As Time Goes By (12 page)

"Very good, sir," replied Blackwell.

"Keep an eye on him, will you?" Lumley requested.

"I shall take very good care of Mr. Blaine, sir," re
plied Blackwell. "You may rest assured on that ac
count."

Blackwell turned to Rick. "Would the gentleman like
another glass of cordial?" he inquired.

"The gentleman would," said Rick.
    

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

Their rooms had been gone through very carefully; that much was evident when he opened the door. Rick
had seen better, but still this was not an amateur job. Just enough had been disturbed to let him know he'd
had visitors. Just enough was put neatly back into place
to let him know they were gentlemen. Just enough had
been destroyed to let him know they meant business.

"Boss, we been tossed," said Sam, who'd been back
for an hour and hadn't told a soul or touched a thing.
He'd seen this before.

"Any guesses who?" asked Rick, surveying the
wreckage.

"I think I might have a suspicion," said a voice be
hind him.

It was Renault, hard on his heels.

"Come on in and make yourself comfortable,
Louie," said Rick. "Somebody else already has."

Renault glanced around quickly. "Seems like old
times," he remarked, snapping open his cigarette case
and settling into an easy chair by the electric fire.

"Don't flatter yourself," said Rick. "Your boys
weren't this good." He started to poke through the de
bris.

Their closets had been emptied. Clothes lay on the floor, pockets turned inside out, except for Rick's din
ner jacket and trousers, which their visitors had
thoughtfully left hanging so as not to rumple.

Renault smoked while Rick and Sam took inventory.
"When your curiosity gets the better of you, do let me
know," he said, puffing away. The dapper little French
man was resplendent in a new suit, new shoes, and a
fedora.

"I thought you just bought a new suit," said Rick.

"One must watch one's appearance at all times,"
said Renault.

"I prefer to watch my back," said Rick, surveying
the room. "I guess I'm not doing a very good job of
it."

Their passports were gone. Whoever had paid them such assiduous attention had wanted to make sure they
wouldn't be going anywhere any time soon.

"Ricky, how many times have I told you to always carry your identity papers with you?" asked Renault. "We Europeans do."

"Maybe that's why so many of you want to become Americans," replied Rick. "We live in a free country." He couldn't tell Renault that New York City gangsters never carried anything identifying themselves on their
persons, so they could be free to give the cops any
phony name they wished. Old habits died hard. "Okay,
Sam, forget it. We're here for the duration, so we might
as well make the best of it." He checked the liquor
cabinet. "At least they didn't drink our stash."

Sam halted his search for the passports and poured
Rick and Renault each a stiff drink.

"It's my fault," began Rick. "I've just spent the past few hours getting suckered by a limey."

"Boss, you slippin'," said Sam under his breath.

Rick ignored him. "Sitting on my duff at the Garrick
while British Intelligence paid us a visit, courtesy of
Reginald Lumley."

"Or perhaps courtesy of Victor Laszlo," retorted
Renault.

Rick and Sam both turned to look at him. "What?"
said Rick incredulously.
    

Renault smiled inwardly. He enjoyed having the un
divided attention of Richard Blaine, a man who had
always held himself to be superior to the likes of Louis
Renault. True, they were now friends and, even when
they hadn't been, had done a great deal of profitable
business together in Casablanca. Rick had always kept
himself aloof from Renault and the refugee horde; he
was in Casablanca, but not of Casablanca, and he never
let anybody forget it. Until she walked back into his
life. That, Renault decided, was what had finally sepa
rated Rick Blaine from his rival club owner, Arrigo
Ferrari: a woman named Ilsa Lund.

"I mean, here we are, having followed Victor Laszlo
and his wife from Casablanca to Lisbon to London, and
what do we really know about them?" Renault took a sip of his drink. It was an Armagnac, his favorite. "I wasn't Prefect of Police in Casablanca all that time without learning a thing or two about the human ani
mal. About what motivates him, about what drives him.
About what obsesses him."

"I can think of a few things," said Rick.

"So can we both, my friend," replied Renault.
"Money, of course. And power. And women." He
laughed to himself. "You know, Ricky, there was a
time back there in Casablanca when I worried about
you and women. You didn't seem to have any interest
in them at all, and, well, I..."

"You what?"

Renault didn't bat an eye. "Now don't take that the
wrong way," he explained. "I simply meant that a man
who doesn't like women even half as much as I do
makes me nervous. What I mean is, I don't understand
such a man."

"Meaning me," said Rick.

"No, meaning Laszlo," said Renault. "This Laszlo is
an odd duck. He responds to neither money nor power.
Indeed, the only thing that seems to interest him is his
glorious cause."

"What's wrong with that?" asked Rick.

Renault snapped open a cigarette case and withdrew
a Players. They weren't Gauloises, but they would have
to do. "Mind you, Ricky, I'm sure altruism and
selflessness have their place in this world of ours, but I
must confess that for the life of me I can't see where if they are not accompanied by some other, more tangible, rewards."

"Maybe Victor Laszlo really believes in something, Louie," said Rick. "Maybe he's even willing to die for
it." He took a sip of bourbon. "And maybe he's just a chump."

"Perhaps he's something more," suggested Renault.

"Now you're losing me," said Rick. He was nearly reclining in his wing chair, his head thrown back.

"How to broach this subject?" Renault waved his
cigarette in the air. "Rick, has it ever occurred to you to question any aspect of Laszlo's story?"

"Many times," answered Rick. "Ilsa's, too."

"Precisely. Both of them have so many loose ends,
so many unexplained occurrences, so much—well,
sheer coincidence, not to put too fine a point on it.
Don't you think?"

"Doesn't everybody?"
           

Renault was barely able to sit still in his chair. "I mean, so much doesn't add up," he said. "For exam
ple: How did he escape so conveniently from the concentration camp at Mauthausen? How has he managed to slip through the Germans' fingers three times? Why
has he been reported killed five times, only to turn up
very much alive, and looking quite dapper, as if he
were going on a safari instead of fleeing the Nazis, in
Casablanca? Aside from that little scar on his face,
there wasn't a mark on him to show that he'd been enjoying the hospitality of the Third Reich, as he
claimed." Renault was gesticulating now. "I'm telling you, Ricky," he said, "a man who could contemplate walking out on a beautiful woman like Miss Lund is capable of anything."

Rick was following the argument but wasn't con
vinced. "She's
Mrs.
Laszlo, Louie, even if he tried to
hide it from the world for her safety."

"So he says," observed Renault. "How do you think Miss Lund feels about that?"

Rick wasn't prepared to answer that question. "It's
not that I don't agree with you. But I think you were in Casablanca so long, playing so many angles, that you
don't trust anybody anymore."

"I made a very handsome living doing so, too," said
Renault. "Seriously, Ricky, I think we have to examine
the possibility that Victor Laszlo is not who, or what,
he says he is. Even his name doesn't fit: Victor Laszlo.
If he's Czech, what's he doing with a Hungarian name?
It's more than a little fishy, if you ask me."

Rick poured another drink for himself and Renault.
Over in the corner Sam was reading a book on contract
bridge. Sam enjoyed playing cards, but never for
money.

"I don't know much about names," Rick replied,
"but I gather they've moved the borders around here
so often that hardly anybody is a citizen of the country
in which he was born." Not for the first time, he was
glad to be an American. "Besides, lots of people
change their names, for lots of reasons.

"You mentioned Mauthausen a moment ago," Rick
went on. "I can't prove it yet, but I'm beginning to
think that whatever Victor Laszlo is up to in London
has something to do with the guy who set that camp
up, a man named Reinhard Heydrich. The bully who's
running Czechoslovakia now. The one who probably
had something to do with Laszlo's getting thrown in
the jug in the first place." He took a drag on his ciga
rette. "The way I see it, Victor Laszlo and his boys
might be getting ready to clip Heydrich. From the
looks of him, nobody deserves it more."

"Assuming Laszlo is who he says he is," objected
Renault. "This Heydrich may be a beast, but even if he
is, it may well be none of our concern who the target
of Laszlo's operation is. The real question is whether
it suits our interests to make it happen." He rubbed his
hands together meaningfully.
"All
of our interests."

"Well, then let's assume it does suit our interests for
the moment," said Rick. "Why not? You may be suspi
cious of him, and God knows I certainly have no rea
son to like him, but aside from his fancy suits, he's n
ever given us any real indication he's a phony. Major
Strasser certainly thought he was real enough. Real enough to die trying to stop him from getting away."

"Don't forget he had information Major Strasser
wanted desperately," said Renault.

"And now he has information we want desperately,"
said Rick, jumping to his feet. "Listen, Louie, stop
waving red herrings about Victor Laszlo in my face."
He looked down at Renault, who was still sitting in his
chair. "However, I think you may be onto something
about this mess being Laszlo's doing."

"Really?" said Renault, rising. Sam looked up
briefly from his book.

"But not for the reasons you think. Today at the Gar
rick I met this fellow I told you about, Reginald Lum-
ley. He's the man Friday of the Secretary for War in
Churchill's cabinet. He's our kind of guy, Louie: he
likes his drink and he likes his women. I gave him one
of these."

Rick produced one of his bogus business cards and
showed it to Renault. "I wrote a few names on the
back, to get his attention. One was the name of his
mistress."

"You have been busy."

"The others were Ilsa Lund, Victor Laszlo, and
Reinhard Heydrich."

"Which one hit the bull's-eye?"

Rick drained his bourbon. "That's just it. I don't
know."

"But you suspect?"

"At this point," he said, "I suspect everything and
everybody. Except maybe Sam, and sometimes I'm not
too sure about him."