Louise's Dilemma (23 page)

My feet were sore and I needed to move quietly, so I had a momentary fanciful urge to slide down one of the winding mahogany bannisters, but figured I’d fly off at a curve and break my neck.

If one can tiptoe down a staircase, that’s what I did, clinging to the bannister for support and stopping every few steps to listen. I heard only silence echoing. When I got near the bottom I sat down on a marble step and peered through the bannister railings. No one waited by the front door. I crept the rest of the way down, and then there was nothing else to do but step into the entrance foyer for a good look around. No one was there.

I felt relief course through my system, then remembered that what was good for me wasn’t good for the British Embassy. If Anne had caught a bus shortly after locking me in the bindery, she would be most of the way there by now.

Two pay telephone booths stood across the wide hall next to the double doors of the L’Enfant Map Room. I ran across the marble floor, pulled open the mahogany door to one of the booths and grabbed for the telephone receiver. Thank you, Lord, a dial tone!

But I didn’t have a nickel! Damn it, my pocket book was in Phoebe’s car! Frantically, I searched through the pockets of the borrowed pea coat and trousers I was wearing. Not even a penny! I couldn’t call the police. What now?

I heard a door slam nearby. Through the glass of the booth I saw Anne come out of a rest room across the foyer, her handbag clutched tightly to her side. She hadn’t left yet after all. So there was still hope I could stop her.

Oh, she had a Luger, my switchblade, and a Nazi stick grenade, but I had a bookbinding awl, didn’t I?

I slid onto the floor of the phone booth to hide and think.

Then I heard her footsteps. They were, step by step, inexorably coming my way! She must have seen me! And there I was, crouching on a telephone booth floor, so vulnerable. I was exhausted, and my feet were terribly sore. I was no match for her.

Anne would shoot me this time, I was sure of it.

As she came closer I could imagine her pulling the Luger out of her oversized pocketbook, her left hand reaching for the door of the box, and finally standing over me with her gun to my head.

Instead, I heard the door of the box next door open. Anne was making a telephone call! I squeezed tightly up against the wall next to her booth and strained to catch her words.

‘Yes, yes,’ she said. ‘It’s late. I’ve been waiting for almost an hour.’

She’d called the bus terminal!

‘Are you sure it’s running only ten minutes late? Yes, I know it’s still icy in places. All right, of course I’ll wait, I have no choice.’

I heard Anne hang up the telephone, and as she left the booth, I burst out of mine and tackled her from behind.

Taken completely by surprise, she landed flat on her stomach on the hard marble floor. I could hear her gasp as the air was knocked out of her lungs. Her pocketbook skidded across the floor, and I scrabbled over her to grab it.

Anne wasn’t so easily defeated. She seized one of my sore feet with both hands, and I squealed in pain. She dragged me back towards her, and as I kicked back as hard as I could with my other foot she feinted backwards, letting go of me.

She was on her feet quickly, more quickly than I, and as I struggled to stand up to face her she slapped my face hard, knocking me to the side. I kept myself from falling flat by breaking my fall with my hands.

I rolled away just as she aimed a kick at my head.

If Anne hadn’t missed that kick and lost her footing I’d be dead today, no question. It certainly wasn’t skill that won me that fight. Anne lost her balance and toppled back against one of the telephone booths with one hand smashing back against the door.

I don’t have a clear memory of what happened next, but the next thing I knew Anne was pinned to the door of the booth with a bookbinding awl piercing her hand. Blood trickled down her arm.

Anne didn’t scream, but made soft moaning sounds while I went through her bag looking for the rope she used to tie me up in the car. When I found it I pulled the awl out of her twitching hand and tied her to a cast-iron grate in the wall. Blood gushed out of her wound, but I couldn’t have cared less.

I found a nickel in her purse and called the police.

Anne hadn’t gone meekly. She fought and screamed all the way to the paddy wagon. It took four policemen to force her inside and lock the door. I rode in another police car to the DC Jail behind the paddy wagon. The jail was a famously hideous building, its plaster façade painted an odd blue to resemble stone, which it didn’t at all.

Inside the stark police infirmary a medic cleaned and bandaged my feet and legs.

‘Your lacerations and bruises aren’t serious,’ he said, ‘but there are lots of them. You’ll need to rest and stay off your feet for at least a week. I’ll send some laudanum tablets home with you. You won’t need them for more than a couple of days.’

I managed to nap for a couple of hours until Agent Williams showed up to debrief me. I told him the entire story, except for the part about how terrified I was of being trapped in the dumbwaiter.

‘We caught the saboteurs,’ Williams said. ‘They were boarding a train for Chicago in Baltimore when one of them dropped the suitcase radio. It fell open on the platform, and the four of them were tackled by a bunch of GIs traveling in their car.’

The Navy and Coast Guard were scouring the bay for any sign of a scuttled Nazi submarine. If they located it they’d destroy it completely, so that the American public would never know that Germans had made their way into the Chesapeake Bay. Close watch was being kept on the coast of the eastern shore of Maryland, in hopes that the submariners could be captured trying to escape.

‘Eastern Command gave us permission to search the Martin property yesterday mid-afternoon,’ Williams said. ‘While we were there Constable Long came driving like a maniac down the driveway. Some Coastguardsman had called him, wouldn’t give him a name, crazy worried that he’d left you alone at the Martins. His HQ had forbidden him to report it, trying to keep the scene under wraps. Then Constable Long talked to Mrs Sullivan, who said Anne had called her and told her the two of you were together.’

Constable Long and Williams had searched for me, and Anne, in the vicinity of St Leonard for hours, until the DC police called them to tell them that Anne and I had been found.

‘I suppose they’ll charge her with treason?’ I asked.

‘I should think so. She’s a citizen who aided an enemy of the United States, with intent to adhere to the enemy’s cause.’

‘Will she hang?’

‘Nah. DC has an electric chair.’

I
hobbled to the front door of ‘Two Trees’, with the support of a DC policeman on each arm.

Phoebe opened the door, and she and Ada rushed out into the cold to hug me.

‘You poor girl!’ Phoebe said.

‘Louise, we’ve been so worried!’ Ada said.

I winced as I moved to the door, and they both looked down at my bandaged legs and feet.

‘Oh, my Lord!’ Phoebe said.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ I said.

I thanked the policemen, one of whom had driven Phoebe’s car home, miraculously without a scratch on it, and with Ada and Phoebe’s help I limped inside the house.

‘Baby,’ Dellaphine said, standing in the hall with a tray holding a mug of hot cocoa and a plate of ham biscuits, ‘what on earth happened to you?’

‘I was walking on the beach after dark,’ I said. ‘It was so stupid of me. I tripped over a stone jetty and fell. I thought it would be smart to take off my shoes, to give me more traction, but then I stepped into a pile of oyster shells and fell again. I twisted my ankle and couldn’t walk. I’d still be there, I think, if Mrs Sullivan hadn’t called the local constable when I didn’t return to her guesthouse.’

‘Girls shouldn’t be out walking any beach alone at night,’ Henry said, coming out of the lounge.

Joe was behind him. I tried to read his expression and didn’t see any anger there.

‘Here,’ he said, with a faint trill to the ‘r’, ‘let me take you the rest of the way to the sofa.’ He edged Ada and Phoebe aside, slid one arm under my shoulders and the other under my knees, and carried me into the warm lounge.