Mr. Moto Omnibus

by John P. Marquand

  “Turn on the water in the tub,” he whispered.

  “Oh, Jack,” she called as she turned the water on, “hasn’t it been a wonderful day, darling?”

  It was not the right adjective to describe it, and besides, the day was only just beginning. She moved close to him and rested her head on his shoulder, and he was glad to put his arms around her. He had seldom felt so grateful for companionship.

  “My God,” she said, “it’s really started now.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it’s moving, what do you know about Skirov?”

  “Skirov . . . ” she repeated vaguely.

  He could not blame her much when her whole mind must have been on the present.

  “Yes,” he said. “Skirov, the Russian who’s running the Communist show here—the masterminder whom our boy makes contact with. The Chief briefed you on him, didn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “I’m sorry, Jack. I was thinking about the Jap and the big goon down in the bar and everything. Yes, Skirov. I saw him in Vienna once—Cossack descent, I think.”

  “You saw him?” Jack Rhyce said. “Then you can tell me if I have his description straight. Middle forties, five feet five, one hundred twelve, thin, agile, delicate hands and feet, Mongoloid features.”

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s him.”

  Jack Rhyce lowered his voice, not because he was afraid of being overheard, but because he dreaded that his idea might not be right.

  “All right,” he said, “what about this Moto? Is he Skirov playing a Jap?”

  He was conscious of his anxiety while he waited for her reaction. It had been one of those swift inspirations which he had learned to suspect, but if he were right, they might be able to end the show that evening, because they would have worked out the whole scheme of the apparatus. It would be Gibson’s job to make the ultimate decision regarding Skirov, but from their point of view, the mission would be accomplished. The prospect of completing a mission always had its alluring side; he had never before been so desperately anxious to end one, not so much because of himself as because of her.

  She was still considering his question. Her forehead was wrinkled and she gazed straight ahead of her. He was aware both of her nearness and her beauty, which annoyed him because his mind should have been concentrated on abstractions.

  Finally she looked up at him, not enthusiastically, but with respect.

  “I guess I was wrong in thinking that big, handsome boys like you are dumb,” she said. “I like your thought. I wish I could buy it all.”

  He had already developed the thought further, while she was speaking.

  “Maybe it’s more reasonable than it sounds at first,” he said. “Take it this way.” He began to speak in a whisper, in spite of the running water. “They looked us over in San Francisco. They’ve got us down as innocent bystanders. They think we’re absolutely pure.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I check with that. I think we’re clear to date. I had that feeling in the bar.”

  “Right,” he said, and his enthusiasm rose. “Then what could be better than using us as a cover? Wouldn’t you do it if you were on their side of the fence? Skirov and Big Ben want to meet. They know we’re greenhorns. What’s better than having Skirov as a Japanese chauffeur? That explains his being in the room—just to make a final check.” He stopped and laughed quietly.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “The two contacts,” he said. “Us doing the same thing—coming up here for a meeting. It’s like a convention in Atlantic City, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said, but she did not look amused. “It’s funny if true. The trouble is, it’s too good to be true. Life isn’t made that way. It’s too damned easy, darling.”

  Her criticism confirmed his own inner dread. She was right, that life never ran that way, and nothing ever came easy in the business.

  “Besides, Jack,” she said, “he simply isn’t Skirov.”

  “You don’t know Japs as well as I do,” he answered. “This one’s like something on the stage.”

  “I’ve got eyes too, dear,” she said. “Perhaps he’s trying to hide his rank or education, but I know he isn’t Skirov.”

  “Well, if he isn’t,” Jack Rhyce asked, “who is he?”

  She shook her head slowly, and her expression reminded him of the Whittier’s poem about the schoolhouse.

  “It’s too bad—because it fits—but he just isn’t,” she said. “He’s in the business, all right; I can spot that as well as you can—but he isn’t Moscow-trained. You know he isn’t, darling. You know how that Moscow school sticks out all over them. You can spot them a mile away, as easily as you can a German Volkswagen. Skirov is a Moscow boy. This one just isn’t.”

  Jack Rhyce sighed.

  “All right,” he said. “But I still want Bill Gibson’s reaction. Since you can spot them—what about Big Ben? Was he on the Moscow squad?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I don’t agree,” he said. “But what makes you think so?”

  “You’d have noticed it in the bar,” she said, “if you hadn’t been concentrating on the dialogue, darling. That Paul Robeson, Old Man River manner, that lift-that-bale, we’ll-all-land-in-jail manner. It’s late Moscow. It’s still being taught there by their prewar American imports. They must have rather a quaint American section.”

  “I’ve got to watch him some more,” Jack said. “He doesn’t look much like it to me. He looks as American as all get-out.”

  He wanted to go on and tell her about his reconstruction of Big Ben’s college days, but it would have to wait until later.

  “Of course he’s as American as all get-out,” she said. “A lot of very American Americans have gone to Moscow. Jack Reed went and he’s in the Red Square now, if they haven’t moved him. Now unzip my dress, will you? I’m going to have that bath, but I’ll leave the door open, if you have any more ideas.”

  He had a number of ideas as he sat in an easy chair near the window and listened to her splashing in the tub, but he had learned long ago that it was folly to spread ideas around. No one should ever know more than necessary in the business; the less you knew the less you could tell if they caught you. It occurred to him that he should not even have told her his idea about Skirov. His having done so went to show that he was talking too much, and besides he might be obliged to revise all his thinking after his meeting with Bill Gibson. Bill would have the whole story straight, while he and Ruth Bogart were still only on the fringes of it. Nevertheless, he was already getting his general shape and structure so clearly that a question of policy was beginning to arise. Should the apparatus be smashed, or should it be left alone in the hope of locating Skirov? But Bill Gibson, not he, would make the ultimate decision. The main thing was to get the picture straight.

  He wished that he did not have to see Bill Gibson that night, now that the dangers of the meeting had measurably increased with Big Ben on the scene. However, the importance of an immediate meeting had increased correspondingly, but now the contact must be made more carefully than ever. The room was growing dark. He rose and switched on the light that stood on the small table separating the twin beds.

  “Jack,” she called, “are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  “I thought you were going to tell me some new ideas.”

  “You know that’s bad technique, to tell too much,” he said; “and you know the reason, Ruth.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I know.”

  She was out of the bathroom, brushing her hair by the mirror with quick, brisk, almost savage strokes. She was wearing an oldish cotton print robe.

  “I’ll buy you a kimono tomorrow,” he said. “You’d look well in a kimono, green and blue.”

  “Thanks,” she said, “I’m sorry about the thing I have on. I didn’t know there was going to be a bedroom scene. I’ve started your bath for you.”

  “Thanks,” he said. He began taking things
from his suitcase, putting his brushes and toilet articles on the tall dresser, laying his blue suit carefully over the foot of the bed and his dark black shoes with their composition soles on the floor beneath it. Both he and she were neat as pins, as you were bound to be in the business.

  “I was thinking about tonight,” he said.

  “Were you?” she said. “Well, you aren’t the only one.”

  They looked at each other thoughtfully for a second.

  “You know you’re right about that goon,” he said. “From the way he looked at you I think maybe you could take Big Ben—if you keep on encouraging him.”

  “Yes, I know I can,” she answered.

  “But at the same time it makes me mad,” he said. “But maybe it’s a good thing for tonight.”

  “Why for tonight?” she asked.

  He hesitated before he answered, and she must have guessed what was running through his mind. Nevertheless, it was part of the business.

  “I want Ben’s mind to be off things for about an hour. You do it and I’ll see Gibson,” he said. “It’s necessary to box that boy off. He mustn’t worry where I am, and only be glad I’m not where he is. It’s the best way of handling things, don’t you think?”

  Her face grew stiff and wooden. She did not answer.

  “What is it, Ruth?” he asked. He spoke more gently. “Are you afraid of him?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said, “but I hated that mental undressing way he looked at me, and you’d have to be mighty convincing with a man like that.”

  It was the business, it was what she was there for, and they both knew it, but still he felt his face redden.

  “I didn’t mean anything serious,” he said. “Just a walk downtown or a ride up the mountain in his car.”

  The set expression left her face and she smiled.

  “It’s nice to know you’re human occasionally,” she said. “I’m glad the proposition doesn’t appeal to you personally, but I don’t think it would be a good one, anyway. It’s too damned obvious, Jack, and he’s a very smart man.”

  “Yes, he’s smart,” Jack said.

  “It’s just the thing we’d be expected to do,” she said. “Don’t you see it would tell him right away that there was something wrong with us? You’ve got to be jealous and difficult. It would look better if I simply let him know he was attractive to me—and made him want to get me away from you.”

  She moved closer to him and put her hands on his shoulders.

  “Now listen, Ruth,” he said, “I’m ashamed I made that proposition, but it was business, Ruth.”

  “Never mind the proposition, Jack,” she told him, her grip on his shoulders tightening. “Just get it through your head that I want to stay with you tonight. I don’t want to see you get a shiv in your back.”

  “If anybody’s watching,” he said, “it’s going to be harder for two to get up to that cottage than one.”

  “Jack,” she said, and she moved closer to him, “please—all right, I’m frightened. I’m scared as hell. All right, he’s scared me, on your account more than mine, Jack. I promise I won’t let you down.”

  He bent over and kissed her. Even as he did so he knew that under any circumstances he was being very foolish.

  “All right,” he said, “but put on a dark dress, and let’s go down to dinner.”

  “Darling,” she said again, “I won’t let you down. You’d be surprised. I’m wonderful in the dark.”

  Jack Rhyce had often thought that any ballroom anywhere in the world was interchangeable with any other. There was every reason why this should be so, since the ballroom and the dances derived from it were a part of Western civilization that should have interested Spengler. If you thought of it in purely historical terms, the decline of the West—and he believed that in many ways the West was declining—could be interestingly illustrated by ballrooms and modern music. The time and place that night made thoughts like those more natural than usual because the ballroom of the hotel was an incongruity, like its native orchestra. The jazz and the people had no evolutionary place in the Japanese starlit night. They were only there as part of the flotsam on the wave of history. At almost any time the European dancers might be whisked away, but the dance convention would be left behind because of its social, sensual and selective attributes. In fact, with the leisure of the machine age, how could people get on without dancing? They are no longer physically tired, and the imponderables of life are heavier, and with them grows the need to escape reality.

  A great many couples were escaping in their different ways on the hotel dance floor at shortly before ten o’clock that night. They whirled with fancy steps that they had learned on other dance floors. No one noticed the elaborate Japanese paper decorations on the high ceiling. They were all following the uninspired rhythms of the Japanese orchestra, which did its best, in costume and manner, to follow the American tradition. The music was mediocre, and most of it dated, but everyone who danced lost part of his or her individuality in the pervading sound. The girls, both European and Japanese, were pretty. The men seemed to find it harder to surrender themselves to the pleasures of the evening. Their faces, as they danced looked less forgetful and more careworn than their partners’. Tall windows on both sides of the room opened directly on the hotel grounds so that the dancing was almost in the open air, but even so the orchestra sounded surprisingly loud. Its members, though small men, were eager, conscientious and vigorous.

  She was a light and beautiful dancer, much better than he, but they were both of them good enough, in that rather pedestrian company, to be disturbingly outstanding. Their steps had a professional exactness, and they both looked well—she in her dark green and he in his conservatively cut blue suit. He was aware that they were attracting approving attention, which was something he could have dispensed with that night.

  “Don’t do anything fancy,” he told her. “Just dance in a mediocre way. You’re too good-looking as it is.”

  “That’s what I thought about you when I saw you first,” she said. “You’re too good-looking for the business. You look like the answer to a maiden’s prayer in this crowd.”

  “Do you see him anywhere?” he asked.

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “I wish he were here so we could keep an eye on him,” he said. “We’ve been dancing about half an hour, haven’t we?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Don’t you like it?”

  “I would under other circumstances,” he told her, “but Bill’s going to get nervous pretty soon. I wonder where he is.”

  “Bill?” she asked.

  “No, no,” he said. “The Big Boy. I gathered he was going to the dance tonight from the way he was talking in the bar.”

  He felt her shiver, and she shook her head.

  “I wish you’d get him off your mind,” she said, “or at least look as though you were having a good time so people won’t wonder what we’re going to do when we go outside. Hold me closer. Don’t forget, we’re supposed to be in love.”

  It was another half hour before he saw Big Ben. He had stepped in from the grounds outside. Instead of his Aloha shirt and khaki trousers, he wore a charcoal flannel suit, black shoes and a dark tie. He appeared very young to Jack Rhyce in that formal attire with his unruly sandy hair, his heavy eyebrows; only his eyes gave his age away. Eyes and hands were something that nobody ever could disguise.

  “Good,” Jack said. “There he is, coming in from outside.”

  He felt her shiver again.

  “Is he looking for us?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think so.”

  “If he cuts in,” she said, “cut back soon. Please, Jack.”

  “All right,” he said, “but don’t discourage him. It won’t hurt to have him fall for you.”

  Big Ben smiled pleasantly while his glance roved over the dancers. Jack Rhyce noticed that he pulled his coat straight, although it had not been disarranged. Then Big Ben took a handkerc
hief and passed it lightly over his forehead, though he had not been dancing, and then made a gesture with his hands as though he were ridding them of imaginary dust.

  “He sees us now,” she said. “He’s coming over.”

  “All right,” Jack Rhyce said, “and when he cuts in, smile.”

  Big Ben was moving toward them through the dancers, a head taller than most of the men. A second later he slapped Jack Rhyce on the shoulder. It was a friendly, good-natured slap.

  “Hello, Oberlin,” he said.

  “Why, hello,” Jack Rhyce answered, “Alabama Baptist U.”

  Big Ben’s laugh was infectious.

  “Your guessing cap’s on crooked, boy,” he said. “Not Alabama, Mississippi.”

  “Oh, come now,” Jack Rhyce said, “your accent isn’t thick enough. Let’s make it Carolina.”

  “Okay,” Big Ben said. “Carolina Baptist. And now may I relieve you of your lovely burden, Oberlin, just for a little while?”

  “You mean you want to dance with my girl?” Jack Rhyce asked him. “All right, but just remember—only for a little while.”

  “Oh, now,” Ruth Bogart said, “don’t pretend to act so jealous, Jack. I’d love to dance with Ben just as long as he wants.” She sighed, giving Big Ben another of her dazzling smiles. “Maybe I need a change . . . ”

  Jack Rhyce walked to an open doorway and watched them. Like many large men, Big Ben danced very well, even to the nervous jiggling beat of the orchestra.

  “Hold me closer,” she had said. “Don’t forget that we are supposed to be in love.”

  You had to be able to estimate degrees of physical attraction, and to observe and capitalize on the onslaughts of desire, if you wanted to be successful in the business. It was a sordid matter, standing there watching Ruth Bogart and the big man dancing. He was ashamed of playing a part in that ugly scene, but it was business. Seeing them dance was like watching the merging of two different worlds, a world of grace, gentility and refinement with another of ruthless, dynamic force. It occurred to him that Big Ben might never before have had the experience of dancing with anyone like Ruth Bogart. she had never looked more delicate or more a perfect product of gentle upbringing than when Big Ben held her in his arms. He saw her lips move in some smiling remark. He saw Big Ben answer, and he did not care to guess what they had said.