The Venetian Affair (51 page)

What was that? Some disturbance. Far downstairs.

He looked over the yellow marble balustrade. He heard the cries more clearly: “Fire!” Down in the hall, a billow of black smoke gushed from the kitchen quarters; it spread and thickened, pouring over the flagstone floor far below him. As he stared at the forming cloud, the cook came running out from the kitchen corridor still screaming, “Fire, fire!” The cloud enveloped her, and turned her scream to a choking cough.

Kalganov shouted.

The guard, posted outside the girl’s door, started to his feet and came running along the attic’s corridor. Kalganov, turning to race downstairs, signalled to him to stay where he was. He shouted again, bringing Lenoir away from his precious telephone and Martin out of the library. Lenoir stared over the balustrade. “Fire!” he cried, as if he had discovered it. “Look! Fire!” He pointed down to the hall.

“You amaze me,” Kalganov said bitingly as he passed Lenoir at a run. Then he halted, really amazed, when Lenoir didn’t follow: just stood, hands on the balustrade, looking over into the hall. There were three figures down there now, running around in the cloud of smoke like chickens with their heads chopped off. “Get them organised,” he told Lenoir sharply. “Come on, get moving! It’s only a kitchen fire. We can deal with it.”

“It’s spreading!” Lenoir cried, pointing down to another room where a thick ooze of smoke soaked its way into the hall
from under the closed door. “That whole wing—”

“Don’t open it!” Kalganov yelled down to the hall. “Don’t open that door!” But one of the men had already thrown the room door open, and was entering: “Don’t open any windows, you fool!” Kalganov was screaming after him. “Do you want people outside to give an alarm?” He was clattering down the last flight of stairs, a handkerchief covering his mouth and nose. Martin was at his heels.

Who was the fool? Lenoir wondered, following more slowly. Windows had to be opened to get rid of that smoke. No one could breathe. The shouts had become gasping coughs. He choked into his handkerchief—burning grease, obnoxious, sickening—and retreated a step.

“Fire extinguishers—” Kalganov was yelling. “Where are they?” He shouted up to Lenoir.

“I—I don’t know. How could I?” Lenoir kept his voice as normal as possible. This screaming was grotesque. This speed of action was close to panic.

“Water!” Kalganov shouted, now. “Buckets—”

“Water makes the smoke worse,” the cook called to him, groping her way to the staircase, her eyes white in a blackened face, hair soot-heavy.

“Whose carelessness?”

She shook her head helplessly. “The fireplace was filled with flames. They just—”

“How far have they spread?” Kalganov stared at her. “The fireplace? That’s all?” He turned to Martin. “Take charge. It’s nothing serious. A chimney fire. Use salt—” He broke off, listening. Far distant came the high wail of a fireboat’s siren. Loud, louder, nearer and nearer.

But it’s less than a minute since Kalganov’s first shout, Lenoir thought in complete amazement, much less. How quick they are!

Too quick, Kalganov thought grimly, and started back up the staircase, pausing only to yell down to the startled faces in the hall, “Keep the doors barred! Tell them the fire is under control!” But his voice was lost in the siren’s hideous scream, blaring into the small canal. As it sobbed into silence, heavy pounding began on the street door.

Lenoir caught Kalganov’s arm. “We must let them in—it’s the law! They’ve seen the smoke.” Someone has to use his intelligence, he thought, but he wondered why Kalganov was looking at him with such a strange small smile. “I’ll keep them downstairs—”

There was a shot, light, muffled by distance. Another. And another. They came from the attic.

Kalganov pushed Lenoir aside, and was racing along the first landing to the next sweep of stairs.

“Open the doors!” Lenoir called out. “Open the doors, at once!” If the firemen had to use axes to get in, there would be questions, suspicions, a search. Show no panic. Lenoir told himself as he started downstairs. This is a matter of tact and reason.

Again there was a shot. Only one, this time, sounding loud and clear from overhead.

Lenoir halted in surprise. Kalganov hadn’t yet reached the attic stairs. He was only on the second landing, racing past the bedroom doors. That must have been the guard who had fired, Lenoir thought worriedly. But those three lighter shots? The girl had carried no gun, no weapon of any kind. So the men who brought her here had reported. Or had they blundered? Let
Kalganov puzzle that out. Upstairs is his problem. Mine is here.

Lenoir looked down at the shadowy figures who were moving into the swirling cloud in the hall. The cool air from the wide-open door cut through the black smoke, dissolving it into thin grey wisps. The number of men alarmed him. He raised his voice, “The fire was only in the kitchen. It has been confined. No need—” He broke off as four men came running up the staircase. “Gentlemen!” he insisted. “There is no need whatsoever—” He stared at them. These men were not firemen. And behind them were policemen. Suddenly he remembered Kalganov’s small smile. Kalganov had guessed, Kalganov had escaped.

Lenoir caught his bitterness, choked it off. Kalganov would do more than escape: he would eliminate all evidence. Lenoir blocked the path of the men as they reached him. “Get out! Get out, all of you! Do you hear me? The fire is over. You have no right—”

“Don’t we?” asked an American, a dark-haired man with angry dark eyes. He shoved Lenoir aside. “He’s all yours, Jules,” he said over his shoulder, hurrying on, two others at his heels.

Jules nodded with grim satisfaction, and stepped aside politely to let the Italian policemen make the arrest.

Lenoir didn’t even listen to them. He was watching the American and the two men, spreading out along the landing, opening doors, searching. “Here, Rosie!” one called urgently from the library. Lenoir almost panicked. Sandra...

He glanced quickly down at the hall. Martin was there, handcuffed, watching the search, too. But he had no alarm on that stolid face, upturned to the library door. There could be no sign of bullet or knife in Sandra’s body. Lenoir relaxed.
He stared at the handcuffs closing on his wrists. “What is this ridiculous charge?” he asked.

“Abduction,” Jules said. He added, with a thin smile, “Meanwhile.”

“Abduction?” repeated Lenoir unbelievingly. Three more men pushed their way past him to help with the search upstairs. The man called Rosie had come out of the library, and was signalling to the others to follow. But I have given Kalganov time, Lenoir thought rapidly; without evidence, what can be proved? I’ve given Kalganov at least two minutes. The strong attic door would give him more: locked and barricaded, it could stop the search for many minutes; more than enough to let Kalganov go free. He wouldn’t leave the girl, either. No evidence—no proof; only guesses and suppositions. A body found floating in the Grand Canal was proof of nothing except death. “Whose abduction?” Lenoir demanded with an appropriate show of anger.

Jules did not answer. His hand tightened on Lenoir’s arm. “Start moving!” he said. Then the little group on the staircase halted, looked up. One shot, distant yet clear, echoed down from far above.

One shot, definite in every way, thought Lenoir. The American with the ridiculous name had not even reached the attic staircase. He was racing now, the other men clattering wildly after him. Too late, Lenoir’s mocking eyes told the backs of the running men, too late. By this time, Kalganov is out on the roof. The girl is gone. Kalganov will escape.

And so shall I, Lenoir thought. Since when has propaganda become a felony? He looked at the Frenchman beside him, coldly. “You are making a grave mistake.”

“You must tell that to Trouin, the wine merchant,” Jules said with his thin smile. He tightened his grip on Lenoir’s elbow as another shot rang out, and Lenoir’s indignant innocence crumbled into blank silence.

The siren had screamed high as the fireboat curved from the Grand Canal into the
rio
, swooped down two full octaves, and stopped.

Claire started when the shrill note blared into the attic. Then, as it ended abruptly, she took a deep breath, steadied her nerves, and took aim once more at the padlock. “Hurry, Claire!” Bill’s whisper urged her from the balcony.

“Three shots,” she warned him. Three to make sure. She fired rapidly. And accurately. For when she wrenched at the padlock, it broke loose. Fenner smashed the shutters open, jumped down beside her.

“Out!” he told her, regaining his balance, a revolver pointing at the door, his eyes glancing around the room. His free hand steadied her as she began to raise herself over the window sill. She heard the guard’s footsteps, the heavy key turning in the lock. We’ll never make it, she thought, and dropped back on to the floor, turning to face the door with Bill. He caught her, swung her to the side, sent her tumbling, sliding over toward the heavy, carved chest. She fell prone behind it as the door crashed open. There was a shot. One shot.

Cold with fear, she raised herself on her elbow, her automatic ready. But Bill was all right. He was looking at an empty doorway. She pulled herself to her knees, and saw that the guard had fallen backward across the threshold, half-in, half-
out of the room. He was clutching a shattered right shoulder, and beginning to moan.

Bill had heard something else, for he moved quickly to the door, kicking aside the guard’s pistol, switching off the light. “Keep down!” he said softly, and she obeyed him, letting herself drop back again on to the dust-coated floor.

Running footsteps, that was what Fenner had heard. And so had the guard. For he made an attempt to rise and lunge forward with his one good arm. Fenner smashed down at the upraised head with his revolver, sent the man toppling back into the corridor. He pulled the large key from its outside lock, tried to close the door, found that it jammed on the man’s leg, lying stiff and straight over the threshold. From the far end of the corridor, the light was switched off.

The footsteps, careful, no longer running, were coming close. Too close. No time to clear the threshold, get the key into this side of the lock. No time to do anything at all except step behind the gaping door, and wait. He glanced over at the chest. Claire could be seen from the threshold if she didn’t keep herself flat on the floor. Keep down, Claire! he told her silently, for God’s sake, keep down.

Any minute, now...

He waited, spine pulled taut against the door in the hope that he couldn’t be seen through the close-angled crack at its hinges, left hand lightly holding its knob to sense any touch on it from outside, right arm close across his ribs with the revolver’s two-inch barrel pointing just where someone would step across the guard’s ankles.

But the man was waiting, too. His breathing, audible at first, had been controlled. There was only silence in the blackness of
the corridor. Neither breath nor footsteps. A clever type, thought Fenner: not one who came bursting into a room with his gun blazing. What was he waiting for? Reinforcements? Or was he studying what he could see of the room from the gaping door? If so, he would see that the shutters had been burst open, for a stream of faint moonlight stretched obliquely toward the crowded furniture, played over it gently, set two dark mirrors gleaming, turned a golden cherub into silver, shimmered over the silks and satins lying in an opened trunk near the chest where Claire lay so still, whitened floor and walls, sharpened shadows.

Why didn’t he move? He knew he had little time.

He is more than a clever type, thought Fenner tensely, eyes now fixed on the edge of the opened door. He isn’t just standing somewhere in that corridor (and I wish to God I knew exactly where), waiting for someone to make a false move: he is goading us into one. Us? He doesn’t know I am here. He didn’t see who was trying to close the door. He can’t see me standing here. That’s the only good thing about this position: he can’t see me. But if he throws this door wide open, he could fling me off balance for one second. And seconds can mean everything—for proof, just look at that damned foot lying wedged across the threshold. So that’s one advantage he has. There is another, too: he is in a black corridor looking into a moonlit room. Or now and again moonlit. For the light, ebbing and flowing, was once more veiled by a passing cloud.

Fenner heard the first careful movement from the other side of the door. Here it comes, Fenner thought, here it comes, whatever it is. He braced himself, waiting for the darkness to end once the cloud had passed over. The pale, uncertain light began to flow back into the room. He gave one quick glance
in Claire’s direction, for the low chest had worried him: unless she lay absolutely still, she might be seen. Invisible, thank God. Then, as the light played briefly over the mass of furniture, he froze. That mirror tilted drunkenly forward from the wall, that mirror catching a beam of moonlight—He stared at Claire’s trapped image. She had moved behind the trunk, using its upraised lid as a shield. Abruptly, the moonlight fled; Claire’s reflection vanished. He was left staring at a jumble of dark shadows. But the position of her head and shoulders behind the trunk’s lid as she knelt, motionless, waiting, her automatic ready, would be marked and remembered. From the corridor, he heard another careful movement, the slight scrape of metal on metal (a silencer, perhaps?), a small click of readiness. When the light strengthened again—but Fenner didn’t wait for that.

He wrenched the door open, dropped to the floor. The man just beyond the threshold swerved his aim from trunk to door’s edge, and fired silently into the darkness. The bullet smashed savagely into the wall behind Fenner as he shot from the floor at the black shadow emerging from the corridor. It gasped and fell, lay motionless. The moonlight was spreading across the room, sending the mirror glancing.

“Don’t move, Claire!” he called warningly. He began to rise, and stopped, watching the man’s still body. A clever type, Fenner remembered. He could be faking. And his aim was good. If I had been standing as he expected, his aim would have been very good.