The Blackbirder (7 page)

“We meet again.”

Any answer must be provocation or snub. She was silent.

He said, “D'you know, we have met before?”

She spoke without inflection. “On the train.”

“I don't mean that.” The smile deepened. “I've remembered. You're Julie Guille.”

She set the glass on the table without trembling the liquid. Her eyes were expressionless on his gray ones. “Where did we meet?”

“In Paris.” He laughed. “It must have been the Ritz Bar, of course. You were with your cousin, Fran Guille.”

She stated deliberately, “I don't remember you.”

“You wouldn't.” Without asking he'd pulled out the opposite chair, dropped into it. It was done like sleight-of-hand and without seeming intrusion. “You were surrounded by an admiring covey and I was one small visiting fireman. On leave. Even then, it was all of four years ago, I was in the R.A.F.”

She said rather than asked, “You are English.”

“Yes.” He passed cigarettes, American, to her. “You don't remember, do you? My name is Blaike, Roderick Blaike. My friends call me Blaike, however, never Rod.” He lighted the cigarettes. “I'm again on leave.” His mouth had gone straight. “Had a little crackup over the Channel— my leg— ” He touched it. “They tell me I'll have to relearn flying.”

She asked then, “How do you happen to be in America?”

“I'm recuperating.” There was a moment before he remembered to slant the smile. “How is Fran? With you?”

She answered, “No.”

His brows pointed up. “Not still in Paris?”

She took her time in reply. “I don't know where he is. I haven't heard from him for a long time.” She raised her eyes then. “We don't get much news from Paris now.”

He accepted that with a grave face. “You're with your aunt and uncle here?”

“As far as I know, they are in France,” she answered brusquely.

She didn't like this questioning. Maybe he was only a naive young British flyer; maybe not. Gestapo agents, disguised above suspicion, had been instrumental in placing Fran in internment. There were Germans who could pass for British in Whitehall, much more easily in this remote New Mexican town. She could have been led here deliberately by Maxl, his death not part of the pattern. Reports of Paul's fury at her escape had reached her while she was still in the Paris underground. He had been determined to recover both her person and the de Guille diamonds. The Blackbirder could be Nazi. The whispers about him in New York had always started at the appearance of refugees who could not have entered the United States by legal methods. She rejected, definitely now, the coincidence of this man as a traveling companion.

She finished her drink, scooped up part of the change. “It so happens that I am an American. I do not hear from the Guilles.” She rose, slid her purse under her arm. “There is no word from France since France's death.”

He apologized, following her toward the door. “I'm so sorry. I didn't mean— I know how you must feel— ”

She didn't answer; she didn't even hear him. Her eyes disbelieved as she hurried forward. Beyond the man blurred,in the doorway was another man. It was Jacques Michet.

Julie propelled herself forward, barely excusing herself as she brushed aside the man in the entry. “Jacquesl” She ran to him, caught his arms. “Jacques! Jacques!” She could only repeat his name over and over in wonder, in faith.

He appeared thin but fit; his dark curly hair cut American; his tight denim levis and blue shirt, New Mexican; huaraches on his feet. His eye lighted for a moment, his lips formed, “Julie,” and then unaccountably both were shuttered. “Pardon?”

She shook him slightly. “Jacques, I haven't changed that much. It's Julie. I just can't believe you're here.” It was too good for belief. After the years of working alone, to have someone on whom she could depend, who would help. Jacques had been paid by Paul Guille but he had been Fran's man, Fran's friend. The Guille heir and the Guille handyman. The gap hadn't counted. Not with both of them so enamored of planes. That was before planes had become stamped as lethal weapons, when they were incredibly beautiful silver streaks in the sky. Fran had taught Jacques to fly his two-seater. It was the summer when she was fifteen. Fran from his six years of seniority had promised to teach her when she was older. Another summer.

Fran was in prison. But Jacques was free. He would help. “I've so much to tell you, Jacques.” She didn't understand his restraint, then she realized.

The gray man was standing there watching. The man she had brushed in the doorway was also watching. She hadn't looked on him until now. Slight, no taller than she, with a sad monkey face and a beautiful silken brown beard. It was the exact color of the corduroy jacket he wore. His eyes were brown, cinnamon brown. When she turned he peered and asked, “You have a friend, Jacques?” His voice was gentle.

Jacques spoke formally to Julie. “It has been good to see you, M'mselle. Give my regards to your family.” He took a step away, toward the beard.

She shook her head slightly. She was puzzled but she accepted it. There must be a reason. Her eyes suddenly lifted to the gray man, to that faint amused smile.

The bearded man was in front of Jacques. “Your friend— ”

Jacques's back was to her but she heard his words. “We are late now, Popin.”

“Popin!” She echoed it aloud.

He had sidestepped Jacques. “I am Popin.”

She was delighted. “But amazing! I tried to reach you by phone only a little while ago. The— maid?— said you were in Santa Fe for dinner.”

“So I am.”

“For dinner with me,” the gray man said. “Mr. Popin, I am Roderick Blaike.”

Popin's laughter was unrepressed. His long fingers gestured to one and to the other. “It couldn't happen.” He shook his beard. “No carnation in the buttonhole. No seeking a face for a name. We meet. We are all friends. That easy it is. We will dine together? Miss— ”

Jacques spoke. His face was a graven thing. “She is Julie Guille.”

“Yes?” If there was a flicker of surprise behind the silken beard it was swathed. “And you are an old friend of my friend Jacques? How pleasant. A reunion. Mr. Blaike, you do not object if the young lady joins us for dinner?

Popin didn't know Blaike, the meeting was of strangers. He distrusted the gray man too, obviously; otherwise he would have mentioned Fran. She didn't want to dine with Blaike but possibly he could be eluded after dinner. If there could be granted just one moment alone with the bearded man, to speak Fran's name, to hear it spoken.

“I'd be delighted,” Blaike said. He might have been laughing at her. He looked from his height down into her face. “You will join us, Miss Guille?”

“Certainly.’

Jacques stood apart.

Popin said, “The New Mexican room is most pleasant. There are the delicate frescoes of Olive Rush. And in this— our new country— there is yet sufficient food.” His voice muted. “We are the fortunate ones.” He raised his cinnamon eyes. “I too am a refugee.” His head turned. “Jacques— ”

Jacques said unsmiling, “I have the important errands, Popin. You remember. You will excuse me.”

“But dinner first. You must eat something.”

“Something I will eat. But first the list for Spike— and other more important things.” He did not wait for response. His huaraches clicked across the lobby.

Popin shrugged his hands. “You knew him well before, Miss Guille?”

“He worked for my guardian, Paul Guille.” She made a little face. “I've known him since I was a child— but not too well.” Evidently. She didn't understand. True, she had not known Jacques well but Tanya— Tanya was his wife. It was Tanya who had effected her escape out of France. Jacques knew; he must have known. And he knew her love for Fran.

A stringed orchestra in the velvet garb of Spanish grandees strummed outside the dining-room door. The room was pleasant, quiet, pastel on the walls and pillars: a delicate faun, a warm gray squirrel, white blossoming cactus. Popin led to a banco against the wall, placed her beside Blaike there. He took the chair across the narrow, painted table. His fingers touched the fat white of the candle. “You have only just arrived, Miss Guille?”

“This afternoon.”

“Funny thing.” Blaike beckoned the wine boy. “You'll have a drink before we order dinner?” Julie refused. Popin said, “Bourbon, if you please.” Blaike gave the order. “Funny. Miss Guille and I traveled from New York together.”

She scotched it quickly, her eyes warning the bearded man. “On the same trains.”

Blaike laughed pleasantly. “Yes. Funnier still, I'd met her in Paris years ago, with her cousin, Fran Guille.” Popin didn't move an eyelash. “I didn't get it remembered until a while ago.” Blaike suggested from the menu. The starched white waitress wrote the order.

Popin laid his fingertips together. He spoke modestly. “What I do not understand, Mr. Blaike, is how you happen to hear of my painting back there in New York.” His accent was definite, not definable.

“I've always been interested in modern art. Cigarette?” He was playing the host, easily, practicedly. “A fellow I knew there told me about your work. With great enthusiasm, I might add.” He hesitated. “I'm on leave. R.A.F. Recuperation by travel, that sort of thing. I decided to drop off here and look you up.”

He was lying. She knew that. It was no sudden decision to drop off here; he had come deliberately as the crow would fly. Popin knew he was lying. He asked with incredible gentleness, “Who was this fellow you know? Did he know me?”

Blaike finished lighting Julie's cigarette. He blew out the match, laid it in the diminutive brim of the clay sombrero. He said, “His name was Maximilian Adlebrecht.”

She was as quiet as the small painted burro on the wall. She made no waste gesture with her cigarette nor with an eyelash. He knew. He had known all the time. He was waiting, the way the mountains were waiting, for something, and she did not know for what. She could only wait too. She could not ask.

Popin was turning the name unfamiliarly on his tongue. “Adlebrecht. Maximilian Adlebrecht.” He was apologetic. “One meets so many.”

“Young fellow,” Blaike said. “Good broth, what?” He tested again. “He was here last autumn, I believe.”

“A German?” There was a faint suspicion in the question.

“Refugee,” Blaike said.

“I do not know,” Popin decided promptly. He began to eat as if he were very hungry. He repeated, “One meets so many. He told you of my work?”

“Yes. He was well pleased with it. I was hoping you'd be good enough to allow me a look at it.”

“Perhaps it can be arranged,” Popin murmured. He put his napkin to his beard. His head tilted at Julie. “You too are interested in my work?”

She wasn't certain what the answer should be. He was trying to convey to her something beyond the words but she knew too little to decipher the message. It was necessary to fence, neither rejecting nor accepting until she became wiser. “I'm afraid I don't know much about modern art. I was toured through quantities of galleries in Paris, of course, but no one bothered to explain to me what were the requirements of quality. As far as I could judge it was all based on fashion, and as tenuous as that.”

Popin was smiling under his beard. “You do not know much, do you?”

She shook her head “I'm the blank page.” Her eyes held his a moment. “Really a find for an artist. And certainly I'd like to see your work, Mr. Popin. But I warn you in advance my personal taste is Rembrandt.”

“You could not go wrong.” He attacked his plate again.

Blaike emerged from his. His eyebrows were puzzled. “You must have known Maxl in Paris, Julie.”

“Paris is a large city.” She raised soft blue eyes at him, deliberately innocent eyes. “My circle was limited.” She was casual as a breath. “This— the fellow was Ritz Bar?”

He wasn't. He'd been poor. Studio parties, free lectures, music— how had she happened to know him? The Russian choreographer? The Spanish guitarist? Some toast of the town who had crept from the fringes.

“You should remember him,” Blaike insisted. “Young fellow. Rather good-looking in a dark way. Neat dresser.” He was describing the New York Maxl. She listened without expression. He stated deliberately, “He was a friend of Fran's.”

He wasn't. Fran's friends were not poor students. The corners of her mouth taunted but her voice was milk-mild. “Fran is quite a bit older than I, almost six years. I didn't know many of his friends.” She asked a question lightly. “You knew this"— she forced her lips to form the name—"this Maxl in Paris?”

He answered slowly, “No, I didn't. I ran into him in New York.” His gray eyes were cold as granite. “It was he who told me he was a friend of Fran Guille's.”

She dismissed the subject. “Fran had too many friends.” She saw him suddenly, tall, dark, gallant, always gay. Her heart wrenched. Fran in prison. A falcon caged.

Something must have flickered in her face. Blaike said, “Sorry. I forgot.” He turned to Popin. “Miss Julie hasn't heard from her cousin. She believes he is still in France.” There was something ironical in the intonation.

She touched the cold of her dessert. Could it be he was looking for Fran? Had he too learned that the bearded man was Fran's friend? Was that, not an interest in art, what brought him here? She couldn't warn Popin to say nothing. She could only pray that intuitive sensitivity would allow him to realize the danger of discussing Fran with an inquisitive stranger. If the gray man were after Fran, from what source did he stem? Not the British secret service, no matter the accent, the pretense of R.A.F. affiliation. Not the F.B.I. That organization would know that Fran was already in custody. She faced it with cold terror. It could only be the Gestapo. Had word somehow failed to reach headquarters that their American agents had put Fran in prison camp? Their men, masked as loyal Americans, bearing false witness against Fran, linking him with Paul's sedition. It was possible. How long had he been locked up? At least a year. But if those agents had been unmasked, also put away? This was credible. But why would they seek Fran, why wish to harm him? Why? Paul Guille was a collaborationist. Why would the Nazis believe his son a danger to them? Fran had been in the United States before the war began. He hadn't been in Paris to bore against the reign of horror. Why? Unless the Gestapo had ferreted the secret which she and Fran alone shared. If they had learned, he was in danger because of her. But she was in graver danger.