Rex Stout (5 page)

At midnight there was still activity. A man entered in a large roadster with the top down, roared up the ramps to the third floor, nodded good night to the floorman, and walked his way back down to the street. A uniformed chauffeur steered through the entrance a dark blue limousine bearing on its door the shield of the Republic of France; this, being an embassy car, went up only one flight. A black sedan, quite ordinary-looking, arrived. It went all the way up. Gliding across the top floor, it sought no niche in the ranks, but continued along the central alley to the front of the building and stopped with its nose against the wall. The driver got out and walked back down the alley to meet the floorman who was approaching. The driver said, not very loud, “Union.” The floorman nodded and said, “Union.” The driver hastened back to the sedan, opened the rear door, and said, “All right.”

Four men got out. Two wore felt hats with turn-down brims, and two caps; all had their coat collars turned up. One led the way a few paces down the alley and then, turning to the right, squeezed between two cars and kept on, sidewise, twisting through the maze. The others followed. Finally they were brought up by a wall. The leader put his hand to it and fumbled around in the dim light, found a button and pushed it. A door opened directly in front of them and a man’s face appeared in the crack. The leader said, “Union.” The door swung back, and they went in.

There were thirty or more men in the room. All were under middle age; some were scarcely more than boys. Their coats and hats hung on hooks along one wall, and their gray shirts were open at the neck. A few sat around a table near the center of the room; the others stood scattered in groups. An unshaded electric bulb dangled from the ceiling on a cord. The rich dark brown of the walls was thick slabs of insulating cork, and there were rubber strips around the edges of the door to keep the light in.

As the five entered they were greeted with a muttered chorus, “Union!” and everyone stood straight. The man who had led the newcomers, stocky with light brown hair and a clamped mouth with one corner twisted down, took the whole room in with a swift sweep of his eyes. One who had been seated at the table hurried over to him and then turned to the crowd: “Men! Here he is!”

There was a murmur, but the stocky man disregarded it. He walked abruptly to the table, brushing a chair aside, and rapped with his knuckles on the transmitter of a telephone which stood there. “What’s this?” he demanded. “A decoration?”

One who stood near him said, “Why—it was put in last week—”

“You don’t mean it’s connected?”

The other met his eyes and said with a touch of resentment, “Sure.”

“Sure what? A sure trap? It is. Take it out tomorrow. No. Not tomorrow. Leave it in, but don’t use it. If it rings don’t answer it.”

The other persisted, “I don’t see what—”

“I do. You should. Let’s find out.” He turned to the room. “Union! Men, you tell him. I say that telephone is dumb and dangerous. You who agree, show your hands.” Hands shot up, many of them. The stocky man did not wait for laggards. “You who disagree, show it.” There were none. He turned to the culprit. “You’re in the ranks, beginning now. We’ll choose a man for the place later. Well?”

The other did not hesitate. He lifted his right hand and laid it on his heart, and said firmly and clearly, “Union.”

“Good. The Gray Shirts of the Union do not fear danger, they welcome and embrace it, but they will not be betrayed by stupidity.” He turned to the room again. “Men! Gather before me.”

They stepped briskly, with eagerness, not taking their eyes off the stocky man as they moved. Partly the forcefulness of his words, partly the electric crispness of his voice, had galvanized the air for their lungs. They collected into a compact group and stood straight, gazing up at him as he mounted a chair.

He did not raise his voice. “Men, I am Lincoln Lee. A few of you I have met before, in Detroit or Memphis; most of you see me for the first time. This is my first entry into Washington, but it will not be my last. On a not distant day I shall enter it to stay, as Mussolini entered Rome and Hitler entered Berlin. Not that I shall imitate either their ideas or their methods; this is the United States of America, and none but Americans shall guide its destiny, none but Americans shall point the way, none but Americans shall accompany us to the goal. Well, men?”

The chorus was instant, a breath of zeal, “Union!”

“Yes. Union. Union of the blood and the ideals America needs and must have; for all others, contempt and destruction. You know them and I can name them. The dirty whining Jews, the tricky lying Pope-lovers, the Reds, the Anarchists, the filthy Communists; you know the enemy. We are not enemies of the good Americans who have not yet accepted our leadership. We wish only to show them that we are the leaders,
I am the leader
, they are waiting for, and their millions will be in our ranks. I am now hunted and despised. That is my present pride, it is the foot of the ladder on which I shall mount to my future glory, and your glory, and the true grandeur of America. Men, you will mount the ladder with me?”

“Union!”

“Now, America has other enemies who must be destroyed. The yellow men from Japan, not even human, the Britishers who want the earth and will know they’re licked at last when we turn their muddy little islands upside down in the ocean, the French frog-eaters who borrowed the last war from us and wouldn’t pay it back—common dirty welchers. They are America’s enemies and must be destroyed. We’ve got a sissy in the White House, a weakling with water in his blood and without a spine, but in spite of him America must deal with her enemies, and if he gets himself between the battle lines he’ll have to get hurt. We don’t squirm at that. We squirm at nothing! There is only one gantlet we force any man to run,
but all, from White House to gutter, must pass through that: he who stands in America’s way must be destroyed! Neither your brother nor my sister can escape; and no Red, no Jew, no Pope-lover. We are hard, and hardest of all to traitors!”

He paused for the chorus: “Union!”

“We are hard, and we are patient. Those who lack patience will disappear from our ranks, and we shall not salute their graves. In the days ahead, for the destruction of our enemies abroad, we must expect separation and delay. I do not know when I shall see you again. My lieutenants are your commanders; obey them. One who proves himself unworthy of your reliance will pay the penalty swiftly and without fail. Those whom I trust, you may trust. Be patient, time is with us. Wherever you may find yourselves, on the battlefields of Europe, on the front with our allies in Siberia, on the deck of a ship after the yellow men, remember that we are hard, we do not forget, and we want the future only for the glorious day it holds for America.”

Lincoln Lee paused. His mouth twisted, a nervous grimace that certainly was not a smile, and he said in a lower tone from which everything was excluded but insane ferocity:

“Men. I talk big. I am big. Union!”

There was no sound or movement; his voice had hypnotized them. They did not even breathe the chorus. He let his eyes move over them, from face to face, seeing each one, and after that was finished he said in a different tone:

“That’s all. Don’t leave, whether you have your orders for tomorrow or not. Take your coats for pillows and lie on the floor; get some sleep if you can. There may be a change in plans.” He got down from the chair, agile and sure on his feet. “Grier! Fallon! Let’s look it over. Where are your lists? Put that telephone on the floor; be careful; get some string and tie the hook down.”

One man got at the telephone, another came forward with an envelope and began removing papers from it, a third unfolded another paper, quite large, and spread it out on the table, disclosing a map of the city of Washington. Lincoln Lee sat down and bent over the map.

When Alma Cronin got up to go home it was half-past twelve. On receiving the telephone call from Chick Moffat, at a little after eight, to the effect that he would be unable to keep his appointment with her for a walk and a couple of hours at a movie, she had been, of course, momentarily disappointed but had refused to confess to pique. She had plenty of intelligence and was quite aware that she was far from having Chick Moffat finally and satisfactorily oriented in the pleasant groves and meadows of her emotions. Was it possible—heaven forbid—that there was a bit of jungle there and he had found it?

She had first met him one day a year back, in a corridor of the White House. She had been new there then, and on seeing this hatless man striding along with the assurance of familiarity she had stopped him to inquire:

“If I keep going will I get to the President’s office?”

He had smiled with his eyes. “You will, madam, if you make all the right turns and nobody stops you.”

“I see. Thank you for the encouragement. Mrs. Stanley asked me to take the President his wrist watch.” She dangled it by its strap from her finger. “She says he forgot to put it on, and he’s a lost soul without it.”

“That’s what I was going for.” He held out his hand. “Will you entrust it to me? I’m Chick—Charles A. Moffat, Secret Service.”

“Thanks. I’m Alma Cronin, Assistant Secretary.”

He had half turned, but gone back again. “Don’t you want to come along so you’ll know the way next time?”

She had gone with him.

That had led to something, a walk or a dinner, and another one, and neither he nor she had seemed to develop an inclination to let the matter drop. Alma knew perfectly well that there could be nothing to it. She was an intellectual, knew all about trends and undercurrents and the social ferments, and was a member of the Women’s League for Peace, whereas Chick Moffat—well, he read
Collier’s Weekly
and played poker with newspaper men. With so wide a space
between the roads their minds were traveling, it seemed odd to her that she should find an increasing pleasure in strolling with him through Rock Creek Park or in letting him, on winter evenings, sit for hours in the only comfortable chair in her room and tell her jokes—until it suddenly occurred to her one day that she was fond of him. That explanation was quite satisfactory and even soothing. But as winter began to retreat before spring, and she found herself becoming indifferent to those of her friends who did not know Chick or regarded him as unimportant, a suspicion sneaked through her defenses that “fond” was hardly the word. There were various little symptoms which alarmed her, for instance catching herself singing one day while making deviled ham and onion sandwiches. She had hurried home from work, buying the ingredients on the way, and the sandwiches were intended for Chick’s delight upon their return that evening from a violin recital. With beer. She disliked onions and managed easily without beer. And with onion-tears in her eyes she was singing! She dropped the knife onto the newspaper and went to the bathroom and wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at herself in the mirror. She thought, if these inexorable facts are capable of two interpretations, I’d like to know what the other one is. As sure as God made little apples, I’m teasing a man’s stomach to show him what he’d be missing in case. She said aloud, “Alma Cronin, you’re compromising yourself, and with onions!”

As she finished the sandwiches, vaguely seeking justification, it occurred to her that Chick was no more enamored of violin music than she was of onions and beer; and he had bought the tickets. But that only made it worse. Both of them frantically clutching at an alien culture, just to show … Ha! She decided that the situation provided the only decent excuse for a war that she had ever heard of: Chick Moffat might go away to it, and then this nonsense … But the jest gagged her, and there was a sudden definite aching pain low in her breast, so definite and pronounced that she put her hand there without knowing it. It was a different sort of feeling entirely from the fiery indignation which had on occasion been aroused in her at a meeting of the Women’s League for Peace. It really scared her; she felt helpless and betrayed, and for the first time since puberty unsure of the next hour and the morrow.

But none of the débris of that collapse was left to inform Chick Moffat’s eye when he arrived thirty minutes later.

Nothing happened in the following weeks. For one thing, Chick appeared to be stymied at friendship; for another, her sense of humor was stubbornly jealous of its prerogatives; and for still another, the war controversy approached a crisis and Alma was hot in the fight. Her position at the White House was both unofficial and unimportant, since she was merely the secretary of Mrs. Robbins, who was secretary to Mrs. Stanley, who was the wife of the President. But Mrs. Stanley was friendly, democratic, busy, curious, and indiscreet; so Alma learned many things a secretary of a secretary should perhaps be kept in ignorance of. She wrote, at dictation, letters to capitalists’ sisters and Congressmen’s wives, which, left by catastrophe as the only records of our time for the enlightenment of posterity, would convince future historians that the twentieth century United States of America was a matriarchy. Alma was not concerned with that; she was ready to help with any stab at the threat of war; and since her heart was in it as well as her mind, she let the issue of her private crisis wait for a better moment.

So when Chick phoned her that Monday evening that he could not come she refused to admit pique, though she would have liked to be with him that evening, the eve of defeat or victory. She wondered whether his being recalled to the White House after having spent the day there meant any new development since her departure at six o’clock, and then remembered that he hadn’t mentioned the White House, but had merely said that he had to go on duty. Elsewhere, perhaps? Possibly the street demonstrations were getting harder to handle; on her way home she had twice seen police breaking up groups and shoving them along, and this was not the part of town where such things were supposed to happen. Frowning, she stood looking out of the window. There was no telling, but she would like to know. She sat down with a book and stuck to it for over an hour; when her restlessness made the prolongation of that gesture not only irksome but silly, she went to the phone and called up the Lindquists. They were at home and said come, please do.