by David Garth
Berkeley sighed softly with resignation. “Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s true.”
“That does it,” she heard Robert Luce murmur. “Here we go again.”
They were escorted to Madame Manet’s spacious guest chamber overlooking the garden. The door closed behind the cheerful little French woman with a perfect hail of “bon soirs.” Luce placed his hands on hips and glanced around him briefly.
“It was bound to catch up with us,” he said casually. “I never heard of it failing. I suppose I’ll be able to drop from the window all right, don’t you think?”
“It won’t be necessary,” said the girl. “Have you noticed the sleeping porch out there?”
“I noticed it,” said Luce. “Thanks.”
He started off toward the screened porch and then stopped.
“I keep thinking about that blank music page,” he said. “Let me take another look at it.”
She handed him the leather music roll and watched while he drew forth the blank “Second Movement of the New Concerto.”
He felt the paper with his fingers, held it Up to the light, then tested the thickness with his thumbnail.
“Second Movement of the New Concerto,” he repeated. “I don’t like the sound of the title.”
Second Movement of the New Concerto. They both regarded the bland emptiness of any music on its page as though it was some barred and ominous door.
“Somehow, I think it might mean a lot to somebody for all its emptiness,” he said.
His eyes scanned it one last time, then rose to rest on her. “This is yours by right of discovery,” he said. “Shall I keep it for you?”
Berkeley nodded after a barely perceptible hesitation. He replaced it with the other selections and did up the music roll.
“Good night,” he said to her with a polite nod, “Number Seven.”
“Good night, Number Nineteen,” responded Berkeley. Then quickly, as she thought of his tightly bandaged side, “And my deep thanks for what you did today. Even if it did bring failure in your plans.”
Later as she lay back against the pillow with her hands clasped behind her chestnut head and her mind racing too fast for repose, she heard him move stiffly out there on the sleeping porch and knew that his injured side was giving him trouble. She could see him as he had stood in the courtyard with his arm tightly pressed against his side and perspiration dewing his forehead—a tall man hit by a bullet and keeping the fact buttoned tightly behind the mask of a taut, expressionless face.
Impulsively, she called in a low tone.
“Yes?” he said.
“Have you any brothers or sisters, Robert?”
There was a pause before his voice returned in the darkness. “No.”
“Any parents?”
“No,” said Luce.
“This friend of yours to whose home we are going tomorrow—who is he?”
There was another pause. He was silent so long that she thought he was not going to answer her. Then she heard his voice.
“He was,” said Luce deliberately, “a man named Lucian Rhodes.”
And then he was silent and there had been something about his voice that made her fall silent, too.
CHAPTER 19
The swirling of fallen leaves in their tipsy dance up the Rhodes drive increased steadily now. It was more evident by night when the wind breathed through the trees that sentineled the home of the great dueling family.
Miss Melissa Rhodes liked to listen to them, even though they made her sleepy. She seemed to become drowsy early these fall evenings, anyhow. Perhaps it was sitting near the fire in Lucian’s study after dinner, reading or knitting or occasionally amiably bickering with John Hardesty.
She had come to prefer the wainscoted study as a place to spend her time after dinner before retiring upstairs to her own apartments. Here, in the comfort of the dark paneled room with the firelight flickering on the soft sheen of the woodwork, the house did not seem so big and silent.
So she dozed off before the fire, her white head nodding and her knitting forgotten in her lap and the serenade of the leaves lulling her gently, and only dimly in her consciousness did it seem that a key was turning in the study door that led to the rear terrace. But the sudden little breath of tart night air stirred her and as she raised her head gradually, she seemed to see as if through a mist of drowsiness a tall man with Lucian’s face standing at the door, removing his hat slowly and smiling—that familiar whimsical smile.
Miss Melissa closed her eyes and opened them again, slowly, reluctantly, as if fearful of letting the dream filter away like quicksilver. People always lived in the minds of those who loved them and seeing him back in his own study where he had done his brilliant work was so much a part of the dream. Standing just on the edge of the fitfully fingering firelight, a rangy man with Lucian’s hair and eyes and rare slow smile—Miss Melissa looked at him and it was as if in a dream that she heard her own voice.
“I knew you would come,” said little Miss Melissa Rhodes sleepily.
The tall figure crossed lightly to the fireplace and stood before her chair.
“Wake up slowly, Aunt Melissa,” he said gently. “Don’t be in a hurry. Yes, of course, I’ve come back.”
But she woke up abruptly, as if the dreamlike fiber of her thoughts had been snapped to jolt her into a living, waking dream itself. With a little cry she started up from her chair and fastened on to the lapel of his topcoat as if to pin a wandering vision.
“Take it easy, Aunt Melissa,” he said in that same gentle way. “Just as though I’d been away for a weekend.”
Lounging down in a chair he drew her down on his lap. She perched there, looking fragile and wide-eyed, still tensely gripping his lapel and her heart fluttering wildly.
“Have you been a good girl?” he asked, smiling.
She tried to speak. “Lucian,” she said tremulously, and then began to cry, only to check herself resolutely. “No,” she declared, “I’m a Rhodes and the Rhodes don’t weep. But, oh, Lucian, you’re alive—and here! Nobody would believe you were alive, but I—” Her words trailed off for lack of breath and she stopped, her hand trembling on his lapel.
He waited, letting her quiet down, keeping that hard right arm of his around her, holding one fragile, blue-veined hand in his own warm capable one.
“In my mind, Lucian,” she said shakily, “you’ve always been alive, but—where have you been? Why?”
“Dear little aunt,” he said, “I can’t answer you now. There’s a good reason. You know that I’ve always had reasons for everything I did. I have them now, believe me.”
“But…” began the little lady.
“Listen a moment, Aunt Melissa.” He spoke seriously, slowly. “This will show you what I mean. Do you remember that duel that gave the Rhodes name such an odious twist? Cary Rhodes’ last duel, a hundred years or so ago, with Bradman? He went out to fight against every god-fearing reason on earth and the repercussions shook the state of Maryland, to say nothing of two fine old families.”
Little Miss Melissa Rhodes was silent, looking down into those black eyes. It was as if time rolling back a hundred years again brought Cary Rhodes, the duelist, out of the shadows—brought him back from the mists as he had been that fateful morning, lithe, healthily tanned, impeccably dressed, descending the staircase in the early dawn to face the desperate appeal of his wife and then stride on out to a fatal appointment under the oaks at sunrise. And as if that memory struck a chord of secret mutual understanding between them Miss Melissa Rhodes only nodded. “It’s enough that you’re here, Lucian,” she added.
Her nephew shook his dark head. “Not Lucian,” he corrected. “The name is Robert Luce, Aunt. Robert Luce—Luce. Please remember that.”
“Robert Luce,” she repeated, unquestioning.
“Except to you and me, Lucian Rhodes is dead, Aunt. Officially and completely dead.” His thin mouth curved in a quick, satiric smile. “I’m leaving again tonight. I can’t be
seen here by anyone. I’ve just come to bring a girl to stay with you. She’s in real danger, Aunt. I can’t have her wandering around footloose. Here she can lie quiet and safe.”
“A girl!” exclaimed Miss Melissa Rhodes. “Where is she?”
“Down at the Five Mile Inn in the village. I left here there while I made arrangements with you. She thinks I’m Robert Luce, a friend of Lucian Rhodes, and, Aunt, you have to play your part well. If she suspects the least bit of camouflage she’ll be on her way in a wink. She must stay here—it means her life.”
“I’ll help you, Lucian—Robert Luce,” his little aunt declared earnestly. “But when will you come back again? I couldn’t stand it this time if you didn’t—”
“I expect to come back, Aunt,” he said quietly. “But whatever happens—remember Cary Rhodes. Remember him and keep your little chin up.”
He glanced at his wrist watch and then lifted her bodily from his lap and set her on her feet.
“I’m going to get Berkeley,” he said. “What did you say my name was?”
“Robert Luce,” said Miss Melissa happily.
He pressed her shoulder. “Aunt Melissa,” he said, “you were born to lead cavalry charges.” At the study door he paused to caution her to be sure that none of the servants were in evidence, then again he slipped unobtrusively into the night and Miss Melissa Rhodes sank down mechanically on the edge of a chair and stared after him incredulously.
Now that she was alone she gave way suddenly, completely, burying her face in her hands and her shoulders shaking uncontrollably. But by the time he returned she was composed, recovered from her reaction.
The girl whom her nephew brought into the study struck her immediately. A tall girl with sports coat buttoned tightly around her and her cheeks fired with a gorgeous natural color from the nipping night air. She had the most striking dark blue eyes Miss Melissa Rhodes had ever seen.
“My dear,” said Miss Melissa, “I am so happy to welcome you. It will give me real pleasure to make you comfortable for as long as you will stay.”
“It’s lovely of you to say so,” said Berkeley. “I am sorry that it’s under such strange circumstances.”
“The circumstances are none of my business, my dear. All that matters is the chance to help someone.”
Berkeley accompanied her as she led the way to the room she had made ready for her, a great high-ceilinged chamber with old-fashioned canopied four-poster.
“George Washington never slept here,” said Miss Melissa, bustling around cheerfully. “Otherwise, I should think you will be quite comfortable.”
Berkeley regarded her with interest as she bustled around, making sure that every last detail for her guest’s comfort was complete. She made a person think of a shining, singing little teakettle.
“I suppose you have known Robert Luce a lone time,” Berkeley commented.
Miss Melissa glanced up smiling.
“Since his mother died he has been very close to me.” Berkeley nodded. Although, she found it difficult to imagine Robert Luce with a mother. He certainly must have had one, of course, but there was so much of the footloose lone wolf about him that it was impossible to see him with any tics.
“Miss Rhodes,” she said, “do you mind if I see him alone for a few minutes?”
“Of course not, my dear,” exclaimed Miss Melissa. “Flo’s probably in the study waiting for you.”
The girl found Luce in the wainscoted study. He was at t le desk studying the blank music page under the lamp, smoking a mellowed, stunted briar pipe.
“Miss Rhodes is charming,” said the girl. She sat down on the arm of a chair across the desk from him. “You say her nephew was a good friend of yours?”
“I knew him about as well as anybody did,” said Luce.
“He had a beautiful home,” said the girl.
Luce glanced up at her. Then his eyes wandered about the study. “Yes,” he said pensively. “I doubt whether he ever really appreciated it enough.”
“He was killed, you say?” questioned the girl. “How?”
“Air raid,” said Luce briefly.
“Was he Lucian Rhodes, the playwright and author?”
Luce nodded.
“I liked his plays,” said Berkeley. “I remember his name now. He was good. Very good.”
“People were kind about his work generally.”
“You were with him abroad?” pursued the girl. “What was he like? This Lucian Rhodes with the lovely little aunt?”
Luce stirred restively. He looked at her over the top of the blank music page.
“He thought he was content,” he said. “He had a career he liked and a satisfying kind of life—horses and flying and sailing and farming. He dabbled a lot in farming on the side, planted orchards and nursed them like a mother hen.”
He looked past her at the climbing flames on the wide stone hearth.
“He’d got a lot out of his system, too—fits of wandering, sailing around those little green islands in the South Seas with a Polynesian crew in a battered schooner and a pair of duck pants; living from day to day all over the Pacific. And he was so sure of himself that he went abroad as a war correspondent to observe, feel the excitement of events, like somebody trying to catch the brass ring on a merry-go-round.”
He laughed suddenly.
“By God, but he was naive. The things he observed seared his soul. He saw Vienna fall and watched the faceless men spring out of the ground. He was in Prague, too, working out of a Central European press bureau, and he saw those decent orderly crowds in the streets watching the conqueror come. He saw man’s inhumanity to man, and the death of spirit and love and family, and then he, like a lot of others, found they weren’t in on some romantic merry-go-round reaching for a brass ring of excitement, but wading knee deep in a rising tide of darkness and treachery.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry that Lucian Rhodes is dead—but perhaps it’s just as well. He really wasn’t tough enough.”
He was silent a moment, then took his pipe out of his mouth and regarded the bowl rather fixedly. Berkeley nodded thoughtfully. Lucian Rhodes, the playwright and author and foreign correspondent, had not been tough enough, but this rangy, black-eyed man was.
“I’d like to have known him,” she said.
“You’ve known a hundred like him,” said Robert Luce abruptly. “Let’s get back to the present. We’re faced with a terrific thing here. I feel it.”
“Carney?” she began tentatively.
“That rotten political machine that’s supporting Buckthorne is a danger, of course—but I have an idea it is only part of the picture. That machine is a branch of the tree—the root is what we’re after.”
“Meaning by the root, what murdered Tresh in Valleron and nearly got me,” she said, nodding. “What sent Winters to bottle me up and later sent him to clamp down on me again. This man, Vokels, do you think?”
“I don’t know. But the key to who it is lies in our hands. Why was that little ivory tiger put in your room in Horta? That’s the answer, and if we could find it, we would be close enough to our man to touch him.”
“It might have been as a warning,” suggested Berkeley.
“Warn you first and then try to take your life inside of forty-eight hours?” He shook his head again. “No, there’s some other reason and it’s the right one.”
The brushing caress of the night wind past the dark windows seemed to arouse again that strange, indescribable feeling of cold ruthlessness in every fiber of her being. And even though it was warm sitting so close to the lamp on the desk, she felt as though the tips of her fingers were numbed and arose to walk toward the fireplace, not for its warmth, but for its cheering, crackling friendliness.
“Berkeley!” She swung around at the taut note in Luce’s voice.
He was on his feet, staring down at the circle of lamp light on the desk. She swept quickly to his side.
“Look what the heat of the lamp is doing to that music paper!” he said, poin
ting.
The blank music page of the Second Movement of the New Concerto had undergone a change. Among those plain lines hid appeared the faint semblance of musical notes. They were the e, shadowy, but discernible, apparently, even as Luce had said, chemicalized by the heat of the lamp.
He picked it up and held it over the lamp to get more direct heat on it. When he took the music sheet away the notes were brought out with startling clarity, notes that had been done in some kind of invisible ink.
Second Movement of the New Concerto—there it was, a finely executed musical score, the notes summoned forth to inspection.
“Code,” breathed Berkeley. “It must be—”
Luce studied it closely.
“I don’t know much about music,” he said thoughtfully. “Does that score look as though it could be played?”
Berkeley ran a practiced eye over it. She tried to hum the first measure or two, stopped, and then tried again.
“I can’t see how that score could possibly be played,” she said. “It would be full of dissonances, no continuity.”
The Second Movement of the New Concerto—Luce bit is lip, eyes narrowed in deep concentration. Berkeley stared down at it, too, as if to translate that mockingly inscrutable score. A great many one-eighth notes, a few quarter notes, here and there a half note—no, that score could never have been played on a piano, but what kind of a song did it represent?
Luce pointed to the first measure. “You know, this code might be broken without too much difficulty. At least, there looks to be something to work from—look how that note recurs. The second and fourth are repeated.” He snapped his lingers decisively. “I’m going to try to break it right away and I know where I can get expert help on it.”
He folded it carefully and put it in an inside pocket. “I’ll be at the Congressional Library in Washington. You’ll hear from me definitely in a day or two. Until then sit tight.” He looked at his wrist watch and then remarked he would say good-by to Miss Melissa Rhodes.