Fallen Sparrow

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  She was a little frightened. “He usually sleeps all day.”

  “I’ll step across and tell him you’re moving.”

  She didn’t restrain him nor was he nervous. He could draw more rapidly than any of them; they hadn’t learned from old-time western experts. He might find the wobbling man there.

  He found Otto Skaas. He was surprised. José, his cheeks flushed, resented the intrusion. José didn’t look beautiful in dinner clothes; he did in the embroidered white peasant blouse, the baggy red trousers.

  Skaas offered his hand; Kit couldn’t ignore it now.

  Kit asked, “Back from Franconia so soon?”

  “Yes.” There was no German accent in the Oxford intonations. “We returned this morning. When Barby learned of her fiancé’s death.”

  He heard his stupid echo. “Fiancée?”

  Skaas explained easily. “Ab Hamilton. You’ve heard? He—”

  Kit spoke mechanically. “Yes. I’ve heard.” He didn’t try to understand it. He didn’t know why it made him feel as it did. Ab was worth a baker’s dozen of him. He turned to José alone. “I’m moving Content up to my place. She’s rather broken up, doesn’t want to be alone.

  There was petulance on José’s underlip. “She cannot do that. We must rehearse.”

  Kit was abrupt. “Rehearse all you damn please. It won’t bother me. If it does, I’ll get out.” He closed himself out of that room. It smelled of beer and perfume. Barby Ab’s fiancée? He still didn’t get it; he couldn’t believe.

  Content stared into his face. “What’s the matter?” She was sitting on one overpacked bag.

  He walked over, put his knee on it. He asked, “Were Barby and Ab engaged?”

  “Yes.” She hesitated. “It was after word came that you were missing.”

  He had to break out with it. “If she was engaged to Ab, what was she doing at Franconia Notch with Otto Skaas?”

  She didn’t want to answer him. She said, “Ab couldn’t go. He had business in Washington. There was a party going to Franconia.”

  He persisted blindly, “Why was she with Otto Skaas?”

  Content spoke as if her mouth had a hot stone in it. “Because she wanted to be. Because that’s the way she is. The way she’s always been. Any man could have her. You’ve never known it but everyone else has. Ab knew. He didn’t care. He knew she’d marry him. No matter whom she was infatuated with, she’d marry him. Because he was a Hamilton. Ab was in love with her. Ab—” She began to cry softly. He didn’t look at her.

  3.

  Tobin was seated on the narrow leather bench, waiting. Content repeated under her breath, “I don’t want to come, Kit,” and he repeated, “It’s better.”

  He introduced her to the Inspector, “Content Hamilton.” Tobin recognized the name.

  They sat at a circular table. Kit said, “I suppose you want to know why I bothered you again.”

  “I’d have rung you if you hadn’t me.”

  Kit questioned.

  Tobin said, “I was in Washington. Ab Hamilton put in two calls to you on Wednesday night.”

  “And I was out.” If he hadn’t been, would it have made a difference, would Ab be alive? He doubted that, but he would have known what it was Ab wanted to tell him.

  “You haven’t any ideas?”

  Kit said slowly, “I could say no. The truth is—” He could see Tobin’s skepticism borning. “It’s involved and nebulous. I scarcely expect you to believe me, but perhaps you’d like to hear what I have to say anyway.”

  Tobin stated, “That’s why I came down here tonight.”

  Kit thought it out, what he could say, what was better suppressed. “I happen to be in possession of something which a certain man wants. He has sent hirelings after me. I don’t have certain knowledge of who these persons are. That’s why it sounds phony. I only know they’ve followed me to New York to obtain what I have. I’m certain that the chief agent is in this country. He is the man I told you about yesterday. The Wobblefoot. I don’t know his name; I’ve never seen his face. That’s God’s truth although you didn’t believe it.”

  “What’s this to do with Ab Hamilton?”

  “I’m getting to that. Although I don’t know anything. It’s a guess.”

  “Spill it.” Tobin began to eat.

  “This head man has confederates.” Kit spoke slowly. “I don’t know who they are. But by deductive reasoning, I think I’ve spotted some of them. And I believe that two are men whom Ab was investigating.”

  Tobin asked, “What has this to do with Hamilton’s suicide?”

  Content’s lips parted. Kit said flatly, “Ab Hamilton didn’t commit suicide.”

  The Inspector pushed away his soup plate and pointed two elbows on the tablecloth. “So you’re going to start that again.”

  Kit repeated with impact, “Ab didn’t kill himself. Content can tell you why.”

  Her eyes sorrowed. Kit nodded command; Tobin would listen to her. She began tonelessly, “Ab was my cousin. My mother raised him. He was eight years old when he came to live with us.” She told him; she made him see Ab’s horror of a gun, the phobia too firmly rooted in the child ever to be eradicated by sane adult reasoning. Passionately, she made him see it. When she’d finished, she began to spoon her soup but she didn’t know what she tasted.

  Kit endorsed her statement, added, “That is how we know that Ab was murdered.”

  Tobin said, “I flew to Washington last night. I was closeted all day with the chief of police there. I’ve been all over the ground with him.” His elbows dug the table. “There isn’t any doubt that Abner Hamilton committed suicide. The bullet entered his right temple; there were powder marks. His fingerprints are on the gun. It was purchased last week here in the city; the purchaser was Hamilton himself.”

  Kit was cold with rage. Content had stopped the pretense of eating; her eyes on Tobin’s face were smudged with horror. Ab standing there in his room, a gun at his temple; threatened if he didn’t obey their whim, killed in cold blood whether he did or didn’t. Why? Kit didn’t know. Ab was dead.

  “The clerk who sold the gun won’t swear to Hamilton’s identity but the description tallies and the signature checks.”

  There was a forger in the outfit. Kit didn’t mention it; he’d keep Elise out of it for the present; she wasn’t important enough to introduce.

  “The room is so smudged with fingerprints that none matter. The door was locked from the inside, not that that is important. The door is self-locking and someone could have been admitted. No one was seen entering or leaving, not surprising in a large hotel.”

  Kit asked, “If you’re so certain it was suicide, why did you fly to Washington to set up these straw men?”

  Tobin’s mouth was without expression. “I know it’s suicide because I did make these investigations. I flew to Washington at the request of the police chief of that city. You see there was no suicide note and that is fairly unusual although not unknown. Moreover, the persons with whom Hamilton worked on Wednesday couldn’t believe that he had killed himself. He hadn’t seemed depressed.”

  “What did he do that day? Whom did he see?”

  “He was with co-workers at the state department until five.” The names meant nothing. “He had dinner with Sidney Dantone and some members of the Senate.” He mentioned friends of Geoffrey Wilhite, of the Hamiltons, elder statesmen, above reproach. “After dinner he spoke of an appointment and returned to the hotel. He was alone. The elevator operator remembers that because he took him down again shortly after, still alone. Meantime Hamilton had put in one local call, untraced, and a call to you. No one remembers his return the second time. But again he telephoned to you. That’s the end of the story.”

  Kit said, “The perfect crime.”

  Tobin stated, “There’s no trace of a crime, only suicide.”

  “That’s why it’s perfect.” Kit was bitter. “And our knowledge—Content’s and mine—that psychologically suicide is impossible wou
ld mean nothing to the police?”

  Tobin boned his trout with care. “The Hamiltons are an important family. That’s one reason Chief Channak called me in for conference. Neither he nor I would take any chances on calling a murder a suicide.”

  Kit’s mouth was frozen. “The Lepetinos aren’t so important. The killers didn’t have to take such pains at making that phony suicide foolproof.”

  Tobin was quiet. “Still playing that tune? You ought to know the department takes care of its own. By the way it wasn’t the cops, it was the cups.”

  “I found that out too.”

  “You wouldn’t know anything about the cups, would you?”

  “I might.”

  Tobin fired the question. “Where’d you get them? Do they belong to you?”

  “I got them in Spain.” Kit’s voice was level. “They’re mine.”

  “You didn’t steal them?”

  Kit shook with anger. “No, I didn’t steal them. The man who owned them was dead. They were spoils. And I took them.” He shouted suddenly, “Is that what you’ve been thinking? That I’m a thief and I’m letting my best friends be bumped off to hang on to what I snatched, and what other thieves are trying to take from me?”

  Content warned, “Everyone’s listening, Kit.”

  Tobin broke a match in his finger. “Your old man was a crook. You might be.”

  Kit cut sharply, “What do you mean, Chris McKittrick was a crook?”

  “He was.” Tobin spoke mildly. “He wasn’t a tin crook. He was honest as a dog when he was a copper. But after he left the force, you couldn’t even trust him with your bridge work.”

  Kit was stiff with rage. He asked, “What do you know about it? The Princeton cop. The good boy who made good. You weren’t born on the wrong side of Fifth. You didn’t have to lift that diamond studded spoon to stuff the cake into your mouth; your nurse did it for you. You don’t know what McKittricks and Lepetinos and the likes of them have to go through to get just a little bread to eat. Maybe old Chris found a way to put more bread behind the brick walls of the tenements. Maybe he took some of the cake from the brownstones and the marble towers to do it. Maybe that made him a crook. You won’t find anyone on the sidewalks saying he was a crook. They’ll tell you he was a good man.”

  He’d like to put his knuckles in Tobin’s face. This was not the time for family pride. This was not the time to tell Tobin what Geoffrey had told him long ago, told him when he’d first faced disillusionment concerning his father. Chris McKittrick hadn’t built his own pile out of other people’s pockets. He’d never taken more than salary for himself; natural shrewdness and sound business instincts in a time of plenty had pyramided. That too had helped where help was needed.

  “They’ve told me,” Tobin said laconically. “All I’m trying to find out is if you have a right to those cups or if you took them away from someone.”

  “I have a right to them,” Kit defied him. “I didn’t take them from anyone—not anyone who had a better right to them. I didn’t even take them for myself. I don’t intend to keep them. As soon as it’s safe, they’ll pass from my possession. But they won’t ever pass into the hands of the ones after them now. Is that good enough?”

  “Good enough,” Tobin nodded. He stirred his coffee. “Now supposing that Ab Hamilton’s death was the perfect crime. Just supposing. In that case, you believe he was killed because of his knowledge of those cups of yours?”

  Kit shook his head. “He’d never heard of the cups.”

  Tobin cried out, “My God, then what makes you think Hamilton was murdered by your unknown gang?”

  Kit said, “I started to tell you. I said it didn’t make sense and that I was only guessing. But I know—Content knows—that Ab was investigating two men for a different reason—two foreign refugees. It happens that I believe these two are accomplices of the man after the cups.”

  “What are their names?” Tobin asked quickly.

  “I have no proof,” Kit repeated.

  “Names?”

  “Christian Skaas. Otto Skaas.”

  Tobin nodded, “Yes. Hamilton asked questions about them in Washington. So did I. The Refugee Committee brought Dr. Skaas into this country. The nephew came by way of Canada, arranged by the Committee through our state department. Hamilton was suspicious of him because of his frequency at the German Library of Information before it was closed. Young Skaas talked that over with some of the department not long ago. They weren’t all loyal National Socialists at the library. Skaas used to receive word of his family through certain channels.”

  Kit said quietly, “If you believe all that, there’s nothing for me to say.”

  Tobin’s lips thinned. “I suppose you’re a better authority on foreign relatives than government experts.”

  “Maybe I am. I’ve had more experience than the arm chair squad.” He was angry again. “God knows there’s been a wave of unexplained suicides and accidents—columnists drowned in shallow pools, business men shot down on the street by some nonexistent holdup man, the pattern of Ab’s death repeated over and again—” He beckoned for the check. “I didn’t expect any help from you. I don’t know yet why I called you. Maybe to tell you that if I commit suicide, you can know it’s a phony even if you watch me write the farewell note. I’m going on with this. You’ll believe me if I wrap up the murderer in a confession and throw him in your lap.”

  Tobin said, “If you’re bucking foreign agents, you’re playing a dangerous game.”

  “I know it. My God, don’t you think I know it?” He had to play it alone; clearly there would be no help from New York police or from federal agencies. “It so happens I have to go on with it whether I like it or not.”

  “You could turn over the cups.”

  Kit looked at him out of steady eyes. “A man doesn’t sell out—not even to himself.”

  They parted on the curb. In the cab Content rested her cheek against Kit’s coat sleeve. “Ab didn’t commit suicide.”

  “No, darling. He didn’t.”

  “You’ll find out who did it.” She had faith in him.

  “Of course.” He wished he had as much faith in himself. He was let down as always after a bout with Tobin, let down and angered simultaneously. The Inspector of the New York Homicide Squad was perverse in his attempts to roll out unsurmountable obstacles. Yet Tobin had gone to Washington. He and the Washington chief had known that if it proved murder, the roots of it lay in New York. And they wouldn’t recognize the roots even when exposed.

  Content stirred. “Why did you tell Tobin that story about the cups?”

  “Why?”

  “You know you don’t have them. Prince Felix does.”

  “You’ve seen them?”

  “Yes. They’re very beautiful. Why did you tell Tobin that?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t want her to know the truth. If he couldn’t protect her against their ruthless depredations, it was to her advantage to know as little as possible. Taking her into his home was a danger in itself, linking her closely with him. If she knew nothing of the real purpose of his being hunted—actually, he realized, she didn’t even know he was hunted—she would be less endangered. And she would be safer under his eyes and those of the good Lotte than in that house where José entertained the deformed man. With Ab gone, it was up to him to take care of her.

  She was waiting for an answer. He sparred, “I have to be careful what I give out to the Inspector. He doesn’t trust me. You saw that.”

  She raised her child’s face. “You didn’t want him to know the truth. What does that group really want from you, Kit?”

  “Ask me no questions.”

  “I won’t if you’d rather not. But I don’t like to have you in danger.”

  He laughed long. “I wouldn’t know how to act out of it, sugar. When I get free of this mess, I’ll have to wangle a job with the Department of Justice to feel normal.”

  He helped her out of the cab. Pierre was waiting in the elevator
. His eye lay too wisely on Content. He guessed wrong.

  Elise must have taken her outing along with the hell and high water. Maybe she’d left for good after Tobin’s call. The note on the foyer table was in Lotte’s cramped hand, her phrasing. “M. Barby says you can call her any time.”

  Kit handed the paper to Content. He dialed.

  Barby’s voice was unmoved. “Kit—could you come down?”

  The sound of her made him forget doubts. “Right away.”

  Content’s eyebrows were not pleased. “She beckons?” She didn’t wait for him to speak. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Try to keep your eyes above water.” She headed for the bedroom corridor.

  He was irritated but he didn’t answer back. It was none of her business where he went or whom he saw. She wasn’t wise enough to temper her bitterness towards Barby. The seed of it lay in jealousy, nothing else. Barby was not the stench whereof corrupts the inward soule even if she had gone skiing. He had no right to believe Content’s accusation of her this afternoon. It didn’t agree with what he knew of Barby. She was untouchable. He’d be a fool to allow tears to blur his knowledge that Content was trouble-maker.

  Barby herself opened the door of the apartment. Her loveliness smote him with a new pang. She wasn’t his; when he didn’t return, she had promised herself to Ab. He was angry at his resentment of that. There was no reason why she shouldn’t. A Barby was too desirable to wait forever for a man.

  Her hair was piled on top of her head, the silvery black of her gown clung to her as if it were frescoed on. She looked sad but her skin was brightly tanned by winter sun and wind, and she hadn’t been crying. Her voice was throaty, “Kit, I’m glad you could come. I needed you. You know of Ab’s death?”

  “Yes.” He took her hands; he wanted to take her closer to him but he couldn’t. She had faded away from him in four years.

  She said, “Come.” He followed her fragrance to the library. He stopped, bristling. Otto Skaas was at ease by the fireplace.

  Kit nodded. He drew another chair to the fire. Why had she called him. He asked it, “Why did you call me?”