Delicate Ape (3 page)

It was improbable that this was the reason behind his being followed. The more unimportant causes were the more probable. Conceivably some of the schemers might believe that the Secretary of Peace was purposely remaining out of sight until the opening of the conclave in order that he might face it without the insinuating propaganda of the various legations. Granting this premise, Piers could be followed to lead to Secretary Anstruther’s place of retirement. This premise did not carry the threat of death.

But this one did: If the intriguers knew that the Secretary would not appear a
Deus ex machina
at the opening of the conclave, it could be believed that Piers carried his final instructions. Careful as he had been, it could be known that he had the Secretary’s papers. If certain nations did not wish these voiced, and they did not, Piers would need to be eliminated. This theory carried promise of sudden death, death within five days’ time.

He didn’t want to die. This was his world. He liked work, fair fight, and the blue hills of adventure. He liked the stimulus of books. He liked long thoughts, and man, and some men. He liked earth in its greenness and in its barrenness; he liked the machine and the elements and the stars. Like was a poor word for it. Life was of him. It was he. He savored it and he gulped it. He didn’t want to die until he had been filled to saturation.

He had spent four years during the Last War, that Second World War, in daily combat with death. He hadn’t wanted to die then but he hadn’t been afraid. Now he was afraid to die. The fear had nothing to do with fear of losing his identity. He didn’t believe in oblivion. Death would be the new adventure. Nor had his fear to do with giving up this life. That brought resentment but not fear. He feared because if he died there was no one to fight for peace. There were multitudes who wanted peace, who blossomed in the peace of these past twelve years, who clung to the promise of everlasting peace. There were many who had forgotten war and some who had never known it, who believed therefore that peace was inevitable. Even Watkins and Sandys could not fight for peace. It wasn’t that they lacked courage or will; it was that they were not yet appointed. His was the appointment.

He stood from the bed and crumpled the papers. Anstruther’s death should not be without purpose. The old man had been good; he had had the simplicity of goodness. This was not enough when the apes stirred man to bestiality again. The good could not stop the depredation. Only man who had risen from brute man, who recognized the evil gropings, could do that. Piers could and would do it. He was not traveling to Samarra this season.

He crossed to the window and stood there, unseen, looking down at Broadway below. Morning Broadway was a different street from that of night. It was almost quiet now; there were few walkers; the policeman at the intersection was unharried. The police force was for the protection of honest citizens. What would the Commissioner do if Broadway demanded the police be removed from its environs? The idea was too ludicrous for consideration. The same idea for a different street should be laughed out of the peace conclave. It wouldn’t be.

He wished he knew where to find Fabian. A plane whirred overhead. No one below looked up, no one burrowed for shelter, the old Broadway trolley continued to bump along the tracks, the leisurely spring morning was unchanged. That was peace. There was a time when the sound of a plane had brought the terrible silence of fear.

He stretched his lean body and went towards the shower. He wasn’t going to die. It would help, however, if he knew for certain who wanted him to die. It could be Gordon. Gordon intended to step into the old man’s shoes. He had directed his career carefully towards that achievement. But Gordon didn’t know that Anstruther was dead. Only Piers knew that. And it would never occur to Gordon that Piers might be a contender for the post.

It must be Brecklein. Brecklein knew or sensed something. The exquisite German espionage system wouldn’t be blotted out by twelve or twice twelve years. It would if anything be more perceptive by its enforced quiet. The presence of Schern as an envoy of appeal to the court wasn’t by accident. Schern had been the key man in their intelligence during the Last War. The inner key. Piers knew that well.

He scrubbed himself happily. He wasn’t afraid of Brecklein or of his associates. He knew exactly how their minds would function; the traveling salesman was an example. He needn’t be afraid of quick death at their hands. Theirs would not be a shot in the dark; their passion to know would insist that they first probe his motives and intentions.

And now he wasn’t afraid of failure either. The depression he’d brought home with him last night from Washington, result of a day of lethargy and of being shunted from one minor bureaucrat to another, had lifted. He didn’t like the prospect of the inactive days ahead—the conclave would not open until Sunday, four days to wait—but it was an essential part of the plan. To remain in the background, to wait, until the time was ripe for striking. He could wait.

The phone rang as he was brushing his dust-colored hair. He scowled. There was no reason for it to ring. No one knew a Mr. Pierce stopping at the Astor. No one but the clerk could call. Reflectively Piers moved to answer but his hand remained pressed down on the instrument. He turned away, finished dressing to the punctuation of its ringing. It had stopped before he left the room.

He didn’t take his room key to the desk. The night clerk had put a name to him last night; it was possible the day clerk also would recognize him. Later he would inquire, after the seeker, if there were one, had gone. He went out the side door onto 45th street. He walked over to Broadway, stood for a moment in the doorway of the Walgreen’s drugstore on the corner. On impulse he cut into the street up to the traffic officer. He waited until the patrolman blew his whistle and lifted his white gloved hand for traffic change.

Piers stood equal in height if not in breadth to the officer. Assignment in Africa had worn him thin. He asked with the right careless curiosity, “Hear about the accident up the street last night?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t on duty.” He continued manipulating traffic as he spoke. “Did you witness it?”

“Not exactly. Not till it was over.” Piers spoke with clear conscience and candid eyes. “Had my back to it. Who was the fellow?”

“Don’t know. If you were there last night you ought to report in to the Precinct. It’s the Eighteenth, up on Fifty-fourth street. Captain Devlin is trying to round up all the witnesses.”

“He must have been someone important,” Piers said carelessly. “But I didn’t see anything in the papers.”

The policeman held traffic for two women and a little girl with dyed yellow curls and white tassels topping her boots. One of the women examined Piers. When they reached the curb, the cop blew his whistle. “Wasn’t that. Only some of the witnesses say the guy was being chased. Some of them say he was pushed.”

“Sorry I can’t help out. I was just too late.” Piers moved on, lounging across to the east side of Broadway.

The officer didn’t look after him. Doubtless took him for one of the unemployed actors who emerged at the late morning hour. The officer hadn’t been suspicious.

There was risk in it but he wanted to visit the precinct where the accident had been reported. Wisely he had changed to protective coloring today. The sand-brown gabardine, the panama, wouldn’t fit a description of a dark suit and hat. No spectator could have described his face; it was any face, thin, tanned, no distinguishing marks.

He walked on uptown. It was worth the chance for the possibility of finding out the fellow’s name. A lost article. A briefcase. Lost in the excitement over the accident. A good enough excuse. He strode north the nine blocks, turned west on 54th, to the severe gray stone of number 306. He didn’t hesitate at the door; he pushed in.

The sergeant at the desk was big and red. A tuft of saffron gray hair grew over each ear. He sucked his pen and exhaled, “What’s yours?”

Piers stated without preamble, “I lost my briefcase last night. By any chance has it been turned in here?”

The sergeant had a list of questions, routine for lost and found.

Piers avoided name and address, describing, “Alligator, brown. Papers in it.”

“What kind of papers?”

He smiled, deciding to hold his imagination to a guise which would fit. “Plays. Manuscript plays, that is.”

The sergeant’s nose didn’t consider that of much importance.

“It was a good briefcase,” Piers insisted. “Good alligator.” A good alligator is a dead alligator. He continued answering the queries. “It was somewhere in the Paramount block. I think it must have been knocked from my hand when the accident occurred.”

When he spoke the word “accident” the watery blue eyes with the yellowed pupils, the disinterested eyes, suddenly became crisp as china.

“You mean the accident—you mean the guy that jumped in front of a taxi?”

“Fell or jumped or was pushed,” Piers said. He said it blithely, as if he’d taken part in a sidewalk session after its occurrence.

“You want to see Captain Devlin,” the sergeant nodded. He got to his feet as if they pained him and he padded to an inner door.

Piers let his voice follow eagerly. “Does he know about my briefcase?” He lighted a cigarette after the officer disappeared. This was better than he had expected, a first-hand talk with the captain. He wasn’t apprehensive; he couldn’t be connected with the accident; he had not come here to speak of it but to inquire for lost property. He was curious as to whether the police had discovered the dead man to be important or whether this was normal procedure for the many like accidents which must occur in the city. If the latter, the police were to be respected for their careful regard for death.

The old sergeant stuck his head through the door. “You, there. Come on in. Captain says he wants to see you.”

“Certainly.”

Piers followed the man down a corridor into a drab box of a room. It was furnished with a too large desk, an old wooden bench and chair, a calendar portraying an Indian girl stepping into a birch canoe, and a large brass cuspidor. The man behind the desk was large, gray-haired, ruddy-faced. He wore his hat on the back of his head.

“I’m Captain Devlin. Sit down, Mister … Sit down, O’Leary.”

The sergeant sat on the chair. Piers lounged easily on the old bench.

“Your name?” Captain Devlin asked. He had a green pencil with a large brass clip on it pointed at a paper. His desk was assorted with papers.

“George Henderson.” Piers didn’t hesitate. He’d been Thompson in Washington, he was Pierce at the Astor, but Henderson came easily to his lips. He knew these names well, always he used ordinary names, nothing too common or too unusual to attract suspicion. “I lost my briefcase—it’s of brown alligator.”

“Yeah,” Captain Devlin interrupted. “Your address, Mr. Henderson?”

They couldn’t be meaning to detain him while they checked on this. He was a casual. An innocent bystander. He said as if he were slightly ashamed of it, “It’s seventeen Sheridan Square.” He had been born at 17 Sheridan Square. He hoped the building still stood. “I’m staying with friends there—it’s just temporary. I expect to get a place of my own soon. I’m a playwright.” He gave the captain a smile both proud and happy, and then he frowned a little. “My newest manuscripts are in that briefcase and it’s very important I find it. Of course I have my rough drafts but I don’t want to have to type the whole thing again—” He prattled, at ease in his role.

The captain interrupted again. “You witnessed the accident in front of the Paramount last night?”

“But I didn’t. I was right there but I was walking the other way.” He said with slight regret, “I just missed it.”

The captain’s square face took on a shade of disappointment. “You don’t know if he fell or was pushed then?”

“No,” Piers said. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry. I heard the brakes of the taxi when it stopped. Everyone was terribly excited, all talking at once. Some said the man jumped and some said he was pushed. I couldn’t wait though. I was late for an appointment. It wasn’t until I was in the theater later that I missed my brief case. It’s been turned in?”

The sergeant said, “No. Nothing good ever is.”

Piers was emphatic. “It was a good briefcase. I’d hate to lose it. It means so much work—” This time he did the breaking off and his eyes were bright with curiosity. “Who was the man who was killed? Was he someone important? Is that why you think he was pushed?”

Captain Devlin shook his head. “We don’t think he was pushed. But some of the witnesses say he was. There’s always witnesses with big imaginations in any accident case—”

Piers waited, taut. He couldn’t repeat his question. He mustn’t be anything but a naïve young playwright in this room. He could play the role. His face was un-lined, boyish enough for his thirty-six years. He waited and the identity was forthcoming.

“He wasn’t anyone at all,” Devlin continued. “John Smith.”

“John Smith,” Piers repeated, and then he brightened to hide his disappointment. “That’s like a play, Captain. That anyone should actually be named John Smith and be in an accident.”

“It was his name.” Devlin tapped his pencil. “He was identified late last night. By his uncle. We could write it off as closed if it weren’t for those two damn witnesses insisting he was pushed.”

Piers said thoughtfully as if weaving a plot, “And of course that means the uncle will press you—”

“He doesn’t give a damn. He doesn’t think the guy was pushed.” Devlin was grim. “It’s the Commissioner. He don’t like loose ends.” He seemed to see Piers again. “Well, young man, if your briefcase turns up, we’ll notify you.” It was dismissal.

Piers said, “Thank you, sir. And I’m really sorry I didn’t witness your accident.” He followed the sergeant back into the outer room.

“John Smith,” he said. “It’s funny—a real John Smith.”

The sergeant gruffed, “He musta changed it from Schmidt. The old man could hardly talk English.”

Piers moved, reluctant, into the spring sunshine.

Leaving the precinct station, he seemed to be leaving safety behind. He felt an impulse to turn back, to tell the dull and honest sergeant, the worried and rigid captain, “I am in danger. Will you give me protection before I lie beside John Smith?”