by David Garth
It was more impossible than ever to understand why Carney should have come here. The place was bona fide, quiet, established, and it certainly had antiques for sale.
Back in her room at the hotel she reviewed the situation. She could return to the shop and haggle some more over that print and later in the afternoon she was on the point of doing so when her phone rang.
“Miss Britton,” came a low voice over the wire. “Winters.”
“Who?” she asked in surprise.
He repeated the name. “Of the Department of Justice,” he added.
She remembered then—the stocky youngish man who had interviewed her at her home about the death of John Tresh. “Oh,” she said. “Yes, of course—”
He asked to see her as soon as possible down in the lounge. She arrived five minutes later and in a secluded corner of the lounge sat down with him.
“How did you know that I was here?” she asked.
“Your father seemed to be concerned about you,” explained Winters. “He asked us to keep an eye on you.”
Berkeley reflected that was a strange thing for her father to do. He usually had unbounded confidence in her.
“Miss Britton,” Winters said quietly, “do you think it’s worth it?”
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“Forgive me for saying so, but you are an inexperienced amateur and that means a risk of your own safety. It also might interfere with our departmental activities.”
She waved aside the point he had made of her personal safety. But upon the other she requested details.
He shrugged. “If you should betray an interest there might be an alertness aroused that would make our task doubly difficult. We’re investigating this Buckthorne campaign. Leave it to us, Miss Britton.”
His attitude stung her, as though she could not have possibly learned anything of value and was merely a detriment to the work of the Department of Justice.
“I judge then that you are in New Orleans solely for my sake,” she said crisply.
“It might be, Miss Britton,” he conceded.
“You know, of course, that Carney, the political boss, is here to confer with a Nazi contact named Vokels.”
That surprised him. It was evident immediately.
“You are sure of that?” he said. He fell silent, regarding her with that same uncertain expression, a mixture of astonishment and deep interest. “How do you happen to know that. Miss Britton?” he asked suddenly.
Berkeley told him quickly and when she had finished, he remained silent.
“It’s a lead,” she said swiftly. “And it might be a very important one. Why should Carney come here to confer with a man named Vokels at the antique shop of Octave’s? Why?”
Winters mashed out his cigarette deliberately. “You certainly seem to have hold of something, Miss Britton,” he said.
“Of course, I have!” she exclaimed. “Give the loose thread of this political machine angle a yank and perhaps a lot will unravel.”
Winters smiled briefly. “This Octave may be worth an inspection,” he agreed. “Show me where it is, Miss Britton.”
The afternoon was wearing late as they crossed Canal Street and walked down the Rue Royale into the midst of the French quarter. In sight of that two-story red brick building with iron balcony she put a hand on his arm and called his attention to the faded wooden sign—“Octave.”
“You’ve been in there already?” said Winters. “Well, let’s try it again, Miss Britton. See if you can hold his attention for a few minutes.”
There was nobody in the shop except Octave. He recognized Berkeley and once again came forward to greet her with that courteous manner of his. And once again he entered in a pleasant discussion with her on the merit and value of the old print. Winters wandered off around the shop while they were thus engaged, and it was not until Octave murmured a word of excuse and walked to the back of the shop that she abruptly discovered that Winters had actually disappeared. In fact, as Octave did not return she discovered that both of them had apparently disappeared.
She stood irresolute, wondering, alone in the old shop. But just then the door to the courtyard in the rear opened and she saw Winters beckon quickly.
“Come on out here and take a look,” he said in a low voice.
She passed through the door into the courtyard and stood there with him, looking about her eagerly. This had once been beautiful—this fine old courtyard deep in the Vieux Carré. A wide stone fountain was set in the midst of a cracked and shallow basin and, even though the stone paving of the courtyard was cracked and weather-beaten, remains of what must have been inlaid mosaics were easily discernible. A gallery supported by slender carved columns circled the courtyard completely and an outside circular staircase led to the second story balcony of the antique shop.
She glimpsed all that in the space of a few seconds and in those same few seconds she also felt an eerie sense of ghostliness. It might have been because of the musty presence of all those possessions of long dead owners back in the shop, but out here beneath that patch of fading sky and hemmed in by the blank walls of the surrounding houses she felt a peculiar sensation of isolation and fear. She had been afraid before in her life, but never with this unreasoning cold fear that came from nowhere, as though the chill stone of the courtyard had melted and crept up through the very soles of her feet.
A thought leaped into her mind and hammered at her consciousness—where was that Octave? Why had he so strangely disappeared? Why was everything so silent?
She started to speak and felt Winters’ fingers close over her wrist.
“Quiet!” he said tensely. She was surprised to find him looking past her shoulder and with a revolver in his hand. And then as she turned swiftly she saw it, too, a figure standing at the courtyard door of the antique shop. A tall man with lean rugged face and piercing dark eyes. Her breath caught in her throat—a tall man—that hard straight look—Luce! She recognized him with a shock that sent her pulse racing madly. Winters recognized him also.
“Aren’t you Luce?” he asked peremptorily. “I’ve seen you before. Sure, you’re Luce.”
“That’s right,” said Robert Luce. He regarded Berkeley. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
She gave a strangled little laugh. “I might ask the same thing.”
Winters had released her wrist and stepped forward. He faced Luce directly. “I’m glad to find you, Luce,” he sad tersely. “The law wants you. I’m placing you under arrest.” Luce stood there, his right hand in his coat pocket. “Really,” he said. “Why?”
“Illegal entry into the United States,” said Winters. “That will do to start. Raise your hands.”
Robert Luce moved swiftly. His right hand snapped out of his pocket with a flat little automatic and that courtyard in a split second crackled with electricity.
Berkeley flung the back of her hand across her mouth to stifle a scream. He had to be stopped, that tall hard man who had risen to the occasion for her in time past. He must not tangle with this department man.
“Winters!” she cried. “Don’t shoot.” She sprang between them, flung herself headlong at Luce. “He’s the United States Government, Luce!” she said desperately. “You must not—”
Her voice stopped short as Luce swept her aside violently with an outflung arm. She was sent reeling to one side and in the same instant her ears were filled with the deadly reverberation of two revolvers speaking as one.
CHAPTER 17
It had happened so fast that everything seemed jumbled into one blurred and racking moment. Everything—the violent sweep of Luce’s arm that hurled her to one side, the deadly twin report of the revolvers, the stark realization that this had actually happened, all in the space of a long breath.
It was impossible that there had not been damage done. Luce and Winters had fired at each other as though they had been dueling across a table, shooting it out pointblank from the hip and pulling trigger practically on the same flic
k of the second with just a narrow stretch of courtyard between them.
Yet, as Berkeley steadied herself and everything was again before her in clear sharp focus, she saw that both men were on their feet. Luce’s right arm was pressed close to his side and his tall lean form was turned completely sideways to Winters, as if he had shot from the natural stance of a duelist, twisting his body to present the least possible target. Winters was gripping his right wrist, his face twisted with pain, and even in that moment the revolver slipped from his nerveless fingers to thud on the stone paving of the courtyard.
Robert Luce moved instantly. He took a few quick steps and kicked the fallen revolver over toward the girl.
“Pick it up,” he said tersely. “And be careful with it.”
She bent, almost mechanically, to do as he asked and straightened up just in time to see him bring the butt of his own revolver down on Winters’ head with an impact that swept her with horror. Winters went down as though his bone structure had melted. He sprawled senseless, a limp and shapeless figure on the paving. And even as when she had seen him boot a desperate refugee off the Lisbon train, once again her every instinct recoiled before the streak of brutality in this whipcord specimen with the duelist’s eyes.
Luce paused a moment, pressing his right arm close to his side as though he might have wrenched himself and the gleam of perspiration was suddenly discernible on his forehead. Then quickly he motioned at the girl.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said in a flat, restrained voice.
She dropped to one knee beside Winters. “This is a Department of Justice man you’ve slugged,” she said tensely. “What makes you think you can get away with it?”
Luce looked down at her. Those dark blue eyes were leveled upon him with a glinting directness and there was something about the poised way she knelt there that seemed to impart to her lithe, slender form the impression of a crouching feline. She had claws, too, the lady, for the hand that rested on the ground beside the prostrate form held the revolver he had kicked over toward her.
“Justice man!” he repeated. “He? Why, you babe in the woods, he’s a Nazi stooge!”
Winters? The sheer stunning incredulity of his statement nearly took her breath away.
“I suspected him from the moment I first saw him at your house,” Luce said swiftly. “God Almighty, I haven’t time to waste in explanations. Neither have you. I put him out for both our sakes. Put your chips on me and come on—now!”
The very tenseness in his voice struck home. It was impossible to believe that this man, Winters, in whom she had confided, to whom she had entrusted herself—and yet she found herself intuitively caught by the urgency of Luce’s whole voice and manner. He bent and took her wrist.
“This is no place to fool around,” he said crisply. And because she could believe that she allowed him to pull her along with him, blindly following the only thread that seemed lo present itself in the mazes of the situation into which she had been plunged.
The antique shop was quiet, and darkening with the descending shadows of the afternoon. The musty smell of aged belongings, the sense of antiquity and silence and dusk, blended to form a tense and unnerving syncopation to the muted background of mystery and menace. The report of the revolvers, although muffled by the hemming walls of the courtyard mint have been heard out on the street to some extent;—and where was Octave?
They found the door of the shop locked. Octave must have covered quickly. Berkeley about to tug on the knob felt Luce touch her arm and saw him nod slightly toward a group of people collecting out there on the street apparently not decided just where the shots had come from.
“There’s an office in the back,” said Luce. “It must have a door—rats always have two exits.”
He started to lead the way, but halted momentarily to lean against a counter and again press his hand to his side.
“You’re hurt!” she exclaimed involuntarily.
“Nothing,” he said impatiently. “Little nick in the side.”
He straightened up then and struck off without apparent trouble. At the rear of the long narrow shop two steps led down to the office door. Luce’s hand came out of his pocket with his revolver. He stood back from the door, kicked it open, and then glided in swiftly.
The office was empty and showed signs of having been vacated in a hurry. The door to a wardrobe cabinet swung open and a chair at the roller top desk was shoved drunkenly back. Octave must have left precipitately and it seemed evident that he had gone out through the front door, for the small rear door of the office was bolted from the inside.
Luce closed the door into the shop behind them and leaned back against it a moment, his eyes racing about Octave’s office. Its walls were literally covered with fading relics—prints, pictures, handbills, Civil War election posters and proclamations. On a long work table were several articles undergoing restoration and at one side of the office stood a small rosewood spinet with a tall fragile vase of flowers, an old silver candelabra, and a leather music roll.
Berkeley looked questioningly at Robert Luce.
“Where is he?” she asked.
Luce spoke deliberately. “Probably getting help for Winters. That little gunplay in the courtyard caught him by surprise.”
“How do you happen to be here?” she demanded.
Clearly there was a definite leash on this girl’s confidence. She had held on to that revolver and there was a watchfulness in her striking eyes, a crispness in her voice.
Luce smiled slightly. “This place is a red-hot Nazi confidential post office and listening post. It’s the headquarters of the agents for the big shakedown fund of Nazi sympathizers and supporters in this country, to say nothing of the unfortunates who have relations in the Reich. How either of us happen to be here isn’t important just now. The trick is to get clear before we have a flying squad on our necks.”
Once again his glance traveled conclusively about the office of Octave’s of New Orleans. “There must be something here,” he said tensely. “There must be—Octave did not have time to cover up entirely.”
He paused a moment. “Let’s take a quick look,” he muttered. He tried the desk, yanked at the drawers, picked up a handful of papers off a spike and ruffed through them swiftly. Berkeley rested an elbow on the spinet and watched him a few moments, then glanced down at the spinet with its graceful vase and old silver candelabra and a black leather music toll. Stamped in letters of faded gold on the music roll was a name, G. V. Kels. Her eyes wandered on to Luce. He was at the wardrobe cabinet now.
The girl frowned and looked down again at the music roll on the spinet. G. V. Kels. An ordinary leather music roll with a small strap at each end and a clasp in the center—but it was the name stamped on it that seemed familiar. Kels.
Luce whirled from the cabinet and listened. Berkeley had not heard anything, but he seemed to have picked up a sound out there in the shop.
“Out!” he shot at her in a low voice. “Out—this way.”
He had slid back the bolt to the rear door and pushed it open. There was an eerie sense of pressure on them, as if something or somebody was abroad in the shop beyond the office door, an indefinable presence of danger. She crossed to the door as he waited, and then stopped inexplicably.
A persistent note was hammering in her mind, something that stirred sharply in her memory, even while every second that passed increased the weight of tenseness and uncertainty.
Kels! G. V. Kels—V. Kels—Vokels! No wonder that name, Kels, had sounded familiar and had started a subconscious bell ringing that pealed forth suddenly into the name of Carney’s Nazi contact. A leather music roll being held for Vokels in this confidential post office in New Orleans—instinctively, impulsively, she turned back to Octave’s office.
“You can’t go back there!” It was Luce’s urgent, low voice. He tried to catch her arm, but she tore herself free and dashed back to the rosewood spinet. She snatched up the music roll and then fled. Luce was wait
ing for her, holding the door open. They stepped outside and closed the door behind them.
In the indistinct and failing daylight they saw that they were in what appeared to be a narrow brick alley.
They forged straight ahead a short distance into the apparent maze of this deep buried section of the Vieux Carré, all sense of direction gone, although it seemed likely that they were parallel with the street that intersected the one upon which Octave’s shop stood. Suddenly, on their left, they saw a grilled-iron gate slightly ajar on a small garden. Without hesitation they abandoned that straightaway alley and swerved through the gate. Luce stumbled in the process and she remembered then that he was hurt and caught his arm as he seemed to sway slightly. The sound of running feet in the alley behind them served ominous notice that they had ducked out of it just in time.
“God!” Luce murmured through clenched teeth. “What a moment to get dizzy—”
Berkeley cast about her quickly. This little patch of garden could be just as dangerous as that alley as far as being trapped was concerned. But then to her relief she spied what seemed to be an outlet—a plain wooden door in the blank wall that adjoined the little lawn—and together they weaved toward it, pressed down the heavy iron latch and, swinging the door open, pushed on through. And instantly they knew that they had burst into one of the little old French churches of the Vieux Carré.
Up ahead of them to their left a small altar was lighted by candles and in the cool, musty dimness they could see the rows of pews with here and there a thick stone pillar. Tall candles cast their flickering flames and, sprinkled sparsely among the pews, a few figures kneeling in prayer listened to the deep muted grandeur of organ practice that swelled through the little church.
Luce felt his way into a pew and sank down close to a big pillar. In its sheltering shadow he rested his head against it and breathed slowly and deeply.
“That’s the way it goes,” he said laconically. “You can get just so far after being kissed by a bullet.”
“Let me see if I can help,” she offered, and gently swept aside his coat.