Rex Stout (25 page)

“Nothing, sir. The man you sent for me woke me up. I didn’t know Colonel Blaine had been relieved until after I entered this building.”

Before the next question got out there was an interruption: Cunningham’s name was called by the Secretary of War. The general grunted, “Wait here,” got up and passed around the group of officers at the table. Oliver, with the brigadier general at his desk, waited to speak until Cunningham was close.

“About the guard for the White House. Barlett says that Hobbs is a good sensible officer, and reliable.”

Cunningham nodded. “I have no doubt of it.”

“Then do we leave him there?”

“We can. If you wish. You said there was a special reason for having the White House and the Executive Offices protected by men—which in this case means their officers—absolutely above question both in loyalty and in ability.”

“There is. I repeat it, emphatically. The reason is—well—a Cabinet secret, but I assure you it exists.”

“Is it up to me?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Cunningham turned to the brigadier general. “Put Hobbs’s regiment somewhere else, and send the Thirty-ninth, Colonel Wright, to the White House. Get Wright there before Hobbs leaves, I should say by seven o’clock.” To the Secretary: “Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

Cunningham went back to his chair. The short dark captain was there waiting for him, and the general, unexpectedly
looking up as he sat down, got a good view of a hastily covered yawn. The captain blushed. Cunningham said, “I don’t know how good an officer you are, but you’re too damned sleepy to be an intriguer. Go back and go to bed.”

He beckoned an officer from the table and handed out the folder. “Here, take this. What’s the next one?”

Around eight o’clock Friday morning it began to rain. That was as it should be; it was in the mood of things; it rained seriously and steadily on a stalemated capital, a stalemated Congress, a stalemated Cabinet, a stalemated coup d’état. The capital, like the country, was stalemated by confusion and exasperation: filled with wild and incredible rumors, impotent against an outrage of which the nature and the perpetrators remained undiscoverable, offering to explode at each false spark; balked again, retreating perforce to its murmuring of futile ferocity. The Congress was caught between two opposing and deadly threats, one from the men who owned the country and the other from those who did the voting in it; the only act it desired to perform, it did not dare to attempt; so it quit. The Cabinet was stalemated by its ridiculous and utter failure to solve the problem of the disappearance of the Chief Executive; it was even losing the anxious sympathy which had urged it on for two days and three nights; Friday morning the press and the people were howling with derision at what they had enthusiastically applauded the day before, the prompt and energetic dispatch of the cruisers to overhaul and search the
Richard Cranmer.
And the coup d’état was stalemated because, as its leaders discovered to their enraged dismay Thursday around midnight, the Vice-President had got lost or someone had stolen him. That was one of the very few poor guesses that D. L. Voorman ever made; Voorman guessed that Molleson had got too impossibly scared and had simply run off to hide. The enterprise might in any event have been frustrated by the prompt and energetic measures of Oliver and Cunningham, but the desertion of Molleson—poor Molleson did not deserve that from his old friend Voorman—made chaos of their arrangements and reduced Daniel Cullen to an imbecile fury.

It rained, steadily from low leaden skies, on a stalemated country.

During all the tense, vigilant, unforgettable hours of those three days and nights, Chick Moffat had only one piece of bad luck, and that didn’t amount to much. He had known from the beginning that for this amazing enterprise he would need not only ingenuity, audacity, a quick wit and a cool head, but also plenty of luck. He admitted that he had had it; but at ten o’clock Friday morning, walking down a corridor of the White House, he thought it had deserted him when he saw the Chief of the Secret Service coming towards him, not twenty feet away. It was impossible to turn, to avoid an encounter. Chick went on, and without slowing down tried nodding a casual good morning.

Skinner stopped him. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought I tied you to Lincoln Lee’s tail.”

Chick nodded. “Sure. Sam Carr has him. We lost him once yesterday afternoon, but I picked him up again. I’m going home now for a phone call from Sam.”

“Yeah. I suppose you came here to breakfast with the Cabinet. What’s the idea?”

The quick wit had been trying, but could think of nothing better than the truth. “Mrs. Stanley sent for me. A personal errand. She’s got the habit the three years I’ve been here.”

“No doubt.” The gray eyes disagreed with that. “I’d like to pay my respects to her. Wardell sent me over here to see the Cabinet. I suppose she’s with them.”

“She may be by now. I just left her.”

“Yeah. We’ll see. Come along.”

Chick went, inwardly cursing his luck. Not that he had any misgivings as to Mrs. Stanley’s wit; but it was at least undesirable, if not dangerous, that Skinner should know he had been at the White House for any purpose whatever; and if ever there should be no minute’s delay it was now, the last and most difficult and perilous hour of all. He followed Skinner and cursed his back.

Upstairs, a Secret Service man stood outside the door of the library. Upon Skinner’s instruction to ask Mrs. Stanley please to come out for a moment, he went in. After a short
wait she appeared. She nodded to the Chief and looked at Chick with surprise, and stood sagging. She was pale, there were dark puffs under her eyes, and her wonted brightness was gone.

Skinner said, “Excuse me for bothering you, Mrs. Stanley. I ran into Moffat down in the hall, which surprised me because I thought he was on a job I gave him. He said something about an errand for you. I just wondered if it was important.”

Chick, knowing how keen the Chief’s eyes were when they seemed most casual, was busy looking indifferent. He couldn’t blame Mrs. Stanley for hesitating an instant, but he hoped she would manage her voice. She did, extremely well; to his ear there was nothing in it but annoyance.

“Important? Not terribly, no. A private matter. If there was any reason … really, I’m sorry if I have interfered …”

“Not at all.” Skinner was apologetic. “I just wondered what he was doing here. Considering everything, there was even a chance he was lying.”

“Chick Moffat?” The ghost of her well-known smile flitted across Mrs. Stanley’s face. “There are so many others it is so much easier to suspect.”

The Chief nodded. “It’s a good idea to have enough suspicion to go around, no matter who it is. But you must excuse me for bothering you. The Secretary of the Interior sent me here to the Cabinet. Do I go in now?”

“I’ll see. If you’ll just wait here.” The man at the door opened it, and she went in.

Skinner said to Chick, “All right, get along.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be back on Lee in less than an hour.”

“Yeah. Beat it.”

Downstairs in the anteroom, where he stopped for his hat and raincoat, Chick looked at his watch. It said a quarter past ten. Outside, it was raining harder than ever. Leaving the grounds and getting through the entrance, he was stopped four times by soldiers, the last time by one in the uniform of a captain, demanding to see his pass. He showed it to them—written on Executive Offices stationery and signed by Harry Brownell, Secretary to the President.

Fifteen minutes later, at half-past ten, Chick was driving his little black sedan through the rain down the dismal and doubtful street where six years previously he had found the apartment which suited him for a home whether its locality suited the ideas of his superiors or not. He rolled up to the curb in front of the entrance to that building, stopped, and got out. Pedestrians passed: a man and woman under an umbrella. Nearly a block off to the north a soldier stood huddled under his rubber cape; in the other direction, south, there was one much closer, a dozen yards or so. Chick let himself into the building with his key and ran up the flight of stairs to his apartment.

In another fifteen minutes, at a quarter to eleven, Chick came out again. From the sidewalk he looked right and left; he was keeping one eye shut and holding his head cocked at an angle as he squinted out of the other one. Keeping his eye shut was the prologue to the carefully considered program which he had just communicated to his collaborator, in minute detail, upstairs. As he paused a moment before the entrance his heart was pounding out a violent and rhythmic invocation to the lords of luck; there had to be luck now. Though his life, by the nature of his occupation, had known many moments of stress and two or three of deadly danger, this was the first time he had ever felt his heart beat; he noted it without wonder, for upstairs a man had just said to him, “I needn’t remind you, Chick, that our slightest misstep will cut the thread of life for a million men.” Chick had grinned with confidence: “Yes, sir.”

Now, feeling his heart beat, he sent another glance right and left up and down the street, with his open eye, and turned with quick decision to the right. The rain had let up a
little. He walked south down the sidewalk a dozen paces to where the soldier stood, and accosted him. The soldier greeted him as an acquaintance; in preparation for this contingency, Chick had made occasion for conversations with him the day before.

Chick said, “How are you on operations? I’ve got something in my eye and it feels like an oak tree.”

The soldier said, “I’m not much good. Here, get under this awning. Got a handkerchief?”

Chick pulled one out. He had maneuvered to face north, which got the soldier’s back where he wanted it. He could see the entrance he had just left, and the sidewalk for nearly a block; no one was passing. He let the soldier pry his left eye open, the lower lid down, then the upper lid up, and peer at it this way and that way, and dab at it with the twisted corner of the handkerchief. It was being done with more than ordinary clumsiness, but Chick didn’t notice. He was using his right eye, and with it saw a figure emerge, to the sidewalk, from the entrance to the building of his apartment. It could be seen that it was a man, from the bottom twelve inches of his trouser legs, but the voluminous rain-cape and the hat with the brim turned down all around concealed all other details.

The soldier said, “Hell, I can’t see anything.”

“Try the upper lid again. It feels like it was up there.”

The figure in the rain-cape had slowly and deliberately crossed the sidewalk and opened the rear door of Chick’s sedan. Chick’s right eye was straining to see. The figure was bending, was on the running-board, was inside. A hand came out and the door swung shut.

The soldier said, “There’s a drug store down two blocks. You’d better go there. I’ll blind you if I keep this up.”

Chick blinked his eyes rapidly several times. He took the handkerchief and wiped the tears away from them. He could feel his heart thumping, plump, plump, plump, against his ribs. He said, “I believe you got it.”

“Got hell. I’ve just made it numb so you can’t feel with it.”

“Anyway, much obliged. I’m in a hurry. If I feel it again I’ll stop in a drug store.”

The soldier nodded. “You’d better. Driving in the rain with one eye ain’t so hot.”

Chick thanked him again, held the handkerchief to his eye, went down the sidewalk without too much haste to the sedan,
and got into the driver’s seat. He did not look at the back. He started the engine, pulled the gear in, and rolled off.

At the first corner he turned right. Since eight o’clock the evening before, when the destination of that ride had first been definitely decided, he had over and over again considered each block and turn of the itinerary, and had finally determined on Eighth Street, Massachusetts Avenue, Tenth Street, and then Maryland Avenue to the garage. That gave him only two left turns, and at pretty good corners. He had figured that if he drove inconspicuously, not too slowly and certainly not too fast, it would take about twelve minutes, and it would seem like about twelve hundred years. As a matter of fact, it did not. His time-consciousness, instead of being elongated, ceased to operate at all. That drive was out of time. There was a remarkably keen vividness about all phenomena: cars approaching, cars passing, rain falling, pavements glistening, pedestrians crossing at corners, but in the forefront of his mind throughout was distributor points. A month previously, when out with Alma, the car had suddenly started bucking, stopping, starting, halting, and bucking again. A man at a garage had said it was the distributor points and had done something to them. Now, Chick thought, this whole thing, this whole cockeyed shebang, depends on a bunch of damned distributor points, and I don’t even know what they are. He steered, swerved a little to the curb as a car whizzed by, sloshing over the wet pavement.

As he waited at a traffic light, the second and last one he would encounter, he glanced back at the tonneau. The back seat was empty; but huddled on the floor in front of it was a great long lump covered by the folds of the rain-cape.

Chick did not know whether the Maryland Avenue Garage was still under surveillance, but that did not much concern him, since in any event they would not be attempting to stop all entering cars. He had the collar of his raincoat turned up and the brim of his hat pulled down, and even if one in the Service who knew him was posted there, it was highly improbable that he would be recognized. What there was of risk in it could not be helped. As, down Maryland Avenue at last, he slowed up for the garage entrance, he kept his eyes working the corners, but saw no one that looked questionable. He swung in through the wide door. Two or three attendants and loiterers were there, but without halting he headed for the ramp. He went into second and roared up,
around the swing on the second floor and up again, past the third and still up. On the top floor, he turned sharp right and rolled down the center lane toward the front of the building. He could see no one, as he passed by, except the floorman, who looked up, stopped rubbing at a fender on a car, and walked down the lane. Chick, at the far end, before he stopped and got out, turned his car around so that it was headed back the way he had come.