That gave me something else to think about. Had Washington really called Felicia Carr back, or was this her way of bowing out of a picture that included Melissa Mercer in it? I didn't know. Being me, I chose to think there was something fishy about the sudden run-out, and I'd reserve judgment until I saw it in Felicia's own handwriting, which I would recognize. But dames are so peculiar and emotional I just couldn't be sure of anything. Anyway, I didn't like the aroma of the letter.
You don't take anything for granted in the espionage league. There are more foul balls than legitimate base hits every time. It's the nature of the greatest of all undercover sports.
I got up from behind the desk, went into the outer office and walked to the wall safe hidden behind a great reproduction of Wyeth's "Christina's World." It suddenly struck me that the farmhouse in the background of the painting toward which the lonely girl is looking resembled the house in Rahway a great deal. Small world. But the painting was a great spot to hide a wall safe. Nobody would expect a safe to be in the secretary's office. The way I was feeling then, Christina's lovely slender back was a dead ringer for Felicia Carr, too. Just as lithe and shapely.
There were important papers in the safe, but it was also a cache for the James Bond gizmos. I checked them out, wondering if I hadn't better get used to carrying some of them around with me at all times. Not too sure about that, but strangely uneasy, I decided to pack some of the explosive chewing gum, another smoke-bomb pellet, and one little marble that was a fantastic transistorized homing device. The trick with the gum was to remember it wasn't a standard product, and once you chewed it up and then rebounded it off an object, it could level a two-family house in Canarsie. I always remembered that.
The President ought to be back from Teheran on Monday. Time enough then to check with him on exactly where the whole operation stood. Till then I wasn't going to take any more chances. The link between what had happened to Garnu Sin and the UN building had to be cleared up before I could write the whole project off satisfactorily.
Properly.
Fittingly.
The only way, really.
I saw her shadow on the frosted glass of the door long before I heard her footsteps. For an old dame, she moved with all the swiftness and silentness of a Sioux. She must have gotten rid of her clodhopper shoes. Either that or she was trying to sneak up on me.
But she wasn't.
She knocked on the door. Softly, in a three-rap rhythm that reminded me of a signal of some kind. I moved away from the safe, reset Wyeth's painting, and got over to the center of the room, by Melissa's desk. The knock came again, and I could now see her framed in the pebbled-glass door that spells out my name and occupation in big three-inch lettering. Her silhouette was laughable. Like a caricature of some kind.
"Come on in, Dame Paul," I said.
She did, bouncily, springily, the waddling walk intact. And the tweed outer garments as I had seen them yesterday. The cape, the jacket and skirt. The Robin Hood hat. And the clutch bag. It was dangling off her arm, and it wasn't pointed at me this time. Her withered old face with the dancing, alert eyes looked very glad to see me. I was glad to see her. If anybody could unravel things, she could.
"Aha—Edward, my boy. There you are. Jolly glad I kept my bonnet on last night. I would have hated myself—never forgiven myself—if I had killed you."
"That's nice of you," I said. "Exactly where the hell have you been, lady?"
"Oh. Here and there. Thither and yon." She scanned the office almost as if she were interested in leasing it for the winter. "I like your quarters, Edward. Very masculine, very much a man's sort of place. Did I ever tell you that you're very much like Sir Henry? You really are, you know. Same sort of bull-doggish pertinacity. That says a lot for you, my son. You really do down tools when you're on an assignment, don't you?"
"Bully for me," I said drily, keeping an eye on her charming clutch bag. "Sir Henry Twillson Paul, K.O.B.E., and all that mountain climbing? Tell me—did you push him off that Alpine cliff, or did he really fall?"
She didn't get offended. "You remembered. How clever of you."
"I remember everything, and you are talking in circles."
"Then invite me into your sanctum sanctorum, and I'll make a clean breast of everything—disgusting expression that. So vulgar when you get right down to it. Is it in here?"
She had moved past me, circling like an eagle after prey, and I deftly slipped the clutch bag from her shoulder. She let me, grinning at me like a monkey. Her eyes regarded me fondly.
"That's what I mean about you. You always retain your native suspicion. Oh, the bag is deactivated, never fear."
"I'll tell Dmitri and Aloyesha when they come in." I gestured toward the inner office. "After you. I've got about a million questions to ask you." My brain was trying to find a motive for her sudden visit.
"All in good time, my boy. All in good time."
She breezed into my office without a glance back over her shoulders. I followed her, kicked the door shut and waved her to the client's chair. She took it, huffing and puffing, like the old dragon she was. I went around the desk, set the clutch bag down without examining it, and took up my usual seat. Louise Warrington Paul had settled down in her seat, put the tips of her gnarled old hands together, and favored me with one of her fondest smiles. I could have been fooled into thinking she actually liked me, but I wasn't. I was in that kind of a mood. I would have asked my mother for her marriage certificate.
"Well?" I said, by way of preamble. "You disappear, you reappear. You play games with baseballs. And you leave me holding the bag. I will tell you one thing, though. I know you wanted Marcus Strang to have that ball. I know you were sure he'd be around when it was being taken apart. You wanted him dead very badly—that part I understand. But will you tell me why you went about it so deviously? Somewhere along the way, I would appreciate knowing if the microfilm angle was real, and if it was, exactly what was in it. I have a reason for knowing. Something that shouldn't bother any security code or anything. Do you read me?"
"Quite, quite." She pursed her lips and added some more wrinkles to her face. Her tiny eyes squinted. "But really, Edward. Haven't you even guessed why I have returned? Out of the blue, as it were?"
"Not a single blessed idea. But I expect you to tell me."
Louise Warrington Paul chuckled, shook her Robin Hood hat at me, and extended her right hand in my direction. It was then that I saw what I should have seen all along. Should have known. I hadn't been wrong about her at all. I'd just not had enough of the facts.
There was a ring on her hand—third finger right hand—and the open hand she pointed at me was as positive as a loaded gun. If I had any doubts at all, it was in her eyes. The squint was cold, deadly, and absolutely merciless. Only the traces of a faint smile lingered at the puckered corners of her mouth. The ring was a big jade piece in a single setting.
"Sleeve gun, my boy. I've only to close my fingers into a fist and you would be dead in a second," she said in a low, unemotional voice, now devoid of the cheery, brainless chatter she usually affected. "You have only a few minutes, so don't do anything to speed up the process. I give you that much time because there are still tiny items, little scraps of information only you can give me. Do we understand one another?"
"Quite," I said. "I'm the world's biggest fool, and you are everything I've heard you are. The Old Gray Fox of the trade. I'd tip my hat to you, but I haven't got a hat."
"Stop it," she hissed suddenly. "Spare me your American wit. Now, I'll ask the questions and you will answer. Agreed?"
"You asking me or telling me?" She had me dead to rights in the chair, the desk between us. My hands were already on the desk pad, and I couldn't have reached anything in time to throw at her. The alarm buzzer on the floor out of sight was useless. There was no Melissa Mercer in the outer office to hear it. Dame Paul had me with my pants down. It must have showed, because she chuckled again. Her booming bass chuckle.
"Co
me. Not as bad as all that. You'd be surprised. Better men than you have been taken in by me."
"I'm sure. All right. Get on with it. What the hell do you want to know?"
Her gimlet eyes slitted. The prune mouth tightened. The open-handed weapon remained leveled at my chest. Just where the knot of tie joins my collar. The jade stone seemed to wink at me in the light.
"You will tell me where Miss Carr is and the names of all her confederates. If you tell me that, you will die quickly. Without pain. If you don't——" She shrugged. "I could make you wish you had never been born a man. Do you understand me?"
I stared back at her. Whatever she was, whatever she might be, she now looked like The Terrible Old Woman, the hound from hell who has worn a fright-wig since the beginning of Time and scared the hell out of little boys and girls from Cain and Abel on. I knew she wasn't making small talk. And I knew who she was now.
She was the worst possible thing man or woman can be in this screwy old world of ours. She was Fink. F-I-N-K. A traitor in tweed. A sorry sight anyway you looked at it.
"Dame Paul," I said as quietly as I could.
"Yes?" Her eyebrows rose, and her smile widened.
"Drop dead and go to hell," I said.
She threw back her old gray head and brayed.
A short, booming bray.
The sound seemed to roll around the four walls of the office.
It just might be the last laugh.
The one I'd heard about all my life.
14
The Final Out
"Melodrama, my dear Edward?" Louise Warrington Paul snorted. But her hand didn't move at all. "The wisecracking Yankee investigator. Face of death and all that? Don't be a fool, my boy."
"I come by it naturally, lady. But it doesn't matter. I don't know where Miss Carr is, I don't know who her confederates are or may be, and you know far more than I do about this whole fandango. Believe me."
Her eyes considered me for a moment, and her head tossed to one side. She sighed, and her bosom rose behind the tweed jacket.
"By the Colonel's beard, I do think you're telling the truth. If you are, then who are you and what are you, dear boy? You can't have been contacted by dear Miss Carr simply because she likes the cut of your jib. That I will not believe."
I smiled. "You thought I was a secret agent yesterday while we both whiled the time away talking about baseballs and microfilm. Why are you in doubt today?"
Her eyes glittered from across the desk.
"Yesterday you seemed to be who you say you are. Then when the brothers appeared, I doubted you. Playing it rather safe, I simply nicked you—just in case, you understand. How is your head by the way?"
"Smashing."
"—then when I disposed of the proper ball and learned that Marcus Strang was still trying to get in touch with you, I realized how smashing it would be to make you a go-between again. I understand it succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Fromm, too, eh? Marvelous." The prune face creased in a thousand wrinkles.
"Your information is correct, and I wonder how you got it. And you did recognize the name Godlove yesterday, didn't you? Why did you pretend about that?"
"Good heavens, Edward. One doesn't tip his hand at every blessed point! I was still curious about you and thought it wiser to play it stupid. Blassingame was killed at the park because he somehow recognized or spotted Godlove there. I'm sure Godlove didn't kill the poor boy, though not because he hadn't the skill to. Do you realize, Edward, that I have eliminated a man who is responsible for more deaths than a single week of Vietnam casualties?"
"So Felicia told me." I was getting more and more confused. The old dame was running off at the mouth, saying a lot of things, but not really saying anything. "Do me a favor?"
"If it's in my power, but do be quick about it."
I leaned back in the swivel chair, making sure to keep my hands in sight on the desk. Apart from everything else, I was now convinced that the old girl was not using all her marbles. I didn't like the way her eyes flickered, and somehow it seemed to me that her treason and defalcation might be a very recent thing. But I had to make sure of that first.
"You're going to kill me anyway. Right? I'd really like to know what this has all been about—roughly—before I walk up that big staircase in the sky."
"You're not serious?" She looked thoroughly flabbergasted.
"I am. Make out I was just born and you're telling me about the birds and the bees for the first time. Like I was your own little boy. A regular l'il Johnny Jones."
I had struck a chord somewhere in her. Maybe a nerve. I could tell. Her eyes jumped with fresh interest, though her hand didn't lower an inch and she licked the corners of her mouth.
"Well, now—that's not entirely unreasonable. I do like you, you know. Have from the start. Which is why I merely creased you on the noggin last night. Ripping good shot, eh?"
"You're in a class by yourself. But tell me."
Louise Warrington Paul shrugged her caped shoulders. The Robin Hood hat bobbed. The prune face puckered almost wistfully.
"It's all true, you know," she murmured, almost in a whisper. "The microfilm, the ABM diagrams. Great Britain, America. All of that. But once I got the film last night, I saw a golden opportunity. I had a change of heart. I'm seventy-two, my boy, and I've done this cloak-and-dagger charade for longer than you've been alive. On my way to your Penn Station, it all came to me in a sudden flash. Like a vision from the Gods. And why not? I would keep the ball and sell it to the Johnnies in Europe and Asia who would give a king's ransom for it. Therefore, I didn't deliver the ball. You see? But it did occur to me to relieve myself of the competition, as it were. So I rigged a dummy ball with the same outer covering as the old one, of course. I'm rather handy with precision tools, and I haven't forgotten how to operate a sewing machine. A clever reproduction, eh?"
"The best," I agreed. "Fooled me completely. What did you put in the ball in place of the microfilm?"
She chuckled, the eyes glinting. As if she hadn't heard me.
"The price that film will fetch me on the other side of the ocean will allow me to live comfortably the rest of my life. They shall never find me, either. I know my job too well. I shall go underground and vanish—tell me, did Godlove open the ball himself or did Fromm? Good man, Fromm. A cunning technician. Pity he worked for the wrong side—"
I maintained a calm on my face that I didn't feel. Trying to look wrapped up in her recital. I was, all right, but not the way she wanted me to be. If there was a cuckoo clock in the room, I was sure it would be doing the Charleston. Dame Paul had gone off her rocker, horribly. Suddenly and incredibly. You could see it in the shine in her eyes, the hoarse breathing emanating from her bosom.
"Why didn't you run then?" I asked. "What did you come back here for? You have the film."
"Oh, yes, but you see, I must eliminate everyone who has any knowledge of my connection with this venture. You, Miss Carr, all and any of her confederates—"
She was talking backward, now, but as dotty as she was, the hand that was a secret sleeve gun was still targeted on my chest. Melissa Mercer was going to show up any minute, and my ears were attuned to the noises from the outside office and hallway. And the elevator whose doors you could hear closing if the corridor was silent enough. I'd be able to hear her this time. My floor was like a tomb because it was late Saturday and early evening. My foot, the tip of it, was an inch away from the floor buzzer that could alert her as soon as she came. Even I had secret weapons.
Dame Paul was chuckling again. Almost ruefully. My mind had wandered from her ramblings. I picked up the thread again, just to keep her talking. Keep her from remembering that she wanted to kill me. I had no doubts that that was exactly what she would do.
"Felicia told you about my meeting Godlove this morning, didn't she? She must have called you after she left my apartment today. And you could only know about Godlove and Fromm through her, too. Isn't that so?"
The Old Gray Fox loo
ked bewildered.
"Felicia? Nonsense, my boy. She wouldn't have known where to reach me. No one does. You see, my connections are rather highly placed. Poor Felicia. As soon as she would report in to her superiors, as she certainly must have when you both returned from your New Jersey adventure, I contacted her Naval blighters. They passed the information on to me. Your country will deny me nothing, my son. After all, my reputation, justly earned and fought for, has won me certain privileges. It was simply a stroke of good luck that I had the false ball ready for you this morning. I didn't know you were meeting Godlove until that moment However, I had intended giving you the ball at any rate. I know Godlove. He would have gotten back to you in any case. Sooner or later. Marcus Strang was one of the world's great men, Edward. A marvelous assassin. A genius of elimination. In fact, liquidating him has been the triumph of my life. And when that fact becomes known in international spy circles, I shall be able to name my own price for the ball. Or rather the film. Remarkable, isn't it? The entire missile program of the United States and Britain. Oh, heads will roll, I can tell you. Heads will roll!" This time her boom turned into a cackle. A high, gobbling kind of cackle. As if she used brooms to get around on. I was glad about one thing, though. As small as it was at the time. Felicia hadn't played me for a sap. She wasn't a fink.
"The UN building," I said. "Where does that fit in?"
She shook her head at me. The gray hairs looked limp in the room light. The hand still didn't waver.
"There are things even I must not tell you, Edward. Sorry. But suffice to say that the little ruckus at the UN last night was to serve notice on the United States that all is not well in Paradise. Shall we leave it at that? You don't suppose your President journeyed to Teheran for his health, do you?"
"I don't know from nothing, Dame Paul. I'm just a poor little sheep with no place to sleep—please let me in."
She giggled, but suddenly the giggle stopped and so did her smile. Her hand, the ring hand which was supposed to be a sleeve gun, raised a trifle. The Robin Hood hat tilted as she cocked her head again, and the fond look was still in her eyes.
Little Miss Murder Page 15