Hunt in the Dark Page 23

  Rudolph’s ethical sense seemed impeccable. In fact, everything about Rudolph was impeccable. Our chances of wooing Aloma away from him had dwindled to nothing.

  Aloma suddenly looked self-conscious and arch, if a wild child of nature can look arch. “Guess yo’ mad at me, keepin’ Rudolph for a tête-à-tête after the party ‘sted of goin’ out—even though he is my lawful husband. Guess you doan’ care for such carryin’s on.”

  “On the contrary,” I said, “if Rudolph hadn’t stayed we’d be corpses by now.”

  “Rudolph’s wonderful,” said Iris. “He could live here if he wanted to.” Aloma beamed. Iris went on: “And one of the most wonderful things about him was that gun. How on earth did he happen to have a gun with him?”

  Aloma shifted uneasily from one satin slipper to the other. “Jest a bad habit of his, Miz Iris, an’ I’m gonna break him of it.” She paused. “You heard him say he didn’t want no ‘sociation with the police. Well—tell you the truth, he’s just outta Sing Sing yestidday which accounts for his long absence. An’ that’s why I gives this party—so’s he could get acquainted with real nice people again and rehalibitate his’self.”

  So! The mystery of Rudolph was a mystery no longer. Oddly enough, it gave me pleasure to find that his character was as tarnished as ours, that he was human, after all.

  Poor Rudolph. We weren’t giving him much of a chance to “rehalibitate” himself.

  “Yeah,” sighed Aloma reminiscently. “Five years he done— breakin’ an’ enterin’. That’s why it was a cinch for him fixin’ them people in the kitching. That’s why, seein’ he’s on parole, he doan’ wanna get mixed up in no mo’ shootin’ right now.” She shook her head sadly. “He’s a good man only he sho’ does slip.” And then quickly: “But doan’ let on you know ‘cos he’s real sensitive.”

  After all Rudolph had done for us I would have embraced him as a brother even if there had been fifty breakings and enterings against him. I told Aloma so and confirmed her opinion of me as a very sensible and admirable character.

  Iris had glanced at her watch again. Abruptly she got up and moved to the mad purple hat, which still lay on the carpet where Ruby had dropped it. Fixing the purple stars onto the crown again, she put the hat on.

  Aloma stared at her. “Miz Iris, you ain’t goin’ out no mo’ tonight?”

  “Yes,” said Iris. “We’ve got to go to one more place.”

  “It ain’t no mo’ to do with them crooks and blowin’ up ships?” Aloma was really worried. “You shouldn’t have no mo’ to do with them.”

  “We’ve got to, Aloma.” Iris laid her hand on her arm. “Listen, you and Rudolph stay here tête-à-tête again and see those people don’t escape.” Impulsively she added, “And if we don’t come back, look for us at the Royal Book and Record Shop.” She gave the address. “That’s where we’ll be with a gentleman called Mr. Garr.”

  “The Royal Book and Record Shop.” Aloma repeated the words solemnly and moved with us to the door. As we headed for the elevators, she stood watching us, a dark, ominous Cassandra. “You jest head-in’ for mo’ trouble,” she called. “That’s what yo’ doin’.”

  It was only too obvious that she had little or no confidence in our good sense. To her, we were two hopelessly naive babes in a very dangerous wood. To her, in fact, we were suckers.

  I had a horrible feeling that she was right.

  Forty-Second Street, that tireless boulevard, was still bristling with activity as Iris and I moved down it to our final, and by far our most dangerous, assignation—with Garr. Although it was quarter past two, the night here was yet young. Soldiers, sailors, marines, gay young ladies, small-time crooks, drunks, shoe-shine boys, has-beens and will-bes—all the less conventional elements who seem to have so much more carefree a life than sober citizens—paraded up and down in a colorful pageant.

  Around them, catering to them, movies still flashed their electric signs; drug stores, haberdashery stores, second-hand book stores, and penny arcades made the night cheerful and raucous. Somehow, the lusty vigor of Coney Island had reduplicated itself here. It was almost as if we were back at the beginning again—as if the weird and wonderful wheel of the evening was coming full circle.

  High-stepping along, wearing the purple hat with an air, Iris was confident, as always. I wasn’t, as always. I knew now that we were doing the right thing. Iris had sold me on that. Unless we managed to compromise Garr in some way, he would still be able to slip through our fingers. I wasn’t worried about our motives; I was worried about our ability. We’d had tough enough sledding trying to outwit Nikki, the least of Garr’s minions. How were we likely to fare against Garr himself, that elusive, terrifying will o’the-wisp whose very name inspired dread in his own associates, that dark shadow who had managed to evade even the far-reaching net of Leslie, Pine 3-2323?

  A very dark sailor and a very blond sailor both rolled their eyes at Iris. A shuffling old man with a toothless smile mumbled some begging message to me. There was a street corner ahead. We reached it.

  “Down here,” said Iris.

  We turned off 42nd Street into gloom. One frail bar-sign glowed ahead. Otherwise, all was darkness. No—not entirely in darkness. Beyond the bar, throwing a pale shaft of light across the sidewalk, a single little shop was still awake.

  “That’ll be it,” breathed Iris. “The Royal Book and Record Shop.”

  The sight of it touched off some fuse of horror in me. I thought suddenly of that vast, consciousless disaster which, unknown to the world, was even now hovering over New York, and which, at five o’clock, unless our puny efforts could stop it, would be rocking the pavements even here where we were moving now. As I had been duped before, I realized the enormity of the responsibility we had loaded onto our shoulders.

  At five o’clock, after one word from Garr, the Purple Star and all its sister ships of the convoy would soar in a tornado of splinters and flame up into the dawn sky. And we weren’t going now to stop that from happening. We were going to give Garr the chance to let that inferno loose!

  The dreadful razor-edge between success and cataclysmic failure!

  Vague night-figures hurried past us. There was even a policeman—that, to us, most useless of objects. The little shop drew closer. We could see it across the street now, see the haphazard piles of second-hand books in the window and the worn lettering above saying: Royal Book and Record Shop.

  I started thinking exclusively of Garr, trying to visualize the man whom I had so brashly tried to imitate. What would he look like? A great, hulking bully with cropped hair? No, too obvious. A thin, dark intellectual with stooped shoulders and sad, luminous eyes? Perhaps.

  Iris’ hand dropped on my sleeve. “Here we are, darling. Let’s cross.”

  The fuse burning slowly nearer and nearer the dynamite! I said tensely, “Don’t forget, honey, you’re Ruby. Be tough. And I—”

  “You’re a bodyguard Captain Fischer sent along with me,” she said, “in case of any danger. Don’t do any talking.”

  “Okay.”

  We crossed the dark, empty street. We reached the little drably-lit window of the Royal Book and Record Shop. A glance took in a pile of much-fingered detective stories, a pile of reduced biographies; a suggestive column of sex-books, a sprawling heap of records. We moved to the glass door. As we opened it, a rasping, old-fashioned bell squawked an announcement of us. We walked into the shop.

  No one was there—in that thin, cluttered interior. Wall-high bookshelves, stuffed with books stretched on either side. Tables heaped with old magazines and books marked: Anything on this counter 19 cents, took up most of the space. There were only little corridors for movement. An odor of must and disuse hung on the atmosphere.

  A curious setting for the most dangerous man in New York. And no one was there. In that dead, hollow silence, Iris and I moved between the tables of books. I paused here and there, pretending to glance at something—an old copy of Lea
ves of Grass, a Strength and Health magazine from 1936. The throbbing of my own pulses sounded ridiculously loud to me—like something mechanical and apart from me.

  Iris looked at her watch. I looked too. Two-thirty exactly. We moved deeper into the shop, our footsteps creaking on the bare boards. We reached a table piled with old jazz records. Ukelele Lady, I saw, the topmost title.

  If you like a Ukelele Lady, Ukelele—

  Suddenly there was sound in the silence, slow, shuffling sounds as of footsteps in carpet slippers. They came from beyond a closed door in the back wall, shuffling nearer and nearer.

  Iris’ hand went to my arm, then it dropped to her side as the door was pushed open and a man appeared.

  He was a small man. That was my first impression. A very small bent figure with a shabby old suit and white, thin hair showing, in the dim light, a pink, benign scalp beneath. As he came toward us, slowly, almost absently, as if his thoughts were miles away from us, I saw the glint of steel-rimmed spectacles.

  He came to us. He looked up. He smiled. It was a quiet, unobtrusive face with a strange fluidity to it as if it had never hardened into any particular mould. His eyes, very gray and clear, were smiling too, beyond the flat lenses of the glasses.

  Could this possibly be the great—?

  “Good evening!” His gaze flicked to the purple hat with its twin stars. He brought his small hands together in front of him with the faintest suggestion of a bow at Iris—a strangely outdated gesture. “I can get you something?”

  I tried not to be tense. Iris, with a very passable impersonation of Ruby at her toughest, said: “Yeah. I wanna record of The Blue Danube.”

  “The Blue Danube!” His smile stretched a little. “Yes, yes, I think so.” Then he did a curious thing. His eyes, behind the spectacles, moved to me, giving me one quick, appraising glance. “This gentleman is your husband?”

  “No,” said Iris. “He’s just a friend.”

  “A friend? Good.” He stood there a moment, his hands still folded in front of him, his lips still holding the smile. Then, with a little bow, he turned away back toward the door through which he had entered. “If you would be good enough to follow me, I believe I shall be able to find The Blue Danube in the other room. I keep the majority of the records there.” He glanced back over his shoulder at us. “You won’t mind stepping this way—both of you?”

  He was shuffling toward the rear door. Some vague atavistic thing in me shouted: No. Don’t go through that door. Don’t. Silly, of course. But then atavistic impulses always are silly. Iris was walking briskly after the man. I followed, hating it, full of nameless dread.

  “This way, please.”

  Still smiling, he was holding the door open for us to pass. I wished he would stop smiling. I wished he was less inconspicuous and harmless and benign.

  Iris moved through the door. I went after her. Then he came, the door swinging shut behind him.

  We were in a small, windowless room lit by a single ceiling light. Its walls were lined with books. An ancient desk, covered with old magazines, squatted in the center. A second door led to somewhere even deeper within the building. It was any office of any old book-collector. Nothing could have looked more innocuous.

  With little bustling movements, he squeezed around the desk and sat down in a rickety chair. His small hands went to the desk, lying there on the magazines. The serene smiling eyes found Iris’ face again.

  “Now!” he said. “I believe you and your friend have some business with me—other than The Blue Danube?”

  So he was Garr. Of course he was Garr. I should never have doubted it. Garr, the secret spider weaving the plots in darkness; Garr, the little second-hand bookseller in his dingy, unobtrusive little office.

  Iris’ hand went to her hip—Ruby with a touch, perhaps, of Aloma. “It’s you that’s got business with me,” she said, “How about it? Time’s getting short before five.”

  “Yes, yes, time is getting short, isn’t it? But I still think we have no cause for concern.” Garr tapped his fingers against an old-tattered copy of Vogue. “I gather you have come for my decision?”

  Keep that pulse under control, Peter Duluth.

  Iris said, “Sure I have. What’s it to be?”

  The smile seemed to have spread from his eyes and his mouth until it illuminated the whole, oddly liquid face. “I’m sure you will be delighted to hear that I have decided in favor of it. I have studied all the plans carefully. A great many ships should be destroyed. It seems to be both safe and—ah—effective.”

  “Good.” Iris batted her eyelids. “And the price is okay? One hundred grand?”

  He gave a little shrug. “Of course, that is a great deal of money.”

  “And you’re getting a hell of a lot for it,” said Iris, which was putting it mildly.

  Hold your breath, Peter Duluth.

  “I am not denying that.” The fingers beat their soft tattoo on Vogue. “All right. The price is satisfactory.”

  “Fifty grand in cash now? And then the other fifty—after it’s over?”

  “That was the agreement.” The little mouse-like hand scurried to one of the drawers in the desk and opened it. Fantastically, he brought out a huge wad of bills, fastened together with rubber bands. He put it down on the desk in front of us. “I think, when you count it, you’ll find the amount correct.”

  My heart was racing. He was giving us fifty thousand dollars. Just like that! It wasn’t possible. It was too easy—too devastatingly easy. That money would entirely debunk him in his role as a poor little bookseller; it would implicate him utterly in this fabulous plot.

  Take it and scram to the nearest phone.

  Leslie—Pine 3-2323—here we come!

  Iris’ fingers, slightly unsteady, went out toward the money. Before they reached it, Garr’s small hand settled over the pile like a wan moth.

  “One moment,” he said gently. “I believe the agreement was that before I gave you the money you were to make your telephone call to—ah—”

  “To Captain Fischer, yes.” The words came quickly from Iris. I’d forgotten about that telephone call, which was to take off the brakes, the telephone call that spelled the doom of Karl Pauly and the Purple Star. The thought of it threw me into a flurry of

  uneasiness. But Iris didn’t seem to be worried.

  “There is a telephone right on the wall behind you,” said Garr in that low, soothing voice of his. “Perhaps you would like to make the call immediately.”

  “Why, sure.”

  Iris turned. The telephone was on the wall behind her, half buried by an overflow of books. She moved to it, still acting Ruby. She lifted the receiver.

  I realized then what she was going to do and the brazenness of it was magnificent. The time had come and she wasn’t going to wait. Right here from Garr’s lair, she was going to call Pine 3-2323.

  I watched fascinated as her finger picked it out on the dial. P-I 3-2-3-2-3.

  The clicking of the dial was the only sound there was. Garr still sat there, smiling impassively, behind his desk. I stood, awkwardly stiff, trying to obliterate myself.

  “Hello.” Iris’ voice came sharp and clear. “Hello.”

  Slowly, Garr got up from the desk. With that leisurely shambling gait, he skirted it, coming benignly toward us.

  “Hello,” said Iris. “Is Leslie there, please? I—”

  It was then that it happened. Meekly, almost apologetically, Garr had moved to Iris’ side. Meekly, almost apologetically, he took the receiver from between her fingers and put it back on the hook.

  His smile, as he stared at her, was even more grandfatherly. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I played out the farce a little too long.” His steady eyes glinted to me. “I’m afraid you have rather underestimated us from the very beginning—Mr. and Mrs. Duluth.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Duluth! Those four softly spoken words were more staggering than an earthquake. He knew our names. All the
time, when we thought we were fooling him, Garr.

  I looked at Iris, standing by the telephone. Her face was pale with horror. Her hands were twisting and untwisting a little lemon handkerchief. I remembered most irrelevantly, that it had been Aloma’s last year’s Christmas gift.

  Around me, the little overcrowded office lost its stability. Pieces of it started floating across my vision at random—a row of red-backed books, an old-fashioned brass lamp, a black slag heap of records, all of them merging into a crazy, surrealistic background for the figure of that little man with the friendly gray eyes, the gleaming spectacles, the pink scalp peeping through the white candlewicks of hair.

  “You should have realized,” he said, “that so important a transaction as tonight’s would never have been allowed to take place without adequate precaution. Both Nikki and the genuine representative from Captain Fischer have been under constant observation since the beginning of the evening. Every move they or you has made has been reported to me. For some time now, I have found a counter-checking system in these affairs indispensible.”

  He paused. “It was ingenious of you, Mr. Duluth, to have inveigled Nikki to your apartment by an engaging impersonation of myself. Nikki, I’m afraid, although he is an excellent man of action, is not one of my more imaginative assistants. He was a poor choice for the job. But we have no cause for concern. Both he and Captain Fisher’s agent are already being—ah—rescued from your apartment. They should be here shortly and I am quite sanguine that the little affair of the Purple Star will go through according to plan—in spite of your obstructive efforts.”

  I didn’t have any words to say anything with. What words were there?

  “Yes,” said Garr with a note in his voice that was almost sad. “You should have gone to the proper authorities, you know. From the very beginning, I would like to have warned you that this is no line of business for the amateur.”

  I pushed past Iris toward him. Maybe he’d outwitted us, but I still had a chance to fight our way out of this. That’s what I thought. But I might have saved myself the trouble. Before I’d raised my arm to sock him, the inner door opened and three men were on the threshold—three men with guns.