The German Agent

by J Sydney Jones

  I would, too, if it were my job to protect Appleby. No sense in advertising your presence; no need for displays of strength: all the cards are in their hands.

  He looked up to the ornate top floor of the hotel. Suites are up there, he figured. That’s where they’ll be keeping Appleby: top floor, officers in the corridor and inside his rooms. They’ll sit there and wait me out; sit there until President Wilson returns.

  I’ll torch the place, he thought. Set fires throughout the building, wait for Appleby to come scurrying out in his nightshirt, and then shoot him down.

  Max finally rejected the idea of arson simply because it was too difficult to accomplish; to light such an enormous structure successfully would demand that he had access to the entire building. If I can gain access to the building, I don’t need to set it on fire. I’ll simply go to Appleby’s room and kill him. And that is what gave him the idea of watching the employee entrance to the back of the building on F Street.

  The day was already drawing in by the time he changed his watch post to the north side of F Street, opposite the back entrance to the New Willard. Max only saw one man back here who looked to be police, and he was at the corner, back-up for the other men at the main entrance. He wasn’t needed, for the hotel had its own security man at the employee entrance, he soon discovered.

  A metal awning covered the stairs going down to a half-basement at the northwest corner of the rear of the building. After watching the building for a time, he crossed the street to the hotel side to examine these stairs more closely, and then he saw the hotel guard seated at a desk just inside the door to the half-basement. Over the door was a sign: ‘Employees Only’.

  Max crossed back to the other side of the street and went into a cafe facing the hotel. It was a simple, bare bones sort of place with a counter and wooden stools, and separate tables scattered about on a wooden plank floor. There was the smell of chili in the place and Max ordered a large bowl, taking a table by the window. It was well after lunch and too early for dinner: no other diners were in the place. The cook was drinking a cup of coffee at the counter, his white apron front smeared with cooking stains. Max ate the chili without tasting it; a plan was taking shape in his mind. He was beginning to see how he might get to Sir Adrian Appleby right under the noses of the men who were guarding him. The rest of the afternoon he spent drinking cup after cup of coffee, and keeping watch on the rear of the hotel from his window seat.

  At five thirty several young men emerged up the steps from the employee entrance, playfully throwing punches at one another and laughing loudly as men fresh off work would. Max quickly left coins on the table for the chili, coffee, and tip, then began following one of the young men, roughly his own size, who happened to be heading west, away from the officer at the corner.

  Max caught up to him a block away from the New Willard.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said coming alongside the young man. He was barely more than a boy, Max now saw. ‘I saw you come from the hotel back there.’

  The kid was chewing gum and his breath smelled of mint as he looked smugly at Max. ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘My cousin, you see. He works there. Do you work at the hotel?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Suspicion manifested itself on the kid’s face with wrinkled brows, pinched eyes.

  Reassure him quickly or you’ll lose him, Max told himself. ‘I am so sorry, but I am new to America, from Switzerland. My cousin works in the kitchen at the hotel. He tells me to meet him at the employee entrance at five. I wait, but he does not come.’

  ‘Well, that’s too bad, Fritz. But I don’t work in no kitchen, see. I’m a bellhop. No chopping onions for me.’

  Max tried to look impressed. ‘You are a bellhop? But where is your uniform?’

  ‘We leave them in our lockers.’ He looked suddenly peeved with himself that he had answered the question so automatically.

  The kid was about to move off, but Max blustered on. ‘This is quite the coincidence,’ he said brightly. ‘I, too was a portier in one of the finest hotels in Zurich. But we had the necessity of wearing our uniforms to and from work.’

  ‘Well, this ain’t Zurich, pal. This is America and they give us our very own lockers in a changing room.’ He said this with haughty pride.

  ‘Imagine,’ Max said reverently, ‘one’s own locker. America surely is the land of opportunity.’

  The kid warmed to him at this comment. ‘That’s right. Opportunity. I only been at the Willard two months and already I’m assistant to the head bellhop. Hell, in no time at all, I’ll be a head myself. Look, I gotta be going.’

  ‘Imagine, only two months and they give you your very own locker.’

  ‘No,’ the kid said impatiently. He was eager to leave, but also eager to set this silly foreigner straight. ‘They give you the locker straight out, see? Me, they must’ve heard of my special talents, ’cause I get number sixty-nine.’

  The kid nudged Max in the ribs. ‘Get it? Sixty-nine.’

  Max smiled dumbly, playing the ignorant foreigner to the hilt. ‘It is an honor, this sixty-nine?’

  ‘Ah, Christ. I give up. See you later, Fritz. I gotta run. Say, what’s the name of that cousin of yours? I’ll look him up some day. A buddy in the kitchen is a good buddy to have.’

  ‘Max,’ he told the kid. ‘My cousin’s name is Max. An assistant chef.’

  ‘OK. I’ll remember that. Maybe he had to work overtime today, huh? There’s a crowd of people at the hotel today: twelfth floor is completely booked out.’

  ‘I shall wait,’ Max said.

  ‘Yeah,’ the kid said, hurrying off. ‘You do that, Fritz.’

  Max waited for the kid to turn off of F Street out of sight, and then he went back toward the hotel.

  Now to get past the hotel guard, he thought. That should be the easiest part of the plan.

  Two hours later, however, frozen to the bone, he was not so sure. He pulled the lapels up on the tweed jacket Mrs McBride had given him, and eyed the back of the hotel. He had taken up watch from a front porch across the street from the hotel, elevated enough so that he had an angle of view down into the half-basement entrance, hidden enough so that the policeman on the corner of F and Fourteenth did not see him, and deserted enough – it was a law office and the tenants had gone home at five – so as not to attract attention to himself. Yet for all the advantages of his watch post, it did him no good in getting the guard to leave his post for a moment.

  The man’s inhuman, Max thought as he watched the hotel guard sit there like a statue, unmoving, eyes fixed on the entrance. At one point he thought that perhaps, like Appleby at the theater the other night – as he had learned from Catherine Fitzgerald’s journal – this guard too was a mannequin, a plaster of Paris model. Then the man suddenly scratched his head, giving Max a start.

  Max examined his options: I could simply go around to the front entrance. There is a steady stream of foot traffic in and out of the main foyer there. He remembered something in the guidebook he’d purchased, in fact, about the main hall of the New Willard being called the ‘Peacock Way’ for all the internationals who promenaded about, using it like a piazza in an Italian village. I should have no trouble simply getting into the building that way, though my clothes leave something to be desired in elegance. Yet there would still be the difficulty of finding my way to the employees’ changing rooms.

  Alternately, I could simply go up to this automaton-like guard, stick my gun in his face and tie him up somewhere. This option, however, would be sure to cause problems for me when his absence is noted.

  Or …

  At this very moment the guard arose, stretching, and hitching up his pants with his elbows. He turned and disappeared down the hall, and Max just as rapidly headed down the steps from the stoop where he was hidden and crossed the street directly to the entrance. The policeman on the corner had his back turned away from him, so Max had a clear path to the entrance. As he reached the awning over the steps leading down, he could see
the guard was still gone. He hurried down the steps, careful to keep his shoes from clicking on the cement, opened the glass door at the bottom of the steps, and entered the warm hallway. No one was about; he heard water running behind a door just to the left of the guard’s desk and hurried down the hall past it, hoping the changing room the kid had mentioned was down here close to the entrance as he had expected, otherwise he was going to be stuck out in the hall when the guard returned, and then option two, tying up the guard, would take over. He felt for his gun: it was under the jacket and sweater, not the most easily accessible weapon. From behind him he heard the sound of a flushing toilet, and he hurried on down the hall, finally coming to a door on his right marked ‘Changing Room’. He ducked into this just as the lavatory door opened down the hall in back of him.

  Inside were rows and rows of lockers with wooden benches in front of them, a concrete floor and walls, and electric lights hanging from exposed girders. He saw no one about; it was between shifts. He soon found locker sixty-nine and swore out loud. There was a padlock on it.

  Max looked quickly about the room for something to force the lock with; there was a broom cupboard in one corner of the room and he opened its metal door and was looking at the arsenal of cleaning supplies within, when the door to the changing room opened and a young bellhop stopped abruptly at the door.

  ‘Jesus, you scared me there for a minute,’ the bellhop said, coming in and closing the door in back of him. ‘I wasn’t expecting anybody down here between shifts. I guess you gotta clean when you can, huh?’

  Max had said nothing, his mind busy calculating what he should do. The young bellhop had done the thinking for him, he realized, placing him as a janitor because he was at the broom closet. Max picked out a three-foot-wide push broom and closed the door, saying nothing. He began sweeping, keeping his head to the floor.

  ‘Had to have a smoke,’ the kid was saying as he rolled a cigarette deftly with one hand. ‘Bastards won’t let you smoke up there.’ He jerked his head toward the ceiling. ‘Say, you’re a talkative guy, aren’t you? You new here?’

  What Max had seen in the broom closet had given him a new plan, and he continued sweeping until the kid took his attention away from him, and then Max swept his dust into a far corner, his back turned to the bellboy for a moment, a hand maneuvering in his clothes. He then began sweeping back toward the bellhop, who was now luxuriating on a bench under a swirling blue veil of smoke. When Max reached him, he dropped the broom and held his gun to the bellhop’s head.

  ‘No sound. I don’t want to have to kill you.’

  The young man’s eyes bulged in terror at the gun; the cigarette had reached the end and now burned his fingers, but he dropped it without a yelp, looking sideways with eyes only at the gun.

  ‘I got no money, mister.’

  ‘I don’t want money. I want your clothes.’

  The bellhop’s eyes narrowed.

  Max prodded his temple with the barrel.

  ‘Quickly. Off with them. Now!’

  Max’s eyes darted to the entrance; this will have to be fast, he thought. If someone else comes in now, this will turn into a real fiesta.

  The young man stood and Max pushed him toward the broom closet where he reluctantly took off his clothes, leaving them in a heap at his feet.

  He’s at least a size bigger than me, Max thought, but I’ll have to live with that. Just suck up your chest, he told himself. He realized he was enjoying this; he felt a shiver of exhilaration pass through him. From the closet he took the coiled bit of rope he had earlier seen and quickly trussed the bellhop up like a prize bird, then stuffed his handkerchief in his mouth and bound that as well. He helped the young man hop into the closet, and before closing the door he rested the barrel of the gun against his nose.

  ‘I’m going to be right outside this door while my friend upstairs goes about his work in the rooms. I hear one peep out of you, and I come back in here and kill you. Understand? One move, one jiggle at this door and you are a dead bellhop.’

  The young man’s eyes broadened like a horse’s before the jump, and Max knew he was terrified enough to believe anything, even the robbery story Max had alluded to. He would stay put quietly for a good long time.

  Long enough for me to do what I need to do, at any rate, he thought.

  Max shut the door to the closet, propping the broom against the latch to lock him in, and then quickly shed his own clothes and put on the bellhop’s uniform.

  A good thing he is a size larger, Max thought, looking at himself in a mirror at one end of the room. The bulk hides the gun under my jacket.

  He took his things out of his own clothes and stuck them into the pockets of the uniform: money, leather notepad, extra bullets, and pocket watch. His own clothes he bundled and tossed on top of a row of lockers against the wall, planning to gather them again after killing Appleby.

  He pulled the rimless bellhop hat down low over his forehead and left the changing room. The guard looked his way as he came into the hallway.

  ‘Coming down for a smoke again, Bill?’ he called out.

  Max waved at him, turning his face away quickly, and made for the service stairs at the end of the corridor. These took him up a flight to the kitchens where black-suited waiters and cooks in tall white hats were scurrying about, steam and rich aromas filled the air, and silver serving dishes were hoisted onto wide shoulders and carried through swinging doors to the dining room. Max heard the chatter of voices and clinking of silverware in a sort of Doppler effect as the doors swung open and closed.

  He left the kitchen precincts by another door to the main hall. It was promenade hour out here, it seemed: elegantly dressed ladies and men strolled about casually; two Italian men upon meeting one another embraced; a plumed lady seated on a divan was having her hand kissed by an officer in dress khakis; a small white-haired gentleman smoked an enormous cigar as he spoke with two other men, punching the air emphatically with the Havana as he emphasized some point he was making.

  Part of the staff, Max blended perfectly.

  ‘Boy! Oh, boy!’

  It took Max a moment to realize the little white-haired man with the cigar was calling him. Max held his chin to his chest in the best military fashion as he walked over to the group.

  ‘I need an ashtray. Would you be good enough?’

  The man’s cigar ash was a good inch long. Max retreated with a nod of the head, found a cut crystal ashtray on a low table by a seating arrangement of plush chairs and a potted palm, and brought it back to the man. He was handed a nickel by one of the cronies gathered around the tiny man, and he put it in his pocket with a smile.

  The main desk was unoccupied except for a clerk dressed in a tuxedo, looking very self-important. Max gazed around the foyer, avoiding eye contact with any of the guests who might decide they needed his services. Located to the right of the entrance was a small closet-like room, with a half window: a phone room. He walked busily toward it, ignoring at one point a shouted ‘Boy!’

  ‘Well, I never,’ the person’s voice trailed off in back of him as he passed by.

  The small phone room was unoccupied and he went in, looking in the district directory for the Willard’s number. He found it quickly: Main 3100. Then he picked up the receiver, got an outside line, and gave the number to the operator, watching the clerk at the main desk through the window as the number rang. The clerk looked at the phone to his left with pique, for he was busy serving a customer now.

  The clerk picked up the phone on the fifth ring. ‘Good evening, New Willard Hotel. May I help you?’

  Make it brief, Max told himself. Give him no chance to affirm or deny Appleby’s presence. ‘A message for Sir Adrian Appleby—’

  ‘Let me check the register, sir.’

  Max went on as the man looked into the ledger-sized book of guests. ‘It’s most urgent that he receive this immediately. President Wilson will see him on Monday evening. Have you got that?’ He watched the man now scramble f
or pencil and paper.

  He doesn’t even hear my accent, Max thought. Not once the word president was uttered.

  The man wrote quickly; Max could hear the scratch of pencil to paper over the phone.

  ‘Yes,’ the clerk said. ‘Is that all?’

  Max hung up, watching the clerk mouth more words into the speaking horn. Finally the desk clerk hung the earpiece up, saying some fawning words to the guest who was waiting impatiently, turned and placed the message in a pigeonhole behind him to the far right of the matrix of boxes.

  One of the last room numbers in the hotel, Max calculated. So the kid on the street was right: the large party that took over the entire twelfth floor will be Appleby and friends.

  He left the phone room and walked to the desk. The clerk spotted him and waved him over to the desk, then turned from the guest once again to fetch the message out of its pigeonhole and hand it to him. All the while he never looked at Max’s face, only his uniform.

  ‘Take this at once to room 1220. The presidential suite. No loitering about, mind you. It’s urgent.’

  Then turning back to the customer who was beginning to fume, he said, ‘So sorry. Matters of state, you know.’

  So easy, Max thought as he headed toward the elevator. Like a duck shoot. So much for security.

  Near the elevators he spotted two more policemen, but they too only looked at his uniform; looked past it really. He was not the bearded assassin they were looking for.

  As he waited for an elevator to arrive, he noticed a newly installed fire alarm next to the elevator buttons. It was a glass cage with a tiny hammer on top; you broke the glass with the hammer and pulled down the lever inside to activate the electric alarm. He had been hoping there would be such a device.

  Once on the upper floors I’ll search out another such alarm, activate it, wait for Appleby and his entourage to rush out of their hiding places like rats, and then shoot him down. There will be a crush of people; if I’m lucky, the confusion will be my shield. It worked once before, at the theater. No reason it won’t work again. And this time I’m certain that Appleby is here.