Mr. Moto Omnibus

by John P. Marquand

  “Well, well,” Jack Rhyce said, “congratulations. That’s a great school, isn’t it Ruth—Cal. Tech.?”

  “Yes, indeed it is,” Ruth Bogart said. “One of my classmates at Goucher married a very cute boy from Cal. Tech. who majored in physics. I can’t remember his name right now, but it will come to me in a minute.”

  “I was interested in what you were saying at the table,” the boy said, “because I have relatives in Japan. May I introduce myself? My name is Nichi Naguchi. They called me Nick at college.”

  “Well, well,” Jack Rhyce said. “This is a real pleasure, Nick. My name’s Jack Rhyce, and this is Miss Bogart.”

  “I do wish we had time for you to show us Chinatown,” Ruth Bogart said.

  It was hard to tell whether or not the meeting was offbeat. After all, people were more breezy and friendly on the West Coast than the East.

  “Well, don’t hold back on us, Nick,” Jack Rhyce said. “What was it you heard us say that caught your attention? Come on and tell us.”

  “Well, sir,” the young Japanese said, “might I ask if you and Miss Bogart are going to Japan? You were saying you hoped to hear Big Ben strike in Tokyo, over the BBC.”

  The tingling at the base of his skull grew more pronounced. Now that Big Ben had been mentioned, he could not disregard the coincidence.

  “Why certainly you can ask,” Jack Rhyce said. “We haven’t any secrets, Nick. Why sure, we’re flying out that way tomorrow morning. Miss Bogart and I happen to be working for an organization in which we both take great pride—the Asia Friendship League—and I certainly hope that some of the things we’re going to do may be of some assistance to your relatives there in Tokyo.”

  He watched for some revealing sign, however small, but the boy only looked reassured, and began to speak more eagerly.

  “Since you have been so kind as to tell me,” the boy said, “may I ask if you will not need a guide when you get to Tokyo? The Japanese language is difficult for Americans sometimes.” He was overeager and laughed nervously. It was the first time that his Cal. Tech. veneer was gone. “I know a very good guide. He is my uncle. His English is very good. He is also fond of Americans, is very educated, knows all about Japan, all sights—everything. He can answer all questions, because he knows everything about Japan.”

  Jack Rhyce listened, balancing every word, but he could catch no undertone.

  “Well, that’s quite a recommendation, that he knows everything,” he said, and he laughed before he finished. “Do you suppose he knows Big Ben?”

  It was dangerous, but now and then you had to play a card.

  There was nothing he could see in the boy’s face, except uncomprehension.

  “Big Ben?” the boy repeated.

  Jack Rhyce laughed again, very heartily indeed.

  “Didn’t you get it, Nick?” he said. “The clock that you heard us talking about, you know, the one that strikes.”

  He still could read nothing in the boy’s face.

  “Oh, yes,” the boy said, “I forgot. I am very sorry. If you would like, I can give you my uncle’s address. I can write it on a card.”

  “Why, sure, Nick,” Jack Rhyce said. “Jot it down and I’ll look him up if I should ever need a guide.”

  “Thank you,” the Japanese boy said. “Thank you very much.”

  “Not at all, Nick,” Jack Rhyce said. “The pleasure is all ours, and I’ll certainly give your uncle a buzz if I need him. Well, thanks, and so long.”

  “Good-by, sir,” the boy said, “and Good-by, Miss Bogart, and good luck, and a very happy trip.”

  They were alone, with their backs to Alcatraz. The wharf was more crowded now. No one among the parked cars or in the arcade seemed to take any interest in them, but it was safer to register an impression, in case there was anybody there who cared, and still to be very happy about what they were beginning to discover in each other.

  “Well,” he said, “that was quite a little human experience, wasn’t it?” He put the card carefully in his wallet. “Everybody has always told me that San Francisco is a friendly city.”

  “Nichi Naguchi,” she said. “They have funny names, don’t they? But he was sort of shy and sweet. It was cute of him, wasn’t it—thinking of his uncle? We should have asked him his address, so we could send him a picture card when we get to Tokyo. Oh, dear, that was stupid of me, not to think of it.”

  “It’s all right,” he told her. “I was just about to ask him myself, when I saw he had written his uncle’s name on one of his own cards. His address is there, and everything.”

  “That was sweet and sort of sensitive of him, I think. Don’t you?” she said. “Well, I’m glad we didn’t ask him, because it might have looked too inquisitive. I don’t like inquisitive people, do you?”

  “No,” he said. “They rub me the wrong way, somehow. This has been a lovely experience, getting to know you, Ruth.”

  “The same is true on my side, too,” she said. “The more I know you, the better I think I’m going to like you, Jack. Let’s stroll around and look at the fishing boats and things, before we go back to the hotel. Always get as much as you can out of any place you go to, has always been a motto of mine.”

  Undoubtedly she was as anxious to get back to the hotel as he, but it was never wise to hurry.

  The elevator boy who took them to the third floor only looked bored when Jack got out with her.

  “I’ll just see you to your door,” he said, “and see you’re not locked out or anything.”

  “It isn’t really necessary, Jack,” she said, “but it’s sweet of you to think of it.”

  When she took her room key from her handbag, he snatched it from her playfully, and there was even a merry, gentle little scuffle in the corridor, just in case anyone might be interested.

  “Now really, Jack,” she said, “now please try to behave.”

  When he turned the key in the door he was still laughing softly, and he approved of the way she covered him and watched the hall, and she kept the correct distance behind him when he entered the darkened room. The second the door was closed behind them he pointed to the closed bathroom door. She nodded, opened it, turned on the light, and pulled open the closet door afterwards.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “My God, I’m tired of being a Major Barbara!”

  “Just a minute,” he said gently, “just a minute before you get so frank.” He took a pencil from his pocket and offered it to her. “Would you mind writing a few words on the back of this envelope?”

  “Oh, so that’s it?” she said.

  “Yes, that’s it,” he answered, and his hand closed over her wrist. “I’ll take your handbag while you’re writing. It might get in your way.”

  They eyed each other for a moment.

  “You don’t miss any tricks, do you?” she said.

  “I try not to,” he answered. “Hurry, please.”

  “What do you want me to write?” she asked.

  “Anything, as long as you write it,” he told her. “Write ‘I’ll do my best to be a good co-operative girl if I go with you on this trip.’”

  There was no hesitation when she wrote, but she did not write the words that he suggested. Instead, when she handed him back the envelope he read: I don’t like people who have to be so careful, and as I said, it has been a boring evening.

  Her writing was the same as the Helena letter that was in his briefcase.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “if you think I’m disagreeable, but I had to make up my mind about you. Let’s check on the luggage now.”

  He pointed to her matched suitcases. They were lying one on top of the other, with a small envelope briefcase on top. She unzipped the briefcase while he sat on the edge of the bed watching her, aware for the first time that he was feeling tired. All of her gaucheness was gone. Even before she looked up and nodded, he knew that the baggage had been searched.

  “Good job?” he whispered.

  She nodded back, smiling, an
d held up both her thumbs.

  “It must have been a woman or a ribbon clerk,” she whispered. “They folded the nylons back beautifully.”

  “Briefcase contents?” he whispered.

  “All through everything,” she whispered. “They had it out all over the writing table.”

  “Careless of them,” he said.

  “Clever of me,” she whispered, “for being dainty and using lots of dusting powder. See where they brushed it off?”

  He looked over her shoulder at the glass top of the writing table.

  “Gloves,” he said. “They dusted with them before they put them on.”

  “Smart as a whip, aren’t you, Buster?” she said.

  “You bet,” he said, “right on the ball. What makes you call me Buster?”

  “The Chief,” she said. “He calls you that.”

  “Right,” he said. “Now—what’s the word?”

  “Gibson asked for both of us. Big Ben’s coming over. It’s definite, he’s from the States.”

  They both stopped and listened. Another guest was walking down the corridor with jaunty, heavy footsteps, and just as the steps passed, they heard a man’s voice singing softly:

  For every day is ladies day with me.

  I’m quite at their disposal all the while!

  The song was from The Red Mill—an old song, and slightly incongruous for that reason, but then the comedy had been revived recently. They were both silent until the steps and the voice died away.

  “Any identification?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Nothing new. The Chief still likes show business.”

  “Well,” he whispered, “things don’t look too bad for us, now they’ve gone through the bags.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I know, but what about that Jap?”

  “I know,” he said. “I’d like to get a check on him, but I think it’s wiser not to signal Washington. Don’t you?”

  They looked at each other, and nodded. From now on, any communication with the Bureau might ruin everything.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess that’s that. I wish I’d met you earlier before I took on this cover. I hate to be such a pratfall all day long.”

  “Oh, well,” she said, “it won’t be as bad as all that. Breakfast downstairs at 7:30, what? Good night, Buster.”

  “Good night,” he said, and he put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t worry. We’ll get through all right.”

  “Hell,” she said, “I’ve given up worrying long ago. Haven’t you noticed that?”

  4

  BY THE time he left Honolulu for Tokyo, Jack Rhyce was positive that he and Ruth Bogart were in the clear. It was inevitable, after a number of years’ experience, that one should develop intuition. There was a sense of malaise—similar, he sometimes thought, to what psychiatrists called ‘free guilt’—when you were being watched. You could not put your finger on any one thing, but finally you could learn to depend implicitly upon that feeling of imbalance. There had been none of that feeling in the airport at San Francisco, and none in Honolulu. When he showed Ruth Bogart the feather cloaks in the Bishop Museum, and the old mission house that had been transported in sections in ships around Cape Horn, he felt that he was exactly what he was supposed to be.

  When the pictures of the early missionaries gazed at him sternly, he was able to gaze right back, and the question hardly crossed his mind as to what the Chief would have said about the missionaries. He was exactly what he should have been, and so was Ruth Bogart. He could even forget that they were boringly obvious. He was even able to take a surfboard out at Waikiki, in a perfectly carefree manner. He had learned a little of the trick of it while he had been stationed at Honolulu, during the last war, and it all served as part of the cover. He could be as expert as possible because he was a muscular do-gooder, full of good will toward the world. He was beginning to experience that wonderful feeling of complete creative success that came with perfect cover. There was confidence in such a feeling, but never overconfidence, only a thorough understanding of the cover itself, and a conviction that it had finally blended with his own personality.

  On the afternoon when they boarded the plane for Tokyo, and began flying into the setting sun, nothing changed his mood, and he had always been highly sensitive to airports. The passengers on the plane were interesting, but not outstanding; a Hawaiian-Japanese couple, a Dutch businessman, two British businessmen, and then thirty members of a world tour group, all of whom could only have been exactly what they were. The project, as he learned from the world cruise director in the course of the trip, had been started by a travel agency which had founded an organization named the World Wide Club. Members of this organization, it seemed, paid their dues into a general account for several years, until at last the total sum had become large enough to pay a liberal down deposit on a round-the-world trip—and that was not all, either. During the years (as the director, who was a retired chemistry professor, told Jack Rhyce) in which the fund had been building up, there had been bi-weekly study groups, so that everybody by now knew quite a lot about the places to which they were going. Jack fell into the spirit of their trip at once, and told the cruise director that it was one of the greatest ideas he had ever heard of, and one that ought to spread to every city of the country.

  “You know,” he said, “the thought has just occurred to me, that we might incorporate this very travel idea into the organization which I happen to represent—the Asia Friendship League. One of our basic problems is to stimulate an interchange of travelers. Don’t you think it is a great idea, Ruth?”

  Of course she thought it was a great idea, and except for the Dutchman and the Englishmen, they all became a congenial group, flying across the Pacific at nineteen thousand feet. There were very few cocktails served, except to the Dutchman and the Englishmen, but still they began singing songs, and Jack Rhyce threw himself into the spirit of it, and he did have a good baritone. As far as he could remember later, they broke away from cover only once; it was Ruth Bogart’s fault, not his. When it had grown dark, and dinner was over, and the merriment had died down, he took the sayings of Buddha from his briefcase.

  “This fellow Buddha,” he said, “has quite a lot to say. Some of it’s a little difficult, due to his antiquity and his foreign way of life, but a lot of it fits right in with today. Would you like me to read you a little of it, Ruth?”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said, “and let me go to sleep.”

  “Why, of course,” he said, “it was very thoughtless of me, chatting along this way, but I’ve been stimulated by this travel group and everything. Shall I ring to get you a pillow, Ruth? I know it is a tiring trip, with all this change of time and the plane vibration.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said again, and on the whole he could not blame her. They were silent for half an hour.

  “Jack,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” he told her. “Everybody gets tired sometimes.”

  “Damn it, I’m not tired,” she said. “It isn’t weariness, it’s schizophrenia. When we set down at Wake, can’t we get away for twenty minutes and be ourselves?”

  “Why yes,” he said. “I think that would be a wonderful idea, but it will be dark at Wake—just before dawn.”

  “All right,” she said, “in the dark then. In fact, it would look better if we did. We’re supposed to be in love, aren’t we? At least the idea is for us to give that impression.”

  “Yes,” he said, “and you’ve been wonderful about it.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said, “and let me go to sleep.”

  She was still asleep hours later when the plane was letting down. He put his hand on her arm to awaken her, and she gave a start and looked around her for a moment, as though she did not know where she was or who she was. He knew exactly how she felt, because he had experienced the same confusion more than once himself. And this was dangerous, particularly on the beginning of a trip.


  “Wake,” he said, “in about thirty minutes.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ve got it now. I was having a bad dream, and I thought you were someone else.”

  “Just take it easy,” he told her. “There’s no reason for any bad dreams.”

  His guess about the time of arrival at Wake was approximately correct, because the announcement came over the loud speaker a few minutes later.

  They would be on the ground at Wake Island in half an hour. It would still be dark. There would be a change of crew, and an hour or two hours on the ground. Transportation would be furnished, so that passengers could go to the resthouse, which was only a short distance from the field, for early morning refreshment. He had not touched at Wake when he had been to Japan eight years ago, but had been on other islands like it—atolls that were pinpoints on lonely seas. Even in the dark, when he stepped out of the plane, he could almost swear that he had been on Wake before. The lights on the field, the activity around the hangars were exactly the same as on other islands, and there was also the same warm humidity, and the sticky smell of salt in the air. They had been given a leaflet describing Wake, and even a map of the island, but he really did not need it. There was the field with the familiar cluster of buildings around it, the tarred streets, the Nissen huts, the army shacks, and then the lagoon. There was no check-up on the passengers, and there was no reason at all why he and Ruth Bogart should not walk to the resthouse or anywhere on that small island.

  “God,” she said, “it’s lonely.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it’s lonely all right.” But he was surprised that she should be impressed by it, because nothing was more lonely than the existence of anyone who was in the business, and she must have guessed what he was thinking.

  “I mean, this is a different sort of loneliness,” she said. “I’m used to being lonely in the middle of everything, but this is being lonely in the middle of nowhere.”

  Except for the field, the personnel at Wake was still asleep. They walked alone up a road illuminated only by dim electric lights, with ugly shadows of buildings on either side.