Delicate Ape (2 page)

The man heard him, his head half-turned, and the fear on it illumined the dark mass where momentarily he was arrested. He plunged again out of sight and Piers again shouted, “Wait—” He himself battered through the crowd, making his way to the curb where he could both see ahead and move more quickly. The man had done the same. Yet he might have lost himself amidst the dark coats and the pale, feathered hats had he not looked over his shoulder again. He saw Piers coming after him; he must have seen the impossibility of escape. His mouth opened but whatever sound came out was lost in the noise of the city. The man looked back again and he plunged off the curb into the onrushing propulsion of traffic.

There was the agonized scream of braking; there was the sudden roar of wonder from the crowd before it pressed ravenously towards this human sacrifice. In the moment when the mob stood awed, before it moved, Piers saw the mashed thing. Before the quick blast of the police whistle shrilled nearer, Piers had mingled with the northbound stream of walkers again. There was no need to remain to give testimony. Too many were there who could repeat, “He jumped in front of the cab.” There was no need to remain to hear the inevitable evidence of someone who had noticed, “A man was chasing him.”

What manner of man? A tall man in a dark suit. The streets were crowded with small men, middling men, tall men in dark suits.

Piers sauntered on without looking back. He crossed 44th street; he moved steadily, without outward evidence of the turmoil blackening his inward heart. He had sent a second man to meet death.

There were red-mouthed women and waxed men on the shallow steps of the Astor. Piers walked through them into the lobby. It was crowded as always before theater time, afternoon and night, and after theater. It was seldom without its hosts and it was seldom that the same face appeared successively. The meeting place of the Forties, of Broadway. Piers had chosen it for precisely this transient quality, remembered from the past, unchanged in the present.

Music from the dining room floated to the lobby below. Perfume and fresh flowers and barber lotions spilled from the mezzanine. There was constant motion, incessant sound, and anonymity. Piers didn’t go directly to the desk for his key. He joined the unhurried motion of the lobby, seeking without seeming to seek a face which did not belong here, a face that might match the one now lying under the cabbie’s tire. He saw none.

His nerves hadn’t quieted; his blood churned from the encounter and its ruthless end. He would have a drink before going upstairs. It wasn’t that he feared to be alone; he wanted to be alone to think, but he was afraid of thinking unless he could dull the edge of thought. He walked towards the bar and he saw, slanted in the doorway there, Gordon. He knew then it was too late for thinking. What had happened tonight was not only inevitable, it was no longer of import. Gordon saw him. Gordon had been waiting for him. The man opened his eyes in surprised recognition and he held out his hand as Piers reached the open doorway.

“My God, Hunt,” he said. “What are you doing here? I didn’t believe it at first but it’s you, all right.”

“It’s I,” Piers said. He took the firm clasp. Gordon looked fit, handsome and competent as always. Without Piers’ height, he was still the more commanding figure, perhaps because of his military shoulders, the well-constructed bulk. Gordon always looked his best. He was face-handsome too. A good oblong face with strong chin, a dark well-clipped mustache over his rich mouth, dark blue eyes under straight brows, dark hair curling just enough above the broad tanned forehead. Women liked Gordon. Men liked him more perhaps. He was a man’s man. Women were for the hours when work didn’t press. Gordon’s life was strong and ordered. Piers had never envied him more than he did in this moment of meeting at the Astor Bar.

Gordon said, “But I thought you were to hold the line in Berne?”

“I wasn’t needed,” Piers told him. “Nickerson had returned from Istanbul and Wiles was there. They know the mechanics better than I. I particularly wanted to be in on this conference and I jumped at the chance to come, although unofficially.” He smiled. He knew his smile, not sure of itself like Gordon’s, a little smile, tentative.

“I’d have jumped at the chance to miss it.” Gordon smiled his smile. “I’ve always thought you lucky to be the field assistant while I had to stay in Washington and listen to talk.” He split a hammered red-gold cigarette case, heavy with monogram, passed it.

Piers refused. He had a like case; both were gifts from the Secretary. He never carried his. It was too rich for his blood. It belonged in Gordon’s hand. Gordon touched a gold lighter. “Did you travel with the old man?”

Piers said, “I said good-by to him in Alex. I flew to Berne. It was only after I found Nickerson there that I decided to come over.” He added, but it was to himself, “I haven’t been home in twelve years.”

Gordon took a whiff of his Turkish cigarette.

Piers laughed softly. “He doesn’t know I’m here.” His brows drew together. “I tried to find him this afternoon in Washington but he wasn’t in.”

Gordon threw away the cigarette. He said, “He hasn’t arrived.”

Piers allowed a startled look to meet Gordon’s steady one.

“We’re explaining the delay—but only to those who must know—by saying that he had business in South America.”

“No,” Piers said. He said it again, shaking his head. “No. One of us would have known.”

Gordon asked with a pitiful eagerness, “Did you see him on the plane? With whom was he flying?”

“I put him on the plane myself,” Piers answered. He added slowly, steadily, “I didn’t know the pilot. I’d never seen him before.”

They stood there in silence, in the midst of sound.

Piers broke through it. “I came in for a drink. Join me. I’ve just seen a man killed.”

Gordon started. He settled his shoulders again before he followed Piers into the undersea light of the room, past close-set tables to the crowded bar. He said, “I can’t accept death as casually as you, Piers. It always gets my nerves. I suppose you learned its unimportance in combat service while I learned nothing sitting in Washington, adding up figures with one hand and saluting brass hats with the other.”

Piers said, “Rye,” to the barman.

“I’ll stick to Scotch and splash,” Gordon said.

Piers turned to face him. “Death is often casual, Gordon. This one was. The man leaped in front of a traveling cab. A strange little man in a misfit coat and a new hat. The hat wasn’t touched. But the mustache was. It wasn’t much of a mustache. A ragged yellow affair.” He lifted his glass.

Gordon spoke with a tremor. “You looked at him.”

Piers swallowed the rye neat. “It happened he was in my car coming up from Washington.” He lit a cigarette from his crumpled package. “It isn’t often that you see a second time someone you halfway notice in a restaurant or on a train. It’s casual.” He pushed his glass again to the barman.

Gordon said, “I don’t have your nerves, Piers. I’d be home in bed after an encounter like that.” He smiled his particular smile. “Hoping the Clootie hadn’t followed.”

Piers met his smile. “He looked like a commercial traveler. Nothing important. He didn’t look at all the sort of man who was traveling in Samarra.”

Gordon put down his glass unevenly.

“Someone in the crowd said a man was chasing him. But he got away. Another drink?”

Gordon touched a white linen handkerchief to his mustache. “Sorry. I’m with a party. I shouldn’t have taken this long.” He folded the handkerchief away. “It can’t be that anything’s happened to the old man. There’ve been no unaccounted plane accidents reported. He must have stopped over somewhere.”

“Not without telling us,” Piers said.

“There’s not a week before the conclave opens.”

“What will happen if he doesn’t come by then?”

Gordon spoke thoughtfully. “The President will appoint an acting secretary.”

“One of us.”

“Yes.” His face was grave. “One of us.” He had no doubt as to which one it would be.

Neither had Piers. He paid the check, started away from the bar.

Gordon halted him. “Where can I reach you? Where are you stopping?”

“The Plaza. I’ll ring you in the morning.”

They separated; he continued to the door. If Gordon tried to reach him there, he’d insist he’d said Savoy-Plaza. At the door, he paused, turning to allow the woman in iridescent feathers to pass him. Standing there he could watch Gordon rejoin his table. It was set where it commanded the door and the corridor outside. For the moment his heart was constricted. And then his eyes cleared and he saw it wasn’t she whom he feared it was. It was a young girl with hair pale lavender in this light, dark purple eyes and a shimmering violet dress.

There were also at the table two quite ordinary young men. Disbelieving in the normal, he concentrated in that brief moment on the men. Neither looked as if he would recognize the jaundiced commercial traveler as a part of the human race. Each wore the face of Princeton or Yale, handsome, sure, protected. Gordon must have looked that way when he was young, during the war when he was at a desk in Washington, aide-de-camp to an important—socially and politically—Major General. Gordon hadn’t lived in the land of death. He had never known the descent to hell, the stench of human decay in his nostrils, the rivers of blood lapping his boots.

He was watching Piers from the table. Piers moved as soon as the feathered one’s attendants had passed him and he turned outside the door as if he were seeking the 44th street exit. He waited for a moment in that corridor but no one came after him, and, avoiding the bar doorway, he made his way by the back corridor to the desk.

The sleek-haired clerk with the scent of dark carnation said, “No messages, Mr. Pierce.” He passed across the key.

Piers scowled at it on his hand. He didn’t want the clerk to identify face with name; this was the first evening that it had happened. He took the papers from the newsstand, added a pack of cigarettes, and went to the elevators. No one was standing on watch; the activity of the hotel, intensified as curtain time grew nearer, was centered in the front lobby. Piers waited until the elevator cage was shut before he spoke the number. “Six.”

They didn’t know he was stopping at the Astor. They did know he visited the bar. Gordon couldn’t have been there by accident. Someone wiser than he had suggested this particular bar. Someone, a pale lavender girl, two young men cut from a stereotyped pattern? And a slinking shadow frightened to death.

Piers left the elevator without good night. His room, front and center, was near. He opened his door, locked it after him. He didn’t make a light, the lights of Broadway shone gaudily. As they shadowed, he crossed to the windows, opened them wide to the sound and the brightness of maelstrom below.

He stood, a frail reed, between this light and the darkness. He would not be eliminated. Not by a rat-like man with a scant yellow beard, not by the experts of European intrigue. Nor, he smiled, by the ambitions of Gordon and his sure, steady perfection. De Witt Gordon to succeed the Secretary? No. It must be he, Piers Hunt.

He alone knew where the Secretary was. He alone knew the two unmarked graves in the African sand. Gordon was eaten with anxiety. Piers knew that Secretary Anstruther was dead.

P
IERS HAD THE MORNING
papers sent to his room with breakfast. They were featuring the imminent International Peace Conclave as if nothing untoward had happened. Perhaps the secret had been kept; perhaps the press didn’t know that Anstruther was missing.

Brecklein had arrived and—his nostrils narrowed—the dirty Schern. That arrogant sentimentalist, Dessaye, was here. The French again would toady to the stronger nations. Once France had been a strong nation. That was before his time, a part of history. She would assuage her fears anew with another loan. Lord Evanhurst arrived today; with him Watkins. Piers could count on Watkins, but Watkins, like himself, was only an undersecretary. Evanhurst was believed to be one of the chief proponents of the withdrawal.

The Dominions were against it but they wouldn’t fight the mother country, not if she were lined up with the United States. He didn’t know about the Russians. China would vote with the States; South America with the majority. South Africa was for withdrawal; they were too far away to fear, and there was German blood. North Africa would follow Britain. As for Equatorial Africa, Black Africa, the important new province—it was an unknown quantity. It would go as Fabian willed. And Fabian’s will was more unknown than the territory he represented. Piers feared its expression.

He searched the papers for news of Fabian but there was none. Perhaps the New York reporters didn’t know the importance of the Secretary of Equatorial Africa. Few of the conference did. If he could get to Fabian, talk with him, person to person, he might possibly make him see, understand. Fabian might well hold the balance of power in the voting. Most of Asia, even Asia Minor, would listen to what Fabian had to say. It was possible that South America would be swayed by him; there had been portents in regional meetings that the mass of the people of South America considered themselves allied with the dark continent.

If he could find Fabian he could at least learn his reactions to the border incidents. He could demand an explanation of the telegram and its aftermath. He would know from the answer or the evasion if Brecklein had got to the African leader first.

The most important thing now was that he himself not die. Last night had proved he wasn’t safe. The man who had followed him hadn’t been the killer but he had been the first messenger from Death. Piers wasn’t certain why he was being hunted. The most valid reason was because of his determination to block the withdrawal of the international military from Germany. But no one had knowledge of that. There were a few, yes, Watkins, Nickerson, Abrahmsky, Australia’s Sandys, the young Czech delegate, all undersecretaries, all unimportant, who knew his convictions. But they knew as well—or thought they did—his inability to act on these. They believed his hands were tied as were their own.