by David Garth
The old church breathed a sense of seclusion and reverence. But the sudden breath the girl drew was that of shock. Luce’s whole side seemed blood-stained. He must have kept going on the ragged edge of sheer driving will.
She whipped off her silken scarf and with slender strong hands tore it into strips, the sound obliterated in the deep organ roll. She ripped the blood-stained shirt away from the wound, balled her own fresh handkerchief against his side, worked deftly with the silken strips in a makeshift first-aid job.
Luce grinned faintly. “I guess you’ve saved my life,” he said. “Thank you very much.”
The organ had stopped and in the deep quiet that ensued his voice was hushed. Berkeley tied a bandage strip, her attention fixed on her task.
“I want to know about Winters,” she said quietly. “You say he is a Nazi stooge. How did you know?”
He was silent, as if he was listening intently, and then as they both heard the sound of quick soft footsteps in the aisle he caught her arm.
“Kneel!” he whispered.
She dropped forward with him, bowing her head against the pew ahead, her heart accelerating as those footsteps passed on up toward the altar and then disappeared in silence. They sat back again. Luce looked at the purposeful girl still awaiting his answer.
“If you’ll remember he showed up the very morning after you had been struck down by that drug. That was most fortuitous.” His voice was low and measured. “His excuse was a few routine questions about the death of a man named Tresh in Valleron—questions that could have been asked a lot easier at the airport instead of letting the passengers scatter to the four corners of the country.”
He paused a moment, resting his hand against his side in that mechanical gesture that bespoke pain.
“Somehow he didn’t ring true with me,” he went on. “And I tossed a little trap into the conversation. You may remember I brought up the investigation of the Cordicio Bureau in Spain. Our friend, Winters, said he knew all about the Cordicio Bureau. I knew then he was a phony. I made up that Cordicio Bureau out of my own head.”
“But my father—” Berkeley began impulsively.
“You and your father,” said Luce casually, “were in an emotional state where you were so glad to see a Department of Justice man that you both accepted him directly. That’s a certain kind of psychology Winters undoubtedly counted on and he got by with fake credentials. But, me,” he said, nodding, “I suspect everybody. I ring every coin I meet. There was lead to Winters. And when I tangled with him in Octave’s courtyard just now I knew that he was not only a fake, but a Nazi—he knew his way too well around that hangout.” That brief mirthless smile flitted across his mouth. “The only trouble was that he did not know I was on to him. If he could have put me under his fake arrest both of us would have been at his mercy.”
He was silent, then, leaning back against the pillar, conserving his strength. Berkeley stared at him incredulously. But, good heavens, if that was true, then all the time that she had so comfortably believed the Department of Justice was tirelessly working to unravel a lead to the strange thing called the Ivory Tiger they had, instead, still been in total ignorance. And she had been in deadly personal danger right along—ever since she left Valleron—those dangerous secret forces striking at her information twice; first with an attack on her life and then bottling up all she knew by getting her to confide in a fake agent.
The thought shook her deeply. If she believed this strange, hard, capable man, then she had been in danger of her life standing guilelessly in that courtyard, having told Winters all she knew, having proved a fatal case against herself. Why, Winters’ sudden appearance in New Orleans could only mean that he had been on her track.
“How,” she asked in a hushed voice, “did you happen to be on hand?”
Luce raised one shoulder in a slight shrug. “I’ve been watching that place. I expected somebody. I was waiting for him. And then you showed up. Good Lord! You!” He shook his head slowly, wondering. “I even trailed you into the shop and became absorbed in a counter of old pistols while you discussed some print with Octave.”
The girl remembered the tall man that she had noticed bending over a counter at one side of the shadowy shop.
“And then when you showed up again and with Winters, of all people, I had to drop everything and follow you up to get a line on this.”
“It seems,” said Berkeley slowly, “that once again I’m under great obligations to you.”
Luce looked at her. She was sitting close to him, absently rubbing her hands with a tiny remnant of her scarf, looking slender and pensive, with the soft flickering light of a nearby taper touching her patrician face almost ethereally.
He frowned. “Obligations?” he said shortly. “Not at all. There’s a Providence that looks after the innocent and I was the chosen channel.”
The curtness of his mood stung her. Always you ran up against that streak of sheer granite hardness in him. He could sit there now, hurt, weakened, after outthinking and outfighting a deadly masquerader with cool courage, and then leave only an impression of a lean-faced pirate with a blood-stained bandage watching a victim, whose life he had just saved, walk the plank.
“You don’t put much of a premium on gallantry, do you?” she said. “I’m sorry. I do.”
“Gallantry is a trait that can be used against you in a brass-knuckle fight,” said Luce. “I know that too well.”
He was still regarding her with that keen, straight glance. “What do you know, Berkeley? Why were you in Winters’ hair? Why did you take that thing?” He nodded toward the leather music roll that she held lodged firmly under one arm.
“I took it on a hunch,” she said leisurely. “And as for telling you what I know—suppose we trade a little there after that wound of yours is attended properly.”
“All right, Berkeley,” he said. “Let’s leave this refuge. But where to go?” he frowned. “I’m not in what you might call fighting trim.”
“I know a little French lace-maker here,” she said. “She’s done work for my mother and her home is a good place to heave-to while you’re looked after.”
“A lace-maker!” said Luce, and grinned. “Well, so be it.” She helped him with a steadying hand on his arm once or twice as they made their way to the vestibule. He waited while she commandeered a passing taxi with an expert, sharp whistle. Darkness had descended over the Vieux Carré.
The dimly lighted doorways of world famous French cafes glowed across the narrow streets of the Old Quarter as the taxi wriggled its way back toward broad, modern Canal. The Vieux Carré with its hidden courtyards and antique shops and galleries—New Orleans of the days of the pirate, LaFitte, and Jackson’s fighting frontier veterans waiting for a great British army, and the brilliant Creole society of the capital of New France—the French Quarter dropping behind them.
CHAPTER 18
Madame Manet’s home was in the residential section of New Orleans, a small house on a quiet side-street bordered with ancient palms and an occasional hoary old oak from whose branches strands of Spanish moss clung with airy embrace.
The little French lace-maker, herself, combined the gracious hospitality of the courtly city with a truly warm-hearted Gallic sympathy. She not only welcomed Berkeley with delight, but accepted Robert Luce along with her and promptly rushed off to telephone for a doctor.
Berkeley waited in the small garden in the rear of the house while the doctor was making his examination. Out here, the glow of the lights of New Orleans could be seen against the black velvet sky like a spray of golden dust that rivaled the natural effulgence of the night itself.
It did her good to be out here alone, relaxed, for a little while. The echoes of that gun fight recurred to her ears from time to time and the shock of Winters’ masquerade gave her a shaky feeling when she thought about it. As she reviewed Winters in her mind she could see clearly how logical it was for whoever had attacked her life to follow up with something like that—some
body on hand immediately to learn what had happened and, if she had survived, to ascertain just what she knew and cork up her information tightly.
“You don’t need to concern yourself any further with the matter, Miss Britton. We’ll take care of it from here on in.” Yes, Winters had carried out his part well.
But the deadly precision and calculation of it made her clench her hands so tightly that her nails dug into her palms. The fact that her information had been bottled up had saved her from another attack on her life probably. She had been sold a bill of goods and rendered harmless. But as soon as she had begun to show dangerous activity her life had been in pawn again.
She swept a hand across her eyes as if to blot out the thoughts that stole in on the clear, balmy beauty of the night and then as she opened her eyes she saw Luce coming slowly into the little garden from the house.
He wore a clean fresh shirt, evidently pressed upon him by Madame Manet’s son, and with his thick dark hair crisply combed, he presented a trim refreshed appearance.
He reported briefly on the doctor’s findings and then sat down on a small marble bench, clasped his fingers together, and regarded her directly as she relaxed in a garden chair.
“This is a good place to get straightened out, Berkeley,” he said. “Will you tell me what you were doing at Octaves? Whiling away the time,” he asked delicately, “getting a divorce?”
“I was on my way west,” she said. “I would not have you think for a moment that I’ve delayed it from choice. There were—well, pressing elements involved.”
“Of course,” he said pleasantly. “I don’t doubt it. What might those pressing elements be?”
“First, I would like to know something, myself. You say you were waiting for a man? An enemy of the United States?”
“I don’t believe the United States has a worse one,” said Luce deliberately.
“Do you remember that night in Horta when you warned me to be glad that I never knew how close something had passed me by? Pull that good life around me, you advised. What did you mean by that?”
Her questions stabbed out like the fingering rays from the searchlight of her mind.
“You have quite a memory, haven’t you?” he commented. “Yes, I remember that. It was an impulsive thing to say. Yet, as I looked at you that night in Horta I could visualize what your home was like, comfortable, beautiful, and what your life was like, full of friends and admiration and protection—like a million other American girls. And all the time you were traveling on the same plane with a man who had a terrible destiny to fulfill in America, a shrewd, ruthless, and dangerous man.”
“You knew that?” she repeated. “Yet you let that man slip free?”
“I did not know who it was. I did not even know definitely that he was on the Clipper. I had a guess formulated as to whom it might be. And I was watching Octave’s because if he had shown up there I would have known my guess was right. I was positive that he would show up at Octave’s. That is the one place in the United States where he could obtain ready Nazi cash in a large amount fast—and I happened to know he needed money.”
“But how could you know all that?” she said wondering.
He looked up, his eyes narrowing imperceptibly.
“We’re getting into irrelevancies now,” he said abruptly. “How I know is not important. What is important above everything else is love of country and it’s the hardest thing in the world to keep above everything else.”
She demurred at that.
“You don’t think so?” he said. “Well, you just had an excellent proof of it. If I’d put love of country above everything else I would have let you go into that antique shop with Winters and never batted an eye. I was watching for somebody who has to be nailed and my inside information on Octave’s gave me an ambush on him.” His low voice had a crisp, curt quality. “Now Octave’s has been ruined as a lead forevermore. I plowed in like a silly gaslight hero pulling the heroine away from the buzz-saw and thus tipped my hand to a smart Nazi agent instead of having him tip his hand to me.”
“And, incidentally, got yourself shot,” nodded the girl.
“So I hear. I left with a bullet hole and you with a leather music roll. Oh, I don’t mean to sound regretful. I’m glad to have been able to help you. But the chivalrous code of my ancestors jumped in ahead of my country’s best interests. It can’t happen again. Chivalry is a luxury.”
Berkeley contemplated him with undisguised wonder. Fifty percent of that man was sheer shining knighthood and fifty percent was hard and ruthless fighter with the instincts of the jungle.
“You know,” she commented, “I never thought anyone could remain a stranger so long.”
“Who I am doesn’t matter,” Luce informed her. “What you think of me doesn’t matter, nor what I think of you. Even the fact that you have not put through a divorce does not matter. We’re really just a couple of numbers. All that matters is finding a man and stamping him out.”
The New Orleans night touched the little French garden with beauty and softness, and the glamour of the old city seemed to fill the warm air—the feel of the mighty Mississippi nearby with its epic rhythmic song, the swaying Spanish moss over shimmering bayous. Yet his metallic code dissolved the charm, and the soft beauty of the night served only to glint on the steel of an implacable fighter.
“Berkeley,” she heard him say, “I’m waiting to know what you were doing at Octave’s.”
She hesitated a moment, arranging her thoughts in orderly cohesion, and then began to speak. She told him everything, lucidly and briefly, from the time she had seen John Tresh.
When she had concluded he made no comment immediately. He ran a hand over his hair, his mouth pursed in a soundless whistle.
“What do you think?” Berkeley asked finally.
“Think?” said Luce. “I think that somewhere in the knowledge you have been carrying around with you is the clue to the Nazi agent who crossed from Lisbon with us in the Atlantic Clipper.”
The thought of having in her hands some intangible lead toward the strange secret of the Ivory Tiger was enough to set her heart bounding. Something that she knew—
“You think it might be this man, Kels—Vokels?” she asked.
“It could be,” said Luce. “Let’s look at that music roll Octave was holding for him.”
They examined it together in the light from the house. A black leather music roll with G. V. Kels stamped in faded gold letters. Although the clasp was locked, it was no trouble for Luce to break it with his hands. He unrolled it and drew forth the contents.
They consisted entirely of sheet music. Berkeley read out the names of the selections—Scherzo by Chopin, Clair de Lune by Debussy, Hungarian Dance by Brahms, Ave Maria by Schubert, and one blank music page with a notation penciled at the top—“Second Movement of the New Concerto.” This last consisted simply of five groups of five lines, with neither notes, key, nor any other musical signification.
Berkeley wrinkled her brow. “It certainly seems the kind of thing that you would find in a music roll,” she confessed.
“There’s nothing apparent,” he agreed. “But this music roll may mean a devil of a lot.” His voice trailed off and for a few moments he frowned in thought.
“I’ll have to warn my father,” Berkeley said. “About Winters. And I don’t know where I can reach him. He’s on his way west by easy stages. But we had better rush this to the Department of justice right away, don’t you think?”
Luce looked up quickly. “Not just yet,” he said. “Time and momentum are on our side and we must keep them. The F.B.I. would hamstring me into inaction because they will ask me questions that I can’t answer.”
Berkeley could not believe that she had heard aright. Why, he sounded as though he might be an outlaw. She said so in a slow wondering way. Luce bent toward her deeply serious.
“It doesn’t matter about me,” he said. “Sometimes a man can’t choose the way he’ll fight a battle. I give you m
y word that the sole basis for everything I do is love of country. I think that right now it is best that I be free. The moment I think it is not best I will surrender myself and all I know to the F.B.I. That’s a great and honest fact, Berkeley.”
The girl remained silent. However it might appear to her, one thing rang with conviction—his basic love of country.
“Now listen to me, Berkeley,” he said abruptly. “There’s nothing personal about all this. You’ve got in my way and tangled me up a couple of times, but you’re too easy a game for the professional talent that would like to shut you up for good and all. I know just the place where you could be safe and out of harm’s way—place in Maryland that belonged to a friend of mine who was killed abroad. It’s a lovely quiet old place in the Maryland countryside.”
“It sounds safe, indeed,” she conceded. “But,” and her dark blue eyes rested on him in their disconcerting direct way, “I’m not inclined to the idea.”
“Berkeley,” he said calmly, “you don’t get it even yet. You’re still thinking in terms of personalities. Forget it. I want you safe and on hand to corroborate me when I need you. It will be best for you, best for your family, and best for your country.”
Her cool even glance dwelt on him a long moment.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll see it through your way.”
“Good,” said Luce. “We’ll get under way as soon as possible. We can’t risk flying from here—better to drive to Mobile and get a plane there. I’ll arrange for a car tomorrow.” He paused then as Madame Manet came into the garden.
The little French lace-maker had come to extend the hospitality of her home for the night. But, no! Had not the doctor assured Monsieur that he should rest quietly a day or two. Madame Manet turned to Berkeley.
“You will insis’ on your husban’ to stay?” she pleaded.
Luce started. Berkeley peered closer at the little French woman.
“What made you think we were married?” she asked.
Madame Manet spread her hands wide. “But I thought, of course! An’ the doctor who mus’ report all shot wounds write down as witness to Monsieur’s accident—‘his wife.’ Is it not so, Berklee?” she appealed.