Hunt in the Dark Read online

  A waiter came, took my order and brought me a drink. Still nothing had happened over at the bar. I was sure of it. I glanced at my watch, 11:31. Something happen! Please something happen soon—before Nikki—!

  I kept myself from thinking of Nikki.

  Then another thought came. It was even more devastating. Had Nikki, perhaps, found some way of contacting the second agent and of warning him before the rendezvous? Did the whole shadowy chain of Garr’s disciples know already of our clumsy attempt at imposture? Had the real assignation been moved to some other safer place? And was there here, instead of a gullible unwarned agent waiting to be fooled by us, some crafty sort of trap?

  That thought, coupled with the sight of Iris there at the bar, still alone, was almost more than I could bear. 11:32. Why had I let Nikki meet the real woman with the purple hat at the Waxworks Museum? Why hadn’t I contrived some way, however desperate, to keep them separate?

  I saw then how hopelessly amateurish our every move had been. And it was largely my fault. If there was mortal danger for Iris now—it was my doing.

  These morbid fears racked me as I sat there, pretending to drink, with those pointless fragments of conversation trickling into my unlistening ears.

  “… Tyrone Power … Roosevelt … artificial pearls, that’s all I got for my birthday….”

  Then I saw that a man—a man I hadn’t noticed before—was strolling from the far end of the bar toward the jukebox. He attracted my attention just because he was something, moving in that stagnant pool. He was a vague, thin little man with no hat and a bald head—an utterly unobtrusive little man. He moved to the jukebox. He took out a nickel. He slipped it into the slot and pushed a button almost immediately, with the authority of a man who already knew, before he reached the machine, what tune he wanted to play.

  There was a vague whirring from the machine, mingling with the bar conversations. And then, soft at first, mounting up to a booming pulsing rhythm, issued the familiar and now terrifying strains of The Blue Danube.

  I saw Iris, at the bar, stiffen instantly. The little man was still lounging by the jukebox, staring with apparent casualness at the list of tunes sprawled across its front. Iris was moving. Nonchalantly, her drink in one hand, she started crossing toward the jukebox, the shadowiest hint of a waltz step in her walk.

  Watching her, I felt a sort of dreadful paralysis. Was this the genuine agent making the genuine signal? Or was it a trap? The vast responsibility! To stop her or not to stop her!

  Iris was moving closer to the jukebox and the little baldheaded man. No one at the bar was paying her any attention. She was just a woman with a purple hat and a drink going to the jukebox. The Blue Danube—the murmuring voices—and then, mingling in with them, Iris’ voice, soft but clear—humming.

  De-tumptee-tee-tum—tum-tum—tum-tum.

  Quickly, with one of those expertly unnoticeable changes of direction, the little man’s glance took her in. He never caught her eye. Merely, as she moved toward him, he started away from the jukebox—toward the shadowy room that lay beyond the bar.

  To stop Iris or not to stop her! It was the most dreadful decision of my career. If this was a trap, it would mean Iris’ life. If it wasn’t a trap, it might mean our discovering the whereabouts and the eventual destruction of Garr. Two immensities up against each other. Finally, just because Iris meant so horribly much to me, I let her go. I did nothing.

  The Blue Danube swam on. The little man disappeared into the room beyond. Slowly, inconspicuously, Iris passed the jukebox. She turned the corner into the backroom. She disappeared too.

  Over at the bar Tyrone Power fought it out with Roosevelt. The maddeningly inevitable rhythm of The Blue Danube beat on.

  The horror of that invisible room beyond. What was going on? What—?

  The Blue Danube stopped. It ground out its final chord and then subsided into a swishing sound and silence.

  More than anything in the world, I wanted to get back to that inner room, to remove from Iris’ shoulders the whole onus of the danger. But I couldn’t. For if she was being successful, if the second meeting was going off—my appearance would be a monkey-wrench in the works.

  I just sat there, my unsteady hand cupped around my drink, listening to the post-Blue Danube silence, staring blankly ahead of me, through the bar window pane out to the drab, ill-lit sidewalk. A hobo, ragged and unshaven, slouched past, pausing to throw a thirsty glance at a whiskey ad in the window. I watched his shambling progress out of sight. There was no one there— only an empty expanse of sidewalk.

  Then faintly, through the glass pane, I heard the click-click of invisible, approaching high heels. The sound linked instantly in my mind with the tapping heels in the Waxworks Museum. I was suddenly taut, waiting for what was to come into view in the framed street scene in front of me. With one of those uncertain intuitions of doom, I knew what I was going to see.

  And I did see it. And my excruciating anxiety shifted instantly away from that back room to the sidewalk outside.

  For, suddenly, like actors appearing on an empty stage, two figures came into view on the sidewalk outside the window of Sammy’s Bar. Two figures, a man and a woman. Inevitably, a man with a blue turtle-neck sweater and a woman with a purple hat.

  Their arrival, at the most crucial moment of the second transaction, was a nightmare reduplication of what had happened at the Waxworks Museum. Fate repeating its same trick against us!

  In those few seconds while Nikki and the real woman with the purple hat crossed the window pane on their way to the door, I realized what had happened. My early fears had been correct. Nikki had opened the purple star. And, instead of finding some way to send a warning ahead, he had come in person with the real woman with the purple hat—to trap Iris.

  And Iris was there, only a perilous matter of feet away, in the next room. In a moment they would discover her and expose her to the second agent—unless I stopped them.

  Last time, in a similar situation, I had failed miserably. I couldn’t afford to fail this time. And as if through some benign compensation of providence, I found I knew exactly what to do. And I felt quite calm about it.

  In the dimly lit museum I had deliberately hidden my face. Almost certainly, neither Nikki nor the woman with the purple hat would recognize me. And if Marta had been right, certainly neither Nikki nor the woman with the purple hat would know Garr.

  They were coming in through the door, Nikki ahead, his blond hair dishevelled, his heavy face, which had been so arrogant after the murder of Marta, uncertain and harassed. The gaunt, thin-legged, ash-blond woman came mincingly after him, the brim of the purple hat flapping as she moved. They hesitated on the threshold, glancing around the haphazard assortment of customers—looking, of course, for Iris or the little man with the bald head, both of whom were mercifully out of sight around the corner in the next room.

  I rose from my table. I moved toward them, feeling their gazes switch to me. I didn’t look at them. I just strolled closer. And then, softly, I started to whistle the first bars of The Blue Danube. I felt their gazes rivet on me. I still didn’t look at them. Still whistling under my breath, I pushed past them to the door. I opened it and sauntered out onto the deserted sidewalk.

  It was a terrific gamble, depending entirely for its success on the gullibility which the cold-blooded, slaughtering Nikki had already shown. I had nothing but Mr. Strauss’ waltz on my side. If they didn’t follow me, if they went on into the bar, I would be abandoning Iris to them. If they didn’t follow me—

  I didn’t look back. I moved slowly on down the deserted block. To my overwrought, selective sense of hearing, it seemed as if there was no sound in all of Manhattan. Then—exquisitely—I heard footsteps on the cement behind me; the thud of male footsteps, the click-click of French heels.

  It was working. They were following me, following The Blue Danube like rats following the Pied Piper.

  I moved on to the corner of
the block. I paused there, as if waiting for nonexistent traffic to drive by before I crossed. Their footsteps came after me unbrokenly. A moment later, without looking round, I could feel their presence at my side—the woman with the purple hat and Nikki. Nikki—my boyfriend!

  I took the leap then in the wildest impersonation attempt in forty-eight states. In a quiet, ominous voice which, from reading stories equally lurid as this reality, I associated with sinister master-minds, I said: “You fool! What sort of a mess have you made of it? A woman with a purple hat came at the right time; she made the right signals. She was an impostor. You must have given her the purple star. You should be shot for it.”

  At the Waxworks Museum I had underestimated Nikki’s quickness and the extent of his information. Was I doing it again? Standing there, absurdly casual, on the corner of 58th Street and Third Avenue I waited for his reply which was to mean so much. His voice came, quick, confused. “L-lis-ten, I can explain. I—”

  I had him on the run. Trying to keep triumph out of my tone, I said: “Explain! Little late to explain, isn’t it? For all you know, that woman may be in with the police—”

  “No, no, she ain’t in with the police. I can explain—” He broke off, a tinge of suspicion in his voice. “But who are you? You ain’t Baldy.”

  “Baldy”—the little man with the bald head who, right at this very moment was giving Iris the instructions that might lead to Garr. “Baldy”—the second agent. Thanks, Nikki.

  “Baldy!” I echoed. “At least Baldy saw through that woman. He knew she was an impostor right away. He and the boys are taking care of her all right. Baldy has some sense.”

  “But, listen—”

  “You can explain. I know. You’ve said that before. Well, you’re not going to do any explaining here. This neighborhood’s as dangerous as a powder plant now—thanks to you. You’re coming with me.”

  I saw a taxi then. I hailed it. It stopped, swung around, started for us. My pulses were tingling. Dangerous as a powder plant! That was an understatement—if only Nikki knew. Any second, Iris might be coming out of the restaurant. I had to get them away without their seeing her.

  All through that remarkable conversation, I had kept my back to them. I had looked neither at Nikki nor at the woman with the purple hat.

  As the taxi moved toward us, I said, “You’re coming with me—somewhere where it’s safe. And then you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do. A lot.”

  The taxi came nearer. Iris don’t come out of that restaurant yet!

  I could hear Nikki shuffling indecisively behind me. Suddenly he blurted, “You ain’t Baldy. Who are you?”

  That seemed to be the moment. The taxi had stopped right beside me. I turned—rather dramatically. Nikki was standing there, a huge blond figure, his mouth thick and sullen. The woman with the purple hat was staring too, shifting slightly on the spindly legs.

  “You want to know who I am?” I paused. I let my glance flick to the woman and then come back to Nikki. For all I knew, I was about to sign my own death warrant then. Maybe Nikki didn’t know Garr. But it was more than possible that he knew something physical about him that would disqualify me—that he was old, or thin, or fat, or bald, or something. I held the steady gaze. I said: “I’m—Garr.”

  The instant I spoke, the woman started and Nikki’s face, above the tall throat of the sweater, went a kind of greenish gray. His eyes were rabbit’s eyes, the eyes of a rabbit hypnotized by the dread, snake-like name—Garr.

  Without the slightest shadow of doubt, the precarious gamble had worked.

  Curtly, I jerked my head toward the waiting taxi. The driver opened the door. The two of them scrambled in—cowering. I took a final glance down the street. There was no sign of Iris. I jumped into the taxi, too, slamming the door on us. I gave the driver our home address.

  The taxi started and jolted forward into Third Avenue, while I sat there, in the back seat, crammed in with Nikki and the woman with the purple hat.

  As we dodged in and out under the looming bulk of the El, I felt a little dizzy. Never had victory come so easily—or brought so many potentialities of danger in its wake. Behind me, in Sammy’s Restaurant, I had abandoned Iris, impersonating the sinister Garr himself to one of his own buddies, brashly kidnapping Marta’s murderer and a woman who held the key to some vast scheme for destruction.

  The Duluths, once they decide to deviate from the respectable norm, are nothing if not thorough.

  And Aloma had said—have fun!

  On that fantastic taxi ride, there was not a single peep either from Nikki or from the woman with the purple hat. Presumably the very thought of being in the presence of Garr was sufficient to numb their faculties. That was a break for me. In fact, I started to see that my impulsive abduction had been a master-stroke.

  For Marta’s memory and, now, for our own skins also, Iris and I were pledged to three things. We were pledged to expose Garr and his minions to the police, to rescue Karl Pauly, if he was still in the land of the living, and to deadlock the ominous scheme for destruction which was to have started that night in Coney Island.

  Earlier in the evening, even at the brightest moments, that undertaking had seemed wildly ambitious. But now, with any luck, success was all but in our grasp. Back at Sammy’s Bar, Iris was getting the lead to Garr. Here in this taxi, thoroughly subdued, I had Nikki, who certainly knew where Karl Pauly was; and the purple-hatted lady around whom the sabotage plot seemed to center and who carried on, her person “something of vital importance for Garr.”

  Keep them fooled, get them to talk, wheedle the “thing of vital importance” out of the purple hat. That’s all I had to do and the moment might come for Leslie—Pine 3-2323.

  Play up, Mr. Duluth.

  The taxi rattled on. It swerved west of Third Avenue, drawing closer and closer to my apartment. I sat very stiff and pokerfaced. The woman with the purple hat, next to me, patted with spasmodic uneasiness at her ash-blond hair and shifted her thin legs. Every now and then when the taxi jolted, the brim of the purple hat flapped against my ear. Each time, she shrank further from me as if she expected flames to shoot out of my nostrils. Nikki’s face was still green. Once his unsteady fingers pulled out a package of cigarettes. He glanced at me and, at the last minute, lost his nerve and let the cigarettes drop down onto the seat.

  Having Nikki there in the taxi with me, sweating his sweater off for fear of me, was paradise on earth. If they went on being that scared, it was going to be a cinch.

  The taxi drew up outside my door. I got out, tossed the driver a dollar bill, and nodded to Nikki and the woman to follow me into the deserted vestibule. As they crammed into the automatic elevator after me, I started hoping that Aloma’s pleasant evening of bridge and good music had drawn to its elegant close. Aloma and the three-hundred-pound Rudolph would make invaluable allies in a knock-down, drag-out brawl, but they were hardly the company I would have chosen for this, the most delicate and subtly dangerous enterprise of my life.

  I needn’t have worried. When I opened the apartment door, discreet silence reigned within. I waited at the door until Nikki and the woman had entered ahead of me. Then I shut the door and led the way into the living-room. Except for a faint lingering of jasmine perfume in the air, all signs of Aloma’s revels had been obliterated. Aloma and Rudolph were off, apparently, doing the town.

  While Nikki and the woman with the purple hat watched me sheepishly, I crossed to the mantel, preparing myself with the conscious effort of an actor for the epic role I was to play. From now on, I was to be Garr. What did I know about him? Nothing—except that he was one of the cleverest and most dangerous termites in the United States, that his very name inspired terror in his employees and that he was smart enough to have eluded the grasp of Leslie, Pine 3-2323. Okay. I would be Garr; I would be cold and quiet and ruthless and omniscient.

  Being omniscient, when I knew so little, wasn’t going to be easy!

 
I turned slowly, facing the two of them. They were still standing respectfully.

  “Sit down,” I said.

  The woman with the purple hat minced to the sofa and sat on its extreme edge, one spindly leg crossed over the other. Nikki hesitated and then dropped into a chair. Their awe of me helped my self-confidence. I gazed straight at Nikki, the man who only a few hours before had murdered Marta. Scare the pants off Nikki for his bungling. That was what Garr would do first. Scaring the pants off Nikki would be pleasant.

  “Well, Nikki,” I said in a soft, steely voice, “you have a little explaining to do, haven’t you?”

  He moistened grayish lips, and shifted his great bulk miserably in Iris’ gold brocaded chair. I’ve never seen a more uneasy man. “It ain’t my fault,” he said. “I get my orders. I’m to go to the Waxworks Museum, look for a dame with a purple hat, and when she sings The Blue Danube, I give her the purple star. Okay. I goes to the Museum; I see this dame with a purple hat; she sings The Blue Danube. How’m I to know she’s a phony? No one ain’t told me—”

  “It certainly wasn’t my fault.” For the first time the woman with the purple hat raised her voice. It was harsh and unattractive. It went with the scarlet mouth and the thin legs. She was obviously all out to justify herself too. “I wasn’t told in what part of the Museum to meet this man. I was waiting down one of the corridors and this other woman was in the main hall. She’s the one he saw first. It’s no fault of mine.”

  “How was I to know she’d be way down one of them corridors?” blustered Nikki.

  “It was the most sensible place—” retorted the woman.

  A flick of my hand cut them short. “Squabble later,” I said. “When Nikki didn’t show up,” continued the woman with the purple hat, “I went down into the main hall and I saw him there. But it was too late because this other woman…”

  “Yeah. Soon as I saw this dame I realized the other one’d been a phony. But what was I to do? I couldn’t contact Baldy before the meeting. You know that. But I’d opened the purple star before I give it to her. I seen the instructions for the next meeting.” Nikki tried, rather unconvincingly, to swagger about that as if it had been a master-mind move. “So I figured it was best to take the real dame along to Sammy’s place and fix that phony when we got there.”