by Frances
“Hilda Macklin was wearing a white dress,” Pam said, sitting upright on her chair, speaking with the air of one who speaks of important things. “A long white dress.” She waited, her eyes bright with expectancy.
Bill looked at Dorian, at Jerry. Jerry nodded, confirming what Pam had said, clearly sharing her belief that what she said had meaning. And Dorian waited too.
“I came in late,” Bill reminded them.
“Last night,” Pam said. “It wasn’t barebacked, but otherwise—Don’t you see? It was almost dark on the deck and a woman in white—” She stopped, as one who did not wish to labor a point.
Bill’s first reaction was to reject out of hand, since it was absurd to suppose that, even in semi-darkness, anyone else could be mistaken for Dorian. Or, more precisely, and as Pam was suggesting, Dorian for Hilda Macklin.
“It was quite dark,” Pam North said, helping him, recognizing his need for help. “And—they move alike. A little.” Bill raised his eyebrows. “Oh,” Pam said, “but they do. I remember thinking that yesterday or some time. That Hilda moved almost like Dorian. I told Jerry—didn’t I, Jerry?”
“Yes,” Jerry said.
“Only that,” Pam said. “In the light—I don’t say they’re at all alike. But in the darkness, or almost—seeing somebody in a white dress, moving in a certain way. Don’t you see?”
It was still hard to see. But it was not so hard as it had been at first. Bill’s face showed that.
“It makes more sense,” Pam said. “Because, who would want to hurt Dorian?”
Dorian said, “Oh come now.” She said that she could have enemies as well as anybody, if she put her mind to it. Pam said, “I didn’t mean—” and realized herself caught out, and responded to Dorian’s smile. “All the same,” she said, “it does make more sense.”
Bill nodded slowly, and said, “Right.” What sense it made was not, to be sure, much clearer. If someone—certainly a very careless someone—had tried to kill Dorian thinking her Hilda Macklin things became, if not clarified, at least not entirely incoherent.
“Look!” Dorian said, and pointed, and there was Morro Castle, looking precisely like its pictures. The Carib Queen, moving very slowly now, nosed up the channel toward Havana Bay.
The public-address system clicked, and politely asked for attention. It then requested that all who wished to participate in the American Express Company’s guided tour of Havana, in private limousines, make their arrangements at the desk in the grand entrance. It paused. It said, “We repeat,” and did.
To see a large and unfamiliar city in which the language is strange as the streets are strange, a guided tour is best, although of course faintly repugnant. “I think,” Dorian said, “that we ought to swallow our pride,” and to that Pam agreed, although pointing out that it would probably entail a great many churches. “To stand in the middle of and look at,” she said, amplifying. In spite of this, they sent Jerry forward to arrange for three. Bill would, somehow, overtake them, when he could. They went below to freshen up for Havana. The ship, going ever slower, crept past other piers toward her own—crept past a strange large ship full of freight cars (outbound for Florida) and past low merchant ships, and among bright, darting launches. Now and then, for reasons not apparent to landsmen, the Carib Queen hooted, conversationally. At a little after eleven, she tied up. Fifteen minutes later, after what seemed a good deal of fussing, the guard at the head of the gangplank stepped aside and the passengers of the Carib Queen—or such of them as did not, thriftily, remain to lunch aboard—surged into Havana. Bill and Dorian were just in time to surge with the others. They had, Bill explained, waited for Dorian to finish a sketch.
Havana was a long pier, with a passageway between stacked crates and bales. Havana was a street, no more grimy, and no less, than all streets which abut on piers. Havana was a line of cars—two of which were limousines, the rest taxis—and three seemingly excited men wearing caps banded with the words “American Express.” The men talked very rapidly in what was often English, and apportioned tourists among cars.
They saw Hilda Macklin, then—saw her just as she was whisked into a car in which there were already three other people. Bill tried, without success, to identify the others; thought none of them was Mrs. Macklin, but could not be sure. Almost before Hilda Macklin was seated in the car, its horn blasted and it leaped away, turning violently into a narrow street. “Señors, señoras,” a guide urged, and compressed Pam and Jerry North and Dorian into a cab. He reached out for Bill Weigand. Bill shook his head, and went to a waiting police car. The guide shrugged, and said, “Señor?” to Captain J. R. Folsom, who wore an orange-colored shirt, and no jacket and looked very hot indeed. Captain Folsom was propelled into the car with the Norths and Dorian, the door was slammed, the car squawked angrily, shivered and leaped like a cat with its tail stepped on. Moving, the car continued to squawk, as if its tail still hurt.
It darted through narrow streets, frowned down upon by massive buildings. It turned when least expected, its horn protesting angrily. It darted furiously between other cars at intersections; when, as happened infrequently, it was out-squawked, it stood on its fore-wheels and Pam and Dorian, in the back seat, were catapulted into Jerry and Mr. Folsom, in the jump seats. “Uff!” Mr. Folsom said. The cab plunged into the openness of a square, dashed head-on to a curb and stopped, as if it had balked a jump. They unscrambled themselves and climbed out. Folsom said, “Phew!” for all of them, and the small, dark and engaging man at the wheel removed his hand from the horn button, turned to smile brilliantly and said, “Name of Mike.”
“What?” Pam said.
“Sí,” he said. “Mike. The cathedral. You find me. Name of Mike.”
Cars plummeted into the square, on one side of which the cathedral loomed. From dark buildings, from the shelter of colonnades, children popped, to stand with round dark eyes and expressions of enthrallment—and to suggest the purchase of oddments. The square filled with cabs and the tourists of the Carib Queen poured out of them, and looked about dazedly, and counted their arms and legs. A small, anxious man under an American Express cap emerged from a limousine, and said, in a voice too big for him, “Ladies and Gentlemen, if you will please try to stay together, yes?”
“I’m sure,” Pam said to Dorian and Jerry, “that we’re doing our best.”
The cathedral—“Columbus Cathedral”—is massive and of stone, with belltowers at either side; it is aged and massive and not, save for its dignity of age, particularly beautiful. They were led into it, and a good deal of the dignity vanished—it is not dim, but lighted. Rather, as Pam North noted—but in a voice low enough for reverence—like a Christmas tree. Electric lights festooned it, outlining doorways, ringing the altar, winking dimly far above. The guide gathered them about; he spoke admiringly of the woodwork, of murals, of sacred paintings. He reminded them that the remains of Christopher Columbus had rested in the cathedral for more than a hundred years. He moved them on.
There is much to see in “Columbus Cathedral” and the American Express Company is diligent. The guide led his followers from place to place, through the nave and the transept, into and out of chapels. The followers diminished; men went outside for cigarettes and neglected to return; women began to complain of their feet. Cathedrals are very hard on feet.
Dorian—who likes pictures of many kinds—proved the most diligent of the three, and Jerry, polite, went with her, on the fringe of the lessening group. Pam promised to wait for them, where she could sit down, and admitted that she was not really good at cathedrals. She sat and waited, and the guide’s voice grew fainter in the distance. Folsom passed her, on his way toward a door, and was taking out a cigarette package as he passed. The idea of a cigarette was suddenly very appealing to Pam North and she stood up, reached into her bag. She, also, began to drift toward a door.
She passed a chapel, through which, earlier, the guide and his followers had moved. It was dim; instead of electric lights, candles burned
in it. And, in it, Hilda Macklin and Jules Barron stood, close together, talking, their voices low. They were drawn a little to one side, were only just visible in the semi-darkness. It was, Pam decided, a surreptitious meeting if she ever came on one. And it was very interesting. She drew back, into a window embrasure, and gave up thought of cigarettes. After all, she thought, we’re official this time, or almost. This sudden close association of purported strangers—there was something intimate about the way Hilda and Barron stood, the way they talked—was worthy of attention.
She had come in near the end of the conference, if it was a conference. She had hardly withdrawn into the shadow before Hilda and Barron came out of the chapel. They immediately separated. Barron went, apparently, to rejoin the party—a tardy tourist, which he did not much resemble; it was difficult to believe him intensely interested in sacred murals. Hilda, thin and somehow brittle in gray linen suit, went toward an exit, and went quickly. She went, Pam thought, like somebody up to something. She carried a black bag, held tight under an arm.
It was not Pam North’s habit to linger when duty calls, or even when it whispers. This had got her into trouble before now. She went after Miss Hilda Macklin, who was surely up to something—and up to it with Jules Barron who, if he had been trying to strike up an acquaintance with Mrs. Macklin’s thin daughter, had certainly, and abruptly, succeeded. Pam took out a cigarette and did her best to look like a woman who was simply dying for one.
She was in time to see Hilda Macklin briskly crossing the cobbled square. She was in time to cross it briskly after her. Hilda went down a narrow street, with the air of one who knows where she is going, and Pam went after her, rather wishing—now that she was committed—that she knew where she was going and, perhaps, why. She also wished it were cooler; she had not, until then, realized quite how hot it was in Havana. Hilda turned, suddenly, into a passageway.
The buildings of old Havana are massive, and a little dour. They are given to colonnades. Their walls are thick; passageways vanish mysteriously into them.
Following such passages, one may enter a labyrinth—or may come, unexpectedly, on a hidden, shaded patio. The early residents of Havana wisely sought shelter from Havana’s almost tropical sun; many of their survivors are somewhat dazed by such glassy buildings as the American Embassy, planned—like the United Nations building it somewhat resembles—to let sun in.
It was cooler in the passageway, once Pam had followed Hilda into it. The walls on either side were close enough to touch with arms outstretched. There were dark openings in the walls, like the openings of caves. In one she passed—following now the click of heels ahead—a brazier burned and several people, including two children, were clustered around it. They did not pay any attention to Pam North.
She came out into a square, walled by buildings. It did not appear that any streets led out of the square, only other passageways. She was in time to see Hilda Macklin going into one, and went after her. It appeared more than ever that Hilda knew where she was going, and this became increasingly important to Pam, who no longer had the faintest idea where she was. Hilda was now not only quarry; she was guide as well. Pam heard Hilda’s heels clicking, echoing in the passageway of stone—and heard the staccato clicking of her own heels. So much did the sound echo that Pam had an uneasy feeling that she might, in turn, be being followed. Which was absurd. She hoped.
She came out of the dark tunnel into a narrow street, which at once curved away to the right. The character of the surroundings had somewhat changed; now there were dimly lighted, rather secretive, shops at intervals, where before the buildings seemed to house only cluttered dwellings—and too many people; so many that they could be felt all around, as if the soft breathing of so many were turned palpable. Here, too, in the narrow street, the sun slanted its way. Then it was hot again.
Pam went quickly through the little street, and felt, now, that people were watching her—that North Americans, dressed for touring, wearing clicking heels, were aliens and intruders, and might, as such, be resented. But there was no sign of resentment in the faces or manners of the few Havanese she saw. They looked at her curiously, but without enmity.
Once she had turned the corner of the street, she could see some distance ahead—and could not see Hilda Macklin. The street ended in a building—with colonnades, with ironwork—and had the appearance of a cul-de-sac. Small, somehow secret, shops opened off it—into any of which Hilda might have gone. Pam stopped, to listen, and did not hear Hilda’s footsteps, but nevertheless went on, since she had no notion how to go back. She reached the end of the street, and there was a passage through the building. She could not see the end of the passage, but she could not see where else Hilda could easily have gone—unless into one of the shops. Pam went into it. It would, surely, come out somewhere.
She was in it, and found there was a jog in it, and went around the jog. It was not really dark in the passageway—if one looked up, there was the sky; the very blue sky. But it felt dark and now, listening, Pam felt, more than before, and uneasily, that there was the sound of steps behind her. The echo again, she thought, and stopped. And the sound of footsteps behind her did not stop with hers—not for more than a second. Then the sound stopped.
It was a heavier sound—not the sound of a woman’s clicking leather heels. It was that before it stopped—before someone waited behind her, for her to go on.
She went on. She went on very fast, and found herself breathing rapidly, nervously. Anything could happen in this dark passageway—anything that was not good. She found that she was almost running. She—
There was an archway on her right and Pam—pursued, now, not pursuer—turned into it. There was a door, and she pushed at the door, and it opened into a large room. In the middle of the room there was an alligator hanging by its tail.
10
The National Police of Cuba proved as anxious to cooperate as, by telephone, they had promised to be. They were also efficient. Half an hour after the police car—which moved even more rapidly than the Havana taxicabs—had deposited Captain William Weigand at the massive, ancient and ornate building which is police headquarters, electronics as well as policemen were at his call. A signature sped through nothingness toward Worcester and New York; pictures leaped across oceans and radio messages went along, explaining what was wanted. And Bill Weigand, at a desk supplied, read a message from Sergeant Stein—a message which reiterated and amplified. “Confirming our telephone conversations,” Stein might have prefaced, but did not. The police of Los Angeles, as requested, had been asked to trace a Mrs. Winifred Ferris, if possible. Bill doubted it would be. The president of the Worcester Box Company, of which J. R. Folsom was treasurer, was one Abner Baldwin, who had not yet proved available.
The waiting game again, as it was so often, Bill decided, and drummed on the borrowed desk with his finger tips. His opposite number sat at a larger desk.
“It does not go well?” he enquired. Bill said that it did not go particularly well. A telephone rang; there was a conversation in Spanish.
“Miss Macklin,” the opposite number said, “has not yet visited Carrillo et Cie.”
Where else might she go? The sub-inspector of the Cuban National Police considered. He shrugged. There were many places, if she knew of them. Some as reputable as Carrillo et Cie. Some—again he shrugged. It was improbable that a young North American woman would know of those, unless—There was another shrug. In all large cities, as the captain knew, there were these others. In New York, undoubtedly. Places where one might sell precious stones without too much enquiry—without any enquiry—as to the source from which they came. But, as he understood it, Miss Hilda Macklin would neither know of such dealers, nor have reason to learn of them. The jewels she might wish to sell were her mother’s, were they not?
“Presumably,” Bill said. “None of it is too clear, inspector.”
“A block on a certain street,” the sub-inspector said, and named the street. “There we keep a watch
but—” He shrugged again. If Captain Weigand wished, men could be sent, with photographs—with this so admirable drawing of Miss Macklin—to the more likely places? In the usual course, such a procedure might come to nothing. But, with murder involved—and to be mentioned? Few like even a remote association with murder.
It would, Bill thought, be worth trying. They waited. Photographs, electronics through with them, came back to the office. They were sent away again, this time to be rephotographed. They waited and while they waited drank coffee, which was black and bitter, and delicious. In his, the sub-inspector used much sugar. The copied sketch, the copied photographs, came back. Bill put them in an envelope. He put Stein’s message in an envelope.
He might, Bill said, as well see Havana, since he was in it—since seeing Havana had, when all this was only to be a pleasure cruise, been one of the main points. It would be a privilege to assist Captain Weigand to see their beautiful city; they had special tourist policemen whose English was excellent, whose knowledge of the city complete. It—
Bill was appreciative, realized there would be no other way one half so good. But, he was with a party, including in it, his wife. “The artist,” the sub-inspector said, with appreciation. No doubt, the American Express tours had an established itinerary? If Bill could be guided to some likely point where—
He stopped, since a uniformed policeman came in, with urgency in his manner. He spoke, in Spanish and—it appeared—in surprise, to the sub-inspector, who then spoke to Bill Weigand, in English, but also in some surprise. There was a man who wished to see the captain—wished, it appeared, somewhat urgently to see the captain. A Mr. Folsom?