeves examining a folder of papers before him. He was gaunt to the point of fleshlessness, his face skull-like under a bald head, his arms as thin and unmuscular as a woman’s. He was smoking a cigarette in a long holder, the holder between thumb and forefinger, Russian style. Still concentrating on his papers, he delicately flicked an ash from the cigarette into a coffee cup on the table. Then, without looking up, he said, “Name?”

  I glanced around to see if this was directed at me or Leschenhaut. I found that Leschenhaut and the two men who had ridden in front of the car were no longer in my company. Hawaiian Shirt and I were alone in the room with this inquisitor.

  “No
name,” I said. “I forgot it. I have amnesia,” and the heavy hand of my guard clamped down hard on my shoulder again, the pain of it making me buckle a little at the knees.

  The gaunt man raised his head now and looked at me with eyes as coldly luminous as a cat’s. “Papers?”

  I shook my head.

  “All right,” he said to the guard, “clean him out. Pockets, shoes, everything.”

  The guard did the job quickly and expertly. My property was laid on the table. A few coins, a handkerchief, a pair of sunglasses, the tightly folded sheets of wrapping paper containing the OEI membership list.

  The wrapping papers almost covered the table when they were spread open.

  “What’s this?” said the inquisitor.

  “God damn it, if you tell me who you are—!”

  The heavy hand was already on my shoulder again, but its grip slackened when the gaunt man said, “I’ll do better than that. I’ll tell you who you are, Monsieur Reno Davis. You are an escaped murderer, charged with killing one Louis Metchnikoff alias Louis le Buc. You are an active member of a terrorist organization. On either count—”

  “Both counts are false! And while we’re wasting time like this, a woman and child are in serious danger. Madame Anne de Villemont and her son. If you let me call the American embassy—”

  “Hasn’t it dawned on you yet, Monsieur Reno Davis, that you’re being held incommunicado?”

  “Then you make the call. If Madame de Villemont and the child are there, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Otherwise, I won’t say another word, even if your gorilla here takes me apart piece by piece.”

  Almost lazily, the gorilla swung the back of his hand against my mouth. I felt the lip split and the taste of blood on it. The gaunt man watched this as indifferently as Georges the chauffeur had watched me being punished for trying to walk out the door of the Château Laennac.

  “Not very pleasant being taken apart piece by piece, is it?” he asked gently.

  “It’s nothing new to me. I used to make my living this way.”