Odor of Violets

by Baynard Kendrick

  Duncan Maclain lived in a world of sound. He knew each note in the scale of speech; how to make it ring deep with compassion and equally well how to make it pump blood to the face of a listener under the coruscating stab of jibe and irony.

  He threw back his head, opened his mouth, and suddenly began to laugh. It came from his heart, mirthful and unfeigned, and struck against the confining walls with rolling peals of jollity. Immoderately and long he continued, shaking his pinioned body in the chair.

  The hand which had torn the adhesive loose flashed out and struck him cruelly. Blood stained his lips and a single drop slid quietly down his chin.

  “What are you laughing about, you fool?” asked the voice of Number 1.

  “I’m laughing about nothing,” said Duncan Maclain. “I’m laughing at you. In my peculiar scale of values, I possess two things which you know nothing about. They go by the names of perspicacity and integrity. The perspicacity tells me that neither I nor the woman you’re holding will ever leave here alive no matter what I say; the integrity would silence me more effectively than a hundred yards of adhesive no matter how the woman or I might die. Add them both together, my friend, and you have the cause for my laughter. I’m blind and helpless, but I’m an American officer who lost his sight on active service and you’re a renegade plotting the downfall of the country you’re living in. It amuses me to know that you’re the fool and not I.”

  “A blind man’s ears are sensitive, Captain Maclain. Certain steps have been taken to prevent this country you speak about so staunchly from manufacturing war supplies to sell to enemies of mine. Those steps will be felt from coast to coast, joining the bells on Christmas Day. Nothing you can do, or anyone else, can interfere. You can, however, save yourself the maddened screams of a tortured woman pounding against your receptive ears. Hours of them, Captain Maclain. Hours of pleading and entreaty from a woman unwittingly involved in this by you. When you meet death in the end, the thought of those screams will be your torture. Do you know of any more difficult way to die?”

  “One,” said Duncan Maclain. “Giving satisfaction to a fool.”

  The chair behind the table moved back and the pleasant voice said, “Perhaps we’d better give you a few hours to think it over, Captain Maclain.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  1

  LOUIS MADOC, his long neck drawn turtle-like through the collar of his cardigan jacket, stood against the sheltering wall of the new addition and watched the men file by. It was Christmas Eve and occasionally one man more friendly than the rest would wave or call a greeting; but for the most part they passed him silently or deliberately turned away. The surliness of his fellow workers was lost on Louis entirely. He resented the noisy groups which formed to pass on ribald pleasantries and give advice about not eating too much dinner on the following day.

  He was glad when they trickled on into the parking space, found their cars, and drove off. Only a handful of men was left when Louis forsook the shelter of the wall. He started toward the gate. A short distance up the road toward Glastonbury he had sighted the truck he wanted so much to see.

  The watchman on duty hailed it. Louis quickened his steps and was just in time to prevent an altercation between the watchman and the driver.

  He broke it up by showing his long teeth and saying, “That’s plumbing equipment. What are you stopping for? I’ve been waiting for it all day.”

  “This is a hell of a time to be bringing it in.” The watchman glared from Louis to the driver and back to Louis again. “This shebang’s supposed to be shut down. Tomorrow’s Christmas Day.”

  “And we go to work again the day after.” Louis hopped on the running board beside the driver and said, “Take it through.”

  The watchman looked after them until the truck stopped by the new addition and disgorged the driver and helper. The watchman shrugged and went back into the warmth of his little house. It was cold outside, anyway.

  Louis waited while the two men unloaded a short squat box, handling it gingerly.

  “Bring it in here,” he ordered, and clicked on a flashlight to dispel inside shadows grown long with the fading of the day.

  The two men followed him through skeleton walls down the length of an uncompleted hall.

  “Here.” Louis pointed to a spot with his flashlight. “This’ll do. Any more?”

  “This is plenty,” said the driver.

  Louis guided them out and stood in the doorway until he heard the motor roar. When the truck had gone, he made his way back to the building without using the light. Near the box, he stood silently, turning his head from left to right and back again. Not quite satisfied, he knelt on the floor, put his ear against one end, and gave a wolfish grin.

  It was dark when he reached the other side of the parking lot and opened the door to turn on the lights of his car.

  A hand reached out and fastened itself firmly to the throat of his cardigan jacket.

  “I’ll help you in,” said a voice.

  The arm went back into the sedan with Madoc attached to one end of it. He had a sensation of falling through space as his shins scraped along the running board, and his feet kicked vainly in protest. Not more than five seconds elapsed before Louis found himself tucked neatly behind the driver’s wheel.

  “You drive, Hawkface,” said the voice.

  The dashlight went on and shed rays on the camel-hair coat.

  “That uncomfortable lump in your side is a Luger 7.65. I’d hate to have to shoot it because this coat set me back sixty-nine fifty and at a hundred feet this Luger will penetrate eighteen inches of pine. Now drive on like a good lad because some friends of mine will be here in a few minutes to take your little box away.”

  Louis stepped on the starter with a foot that seemed suddenly affected with frostbite. “Who the devil are you?”

  “I’m the Spirit of ‘76,” said Arnold Cameron, “but you can just call me Toots and I’ll call you Hawkface, and we won’t get in each other’s way. When you get outside the gate, turn toward Hartford—and don’t dillydally.”

  “This is kidnaping.” Madoc’s bony frame began to shake with a chill of sheer fury. “You can’t get away with it. I’ll signal the first policeman I see.”

  “All you need to do,” said Cameron, “is raise your right hand and wiggle your fingers in the rear-view mirror. There’s a state trooper named King riding in the back of your car.”

  “You can’t arrest me without a warrant.”

  “Who said I was arresting you?” Cameron demanded bitingly. “I wouldn’t waste my time.”

  “What do you think you’re going to do?” Madoc’s voice wasn’t quite so brave as before.

  “I’m going to torture you,” said Cameron. Something terribly sincere in his tone caused Madoc to swerve the car.

  “Keep on the right side of the white line,” Cameron told him, “or the Sergeant will run you in. I said I was going to torture you and I mean it, too.”

  “You can’t scare me,” Madoc told him, but the force of the words was lost on a quavering note which crept in on the end.

  “Scare you?” Cameron repeated, surprised. “I’m not going to scare you, Hawkface, I just don’t like you. I’m going to feed you to rats and throw what’s left of you away.”

  2

  It was cold and extremely dreary in the top-floor room of the closed-up, deserted hotel. Wallpaper which had long ago served its purpose was beginning to scale in tiny curls from the wall. Louis Madoc, stripped down to shirt, socks, and shorts, lay on the pancake mattress and stared at the flinty, clean-lined face of Sergeant King. Arnold Cameron had just finished a neat job of trussing with sash cord cut from the long closed windows. Madoc had taken it unresistingly, gazing with feverish, birdlike eyes into the steady muzzle of the Sergeant’s gun.

  Cameron took off his camel-hair coat and hunted for a dust-free place to hang it up. Failing to find one, he went over the top of the bureau with a handkerchief and deposited his treasured garment there. T
hat done, he sat down and began to rock himself slowly back and forth in a squeaky rocking chair.

  “It would be quicker,” said Sergeant King, “to shoot him and be done with it. I hate these stinkin’ foreigners. He chopped off the head of a girl.”

  “I never killed anybody in my life,” Madoc whimpered protestingly.

  “Shut up,” said Cameron, “or I’ll stick my finger in your eye.”

  He rocked back and forth a dozen times more, each separate squeak stabbing into Madoc’s nerves with the pain of a dentist’s drill.

  “I’d match you,” said Cameron, still rocking, “to see who’d shoot him first. In that way one of us could start and we could riddle him with bullets. Maybe we’ll do that after he tells us what they’ve done with Duncan Maclain.”

  Madoc’s wrinkled lids slid down as though the light of the single bulb in the room had become too strong. He raised them quickly as Cameron left the chair.

  A suitcase carried upstairs by the Sergeant sat just inside the door. Cameron picked it up and held it in his hand for a moment, weighing it appraisingly.

  “It’s funny as hell about you fellows,” he stated flatly, looking down at Madoc. “You figure everything out on earth except that two can play at a game. You and your gang of saboteurs have kidnaped a blind man who’ll never talk if you cut him to pieces. I’m interested to see if our side isn’t better than yours. I’m giving you a chance to tell me right now what they’ve done with Duncan Maclain.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.” Madoc was drooling slightly on the mattress.

  “Now that you’ve got that lie out of your system,” said Cameron, “I can get on with my work without having to start all over again.”

  He lifted the suitcase suddenly and set it down on the bed close to Madoc’s ear.

  “Listen.” The glint of merriment usually present had left his eyes, leaving them poisonously gray and clear. Leaning over, he rapped with his knuckles on the side of the suitcase, to be answered with scurrying and a tiny squeak sharp as the slice of a machete against the silence of the room.

  Madoc’s lips worked convulsively and his beak-nosed face grew ugly with pallor.

  “Those rats in there are hungry.” Cameron took the suitcase from the bed and put it on the floor. “The Sergeant kindly got them for me from the hospital laboratory where they’re used for experimental purposes.”

  He turned toward King. “It’s a very pleasant custom, Sergeant, handed down from the last world war. I’ve heard that the Sikhs and Gurkas, who were noted for their fortitude, could stand as many as three, only to become raving maniacs at number four.”

  He swung back unexpectedly on Madoc and said, “Weak men talk and so will you.”

  Reaching down, he picked the trussed-up man from the bed as though he weighed nothing at all, strode across the room to the closet, opened the door, and dumped Madoc’s struggling form down on the floor.

  “We’ll see how long you can stand it, Hawkface. One at a time I’m taking those rats from the suitcase and tossing them in there with you.”

  He slammed the closet door. Sergeant King mopped his forehead and said, “Holy Saint Cecilia! If this is police work, I think I’ll go back to farming.”

  “This isn’t police work,” Cameron told him. “It’s a bloody war.”

  He unstrapped the lid of the suitcase, clicked the latch, and walked to the closet door; then came back and seated himself in the squeaky chair.

  The Sergeant looked at his watch and said, “It’s quarter past seven on Christmas Eve.”

  A sudden scream, prolonged and terrifying, started a tingling at the roots of the Sergeant’s hair. It rose again and died away.

  “Hark!” said Cameron. “The herald angels sing.”

  He got up and walked to the closet door. “Where is Duncan Maclain?”

  “He’s in the basement of a deserted house on Sunset Hill in Glastonbury,” Madoc poured out sobbingly from behind the closet door.

  “Who’s there with him?” asked Cameron.

  “Four men. Oh God, they’ll murder me!”

  The scream rose up again and died off lingeringly.

  “Damn it all,” said Cameron. “He’s fainted.”

  He opened the closet door, lifted Madoc’s unconscious body, and laid it on the bed with the head hung over the edge. He returned to the closet, groped around for a minute, and picked up the tiny furry animal from one corner. Holding it in his hand, he came back into the room and said: —

  “If you’d had the time to get rats, he probably would have given us a certified list of every spy in the United States. It’s funny what a bit of talk, a lot of darkness, and a guinea pig can do.”

  3

  Heavy-footed men had been coming and going for a long time, moving crates out of the cellar. Duncan Maclain played a game by following their approaching footsteps and guessing which box they would take out next. The men worked silently, indicating the effort of their labors by occasional grunts and groans.

  Lying in a corner on the damp floor, the Captain traced their burden-laden steps and reached the conclusion that the boxes were being taken outside through a cellar door. Big plans were apparently in the process of completion. Several times he heard the start of a powerful motor and the rumble of wheels as heavy trucks came to life and moved off. It was doubtful that such dangerous contraband would be assembled in a place of safety and summarily whisked away unless a culmination was near.

  His hands had been loosened long enough for him to eat. Afterward the handcuffs were restored, but his lips were left untaped. He read that courtesy as a preliminary step to letting him talk with the girl.

  He was not surprised when they brought her in and laid her down beside him after the last of the boxes was taken away.

  Her whisper was tremulous and startlingly close to his ear when she asked, “Captain Maclain, can you hear?”

  “Perfectly, Cheli,” he answered gently. “This unforgivable situation we’re in is entirely due to me.”

  After he spoke she breathed erratically as though finding it difficult to know just what to say. At last she asked him, “Have you any idea where we are?”

  “No,” said Maclain, “except that we’re in a house near the top of some small hill.”

  “Hill?” she repeated leadenly. “They’ve kept me blindfolded. I haven’t been able to see.”

  “Nor have I, Cheli, but I have heard trucks approaching in second gear, and the ease with which, once loaded, they roll away.”

  Twice she began to speak and faltered. The Captain knew what was in her mind. It was better to refrain from prompting her, preferable to let her face the task alone, find the difficult words she must inevitably choose to tell him of cool-voiced threats made against her. He could only wait and listen when finally she sobbed out her story of carefully calculated torment and coercion. Cheli Scott had become part of their plans, and Duncan Maclain was powerless to do anything but remain inert and receive like dripping acid on his delicate eardrums every soul-scarifying word she had to say.

  “Captain—”

  “Yes, Cheli.” His voice held rich, full assurance, never betraying the fact that for the moment he had almost ceased to live inside of himself, that his blood had almost ceased to flow under heartbeats, so tense had become his concentration. It was one of those moments when Spud would have told him, “Dunc, you’ve ceased to be a man and become an unemotional machine.”

  “—Those men in there, they’re going to—”

  “Listen, my dear,” said Duncan Maclain. “There are some things in life greater than the human body; some things even greater than the working of imagination, which is the acme of all fear. Love of humanity is one, and another is faith in an ideal. You’ve been placed on a pedestal which the gods might envy. The lives and happiness of a nation and the preservation of its ideals are in your hands, dependent on your courage and you.”

  She suddenly began to cry. “They’re going to put a band around my head and t
ighten it until I die. I haven’t your strength, Captain Maclain. They said that you’re a man without feeling, told me that I could never break you down.”

  “So you’d have me talk?” asked Duncan Maclain, and the glass-edged question silenced the sobbing girl. “You value yourself too highly, Cheli; yourself and me. To save you I’d have to sack a city, throw eight million people at a stroke into a pit of pestilence.”

  He stopped, and with him the noise in the basement window to which he had been listening so intently stopped too.

  “I’m afraid, Captain.” Her words were scarcely coherent. “They murdered Bella so brutally. I can’t forget it. They said if torturing me didn’t make you talk, they’d start on you.”

  The Captain felt that she was stifling an imminent scream.

  “They murdered her,” she went on, with hysteria taking command. “They’ll have no pity on a girl. They’ll torture me until I’m dead, and then they’ll start on you!”

  “They won’t,” said Duncan Maclain.

  Across the cellar the bolt slid back in the door and the Captain heard the methodical tramp of three pairs of feet coming for him and the girl.

  A Luger 7.65 coiled back and spat four times with the speed of a striking rattler. Somewhere upstairs the Captain’s ears heard the crash of glass and the splintered fall of a door.

  Above his head from the cellar window a voice said, “One miss, one in the middle of the forehead, and two in the eye.”

  “You’re a good shot, Mr. Cameron,” said Duncan Maclain.

  CHAPTER XXV

  1

  THE POLICE car with Sergeant King at the wheel worked its way rapidly through streets festooned with Christmas lights overhead and sped out toward West Hartford up Asylum Street hill. In the back, wrapped up warmly, sat Cheli Scott and Duncan Maclain. Sticking close to the rear, nosing occasional late merrymakers out of the way with a quick imperative blast of the klaxon, came Arnold Cameron’s speedy convertible coupé.