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_Title:_ Advance Agent
_Date of first publication:_ 1943
_Author:_ John August (ps. of Bernard Augustine DeVoto) (1897-1955)
_Date first posted:_ June 3, 2026
_Date last updated:_ June 3, 2026
Faded Page eBook #20260604

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines, John Routh & the online
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                          [Cover Illustration]

                                BOOKS BY

                             _John August_


                             Troubled Star
                           Rain before Seven
                             Advance Agent




                             ADVANCE AGENT


                             By John August



                         CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK
                      THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY




              _Published by_ THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
               2231 WEST 110TH STREET · CLEVELAND · OHIO


                          TOWER BOOKS EDITION

                     _First Printing November 1943_
                    _Second Printing February 1944_


           COPYRIGHT 1941, 1942 BY LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

        _All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce_
              _this book or portions thereof in any form._

              MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

                             Advance Agent




                              Chapter One


At New Orleans a man whose passport said that he was Arthur H. Field got
off the plane from Mexico City, went through the customs, and, after
wiring for a reservation to Detroit, took the seat he had reserved in
the St. Louis plane. At St. Louis, during the wait between planes, he
heard the loud speaker calling his name. He turned and an attendant
said, “Mr. Field? Long-distance call, sir.” He followed the attendant to
a small office. When he closed the door, two men who had been standing
behind it placed themselves on either side of him. One of them said, “It
won’t be necessary for you to go to Detroit.”

And in New York, at a bar on lower Tenth Avenue, an oiler from a
Portuguese freighter, which had docked a few hours before, sipped his
beer and watched the clock. It was exactly nine when a stevedore opened
conversation with him, and they had finished a beer together when the
oiler wiped his lips with a green-silk handkerchief. The stevedore said,
“Looks like that might have come from Polly’s in Caracas.” He took the
handkerchief and idly loosened a knot which had been tied in one corner
of it. They decided to go to another place. The oiler produced a
ten-dollar bill, but the stevedore pushed it aside and slid some change
across the bar. On the sidewalk, he said, “Bills like that are hot. Gold
certificates—called in years ago. If you got any more, take ’em to a
bank. Say you got them in South America—they still turn up there.” They
went down a side street past dark warehouses. The oiler reached under
his blouse, brought out a long manila envelope, and handed it to the
stevedore. At the next corner they separated.

And in Eastern Ontario dusk found a freight train laboring through hilly
country. Lights went on in two ancient passenger coaches just ahead of
the caboose, and a Canadian sergeant of infantry watched two privates
distribute beef sandwiches and paper cups of coffee to the German
prisoners of war who filled them. The prisoners had been quiet for an
hour, but supper made them cheerful and they began to sing again. The
sergeant stood in the door of the second car, watching them
distastefully. He didn’t like the prisoners, didn’t like singing, didn’t
like the train, didn’t like this job. Well, by six tomorrow morning they
would reach the concentration camp in the north woods where he was to
deliver them, and he wouldn’t have to hear any more singing. Maybe he
could get a couple of hours in Montreal, coming back.

The Jerries had sung _Ach! du lieber Augustin_ some fifty times this
afternoon. Now they were singing _Krambambuli_, which the sergeant
didn’t like any better. He had an idea that the blasted flying
lieutenant halfway down the car knew that it annoyed him. But the flying
lieutenant was asleep. The rest of them sang hoarsely, pounding the
rhythm with their feet: “_Trink’ ich mein Glas, Krambambuli_ . . .” When
his own foot began to pound, the sergeant went into the other car.

The small man in prison work clothes beside the flying lieutenant
muttered under cover of the song, “_Der Schweinehund Sergeant ist
fort._”

The lieutenant opened his eyes and joined in: “_Krambim-bam-bambuli,
Krambambuli!_,” prodding the two in the opposite seat to make them sing
also. They looked scared. The sentinel at the far end of the car was
yawning—he couldn’t see the nearer one, but neither could be as tired
as the lieutenant. The chorus began again, “_Krambambuli, das ist der
Titel. Des Trankes der sich bei uns bewährt_ . . .” The lieutenant said
softly but commandingly, “_Nun, wenn die beiden uns nicht ansehen._” He
had instructed the little man to watch one sentinel and the big man
opposite to watch the other, and all of them were scared—they assumed
they would be blamed and punished. “_Achtung!_” he muttered warningly.
The sentinel he could see yawned and turned to gaze into the darkness
outside the car. The lieutenant tensed his leg muscles.

“_Jetzt_,” the little man grunted. The lieutenant started to stand up
but immediately lolled back, singing, for the big man said, a little
loudly, “_Nein, ein Moment_,” and his seatmate said, “_Augenblick_.” The
lieutenant saw dark woods sliding by as the train slowed to a grade, the
chorus was roaring “_Krambambuli!_” and the little man’s “_Also Jetzt_”
was almost a wail, and the two others said, “_Gut_,” together.

The lieutenant stood up. He threw the window up, thrust head and
shoulders through it, kicked and wriggled, and dropped into the dark.

Beyond the ditch woods sloped upward and he ran toward them—heavily,
for his head spun, his knees were crippled, and his left wrist was a
fiery pain. He clung to a tree, panting, and watched the lighted cars
swing out of sight round a curve. They hadn’t stopped yet! He found the
north star, took a bearing on the crest of a hill, and started southward
through the woods. His knees were usable.

He thought it must be about half-past nine when he came up a tarred road
toward a cluster of lights which a road sign told him meant a town
called Glen Nevis. He took to the woods again, circled to the railroad,
and walked warily up the track, his senses taut as a bent spring. He
dodged behind a section house, heard two men inside it speaking French,
wondered with swift dismay if this could be Quebec after all, assured
himself that it must be Ontario. To avoid an electric light he went up
an alley behind some buildings. Suddenly a fire whistle wailed near by,
and he dived into some woods back of a garage—but it was really a fire
for, lying there, he heard automobiles drive up, a series of shouted
orders, finally a truck rumbling down the road with its siren going.
Someone at the front door of the garage said, “One-one, that’s down at
the four corners.” The weeds made as good a place as any to do some
necessary thinking in, and he had had this much luck, that his knees
were not sprained nor his wrist broken. A clock struck ten, the big
front door of the garage rolled down, and the light went out. Someone
went whistling down the road, and in another minute the lieutenant had
the rear window open and was inside the garage. Five minutes later he
was out again. He was wearing a mechanic’s brown grease suit, his cheeks
and hands were daubed with oil, his uniform was rolled up under his arm,
and he had three dollars and fifty cents in Canadian money and a road
map. He had won the first round!

He thrust the uniform into an empty freight car at the crossing and
walked up the single street of Glen Nevis. A milk truck lumbered by and
he hailed it, but it did not stop. Some men came out of a soda fountain
and then were suddenly running toward a lighted corner, where soldiers
were getting out of an automobile and two Royal Canadian policemen were
talking to them. The lieutenant kept on walking toward them and heard
excited questions and confused answers. A sergeant ordered the soldiers
back into the automobile and it went east, up the road. The policemen
mounted their motorcycles and took off down the southern fork.

“What’s up, Mac?” a latecomer asked a man who was turning away.

“They think maybe a Jerry went through town. A prisoner. They were
taking him to camp and he got out a window.”

They glanced without curiosity at the lieutenant, who said, “He won’t
get very far,” and went on.

A bus labeled GORDON was parked at the curb, ready for its last trip. He
took a seat, two other passengers got in, and it lumbered off. Almost at
once the driver was shaking him awake, saying that this was Gordon, the
end of the trip, and Gordon could not be far from Glen Nevis for the
fare was only twenty cents. It was a small place and had been shut up
for the night. A sign said Rooms at a dingy second floor, but all
rooming houses would be searched. He found a road sign which said
CORNWALL 22 MILES and walked southwestward. The fields were dark, the
stars dim, the barking of farm dogs melancholy. He thought that this
would be a pleasant walk for a man who wasn’t risking his liberty on it.
And a man who was less sleepy. A car passed. Five minutes later the
lights of another one found him, it slowed down and while his skin
crawled and he cast a swift glance at the roadside, the driver said,
“Want a lift?” He said, “No, thanks—just going to the next house.” He
didn’t like the pounding of his heart—above all he must be calm. At the
next patch of woods he left the road, hoping there would be no dogs—and
for that matter, no cows. A hundred yards in, he lay down behind some
underbrush. He heard a truck going by, his wrists throbbed, and he fell
asleep.

He woke at dawn cold to the very bones, his clothes sodden with dew.
Today would settle it—and at dawn, without breakfast, the hours ahead
looked ominous with the chance of disaster. He muttered, “You’ve been
lucky so far—keep going,” and could at last examine himself. His legs
were bruised widely, his forearms were pitted with gravel, his knees
stiff, his bad wrist swollen. He found Gordon on his road map; if it was
twenty-two miles from Cornwall, then he must be seventeen or eighteen.
But the St. Lawrence looked very wide at Cornwall. To the westward it
narrowed, but the farther west he went, the more time he would consume.
He thought hard, measuring distances with a fingernail. He would try to
get to a place called Prescott. What if he found a welcoming committee?
He shrugged. Think fast and trust your luck.

He got coffee, doughnuts and cigarettes at a roadside stand, at
half-past seven. Half an hour later a surly French habitant gave him a
lift in a market truck for some miles. Then for an hour no one wanted to
pick him up and the August sun got hotter. He turned west on a road that
led off the Cornwall highway and had walked for another half hour when a
dairy truck slowed down to his thumb. A young man was driving it, an
exceedingly genial young man, who proved to be named Robert Grout.
Robert Grout aired his ideas about dairying, about the war, about the
planes that circled over a military field, about the army trucks that
passed, about the girls in the town of Iroquois, whither he was taking
the cream. The lieutenant listened studying the countryside. They were
on the main east-and-west highway now, within a hundred yards of the St.
Lawrence. The river was unbelievably blue under the sun—and it was the
most beautiful river in the world. For across the rapid blue water was
the United States.

Robert Grout peered searchingly at a squad of soldiers. “Keep a lookout
for uniforms,” he said. “A German prisoner dived off a train yesterday.
They had it on the radio.”

So? “I heard it,” the lieutenant said. “They’ll get the beggar.”

Robert Grout agreed: the roads, he said, were crawling with
patrols. . . . They came to Iroquois just at noon. The lieutenant
wandered down to the river. First there was a ship canal; it and the
bridge across it were guarded. Beyond it, however, the river was
attractively narrow. His map showed breaks in the canal west of town,
places where presumably the ship channel was the river itself. He would
try there. But it was absolutely clear that he must have a boat.

He chose a crowded lunch counter and ordered sandwiches and coffee. He
wondered if the strain were getting him, for he felt uneasy and, for no
reason, wanted to bolt. No one at the counter was looking at him. Still,
he finished as rapidly as possible. The girl at the desk gave him change
from one of the dollar bills. As he left, he looked back at her and
there was something in her eyes. He crossed; slowly he turned and gazed
at the lunchroom. The girl came out and looked up and down the street.
Well, this was either a flurry of nerves or an emergency—in either
case, bad. Action was called for.

A bicycle was leaning against the curb. The lieutenant bestrode it and
pedaled round the first corner, down the street, out to the highway. He
was headed east again and would certainly not go back through town. It
was an English bicycle, high, heavy and cumbersome, but he was grateful
in a moment for it had a lower gear for the hills. He bent over and
sprinted.

About four miles finished him; he could not stand the pace. The road was
empty in both directions. He got off, hid the bicycle in a ditch by a
culvert, and walked eastward, giddy and spent. The sun was intolerable,
he had had too little food and sleep and too much watchfulness, his eyes
swam and his legs trembled. A truck disregarded his thumb. Another one,
a succession of cars, two more trucks. A girl driving a roadster honked
him out of the way. Then an ancient Model-T stopped.

“I’m goin’ as far as Cornwall,” the whiskered driver said. “If that’s
any help to you, get in.”

                     *      *      *      *      *

And in the town of Windham, Berkshire County, Massachusetts . . .

It had been an eventful summer for Abigail Heath Armstrong, the most
eventful, most troubled time since she had come back here, a widow, five
years ago. She had been swept out of her quiet way of life into
turbulent emotions, she had put away inconspicuousness to touch the edge
of notoriety, and the peace of mind she had known for five years had
gone down before a dilemma that was nearing crisis. Was she in love with
Lynn Scovil? Was she going to marry him? Were her emotions fighting a
losing battle with her good sense? In the summer of 1941 was it possible
to know herself?

Five years ago Gerald Armstrong had died of alcoholism after running
through his estate, and Gail had used his insurance—all that was
left—to buy an old white house back from the common in the town where
she was born. She had started a bookstore whose principal patrons were
the girls of Martha Case College for Women, two or three miles out from
Windham. A couple of years later she had added a sweater-and-lingerie
shop, and both enterprises had prospered moderately. Everything was
moderate with Gail Armstrong now, and the hope was that, in the little
Berkshire town, everything would be moderate for the rest of her life.

But that expectation had left out of account the war, and Lynn Scovil,
and Lynn Scovil’s daughter. Six months ago it had become clear that he
was falling in love with her. There had been exhilaration in that, for
he was a national figure, his face familiar in rotogravures and on movie
screens, his voice challenging on the radio—a firebrand, a rebel, and a
friend of rebels—fanatically admired by many, denounced and hated by
hundreds of thousands. Before long it was clear that she might easily
fall in love with him, and with that possibility her quiet ended and
turmoil began. How could she know? The emotions that centered on him
were too complex. There was the glamour of his public life, the crowds
that hailed him, the vigor of his causes and the vehemence of his life.
And there was the far greater appeal to Gail Armstrong that she could be
a private strength to a man who swam against the current, was envied by
the weak and small, was neither dismayed nor turned aside by the fury of
his enemies. Gail hated many of his causes, and was terrified by some of
them, but clearly she could not hate him.

For instance, a mass meeting in Springfield, ten days ago. Gail sat in a
box—by turns appalled, spellbound, apprehensive and proud—while the
big audience roared and swirled to his oratory, broke into frenzies of
applause, or hissed and booed so violently that you expected them to
swarm over the footlights after him. It took great courage to stand
before any audience, this summer, and make such a speech: to denounce
the war and argue for peace and isolation. Some years ago he had been
called a red; now the term isolationist did the same duty; and both
words carried a curse. Gail watched and listened, her fists doubled, her
pulses hammering, her whole body tense—and was chilled by the fear that
he might be mobbed, and warmed by the knowledge that he made love to her
and wanted to marry her, that her five years’ drouth might end in his
arms. Dark and athletic, his eyes flashing, his voice dynamic, he stood
there defying the boos, disdaining the applause, working his way toward
a tremendous climax. Before he finished, there were disturbances in the
audience, even fist fights, and at the end the police had to escort him
to his car and clear a path for it through a yelling crowd that seemed
on the point of stoning it.

Gail joined him at an appointed rendezvous; he sent his chauffeur back
to Windham by train and drove her home. He was exultant, borne up on a
gale of excitement, his voice vibrant. But Gail was—caught in the
dilemma that the summer had made habitual. She was exalted and she was
scared; she responded to his magnetism and something withheld her from
surrendering to it. That heroic figure behind the footlights defying the
world roused her admiration, her loyalty, her protectiveness. And
something in his love of those same footlights, some preening pride in
notoriety, repelled her. He talked in a great flood of words, oratory
running on even in the car—and she was withdrawn, critical, cold. But
he stopped the car and swept her into his arms—and doubt left her, her
lips clung to his, her pulses drummed, and she was near surrender.
Nearer than he knew—nearer, a last atom of caution insisted on telling
her, than she must let him know.

She was wary. “Why, yes, Lynn,” she said, with forced calm. “It’s known
that you’re expert at making love. All the newspapers have said so.
You’ve proved it to me before now. But it’s easy to make love to a woman
who has lived alone for five years.”

He was also expert in knowing Gail Armstrong. He knew when gentleness
was best and he knew when urgency would stir her more. So now he let his
exultation fade into a calm, grave confidence. “If that’s all,” he said
quietly, “what’s wrong with your pulse at this moment?”

“You’ve made many pulses flutter. It’s not so simple!”

“It’s as simple as stretching out your hand.”

That was a skillful phrase. But it reminded her that skillful phrases
were his profession, and when he reached for her again, she moved away.
So an equally skillful mockery touched his voice. “It’s true you’ve
lived alone too long, Gail. You’re spinsterish—you’re as scared of your
emotions as a young girl.”

She would take that taunt to bed with her tonight, for it echoed her own
doubts and self-derision. But she said, “Or maybe I just shrink from
your career, Lynn. You’re spectacular as a martyr and women have the
feeblest defense against martyrs. But most of what you said tonight I
hate with all my heart.”

Instantly he was making a speech, a fine, exalted speech but still a
formal oration. “What have you and I got to do with the war? We should
find refuge from it in each other. We should be a high peak above it—a
distant island which it cannot touch. That’s what I want from you,
Gail—security of soul, the war shut out, the quiet of us two alone and
all the world forgotten.”

Words! Still, they echoed her hope—and her dilemma. She was eager to
believe him, she instinctively rejected him, she scorned his rhetoric,
she remembered the ardor of his lips, she resented what he stood for,
she longed to protect him. It had been that way all spring and all
summer—and slowly her resistance was ebbing away. She divined how it
would end—and struggled to postpone the end.

She should have heard the talk in another automobile, in which his
daughter Constance was driving home from that mass meeting with Bill
Jay, the New York newspaperman who had come to Windham to recuperate
from pneumonia . . . It was Connie Scovil, in fact, who had precipitated
the turbulence of this summer. Till a little before Christmas Gail had
known Connie only as a freshman at Martha Case College, one of many who
liked to spend late afternoons or evenings in the bookshop, talking with
Gail, with one another, with members of the faculty who also used the
shop as a kind of club. Then one day Connie had appeared there, flying a
high color in her cheeks, and said, “I’ve got to have a job. You’ve got
to give me one.” She had quarreled with her father—the climax of many
quarrels—and would no longer accept support from him. Years ago her
mother had divorced him; when she died, Connie had gone back to live
with him; now she would live with him no more. She would have a
scholarship at Martha Case next year and Gail could give her a job. So
Gail had hired her, and when summer came Connie had come to live in the
bookshop, still rebellious, still refusing to lead the life of a rich
man’s daughter. It was that rebellion that had led to the intimacy
between Gail and Lynn Scovil. Before that she had had only the slightest
acquaintance with him—he had merely been one of the rich men who owned
the big estates near Windham. Now he was a man trying hard, if
ineffectively, to understand his daughter, and she was the woman who had
taken her in—and presently Gail Armstrong had been swept out of the
peaceful shallows into the full turbulence . . .

So now, driving back from the Springfield mass meeting, Connie was tense
and scornful. “Why don’t they clap him into jail? How long is America
going to sit back and let guys like him make speeches like that? Why
don’t they do something?”

Bill just grinned—she had never been able to make him see that her
father was dangerous. “He ain’t important, Toots. Just a ham actor that
missed his destiny. He’d wow Broadway. Still better, he’d make a swell
tenor. Give him an orchestra and a Pagliacci suit and he’d lay them in
the aisles. He’d be happier too—more mash notes and fewer Bronx cheers
in his press notices.”

Connie pounded her fist on the cushion. “That’s what you think—and it’s
a terrible mistake! He’s as dangerous as possible. All those red, pink
and pale-rose societies he used to run with! Weren’t they dangerous?
Wasn’t he dangerous as a Fellow Traveler? Isn’t he dangerous now, sowing
confusion and disorder? I tell you—”

“No,” Bill said, “to be dangerous he’d have to be bright—and he isn’t
bright, Connie. Your pa is just a dumb cluck with a voice like a bull
fiddle. Just a beautiful ham with a beautiful voice. He’s just in the
spotlight business. Let him sing his song—he won’t hurt anyone.”

“And,” she wailed, taking another tack, “it’s fifty to one Gail will
fall for that voice and marry him. I can’t take it!”

“You don’t issue the marriage licenses in Berkshire County or write
canned balm for lonely hearts,” he pointed out. “If Gail wants to marry
into the headlines, just thank God you’ve got a damned pretty
stepmother.”

For a moment Connie almost hated him. It was bad enough for him not to
take her father seriously. But it was far worse that she hadn’t been
able to make him take her seriously . . .

Gail had been amusedly watching that one-sided romance ever since Bill
Jay arrived in Windham. She had known him casually in New York, he liked
to loaf at the bookshop, and Connie had been assailing him with every
weapon in her formidable armament, flaunting and flinging herself at
him, tempting, taunting, inviting and scorning him. Bill showed no sign
of weakening under the assault. He treated Connie with amiable
impersonality, swam and played tennis with her, let her divert his
convalescence, and infuriated her by remaining completely uninflammable.

It was chiefly in Bill Jay’s presence that Connie dared to discuss
openly the problem of Gail and Lynn Scovil which was, Gail well knew,
disturbing her almost as much as it disturbed Gail. “When an act of God
widows a woman out of the parasitic class,” Connie would say, stretched
prone on a rug or a counter, her blond curls falling over her forehead,
“well, wouldn’t you think she’d try to stay out of it? But no! Here’s a
guy who loves the poor on a hundred thousand a year, who never did a
day’s honest work—and this brown-eyed limp-brain is thinking of
marrying him!”

Bill grinned at Gail. “You’re a parasite, see? They pick up words like
that at college. It’s pretty easy not to be a parasite. Just start
wearing slacks.”

“All right!” Connie said explosively. “She’s not a parasite—she sells
books and corsets. Put it this way. She’s twenty-eight and universally
admired. She’s got a figure like one of her own corset ads. Men love to
drown in her eyes. She gives off that high-voltage come-hither that is
exactly what us unfortunates haven’t got at all. She could marry
anybody. So she picks a man who would be a traitor if he had just a
little more nerve.”

Gail’s prompt anger rose to that word, which she had heard plenty of
others apply to Lynn Scovil. “It’s not treason to think more calmly than
you do, Connie,” she said. “Be tiresome if you will, but don’t be a
fool.”

“Don’t take my word for it!” Connie took a book from the shelves and
flourished it at Gail.

It was Bill Jay’s book. A year ago he had done a series of articles for
the _New York Globe_ on subversive movements. Now, as _The Enemy within
Our Gates_, they had been reprinted as a book, and Gail knew by heart
the chapter which was the one note of comedy in it. For Bill Jay had
treated all other topics with deadly seriousness, but when he came to
Lynn Scovil he had called the chapter “Christopher Robin and Winnie the
Red,” and had treated Lynn as a character of farce. Lynn Scovil, Bill
said, was anybody’s fellow traveler who could make the headlines, a
setup and a fall-guy, a rich man who loved Russia on space rates and
would love any other Utopia that could get publicity, a sucker who would
pay big money for any new letterhead and any chance to make a speech in
public. Bill Jay could not number him among the national dangers;
rather, he was one of the national sideshows and should be exhibited
between the living skeleton and the tattooed lady . . . It was viciously
unfair journalism, but beneath the caricature was just enough truth to
sharpen Gail’s conflict.

She was angry at Connie for appealing to the book now, but Bill Jay
moved to relieve her. “Toots,” he said, “if I bought a skirt for you,
would you stop wearing pants?”

Connie forsook treason to take up a theme much nearer her heart. “Are
you beginning to think of me as fragile and feminine? Giving me presents
would be going pretty far, Bill. It would commit you.”

“Just to improving Windham. Like planting flowers.”

“I must be getting somewhere at last.” Connie pulled her gray-flannel
slacks tight over hips that were conspicuously without a flaw.

But Bill just grinned. “The left one falls two full inches lower than
the right, like a step. A skirt would cover up deformities like that.
Only your best friends would know how knock-kneed you are.”

“Don’t you think that’s compromising, Gail? When they start talking
about your legs, I mean. Bill is an extremely moral reporter—he must
have marriage in mind. It’s the mating instinct.”

“It’s the instinct that makes a man paint the back porch.”

“That’s right, struggle hard—you’re going down for the third time, the
second time, anyway. Skirts!—Bill, that’s either very, very personal or
else it’s downright lewd . . . He takes things so hard,” she explained
to Gail. “The poor lamb keeps trying to get a commission somewhere. No
dice—he’s twenty pounds underweight. So he keeps trying to enlist. But
he’s still underweight. Naturally he turns to me and the softer
emotions. Isn’t he sweet?”

It was an outrageous foray against Bill’s deepest humiliation—Gail knew
how intensely he wanted to get into the army. He scowled and Connie was
delighted. “Somebody has to be the civilization that gets saved,” she
pointed out. “Preserve America’s family life and you save America. Go
on, Bill, be patriotic—in the right light we look like a family.”

“No sale. Ask the boss if you can play a set of tennis.”

“Gail loves to give our romance a helping hand. . . . If you get mad
when I beat you, it will be a dead giveaway.”

“Put on one of Gail’s skirts.”

“No, I’m shy about showing my legs. I’ll wear some shorts.”

Connie went upstairs—the lower floor of the old house was occupied by
the two stores and a kitchen. Alone with Bill, Gail came back to
Connie’s slur. She yielded to an impulse. “Bill, what do you really
think about Lynn?”

Bill Jay was tall and skinny, narrow-faced, homely, hard to read.
“Peace, it’s wonderful,” he said flippantly. “And doesn’t a peace
offensive bring together the damnedest bedfellows? There’s serious money
in it for some, power for others, and great, big headlines for orators.
I can’t prescribe for your heart, Gail. I’m quite sure he’s incapable of
doing anything dangerous. But I don’t know how much longer this country
can afford to let rich clowns enjoy their fun.”

It was a hard, cold judgment to offset Connie’s—the clown or the
traitor. And there were other elements in Gail’s indecision and Connie’s
anxiety. At bedtime, in schoolgirl pajamas, Connie would wander into
Gail’s room and talk too hopefully and a little desperately—talk round
and round the subject till she dared walk straight up to it. “It’s swell
to live with you,” she said, “it’s swell to have you around, but I’m
damned if I want you for a stepmother—much as anyone would appreciate
the Follies shape that shows through that nightshirt.” She doubled her
tanned fists. “Gail, it’s all wrong, he isn’t up to you—you
mustn’t—it’s a mistake you simply must not make.”

Gail faced her coldly, but her own conflict was riotous within. “Why is
it all wrong?”

Connie turned hard too. “His ego is just short of screwy—and you’re
screwy too, if you don’t admit it. He stands for everything you
hate—how can you be in love with him? Well, say we don’t mention that.
All right, then—” she paused before taking the hurdle—“still, how can
you bear to be the successor of . . . Oh, nuts, who do I think I am? The
pastor of the First Church?” Barefooted and half-heartbroken, she
stalked away to her own room.

“How can you bear to be the successor of . . .?” Gail had no trouble
finishing the question Connie had broken off. How can you bear to be the
successor of Mathilde Winkler? Connie’s mother had divorced Lynn Scovil,
but all the rotogravure sections that printed Mathilde Winkler’s picture
and all the gossip columns that chronicled her activities knew that
Mathilde had not even married him. Mathilde Winkler belonged to the
strange and dying world of the international rich, that other world
which Lynn moved in as naturally as he moved among the radicals who
hated it. The curious group without meaning or place or even
nationality, who had only Palm Beach left now, and Nassau, and Long
Island, and Fifty-second Street.

Blond, cosmopolitan, beautiful, Mathilde was indeed part of Gail’s
uncertainty. Before this summer she would have been just as incredulous
as Connie that she could calmly contemplate succeeding such a woman.

So one night, a week or so after the Springfield mass meeting, Lynn
himself finished the question that Connie had left unfinished. As if the
time had come to force the issue. As if her hoped-for summer of
forgetfulness and companionship must be finally disposed of. As if he
would no longer be put off with subterfuges but would force her to make
up her mind.

“Be honest, Gail,” he said, when, as usual, they had advanced, retreated
and evaded till she was half-angry and half-frustrated. “If you weren’t
in love with me, you wouldn’t have to deny it to yourself so
frantically. What is it that holds you back? Is it Mathilde?”

Nothing was so simple as that, and how could she possibly know? She had
as many doubts of herself as of him. Maybe her unhappy marriage had made
her afraid of any marriage. Maybe he was right in calling her
spinsterish—maybe she was timorous, virginal, cold. But certainly she
was no prude!

“I’m not a child, Lynn. Nor a schoolgirl. Nor a . . . nun.”

“I haven’t so much as seen her all year. We haven’t—she hasn’t meant
anything to me for a long time. You know that. You know you’ve made me
forget there is such a woman.”

No doubt she wanted to believe that—but it did not come near the real
conflict. Not hoping to say it better now than many times before, she
said, “I’d marry you, Lynn. Or I’d—not marry you, I’d simply live with
you. Only . . .”

“Only what?”

“I’ve known you a little for years. I’ve known you better for six or
eight months. And the rockbottom truth is that I don’t know anything
about you. I don’t trust you and a good part of you scares me.”

She roused in him the bewildering and compelling energy she had often
seen before. “What you mean is that I have thousands of enemies!” She
saw all too clearly that he was proud of the thousands. “You’re too
honest to let them sway your mind,” he swept on. “None of them can show
that anything I’ve done is illegal—unpatriotic—call it what you will.
I don’t have to answer to them, Gail—and you don’t have to, either. My
guilt is that I’ve kept my head in a world gone mad. My crime is that
I’ve stayed sane while America has betrayed its heritage. My job is to
fight a battle already lost. Well, they must take me for what I am—and
so must you. This is a time when a man must be a man, Gail.”

No. It was false, it was windy rhetoric, and it repelled her. One of
Connie’s barbed questions came into her mind: “Can you take it when he
gets himself mixed up with God?” Gail said coldly, “I’m not a public
meeting, Lynn.”

He saw his mistake and his voice grew quiet and grave. “I say these
things badly, Gail—how can I think clearly this near to you? And what
has any of it got to do with you and me?”

“Oh, a great deal,” she said unhappily. “We were talking about whether
I’m in love with you or just hypnotized by shiny words. Whether I’m
afraid to marry you or just don’t want to. When do we ever talk about
anything else?”

Still more quietly he said, “I don’t advise you to—if your blood is
cold. Scorn, injustice, public contempt—no woman of cold wisdom would
choose them for a marriage portion. No woman whose blood is cold would
take such a risk.” His handsome, dark face had a melancholy smile. “But
if a woman were warm and loyal, they could be shut out and ignored. If
sharing meant more to her than the applause of fools.”

She was no more able now than before to decide whether the deep response
she felt was a response to oratory or to the courage of a man with whom
she was in love. How much simpler if she could remain a tranquil widow
selling books! But every month she had grown less tranquil, had come
nearer surrender. “If we could forget the war!” she said passionately.
“You always say it should be just you and I. It never is! The war always
comes in between.”

“It will always come back. And if you married me, you would be marrying
great trouble, my dear,” he said. “No careful woman, no woman who is
shrewd and calculating, would consider it.” He paused for a long while.
Finally, “We’re telling the truth tonight. And the truth is—you would
be marrying a man who might have to write to you once a month for twenty
years from a Federal penitentiary.”

“What do you mean?”

Aloofly, “No one has ever proved anything I’ve done illegal. It will be
easier now. I’m telling you what must not be repeated, Gail. That mass
meeting in Springfield will have more important successors. On September
first—on Labor Day—those of us who have kept our heads will hold peace
meetings in many places. We’ll go on holding them. To preach peace may
be a crime now. Be sure they’ll do their best to get me. I think their
best won’t be enough—but it may be. If it is . . .” He shrugged.

Part of her mind protested that this was merely theatrical, that he was
in love with spotlighted martyrdom, that the fire in his eyes was only
play-acting. But it was only a small part of her mind—and he had
summoned up the terrible symbols, the angry crowd, the thrown missiles,
the terrible dark row of cells. He was talking about final
things—terrible, urgent things, things that had broken through to touch
her. Quite suddenly she had begun to tremble with the realization that
her defenses were down at last. The war could not be shut out beyond the
Berkshire Hills, no more delay was possible, and she must make her
choice.

He whispered, “I’m a very lonely man, Gail.”

Blindly, she put out a hand. He had loosed the arrow that must pierce
any defense. Loneliness was what had always dramatized him to her—the
one lone figure against the world and the wolf pack. And now the lonely
fighter and the lonely cell. She could not bear for him to be alone.
“What is it that you want, Lynn?” she said.

She knew that he knew she had surrendered, and she saw the triumph in
his eyes—and no matter. “Three weeks of letting the world go hang!” he
said. “Let’s seize our hour before it’s gone. Let’s take what we can
before the war snatches everything from us.”

Yes, the small calm part of her mind asserted, it would be a war
marriage. Her second marriage would be different from anything that
could have been foretold. Calmness flickered out . . . There was no
choice. When it came to the point, there never was a choice. Widowhood
was behind her and her own lonely years—and don’t forget Connie’s
shocked eyes, don’t forget all the doubts and fears and ugly facts she
had gone over till she was dizzy with them. Don’t forget—but she had
forgotten. They didn’t exist any more. She said, with a long sigh,
“Things shouldn’t come out this way, Lynn! You shouldn’t stampede me—we
should be deliberate, we should know what we’re doing—”

He silenced her: “Will you always be deliberate, Gail? Look—on Friday
I’m to give this vast party for the orchestra.” He sniffed fastidiously.
“The summer patriots being gracious to the arts! Well, if my friends
could come to my house and find you there! If they could meet not Gail
Armstrong but Gail Scovil. The rest of August will be ours—quiet,
peace, the war obliterated. After that we can run our chances. But
neither of us will ever be alone again.”

While it was still possible to question anything, she wondered if this
also might not be only the power of a skillful orator to drown out her
sense in pretty words. “Friday,” she said, “so soon as that, Lynn?”

“Sooner! You’re going to that ball at Manchester on Wednesday—everyone
will be there—the same crowd, the same emptiness . . . We can quietly
leave the dance and be married, there in Vermont. Then on Friday you
will welcome our guests to our house.”

He had everything planned; he had counted on her. Well, why not? He had
been right to count on her; she had made her choice; no other choice was
possible. So much for Connie’s fears and Bill Jay’s ridicule—so much
for her own virginal foreboding! Tenderness overwhelmed her and she
walked into his arms. “I’ll marry you at Manchester,” she said, and
there were no more conflict, no more questions; she was altogether
happy.

Or . . . was she?

                     *      *      *      *      *

The lieutenant came out of the movie at Cornwall toward six o’clock and
bought a newspaper. In a little park he hunted through it till he found
a short item. A German prisoner of war, it said, had contrived to escape
from a train that was taking a detachment to a concentration camp. The
escape had occurred near Glen Nevis and it was assumed that the prisoner
would try to reach the United States. Military patrols were looking for
him, all the authorities had been notified, and a description of him had
been broadcast. He was identified as Senior Lieutenant (Oberleutnant,
they meant) Friedrich Römer.

Oberleutnant Römer would have liked a copy of that description. But he
felt exhilarated and renewed. Up to now he had been in flight—he had
felt like an animal on the run. But now he was a man taking the
offensive after a long retreat . . . The United States, which it was
assumed he would try to reach, was something like a half mile away. An
old song came into his mind—“There’s one more river to cross.” He felt
confident, sure of his luck—he was going to finish the job! The odds
had been enormously long, but they were a good deal shorter now.
_Achtung!, Römer, und vorwärts!_ There was also an old poem: “Let us
then be up and doing.”

Since his experience had been against restaurants, he bought crackers,
cheese and cakes at a grocery store and went back to his park for his
supper. His appetite was keen—he was going to finish the job! He began
to make a survey of the town and in a few minutes had found an
international bridge. How very simple, he thought, whistling a chorus
which he abruptly broke off, realizing that it was “_Krambambuli_.” As
simple as possible! All he had to do was swing onto a truck that was
going across that bridge. That would have been perfect except that there
were sentries at this end of the bridge, a patrol marching across it,
and unquestionably Canadian and American customs officers and American
patrols as well. Superman, he thought enviously, Superman would clear
them all with one leap.

It was also a railroad bridge, and Oberleutnant Römer stood where tracks
crossed a Cornwall street and could have swung aboard a freight train
that bumped past—except that there were soldiers on top of the cars and
on the platform of the caboose. Still, here was an idea: he made for the
freight yards. There were guards where the tracks came through the fence
and it was a ten-foot fence surmounted by barbed wire. He followed it
all around the yards and the other gaps were guarded, and there were
plenty of floodlights that would be switched on at night. “Get out of
here!” a guard yelled, brandishing a club. The lieutenant waved at him
and got out. Report on railroad: not a chance.

Yes, he reflected, it would be no problem at all for Superman. Clearly,
he would have to have a boat; it was impossible to exaggerate his
loathing of boats. A quarter of a mile above the bridge he got down to
the riverside. He could see the backyards of a pulp mill and a chemical
factory. Several gas boats were moored a few yards out from shore—a
most attractive idea, but one could not invade the United States at
night with an outboard motor. Still, the owners must have a rowboat, a
skiff, a canoe—there must be some way of getting to them. He went
closer.

“Hey!”

A man came running toward him. The lieutenant had a sudden vivid
realization of how beautiful this calm evening sky would seem if he
ended up in jail.

It was a little man, furiously angry, shockingly profane, an automatic
pistol in a holster at his belt. He stopped ten feet away. And, the
lieutenant mused, even if he had come closer there would have been
nothing whatever to do. “What in hell are you doing here?” the little
man roared.

“Looking for a plank.”

“Looking for a plank!” The little man discharged a star shell of
sparkling oaths. “A plank! You know damned well nobody can come down
here without an employee’s badge. Have you got a badge? No, you want a
plank—so you’ll ignore regulations. Serve you right if I took a shot at
you.”

“I see your point,” the lieutenant said. “I’d go so far as to say you’re
right.”

“Damn right I’m right. You get out of here. Go back where you belong
before I get mad. Get going!”

The lieutenant got going—and he loved the peppery little man as a
friend and brother. When he was out of sight, he leaned against a tree
and laughed till he was weak. But he was more confident than
ever—clearly luck was on the side of the offensive. Clearly also, he
would do better outside of town—and so he sought the highway again and
headed west. A Royal Canadian policeman was standing beside his parked
motorcycle, watching the traffic, and the lieutenant was moved to engage
him in conversation—just for luck. The policeman had a consuming
interest in the local baseball team. Since the lieutenant had read an
account of yesterday’s game in his newspaper, he could make amiable
comments. It was so friendly a conversation that the lieutenant
reproached himself for withholding information.

Still, let us be up and doing—he nodded and moved on. Headlights came
on and in the gathering dusk he could not see the river clearly. When
the highway curved away from it he grew anxious and turned down the
first dirt road that led off toward the left. It ended at a point of
land that jutted into the river, where in a little cove boys and young
men were swimming. He stretched out at the edge of a fringe of trees,
smoked a cigarette, and watched them in the growing darkness. There was
a little dock and a rowboat was moored to it. So this was the place!
Suddenly his breath caught, his knees shook, and he was weak with the
need to rush down and get that boat. He clasped his arms round his
knees. Careful! Remember Superman.

Downriver he could see the lights of Cornwall, but the whole length of
the American shore was black. That meant a stretch of forest, and a
forest would be bad going after dark. The lieutenant chuckled—he had
reached a point where he could be fastidious about the avenues of
escape! A small freighter moved upstream with a great clanking of
machinery, and ten minutes later there was another one. They would be
carrying lumber or pulpwood or oil. Another boat made a strong
impression on him, a swift patrol launch which swept by, passing a
searchlight along the bank.

It was discourteous to find fault with the Dominion of Canada which had
treated him so hospitably, but it did seem a leisurely place—they swam
late. Little by little the shouting and the splashing diminished, by
twos and threes the boys came in and dressed and wandered off, but it
must have been nine-thirty or later when they were all gone. It was
completely dark, altogether silent except for the swish of the current,
and he made himself wait for many minutes in the deep shadow before he
went down to the boat.

He stood up, cursing—shocked and alarmed. There were no oars! But there
had to be oars! They must be hidden under the little dock—and what if
they weren’t? He stretched out on the planking and groped underneath.
There they were, neatly stowed on the cross pieces, but his swift
satisfaction perished, for someone was coming down the sandy beach! He
rolled off the edge, ducked between the two piles, and stood up to his
waist in water, his head almost touching the under side of the dock.
Slow steps reached the dock; there was a giggle, and a kind of scuffle.
Two pairs of legs dangled over the edge, not a yard from his face. His
feet settled in the mud, he leaned against a pile, and the invasion of
the United States was halted by the most appallingly vapid conversation
he had ever heard. In Canada love scenes were inconclusive and even more
leisurely than swimming. They had the most limited ideas, expressed in
the most saccharine language, and the girl was not going to let herself
be kissed more than once or twice. The lieutenant hated them and his
legs grew stiff and his teeth chattered. It would have been pleasant to
yell and scare them stiff.

They went at last, with more giggles and scuffling. He flexed his leaden
arms and legs, moved out to the edge of the dock and watched their dim
figures disappear in the darkness. He pulled out the oars, cast off the
rope, climbed into the boat, and rowed out into the current. Next stop,
the United States!

The stars were partly overcast. The river was lighter than the sky and
the current strong. His left wrist was sore but rowing warmed him up.
And relief broke over him in a great wave. He had done it! In something
like twenty-seven hours, from train to boat, he had beaten the odds,
shown his heels to the British Empire and held his luck. If the rowboat
had had a deck he would have danced on it. He rowed steadily and
comfortably, his satisfaction growing.

It was a wide river. A half hour must have passed when the current
slacked off, he saw the deeper blackness of trees over his shoulder, the
boat grounded on sand, and he could step out. End of the voyage—this
was the United States. At that moment the beam of a searchlight, no
doubt from the patrol boat he had seen, passed down the bank. He stood
transfixed, but no Canadian patrol could touch him now. He thumbed his
nose at the beam; it swept over him and on down the river. He could not
see the north star—and did not care. Away from the river would be
south, and it didn’t matter in the least where he came out. He shoved
the boat into the current. It slid away downstream.

The bridge was to the east—at his left—and he had better give it a
wide miss. Slanting to the right, he went into the woods, moving with
the greatest caution, straining to see in the impenetrable blackness.
Underbrush caught at him, gouging his cheeks and forearms. A root
tripped him and he went down heavily. He waded through a swamp up to his
waist. There were intervals of tall grass where the going was only less
difficult, and beyond them was always some farther clump of brush. Till
at last he saw an opening beyond the trees. He came into it—and there
was a rocky beach and, beyond it, a flowing river.

He had not reached the American shore. He had landed on an island.

His overcharged nerves exploded a sudden fury. He ran down the edge of
the woods with some crazed notion of getting the boat he had abandoned.
He stopped short, struggling for self-control, realizing that the boat
was gone for good. And the short run had done the final damage. Someone
yelled “Halt” from the trees. The lieutenant dashed into the river, fell
forward, and began to swim. There was a long jet of flame against the
night—someone was shooting from the edge of the woods; the island was
patrolled—and the current had him by the throat.

A sand bar rose black against the water. He let down his feet and stood
up. He stripped off the canvas grease suit, fought to untie his
shoelaces, tied the shoes around his neck, and dived in. Voices were
yelling on the island. Several guns were shooting—but not in his
direction.

The river rolled a great wall against him and there were ominous flecks
of white. Alone in an immensity of water, he became a machine of
thrusting arms and legs and his consciousness diminished to a mere
point. He could see nothing but dim water, feel nothing but the drive of
his muscles, hear nothing but a pounding that was not the river but his
heart. His strength ebbed; he buried his head deeper and struggled on.
His arms were lead, then wood, then nothing. He could hardly turn his
head to breathe and lassitude began to spread over him. He foundered, he
shook his mind awake, grew drowsier. Keep going! A crazy thought struck
him: how preposterous to be licked by a river after he had licked the
Dominion of Canada. Keep going! Suddenly he had the clearest picture of
himself asleep. His mouth opened in a yawn; he swallowed water, gagging.
Just let your feet drop and go to sleep! No, don’t argue foolishly;
stick to a good idea and keep going. The damned shoes were going to pull
his head under. Well, why not? What was the point?

He began to thrash aimlessly. Simply stop swimming. Simply go to sleep.
He rolled over and water covered his head and he struck something solid.
He raised an arm and his fingers gripped something, slid off, caught a
root. He rolled into a shallow and lay face down, strangling. He stood
up and fell again. He heard a loud voice say, “Superman would never go
to sleep. Keep going.” He thought, why, that’s me talking—and talking
like a fool. He stood up, fell, crawled, pulled himself up on a
driftwood-littered bank, and fainted.

Then it was still dark and he was putting on his sodden shoes. He had
shoes, he had underdrawers, and he must keep going . . .

Then it was nine o’clock the next morning, when Oberleutnant Römer rode
into the town of Malone, New York, on a dairy truck that had brought him
the last ten miles. He had walked all night and he had committed two
more burglaries. He had got another suit of canvas overalls from a
filling station and, finding no money in its cash drawer, he had smashed
a window in the crossroads lunch counter across from it and emptied the
till of seven dollars. Then he had run in blind panic down the road till
he could run no farther. A fair criticism would be that his nerves had
not been too good since the time he left that island. Still, there was
some reason for that sudden panic—the burglary had not been planned
for, was extremely risky, and might still cause some trouble. But the
proprietor of the filling station was going to be puzzled when he found
a pair of water-soaked shorts on his floor.

He needed more tranquil nerves—he was going to need as much nerve as
possible from now on. Most of all he needed sleep. But the town of
Malone was too near his burglaries, and there remained one vital job
that must be done at once. He went into the cheapest-looking store he
could find and bought overalls, a work shirt, underwear, a pair of
socks, a cheap razor, and a canvas hat. His battered shoes would have to
do. In the washroom of the railroad station he shaved and put on the
clothes. There were a small square of mirror. Children would not love
the face that looked out of it at him, he thought, and it would be no
help in thumbing rides. His eyes were rimmed and sunken; his cheeks had
no color; there were creases and wrinkles he had not had day before
yesterday.

He dropped his stolen clothes in a trash barrel outside the station. How
to get better clothes, how to get money, remained to be worked out.
Those burglaries bothered him—he had not planned them and much could go
wrong because of them. Well, what do you do when you enter a country
with only a pair of drawers? You take a chance.

He had had to take a chance. So, though Malone, New York, was the most
beautiful town he had ever seen in all his life, though it sparkled with
freedom and success against the odds, he had better get out of it fast.
Too near the border, too near the scene of the crime, and too far from
his destination. He had another journey to begin.

He found the telegraph office—then decided not to go in. He changed his
remaining dollar bill and found a telephone booth in a drug store. There
he phoned a telegram. It was addressed to the Interoceanic Forwarding
Company, on Vesey Street, New York. It read:—

    WE ARE ABLE TO RESUME SHIPMENT OF THE INTERRUPTED CONSIGNMENT OF
    JULY TWENTY-SIXTH. PLEASE NOTIFY YOUR DETROIT OFFICE TO EXPECT
    DELIVERY WITHIN FOUR DAYS. SOME FINANCIAL ADJUSTMENT WILL BE
    NECESSARY AND WE WILL INFORM YOU PRESENTLY WHERE PAYMENT MAY BE
    MADE. HOPE FOR CONTACT WITH NEW ORLEANS REPRESENTATIVE.

               PHILIP GARFIELD. FOR TRANSOCEANIC SERVICE

He came out of the drugstore—and the thing was done. Or started . . .
And at once he knew that, no matter how necessary it might be to get out
of this town, he was not going till he had had some sleep. Had he not
earned some sleep? Without overvaluing the job he had done so far, he
could confidently say that he had. There must be a park. There was a
park. He stretched out on the grass.

So that was done—or rather, that much was done. Yes. The slighter
hazards of his undertaking were now behind him. So the real dangers
could now begin. He went to sleep.




                              Chapter Two


Lieutenant Römer made one mistake—and men on ventures like his are not
permitted mistakes. It turned him from his goal, upset the careful plan
he had worked out, and projected him into a series of accidents for
which he had made no allowance. His mistake came from overeagerness; he
was pressing too hard.

A little past noon he woke in the park, woke with his mind polarized in
a single thought: he had to get to Detroit. From now on he must live on
the edge of the longest chance, against the odds. The odds said that,
with the best luck and the most intelligent effort, he would fail in any
event, but it was certain that he would fail unless he moved fast. Time
was inexorable, and minute by minute it was running out.

His impulse was to wire again to the Interoceanic Forwarding Company,
asking for money. If they had interpreted his first telegram and
accepted him, it would come today. But his unpremeditated burglary
weighed on him: an inquisitive policeman could wreck everything. He
would be safer with more distance behind him. Better to start west. He
would find out where he could get a plane to Detroit. When he knew that,
he would, at the first convenient place, wire the Company to send him
money there. Yes, he decided, start west, find the nearest airport, and
wire for funds. He started out.

Three hours later he had made ten miles. This was the day when no one
was picking up hitchhikers. A river of cars and trucks flowed by him and
none slowed to his thumb. He plodded on toward green foothills in a
waste of sun, his ruined shoes inflamed his feet, and his mind was tense
with the wastage of time. If he were traveling by plane he might still
arrive too late, and here he was slogging like an infantryman, with
Detroit hundreds of miles away. The word Detroit was like a boil in his
mind.

Then Mr. George Stout picked him up. Mr. George Stout, driving a
brilliant-green convertible coupé, proved to be a genial man who loved
to talk, whose talk could not easily be dammed. He was going to
Rochester, on his way home from a selling trip. He sold hardware, and he
was eager to explain the hardware business. When that was finished, it
was his pleasure to learn all about his companion. The lieutenant
answered idly at first but had to invent a plausible biography, for Mr.
Stout probed and probed, an interested and neighborly man who liked to
know things. As the miles fell behind and they approached the mountains,
the lieutenant began to enjoy the game.

It was less enjoyable when Mr. Stout came back to the hardware business.
For it now appeared that Mr. Stout had spent several days showing his
line in Southern Ontario. He was eloquent about the difficulties of
selling hardware to foreigners in wartime. He had spent last night and
this morning in Cornwall. The lieutenant roused to alertness, wondering
if Mr. Stout were probing again. There was too much talk about
Cornwall—had the ass seen him in the movie or on the street? It was
highly unlikely, and yet it was possible. There was a chance. And it was
a bad risk to run.

In the sunniest way, Mr. Stout began to talk about a German prisoner who
had escaped. The papers were full of the story, he said, the radio had
given it a big play, and you never knew what could happen—they said he
had headed for the United States . . . Detroit was hundreds of miles
away. And no, the lieutenant decided, he could not run the risk.

They were well into the mountains now, on a curving road that ran
through woods. “Is your tire going flat?” the lieutenant asked.

When they got out to look, the tires were all right. And as Mr. Stout
stood on the edge of the road, the lieutenant hit him on the point of
the jaw and knocked him out. He bundled him into some underbrush, tied
his hands behind him with his necktie, stripped off his belt and tied
his feet together, secured a handkerchief over his mouth with another
one, and took off his shoes and threw them in the bushes. He hurried to
the car and drove away at full speed . . . Within a hundred yards he
knew that he had made a paralyzing and irrevocable mistake. There were
dangers enough at Detroit, but they were nebulous and in the future.
Whereas, of his own stupidity, he had created an immediate danger that
might well bring him and his job to disaster.

Well—he had to accept the mistake and do what he could. He drove hard
for half an hour, then stopped by another clump of bushes. He went
through Mr. Stout’s suitcase and found flannel trousers and a jacket. He
put them on, and a white shirt and a tie. The suitcase and Mr. Stout’s
sample cases he hid in the brush with his own clothes, and with a
miscellany from the dash compartment. He sprinkled swamp water over the
license plates and threw dust on them. He raised the convertible’s top.
In a small portfolio he had found three ten-dollar bills, and they were
the one satisfaction he had as he drove on.

He must turn east at the first chance—he could get out of the state
sooner and for a while at least the pursuit would go west. The first
chance came at a crossroads called Saranac Junction, and he turned his
back on Detroit. He was moving away from his objective but that was at
least better than being arrested . . . He cursed himself for a bungler
and a fool, a man who could neither plan intelligently nor act on the
plans he made. But there was no point in damning himself—there was
point only in going on.

Every crossroads, every village and summer camp, every motorcycle might
mean catastrophe. There was a radio in the car but, after listening to
it for a while, he realized that police calls would go out on short
wave. He did not even begin to hope till dusk came on. He had emerged
from the mountains and started southward down the valley of Lake
Champlain. His military history told him that this was the route by
which Indians, Frenchmen and Britishers had invaded the United States.
And now Oberleutnant Römer—and maybe some cops.

At last there were signs directing him to the Champlain Bridge, and it
seemed a fair guess that he would be much safer in Vermont. It proved to
be a toll bridge. The attendant gave him back some change, then, as he
put the car in gear, shouted, “Hey! Wait!” Ah, yes, the license plates
had been recognized—but it would have been canny to station a policeman
there. He stepped on the accelerator.

When another hour had passed he began to believe that he was safe. In
the Vermont night even a bright-green car was black and New York license
plates could not be read. His mind ranged ahead, trying to work out some
plan to fit his changed circumstances. He need not abandon the car yet.
Where was the first big town? Perhaps drive all the way to
Massachusetts? Send a wire, wait for funds, take a plane to Detroit—and
do some strenuous hoping.

But he had forgotten about gasoline and after a while noticed that the
tank was almost empty. A green car would not be black in a service
station’s neon lights! But there was no help for it and presently he
pulled up at a row of pumps and had the tank filled. He hurried
away—and there was no telling. If the license number had been phoned
ahead of him from the bridge, then it was probably being phoned ahead of
him again.

He had gone ten miles farther when he saw a single headlight coming
toward him. He slowed down a little, for to be arrested for speeding
would be as disastrous as any other arrest. There was another single
headlight, just behind the first one. He passed them. In his mirror,
first one and then the other turned and came down the road behind him.

Here it was—the clutch, the crisis. If he got through it there would be
many others; if he didn’t, everything would end here. All because he had
made a mistake. He pressed the accelerator to the floor. Ahead, he saw
the lights of a town.

                     *      *      *      *      *

“I can get tired of beer,” Constance Scovil said lugubriously. “One low
dive is just like the next low dive, and I’ve never learned to love juke
boxes. Just what’s the idea? Did you once find romance in a roadside
stand? Is it the morals or the night life of Berkshire County that
fascinates you?”

“Well,” Bill Jay said with a cheerfulness which Connie found altogether
odious, “I could take you home.”

“No, you don’t!” She gagged a little and said, “I’ll have another beer.”

“Not here. We’ll see if we can discover some other place.”

Either Bill Jay was screwy, which was a disloyal thought, or else he had
an idea. For a week now he had spent the evenings driving her aimlessly
about the highways and stopping for beers in hideous little joints like
this. Places with bars and booths and souvenir stands and tiny dance
floors. They went in and had a beer and Bill chatted genially, but never
about her, and then they went out and learned some more about roads and
visited CHUCK’S BIDE-A-WEE or the BERKSHIRE NITE CLUB. Of course some
people thought beer was fattening and maybe Bill’s idea was to round out
her outlines a little. No, that was a personal thought and so far as
Bill was concerned she was just a listening ear in the front seat, not
in the least an ear you’d write a poem to. All she had wasn’t enough,
and it must just be that he liked beer.

So tonight they went to MA’S BARBECUE LUNCH and had a beer and listened
to a tune, and then to =Jimmy’s Place=, and listened to a
tune and had a beer, and then to TRAILSIDE TAVERN, which was a little
better but still nothing to rouse Lucius Beebe’s interest. “At least you
could dance with me,” she said. Bill said, “The women I dance with wear
skirts.” Connie snickered and stretched out a foot, “I enameled my
toenails for you—that’s feminine.” So they bickered about that, and
this place was like fifty others, except that when she pushed her beer
away and said, “There’s a little love of a barbecue five miles farther
on,” Bill said, “Don’t be in a hurry—drink your beer.” She said, “If I
do, I’ll throw up.” He said, “Wait a minute.”

So she saw that he was interested in something, almost on guard. He went
on talking about nothing but presently, lowering his voice, he said,
“What do you make of the specimen in the second booth?” She looked
across the dingy dance floor and the man in the second booth was a
specimen, all right. He looked as if he ate babies raw. Brass Knuckles
Gehogan from Hell’s Kitchen—crooked mouth, flat cheeks, a suit like a
comic-strip gambler’s. You wanted to drop a rock on him and run.

“He’d make a nice part for Humphrey Bogart.”

“Don’t stare,” Bill said. “We aren’t collecting them.”

The idea seemed to be to sit here sipping beer and meditate about
things. She sipped and thought Bill’s hair would be something nice to
run your hands through. And nothing happened. Except that ten minutes
later a handsome young man in whipcords came in and looked round and sat
down by Humphrey Bogart. They talked for a minute or two and went out.

Bill laid a half dollar on the table and stood up. When they were in his
car again she knew that they were through with Windham’s night life for
a while. He was silent and drove slowly, not going anywhere in
particular.

After a while Connie said, “Of course I’m just a sophomore at Martha
Case Seminary for Pretty Girls. But I could understand your simpler
thoughts.”

Bill seemed to reach a decision. Anyway, slowing down still more, he
began to talk to her as if she were an adult and a friend, which didn’t
happen often. “Windham is a summer resort from the 1890’s,” he said.
“It’s so peaceful that when a king bird chases a crow, that’s worth a
banner headline. I’m not used to not working, Connie; I keep trying to
find spot news for the _New York Globe_.”

As if she didn’t know! The poor darling hated being a convalescent. “You
could always make the society page with a big story,” she said
hopefully.

He grinned. “That’s the old college try . . . A very peaceful town—and
the world’s at war. Ever add up what we’re surrounded by, Connie?
Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, Greenfield, Pittsfield, Troy, Albany—a
thousand factories working three shifts for the war. And your _Globe_
representative notices odd things. Little strikes that don’t make sense.
Fights in places like the Trailside Tavern. Queer kinds of night life a
Martha Case girl wouldn’t know about . . . Lots of money being made,
Toots. Where there’s money, you ought to find buzzards. I’ve found
some.”

“Some buzzards?”

He nodded. “A couple of weeks ago here was Miles Hanrahan eating the
Windham Inn’s two-fifty dinner. He hasn’t been five miles from Broadway
since Tunney knocked out Dempsey in Philadelphia. Who is Miles Hanrahan?
Big-shot lawyer who keeps racketeers out of jail. So a few days later
Hymie Schmalz got out of a car and went into the drugstore for
cigarettes. Hymie Schmalz in Windham is like a bishop at a dog track.
He’s in the number racket in Jersey City. Now here’s this torpedo we
just saw. I can’t remember his name—but I will. I saw him out in
Chicago—held for a material witness in a truck war. Why do you run into
one of those babies in Windham?”

Connie was nowhere near as spellbound as Bill seemed to be. But if Bill
was interested, that was all she needed to know. “Well, I can help write
your headline. Did you recognize the neat number he went away with? That
was Carl Booker.”

“Who is Carl Booker?”

“He runs Camp Ryegate and the Ryegate Inn. You know—out in the hills!”

She had made an impression! Bill said quickly, “I thought that was a
kind of Sunday-school place.”

Connie laughed. “It is pretty moral—in the summertime. Recreation camp
for the earnest middle class. Epworth League conventions with speeches
about world affairs and no canoeing after ten P.M. Youth hostel and
girls with uglier knees than you pretend mine are. But in the winter
it’s café society. Carl has the fastest ski run in these parts—out on
Taylor Mountain. He’s pretty spectacular on skis. He could walk through
the Martha Case Outing Club and take his pick. When he shows a girl a
Christiania she gets so weak she’s willing.”

Bill was bothered. He said it didn’t make sense, which was a complaint
he had about lots of things, including Connie. He got silent again and
they drove under the remote stars, through woods that had a cool smell
of lateness in them. Connie was glad Gail had gone to this house party
in Vermont—there’d be no lifted eyebrows when she got in. Yes, and no
cause for lifted eyebrows, either. After a while Bill held his watch to
the dash light and drove off the road, stopped under some trees, and
switched out the headlights. “Oh, good,” Connie murmured, “we’re going
to neck and no one could possibly hear me scream.” But he was just going
to listen to a news broadcast—he was always listening to them. At noon
he’d been excited about some story of a German aviator escaping in
Canada. He felt so damned out of it! He took this sickness as a personal
failure.

The war news was ghastly—the sort of thing you dreamed of shutting away
forever. Then a summary of Washington items. Then Bill sat forward,
fairly straining his ears. The announcer was describing some arrests for
industrial sabotage in Detroit. He named them and it had been a big
roundup, and Bill was fairly quivering . . . That was the end of the
broadcast.

Bill’s voice was angry in the darkness. “I predicted that six months
ago! Only I said they’d pin it on von Weitbrecht. So they make a
cleaning on some Detroit small fry and they don’t take von Weitbrecht
in. Haven’t they tied him up with it? Or has he gone underground? Or
what? . . . Oh, damn!”

The _damn_ was a groan. Connie said, “You feel like an old fire horse
turned out to grass, don’t you?” She laid her hand on his and, most
unexpectedly, he grabbed it and squeezed it hard. “Hey,” she said,
“don’t make such passionate love to me, Bill, it goes to my head.”
Really it went to her eyes, which stung.

“This is important stuff, Connie, it’s a big job long overdue—and I’m
out of it,” he said morosely. “I’m the guy who knows about it, I’ve been
beating the gong for two years—and here I am nosing around back roads
because a cheap thug goes through Windham . . . Look, I think the U.S.
is turning on the heat. Yesterday they grabbed a guy named Schwimmer in
San Francisco—they ought to have grabbed him long ago. Last week they
cleaned out a nest I knew about in Philadelphia. We’re getting tough
with those babies—at last and thank God. And here I am sitting on my
tail in the convalescent ward. Sure I feel rotten! Nobody’s any use
these days except men. So here we’ve got Bill Jay, fully two sevenths of
a man.”

“There are those of us who value the two sevenths pretty highly,” she
said, but Bill just grunted with concentrated self-loathing.

They sat in the darkness and her mind fell away into gloom. Poor Bill!
preyed on by his uselessness in the war. So, bang, here was the war
again, blackness and fear and horror. The world was going to pieces. But
there were friends, people you liked, people you felt tender about! Her
thoughts went off on a tangent, and presently she said, angrily, “You
get lots of fun from kidding me about no skirts! You know damn well I’ve
got to save money for college. You know damn well I won’t take it from
my father.”

He was an understanding person. He touched her hand again, as a kind of
tip to the check girl, maybe. “Your father’s all right,” he said. “Don’t
get a mad on because he has a taste for headlines.”

“I don’t want any part of him,” she insisted. “Yes, and if Gail loses
her grip and marries him—well, won’t everything be so lovely that I’ll
wish I was dead?”

“People get married,” he said. “Take it and like it.” But he was being
human tonight, and so he tipped her another kind deed. He looked at his
watch and said, “I’ll show you something else I’ve found.”

He drove back to Windham and through it and beyond, on and on. Finally
he turned up a dirt road and circled by so many others that Connie got
lost. He parked in some bushes at last and they got out and he led her
through some woods. He took her arm, steering her over broken ground and
under branches. “You’ll admit _Vogue_ wouldn’t recommend a skirt for
this kind of midnight stroll,” she said. Now they climbed a little slope
in the open. They came to the black edge of something and Bill stretched
out prone and said, “We’re here—lie down.” She lay down in grass that
was wet with dew, wondering what the next act of this vaudeville would
be. “This used to be part of Highway 11,” Bill said. “But they cut out
this curve and ran the road straight through the woods a quarter of a
mile away.” Sure enough, she could make out the faint gray of macadam
ten feet below them—they were on the edge of a cut. She recognized the
place now, the hills and roads coming clear in her mind.

“All my petticoats would have been drenched,” she pointed out. “Are we
waiting for the Veiled Phantom? Or does midnight bring a rendezvous?”

“We keep quiet,” Bill said. “Very quiet indeed. We’re waiting for some
folks who aren’t playing marbles. They wouldn’t enjoy having an
audience. One sneeze and you’ll be ever so sorry.”

That was ominous. But her shoulder and hip were touching his and that
was very pleasant, though if she had had forethought she would have
linked arms with him . . . The night was absolutely silent, fathomlessly
dark, secret and mysterious. Take what the good fairies give you, she
thought: anyway, here we are, and he likes me, he really does. He
wouldn’t show me these things if he didn’t. Bill darling! She wanted to
touch his cheek but he would call that forward if not flirtatious. Oh, a
grand night! It seemed hours and hours.

She stiffened and went cold. Down at the west end of the road below
them, something was coming through the dark. It was a big truck—a truck
and trailer. Just crawling, with the powerful engine a deep hum, and no
lights. It stopped not fifty feet away and just stayed there. Connie
began to shiver—violently. Bill’s arm came over her shoulders. The
truck stayed there motionless in the dark, its very silence terrifying
her. Maybe it was only a few minutes but it seemed hours later when a
car with no lights was coming down the road from the other end. It too
stopped. Two men got out of it and approached the truck. Connie dug her
fingers into Bill’s other wrist. There was a soft mutter of conversation
at the truck. Finally, one of two men in the truck’s cab got out, and
one of those who had come from the car got in the cab. Another spurt of
talk, then the truck slithered away with the slightest sound. The two
men walked back to the car and it too went away. No lights at all. So
the world was empty again and here they were on the edge of nothing.

Connie shook and shook. She sat up and Bill did too, and she shrank into
his arms. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “Tell me what it’s all about.”

“It would be fun to know. I blundered onto it. It happens every night.
That’s an interstate truck, from the west, running on schedule. So it
pulls off the highway and stops here and it gets met. I’ve seen sacks
and boxes transferred. Sometimes they just talk. Sometimes a man gets
off the truck or gets on it.”

“Where nobody would ever see!” It was pleasant leaning against his
shoulder but he would soon think she had gone too far. She moved away
but went on shaking. “_Globe_ man on sick leave! You’ll get a story,
won’t you?”

“That’s a very interesting truck company,” Bill said. “Suppose some of
Miles Hanrahan’s clients run it. Suppose it’s a neat way to travel if
the cops are interested in you. For instance, suppose that torpedo we
saw at the Trailside Tavern is hot in, say, Albany. This would be an
inconspicuous way to New York. There could be some news in the setup if
that was our pal who got on the truck.”

It was very dark here and very damp and very cold. And isolated!
Exploring midnight roads with Bill Jay was more than just too much beer.
“Well,” she said, “if you like your mysteries spiced up, I can help out.
That car that met the truck—it could easily have come down the back
hill road from Camp Ryegate.”

“Oh!” Bill said. Slowly, “That’s an item too. Epworth League camp, huh?
Maybe I’d better pay a visit.”

Connie shivered some more. He would, he unquestionably would.

                     *      *      *      *      *

In a single stunning moment impulse had become panic and Gail Armstrong
was going down a corridor of the Taconic Lodge in flight. Her mind
rocked with the knowledge that she could not understand what was
happening. The single moment had proved her hysterical and afraid, or it
had waked her to sanity just in time, or it had been an instinctive
effort to give her time to think more clearly about the most important
step in her life. More time?—that was probably hysterical in itself.
Probably there would be no more problem of Lynn Scovil. A schoolgirl
might dream that such a flight as this would make him more desirous, but
more likely she was striking a blow at his pride which he could not
possibly forgive. Well, no matter now, after that moment. This was to
have been her wedding night and now it wasn’t going to be. Here the
movies would insert a subtitle: THE UNWED BRIDE.

It had come as an unheralded, instantaneous thought: I’m not going
through with this. One moment, dancing with him, she had been eager and
acquiescent, altogether a bride in the languor of the flag-draped
ballroom. Her long doubts were over, his whispering was triumphant in
the music, and his hand under her breast was an intimacy long desired.
And the next moment she had felt such a revulsion that the wonder was he
had not dropped his arms and turned away. The handsome, imperious,
bridegroom’s face so near to hers was suddenly a stranger’s face. I
don’t know him at all, her shocked thought ran, and I’m marrying him in
half an hour! The denial followed swiftly: I know him much too well and
I don’t like most of what I know! So the familiar conflict was clearly
posed again, under the urgency of the irrevocable step that was just
half an hour away—the warmth of championing him against a hostile world
and the cold doubts of him she could not drive from her heart. A vertigo
seized her—the irresistible thought, “I’ve got to have more time!” and
a jeer at herself, “This is just any spinster’s dread of marriage.” The
music stopped, some earnest committeewoman drew Lynn aside, and Gail
walked to the doorway, trembling and almost sick. Reaching the doorway,
she went through it. Then her feet decided for her. She walked down the
corridor. She almost ran.

Reaching her room, she stared in her mirror at the image of a woman who
either was terrified or had achieved common sense just in time. Except
for its coral sash the white-jersey evening dress was a bride’s dress.
It had been intended as one; she wore a bride’s fragilities beneath it;
she was decked and perfumed like a bride. There was a hastily chosen
trousseau in the two bags that were waiting. They had been packed for an
elopement; so they were conveniently packed for flight. The mirrored
face showed derision and a sudden reckless humor. _The Honeymoon
Halted_, she thought, or _The Bride Who Saved Herself_. She took a
sports coat from the closet, picked up her bags, and went out.

A prowling bellboy seized the bags, and Gail said, “Take me down some
back way, a fire escape if there’s no other.” It proved ridiculously
easy to abandon an elopement half an hour before the ceremony. Her coupé
was in the Lodge’s parking lot; the bellboy stowed the bags in the
compartment, and she drove away. She became aware that her heart was
pounding and her whole body tense.

Immeasurable relief broke over her; she was invigorated and glad, buoyed
up by an overwhelming sense of deliverance. She thought wonderingly, I
could sing an aria! . . . That ought to be conclusive. But was it? Did
it mean anything except that she had grown timid in widowhood and was
afraid of her own emotions?

The Lodge road led down to Manchester, Vermont, and she turned southward
on the main highway. Windham being some eighty miles away, she stopped
for gas just beyond the town’s little business district. She was
returning her change to the little white evening bag when for the first
time she wondered whether Lynn might follow her. Oh, very likely! He
would overwhelm her with reproach and pleading, or he would shrivel her
in one of his white rages. She hardened with a determination not to face
him tonight.

It was that thought, the thought that he might follow her, that changed
her destiny, and Lynn Scovil’s, and a good many others’.

She was just driving out of the filling station. At the corner a traffic
light turned green and a big truck snorted into motion. A man came
running down the side of the road and Gail stopped, braking hard. The
man leaped into the truck from behind and, when the truck had turned the
corner into the highway, swung over the side and off again, crossed a
strip of grass, and stood behind a big elm. The truck roared on,
gathering speed. Thirty seconds later a motorcycle sped down the road.
Fifty feet from Gail’s halted car, the man was looking at that truck and
motorcycle. He was looking at them with intense concentration, but the
astonishing thing was the expression of lively pleasure on his face. He
had certainly been running from that policeman but he was certainly
enjoying the chase.

Gail did not think at all. She was in flight from Lynn Scovil and this
vivid tableau had linked her with someone else in flight. She drove
close to the big elm, opened the door, and said, “I’ll drive you past
the policeman.” Promptly the man got in and closed the door. She drove
off down the road.

Her pulses were racing again and there was a further contagion in the
young man’s excitement. And he was not only excited—she had an
impression that he was on the verge of laughter, might be as ready as
she had been to sing an aria, and thought of his flight as both an
escape and a sporting event. He was staring at the road ahead. She
accelerated toward the rear lights of the truck. As it came into her
headlight beam the motorcycle caught up with it and the policeman was
waving it toward the side of the road. It slowed, moving over. She swept
by and the road ahead was empty.

“Goal!” her passenger said. “You think fast and half the stolen jewels
are yours. At least half, mademoiselle.”

“You must be a true American,” Gail said, “your French accent is quite
as bad as mine.”

“What I was praying for was Superman’s cloak, but what heaven sent was
the squire’s daughter. Is it your habit to pick up fugitives from
justice?”

“Is it the habit of fugitives to question the rescuer’s motives? And I’m
not sure that ‘pick up’ is a tactful phrase.”

“Eliza on her ice cake forgets to be tactful—she is too absorbed in the
bloodhounds,” he said. “Have you noticed the halo that is just above
your head? It’s extraordinarily becoming—straight from Saks’ Fifth
Avenue. So if you’ll stop the car, I’ll make a dignified exit and stop
embarrassing you.”

They were far past the truck and moving fast. But she had thought of
something else. “If the man at the gas station was watching—” she
suggested. “When the bloodhounds find that Eliza isn’t in the truck,
won’t they go back to that traffic light?”

He flashed a glance at her. “That’s not only quick thinking, it’s a
marked talent for crime. Then, as a suggestion—shouldn’t we leave this
road?”

She turned eastward at the next fork, deciding that she could find back
roads that would take her home, and becoming very serious about this
drive. It had become a simple necessity to insure this stranger’s
escape—and she wondered why. Why was it necessary? Why wasn’t she
afraid of him? Well, why had she fled from Taconic Lodge? She could ask
questions, tonight, about the erratic behavior of Gail Armstrong but she
couldn’t answer them. She had run away from Lynn Scovil. She was going
to help this man run away. No further reason was needed. Take it and be
damned.

She glanced at him in the dimness, getting an impression that he was not
so young as she had thought. A year or two older than she? Say thirty
. . . “The shoes give me away, don’t they?” he said. “I should at least
have the costume of a gentleman swindler but I’m made up as a cheap
thug. Unfortunately I’ve been . . . too occupied. I could make any
number of explanations. Which would quiet your conscience most easily?”

“I don’t remember asking for an explanation.”

“You’re kind,” he said quietly and gravely. “Kinder than you can know.
But a conscience goes with every halo and yours will soon begin asking
questions. Tell it that you’ve done a great service to a man in
trouble.”

She had a complete assurance that, whatever trouble he might be in, it
involved no dishonor. How, she wondered, did she know that? She
didn’t—and no matter . . . She drove on in silence, accepting the
incredible, and her passenger also lay back in the seat relaxed and
silent. The flow of night air past the open windows was hypnotic, and
there was peace in the long thrust of her headlights down the darkness.
But her mind fell away from the present and she was back at the Taconic
Lodge at the moment when that irresistible revulsion struck her. At this
moment! She was fleeing with a stranger on her wedding night!

She began to tremble. Her hands shook on the wheel. The car veered
toward the shoulder of the road, the rear wheels slid in sand. Instantly
the stranger seized the wheel, fighting for control with strong
forearms. Disaster hung suspended for a moment, the car came back on the
road, and she got it stopped.

She put her hands over her eyes. “That didn’t have anything to do with
you,” she said. “Things have happened to me too tonight, and I got to
thinking about them. It’s not your fault.”

“Would you rather I drove?” he asked, as naturally as a friend. Then,
remembering the circumstances, “You have only my word for it that I
haven’t cut a throat for some weeks. I don’t advise you to take my
word.”

“I’m not afraid of you—take the wheel.” She got out and, as she did so,
thought of something else. “This dress—”

“You were at a dance.”

“I ran away from a dance. It’s possible that someone may be following me
who would be quite as awkward to meet as a policeman.” Decisively, “I
don’t intend to be recognized. Maybe for the sake of both of us I’d
better change the dress.”

He helped her get a bag from the compartment. She said, “There’s no
dressing room,” and he said, “Only the wide world,” and got back into
the car. Let it now be suggested to anyone who knew Gail Armstrong that
she could change her clothes in the open air, on a back road, between
walls of trees! The incredible night had had strangely assorted flavors,
and the headlights of any car that might chance to pass would have given
it another one.

He drove skillfully. After a while, he said, “One doesn’t talk about
either gratitude or sportsmanship. Do you mind my saying you’re a—a
gentleman?”

She had got over her tremors, had recovered both recklessness and zest,
would accept the incredible in its own terms, would play the cards as
they might chance to fall. “As one fugitive to another, thanks,” she
said. “But I’ve done nothing much. When you’ve started something it
would be silly not to do the best you can . . . And I’ve come to see one
thing about escape—it makes you hungry. I’m famished.”

He said, eloquently, “I think I had some lunch at noon.”

These roads were not lined with restaurants like those near Windham and
it was very late. But she directed him to a more traveled road and at
last they found one. He pulled up in the neon blaze. “Thinking as a
fugitive,” he said, “we’d better make it a picnic. And—” he glanced at
her feet—“my shoes are disreputable but those slippers are downright
conspicuous.”

She saw him in the light—tall, athletic, light-haired, his face both
resolute and frank, his carriage almost military. Gail laughed—when she
picked up a man, she picked up an attractive man.

He brought back a paper bag which gave off a delicious aroma of
hamburger sandwiches. Driving on, they topped the rise of a long hill
which fell below them in a straight line. On the level again, he backed
the car into an opening between trees and turned off the lights. . . .
Nothing had ever been more satisfying than those sandwiches, and to
share a meal was to share companionship. Gail felt curiously at peace
and curiously friendly. It was far from sensible to be thinking of him
as an old friend, and it was even less sensible to be disregarding the
intricate unpleasantness she must face tomorrow when Lynn Scovil would
come storming into the bookshop. But sensible or not, reckless or mad,
that was the way things stood. She liked the man she had saved from the
police. Miles from Manchester, on her wedding night, she was enjoying
the adventure of the escaping bride and the handsome stranger.

He groped at the cowl. “No radio? It doesn’t matter—too late for news.”
He turned toward her. “The cop was chasing me for stealing an
automobile. I could plead that it wasn’t so much stealing as
appropriating one in an emergency. Still, there’s no shadow of
doubt—I’ve been stealing cars.”

“Well,” Gail said, “I was running from a man I was due to marry in half
an hour.”

“Poor devil!”

“You may not know his luck.”

“He is a fool—for he let you succeed. Since he did, you would certainly
have been marrying beneath you.”

It was not the most congenial topic. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“Where is your emergency?”

“West of here. I think I need an airport. Is there one at—well, where
are you going?”

“Windham. It’s perhaps thirty miles from here. Probably you can get a
plane at Pittsfield; certainly you can at Springfield.”

“Except,” he said angrily, “that I have contrived to get the police
after me. I may have to hide for a day. Are telegraph offices open at
this hour?”

“Not at Windham. And,” she said firmly, “it’s a late hour even for
fugitives. I may not appear to be a conventional person but we’d better
be going home.”

He started the engine but switched it off again at once. Gail saw it at
the same time—a single headlight coming over the crest of the long hill
and starting down the slope. “A car thief gets sensitive about cops,” he
said regretfully. “That is any cop peacefully riding his beat, or it’s
any farm boy going home after calling on his girl. Still . . .” Tension
came back to the coupé and Gail found that her feet were braced against
the floor. They must not get him now! The single light came on with
abominable slowness. It slowed still more as it drew even with them but
passed by, and she released her breath in a long sigh. But the
motorcycle swung in a circle and came back.

“Sorry,” the stranger said, “this appears to be necessary.” His arm went
round her, he pulled her head to his shoulder and leaned over her, cheek
against her hair. A flashlight shone in the coupé and Gail took her cue.
She flung her arms round him, pressing against his shoulder, and gasped,
“George, I’m scared!” He sat up and said furiously, “What the hell is
the idea?”

“Just us cops,” a bored voice answered. “Always spoiling somebody’s fun.
Get going, George. Go neck on the front porch.”

He started the car and drove out on the road. Gail leaned through the
window and called back, “You like a little fun yourself, don’t you?”
with an excellent impromptu stridency. The cop waved to her and followed
them for half a mile, then spurted ahead and disappeared.

In a moment the car stopped again.

“Did you,” he inquired, “did you experience a certain . . .”

“Frustration?”

“Well, incompleteness.” She could not have stopped him if she had wanted
to but clearly she didn’t want to. This time she was kissed, with
immediate conviction. In amazement and disbelief she saw her hand go out
and touch his cheek and move on to his hair. It was altogether
implausible that she was competently cooperating in a second kiss, but
the evidence was conclusive. That, however, was quite enough, even for
an escaping bride. She moved away.

He said with profound conviction, “He is the unluckiest man in the
world. And the greatest fool to let you get away.”

There was a slight unsteadiness in his voice and Gail was not surprised
to find a similar one in hers. “If you hadn’t, I should have had no
great respect for either of us . . . Still, this is a good place to let
the drama go no farther. There will not only be consciences tomorrow,
there’ll be perplexities. So here is where we drive decorously on to
Windham.”

Nevertheless there was a good deal to think about while the car slid on
through the dark. She had answered that kiss with astonishing fervency.
She decided that he had reaped an emotion which another man had sown,
that a bride in flight had nevertheless felt something of a bride’s
readiness. A new light had been abruptly turned on Abigail Armstrong, a
woman who could not possibly pick up a stranger, still less let a
stranger make love to her. It was incredible and incredibly true, and
the stark fact was she had enjoyed it. Unquestionably she was going to
think badly of herself by morning, but at this moment she thought very
well of herself indeed. . . . But it was exceedingly fortunate that she
was not going to see him again.

“I’m thinking of those perplexities of tomorrow,” he said, after a long
while. “My training in crime is defective—I have to make it up as I go
along. An accomplished criminal would probably go into hiding for at
least twenty-four hours. This town—Windham, is it? Where would a
competent criminal find concealment?”

She felt a certain apprehension, then knew at once that he would not
presume upon tonight’s adventure. “There’s Windham Inn,” she said. “Full
of dowagers and the dull rich. There are a couple of less pretentious
inns. Oh, a variety of summer places, tourist camps, everything for the
vacation.”

“A competent criminal would probably pick a place some distance from the
police station. Out in the country somewhere.”

“There’s Milford Farm—a kind of Provincetown place, they call
themselves artists. There’s the Berkshire Club—horses till six, liquor
till midnight. There’s Camp Ryegate—dull, unimaginably respectable, and
a trifle religious.”

He pondered. “There are these unfortunate shoes. I think the extremely
respectable place.”

“Camp Ryegate. We pass it a few miles before we get to Windham.”

“Yes,” he said quickly, “I must not ride into town with you.”

No, he would not presume. . . . Her exhilaration began to fade,
melancholy coming over her, a foretaste of tomorrow’s remorse. Well,
improbable things happened, and presently they were over, and then you
paid for them. Unquestionably by tomorrow she would be paying heavily
for tonight. Tomorrow she might even finish paying for it. Oh, she
decided wearily, there’s no need to start now; it will be bad enough
tomorrow; go home and go to sleep.

There were only a few miles left and these ended. A small lighted sign
showed in some firs. “That’s Camp Ryegate,” she said. He stopped the
car. “The road leads off here—it’s about a mile and I’m afraid you’d
better walk it.”

He got out and she took his place behind the wheel. It was terribly
late—two o’clock, perhaps three or even later. She got out and stood
beside him, the two of them in the deep dark of the firs. They were
caught in a silent reluctance. Neither of them was willing to have it
end.

“There’ll be somebody at the office,” she said aimlessly.

“We won’t see each other again,” he said harshly. Fortunately that was
true and unfortunately she was sorry. “If there were more time—if the
world made sense . . .” He paused. “You can’t know what you’ve done for
me—it’s . . . a good deal.” He paused again, “Oh, damn all that! It is
something to drive and eat and talk with you—to be running from a
policeman and meet you.”

She was caught in another sharp conflict—fear that he would, fear that
he would not. He took her hand. “You’re very lovely, my dear,” he said.
“Very lovely and very sweet.” He kissed her fingers, and walked away up
the road to Camp Ryegate.

Gail got in the car and drove away. The evening had ended and she would
now begin paying for it. She remembered that she had told Connie, whose
father she had not married after all, that she would be gone for two
days. She stopped the car for she wasn’t seeing the road clearly. But
she could not tell whether these were the tears of a widow who had saved
herself, or of a frustrated bride, or of a woman who had wanted to be
kissed a second time and had not been.




                             Chapter Three


At Camp Ryegate, Lieutenant Römer had done everything that was, for the
moment, possible—he had wired to the Forwarding Company asking for
money and he had kept reasonably patient. If the money came before
evening, he could be in Detroit tomorrow morning. If it did not come, he
must rely on his wits. The trouble with his wits was that they had
landed him on the shore of a Massachusetts pond, hundreds of miles from
where he ought to be. Possibly the police were still after him;
certainly he had lost another twenty-four hours, which was worse. He had
been given a job to do; it was assumed that he might fail but it was not
assumed that he would fail because of his own stupidity. Very possibly
he had already done just that. No, his wits had so far proved
unreliable. They had better improve fast.

He spent some time wandering about Camp Ryegate, where, it was essential
to remember, he was registered as John Page. It had not been designed
for people of his profession. Sited on a hill at one end of Ryegate Pond
was the Ryegate Inn, which appeared to be a swankier place under the
same management. The camp itself was some thirty cabins in a pine grove
back from the shore, and a dance hall, recreation halls, a cafeteria,
the usual tennis courts, the usual canoes and speedboats. There were
noisy children, their mothers in denim trousers, adolescent boys and
girls in shorts. Shrill cries came from the tennis courts but were
smothered by the shouts of swimmers and the barrage of outboard motors
on the pond. His delightful companion had done the place complete
justice: no one would look for a criminal here.

Back at the office, he found that no telegram had come, and stood trying
to master his impatience by studying the skiing photographs that hung on
the walls. A moment later he regretted that he had ever worn a ski. For
a man came out of the private office and instantly the lieutenant’s
mission was in danger of becoming finally impossible. This was a man
about his own age, with the body of a trained athlete and a handsome,
stolid face—and the lieutenant’s memory which was trained for such
emergencies, identified him as a _skimeister_ at Arlberg in the Austrian
Tirol nine years ago.

“Mr. Page?” The lieutenant nodded. “I am the proprietor of Camp Ryegate.
The name is Booker.” Yes, but it had been Bucher at Arlberg. Mr. Booker
was a refugee. “Kindly come outside.”

This was his first taste of the total vigilance that he must maintain
from now to the end—or as near the end as he might be permitted to get.
Also there was no convenient way out of Camp Ryegate . . . Mr. Booker
led him past the kitchens and workshops to where a couple of workmen
were stowing shovels and axes in a light truck. Here he stopped and
said, “We will take a little ride, Mr. Page.”

The lieutenant looked at him coolly. “I’m not sure I’m in the mood.”

“This morning the state police inquired at all camps for an escaping
automobile thief, Mr. Page. There is no baggage in your cabin.”

That suggested that the proprietor was thinking of his camp’s flagrant
respectability. The lieutenant experimented with a calculated anger. “I
paid for the cabin,” he said insolently. “Be so good as to stay out of
it.”

Mr. Booker scowled. “Guests at Camp Ryegate must have baggage. I did not
mention you to the police but they have a telephone.” His face contorted
with a sudden and violent rage. “Damnation! Come with me or I will turn
you in.”

The threat did not impress Lieutenant Römer, who was prepared to
encounter threats from now on. Nor did the harsh and even cruel anger
that had rearranged that handsome face interest him much. But his wary
attention had caught a fleeting expression of uneasiness, which was an
odd emotion for _Skimeister_ Booker to be feeling in the circumstances
and had better be followed up. “All right,” he assented, “we’ll take a
ride. If I don’t enjoy it, Mr. Booker—we’ll come back.”

The proprietor accepted the arrogance and they rode with their feet
dangling over the end of the truck. The likelihood was that Mr. Booker
intended to escort an undesirable guest out the back way, to maintain
the moral purity of his camp. But Mr. Booker kept looking at him with a
steadfast dislike, which corresponded to the lieutenant’s private
emotions about him. “Have I seen you somewhere before?” Mr. Booker asked
abruptly.

Oh, by no means! Not with the entire job hanging on that identification.
“I think not,” he said stonily. “I would remember your manners.”

Not caring for each other, they rode for some five miles of steep back
roads, and came out in a clearing where there were various shacks, a
smooth hillside sloping up, and the poles of what was obviously a ski
tow. Several men were working here, and the lieutenant recognized the
place as the last descent of a ski run which he could see curving in
from above. The bare scar twisted through the trees for half a mile, and
he could imagine it sloping up beyond out of sight. Yes, it began at the
summit of a small mountain, where there were a couple of cabins and a
cleared runway leading to the first drop.

They got off; the truck bumped on to the far end of the clearing. Mr.
Booker gestured toward a wooden bench, and they sat down.

“You sent a telegram by the office telephone, Mr. Page . . . Please do
nothing hasty,” Booker said, and the lieutenant’s eyes must have
flashed. “It was to the Interoceanic Forwarding Company of New York and
it was signed Philip Garfield. It asked that money be wired to Philip
Garfield in your care at my camp, Mr. Page. Also it said that a shipment
had been delayed again.”

Having only that earlier flash of uneasiness to act on, the lieutenant
acted on it. He stood up; he spoke softly. “My friend, it may be your
habit to pry into the affairs of your guests, but I do not permit it. I
like it so very little that I should be happy if you would try to stop
me when I leave. Which is right now.” He had been altogether right—for
though Mr. Booker was now very angry indeed, that same uneasiness showed
more strongly in his face. He followed up quickly, putting a taunt into
his voice, “If you want to start something, why not now?”

Mr. Booker’s face blazed with a desire to start something. But Mr.
Booker’s hands, the lieutenant carefully noted, were pressed against the
seams of his trousers—like a soldier’s. “Who sent you to my camp?” he
muttered.

“Say _sir_ to me!”

It took Mr. Booker at least thirty seconds, but he said “sir” and the
lieutenant had a changed and much clearer idea about him. “No one sent
me here,” he said. “Telegrams I send are no affair of yours. Do not be
fool enough to say anything more. Now take me back to camp. And stay out
of my cabin.”

The man would have liked to punch his face—and, what was more
important, he was not surprised at being bullied. “I do not care if you
are Philip Garfield or John Page or John Doe,” he said sullenly. “But
you sent a wire to that Company.” He looked hard and spoke a sentence in
rapid German. When the lieutenant gave no sign of understanding, he
repeated it in English. “There is a man near here whom you must see.”

“Must?” the lieutenant said gently.

“You appear at my camp. You wire the Company. So you must see him.”

His idea about Mr. Booker went on expanding and it was clear that Mr.
Booker, without feeling any affection, also had an idea about him. This
was altogether unexpected; it might add another delay to a sum already
catastrophic, but it certainly had to be followed up and investigated.
He had no choice.

Booker muttered, “I know what I must do.” He scowled defiantly. “You
will see him or you are an automobile thief.”

The lieutenant relaxed into amiability—and into German. “I have a few
hours—till late afternoon. I will see your man if you can be quick
about it.”

Mr. Booker also relaxed but still could not be amiable. “It will take
arranging by telephone. You had better stay right here till I come back
for you.”

He shouted for the truck and was driven back toward camp. The lieutenant
stretched out on pine needles in cool shade. This also was an accident
that hinged on his original mistake; he had blundered into it, and it
was another unpredictable risk. Well, he had no choice, and there were
now so many risks that one more was hardly noticeable. And there was
also the distinct indication that it might help him on his way to
Detroit.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Connie had spent an active two hours sweeping and dusting the bookshop
when Gail came down to breakfast—in a yellow nightgown that was a
grievance in itself. And also in a dour mood that would not respond to
Connie’s cheerful chatter. She was obviously not going to say anything
about the house party she had decided to come home from; it was a fair
and hopeful guess that there had been a quarrel. Gail went upstairs to
get dressed, and Connie went back to being a wage earner.

So here was Mr. Lynn Scovil coming into the bookshop at ten A.M., which
indicated that it was Mr. Scovil with whom Gail had quarreled. Well,
three hosannas and a Thank God. Wary and defensive at sight of her
father, Connie recognized one of his rages as soon as he asked for Gail.
If you touched a finger to him he would sizzle, and who cared if the
strain on his arteries was ominous? Any rage he might feel at Gail was
so much velvet. Some beautiful morning, Gail would tumble to him.

He tried to be pleasant to Connie, asking amiably stupid questions about
the bookshop and Martha Case College. Nobody could work harder than he
at being a good guy, and nobody ever did it with a colder calculation.
He probably thought he was being benignant when he said, “I suppose I’ll
never understand it but parents can’t insist on understanding any more.
I’d be happy to give you anything you want but if you have to get it for
yourself, go ahead. I’m there if you need me, and the latchstring’s out
for you to pull any time you feel like it.”

He was an extremely handsome man and his talk could charm rabbits out of
this year’s hats. “Just adolescent cussedness,” she said. “You can see
it in any movie. Let the idiot run her head into that stone wall.”

Gail came down and there was a tableau, antagonism and something that
looked like fright in Gail’s suddenly flushed face, a ten-thousand-volt
anger in her father’s. Connie quivered with satisfaction, for this must
have been a high-pressure quarrel. She got out of the bookshop fast.
Maybe they’d break it up right here. No, she gloomily decided, the form
sheet showed that he would make one of those orations and Gail would
dissolve in penitent and acquiescent tears.

She went into the sweater shop and begun to unpack some cartons of fall
stock. Pretty soon Bill Jay strolled in and, as always, the sight of her
seemed to hand him a hearty laugh. “You won’t admire the Martha Case
girl this fall,” she said. “What are we showing? Men’s jackets, men’s
sweaters, men’s shirts, men’s ties and scarves, men’s raincoats. I told
you I was out in front of the new mode.”

“Yeah, in candid slacks—and unconvinced that a girl’s best friend is
her girdle.”

“You Peeping Tom!” she said witheringly. “Maybe I ought to fix it so you
could see Gail through the yellow chiffon she had on a while ago.” She
stared at his clothes. “So what are you made up as? A scoutmaster?”

“I’m going for a bird walk. I want to borrow Gail’s binoculars.”

Last night came flooding into her mind. That dark scene was improbable
by daylight but she could still twitch with the scare it had given her.
“You’re going to go poking into Camp Ryegate.”

Bill nodded. “I never saw the Y.M.C.A. mixed up with the underworld
before. Makes an interesting mixture.”

“I’m going with you . . . Oh, yes I am! If I can take beer by the
barrel, I can go on bird walks. Besides, you’ll look a lot more
convincing as a nature lover if you’ve got a sweetie with you.”

That must have made sense, for he said, “Can you leave your job?”

“We sold a book ten days ago—somebody was caught between trains. We
won’t sell one of those girdles you leer at till college opens.” She
went upstairs for brogues. There was a rumble of voices through the
closed bookshop door when she came down, and as she went out with Bill
she said, “Gail used her mad money and came home last night. She and my
distinguished father are bombing each other about it now. If it would
make her drive all the way from Manchester after midnight, it was a
good, healthy scrap. You spit, I’ll wish, and we’ll both pray.”

“Maybe your license to run other people’s lives has expired?”

“Well,” she said, “if I can’t get a job running yours.”

They drove to Camp Ryegate and wandered among the cabins, tennis courts,
and docks. It was as mild a place as you could find anywhere. Just some
people enjoying an inexpensive vacation. A lot of women who would look
better in stylish stouts, and Connie took care to point out that the
world contained girls more angular than she. Just ordinary people having
a good time. “What did you expect?” she asked. “Al Capone hijacking the
United States mail? You’ll be lucky if you can sneak up on a life guard
kissing a stenographer.”

“I didn’t write that script about the truck,” Bill pointed out. “What’s
the rest of the setup here?”

“There’s the Inn—twelve dollars a day. There’s the ski run. There’s
some shacks on top of Taylor Mountain—call them a youth hostel.”

He said they’d take a look at all of it, so they drove toward the ski
run, parked the car, and started overland by a little trail. Bill got
winded easily and she was careful to stop often and look at nature, tie
a brogue, or just lean against a tree and gabble like a college girl. If
they should walk in the woods all day, she wouldn’t protest, and even a
girl who wasn’t crazy about him would keep him from overdoing. But it
was hot work and he was exhausted when they came out above the bottom
slope of the ski run. He sprawled in the shade of a big pine and panted.
Sweat was running down his forehead and she knew he hated his weakness.
She sprawled beside him and pretended to be worn out.

“It’s all right, Toots,” he said, grinning wanly. “Just be the American
outdoor girl. I know I’m a crock.”

“No more Toots, please, and if you think it’s shameful to get winded
after you’ve had pneumonia, don’t be a fool. What attracts me is your
character.” His grin flickered with what she could almost interpret as
affection. “You have nice impulses,” he said.

“Investigate and you’ll find that even those that make you laugh are
nice.”

But that one daring leap into personalities was all he was going to
venture. He turned over on his stomach and looked out at the steep slope
and the clearing at the bottom, where some small dots were moving about
at the end of the ski tow. “What happens here?” he asked.

“The best of us—the Scovils and Bookers—start out on Taylor Mountain.
You break your ankle anywhere on the course. Between the top and here
are about five places where you’re scheduled to break your leg. This is
where you wish you had taken more lessons or led a better life and take
off for glory. Nature sees to it that you reach the bottom and what you
break here, if anything, is the pelvis. If you don’t, there’s the tow to
the summit again.”

“Sounds legal enough, if tinged with idiocy.” He got out the binoculars
and began to study the scene below him. Little circles of light under
his eyes fascinated her and she was extremely content with today. He was
so homely that he was enchanting, and you could trust Constance Scovil,
Martha Case College ’43, to know what she wanted. “Couple of people
digging a post-hole,” he reported. “Probably no dragnet out for them.
Couple of others piling brush—no Tommy guns in sight. Guy smoking in
the shade of a truck—no previous convictions, I guess. Your pal Booker
is talking to somebody. Not Lefty the Gyp—looks more like a movie
actor. Hell, sweetheart, we aren’t getting anywhere for the _New York
Globe_.”

“I told you the most you could expect was somebody getting crazed by a
can of beer and jumping off the dock.”

He put the binoculars back in the case and turned over on a hip and
elbow, obviously dissatisfied. “Tell me about Booker.”

“He’s mine host. He runs this place like a chronometer. And they don’t
make better skiers. He’s what two cocktails make you dream you might get
to be.”

“That makes time with college girls?”

“Darling,” she said earnestly, “if it make you jealous, he just bowls me
over.”

“If I find you falling for an athlete, I’ll warm the seat of those
slacks.”

Connie was dazzled, for that really looked as if his better nature was
beginning to assert itself. But with Bill Jay it was one step at a time
and a long wait between steps. Still, here was a summer day and a
pleasant hillside and no one but her to talk to when he wanted to talk.
Connie listened to the birds and looked at Bill. She watched the workmen
below them and looked at Bill. She pulled up her short socks and looked
at Bill. No getting round it, she was skinny. If she had had a shape
like Gail’s there would be less of this frank companionship, Bill would
grin less and look closer. Or—Mathilde Winkler. Her father’s—well, say
it, her father’s mistress—came into her mind and she was hot with
resentment for Gail’s sake. But you could say this about Mathilde, when
men looked at her it was without frank companionship. Wrap her in an
over-stuffed mattress, Connie thought, and she’d still look as if she
were doing a strip tease. And if I did a strip tease it would just look
like corrective exercises for the deformed.

“O.K.,” Bill said, “and the clean-cut athletic innkeeper went to
Trailside Tavern to meet a racketeer. And it’s a good guess that the
same inspirer of college girls met that truck and helped the racketeer
on his way.”

“Nuts,” Connie said. “It was movie stuff last night. Today it’s just
what-the-hell. You don’t know that anything happened and my bet is
nothing did.”

But Bill was dead-serious. “Maybe . . . Connie, get it through your
blond head—whoever those babies were, there’s a wide streak of the
rattlesnake in them. I was a fool to take you there. Front-page stuff
aside, that wasn’t bright. Whoever our pals were, they wouldn’t have
waited to say _Pardon me_ before taking a shot at us.”

That depressed her and she resented his casting a shadow on a very
satisfactory hour. “That’s just your depraved mind writing headlines.”

“I’m a pretty good newspaperman. I get around. You’re a college
girl—you’re a rich man’s daughter—”

“Is that my fault?”

“The point is, you wouldn’t meet those eggs socially. You don’t know
what goes on. Somebody ought to tell you there are hard guys in the
world—people whose business is violence. There really is the
underworld—an organized network of very hard-boiled people who would be
distinctly out of place at Martha Case College.”

“Sure, I read the _Globe_. What about it?”

“What about it? Why do they make appointments in Windham?”

That was his point—it had been his point last night—and no doubt it
ought to make her shiver, but it only made her wish that he’d take an
interest in important things. But this was his morning hour for
self-reproach. He rolled over on his stomach again and wouldn’t look at
her.

“I’m a newspaperman. And here I am stuck in a summer resort and a spike
through my lungs when I climb a hill. Am I on the job when a swell story
breaks about an escaped aviator? Washington at last gets tough with the
people I know most about—am I helping out? No, here I am on a hillside
telling you how good I am. The world’s at war and it hasn’t got any use
for cripples, Connie. I ought to be carrying a gun, or learning to fly a
plane, or at least running a truck. Am I? No, I’m—”
witheringly—“getting my strength back—sitting on my tail—watching
other people do the jobs. The hell with all crocks! They ought to be
drowned.”

“Oh, don’t!” she cried. “You great ass, you’re all wrong!” She shut her
eyes hard but felt a tear on one cheek.

That tear must have scared him badly for he patted the cheek. He said,
“You’re all right, Connie,” and she said, unsteadily, “Remember you said
so.” He came out of the mood and smiled a little. “Furthermore,” he said
deliberately, “I lie in the teeth when I say you don’t look nice in
slacks.” He got out the binoculars and this time scanned the hills above
them. He put the glasses away. “Excuse the self-pity,” he said, “but you
get the idea—I’m fed up with doing nothing. So anyway when I fall over
something I can look into it. This is just a thug in a place where you
wouldn’t expect one—I’m stubborn enough to see what I can find out. I
won’t find anything but it’s something to do. Come on, we’ll finish the
job. Let’s take a look at Taylor Mountain.”

“Can you make it?” Instantly she knew that was a mistake.

“Yes,” he said furiously, “I can make it.”

O.K. They took to the trail, slowly but probably not slowly enough,
though now he didn’t pretend but kept stopping for breath. Little white
spots showed on his cheekbones and she felt sorry for him but had
learned her lesson. . . . They came out on a shoulder several hundred
feet higher, rested, and started up toward the next one. It was a
delightful trail, their shoulders kept touching, and Connie was willing
to climb all day. It reached another flat place where the ski tow was in
sight again, and Bill leaned against a tree, panting. And a man came out
from behind a pile of cordwood and said, “Private property. Get out.”

“We’re just on the trail of some birds,” Connie said, and Bill said,
“Take it easy, Mac.”

She wouldn’t have been so familiar. Offhand she would have said that
this was a Boris Karloff part. He had a cauliflower ear and he looked
unfinished or even in the crude state, and he looked threatening. He
said, “This is private property. Go peddle your papers.”

“Wait a minute.” Bill came forward from the tree. “We aren’t running off
with your wildflowers. We’re just taking a walk on this trail.”

“Yeah. It ain’t your trail, buddy. Get off it. Fast.”

“Oh? Some good reason why we shouldn’t walk it?”

The man looked tougher still. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket
and, wiping his forehead, took a step forward. Then in a half frozen
second the handkerchief was fluttering to the ground and his fist
flashed out and caught Bill on the jaw. Bill went down on the gravelly
trail and the man was standing over him, and Connie leaped forward to
kneel by him, with a terrible conviction that the man was going to kick
him, and she blazed up at him. “Get away from him! If you touch him,
I’ll kill you.”

The tableau sorted itself out. Bill sat up groggily, leaning against
her. “Don’t argue, Toots,” he said. “We do exactly what we’re told.”

He got to his feet and she was probably going to be sick but she wasn’t.
They started down the trail, and the man followed them for a few yards,
still looking tough, and yelled, “Don’t come back.” The ghastly violence
still nauseated her, and it was hard to tell whether Bill was leaning on
her arm or she on his. Trees hid them and they kept on. Till Bill
stopped and sat down on a boulder. There was a big red splotch at the
corner of his jaw. Also his eyes were hard and hot, and the white spots
on his cheekbones didn’t mean weariness now. She grabbed his arm and
demanded, “Are you hurt?”

“I felt it.” He was breathing hard, and swearing. “Nice if I’d had a
baseball bat. What a crock! Sorry, Connie. I’m a normal male and if
anybody gets knocked down in front of a pretty girl, I want to be on the
sending end. In Hollywood they fix it so the tough guy gets it. Take my
word for it, I’m embarrassed.” He swore some more and his eyes were
still hot. “Maybe you get the point, now. Here and there a person runs
into a hard guy.”

“I get it.” She was still shaken. “I thought he was going to kick you.”

“In the ribs. Or the stomach.” He cupped his hands round her cheeks.
“You’re all right—you’ll do to take along.” He dropped his hands—the
oaf! “I never liked being pushed around. I like it still less when
you’re the audience. . . . Would a passerby be interested in why you
meet a guy like that in a place like this? Have you started wondering
what there is on his trail he doesn’t want looked at? The _Globe_ is
sending me to find out.”

                     *      *      *      *      *

The crisis planned for was to have begun at Detroit. The crisis actually
arrived at had begun in Windham. Give a child a book to read in a
strange language, take the handkerchief off a blindfolded man’s eyes in
a dark room—and you would have something very much like Lieutenant
Römer at Pinnacle Manor, the Berkshire estate of Mr. Lynn Scovil. Or, he
reflected, set a man down on a high wire above Niagara—he would have to
walk or plunge.

Mr. Lynn Scovil, however, was as bewildered as he and was moving as
warily. The first step was to decide about Scovil. By now he clearly
understood Booker. That sullen and suspicious man was merely one of the
many listeners assigned by the _Nachrichtendienst_—the general staff’s
organization in foreign countries—and required to hold themselves ready
for such jobs as they might be able to do. He probably knew nothing more
than the name of the New York headquarters—the Forwarding Company. A
small cog, a stupid and unimportant man. But he had reported to Mr. Lynn
Scovil—so where did Scovil fit, how much did he know and how much
authority did he have? The lieutenant had seen his name in newspaper
stories that had nothing to do with the _Nachrichtendienst_; he was
obviously a rich man and a man of ability; he was striving hard to
understand the situation and probe the lieutenant’s business—and that
was all, the rest would have to be picked up along the way.

The lieutenant saw that much, knew that Booker had acted because of his
telegram, and believed that the best policy was to keep the initiative
in his own hands. So, after they had spent half an hour talking amiable
commonplaces—while eying each other like prizefighters before the
bell—he took the initiative.

“Mr. Scovil, my liberty is in your hands,” he said. Vigilant to catch
the slightest clue he noted a fact which might be important: that Scovil
liked holding someone’s liberty in his hands. For there was a flash of
satisfaction in his wary eyes and the faintest possible suggestion of a
smile on his lips. “The truth is, I am a German aviator,” he went on.
“Three days ago I escaped from a train that was taking me to a prison
camp in Ontario. I have managed to get this far.”

Scovil nodded, his face attentive and impenetrable. “That was Monday
night? You probably know that the newspapers have been full of you ever
since—and the radio. The Canadians are annoyed and the Americans are
chiefly amused. Your name would be—von Römer?”

“Römer. Senior Lieutenant Friedrich Römer.”

So he had taken his first step on the high wire. . . . They were on the
terrace of a millionaire’s estate and in midafternoon of a brilliant
summer day; what would happen now? What happened was that Scovil became
a gallant gentleman who could admire gallantry, a sportsman who could
praise courage even in an enemy.

“Don’t be apprehensive,” he said. “You will come to no harm through me,
Lieutenant. You have done a brave thing against tremendous odds.”

The lieutenant’s respect for him increased. Mr. Scovil was covered;
since anyone could admire a brave thing done against the odds, he had
given away nothing—and it was still the lieutenant’s move. Or was it?
Scovil began to ask questions about the escape. They rose and strolled
over the wide lawns while the lieutenant sketched an outline of his
story, Scovil making appropriately amused comments, and nothing was
advanced—they were still sportsmen.

There were statuary and stone benches walled round with arborvitæ.
Scovil sat down, took a cigar from a silver case, lighted it, and gazed
inscrutably at the lieutenant. “I shall be happy to entertain you here.
I’m not clear what your legal status is. You were probably safe from the
Canadians as soon as you crossed the line—in any event, you can’t be
surrendered to them.” He met the lieutenant’s eyes, and the initiative
had passed to Mr. Scovil. “Up to a few weeks ago you would have reported
to a German consul. Probably the embassy now?”

The lieutenant smiled. “I think that’s the law. But I’ve had three days
to think it over. The chargé must report me under bond to the American
authorities, who will eventually order me deported. Since I can be
deported only by way of Japan and Siberia, that practically means
something like a detention camp.”

Scovil’s face showed a polite regret—as if it were too bad that such a
brave enterprise must end so ignominiously—but, as one man to another,
nothing could be done about it. “I’m sorry. However, I think that is the
law.”

He took another step along his high wire. “Truly . . . I should like a
few days. I’ve thought I should first like to go to Detroit. You could
serve me handsomely by helping me to get there.”

At last something showed in Scovil’s face but he could not make out what
it was. “Detroit?”

“Was not the consul’s name there von Weitbrecht?”

“No,” Scovil said, “the consul at Detroit was not named von Weitbrecht.”

So they ceased to be sportsmen admiring each other and reverted to the
status of prizefighters before the bell. “You sent a wire to the
Interoceanic Forwarding Company at New York,” Scovil said. “Why?”

“Excuse me—it was on business. Moreover,” the lieutenant gave his voice
an edge, “that wire landed me at your house, Mr. Scovil. By way of
Booker. And I cannot like the man—he is stupid and his temper makes him
unsafe.”

The bell had rung for the first round. “I happen to be acquainted with
the Forwarding Company,” Scovil said. “I can’t imagine what business an
escaped prisoner of war could have with them. I can’t understand,
either, why you should want to go to Detroit. I think I must insist on
your notifying the chargé.”

The lieutenant stood up. “Good afternoon, Mr. Scovil. This has been a
pleasant hour but there is no longer anything in it for either of us.”

“As you remarked, I hold your liberty in my hands.”

It was more than a gleam of satisfaction; Scovil’s face was actually
avid. The lieutenant took a step forward—and a step in space, over the
Niagara gorge. “It works two ways,” he said gently. Then he abandoned
gentleness. “You aren’t what you seem to be, Mr. Scovil, and I am not a
fool. By what authority do you interfere with me? What concern of yours
are my telegrams? What have you to do with the Company? And if you have
anything to do with it, how do you presume to question me?”

“There are holes in your story,” Scovil said harshly. “An escaped
prisoner of war is safe the moment he reports to his embassy. You aren’t
interested—you want to go to Detroit. It is you who are pretending to
be something you are not, Lieutenant Römer. My job is to find out what
you are.”

“Your job is to render assistance when called on and ask no questions,”
the lieutenant said, very coldly.

“You will find that I have a little more importance than that.” The
lieutenant kept observing that curious avidity—the key to Mr. Scovil
was his ego, but how could it be used? “Already I can save you from
disaster. Detroit! They would pick you up the moment you got there.”

“What has happened at Detroit?” More hung on the answer to that question
than even the lieutenant could guess—job, mission, success or failure,
the future.

“I am not permitted to know.” Scovil was sarcastic. “As you say, so far
I can take orders but must not understand them. I wonder if anyone knows
what has happened. But—a good many have been taken, so many that it is
an embarrassment.”

“Von Weitbrecht?”

“No. He is not even implicated. But you couldn’t possibly get in touch
with him. And—you are doubtless very ingenious, Lieutenant, but if you
tried to, the FBI or the secret service would grab you at once.”

So here was where he began to make payment for his one mistake. The long
series of accidents had brought him up against a stone wall. Von
Weitbrecht had gone underground, the one indispensable, the kingpin.
That was the one thing which meant failure, which must not happen, and
it had happened. Or had it? “He is not even implicated.” What did that
mean? Did Scovil know what it meant? Obviously no. Well, whatever it
meant, the situation was disastrous and no plans were good.

“You see, I am important to you,” Scovil said, with that odd insistence.
The man had to assert his importance—had to make it clear that the
lieutenant was altogether in his hands. “You are fumbling in the dark.”
A good deal blinder fumbling than Scovil could know. “You can’t even
communicate with the Company except in ambiguous telegrams. You
blundered upon me—do you think you can go on blundering? I can put you
in touch with the Company. You can get instructions through me—and
whoever you need to see. You have been very lucky for three days,
Lieutenant—but is it safe to rely on luck? What are you to do now? We
had better be allies.”

So at Windham, Massachusetts, hundreds of miles from Detroit, the most
exquisitely calculated plans had been blown to bits. It was as if the
middle arch of a bridge had been destroyed; no instructions, no
arrangements, were worth anything at all. At least there would have been
co-operation at Detroit—here he must go it alone and blind, over the
gorge.

“I will stay twenty-four hours,” he said. “You must get someone here
from the Company by tomorrow. My telegrams must have told them that I am
the one they expected on July twenty-sixth. Tell them I am staying with
you and they must send someone who knows everything. Also I must have
the papers that were sent in. Also complete information about von
Weitbrecht.”

Scovil nodded but was obstinate. “I must know who you are.”

“I will talk to your superiors,” the lieutenant said brusquely. But that
was the wrong tone—he must be wary of the man’s ego. He became affable.
“My dear fellow, I’m under orders—please don’t press me. What you have
told me changes everything. I’m completely in the dark. But you have
done me a memorable service.”

Scovil ate it up—and if he liked flattery, be sure he would get plenty
of it. “You are certainly no aviator,” he said.

The lieutenant smiled. “The British made me one. They had no intention
of letting our people know they had me. . . . I was sent in on the
clipper from Lisbon as a Swiss banker, with all my papers in order. But
the British took me off at Bermuda and flew me to Halifax. It will have
to be determined,” he said grimly, “where that leak was. Well, they put
a flyer’s uniform on me, named me Oberleutnant Römer—I suppose there
is, or was, such a man—and sent me off to a prison camp. I got away.
The terrible question is whether I got away in time.”

Much better! He had thus made Scovil an insider and Scovil loved it. So
they were again the most amiable companions in the world. “There is to
be a big party at my house tomorrow night.” Scovil smiled. “For the
praiseworthy purpose of supporting a symphony orchestra. That makes it
convenient for you to be my house guest. Whatever messenger they send
will be another guest—and I think I know who it will be.”

“I must have decent clothes at once—I stole these. I must have some
money. And some kind of story to explain me.”

“Of course!” Scovil was now eager to do anything, a country gentleman
offering hospitality. They started back across the lawn to the house, a
great stone Tudor place with stables and outbuildings beyond. “You will
get a good night’s sleep,” he said. Then, “I must say your English is
remarkable.”

He smiled. “The _Grossgeneralstab_ picks its men. My father spent ten
years in Colorado as a mining engineer. I graduated from a Denver high
school and—well, till the time comes, let’s say from a California
college as well.”

“That might be very awkward,” Scovil said quickly.

He smiled again. “There is a certain amount of awkwardness in our job.
But Massachusetts is a long way from California.”

He began to think better of himself. He had handled the first emergency.
He had Scovil in a useful state of mind, and Scovil was not likely to be
dangerous except as a pompous man hungry for importance. He wondered why
and how such a man had been drawn into the network—money, social
position, excellent contacts, no doubt—then he stopped wondering. For a
while there was nothing he could do; the ball had passed to other hands
until tomorrow, and he might as well relax. Worry about Detroit and the
severed ends of his mission would get him nowhere. For tonight he would
take his ease at Scovil’s house. Imprisonment, flight, drowning, rifle
fire, a paralyzing mistake, news of an unpredictable and perhaps fatal
development—well, he could use a little ease.

As they approached the house a car came up the drive, swung round the
circle, and stopped. At sight of it Scovil halted on the grass and said,
“Good God! Quick—what American name can you use?”

His aliases glimmered in his mind: Friedrich Römer, Philip Garfield—“I
am registered as John Page,” he said.

A woman got out of the car and, waving, started toward them, a tall,
dark-haired woman in a gray dress. And his release from tension and his
hope of ease had been premature. For he knew that woman and had driven
that car. In the afternoon light she was even prettier than she had
seemed on that romantic drive down back roads, tall, high-breasted, her
body exquisite in motion, her face clear and sweet. It might not be Lynn
Scovil who held his liberty in his hands, it might be this woman . . .
who stopped abruptly, looked straight at him, and turned pink with an
emotion that clearly was not embarrassment but anger.

A temporary providence, however, led Scovil to interpret her anger as
directed at him—and the lieutenant realized that his host must protect
himself as well. Scovil stepped forward and said, “I did not expect you
so soon, my dear. This is John Page, who has come for our party.” He put
his arm around her waist. “Mrs. Armstrong, John, my fiancée.”

His fiancée stepped negligently out of that arm but stood beside him.
She did not see his discomfort for her eyes, scorn clearing them of
anger, were fixed on—on her guest. “Mr. Page.” The three syllables were
clear ice. She swept some of the same disdain over Scovil. “I don’t
remember hearing about him. I thought you would be alone.”

The lieutenant was working hard to interpret the emotions that showed in
Scovil’s face. There was the sharp anxiety of this immediate meeting;
there was also an anger which could be believed in, for Scovil would
anger easily; and there was some queer doubt and questioning of Mrs.
Armstrong. Scovil was not master of the situation and in a moment he
abandoned it altogether. “I’ll have something to drink brought out,” he
said, and literally fled into the house—but not before an urgent
command showed in his face, a glance at his friend John Page which
meant, “You handle this.”

Clearly Mrs. Armstrong was glad to have him go. She stood straight and
contemptuous, her eyes level. “A guest, Mr. . . . Page? In those
clothes?”

“They look worse with every passing day,” he said. “We must do something
about them.”

“You found it not so urgent to take a plane?”

Damnation! Had the romantic satisfactions of last night’s drive betrayed
him into another imprudence? He could not remember mentioning Detroit,
but if he had there might be hell to pay. Certainly Mrs. Armstrong knew
nothing of Scovil’s function but for the moment it would have been less
awkward if she had known.

He said, “I found Lynn’s name in the telephone book at Camp Ryegate.”

“I see . . .” skeptically. She sat on the stone steps, relaxing not the
slightest bit of her scrutiny. “Your old friend Lynn! How relieved you
must have been to find an old and probably dear friend in a town you had
never heard of before. At a time, too, when you needed a friend. Have
you told him that you’re a—what was your own phrase—a fugitive from
justice? Have you told him you’re a car thief?”

“No. You may, Mrs. Armstrong.”

“Oh, no, you’ll tell him—I’ll see to it that you do. He is an impulsive
man, Mr. Page—he is very easily taken advantage of. I don’t like your
riding into town ahead of the police and then victimizing him. . . . I’m
interested in you. Just what kind of impostor are you?”

“You were less solicitous about him last night,” he observed.

This time her flush was darker—and it was embarrassment, not anger.
“Yes,” she said, “I made a first-rate fool of myself.”

“You will make a fool of yourself now,” he said quickly, “if you let
your imagination run wild. You’re quite right, Mrs. Armstrong. I knew
nothing about Windham last night, and I didn’t know that Lynn Scovil was
here. And yes, I have not told him that I came into town fleeing the
police.”

“Why not? How can you accept—”

Sunnily, “For the reason that I haven’t yet had time to tell him. . . .
But you have had time to get your poise back, Mrs. Armstrong. So
remember that it was the fiancé who told you we’re old friends, not the
scoundrel. There is no reason why I shouldn’t tell him the circumstances
in which I got to Windham. Why can’t we tell him together?” He looked
into dark eyes which, however scornful, were as attractive as he
remembered them. He smiled impudently. “Shall we tell him—all the
circumstances?”

The dark eyes hardened still more, wavered a little, and then, turning
away, softened to a smile. “On the whole,” she said, without antagonism
at last, even with a hint of laughter, “that might be carrying
conscientiousness too far.” Pinkness invaded her cheeks again and she
was really smiling. “No. There’s no need to bore him with too many
details. You can skip some.”

Unquestionably she was one more element of danger in an equilibrium
already so precarious that there was little hope it could be maintained.
But her smile had some safety in it and maybe he could prolong the
safety if he could maintain the smile. . . . A house man in a white
jacket came through the door, carrying a tray of drinks, and a moment
later Lynn Scovil appeared.

Mrs. Armstrong turned toward her fiancé’s old friend, swiftly. “I don’t
believe anything about you,” she whispered. “You’re an impostor and an
adventurer and doubtless a scoundrel too. Probably the truth about you
would curdle my blood. But I seem to like you, Mr. Page.” She was openly
laughing now, as she added, “Considering how I’ve behaved with you, it’s
just as well I do.”




                              Chapter Four


Gail Armstrong seemed unable to give her emotions the right timing. She
had gone to Lynn’s house yesterday prepared to make peace, repentant of
her indecisions, and convinced that everything was clear and simple at
last. She was not going to have doubts any more and she understood just
why she had been behaving so idiotically. As for deserting him at the
dance—why, just such a drama had been needed to make her sure that she
did not want to desert him. As for an outrageous flirtation with a
stranger—why, just such an experience had been needed to convince her
that no man but Lynn could really attract her. Calm second thoughts had
made everything clear and she had gone to his house in a mood of
penitence and surrender, prepared to accept his terms, behave sensibly
thereafter, and marry him at any time. The presence of the ambiguous
John Page had frustrated that intention—but she was in the same mood on
Friday morning when Lynn came to the bookshop.

Again her willingness was frustrated. The scenario called for him to be
eager and impatient, but he was preoccupied, too concerned about
something else even to observe her compliance. It showed in the quick
movements of his hands, the brightness of his eyes, the unflattering
fact that he hardly noticed her. Annoyed and resentful, Gail attributed
his excitement to the mysterious Page and resumed the dislike of him she
had conceived yesterday. Humor came to her aid—did she insist on a big
scene, probably to violins? There would be time enough tonight.

Tonight, it developed, was what was on his mind. Something had come up
that would occupy him for a little while. He wouldn’t come for her
before dinner; there wouldn’t, in fact, be any dinner. He would come at
nine. Anxiously, would that be all right?

“Of course,” she said. And the more so if he would ask for more.

He swept her into his arms and kissed her—with, a critic might have
said, insufficient ardor. But he whispered, “Tonight was to have been
different. Make it not too different! It can still be our announcement.”
She pressed against him but he wasn’t noticing. “I’ve got to go. I’ll
come for you at nine.”

Both nettled and amused, she followed him into the hall. He called,
“Constance!” Connie answered from the sweater shop and came out into the
hall, Bill Jay following her—these days he was all but taking his meals
here. Connie put on antagonism at sight of her father.

“I expect you to come to the dance tonight,” Lynn said.

“Well . . .” Connie said uncertainly. Then, “Why should I?”

Lynn’s sharp, “Because my house is yours too,” only hardened Connie’s
chin, but Gail said, “Of course you will, Connie.”

Connie glared at her as if she had betrayed a confidence but said, “All
right. Only—ask Bill too.”

Lynn looked indifferently at Bill Jay, said, “By all means. Of course.
I’ll see all of you tonight, then,” and went away.

Connie snorted. “That’s pretty noble. Considering that he has never
forgotten a single unkind word anyone ever wrote about him.”

“The press don’t count,” Bill said. “He just thinks of me as the paid
agent of a corrupt sensationalism.”

They went back to the bookshop and Connie sprawled on a bench. “Anyway,
you’ll meet the Social Register tonight. Got a cummerbund, Sahib?”

“Sure—by Brooks Brothers. Got an evening dress, Toots?”

Connie shot off the bench to stand six inches from him, raging. “That’s
enough Toots! Sure, I’m just a Martha Case College girl, and that’s a
laugh in any man’s life. Sure, I’m as bloodless as a figure on your
radiator cap. You can call the cigarette girl Toots, but I won’t take it
any—”

Bill caught her wrist behind her back and looked over her head at Gail.
“Too many movies about the tiger woman, maybe? How do we treat it?”

“I don’t know, Bill,” she said, amused. “I’m from your generation and we
hadn’t read much about the war between the sexes.” Connie was straining
away from him, her blond curls tumbled. “She’s being primitive. I’d say
you haven’t got a chance.”

“Primitive!” Connie gasped. “Who’s subduing his woman by brute force?”

Bill let her go and Connie looked deeply gratified. This flagrant,
athletic love-making seemed charming and appropriate to Gail—better
than the obscure contradictions that passed for love-making between
herself and Lynn.

“O.K., you’re an Eagle Scout now,” Bill said. “No more Toots.”

“I should hope not—after all those midnights on the trail.” She beamed
at Gail. “See how he’s softening up? Get down a bet on me.”

“About that evening dress,” he said. “It’s a simple fact I don’t know
how you look in skirts. Why not try a couple of yards of witchery for
once?”

Connie went defensive again. “I’ve told you why. Pants are cheap, so I
wear pants. The great man can make me go to his dance like a good
daughter, but he doesn’t get a chance to keep me.”

“We don’t stock evening dresses,” Gail said. “She’ll have to see what
she can do with one of mine.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Connie headed off at a tangent. “I take theory of
design at Martha Case College.” She looked round the shop, eying rugs
and hangings. She got up, stood on a chair, and took down one of the
curtains—a strip of dark-blue chintz with white gazelles printed on it.
She was wearing a trivial play suit. She unfastened it, stepped out of
it, stood for a moment in still more trivial brassière and briefs, and
began to drape the curtain round herself. “A pin!” She demanded. “Fold
it in here, Gail.” She kicked out a train behind her, and said, “The
gazelles make an exotic note. Well, is this witchery?”

“Primitive was the word I used,” Gail said.

“You strip pretty good,” Bill said.

There was no predicting Connie’s emotions. She had been entirely
un-self-conscious but his remark made her look appalled, her eyes grew
ashamed, and a painful red stain came into her cheeks. “Oh! Strip! . . .
I suppose you’ve never seen me in a bathing suit?” She ran out of the
room, the chintz fluttering.

“Good Lord!” Bill said. “You never know, do you?” He picked up the play
suit, and called upstairs, “Hey! You forgot your pants.” Connie’s
hostile voice floated down: “Please ask that reporter to go to hell.”

Gail was amused—and rather troubled. “She’s pretty much mid-April,
Bill. I hope you realize it’s only five per cent a joke. She’s crazy
about you.”

“She’s got too much sense. I’m just a novelty from How-the-poor-live.”
He frowned. “If you punch a guy’s jaw for a woman, you’re honor bound to
fall in love with her. What’s the formula when you’re the guy that gets
punched?”

“Who punched your jaw? I didn’t know she had another guy in town.”

“It was no beau. Just something that’s going on.”

He looked serious and probably would have explained, but Connie made an
entrance. She had dressed hastily but completely—silk afternoon dress,
high-heeled slippers, hat, gloves. She said pugnaciously, “All right,
you long to see the feminine flutter of a skirt—you look and I’ll
flutter. Help yourself to witchery. Even—” she slapped her hip—“that
girdle. I can be so feminine you’ll yell for help.”

“Stockings too!” Gail said. “No, Bill, you haven’t got a chance.”

It was all carefree and delightful, a lighthearted moment among good
friends who had nothing to trouble them. Gail was to look back on it
with disbelief, marveling that they could have been so lighthearted
about anything.

As evening came on, a warm, desirous impatience possessed her—the same
nuptial mood in which she had started for Manchester. But tonight it
would last; she knew what she wanted. She would not wear that white
dress—it had been a bad omen. She dressed with the eagerness of a girl,
a girl as young as Connie. And Connie kept wandering in to envy and
admire. “I don’t see how you’ve stayed a widow for five years.” And,
“You’d have a nice career in musicals—it’s those well-drawn legs that
make us tennis wenches so hopeless.” And, “I can’t approve the cause,
but it certainly lights you up all over.” Dressed, Gail took an honest
pleasure in the soft eyes that looked back at her from the mirror—this
picture of a tall woman, in beige chiffon, with fluctuating color in her
cheeks. She clasped an antique necklace of topazes round her throat and
went downstairs—to wait for Lynn.

So the telephone rang and Lynn was saying, “I’m sorry, my dear, I can’t
come for you. You won’t mind? Come with Constance.”

There was nothing to do but agree, and he rang off. It was absurd to
feel let down, and she told herself that her annoyance was unreasonable.
But again there was this doubtful omen—ardor unsatisfied, anticlimax,
emotions badly timed. Driving to Pinnacle Manor with Connie and Bill,
she found their idle bickering no longer amusing but strident and out of
key.

                     *      *      *      *      *

In the big library upstairs Lynn Scovil narrowly watched Mathilde
Winkler and the man who called himself John Page. Both of them had tried
to exclude him from this interview and he had been obliged to make a
curt demand. He had had to point out that he was now indispensable—that
circumstances had brought him closer to the heart of their business than
there had been any intention of letting him get. The fact was that not
only the safety of these two but the success or failure of vast
enterprises lay in the hollow of his hand. A sense of power pleasantly
stimulated his nerves, and he would take care to remind them that he
must now be granted equality with them. Equality or even more. . . . He
expected no trouble with Mathilde—he held over her the whip of an old
emotion, an old relation which she would be glad to resume. But what
about Page? Scovil had to admire his casehardened composure, the
competence with which he had mastered an unexpected situation. The man’s
escape showed his courage; his behavior since showed that he was an
ingenious tactician. He was formidable! Well, he would the more easily
see the need of an ally.

They were listening to a news broadcast from Berlin. Scovil knew,
resentfully, that they heard something in it which he could not
hear—that instructions for various centers in America were somehow
coded in the sequence and phraseology of the news. He had not been
admitted to that code; he did not even know whether these two knew all
of it—but he knew that they knew more than he. Well, from now on they
would not shut him out.

Page was wholly absorbed but retained his appearance of assured
composure. But Mathilde had relaxed none of the tension she had been
showing ever since her arrival. She was concentrated on the voice coming
from the radio as if life itself depended on it . . . As it did.

The broadcast ended. In the quiet that followed you could hear a dance
tune coming up from the terrace. Finally, Page said, “You understood it,
_Gräfin_?”

He spoke in German and Scovil said curtly, “Speak English.”

Mathilde said, “Enough of it.” She had a surface control but Scovil
could sense her inner agitation. Was she afraid of Page? If so, that was
further evidence of Page’s importance. But Scovil could take care of
him.

“So Field was taken,” Page said, and Mathilde answered, “He got to New
Orleans and took a plane to St. Louis, where he had a reservation for
Detroit. He never got to Detroit. He must have been taken at St. Louis.”

“Too bad.” There was no emotion in Page’s voice. “But they have heard
nothing about me and they are inquiring. They have been inquiring all
the time I was in arrest? Can you let them know I have got here?”

She nodded. “From New York. It would be better, of course, to have von
Weitbrecht—”

“Yes. Everything hinges on von Weitbrecht. You will arrange for me to go
to Detroit tomorrow, _Gräfin_.”

It was a command, cold and colorless. And it gave Scovil the greatest
satisfaction. For that was his ace. It was the power which circumstance
had given him. Page could know nothing whatever about von Weitbrecht,
and even Mathilde could not know what had happened. Everything hinged
not on von Weitbrecht but upon Lynn Scovil.

“Have New York tell them what has happened to me,” Page directed.
“Report that I was taken at Bermuda, escaped, and have got through.
Report Erich Köchlin on his way to Detroit. You have some papers for me,
_Gräfin_?”

“I don’t use my title in America, Herr Köchlin.” He bowed: “_Fräulein_,
then.”

She gave him a manila envelope. He ripped it open and began to study its
contents, going through them without haste. Some pages he put in his
pocket, some he left on the desk. Scovil saw that Mathilde’s full
attention was concentrated on him. There was no sound till he had
finished, when he folded his hands on the desk, and sat looking at
Mathilde. When he spoke it was as if he were presiding at a court
martial. “Not all of them are here. What have you to say about that,
_Fräulein_?”

Only one who knew Mathilde as well as Scovil did would have perceived
that she relaxed a little. She was just perceptibly more confident and
animated in the big leather chair—her North German fairness resplendent
in her evening gown, her body smoothing to its natural and subtle lines.
Scovil became more intent, suddenly understanding that Mathilde had not
been altogether frank, that something had been withheld as a check on
Köchlin’s identity.

“You see, Herr Köchlin, I was told to give you the envelope—not what
was in it. I don’t know anything about it. That’s between you and the
Company.”

“I am not rebuking you, _Fräulein_.” Köchlin’s courtesy had a sharp
edge. “Please telephone the Company tonight to send the rest at once.
Tell them—” He stood up and into his face came an impersonal
condemnation so complete that it jarred even Scovil’s complacency. His
voice was quiet but it seemed to give off venom. “I was captured—Field
was captured—what is going on, _Fräulein_ Winkler? Do you suppose they
do not wonder about that at home? Do you think I have not been
wondering? Now some of my papers are taken from an envelope it was your
duty to hold for me. What is going on in your organization? Who is
tampering, where is the leak, which of you is a traitor?”

Mathilde had gone white and Scovil could see her quivering under her
dress. “But we knew nothing about you! We were told you were coming.
Then you were two weeks late. Two telegrams! Then Lynn’s phone call. You
might be—”

“You took it on yourselves to withhold some of my instructions?”

“There must be some check on you,” she said, with none of the defiance
Scovil would have expected. Köchlin said, “I am going to Detroit
tomorrow, and those papers must be here before I go, _Fräulein_, if any
of you in New York are in love with comfort.” Mathilde nodded, her eyes
submissive, and Scovil felt his scalp prickle. For this man was truly
formidable! Not only had he at once detected the ruse practised on him
but in thirty seconds he had cowed Mathilde Winkler, whom no one had
ever cowed.

“You have told us nothing, Herr Köchlin,” Mathilde said. “Nothing has
been told us from the beginning. Only that you were on your way.”

“I am not to confide in messengers or—” his cold-blue eyes went to
Scovil with a disdain for which Scovil was determined to require
payment—“or in casual station keepers on an underground railway.” He
sat down again, aloof, his voice edged with contempt. “I will tell you
this, _Fräulein_. I am to advise von Weitbrecht in the matter of
September first. But also it looks as if I must do Field’s job. That
was—” the barbed voice slowed—“to see if something could be done to
repair the intolerable stupidities your people have been committing,
_Fräulein_. The succession of preposterous failures. The wrecked plans,
the bungled efforts, the wasted money, the stupid ineptness—whatever it
is that is endangering our war here.”

Her breasts rose in the bodice of her black-chiffon gown, and her face
was frightened. “You do not understand! Is it supposed in Germany that
the Americans are all fools? Dreadful things have been happening—”

“Yes? That is what I propose to hear about.”

“We have lost so many!” Her fine hands locked in her lap. “Without
warning or trace! The wonder is we have been able to keep going. And
now, within the last week—” The small hands were suddenly thrust out.
“You are not the only one who has been in danger, Herr Köchlin. In a
week, San Francisco, Paterson, Philadelphia, Detroit—”

Instantly, “What about Detroit?”

“I don’t know,” Mathilde said slowly, “I don’t think anyone at the
Company knows. On Tuesday and Wednesday, a great many were taken
there—perhaps enough to end all usefulness. Little word has come in—”

“Von Weitbrecht?”

She shook her head. “No. There was word from him on Monday that he was
leaving for a while. That was very fortunate, for on Tuesday the raid
came. But nothing has been heard from him. Unless—” she turned to
Scovil—“nothing today?”

Köchlin came out of his chair. “I must know about this man! Why should
he know anything about von Weitbrecht? Why should he hear from him?”

Mathilde said urgently, “So much has happened, so much has been
disorganized, we have had to use what was at hand. There is a truck
line—a summer camp near by keeps in touch with it. Among other things,
it carries dispatches. We have had to use Lynn in relation to it.”

“You don’t have to plead for me, Mathilde.” Scovil stood up, feeling the
full strength of his position, even hoping that Köchlin would protest.
“You will find, Herr Köchlin, that I am not without usefulness. I
explained to you yesterday about Booker and his camp. You are perhaps a
little given to hasty judgments? You will find that we can attend to
your needs—provided you appreciate the difficulties.”

That was the right note, an assurance of co-operation in which,
nevertheless, Köchlin would detect a warning that he must respect the
judgment of his allies. The cold eyes studied him and he tranquilly gave
back stare for stare. Köchlin smiled. “I think I appreciate you, Mr.
Scovil.”

Scovil saw that the man must hide his discomfiture under an accent of
mockery. But it was an acknowledgment, even something of a surrender. A
feeling of mastery surged in him. They would disregard him no longer—he
would be consulted, even deferred to. His stake had grown enormously.
And he had taken Köchlin’s measure.

“You had better not be seen off my grounds,” he said smoothly but with a
plain warning to Köchlin. The inscrutable eyes met his, then turned
away. He went on, “We will break this up now and be seen having a
pleasant time at a dance. I have been away from my guests too long. It
will be well for both of you to show yourselves.”

He felt very well indeed. A stimulating half hour!

Yes, he reflected, as they went downstairs, the more stimulating in that
neither Mathilde nor Köchlin had thought to go back and repeat that
question. Neither had asked him again if he had heard from von
Weitbrecht.

                     *      *      *      *      *

It was a curious evening for Bill Jay. Scovil’s big house was packed
with summer notables—the plush and flush, he thought: the Berkshire
gentry, a good many whose faces were familiar to any reporter;
musicians, country squires, a Congressman, minor attachés from
Washington, Boston bankers. There was dancing on a wide veranda and the
terrace beyond it. There were vast quantities of food that might have
come from Park Avenue. There was more champagne than, in the summer of
1941, you would have thought it possible to find. The champagne was the
most vivid reminder of Scovil’s wealth.

“Costs you something to wear a free woman’s pants, doesn’t it?” he said
to Connie. He waved his hand in a gesture that took in house, grounds,
guests and champagne. “Makes a setup for the movies, rich girl.”

“Aw, I was having a good time.” Her forehead wrinkled. “There you go,
always a girl’s best comforter.” She took his arm and led him toward the
sidelines. “You can have it! He can have it—fat dowagers, big names,
people that get talked about, and money to burn. It means a lot to him.
That’s why I never took him seriously as Moscow’s white hope. He’d be
more natural as the _Gauleiter_ of Berkshire County. Name in the papers,
everybody saluting, and a swell uniform.”

But Bill couldn’t take Scovil seriously in any capacity . . . He had
been seen for a moment when they arrived, had wandered about with Gail
on his arm, and now wasn’t visible.

“And when you think that out there—” Connie nodded vaguely at the
dark—“there’s a war. It burns me up to realize that and then realize
that here I am dancing with a bunch of rich stiffs. Don’t dare tell me I
belong with them.”

“You won’t win it by feeling blue. Washington says every girl is
entitled to ten minutes of moderate pleasure. I’ll hold a watch for
you.”

They wandered through various opulent rooms, made remarks about the
company, went back to the veranda and danced some more. She fell in with
his mood, her eyes were gay again, and they both realized that dancing
was distinctly worth while. “Where did your legs get all this
education?” she asked. “I’ve always thought of the newspaper business as
pretty stern.”

“College man, I was—Class of 1897. Yes, and you certainly make good in
skirts. That outfit is a very pleasing vista.”

It was green and voluminous with her young shoulders graceful above it
and silver slippers below. She said, “I’ll remember that—the question
is, will you?” Blue eyes shining, she threw back her head to smile at
him—and it struck Bill Jay with sudden and memorable force that he had
been as mistaken as possible to think of her as just an amusing
adolescent. Men had been shot for smaller mistakes! “Hey,” she said, “to
get that look in your eyes I’d wear hoops. Watch it, Bill, you nearly
saw me that time.” He tightened his arm round her waist and the casual
dance music had been strangely enlivened, had become something that must
be prolonged.

It was prolonged through several dances. They weren’t usually so quiet
but being quiet seemed appropriate now, and both of them were thoroughly
aware of his arm around her. After a while they stopped and went into
the house, aimlessly, and looked at each other in bright light. A long,
surprised look. Something had changed.

Bill was thinking hard, and not clearly, about this development. Then he
came to—was suddenly and sharply aware of the big drawing room with its
variegated costumes, its rustle of talk, its air of wealth and pride in
an agonized world. What had startled him was two men talking together at
one end of the room. One of them was Lynn Scovil—handsome, magnetic, a
figure for the rotogravures. Scovil was familiar enough—but the other
man! He stood there talking casually with Scovil, taller than Scovil,
rather striking in a dinner jacket, blond and erect, even military.

Bill’s mind focused. He had seen that man. Binoculars had brought that
face close to his—yesterday, toward noon—from the ski run. He had been
talking to Carl Booker.

Bill turned to Connie, a question on his lips, but he didn’t ask for it.
For Connie was crumpling before his eyes. She had been gay, pliant,
warm—and now, as he watched, she grew tense, her eyes went hard, her
cheeks turned white and then slowly carmine. “Oh, my God!” she
whispered. “Has Gail seen her?”

He followed her gaze to a striking blonde in a black dress, whom his
reporter’s memory identified as Mathilde Winkler. What did he know about
her? Not much. Only that she belonged to the arrogantly rich who were
such excellent copy for the newspaper business, that she was even more
habituated than Scovil to the rotogravure sections. No, he knew one
thing more—that from time to time her name had been linked with
Scovil’s. He understood Connie’s agitation. Connie knew. So now Bill
knew.

“Steady!” he said, taking her arm.

“How could he! How did he dare!” Her voice was painful and her shocked
eyes met his. “I feel sick. I can’t stay here. Let’s get out.” He looked
about uncertainly but she shook his arm. “I mean it. Bill. Let’s
go—now.”

That distress had to be heeded. “All right,” he said, “come on.” They
went out through the drawing room, across the terrace, down to Gail’s
car. Inside it, she hid her face against his arm for a moment, then sat
up. “Sorry. I’m all right. I mean I will be. But it will kill Gail.” She
struck a fist against the cushion. “I’m running out on her. She’ll just
have to take it.” She contrived a small laugh that touched him deeply.
“Anyway, that proves it. Champagne isn’t my drink. Let’s go somewhere
and find a beer.”

He drove away, and for the moment Connie would have to struggle with it
alone. For here was something to be figured out. He touched his chin and
the soreness assured him that he had indeed been knocked down yesterday
by a thug in the employ of Camp Ryegate. He was seeing other thugs who
were out of place in Windham, trucks stopping in darkness off the
highway, Carl Booker, the proprietor of Camp Ryegate, meeting a
racketeer in a roadside tavern. It was a set of very odd glimpses, very
odd indeed for the town of Windham, glimpses of the sinister network of
the underworld. Windham had no underworld.

Yes. And some odd, unexplained bypath leading out from it to a
millionaire’s estate—unexplained but badly needing explanation. For
this handsome man in Scovil’s drawing room had been at Camp Ryegate, in
conversation with Carl Booker. And Carl Booker met racketeers in taverns
and it was quite possible that Carl Booker helped them get away when
they were hot, by means of trucks parked off the road at midnight. The
unidentified stranger was a link between Carl Booker and Lynn Scovil.
Could he also be a link between Lynn Scovil and the underworld?

                     *      *      *      *      *

Erich Köchlin waited till Mathilde Winkler moved away from a group she
had been with, then fell into step with her and took her outside the
house. “I must know more about Scovil,” he said.

She stirred uncomfortably, the chiffon dress sibilant at her knees, and
it was clear that she was afraid of him. So much the better; he might
find that state of mind useful. “What about it?” she asked.

“I’m surprised that such a man has been allowed to know so much.”

“Use has been found for men like him step by step, beginning with the
peace movements,” she said earnestly. “He has a large following. He is
an excellent agitator. He is in contact with a great many important
people and organizations.”

“I know the type. The rich men who know how valuable peace is and can
tell others. He was your personal convert, _Fräulein_?”

“What if he was?” For the first time there was opposition in her voice.
“We do what we can. In the end it has got me—exactly nothing.”

He nodded, adding that flare of bitterness to Abigail Armstrong’s
admission on Wednesday night and to Scovil’s calling her his fiancée. He
had the story in full. “I wonder,” he went on. “The man has a monstrous
ego—he loves the limelight—it would be very dangerous if he were given
authority.”

She said urgently, “You must not be prejudiced. He is a brilliant
man—he is very valuable. He likes to posture, yes, he knows his own
worth, he is—” her voice was tired—“too readily absorbed in a pretty
figure. But you are wrong if you suspect his loyalty.”

She was pleading with him, a man she was afraid of, on behalf of a
lover, or a former lover. “Of course I suspect him,” he said, “it is my
duty to suspect you too, _Gräfin_. You see, the shocking failures over
here—they are very suggestive.”

“Must it all be our fault? Can’t you allow for the Americans—”

“Easily. They might be buying betrayal from one of us. Perhaps from you?
That is a distressing thought—so, perhaps from Scovil?”

She was disturbed and moved nearer to lay a soft hand on his arm. “He
does not know enough! I tell you he is—I know—he would not—”

“You mean that so long as there is perfume on your ear lobes he can be
relied on. I don’t doubt it. It isn’t his loyalty I suspect. I suggest
instead that his intelligence may not be trustworthy. Both of us must be
careful what we confide to a fool.”

She was standing so close to him that the perfume he had mentioned was
in his nostrils and he wondered whether she would try to use on him the
weapons that had certainly done the Company much service. She said, “He
is not a fool. Make sure not to be one yourself, Herr Köchlin,” and went
away. He watched her cross into the light, wrought and decked for the
pleasure of any eye. Unquestionably she had a cold and effective
intelligence, but he wondered if the methodical Company might not also
list her on a file card under a special heading: Seduction. Well, he had
made it likely that, through fear of him, she would be wary of Scovil
for a while. He intended to widen and deepen that distrust.

Suddenly he relaxed, exhaling a long sigh of relief. Up to now things
had gone well; yesterday and today had done something to repair his
blunders; and for the moment he was dealing the cards.

He went back to the house. Strangers spoke pleasantly to him, he watched
pretty women dancing, he heard fragments of trivial conversation. Such a
scene was incredible! An evening of pleasure without strain, men who
were under no pressure, women whose gaiety was unforced, music and
laughter and a darkness that had no menace in it—it was from a world
that was going down forever. He turned into another room and Abigail
Armstrong was coming out of it. Behind her he saw Scovil’s angry face
and her own cheeks were flying a high anger. He turned his back on
Scovil and caught up with her. The anger in her eyes made a dark
flash—and he had seen no emotion that was not becoming to her. It was
to be said of Scovil that he attached to himself the most unbelievably
pretty women.

“I advise a slower pace, Mrs. Armstrong,” he said. “We should enter the
drawing room, not explode into it.”

He had intercepted her rage at Scovil—whose cause he was willing to
guess—and she wanted nothing whatever to do with him but did walk more
slowly. Laughter and talk eddied round them in the drawing room and he
took two glasses of champagne from a waiter’s tray and held one out to
her. She accepted it, her cheeks brilliant, her eyes more
brilliant—tall and slender, a woman electrically alive. In competition
with her Mathilde Winkler’s blatancies would be worthless.

“Drink it,” he said equably. “Champagne is the right wine for any mood.”

She held the glass to her lips, sipped, looked at him, and her eyes
changed. “Good!” he said. “There was an even chance you would throw it
in the fireplace.”

“Much more than an even chance.” She began to relax, if not to smile.
“You take the long chances, don’t you, Mr. Page? . . . In borrowed
clothes.”

“Must we always make a point of my clothes? They will do to dance in.”

He took her to the terrace and an unreal quality had got into an evening
that so far had been all too real. Again he was immersed in the
unpredictable. For no one could have foretold that, on his mission,
surrounded by such hazards, on his way to a violent ending, he would be
dancing with any woman and especially with Gail Armstrong. At first she
was constrained, a tension from her angry scene with Scovil lasting on,
but darkness and music wrought on her till she was tranquil in his arms.
They did not talk, they stayed at the far end of the terrace where the
music was distant and subdued, and regret awoke in Erich Köchlin. Regret
that the vileness of the _Nachrichtendienst_ could tarnish such
loveliness—and that there could be no help for it in him, that he could
do nothing whatever about it. Regret that, having met her for a
fortunate moment on his way, he must leave loveliness behind—and this
also was fixed forever, he could do nothing about it.

The music stopped and he got more champagne. They drank it, still
unwilling to talk, and when the music began again they danced, still at
the far end of the terrace. Champagne or music or just recovery from
shock, she was dancing more eagerly. Scovil stood in the door. Köchlin
smiled at him, tightened his arm, and Scovil went away. Whether or not
she had seen him, she responded to the pressure of Köchlin’s arm. The
music had a slow, sweet melancholy.

Without thinking, he murmured, “_Verweile doch, du bist so schön_.”

Gail Armstrong said, “Your German is much better than your French. But
that is Faust’s prayer to the passing moment—‘Linger awhile, you are so
fair.’ . . . You say charming things, Mr. Page.”

“It’s a charming moment, Mrs. Armstrong.”

She walked out of his arms but put a hand under one of them and led him
off the terrace to the wide lawn. Shadows enclosed them, the music
dimmed behind them, and he wished that the moment could linger for a
while. But “The dew,” he said. “You’ll ruin your slippers.”

“They don’t matter. . . . You’re an extraordinary person. You have a
feeling for things, or else you’re dangerously skillful with women. That
was very deft first aid. I’m all right now.”

He was aware of the pressure of her fingers. They went on across the
dark lawn which, for his taste, could not be too wide. He did not know
where they were going and she seemed not to, either, for when they came
out through shrubbery to a parking place beside the garage, she
exclaimed in surprise, stopping short. Then she said, “We might as well
find my car—I turned it over to a chauffeur.” But they couldn’t find it
and she decided, “Probably Connie and Bill have gone home. Well, Lynn
has more cars than you would readily believe.” She found one, an
enormous coupé, and they got in.

Sitting beside her, he saw keys in the lock and was recalled to his job.
The job could wait!—it had nothing to do with warm darkness and distant
music and a beautiful woman. “You stumble into my most intimate
moments,” she said quietly. “I was running away from him, the other
night. I was running toward him tonight. And then, with no warning, with
the giddiest and most girlish ideas rioting in my mind, to meet that—”

“That international tart.”

“I don’t need to spell it out for you, do I? Well, it was a bad shock.
You made the promptest and most soothing entrance, Mr. Page.”

“Like the Red Cross.” He found himself deeply concerned, saying with the
greatest earnestness, “There can be no question of competition. She’s
obvious, blatant, futile. You need only—”

“You see, I was confident enough to believe just that. But—there she
was.” Her voice broke; she bent over, her hair dark against her dress,
and sobbed. He touched her arm. She sobbed again, then straightened up.
“One is not supposed to cry—especially one must not be seen crying. The
part calls for me to be proudly indifferent. Any movie would make it a
drawing-room farce, where they say the gayest things.”

“Hush!” he said. “He isn’t worth a joke, still less a sob.”

“You had certainly better say so.” She lay back in the corner, swinging
her legs up under her in the seat, and said thoughtfully, “I wonder how
it is that I can say these things to you. It isn’t sensible; it isn’t
even decent. You are the most ambiguous person—and I flirt with you, I
tell you my heartthrobs, I act as if I had known you for years and
years, as if we were old friends. You had better not be the adventurer
you seem to be.”

A good deal worse than an adventurer. The word struck through the
illusion to the tremendousness that separated them, unspoken and
unspeakable. At the end of the seat her face was a light blur in the
darkness, there was the lightness of her dress, of her uncovered knees.
And there was a blackness much deeper than the dark. He was suddenly
tired, rebellious, disgusted with the job he had to do.

“Say we get along well under the stars,” he said lightly. “Or say it was
a persuasive music on the terrace. Or—we’ve drunk two glasses of
champagne.”

“Starlight—music—champagne. They hardly seem adequate.”

There was a willful provocation in her voice, and he understood that a
strong reaction against Lynn Scovil had become an invitation to him. He
said, unsteadily, “What perfume do you wear?”

“It’s apple blossom. Why?”

“It’s a damned sight more unsettling than another one I’ve smelled
tonight.”

“Yes?” She was expectant in the darkness, and he felt himself blushing
with humiliation, wondering if it would be possible to respect himself
again. At last she said, serenely but with an overtone of scorn in her
voice, “I’m certainly not going back to the party. You can drive me
home.”

There was relief in that. But he found himself driving slowly, pointedly
aware of another night when the road had flowed toward them in the
headlights. She sat close to him, her shoulder touching his sometimes,
talking quietly. “You haven’t seen my house. I’m the widow of Windham. I
sell books and skirts and underwear to college girls.” And, “It must be
the saleswoman in me that makes those remarks about your clothes—I
apologize.” And, “Are you thinking that we drive together in the most
outrageous circumstances?”

“It was how far on Wednesday? Eighty miles?” he said. “I wish we had
that much ahead of us tonight.”

“Well,” she remarked, “there’s no reason to hurry.”

But they came to town too soon and she directed him to a white house set
back among elms. She called “Connie!” going in, switched on a light, and
said, “Lynn has probably told you that Connie is his daughter. She
quarreled with him and came to live with me.” But the girl was not there
and they went into a big room lined with bookshelves and furnished with
deep chairs.

“This is where I lead the drab life of toil Lynn wants to save me from,”
she said. “Skirts and underwear across the hall. Are my eyes red? Do I
look like a woman who has had a mortal insult?”

“I think I’m not a dependable witness on how you look.”

“Then I’d better assume there are visible damages.”

She went upstairs, leaving him alone in the bookshop badly confused with
images of dark eyes and dark hair, smooth arms, a bewildering dress,
more bewildering smile and voice. He looked round the room—and came to
himself. For here was a telephone. A telephone which neither Scovil nor
Mathilde nor any servant of Scovil’s was watching. There was some
risk—no, no risk. He picked up the telephone, softly asked for the
telegraph company, waited impatiently, and, getting it, spoke an address
and swiftly composed a message.

He hung up as soon as possible, and turned round swiftly. No one was
there, no one had heard, the thing was done! Satisfaction flamed in him.
This was the finest room in the world.

She was coming downstairs. She was humming—and when she came through
the door the finest room in the world was suddenly compelling,
overwhelming, amazing. There had been too much starlight or something
else, there was too intolerable an irony. He said, “What is it you’re
singing?” She stopped short, a warm pink coming into her cheeks.

“It was ‘Faust,’” he said, not at all clearly. “It was ‘Linger, O
moment, thou art so fair.’”

Her eyes met his. “And,” she said, no more clearly, “your sense of
propriety was much too conventional back there. Your host’s house and
his fiancée . . .”

So when he spoke again, his lips were against her hair. “I’m going away
tomorrow. I won’t see you again.” She raised her face and he kissed her.

They stood away from each other. “That’s twice,” he said with the most
labored slowness. “There had better not be a third time. If there should
be—all hell would be brought down on us.”

She nodded. She wasn’t pink now but pale. “Yes, there had better be no
third time. . . . That needn’t keep us from remembering the other two.”
She sat down, making a careful modesty of her skirt, running a
restorative hand through her hair, her dark eyes very grave. “Still, we
can believe, now, that we really are old friends. We can talk like old
friends till it’s time for you to go back.”

He smiled, “Or till Scovil comes for us. Be sure he’ll come for one of
us. For you. Or for me.”

Her eyes were darker still. “If he comes for me, it will be too late.”

                     *      *      *      *      *

In Washington, at four A.M., in a room in the United States Army
building, a telegram that had been relayed through two addresses, which
were carefully designed to suggest nothing about the army, was delivered
to a sleepy sergeant. The sergeant took it to a lieutenant in the next
room. The lieutenant opened it and read it, then telephoned to a major
and kept the phone ringing till a protesting voice answered. He read the
wire to the major, who said, “All right,” hung up, and then put through
a call to a brigadier general. He got the general after some time, and
said, “I’ve heard from Garrett. He got through. He says he’s got in
touch with something and will go to Detroit tomorrow. He’s not in
Detroit. He’s in Massachusetts.”

“Massachusetts!” The general swore heartily, piously, even desperately.
He went on swearing. The major listened with heartfelt admiration.




                              Chapter Five


It was Köchlin’s disappearance from the party that impelled Lynn Scovil
to lead from strength. When Scovil protested such recklessness, Köchlin
had said blandly, “I rather expected you to come for me—Mrs. Armstrong
asked me to take her home.” Scovil curbed his anger but early on
Saturday morning he went to Mathilde’s room and got her to agree that
they must tell Köchlin the truth—the truth so far as Mathilde knew it.
So at breakfast they listened noncommittally to his directions about
getting him to a plane for Detroit. A few minutes later, on the sunny
terrace, Scovil began the contest of wills which would make Köchlin a
good deal more amenable.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to change your plans,” he said. “Last night a
truck brought word that von Weitbrecht disappeared from Detroit on
Monday. He has not yet let anyone know where he is. You could not
possibly get in touch with him. There is nothing for you to do but stay
here till he is located.”

Köchlin’s cold rage terrified Mathilde but Scovil was easy in the
knowledge that he held higher cards. Köchlin accepted von Weitbrecht’s
disappearance trustingly enough but began to issue peremptory orders. He
made Mathilde get the Importing Company on the telephone—which was
reckless, since Scovil was to communicate with it only by way of
Springfield or Camp Ryegate. But headquarters could tell him nothing
about von Weitbrecht, was in fact ready to believe he had been captured.
Then, in a controlled but venomous passion, Köchlin set about arranging
duties for Scovil and Mathilde. They would set in motion every means
they had of getting information. They would bring him at once everything
they had that bore on von Weitbrecht. He seemed to think of them as
little more than messengers and file clerks.

“It’s unfortunate that you disrupted everything by arriving too late,”
Scovil said presently, with a pointed courtesy intended to show Köchlin
that he was not afraid and would not be subordinate. “And you can hardly
blame us because von Weitbrecht has had the wisdom to go underground.
You see, your only chance to make contact with him is through us. It
would be sensible to co-operate with us pleasantly, instead of
threatening us.”

“I merely tell you to find him for me,” Köchlin said coldly. “If you
don’t, it will not be I who makes the threats.”

Scovil nodded. “I know what is to be done. And take care not to repeat
your mistake of last night. Be so good as to stay on this estate.”

Köchlin’s eyes glinted. “Be so good as to understand that my actions
don’t come within your authority. You are not even to be curious about
them.”

Scovil negligently exposed his ace for a moment. “You are certainly free
to start for Detroit at any time. How will you find von Weitbrecht?”

He drove Mathilde away in an automobile, first telephoning to Booker.
Before they were off the grounds she was reprimanding him. “Are you mad,
Lynn? You must not risk antagonizing him. We must keep his support at
any cost. He can destroy us.” She shuddered. “I hate all Prussians! He
is as cold as ice. He has no humanity. He is—oh, he has no blood in
him, he is as deadly as a snake.”

“I’ve never seen you terrified before. And it’s absurd.”

“But—” Her white hands were flung out. “We are half-crippled, Lynn. We
are on the verge of complete failure. We must not fight one another.”

“He is certainly right in one way,” Scovil said contemptuously. “There
are a lot of fools in the organization. There have been bad mistakes.
There will certainly be worse ones if fools are continued in power.”
Then, peremptorily, “The time has come when I must know why Köchlin was
sent over. What does he want of von Weitbrecht? What is this matter of
September first?”

He did not have to argue; she accepted that necessity as part of the
emergency. “I’m not allowed to know everything. He was sent in to
inspect and ratify von Weitbrecht’s plans. For all I know, to take his
place, too.”

“Surely I’ve been told everything that bears on the peace offensive.”

“It isn’t that. . . . Our first efforts to make labor trouble were a
grotesque failure. You’ve heard Köchlin—that’s what they think of them
overseas. Von Weitbrecht has worked out plans that cannot be allowed to
fail. On September first the labor offensive will begin. It’s Labor Day.
All over the country. Everything that can be done.”

Thus simply he became an insider—from now on there would be no shaking
him off. But he must learn the whole plan. Strikes in the most valuable
places; riots, doubtless, probably formidable sabotage—and all keyed in
with his own job, the drive for peace. They meant business at last.

“That is why Tuesday was so terrible,” Mathilde added. “Only von
Weitbrecht can do the job. He is responsible for everything. Success or
failure.”

“Then,” Scovil said calmly, “you will have to make him tell us.”
Mathilde stared at him in bewilderment, and he said, “But of course! He
has been here since Tuesday night—he came on a truck. Booker has been
hiding him.” Mathilde turned white and instantly said, “You must take
him to Köchlin at once! You have been insane to keep them apart so long.
You may have ruined everything.”

“What if von Weitbrecht will not see him?” he asked quietly. He would
show her his ace but determined not to let her know its full strength.
“Von Weitbrecht may not be one of the fools but he is a dangerous
coward. The Detroit raid has reduced him to panic. He is in a state of
collapse—pure jelly. He refuses to see Köchlin—he is even more
terrified of him than you are. And I must say it would be fatal to bring
them together while von Weitbrecht is still—unstrung.” Deliberately he
played on her fear. “If Köchlin found the kingpin so helpless, he would
make mincemeat of us all. . . . And that’s the dilemma I have been in
ever since Köchlin arrived.”

Mathilde’s previous alarm had been insignificant compared with this. She
was frozen with terror and despair, her face was pinched and white, she
said nothing at all while he drove by back roads to the clearing at the
bottom of Booker’s ski tow. Booker had brought von Weitbrecht to the log
cabin there. Properly disciplined, Booker withdrew and they were alone
with a key man in conspiracy who might have been formidable once but was
only a wreck now.

Von Weitbrecht’s hands still trembled uncontrollably, his voice was
still a croak, his cheeks were sunken and the dueling scar stood out
black. At sight of Mathilde he broke into rapid German, hysterically
defending himself and describing the dangers he had barely escaped.
. . . Scovil had heard it all before, but permitted it to go on till
Mathilde could see in full the disgusting spectacle of a man whose nerve
had been broken. Mathilde repeatedly insisted that he must see
Köchlin—she commanded, she pleaded, she advised. But she only made von
Weitbrecht more agitated—he was practically sobbing—and Scovil broke
in.

“You certainly need more time to recover from the shocks you have had,”
he said. Von Weitbrecht nodded gratefully. “But unfortunately we have a
Prussian to deal with. And your personal—illness—cannot be permitted
to interfere with things. Pieces must be picked up, the organization
must be patched, there are orders to be given, the arrangements must go
forward. You will have to act through me.”

There was a scared protest in Mathilde’s face and von Weitbrecht
exploded, “But you are totally ignorant—you know nothing.”

“Exactly—you will simply have to use me as an instrument, we will have
to be a team. You will teach me while I act for you.”

Mathilde said “No!” in pure horror and von Weitbrecht was so shocked
that he recovered some authority. “It is preposterous! I can talk only
to Köchlin.”

“So you refuse to talk to him—and time is running out. Think, man! Who
can save you? You are counted on to succeed this time, a vast plan
pivots on you—and you are resting on a mountaintop while the efforts of
everyone come to nothing. You must act—and you can’t. You can act only
through me.”

He had to shout them down repeatedly. He would emerge from this as the
man who had mastered an emergency, and from now on the very highest
would have to reckon with him. But he could make no headway against von
Weitbrecht’s terror. Mathilde said, “Don’t be a reckless fool, Lynn.”
Von Weitbrecht kept saying, “Only a day or two more—I will be all
right.” Scovil steadily pointed out the fatal passage of time and
Köchlin’s cyclonic impatience. Von Weitbrecht only grew more hysterical,
till at last he was actually screaming.

“There is only to hold Köchlin off a day or two! When I am healthy—when
I can think clearly enough to meet him!” Actually, tears slid out on his
cheeks. His voice got wild. “Don’t press me too hard. If I cannot obey
my orders—anyway I can avoid betraying them!” Suddenly an automatic
pistol appeared in his hands. Mathilde gasped and there was no other
sound. But von Weitbrecht intended far otherwise than they thought. “You
can go on pressing me to violate my orders. Or you can bring Köchlin
here. I will not be alive—I will kill myself—”

“Stop crying,” Scovil said, disgusted. “Go back to your mountain view
and get hold of yourself. We’ll see you again—and try to look more like
a man.”

He was furious not to have achieved his purpose and determined to keep
forcing the pressure till he could. Mathilde followed him outside. “You
see the nerve of our superiors,” he said. “And you see why we can’t let
Köchlin see him.”

“It would be fatal.” Her voice was husky with despair. “Lynn, this is
beyond belief terrible. I see no way out. We are lost—we are
destroyed.”

“Not if a man takes charge.”

She was fighting a dozen different fears, and quite clearly he had not
convinced her. But if her persuasion and authority were added to his,
von Weitbrecht would accept him. He thought comfortably that there was a
way of convincing Mathilde.

Booker came up—he had been with some workmen across the clearing. “Take
him back to the cabin,” Scovil said, “and do your best to pump some
nerve into him.” Booker nodded but his face showed the mark of labored
thinking.

“This Erich Köchlin,” Booker said, “you still believe his story?”

Scovil said sharply, “Don’t begin that again, Carl.”

But Booker was dogged. “I tell you, I have seen him somewhere before. I
do not believe in him. He is an American.”

Scovil swore. “Is nobody going to keep his head? Must everybody go stark
crazy because a few fools have been arrested? You have been scared into
seeing ghosts.”

Booker was always sullen under reproof and his face grew brutal. “Who
will be the fool if he turns out to be an American? You have swallowed
the bait whole. Is it by chance he comes straight to my camp? Is it by
chance he comes two days after von Weitbrecht gets here? I tell you, he
is from the FBI.”

“He would give his soul to know where von Weitbrecht is. It was not even
chance that brought him to the camp—it was a suggestion by Mrs.
Armstrong. As a matter of fact, it was luck—our luck—our very good
luck.”

“There is nothing suspicious about him, Carl,” Mathilde said. “We had
received the most detailed instructions long before he came. When he got
here, he knew every detail. Headquarters tested him and he detected the
test at once.”

“Maybe.” The cruelty in his eyes got plainer. “And still, if he is all
right, still he comes to do—what? To spy on us. Who spies on us? For
what reason? Are we not trusted to do our business as we are ordered to?
Who would be set to report on us? Suppose he belongs to the Gestapo?”

There was a release of tension—Mathilde laughed spontaneously, even
with enjoyment. But her laughter made Booker fierce. “If there is a
chance I am right, can we take the chance? All right, he is an
American—so we will be in jail tomorrow, next day, next week. All
right, he is of the Gestapo—so he will report we have bungled and they
will cast us off—maybe abandon us to the Americans. . . . Let me get
rid of him! He can go for a ride with me tonight. Or I will take him for
a friendly stroll in the woods. There is no other way to be safe.”

You had to handle inferior men the way Köchlin did—brutally. “We will
do the thinking and you will do as we tell you,” Scovil said. He went on
abusing him while Booker’s face got more violent and rebellious—but in
the end Booker submitted. . . . Scovil drove away with Mathilde, his
mind racing. Cowards and fools on the one hand, the implacable obstacle
of Köchlin on the other—he would have to force the issue. But
unquestionably the situation was shaping to his advantage.

“It is permitted to approach the Embassy only through New York,”
Mathilde said. “Of course, I must let New York know at once about von
Weitbrecht.”

“No,” he said. “You must let no one know. You must leave him to me.”

He stopped the car and slid an arm round her shoulders. She responded to
the caress instantly and warmly. That was the way to convince Mathilde.
And the expression of doubt, even of inattention, in her eyes would not
last long.

                     *      *      *      *      *

“We call them broomstick skirts,” Connie stubbornly repeated. “They are
the exact opposite of pants—yards and yards billowing like the
Floradora girls.” She held out yards and yards in each hand. “I put it
on so that you can just know I wear it.”

“Coming back to the handsome stranger,” Bill Jay insisted.

“If you hadn’t forced your unwelcome attentions on me all evening, I
might have got to dance with him. Under the spell of my loveliness he
would have confessed everything.” She didn’t like the new phase of Bill
Jay—the tireless newspaperman going into everything, thinking fast and
furiously, and inventing crazy ideas. The whole evening had been a bad
taste in the mind and she didn’t want to remember any part of it. Till
at last she said, “If you want to know, you don’t cross-examine me or
the post mistress—you ask Gail.”

That was supposed to stop him but apparently the tireless newspaperman
was pure gall and presently they were in the bookshop, where Gail was
doing accounts—or pretending to in a pinkly abstracted daze—and Bill
was forthrightly asking her what she knew about Mr. John Page. Connie
noted with much interest, and at a guess Bill didn’t see, that Gail was
on her guard at once. With a haughty lack of interest, Gail didn’t know
much about him; he was a friend of Lynn’s; she had danced with him and
he had brought her home. (Oh? Oh! Interesting, my dear Watson!) Bill
went on asking questions—who was he? Where was he from? What was his
business?—and paid no attention to the signs of Gail’s rising
indignation. In fact he presently had her showing signs of apprehension
instead, and he hit the jack pot when he remarked that he’d seen Mr.
Page at Camp Ryegate, which he was coming to think of as a hangout of
low characters.

If Bill didn’t know, Connie certainly knew, that Gail’s prompt blush and
confused eyes meant something very personal indeed. But she wasn’t
prepared for any such revelation as followed, when, after being first
haughty and then defiant, Gail said, “Well, I took him to Camp Ryegate.”
Bill said, “Oh?” with extreme politeness, though Connie thought of a
number of other things to say. Finally Gail said, looking as if she had
been caught in public sin, “I picked him up.”

That certainly had impact, and Gail was an exceedingly embarrassed young
woman, and her laughter was far from convincing. “He went West this
morning,” she said, “so you might as well know. Wednesday night at
Manchester there was another one of those quarrels that Lynn and I
substitute for a love affair. I left the dance and came home. On the
way, I picked up John Page.” Slowly and stubbornly, “Yes, I picked him
up. I didn’t know he knew Lynn. But if he was at Camp Ryegate, it was
because I took him there. It sounds crazy? All right, it was crazy.”

Bill had no sympathy to spare for embarrassment. “I won’t try to run
your morals. But if this goes on, someday you’ll make a pick-up in the
criminal classes.”

Connie said hotly, “Anybody Gail picks up is practically in holy orders.
She doesn’t spend her time necking the way we do, I wish to God.”

But she knew by the speed with which Bill got out of there that he had
suddenly had an idea, probably crackbrained but certainly hot. Five
minutes later he telephoned her. “Get a hot dog or a piece of steak to
fry and we’ll go picnicking tonight. I’m off to Springfield for the
afternoon.” So she had the extraordinary behavior of Gail to deal with,
who was vexed and alarmed and extremely inquisitive. She wasn’t going to
say anything—“You ask Bill. It’s his guessing game. I don’t try to
understand the newspaper business, I’m fully occupied trying to marry
into it.” And it stood out that Bill’s reference to the criminal classes
kept bothering Gail, and she only made Gail mad when she said, “This is
Bill’s story—I don’t even take notes.” But if she ever made it her
story, she could tell right now that, Wednesday night or last
night—gosh, maybe both!—there had been more between Gail and the
handsome stranger than Gail was telling anyone.

She tried to turn the questions away by talking about her father but
didn’t have enough courage to mention Mathilde Winkler. She only made
Gail angrier and finally Gail put an end to the bickering by going away.
Connie watched her drive off in the coupé, and hoped she was going to
Pinnacle Manor, and hoped she would come back with a blond scalp sewed
to her leggings, but knew she wouldn’t . . . Oh, a happy afternoon for
everyone. And it turned muggy and breathless before Bill got back, and
Connie had worked up a sizable grouch about everything, including Bill.

They picked up buns, hamburger, a ghastly cake, and some cans of beer
and, sure enough, they were going to have a picnic—off in the hills.
About all that she could say in favor of it was that the hills were
cooler than town. Bill had a boy scout’s regard for the rules and poured
dirt over the fire as soon as they had finished eating, so that twilight
and the mosquitoes arrived together. She curled her bare legs under the
skirt. Slacks would have been a lot better and, as feminine allure, the
skirt was wasted. The big oaf sat twenty-five feet away from her and
made a remark about once in fifteen minutes, usually in monosyllable and
always with no reference whatever to her. Well, dear, some people like
to look at the stars. She looked at the stars. She also looked at the
romantic darkness of the hills. Who said romantic? Hour by hour a picnic
with the tireless newspaperman got duller.

She was filling a paper cup with beer when a sudden revulsion hit her
and she poured the whole can out on the ground. “The beer period of this
romance is over,” she announced. “From now on you undermine my virtue
with raspberry pop or not at all.” She threw the can into the underbrush
and wanted to throw Bill after it. “It would be Gail’s reputation you
get concerned about! Never a thought about my good name blasted by late
hours in the woods with only mosquitoes looking on.”

“Speaking of your father,” he said suddenly, “is it your idea he would
have any dealings with Public Enemy, well, say Number Ten or maybe
Number Five?”

Surprised, Connie rolled over on her stomach in the dark, propping her
chin in her hands. “Your story is he’d do anything for a headline but
nobody should take him seriously. My story—” she thought for a
moment—“my story is he ought to be taken with the greatest seriousness.
He wants to be God—he really does, Bill. But he’d compromise on being
Commissar or _Gauleiter_ or anything that sounded big.”

When he lit a cigarette she saw that his face was curiously intent.
“This John Page,” he said irrelevantly. “I said movie actor, but does it
strike you that German war poster would come even closer? Nordic and
military. Remember the headlines about the brave Nazi flyer escaping
from Canada? Meet Mr. John Page.”

At last the evening was getting to be fun! She sat up, shrieking with
laughter. “Boy! When you go back to work for the _Globe_, you take your
plot book with you. Alexander Dumas Jay, pinch-hitting for the guy who
draws Superman. Now I won’t worry about your keeping me in the style I’m
accustomed to. When the phone rings, that’s Hollywood calling. And can
Hollywood pick them!”

“All right,” he said wearily. “I went to Springfield. I read all the
papers. I found out some things. So I got the _Globe_ office on the
phone and learned some more. Then I phoned some upcountry
correspondents. Hollywood wrote the script, all right, but there it is.”

“No. Hollywood would have married him to Gail on the way south.”

“Oberleutnant Friedrich Römer. He unloaded off a train at Glen Nevis,
Ontario, Monday night. Among places he could have got to on Tuesday is
Cornwall, Ontario, and by the quaintest coincidence there is a local
rumor that the border patrol failed to hit someone they shot at Tuesday
night. So maybe it was the guy they missed who burglarized a place north
of Malone, New York, that same night. Also our correspondent says the
New York state cops were looking for a stolen car all day Wednesday and
it crossed the Champlain Bridge that evening. Telephone call to Rutland
by our man Jay establishes the fact that the aforesaid car was found
abandoned two miles north of Manchester, Vermont. That night Mrs.
Armstrong made her Camp Ryegate pick-up at Manchester.”

She hugged her knees in ecstasy. “So Gail’s hero was the dastard who
stole the car, who was the thug who did a burglary at—honestly, is
there a town called Malone?—so the script says he must be the man who
didn’t get hit, so clearly he’s the one who crossed from Cornwall, and
therefore he surely is the one who got off the train, and it works out
that Gail gets pink when you talk about aviation! This year’s Oscar is
yours and no competition. But, talented as you may be, and our hats are
off to you, you’re nothing at all compared to Mr. Page. What a man all
this makes him!”

“Who is it that isn’t taking what seriously enough?” he asked.

He certainly was. He kept asking questions. If Page was a Nazi, who knew
he was? Why had he headed toward Windham? Why had he wanted to go to
Camp Ryegate? And the more Bill built up his fairy story, the more
earnestly he believed it.

“You certainly grow a big crop from one lone fact. Gail made a
pick-up—that’s our fact. But it’s a fact in morals, not war. Look,
stupid, if the lamb is a Nazi, he’s wanted. Just stroll up to Frank
Murray and tell him.”

Frank Murray was chief of Windham’s four policemen.

Bill said, “When I think hard, I decide that anybody interested in a
Nazi would buy Frank Murray.”

“Close-up: the corrupt constabulary. Well, telephone the FBI.”

“I think I’ll do just that, Toots. I mean, Miss Scovil.”

“Just call me darling. And tramp, tramp! Here come the marines.”

“Who do the marines find involved?” he said, with intense exasperation.
“Mrs. Abigail Heath Armstrong for one. And you, darling Constance
darling.”

Connie got up, standing on one foot to scratch a shin. “I wonder why
DeMille insisted on mosquitoes. I see, Bill, I get it now. The Camp
Ryegate Mystery hinges on honest jealousy. Well, I was boasting—Carl
Booker has never made a single pass at me. You’ve got the field all to
yourself—no competition, no hurry, and all summer long to win my heart.
Take it up with Edgar Hoover by letter.”

There was a very promising moment for Bill had been laughed at too much,
and he suddenly grabbed her shoulders. “Get it into that yellow head,”
he said harshly, “that there are unpleasant persons and they don’t send
cards before daring to come into the life of the millionaire’s little
girl. I showed you a thug getting into a truck—have I got to throw you
under the wheels? Did I sneak upstate and leave a stolen car at
Manchester to hand you a laugh at my droll notions? Did Hollywood plant
this guy at a ski tow? Did I convey him to Pinnacle Manor for fun?”

He still had her shoulders and her face was close to his, attractively
close she would have said. But Bill just dropped her. “Damn!” she said,
“you write swell scenes but you certainly don’t act them out.” She
picked up the haversack. “Let’s go home and fool the mosquitoes. After
all this creative activity, you must be pretty tired.”

He was looking off across the hills. In the faint light of a late moon
you could see Taylor Mountain. “I could have been wrong,” he said
regretfully. “Last night, driving back, I thought I saw a light in that
cabin on top of the mountain. I’ve been watching all this evening and
there hasn’t been one.”

“You don’t leave your women a single illusion, do you? I thought maybe
you thought it was nice to be with me. What would the light in the cabin
be for? If DeMille wants this guy picked up by an airplane, there’s a
beacon on Greylock.”

                     *      *      *      *      *

Far off in time and space there had once been the orderly, habitual
existence of a man named James Garrett, a metallurgist, a technician in
the production of alloys. James Garrett had an office in Toledo, a shack
and a gas boat on Georgian Bay; he saw his friends at clubs, played
games keenly, went dancing with pretty girls. In August, 1941, in the
Berkshire Hills, the life of James Garrett was inconceivable.

More than a year ago James Garrett had gone to Washington, put his
training at the service of the Government, and been commissioned a
captain in the Ordnance Corps. But he had worked for Ordnance only a few
months. His two degrees from German technical institutes and his six
years in Germany had found a wider usefulness. G2 had begun to consult
him about German metallurgical processes, and had gone on to find other
uses for him, and for six months he had worked for G2 exclusively.

When the British took Erich Köchlin from the Bermuda Clipper, they had
notified G2, and G2 had seen a faint but stimulating chance to fill some
vital gaps in its knowledge—and Garrett had been projected into a
service for which he had no training and was not ready to believe he had
a gift. It had taken him four frantic days in Washington to master the
information assembled for him; it was to have taken him only two days in
Halifax to collate with it what the Canadians had learned from their
captured spy. But it had taken him five days. So the delicately poised
timetable was three days out of kilter when, dressed in a flyer’s
uniform, he had been put on the train, with arrangements made for the
newspapers to play up his escape, the moment it should be sure he had
been able to escape plausibly.

But, he thought, alone in his bedroom at Scovil’s house, but, by God!,
he had not won through water and gunfire and pursuit in order to go
wrong because his schedule and G2’s had gone wrong. His job had been
desperate and all but hopeless to begin with—it was only a little more
so now that something, which he would find out about sometime if he
lived, had precipitated that Detroit raid earlier than had been planned.
It was still up to him to get von Weitbrecht. If the disappearance of
the kingpin was awkward for James Garrett, remember it was awkward also
for G2 and for others who had done their best to incriminate him—the
secret service, the FBI. And the chapter of accidents that had brought
Captain Garrett of Ordnance out hundreds of miles from his assignment,
late, baffled, impotent, and more than a little absurd—that chapter of
accidents had also put him in the best position of all to close in on
the lost kingpin. He could get to von Weitbrecht. If he could ride the
whirlwind, walk his tightrope above the gorge, and stay alive. The job
was more important now than ever before.

Meanwhile he had learned much that would astonish and delight G2 about
the Importing Company, Mathilde, the truck line, and the peace
offensive. He had a phenomenal memory but needed to see things in order
to memorize them. So he had spent the afternoon writing notes and
photographing them on his mind. Now he tore them up, burned them in the
fireplace, and ground the charred bits to powder with his heel. He could
reproduce them entire when he got through—if he got through! He grinned
at the telephone. Ten minutes of his conversation would make glad many
hearts in Washington. Too bad that it was altogether impossible.

But all this, however valuable, was a side issue. He would pick up what
he could but it had nothing to do with his job. He had to make contact
with von Weitbrecht.

He resumed the reflexes of a German officer and went downstairs.
Directing the house man to bring him a highball on the terrace, he was
willing to admire the impersonation. The cold, ruthless, inhumanly
competent Erich Köchlin was excellent theater. He was wondering what
business in the town of Windham he could invent when Scovil, who had
been away all afternoon, joined him. Scovil had a most distinguished
appearance and, if Garrett could trust his knowledge of conspirators,
Scovil was getting to be more of a menace to Köchlin than to Garrett.

“You tried to telephone to Mrs. Armstrong this afternoon?” Scovil said.

He nodded. “Unfortunately, she wasn’t home.”

“It’s best for you to be absolutely inconspicuous. For our sake as well
as yours. Naturally, I don’t undertake to tell you what you should do—”

“Naturally,” Garrett said, getting to his feet. All along his instinct
had been to make a show of dominating Scovil. “I will respect your
position as a fiancé. But it will be useful to remember that I give the
orders.”

That was the kind of arrogant slap Scovil expected, and Garrett saw his
eyes harden with the affront and with a desire to retaliate. Scovil
said, “Remember, I know this town and you don’t. You are a stranger
here—and conspicuous. You can still be identified as an escaped
prisoner. Or even as a thief.”

“Also,” Garrett said, with the same aloof contempt, “direct your
servants not to watch me or my phone calls. I might begin to wonder if
you were putting obstacles in my way.” Mathilde Winkler came out on the
terrace. She was fresh from hot water and the cosmetic table, she was
exotically dressed, and she had better control of herself, though her
eyes were not altogether free of anxiety. “I was telling our host,”
Garrett said, “that I’m borrowing a car for an hour or so. I should
enjoy your company, _Gräfin_. But perhaps the two of you had better use
the time discussing whether you are employing every means of reaching
von Weitbrecht.”

He let his shoulders swagger a little, crossing the terrace. This was
purely disciplinary. There was no reason why he should leave, and Scovil
was quite right to point out the risk, but it was essential to assert
his authority . . . Before he got to Windham, he saw a car in the
rear-mirror which seemed to be following him. He experimented and, yes,
it was following him. So besides having his phone calls listened to,
Scovil was having him shadowed.

He enjoyed spending the Importing Company’s money for shoes and shirts
and slacks, handkerchiefs and underwear and neckties. And through a
store window he got a fortunate glimpse of the flat back of a skull and
close-clipped hair at a soda fountain across the street. It was Carl
Booker—so Scovil had telephoned him to do the shadowing . . . Garrett
whistled with quiet satisfaction. He put his packages in Scovil’s car
and played with the idea of going into the soda fountain and buying
Booker a drink. It would make good remembering when he visited Booker in
jail.

“You missed your plane, Mr. Page?”

It was a well-remembered voice but, when he turned, he could not like
the expression on Gail Armstrong’s face. Bareheaded, short-sleeved, in a
white dress, she stood in the late-afternoon shadow that filled the
sidewalk, backlighted by the brilliant sunlight slanting across the
street. Her eyes were an accusation.

“Whenever we meet there has been some change of plans I could not
possibly foresee. I telephoned to tell you I couldn’t keep my promise to
go away, but you weren’t home.”

Her white dress had big palm trees printed on it in green. And repentant
second thoughts had assailed her since last evening—or something
unguessed had happened. “I hardly took it as a promise—but I relied on
it,” she said. “There’s no way of leaving Windham by plane, Mr. Page. So
I wish you would take a train. Or a bus. Or . . . someone’s car.”

“It isn’t stolen—it’s borrowed from your fiancé,” he said lightly. He
nodded at the packages on the seat. “And these are shoes and shirts—my
own at last. If I’m wearing my own clothes, perhaps you’ll have dinner
with me?”

That was an outrageous, very likely dangerous, neglect of duty. But, he
argued swiftly, had not Scovil reminded him that he must be
inconspicuous, and did that not require him to act normally, and what
was more normal than asking a woman to dinner? But she said, “Thanks,
no. I wouldn’t enjoy it. I’d be anxious lest the police break in on us.”
So something had happened—and she turned away and the white dress moved
down the sidewalk. He watched her easy grace, remembering dance music,
and she turned back again. A moment before, her face had been
disdainful; now it was grave and honest.

“I’m lying,” she said. “You’ve been kind to me. I’m not likely to forget
how glad I was to have you make love to me last night.” She evoked the
memory of her lips eagerly answering his. Her dark eyes grew misty.
“I’ve never been afraid of you till now—now I am afraid. When I
remember kissing you it’s impossible that there should be this mystery
about you. All this—ugliness—suspiciousness—I don’t know what. I have
hard enough problems, Mr. Page—I’m confused enough. Please go away from
Windham.”

He also had more than enough problems and could not possibly admit that
she had become another one. And he could not afford to acknowledge the
shame she roused in him. But also he could not help saying, “I will have
to go away. At any moment. I don’t know when. But before I go, I’m
coming to see you, Gail.”

“I can’t stop you. I don’t even want to. But you know how to be kind,
and if you want to go on being kind to me, you won’t come, John.”

She turned away again, without saying good-by. What stung him, as he
watched that white dress move down the perspective of blue shadow, was
the knowledge that she had called him “John” in good faith and that the
name was false . . . A car that was certainly Booker’s followed him to
within a mile or so of Pinnacle Manor, then turned off the road. Scovil
would now learn that he had been talking to Gail Armstrong. So much the
better. It was revolting to use her in the dreadful game. But she was
another leverage on Scovil and every leverage was valuable.

The three of them dined tranquilly, Scovil content to let the situation
rest for the time, Mathilde apparently glad of an hour free from strain.
He must constantly remember that these people had the minds of
conspirators. The game they played was deadly, their daily lives were
conducted in the shadow of immediate catastrophe—but also they enjoyed
superfluous and unnecessary secrecy, their habits were set in little
deceptions, in a sacred ritual of mystification.

Scovil drove off after dinner, probably to prod the truck line into more
furious activity about von Weitbrecht. Garrett wanted to explore further
in the information at Mathilde’s command, but she had only small talk
for a few minutes and then went to her room. He spent a couple of hours
speculating about what he had learned, turning over odd items in his
mind, fitting them together and making guesses about them. G2 would know
much about the Importing Company but probably did not suspect Mathilde’s
connection with it, and certainly knew nothing about Scovil that would
incriminate him. Especially the peace offensive. All that would be pure
gold when he could get it to Washington . . . Always provided that he
lived to report.

Mathilde joined him in the library for the keyed broadcast from Berlin.
He had to be totally alert, for the truth was that he had only the
slightest knowledge of the codes. The scene was suddenly vivid—the
luxurious room, the fake German, the real one, and the calm,
unbelievable acceptance of all this while the voice went on conveying
news, propaganda, and the most realistic instructions to the most
desperately dangerous people in America. How much more of this could
they make in Washington, when they played back the record they were
making of it? . . . Mathilde went away when the broadcast ended and, as
a test, Garrett went out to the garage. A chauffeur told him politely
that Mr. Scovil’s instructions were not to let any cars be used tonight.
So that was established. Certainly he must force the issue tomorrow and
bring Scovil to heel.

It was very late when he found that several of the papers which Mathilde
had brought to him from New York had been taken. That must have happened
while he was at Windham. It made no difference, since they were all
photographed on his memory and were quite useless, besides, till he
should see von Weitbrecht. But they had been taken and he must know why.
The time to force the issue was right now.

Scovil or Mathilde? He considered, then went to Mathilde’s room, in the
other wing of the big house. He opened the door, closed it noiselessly,
switched on the light and stood amused, for Mathilde was not here and he
had no trouble guessing where she was.

Methodically he went through the drawers of the writing table and the
various chests, through the closet, through her expensive luggage. The
papers were not there—only a ridiculous quantity of clothes, the
trappings and accessories and unguents and perfumes of a rich woman—and
in one bag, a small automatic pistol. He put it in his pocket—then
restored it to the bag. Unquestionably his need of one was urgent and
might become desperate at any moment. The unstable structure of
deception, bluff, and arrogance which rested on the small point of his
ability to master circumstance as it arose—the whole
impersonation—might be destroyed by anyone’s chance word, any small
development from outside, any infinitesimal false step of his, or any
sudden perception of his associates. If that happened, associates would
instantly be enemies whose survival would depend on killing him. His
sole duty would be to save himself with what he had learned, and he
would have to shoot his way out—or as far as he could get. But he could
not take Mathilde’s pistol.

He was not startled when he heard the doorknob turn. Mathilde gasped and
closed the door behind her, her face turning an angry red. Garrett
smiled, for in any movie the blonde who would play Mathilde’s part would
be wearing just this negligee, just this white sheath that clung to
thighs and breast. The costuming was exact. . . . She crossed to a
blue-and-gilt chaise longue, sat down, stared at him with concentrated
contempt, and said, “Has it come to searching my room, Herr Köchlin?”

He became Herr Köchlin. “I counted on your being away longer, _Gräfin_.
So you are not yet able to erase the image of the fiancée? Accept my
sympathy.”

She whispered, “Good God! Is no Prussian ever a gentleman?” So he
crossed at once and stood above her. “There is no time for courtesies.
Moreover, _Gräfin_, things have gone far enough. Some of the von
Weitbrecht papers were taken from my room this afternoon—you will give
them back to me. Servants listen to my telephone calls and deny me the
use of automobiles—that will end now, at once. Booker followed me to
town—if he or anyone else is permitted to spy on me again, I will break
you, all three of you, Booker and Scovil and you, like a burned match.”

He let his fingers make the gesture . . . And terror had come back to
her violet eyes—she was desperately afraid of Erich Köchlin. “I know
nothing about the telephone or the automobiles,” she said. “That must be
Lynn. I did not know about Booker—I don’t think Lynn told him to follow
you.”

“Booker is not a man who has ideas of his own. And my papers,
_Fräulein_?”

She nodded. “I took them. Lynn told me to.”

He maintained the Prussian touch. “I should send you back to his room to
get them. Don’t bother—I will get them in the morning. And from now on,
both of you will understand that I will permit no interference
whatever.”

“Why are you two fighting each other?” Hostility went out of her. “We
must not. I am frightened, Erich.” He sardonically noted the impact of
another alias. “The odds have become ghastly. There is no hope we can
do—anything at all of what we were to do. At best a month or so,
perhaps only a week or so, perhaps at any moment. At this moment they
may be closing in on us.”

“You need a dime’s worth of common courage, _Fräulein_.” Before the
sneer was finished, he determined to take a different tack. He let the
rasp go out of his voice. “You are right—it is a hard job for a woman.”
Warmly, “You walk in darkness, and every step is a step toward the
abyss. You are young and lovely—no one can blame you for remembering
that. It is sad that youth and loveliness must perish if the need comes.
You can only remember whose need, _Fräulein_, and what cause you serve.”

She lay back in the blue cushions and put her hands over her eyes. A
mule slid off one foot and her shoulders quivered. She looked desolate
when she sat up.

“You are right in saying there are enough perils without adding to
them,” he said. He held her gaze. “Our most serious danger, right now,
is not from outside. You must realize that it is Lynn Scovil.”

She still met his gaze. “I’m beginning to be afraid you’re right. He is
like a drunken man. There is some need to make himself great.”

“I’m glad that your emotions haven’t blunted your judgment.” Or rather,
that jealousy and resentment were working for him. “He must be
controlled at once or he will sink us. What is in his mind?”

She shrugged. “Some mad idea that he must be picked to take von
Weitbrecht’s place.”

Herr Köchlin sneered. “No wonder I am an awkwardness to him. A public
orator can direct an organization? I will have to cure him.” He turned
peremptory. “Let me know instantly every step he takes—everything he
says and does.”

With the familiar anxiety in her eyes there began to mingle indecision
and a kind of shrewd speculation. She was concealing a good deal from
him, doubtless, but she had begun to yield. “I don’t want to spy on him,
Herr Köchlin,” she said, and he answered, “If your life is indifferent
to you, I still order you to do your job.” She nodded slowly, then
relaxed in the blue cushions again and another quiver passed across her
body. She said, very calmly, “You are formidable enough in yourself,
Herr Köchlin. You are—extremely adequate. You will handle Lynn with no
difficulty, I’m quite sure.”

That was more than an admission; it was nine tenths of a surrender. The
highly competent mind of the Countess Mathilde had now decided that
Erich Köchlin was master of the situation. He would have no further
difficulty with her. She crossed her knees, and if not design then
appropriate accident let the affectionate negligee slip away from the
greater part of a white thigh. He wondered if all Mathilde’s loyalties
were bound together.

He smiled. “I am not a rival, _Fräulein_.” Nevertheless she did not
restore the negligee’s decorum but smiled and said softly, “Still, if he
should enter now, we would appear—ambiguous.” Her eyes were calculating
and shrewd again, then she stood up. Stood up so close to him that the
heavy perfume he had noticed at the dance was in his nostrils again.
“What is it you want?” she asked.

“What I’ve said—you must tell me at once everything he does, every
notion he develops.” He thought swiftly. “Yes, and full details of
everything he has ever done for us—what part he played—whom he has
worked with—what is laid out for him to do. Get everything. What you
cannot get, write out for me.”

Incredulously, “On paper?”

“It will not remain on paper very long.”

“You want to be in a position to destroy him,” she said slowly.

“I am already.” He sought for her eyes again and said, “You have already
decided that I am master here. No doubt Scovil can be controlled
tactfully. If not . . .”

Her shoulders moved. “Yes, you wouldn’t hesitate a moment. You would
treat me the same way.”

There was acceptance and submission in the violet eyes—and
admiration. . . . But not, he decided, back in his own room, not yet
frankness. Quite clearly she was concealing something. It might be
something of the greatest importance. And also—such were the
absurdities of the job—it might be something of no importance at all.
Well, he was confident that she would not conceal it much longer . . .
The day had come out far better than he had been entitled to hope. He
had turned frustration into the promise of success; he had secured the
most valuable pressures and weapons. He was doing fine.




                              Chapter Six


Time was when Sunday at the bookshop had been fun—pajamas and New York
papers and feminine chatter till noon, and a pleasant idleness all day.
But not today. Connie did her best but Gail seemed to have no
conversation and no ears. It looked like a brown study or a deep-blue
grouch. Was it long thoughts about Mr. Lynn Scovil, the fiancé who kept
on not making good, or longer ones about Mr. John Page, the mysterious
but distinctly prepossessing pick-up? Well, neither one of them seemed
likely to break in on it in person—and where was Mr. William Jay, our
New York correspondent, whose custom was to spend his idle hours here?
Mr. Jay was absent. Our Miss Scovil had to cultivate the pleasures of
solitude.

At midafternoon Connie got out from stock a little
violet-and-white-checked-gingham suit that had caught her eye when it
arrived, and tried it on. Bull’s-eye! If you could imagine anyone’s
having Constance Scovil in mind when designing a dress, this proved to
be the dress. It was demure—demure with a really wicked gleam in the
eye. Posed at a mirror, she candidly admitted that the vista had a
certain charm. You could point out emaciation and angularity, yes, but
the face was not bad and there were curved areas which the little suit
took due thought of. Encouraged, she did her hair carefully, put on
two-thread stockings and high heels, and in fact gave herself the works.
She sought out Gail, who was pretending to do accounts.

“This cost us eight dollars,” Connie said. “Deduct eight dollars from my
honorarium. Does investment in skirts really have an effect on the male
heart?”

Gail looked up long enough to say, “If you wear it without a blouse,
that way, don’t walk past the pool hall.”

Connie made out a charge slip and deposited it in the cash register. It
was thus that she happened to pick up the revolver she had seen there
every day for months—for some reason she found it amusing today. She
could tell that it was loaded because she could see the tips of bullets,
and that was her total knowledge of firearms. She aimed it at the bust
of Shakespeare. “When the night marauder comes aprowling do you know
what to do? If we had to defend our honor, could we?”

Gail looked up, her eyes far away. “What? That’s a pistol—it belonged
to my husband. You’re supposed to shoot it.”

Connie stared at her, said, “I see,” laid it down, and went out to the
side porch to marvel at the feminine heart. And now the idea was for
Bill Jay to come striding up and get all enmeshed in the demureness of
the gingham suit. But he didn’t come for more than two hours, by which
time Connie had worked up a grouch of her own, and he didn’t see the
demureness at all, for he had a grouch that made hers seem like a
passing whim . . . They were going for a drive, it turned out, but his
conversation consisted of some grunts sparingly salted with
monosyllables. Connie chatted girlishly, tried companionable silence,
produced some deep thoughts. Score: home team, zero. So she got mad
again.

“I’d get farther with a bus driver. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t
use my mad money and leave you to your thoughts?”

Bill said, “Lay off. . . . I phoned the Boston FBI this morning and they
had a man in Worcester for the day—heard the Shadow was there, maybe.
I’ve been to Worcester. He said he had work to do and had I thought of
writing radio continuity?”

“He meant Hollywood, and I got there before he did. So that’s settled.”
And thank God!

Bill drove off the valley road, down a lane that ended by the creek. He
got out and Connie followed, and he stood looking at the water. It was
pleasant here, cool, no sound of cars, blue and gray shadows, the sweet
murmur of the stream. Poor Bill! His shoulders were dejected; his drama
had leaked out at the seams.

Connie was touched. “I’m sorry he wouldn’t play ball. Tell me about it.”

They sat on a rustic bench and Bill looked angry, sheepish and
obstinate. “Very superior young man—Harvard man, doubtless. He said a
thug, even a thug with a record, had a legal right to buy a beer. He
said if there was one at Camp Ryegate, maybe he just liked to fish. As
for midnight at the crossroads, if in fact I was sober, hadn’t I ever
heard about changing a tire? Did I know that truck lines employed
inspectors, who stopped trucks to check up on them? And the U.S.
Government kept pretty busy these days, though always glad to talk to
the press.”

“What did he say about your escaped aviator inspiration?”

Bill looked at her sullenly. “I didn’t mention it.”

Incredulously, “What! But that’s your banner head—the rest is just
filler. Why leave out the leading man? Why didn’t you tell him?”

He threw her a queer, half-desperate glance, and got up and walked down
to the creek. He picked up a handful of stones and started skipping
them, one by one. Connie watch him in bewilderment; the last one skipped
eight times and maybe that was a triumph, but just why? But, when he
turned back toward the bench, for no reason she felt an odd kind of
haste in her pulse.

It _was_ desperation in his eyes. He stood opposite her, positively
glaring. “That’s a damned pretty dress,” he said accusingly.

Still bewildered, she stood up and spread out the skirt. “Your orders.
You said pants were out, so pants are out. A wistful hope went with this
suit.”

He was scowling at her. “You’re a damned pretty girl,” he growled. Then
he snorted. “Pretty! My God, you’re beautiful.”

She didn’t know what was happening but exactly at this moment the haste
in her pulse became turbulence. “Does that make you see spots?” she
asked. Then, “Trying to outguess me with flattery, are you?” Then,
getting better control, “Someday you’ll call me beautiful in front of a
third party and you’ll find yourself trapped into a shotgun marriage.”

He was beating one palm with the other fist. “Shut up!” he said
furiously. “Have you always got to be making wisecracks?”

Not a bit of this made sense, and there was a roaring in her ears, and
she needed a lot more self-control. “Look here!” she said. Her breath
lasted just two words. She took a deeper breath. “Are you trying to see
if you can make me bawl?”

His voice was agonized. “I’m crazy about you!”

How many times had Constance Scovil, Martha Case College ’43, mooning by
herself, tried to imagine him saying just that? With no warning, spoken
as if he hated her like the devil, here it was. It could be a
hallucination. Her own voice sounded frightened: “I thought I heard you
say that!” He said, “I’m crazy about you—you’re wonderful—I’m always
thinking about you.” The trees by the water were all confused and Bill
was just a blurred outline, and she said, with a gasp, “Why don’t you do
something about it?” And Bill looked helpless and said, “Do something?”

Power of motion was gone from her legs—but not altogether. She said,
“Like this,” and contrived to take a couple of steps. And those were his
arms round her and Bill Jay was kissing her at last. She couldn’t
believe it yet and then the great wave broke over her and it was true.
She pressed against him and there was nobody else in the world and no
place but this little circle of trees. After an æon or two he started to
drop his arms, maybe to look at her, but she whispered, “No, you don’t,”
and held him tighter. He whispered, “Connie, there are tears on your
cheek,” and she said, “You know what to do about them.” He said
desperately, “You really mean this—you really like me?” She could only
say “Darling!” and really sob.

They sat on a bench and her head was on his shoulder and he had both
hands and kept saying idiotic things. He actually thought that she had
just now made up her mind—she had to keep telling him that he hadn’t
had a chance from the beginning. He said, “It won’t turn out to be just
a summer crush—you’ll really marry me?” She said, “In this dress!” and
the best of all was laughing together. And talking in whispers, even
though there was nobody else alive. “I kept on throwing myself at you
and that was always me sprawling on the ground where you let me
bump—you’ve lost a lot of time you didn’t need to lose.” And Bill
turning her face up, as if she hadn’t had the same idea, and whispering,
“Lost time can be made up.”

Later on, blue dusk had made the trees indistinct and the brook
murmurous and a great calm had settled on them. Infinitely long ago they
had started out for a drive, grouchy, with no notion of a thunderclap to
come, and now they were going to be married, they were two people in
love, and it simply wasn’t the same world. What had the world been like
before the thunderclap?

“Let’s see,” she said dreamily, still holding his arm round her with
both hands. “Where were we when you made that inflammable remark? You
called me pretty—so look what happened. I know! You were going to tell
me why you left out the scarlet thread in your movie script. Why did
you?”

Her fiancée muttered something and his arm tightened round her. And then
she knew. When you’re in love, when someone is in love with you, you
don’t have to be told.

She sat up. She saw things in the clearest light, and only half the
world was glory now. “I see it,” she said quietly. “You were in love
with me. I guess that’s how you found out you were. If you’re right
about him, my father is involved.”

Bill said, “That’s right. I’m in love with you.”

“That means you’re absolutely convinced it’s true.” A ghastly thought
constricted her throat. “Bill, did you—is this—oh, Bill, it wouldn’t
just be that you feel sorry for me?”

“I’m crazy about you. You don’t have to be told.”

No, not when you’re in love. She took his arm away from her waist.
“Let’s get it said. You think my father is mixed up in something. You
really do.”

Clearly and slowly, “Making peace speeches for headlines is one thing.
Harboring an enemy is something else. That’s a Heinie; that’s the
aviator who was in the news. And there are queer smells. Somehow I can’t
like rich people who have no particular country. Maybe it was just thugs
at Booker’s camp, but the Heinie was there too, so maybe it wasn’t just
thugs. It comes under the jobs I’ve done, darling; I’m supposed to
understand the kind of setup this can maybe be.”

But it meant . . . yes, there were her own long fears, and bit by bit
you could assemble the most damning suspicions. _But it was treason!_
Against the United States. She was cold and sick, trying to imagine the
terrible unknowns.

“You don’t know anything,” she said, “you just suspect.”

He nodded. “That’s exactly true. But anyone who suspects—well, I ought
to try.”

Connie stood up and went down to the creek. That was what Bill had done
just before the thunderclap. It was nearly dark now. She stood looking
at the water, not seeing it. She turned back. Bill got up from the
bench.

“If you’re right, they would be pretty bad people, wouldn’t they? I
mean, it could be dangerous?”

“Escaped prisoners, enemy agents—they don’t come any tougher.”

“That’s what scares me, not what you think,” she said softly. “Maybe you
get it now, darling: I’m crazy about you, we’re in love.” She would not
let her voice break. “I can’t stand it if you—look, everything we’ve
been up to now has been without each other, but now we’re going to get
married . . . You don’t need to consider me, Bill. Not about my father,
I mean. Anything that might happen to him—well, it would be things
happening to you I’d have to live through, not him . . . Do whatever you
want. Whatever you think is right. But I’ve got to be near enough to
keep touching you.”

He took her hands. He said, “I’m crazy about you.” She said, “Then kiss
me.” In a world grown treacherous with the unknown it was more than ever
glorious to be kissed. By Bill.

“That’s settled and we’re settled,” she whispered. “So—oh, darling,
take me to dinner. We’ve never had an engagement dinner up to now.
Tomorrow you can be the boy detective all day long, but tonight we’re in
love.”

“Where shall we go?”

She laughed and tears were stinging her eyes. “Do you suppose we could
find some little place where they sell beer?”

                     *      *      *      *      *

Garrett said, “You seem to feel a strain, _Fräulein_.”

Mathilde nodded. “It was bad enough before I came here—the shock of
those raids. One would think that your success in getting here would
make up for that. But there is too much tension, Erich, too much delay,
too many cross-purposes.”

With an almost humorous detachment, he speculated about Mathilde
Winkler. She might be nervous but she was resolute. She looked fragile
and seductive, and she might shudder if she had to shoot someone with
that automatic in her bag, she might faint after she had shot him, but
she would shoot. And, whatever amusements she liked in her leisure
hours, her mind was cold and clear and sharp. Beside her, Scovil’s
rhetorical intoxication was mere stupidity.

“I had not expected to stay here so long,” she said. “Certainly I did
not expect to have to keep you and Lynn from each other’s throats.”

“I think he is quite mad, and you have reason to be apprehensive. Maybe,
_Fräulein_, you had better tell me what you are holding back.”

No doubt about the coldness of her mind. “What do you mean, Erich?”

“I don’t know, Mathilde. I do know you are withholding something.”

“In the face of that?” She glanced at a little packet of papers.

She had obeyed his instructions of last night completely and he now had
material enough to send Scovil to Leavenworth a dozen times over—and
far more detail about the coming peace offensive than G2 could possibly
have. It was invaluable—and it was still irrelevant. Von Weitbrecht had
not been reached.

“Yes, in the face of that.” She stood his scrutiny; he could not read
her thoughts. “Well, you will decide for yourself—I trust, not too
late. There are forty-eight hours left.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just this.” He assumed the steel of the _Nachrichtendienst_. “You are
quite right. Time has been lost, our situation is desperate, and Scovil
is—too visionary. We make no progress toward von Weitbrecht.” He had,
in fact, decided that more was known about von Weitbrecht than had been
told him. “I will wait twenty-four hours more for him to report to
me—till this time tomorrow evening. If he comes, we will begin there.
If he doesn’t, _Fräulein_, I can wait no longer.”

“What can you do without him?”

“Why,” he said, calmly, “you will summon everyone at the Forwarding
Company who knows anything about our plans, and everyone else who can
get here by car or plane before Tuesday noon. We will have a little
meeting, determine who is to blame for mistakes and accidents, and then
work out the best way of repairing them and preparing to do the job
without von Weitbrecht.”

Mathilde was appalled. “You would call a general rendezvous? Here?
Erich, nothing could possibly be more dangerous.”

“Yes, it is unfortunate. It is also unfortunate that von Weitbrecht has
failed us. Those are my orders—and do not mention them to Scovil.”

If his guess about von Weitbrecht was right, she would have to tell
Scovil at her first opportunity. . . . He was taking the offensive,
bringing on action, precipitating an unknown climax. To lose more time
would be to lose everything.

Mathilde was watching him narrowly, and he saw a slight quiver in her
fingers. “In any event,” he said, “neither of us will be here after
Tuesday night. . . . Is it dinner time? I will miss Scovil’s cook. Your
job has drawbacks, _Gräfin_, but you have not been eating in Germany
these past two years.”

“I think Booker is downstairs,” she said. “Maybe he has brought news of
von Weitbrecht. Or—” more slowly. “You know, he suspects you of being
an American.”

Undoubtedly. He had never left out of consideration that sullen,
suspicious face. He took Mathilde’s arm and said airily, “If I am not
too critical, when you choose helpers like Booker, could you not look
more closely for intelligence?”

Scovil, in good humor but his eyes glittery, was filling three cocktail
glasses. Booker got to his feet when they came in—and looked surly. An
ugly brute, a true squarehead. So typical a Nazi that he seemed a
caricature.

Garrett called the house man: “Bring another cocktail glass.” He nodded
to Scovil. “Don’t stand on caste—Booker would like a drink.” He gave
one of the filled glasses to Booker, and said, “Now as for my being an
American, just what . . .”

Booker nearly dropped the glass. His low forehead creased; his eyes were
first startled and then vindictive. Garrett glanced at Scovil, who was
clearly embarrassed by his subordinate’s stupidity. “Why not?” Garrett
said. “It is not bright to hold a suspicion past its proper time. But
Booker was certainly right to suspect me.” He turned to Booker. “Drink
your cocktail! Tell me what is on your mind.”

The thug was no menace when embarrassed. His swart face got darker, and
he muttered, “I thought I had seen you somewhere.”

“Where?” Booker moved his massive shoulders and had no answer. Garrett
waited, then said, “You are a _Skimeister_? Were you ever in the Sierra
Nevadas?” Booker shook his head. “You could have seen me there ten years
ago. Where did you practise your trade in Germany?”

“In Austria. Arlberg.”

Garrett said carelessly, “Perhaps you have seen me, then. I first went
to Arlberg in 1932. I’ve been back many times.”

“1932!” Booker growled. “That year were many Americans.”

That year, in fact, there was even a team composed of Americans studying
at German technical institutes. It had done surprisingly well. And a
member of it named James Garrett had placed several times and scored one
first.

“I believe there were some Germans too,” he said, and turned to Scovil.
“We can use men who remember a face nine years. But Booker means
something else.” He stepped nearer Booker. “The truth is, you think I am
from the Gestapo.”

He had made the shot at random, merely to embarrass Booker more, but at
once saw that it had got home. Instantly he followed it up. “You do not
like having the Gestapo near. It would be comfortable to get rid of
it—and what better way than framing me as an American spy?” He made the
most of the inch or so by which he out-topped Booker, stood close, spoke
with controlled harshness. “I may well be from the Gestapo. So do not
get above yourself. Be exceedingly careful what you do, even what you
think. You have only to obey orders. Obey them. I will do with you what
I see fit.”

Discipline was a handy thing. The reflexes of Carl Booker—Karl Bucher
of Arlberg—were trained to obedience and he would never again suspect
Garrett of being an American.

“Now, leave us.” Booker made an about-face and strode away, but Garrett
halted him. “Wait!” With the greatest suavity: “You are at the disposal
of all three of us, _Fräulein_ Winkler, Mr. Scovil, and me. Understand,
however, that I command. If anyone’s orders should conflict with mine,
you will obey mine.”

Feeling well satisfied with himself, though his palms were a little
moist, he bowed to the others when the door closed behind Booker. “It’s
just as well that we should all understand that.”

He intended that to rowel Scovil’s pride a little more, but Scovil
showed no resentment. Instead, he said, “Word from von Weitbrecht
reached the camp this afternoon.”

A tonic exhilaration struck Garrett—and wariness at once followed it.
Had Mathilde been able to whisper his ultimatum to Scovil while he was
bullying Booker? Or had Scovil’s crazy notions or crazy schemes
developed in this way—had he been right in suspecting Scovil of knowing
more about von Weitbrecht? Or was this just what it seemed to be, the
system working, von Weitbrecht finally making contact by the means at
hand and Scovil honestly reporting?

“Yes?” he said imperturbably.

He scrutinized the dark, officious face for a motive—deception, policy,
canniness, but nothing was legible. “By wire. We reported your arrival
and he will doubtless come to the camp. He should come sometime
tomorrow, or by tomorrow night’s truck, or at the latest, Tuesday.”

If there was any clue, would it be a trace of surprise or possibly doubt
in Mathilde’s eyes? Well, he would stand pat. “He would find it
convenient to report to me tomorrow. I will not wait past Tuesday.”

After dinner, Scovil went away. The breeze had fallen and the still
night was humid. Garrett was afraid of this pause, for when tension was
released one risked getting careless. But tonight he was buoyed up and
confident, exulting in his progress toward the goal. The improbable, the
all but impossible, was coming true. The long chance had been worth
taking. He had converted accident into good fortune, failure into
success, and the all but forbidden end was coming near.

Mathilde crossed from her chair in deep shadow to sit beside him on the
steps leading down from the terrace, and took his arm. “You are
thoughtful, Erich.”

“I do not enjoy inaction, Mathilde.”

“Heaven knows you have had action enough for most men.” She was
whispering, and her hand made a small, premonitory pressure on his arm.

“Where does Scovil go in the evenings?”

“He must be a postmaster when the truck that brings the courier comes.”
She edged nearer; her hip and thigh, through thin silk, touched his. A
vague amusement colored her words: “He would not tell me if he meant to
pause at the brunette’s.”

He stood up. “You will forgive me if I leave you for an hour or so?” She
rose in a single sinuous movement that brought her hair very near his
face, and softly breathed “Erich!” He said, “I have hard thinking to do.
I think much too irrelevantly when I am by your side, _Gräfin_. I will
drive for a while.”

“You can’t mean to miss the broadcast?”

“Or do you think, like Booker, that I will get in touch with the
Americans if you are not watching me?” Her hand made a gesture of denial
which allowed it to brush gently across his. “I promise I will not
betray you to the enemy tonight, Mathilde. But it is sound sense, it is
a very needful sanity, for us not to be alone together. There is too
much likelihood of forgetting my errand.”

Done with a spade! But it succeeded and, with a sigh, she let him go. No
one at the garage objected when he took a car but, a mile or so past
Scovil’s gates, there were again persistent headlights in the mirror.
Mathilde had not had time to summon Booker, and probably Scovil had not
ventured to disobey his orders. So Booker was doing this on his own.
Either he had not been convinced at cocktail time or he had been
convinced much too thoroughly. Suppose Booker had turned feral? Easy
enough to drive up beside this car and dispose forever of a Gestapo
agent with a single shot. And no report yet made to Washington! There
must be guns at Scovil’s, many of them. At any cost, by any expedient,
he must lay hands on one tomorrow.

But it was a different disquiet that shook him when he drew up at the
bookshop. All the many follies of this impulse, all the private and
official disasters that might turn on it, were quite clear in his mind
as he sat for a moment before going in. He understood them perfectly,
and he had no will to prevent them. Between dark and dark, for a half
hour seized from necessity, a man must be himself.

Gail answered his ring, a white figure coming down the shadows of the
hall. She stood in the open door and was neither angry nor glad. “I
admitted I couldn’t stop you,” she said. “But I hoped you would do what
I asked.”

He stepped past her into the hall, went into the bookshop that was so
like a library, and stood looking at her. “Still,” he said, “you put on
a charming dress to welcome disappointment in.”

The full force of his folly was apparent, for, grave and troubled,
darkly beautiful, dressed for his eyes in complete white that was broken
only by three blue buttons in a line between her breasts, she stormed
his senses with the sudden, overwhelming realization of how much was
denied him. Rebellion rose in him in a great tide; he was struggling not
to take her in his arms. . . . She looked back at him, without coloring,
without turning her eyes away. She gestured toward a deep chair, and sat
down across the room from him.

“That’s true,” she said. “I called myself a fool but I wanted to look my
best so that you would be glad of me. Day by day I’ve come to be more
afraid of you, and tonight I could hardly bear waiting for you. It must
not be, John.”

The shameful alias heightened his rebellion. “Too many things must not
be. I must not remember your eyes smiling, or driving with you late at
night, or how it is to kiss your mouth. What is there to do? I do
remember.”

Her gaze fell; she looked down at her crossed ankles. So he could let
his eyes fill with her hair, her shoulders, her knees, the tenderness of
her lips. She looked up again.

“When are you going to tell me the truth about yourself?”

Yes, that was how the knife had to twist. Never. And already he was
paying high for his folly in coming here. Only a desperate levity could
serve him: “God knows what the truth about any man is, my dear, when any
woman asks that question.”

She ignored it. “There is something desperate about you, John.” Her
breast rose in a long sigh. “Oh, I don’t mean what you think! It’s
nothing to me that you called yourself a thief, or that you did not seem
to know Lynn Scovil when you came to the town he lives in. I forgot all
that when . . . when something happened to us. But there is some
terrible alertness in you. As if you were in the midst of deadly
enemies. Or, God help me, as if the shadow of death were on you. You are
like a steel spring bent too far. You seem to be always looking past my
shoulder, watching for your mortal enemy. It obsesses me—it terrifies
me—I’ve got to know what it means.”

More of the inexorable price set on folly. In an honest man’s life this
disclosure would have been sheer ecstasy. Since that moment on Wednesday
evening when he had first touched his cheek to her hair—remember he had
been trying to fool a policeman!—there had been something electrical
between Gail Armstrong and himself. Some spark that flashed when they
met and carried across the gulf that separated them. Now it had enabled
her to pierce the impersonation that had completely deceived everyone
else. She was as innocent of the evil world he labored in as she was
ignorant of his history—but she had come, in the heart’s knowledge, to
the edge of his secret.

The trap closed on him and what lie could help him out? He smiled.
“That’s a fairly romantic description for a drab metallurgist to fit.”
For a single moment his tone brought a dimple to the corner of her
mouth. It vanished when he said, “I hadn’t suspected you of a gift for
melodrama.” She shook her head and her eyes reproached him. He got out
of his chair, went to a window, stood looking out. The unpredictable and
the incredible swirled in his mind. Washington—Detroit—Scovil’s little
nest of snakes—the antlike creatures of von Weitbrecht scurrying in
darkness. He wondered if the dogged Booker were parked round the corner,
nursing his fears, or if he were stretched prone beneath this very
window, hoping to hear something. And, behind him, looking at him, Gail
was a greater danger than these.

He turned back—and had to pass a desk with a cash register. And good
God! there was a revolver on it, a loaded revolver. But he had decided
that there was only one way to answer Gail—to divert her from the
unanswered question. “And you trouble me, Gail,” he said. “There is
Scovil—you must not marry him.”

She had the dignity of complete defenselessness and complete honesty.
“It can’t make any difference to . . . what we’re saying. But I won’t,
John. I couldn’t. Not possibly. Not now.”

So that much of the price was relaxed, and whatever else might come from
this hour, one vileness was removed from her. But he had been swept out
into a current far stronger than the St. Lawrence he had fought against.
There was the curve of her lips, and for one moment in the midst of war
a man might be himself.

She stood up, shrinking back. “Don’t touch me, John!” she whispered.

He stopped short. “My name is not John,” he said hoarsely. “I won’t
touch you if you tell me not to. What do you say?”

She gave him the dismayed tenderness of her eyes. She said, syllable by
slow syllable, “I can’t care what your name is.”

His moment was fulfilled in the touch of her lips . . . If there were no
war, if he were an honest man, if he had no job to do. She raised her
face again. “You said all hell would be brought down on us if there were
a third time,” she said. “This is the third time. It isn’t hell yet.” He
said, against her cheek, “It will be. Nothing can come of this, Gail.”

“Then I’m right. You’ll tell me what it is . . . now.”

Her image had been in his eyes through the deadliest of days. Trust,
loyalty and surrender were in her kiss. She stood in his arms, and in
ten seconds he must find some final harshness that would alienate her
forever and some despicable lie that would scar her forever.

Voices and footsteps on the porch. Gail stood away from him—and no one
could look at her cheeks or her eyes, or doubtless his either, without
knowing that a love scene had been interrupted. But the two who came
into the bookshop were hilariously excited, too concerned with
themselves to observe anything. There was a girl with blond curls and a
lively face, and close behind her a young man whom Garrett noticed only
vaguely. The girl came into the room practically at a gallop and crossed
its whole length to seize Gail’s hand.

“Gail!” the girl said breathlessly. “Gail, you’ve got to listen!
Richmond has fallen—Martha Case College in the stretch—all of a sudden
he just crumpled and it’s true, it happened, we’re engaged. . . . Oh!”
She had seen Garrett. Her voice broke off, gaiety went out of her face,
she looked first startled and then apprehensive.

Women had their own discipline. Gail was poised and graceful, as if no
emotion had been interrupted. “This is Constance Scovil,” she said
casually, “Lynn’s daughter. And Mr. Jay, Bill Jay. John . . . I mean,
Mr. Page.”

Garrett bowed to Scovil’s daughter and turned to Jay, holding out his
hand, aware now of a homely face, a tall, spare frame—and,
unexpectedly, eyes that were hard and hostile. The young man did not
take his hand but said, “I saw you at Pinnacle Manor, the night of the
dance.”

Garrett’s full alertness roused to the unmistakable antagonism of Jay’s
manner. He said easily, “Yes, I’m staying there.”

“Yeah.” It was unmistakable hostility that was written on Bill Jay’s
face. He had no clue to it. A glance at Connie showed that she was
tense. Jay said explosively, “I’ve seen you somewhere else, too. Camp
Ryegate.” He hesitated for a moment, then plunged. “How much longer do
you think you can get away with it?”

He heard Connie gasp and glanced at Gail’s rigid face. The dice had
fallen wrong and an emergency was here. He smiled tranquilly at Jay, who
burst out, “Your name is Römer. You’re a damned Nazi prisoner of war.”

So it was a total emergency—and in a quarter where it could not have
been expected or prepared for. There was no possibility of flight. The
thing had to be handled here. Handled here, handled now, and handled
right.

Connie had said “Bill!” in a frightened whisper, and Jay was leaning
forward from his toes. The tableau held. Garrett broke it by sitting
down and saying conversationally to Gail, “Is your friend connected with
the theater?”

Gail too sat down, not gracefully. Connie said thinly, “Those were the
beans spilling, Bill—the whole jar.” Bill Jay nodded and seemed about
to paw the ground. “I’m going through with it.”

“Yes?” Garrett said. “What is it you’re going through with, Mr. Jay?”

“Sorry, Gail.” Jay threw her an apologetic glance. “I don’t like being
pushed around. I was pushed around right after I saw you at Camp
Ryegate. You were with Booker. At the halfway house, the cabin at the
bottom of the ski tow.”

Never deny what could be established! He nodded. “That would be
Thursday. A little before noon.”

“I’m a newspaperman—I’ve formed a habit of looking into things. I was
looking into the Taylor Mountain ski run. I got my jaw socked.”

Garrett said thoughtfully, “I can understand that.”

“Yeah. But who does it tie you up with? Just thugs, I thought at first.
Thugs seem to like Camp Ryegate. There’s a truck that comes by every
night toward midnight, and gets met. Somebody hangs out at the cabin on
top of Taylor Mountain—people who mustn’t be seen, I get knocked down
when I start in that direction.”

Mr. Bill Jay was certainly a newspaperman! He had located the line of
communication. More than that, he had learned something which Garrett
had not been able to—someone was in hiding at the top of the ski run.
Mr. Jay was a good man, much too good a man. He must be stopped.

Jay rushed on. “The hell with that! When I saw you at Scovil’s, after
seeing you with Booker—well, I got on the job. You’ll find this is a
funny country, brother—we get out the news. Who unloaded from a car of
prisoners in Ontario? Who got shot at on the bank of the St. Lawrence
opposite Cornwall? Who broke into a lunch counter north of Malone? Who
stole an automobile up above Saranac Junction and drove it into Vermont
and abandoned it just north of Manchester?”

His mind flashed to that revolver at the cash register. No. This crisis
could not be eased by shooting. Could it be eased by anything? “I don’t
know,” he said evenly to this best of all newspapermen. “Is there some
idea that I did?” It was his luck that both Jay and Connie kept their
attention fixed on him. They might have seen Gail’s face. He saw it.

Jay launched his final accusation. “Who did Gail pick up at Manchester,
just about the time that car was abandoned there?”

Gail made no sound. Garrett said, “Gail picked me up at
Manchester—though it’s an ungraceful phrase. That was late Wednesday
night.” Only he knew what her eyes meant when he turned to her. He made
his cast. “Was there some suggestion that I had abandoned a car there,
Gail?”

It was the most despicable act he had been called upon to perform in a
despicable trade. Her eyes died but she said calmly, “None whatever. And
no suggestion that you had stolen a car or that the police were after
you. Bill, this is unforgivable. You’re making some grotesque mistake.”

He felt bitter and intolerable exultation. He had counted on her,
betraying her, and he had been right to count on her. He roused himself
to the advantage. Jay shouted, “I know what I’m talking about!” Garrett
said scornfully, “I admire your talent for fantasy and headlines—but
watch out that it doesn’t get you into trouble.” But, unexpectedly, it
was Constance Scovil who took charge.

“Wait, Bill!” Her thin, pale face had an intentness as deadly as Gail’s.
“We can be wrong. Maybe you could be seeing things backwards—from some
bad angle. Look at him! If you’re right, he’s got nerves made of steel.
Nobody has nerves like that. No escaped aviator looks down his nose at
you—why isn’t he through the window and out into the night? Something
is very screwy—it could be us. Mr.—Mr. Page, will you please tell us
who you are?”

He said, “No, not on compulsion, Miss Scovil.” But Gail said, “Yes, tell
us . . . who you are.” How could they miss the desperation in her plea?

Between Gail and Connie he had won time enough to know what to do with
Jay. He knew, now, in full. He said, “Libel is a precious privilege of
the newspaper business, Mr. Jay. But it has two edges. Why haven’t you
taken your melodrama to the police? If you’ve found an enemy of your
country, you certainly ought to.”

“I’m going to. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”

“Not if you’re prepared to pay the price of being wrong.” He let a
brusque anger be seen in him, and stood up. “But before you do, inquire
about me at the California Institute of Technology.”

He turned to Gail. “The young man is a fool and I should treat him as
one. But I can’t let him embarrass you.” He went to stand a couple of
feet from Jay. “You’ll find my picture in Caltech’s annual for the class
of 1931. I am a metallurgist. I have offices in Toledo—a telegram will
check that. I am an old friend of Miss Scovil’s father. There is no
reason why I should account for myself to you. I’d enjoy your going to
the police before verifying all this. But if the newspaperman’s
technique permits verification, see me tomorrow at Pinnacle Manor.”

“What if I don’t—” the angry young man began, but Garrett cut him
short. “Do whatever your delusions require—but get out of here now and
let me make amends to Mrs. Armstrong.” He turned to Connie, “When you
came in, you were making an announcement. I can’t say that I
congratulate you. But maybe it gives you an interest in keeping him from
being too big a fool?”

“Nobody can call Bill a fool to me,” the girl said slowly. “But Bill
could make a mistake. I think he’s wrong about you. What I believed
about you when I came in doesn’t seem to make sense. I guess this is a
good place to retire and sort out our ideas and see where some second
thoughts bring us out. Come on, Bill. This time, let’s make it bright.”

Bill was clearly in no mood to leave. But the combination of the girl’s
change of heart and, Garrett acknowledged, his own admirable play acting
in the grip of the emergency was just strong enough. Jay growled, “I’ll
damn well see you tomorrow,” and the two went out.

No, not tomorrow. Tomorrow would be altogether another day.

Gail sat in the deep red chair, motionless, without animation, hands
clasped in her lap, her eyes cast down. Nothing about her moved, not her
fingers, not the tips of her white pumps. When she spoke at last her
voice was drained of all life. “You have to go now. You must not wait
till tomorrow. He is not safe.”

The one thing he must do was the one thing he could not do. “I don’t ask
you to believe anything, Gail.”

“Yes. And we won’t even pretend we don’t know why I protected you. You
needn’t be afraid. But you must not lose a moment now.”

Precisely. He must not lose a moment now. Nor was there anything he
could say—even if he were permitted to say anything. He stood saying
nothing.

Gail put her hands over her eyes. “You still haven’t told even me your
name . . . Römer . . . Well, I didn’t tell him that I saw the
police. . . . It would have been better if just one of our moments had
had no lies. Our . . . love scenes.” Her voice broke. “Do you have to
stay to see me in tears?”

He saw her shoulders begin to shake under the heavy white silk. He
turned and went out. An enemy of America in the eyes of the woman who
had answered his kiss twenty minutes ago. A Nazi to the woman he had
fallen in love with. . . . As he passed the cash register, he picked up
the loaded revolver and put it in his pocket.

Before he reached the porch he had made over all his plans. Today he had
resolved to do everything that might precipitate the ending within
forty-eight hours. Now he had no such ample time as forty-eight hours.
The ending was under way, however unprepared. It had been begun by Bill
Jay, who was much too good as a newspaperman but, fortunately, was a
little naive, a trifle too impetuous. And if it was the personal
disaster of James Garrett that he had come to the bookshop tonight, it
was not the disaster of G2—it was the most incredible luck.

But what if Jay was not sufficiently delayed by his fiancée’s doubts or
by the first-rate performance of G2’s leading man? What if he had gone
straight from the bookshop to the local constabulary or the State
police? No. Probably it was just strong enough to hold Jay off till
tomorrow. At least, Garrett must assume it was.

He ducked down the side of the house and went out at a rear gate, kept
to shadows at the corner, and peered down four streets. A car was
unobtrusively parked in the gloom of an elm. It was empty when he
reached it but he found Booker behind the elm, snarling when he called
him by name.

“Never mind—it’s a good thing you’re here. Do you know a man named Jay?
Bill Jay, a newspaper reporter. Some of your gang apparently beat him
up.”

“I know him.”

“It was distinctly a mistake to beat him up. . . . He will be coming
back here before long, with a girl. She is Scovil’s daughter—she must
not be alarmed. Can you follow him when he leaves here—and take him
quietly? With complete quiet?”

Booker nodded. “Yes, but—”

“Silence! I will hold you responsible. Take him to your camp and keep
him there—”

“If there is anything, it is best to—”

“If you harm him in the least I will choke you with my own hands. He is
not to be touched—only held there till I decide what to do with him. Do
what I tell you.” He turned away, then came back. “Say nothing of this
to Scovil or _Fräulein_ Winkler.”

So Erich Köchlin was of the greatest service to James Garrett, and Bill
Jay was taken care of. There remained the unpredictable results that
might come from the emotions of two women. The lightning that had
actually struck had come from a direction about which no predictions
could be ventured. Well, he would see. The finale had begun.




                             Chapter Seven


Connie woke for a moment just at dawn. She thought sleepily that it
might be three or four hours since he had kissed her good night and
said, “See you in the morning,” and went to sleep again. When she woke
again it was full daylight. Seven-fifteen and a hot morning. No leaf
moved, the lawn was white with dew, and there would be thunder showers.
And everything was true: they were going to be married.

Gail’s door was open and her bed empty. Connie stood in a cold shower
and now she could remember other things, trivial things. He would go to
Springfield. No, they would both go. He would get off some wires to
California Tech. Maybe Caltech wouldn’t answer. So maybe there would be
an alumni directory at the Springfield library. He would also telephone
to his paper. The _New York Globe_ could find out anything. He would
wire or telephone to M.I.T., to Harvard, to the Boston libraries. Bill
Jay was going to get Mr. John Page cold, or Herr Oberleutnant Römer, as
the case might be. Before the day was over he was going to confront him
at Pinnacle Manor with a handful of hard facts. . . . Connie smiled. Who
was a darling? And could an engaged girl take war, plots, mistakes in
identity, or hot weather seriously?

A day like this called for the fewest possible clothes. By habit she got
out a play suit, but no, Bill said skirts, so she put on a sleeveless
dress. She thought that the mouth which smiled at her in the mirror had
a new tenderness. No wonder! She went downstairs.

“Gail!” Sight of those pale cheeks and tormented eyes stopped her short.
Her knees shook and the dark forebodings, the intensity of Bill’s
belief, came flooding back. “You believe it!” she said.

“I do not!” Gail said instantly. “Bill Jay was outrageous. He talked
like a fool.” There was no bottom to the pain in her eyes but she was
cold and convinced. “Can’t you make him see that talking like that is
dangerous and silly, too? Can you sit here at breakfast and imagine the
faintest truth in that nightmare?”

Comfort came back. In the daylight the whole thing, however tangled and
mysterious, looked like a series of silly misinterpretations. John
Page’s amused and questioning nonchalance in itself proved that Bill was
wrong. So much the better! “Bill added two and two and got a Sunday
supplement. If that guy is a Nazi, I’m a stylish stout.”

Why, Gail had actually been afraid that she believed it! But Connie had
no interest in Gail’s emotions. She poured out a cup of coffee and must
be grinning from ear to ear. “Do I get twenty-one guns, or don’t I? I
told all and you never said a word. It turns out that Bill is in love
with me. That’s an engagement ring I’ll be getting pretty soon. Ask me
how I feel about it.”

Gail did not break out in lights. “I’m glad. I’m glad you can
be—happy.” She looked away. She put some marmalade on a piece of toast.
She looked up again. “Is he going to—to do what Mr. Page suggested?”

“Check up on him? Sure—Bill’s a stern, determined mind.” Connie set
down her cup. “Look here, your cue is to congratulate us both on getting
me steered safe into matrimony at the first try. We can’t keep on
jittering because a guy you know has aroused Bill’s yen for headlines.
You think Bill has made a silly mistake. So do I. Let’s stop
shuddering.” She met those ambiguous eyes. “Speaking as a candid friend,
one woman to another, you look like the wrath of God. Sure, Bill and I
are going to Springfield and see what we can find out about Caltech.
We’ll find out that your guy is just what he said he was. So my job is
going to be to console poor Bill for making an ass of himself. Now
forget it. Anybody would think you were in love with this guy Page.”

Gail said, “I don’t want any breakfast,” and went away—fast.

Well! No wonder she was upset when in walked the _New York Globe_ and
said he was a Nazi! But as for Constance Scovil, the only thing wrong
with her was impatience. She busied herself about the shops. She wasn’t
going to be a working girl much longer. Or a Martha Case College girl.
Bill Jay was her higher education. By the time college opened she would
have settled down in the young married set. When? Say two weeks from
now. Say next week. Well, how about Wednesday?

Nine o’clock and the oaf hadn’t phoned yet to ask anxiously if it was
true. She picked up the phone and called the boarding house where he had
a room for the summer. Just tell him Wednesday and add that he’d better
get over here right now, for it’s a long time between kisses. She heard
his landlady calling, “Mr. Jay! Mr. Jay—telephone!” She called some
more and then reported, “I guess he ain’t in.”

Connie hung up, swearing. The first duty of a newly appointed fiancé was
to call up and say “Hey, I’m in love with you.” Instead of which, beyond
any doubt, he had broken a whole double handful of promises. He had gone
tearing off to Springfield at about the time she had waked up first.
Well, Connie, you’re the newspaperman’s bride. You never will have a
chance when there’s a good story on the fire. Better get reconciled to
it right now. The darling! She went back to work.

                     *      *      *      *      *

At Pinnacle Manor, Carl Booker was hopelessly bewildered. He no longer
had any doubts of Herr Köchlin, and, moreover, no matter how dangerous
and costly Herr Köchlin’s intentions, he had no choice but to obey
orders. But nothing was clear to him and surely it was also his duty to
point out dangers.

“He has friends. There is his landlady. I think he is still working for
his newspaper. Already many must be wondering why they have not seen
him—”

Köchlin had led him to an enclosure of arborvitæ on the far side of the
lawn. It was very hot and still; there would be a storm before night.
But nothing could diminish Köchlin’s fierce, badly contained energy. He
swung toward Booker. “Let me take the risks. You can assure yourself I
know there are some. When have you a truck going West?”

“We say twelve-thirty. Sometime between midnight and one o’clock it
comes past.”

“Put him on the truck.” Good! Köchlin was showing sense, after all. Get
him well out of the state, and then take care of him. “Where will it be
by dawn? No—that would be only a hundred-odd miles into New York. You
must keep him on the truck till tomorrow night. It should get to, say,
Lake Erie. In some deserted place simply turn him loose.”

“Turn him loose!” Booker shouted. “_Lieb’ Gott!_ We kidnap a man so we
can turn him loose? You do not understand, Herr Köchlin. When you had me
secure him, you made it necessary for him to be disposed of. In ten
minutes, at the first telephone—”

“We will not be here. Neither you nor I nor _Fräulein_ Winkler.”

Booker stared at him, stunned. Köchlin coldly returned the stare. “How
big is your staff at the camp?”

“Counting the Inn, twenty in all.”

“How many of them are—of us?”

“Four. The agent for the trucks. Two workmen. The man who is taking
care—” Careful! He had still been given no permission to mention von
Weitbrecht. “The fourth is a guard.”

“What are your instructions in case it is necessary to disappear?”

“Warn the truck company. Notify the Forwarding Company. Destroy
everything that bears on us and turn the camp over to my assistant, who
does not know what it is. The four are to scatter. I would go to
Buffalo, where—”

“Be prepared to go with _Fräulein_ Winkler and me to New York.”

Resentful anger rocked him. He was being ordered to abandon his property
forever—and the whole thing could be averted by a simple disposal,
hundreds of miles from here, of the newspaper reporter. “I must know—”

“_Achtung!_” Köchlin’s command silenced him; his hands went to his sides
and his shoulders squared. “Nothing is permitted you except obedience.
Instant and unquestioning obedience. Do you think I will pause to
consult your convenience?”

“I am not complaining, Herr Köchlin. But I do not understand—”

“You are not required to.” But Köchlin moderated his harshness a little.
“This much should be plain to you. Our time was short enough, but when
we had to take the reporter we forfeited whatever time remained. None of
this would have been necessary if you had not all bungled von
Weitbrecht. Now I have to act. But if von Weitbrecht gets in tonight,
there is still a chance to save your setup here.”

“Clearly,” he said, “it is necessary for you to see von Weitbrecht—”

Instantly Köchlin demanded, “What do you know about von Weitbrecht?”

With a great effort, “Only what Scovil has told me.”

“Scovil!” Köchlin made the name a sneer. “Nine tenths of our troubles
are his fault.”

“You would leave him here?”

“He is a great man—no doubt he can cover his tracks. If he can’t, we
will all be gone anyway. None of us will be here day after tomorrow. You
understand your orders? Put the reporter on tonight’s truck. Release him
tomorrow night.”

Köchlin dismissed him and went back to the house. All very well to order
men about so arrogantly! But Booker went round to the garage and sent a
chauffeur to the house to ask Miss Winkler if she would see him. She did
not come for ten minutes and, when she came, he could see that she also
was disturbed.

“I must understand what is happening, _Fräulein_ Winkler.”

Her shoulders lifted in humorous despair. “Others would be glad of a
little understanding, Carl. Last night he had me prepare the Forwarding
Company to send the managers here. Now he tells me to cancel the
summons, on the ground it is too late. He is moving to get everything
into his hands at once—”

“But, _Fräulein_, why must it be now? And what will become—”

“While he was waiting, he was a charming gentleman without a care. But
since he has gone into action—I confess, Carl, I feel very small,
helpless and cold. He would not hesitate a second to send me to my
death. In theory one is prepared for that. When the moment comes—” she
shivered, then smiled. “At least the very strength of his ruthlessness
gives one confidence.”

Booker doubled his fists. “But what has happened?”

Her face hardened. “Enough, but not yet the worst. For days I have been
trying to prevent a break between him and Lynn. Lying to each a little,
soothing the ego of each, trying to soften here and appease there. It
must not happen!”

“I am beginning to see that Scovil has done us no good!”

“He has delusions of grandeur! Not once has Erich been wrong about
anything, and from the first he has warned me against Lynn’s ego. He
wants too much! But God help us, Carl, if there is a break.”

“Why should we wait on Scovil’s promise? Why do we not tell Köchlin that
von Weitbrecht is here?”

“It may come to that,” she said slowly. She put her hands over her eyes
and shuddered. “The danger is that Lynn would try to force von
Weitbrecht into alliance with him and defy Erich. And it is certain that
Erich’s rage would be—oh, most dangerous to us. No, once we concealed
him, there was nothing to do but go on.”

“I would agree to handle Scovil!”

“No—not yet. He is now saying von Weitbrecht will arrive tonight. I
trust Erich to handle him. I trust myself, too.”

“Von Weitbrecht has got his damned nerve back. He is willing to meet
Köchlin. I say—let us take him to him.”

“Wait a few hours. Let Lynn talk to him again.” She shrugged again,
despondently this time. “Whatever happens, I cannot think any of us will
ever be comfortable again. But give Lynn a chance to act sensibly. If he
doesn’t, we will.”

Very certainly! It was a time for acting sensibly. He would, himself,
act more sensibly than the orders permitted. Beginning with this weak
notion of letting the reporter Jay go free tomorrow night. The prisoner,
it could be reported, made the serious error of trying to escape
prematurely.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Garrett could only watch time slide by, calculate the hazards, and wish
with a wry humor for three minutes at an unwatched telephone. At any
moment Gail Armstrong might spring the trap which she knew was in her
hands. At any moment Scovil’s daughter might bring the house down round
them all. By this time someone surely, if not the two women, must have
decided that the reporter was missing. How long before a search for him
would begin? He kept the radio in Scovil’s study going, for if anyone
reported him missing to the police, they would at once broadcast an
inquiry. Possibly that would serve Garrett handsomely. More likely, with
von Weitbrecht only a few hours away, it would overturn the whole
precarious structure.

It narrowed down to the chance that von Weitbrecht could get here before
everything exploded. And, finally, he could only wait while the slow
hours passed. He could go to town and phone Washington. Perhaps
Washington would put the nearest FBI unit—Boston, no doubt—at his
service. More likely Washington would command him, as always, to go it
alone. And to appear in Windham might explode the dynamite there. And to
leave Scovil’s might explode the dynamite here. Just wait, hope and
swear.

He sat by Mathilde while she transmitted to the Forwarding Company his
orders canceling the rendezvous. She was a trained, effective servant.
She spoke guardedly, economically, to the point. “They are relieved,”
she said. “They say it is unwise to telephone—you should use the truck
line to communicate. They say it would have been unwise to send anyone
here. And you are not to come there—arrange a meeting place.”

“Tell them we are coming nevertheless, both of us. Alone tomorrow, or
with von Weitbrecht the day after. Those are orders.”

She transmitted them in an emotionless voice and listened to what was
said. She drew a sharp breath at one point, and presently hung up. She
looked at him and shrugged. “They believe that at least a hundred of our
people must have been captured in the last week.”

“What does it matter how many small fry are taken? They missed von
Weitbrecht. No one of importance has even been endangered.”

“For the time being,” she said.

Her eyes were fatalistic, and she was more right than she knew. If,
groping through the darkness and pitfalls, he missed von Weitbrecht in
the finale, he would at least take Mathilde to New York, in ten minutes
get enough to deliver the Forwarding Company into the hands of G2, and
so close the venture not at a total loss. If he got to von Weitbrecht
before the curtain fell, he must contrive to take Mathilde too. Scovil,
Booker, the truck line, and all his other leads could be mopped up at
leisure and did not concern him, anyway.

“Keep your bags packed and your lips rouged, Mathilde. We may go to New
York tonight,” he said.

She was studying him closely. “I am ready, Erich. But how has anything
changed since yesterday? Since Thursday, for that matter?”

“Just that. Time has been lost. Von Weitbrecht, even, is much less
valuable than time. He has failed us, and whoever fails us must be
abandoned.”

“You said you would give him till tonight.”

“Yes. Meanwhile I am arranging to do without him and get his job done.”

“Meanwhile, if you go and he comes late and meets Lynn?”

“I will take care of that. . . . By telephone.”

It was just before dinner time when Scovil came home, from some errand
carefully not disclosed, and touched a match to the powder fuse. Garrett
had frequently called Scovil mad—and now it seemed possible that the
word was exact, that the egoist’s hold on reality had slipped.
Excitement was blazing in him when he burst into Garrett’s room, his
eyes were vertiginous, and there was an additional anger which, it
proved, had been caused by Mathilde’s phone call.

“You know I have forbidden it,” he said, just short of shouting. “Don’t
you realize that the telephone company keeps a record of all toll calls?
Orders from above—and my orders—are to communicate only through
Springfield or Camp Ryegate. The truck line is for that purpose! Suppose
something should happen to headquarters? Every call ever made there will
be traced. Suppose their lines are tapped? There could be a raid on its
way to this house at this moment.”

“If one comes after this evening,” Garrett said coldly, “you will be
free to deal with it as you see fit—alone.”

“That is why there will be no more phone calls from this house. And just
why alone, Herr Köchlin?”

Garrett studied the pose of haughty grandeur. He said, aloofly, “You
were never of any value to me except as a means of reaching von
Weitbrecht. You have failed.”

The harsh eyes flamed. “I have talked to von Weitbrecht.”

“Where?”

“By telephone. He obeys instructions, Herr Köchlin. He telephoned to the
camp.”

“Where is he?”

But the door opened and Mathilde came in. Even in the urgency of her
fears, she had not failed to dress for dinner with the greatest
formality. She said at once, however, with one glance at them, “Stop it!
Both of you have been acting like boys!”

Garrett said, “Scovil has been in touch with von Weitbrecht. Now where
is he?”

“He will arrive tonight.”

“Here?”

“No.”

“At the camp?”

“No.” The flushed face had become defiant. “We will work that out
together, you and I. But alone. Please leave us alone, Mathilde.”

“Stay here, Mathilde,” he said. “Enough of this—”

“Be still, Erich!” She walked close to Scovil and stood studying him.
Garrett wondered what she made of the performance he was putting on. The
show might be merely egotism, it might be rebellion, and there was
always the possibility that, among the other hazards of tonight, there
might be a maniac to deal with. Whatever she made of him, she said
quietly, “This is no time to be a fool, Lynn,” and went out.

“Well?” Garrett said.

“He is driving here by car. I have given him a meeting place and will be
there when he comes.”

“You fool! He must come here.”

“No, Herr Köchlin, I am not a fool.” In other circumstances the blend of
vanity and adolescent hauteur in that flushed face might have been
amusing. But at this moment nothing on earth could be amusing. “It would
be your folly to concentrate our forces. The more so since you have
opened both my house and the camp to suspicion. He will be within reach
this evening. Perhaps you can see him before midnight.”

“Perhaps? Just what is in your mind?”

Scovil took the center of his stage. He began coolly enough, “You don’t
seem to realize how precariously you are placed, Herr Köchlin. In the
eyes of all newspaper readers, you are an escaped prisoner of war. If
anyone were to report you, you would be a prisoner of the American army.
If, for instance, you were so obstinate that I had to defend my position
by reporting you. You would be so much more comfortable as a prisoner of
war than as a spy that you would think it wise not to retaliate by
suggesting that I was anything but a patriotic American acting for the
benefit of his country. And also, you are here because you have a job to
do.”

That was all cool and controlled—but in an instant Scovil was out of
hand. “The day you came you remarked that I held you in the hollow of my
hand. I have had you there all along. Do you know where von Weitbrecht
is? No one knows except me. Can you reach him through anyone but me? No,
Herr Köchlin, you were sent on a mission but you need me to complete it.
I have only to step to the telephone to make you a grotesque failure.
Von Weitbrecht will be at hand this evening, but we will do some talking
before you see him.” Scovil paused a moment, then said, “Think it over,
Köchlin,” and went out.

Well, there it was. And midnight some five hours away.

                     *      *      *      *      *

In the early part of the afternoon it was, “You’d think he would
telephone. He must be finding out that John Page is the Duke of
California with a long record in either crime or good works.” Gail had
had to listen to Connie much too much and that name—that alias—pounded
a nerve that had already meant too much pain. By late afternoon it was,
“I’m beginning not to like this a lot. Maybe it’s just the good reporter
chasing down his lead but it’s definitely giving me nightmares.” It
certainly was. Connie could not sit still, telephoned to the boarding
house three times, and was obviously suffering from acute lovesickness.
The ailment had one usefulness, it prevented Connie from noticing that
anyone else in this house was troubled by problems of loyalty and the
heart.

At dinner Connie suddenly shoved her salad away and stood up. “Maybe
it’s just that there’s a storm coming. Maybe I’m a damned interfering
woman. But he hasn’t telephoned.”

She went out. Gail had twenty minutes of frantic ideas and then Connie
was back—and desperate. “He didn’t go home last night. Gail, I’m
terrified.”

“He probably went straight to Springfield,” Gail said wearily. She
didn’t care what Bill Jay had done.

“Oh, sure. So I’d be an awful fool if I went and asked the State cops
how come. I’m going to be an awful fool.”

Gail’s indifference vanished at once and she saw the girl’s frightened
face for the first time. She said swiftly, “You would be a fool. And
you’d make Bill very mad indeed. Connie, get hold of yourself! What
could have happened?”

“I’ll tell you! Your boy friend could be just exactly what Bill said. So
he could go right out of this house and tell his pretty friend with the
cauliflower ear that we saw on the trail to get rid of Bill.”

Since last night the world had got so dark with fear and baseness that
that seemed a reasonable possibility. But also there was—a certainty.
The man who called himself John Page was an enemy but he was
honorable—oh, he was incapable. . . . Her mind fell away into dread. To
what dark and hopeless flight was he committed? Against the odds,
against decency, let him be swift!

“You may be in love,” she said, “but it’s still possible to be
intelligent. Behave yourself, Connie!”

“Sure, I talked that way too, and now look at us! Aren’t we ever going
to realize that these things happen?” Connie slumped down on the
bed—they were in Gail’s room—and sobbed. “I know, it isn’t possible,
I’ve lost my good sense. But I’m scared stiff. He would have telephoned!
Gail, what can I do?”

Gail smoothed the thin, young shoulder. “You can stop being a child. You
can do your hair and take an aspirin. Or a drink. You can lie here and
wait for the telephone. When it rings, for heaven’s sake don’t tell Bill
how you’ve been acting.”

She went downstairs, closed the bookshop door behind her, and picked up
the telephone. She got Lynn Scovil finally and made him understand that
this was she calling. How completely it had faded out! The now
inconceivable fact that she had thought herself in love with him
belonged to another era, ages ago.

“Is John Page there?”

“No.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did he go?”

“Excuse me, I’m extremely busy. Some other time.” He hung up.

He had made his start! It could not last but he had had a brave moment
of freedom. Maybe she had helped him to get it . . . Nothing was more
futile than tears.

The storm broke in a violence of thunder, gusts of wind that shook the
house, and torrents of rain. For half an hour the fury kept up, then it
stopped and a steady rain set in. And in another hour or so Connie
dropped the book she had been trying to read and stood up.

“I don’t believe a word of it. Something has happened. I’m going to take
one more chance. I’ll go see my esteemed father and then I’ll see the
State police.”

“Your father? What possible—”

“He knows what has happened!” Connie said hysterically. “What kind of
man has spies living at his house? I’ve been telling you all year. Yes,
and why isn’t Bill safe here right now with his arms round me and
getting married tomorrow? Because he was in love with me—he didn’t want
to get my father shown up because maybe I’d feel bad! Maybe you want to
marry him but I hope someone shoots him.”

She went out with a sob, a flurry of skirt, and rapid heels. She was
back in a moment, frantic. “It’s raining. It would be. Where’s a
raincoat? Where are some handkerchiefs?” She tumbled things on the floor
of the closet, yanked out a drawer of her dresser, and went out. The
heels clattered downstairs.

                     *      *      *      *      *

After a dinner during which Lynn’s silent arrogance and Erich’s silent
wariness were played off against each other, Mathilde Winkler got a few
minutes alone with Lynn in the drawing room. She emerged having
accomplished nothing, with a heavy fear that Lynn was bringing them all
down together. Then Erich was closeted with him and her nerves tautened
still more unbearably. She went upstairs but could find neither ease nor
distraction . . .

She came out into the hall and exclaimed, “Lynn! What are you doing?”

He was fitting a clip into an automatic pistol. “I am going on an
errand,” he said, his voice harsh and high. “Someone may need
persuasion.”

She flung herself on him. “Are we not sufficiently under the threat of
death? Have you gone mad?”

The time when the pressure of her body had been a conclusive argument
was over. He shoved her away so violently that her bare shoulder struck
the wall. “You’ve made your choice, Booker, you, all of you. From now on
I will go my way—”

“With the rope round our necks!” she breathed. She was responsible for
this—her weakness, her foolishness. “Lynn! There is no safety for any
of us except in Erich Köchlin.”

“Then take your chances with him,” Lynn shouted.

Erich came upstairs, moving warily, totally alert, totally on guard.
“Stand aside, Mathilde,” he said.

She saw Scovil exhibit his gun, heard him say, “You know my terms,”
heard Erich say, with the bark of an officer on the parade ground, “Drop
that gun!”—and, turning swiftly, flung herself on Erich, crowding him
to the wall. She screamed “Stop!” but was whispering to Erich, “Let him
go! It is all right!” Movement meant Scovil slipping past them and Erich
flung her back but she leaped and clasped him round the waist. He
twisted and her arms slipped to his knees and the two of them went down
on the floor. She kept whispering, “Let him go! It will be all right, I
tell you! Let him go, Erich!”

“At least it is too late!”

He had got to his feet. His anger terrified her but once more she wound
her arms round him. “He would have killed you! It is all right, Erich,
he is better gone.”

“He is going to von Weitbrecht. And you have prevented me from stopping
him.” She felt his terrible coldness replacing anger. “We will now have
an accounting, Mathilde. He has gone to meet von Weitbrecht. Where?”

“I think I can tell you.”

“I’m sure you can.” His hand squeezed her shoulder so viciously that she
nearly cried out. She said, “Not in the hall, Erich!” He muttered but
followed her into her bedroom. She closed the door and stood facing him,
actually at bay. “What happened?” she asked.

“That is for you to tell me. He demanded that I agree to put him in von
Weitbrecht’s place. Or he would join von Weitbrecht and force him to
defy me.”

_Gauleiter_ Scovil! He was a complete fool—or else a madman. She
abandoned him altogether. There was only one question: could she repair
the damage? No, there was another question: could she make amends to
Erich Köchlin?

“I ordered him to take me to von Weitbrecht. He ran out. When I caught
up with him he was whispering to you. You kept me from stopping him,
Mathilde—”

“I did not understand—”

“No? Where is this place he is to meet von Weitbrecht?”

She was desperately trying to think out what Lynn might have planned. “I
don’t know what he means. It may be he has moved him.” She threw Lynn to
the winds and waters. “I can tell you where he was yesterday—where he
has been since Wednesday. Booker has been hiding him at the camp.”

Incredulity flashed in his face, then his dreadful anger. “He has been
here? While time slipped through my fingers?” He had both her shoulders
again. “You have been keeping me from him?” She thought that his hands
would move to her throat. She screamed, but one of those hard hands came
across her mouth to shut off the sound. She struggled free and fell onto
the chaise longue. “You don’t understand! At first we dared not. The
raid he had escaped frightened him into complete collapse. He would not
see you. Once he threatened to kill himself if we took you there. I knew
he could do nothing for you in such a state. Then—”

“By that time you had agreed to Scovil’s game.”

“You must not think so!” She got out of the chaise longue. “I have been
trying to play him just enough to protect you.” She clasped his arm.
“The man is mad with ambition, and with hate of you. Mad
with—jealousy—too.” She put an arm round his neck. “At any moment he
could have betrayed you. I knew you could master him in the end if I
could get enough time for you. Truly, Erich, I have not let you know
everything, but it has been to prevent the break that would ruin us
all.”

He disengaged her arms. “I do not aspire to replace him, Mathilde.” Her
nerves told her, however, that the crest of danger had passed. She sat
down, shaking but beginning to get control of herself. Erich’s cold eyes
held her. “So the man I was commanded to find has been at Booker’s camp.
The man I was captured for and risked death for, escaping. The man it
was the sole duty of you and all your organization to bring to me.” He
had another thought. “Booker! He also was part of this rebellion.”

“Lynn was his immediate superior. Besides, he suspected you. Till today.
Today he has been quarreling with Lynn.”

“And now Scovil is on his way to von Weitbrecht.”

“It will take him more than an hour. They have been keeping him on top
of that mountain, where the cabins are. He has to be sent for. Oh, more
than two hours.”

“Come on.”

“Yes.” Scovil was armed—von Weitbrecht too. Well, Köchlin would master
any situation. She stood up but her knees buckled and she sat down
again. “You have frightened me,” she said. “I am not really so weak.”

“No.” A satirical smile touched his lips momentarily. “Merely frail. You
would endanger your duty for a kiss from Scovil. You throw him to the
wolves because I frighten you. Well, let me know when your knees
recover.”

She stood up. “I am all right.” What had ailed her was, after all, fear
of his authority, not of him nor of the harm that had been done. His
contempt had somehow restored her calm and, the truth was, her
admiration as well. Erich Köchlin was a dangerous man—a man so
dangerous that, with him on her side, she could not be alarmed about
anything. “Come on,” she said. Then, “But it is raining. Go get a
raincoat.”

She got one from a closet. But shoes!—she was wearing satin slippers.
She stooped for a pair of brogues—and was tying the second one when she
remembered the broadcast. Oh, good God! No, there was time enough—it
could be done! She ran out into the hall.

“Erich! We have forgotten the broadcast.”

He was putting on a raincoat of Lynn’s in the hall downstairs. He looked
up angrily—and at that moment the front door opened and a girl burst
in. It was Lynn’s daughter—and another shock traveled along Mathilde’s
nerves. In less than ten minutes the broadcast—she must be got rid of.
Mathilde hurried downstairs.

The girl’s transparent slicker was dripping water on the floor. Her face
was strained and frightened. “Where is my father?” she said frantically.

Erich had become a quiet, urbane gentleman. “He isn’t here, Miss
Scovil.” He turned to Mathilde. “Do you know where Lynn is, Mathilde?
This is Miss Scovil. Miss Winkler.”

“Do you think I don’t know her?” The girl’s eyes burned at her. “Where
is he? I’ve got to see him.”

“He hasn’t been here this evening,” Mathilde said calmly. And Erich
nodded: “I’m sorry, Miss Scovil. I’ve no idea—”

The girl was terribly agitated—her hands shaking, her face pale and
worn, her voice choked. “Has Bill Jay been here?”

“Bill Jay?” Erich looked puzzled. “Oh, the young man! That’s true, he
was to call on me today. I’m sorry. He hasn’t.”

If possible, Constance Scovil looked still more desperate. “What have
you done with him?” she demanded. She would be in hysterics in a
moment—and what could all this mean? Mathilde stepped forward.

But Erich was saying, “Done with him, Miss Scovil? I? I promise you, I
have no idea of making trouble. He was rude but I don’t resent it.”

“What have you done with him?” Her voice rose—the servants would be
coming. “I haven’t heard from him all day. He didn’t go home last night.
Tell me where he is or I’ll—”

Mathilde said, “What is that about, Erich?” But he had taken the girl’s
arm. “You are frightened about something, Miss Scovil. There has been no
sign of Mr. Jay here. I know nothing about him. I’m sure your father
does not, either. Now, suppose you tell me—”

“I know what to do!” Constance Scovil burst into tears and fled through
the front door. Erich made a gesture to Mathilde and followed her.

How did Erich know Constance Scovil? What had he to do with a man named
Jay? Who was Jay? Why had Lynn’s daughter come here to ask her father
and Erich about him? Mathilde revolved the questions swiftly, seeing no
meaning in them but scenting another danger. But the broadcast! In three
minutes!

Erich came back. “Remember that my name is John! She was too excited to
notice your slip. Don’t repeat it. . . . I think I have soothed her for
the moment. But she is on the brink of my identity and there is no time
left. Come on!”

“But the broadcast!”

“Damn the broadcast! We are going to the camp.”

“You must hear it!”

“Have I time to listen to a radio program? With the truth in my hands at
last, and Scovil gone mad, and the police just a telephone call away,
why should I listen to a broadcast?”

Because he had sat beside her last night, after coming back from
wherever he had been—from, she suddenly realized, a meeting with a man
named Jay, and Lynn’s daughter, and, oh, very surely, Gail
Armstrong—because he had sat by her and listened while the broadcast
told him there would be a message for him tonight.

She stared at him in disbelief, bewildered, a shapeless alarm rising to
her nerves. “But . . .” It was unthinkable, he was commanded to obey. It
took priority over everything. He simply could not ignore it. “Erich!”

“Are you coming with me?”

“Not till the broadcast is over. Erich, it is only half an hour—”

“Damnation!”

He stood raging at her. Then his face cleared of impatience. He nodded.
“Come on, then.”

At this hour, on alternate nights, there were news summaries and the
homely, homespun monologues of one who was identified as Hiram Briggs,
an Indiana farmer and a patriotic American who undertook to explain the
New Order to his countrymen. Mathilde tuned in just in time to hear his
immensely rural twang (Berlin supposed that Indiana farmers talked like
the Yankees in “The Old Homestead”) announce that tonight he was going
to take up some letters which had been written to him by folks back home
. . . Letters from America—Mathilde translated that to mean
instructions for America. She kept her eyes fixed on her watch, for the
keyed sentences were on the half minutes. He began reading part of a
letter which accused “President Rosenfelt” of playing the game of the
British-Jewish bankers who were determined on enslaving the world.

Hiram Briggs finished reading the excerpt. “Now,” he said, in his cozy,
country-schoolteacher voice, “that is from one of the common people whom
Lincoln loved. Lincoln said you can’t fool them and the English can’t
fool them now. They know the English have always been America’s
enemies.” The second hand on Mathilde’s watch touched the half minute.
“This week I have received letters from plain folks all the way from New
York to Detroit . . .”

New York to Detroit. Received. They were acknowledging receipt of the
Importing Company’s short-wave report that Erich had arrived. She looked
up at Erich. He was tensely staring out of the window, impatiently
repressing his desire to get out of here, scorning the message.

The half minute approached again. “One of my friends brings up the
dirty, Jew-inspired lie that the Reich has hostile intentions toward
Brazil . . .”

Brazil meant Natal. Natal meant the Italian airline. Or: _Send a
report_.

At the next half minute, “If my friends in the Middle West could see me
here they would know how important their letters are to all of us in
Germany who have the interests of America at heart.” Mathilde murmured,
“They are getting impatient, Erich.” Erich was sitting on the edge of
his chair, straining toward the door.

“. . . a letter from a friend in the great city of Detroit. I lived in
Detroit once. I loved its vigor, its vitality, its magnificent energy.
Always [the hand touched the half minute] there was something important
happening in Detroit.” That was hardly coded. New York had reported the
raids and something about Detroit was to follow. Von Weitbrecht . . .
Erich was scowling at the door. He did not even have his watch out.

At the next half minute, “But those who expect to profit from the lies
told about the friends of Germany in the Middle West will have to change
their plans.” Change their plans. “Erich!” Mathilde said. “Pay
attention!”

Erich looked at her angrily. He stood up. The second hand touched the
next half minute: “I have decided to postpone until a week from tonight
. . .”

Erich switched off the radio, halfway through the keyed order to
postpone for a week—whatever was to follow. “Do you want von Weitbrecht
to get away from us?” he demanded.

It was as if a flash of lightning had illuminated everything. Mathilde
saw, knew, understood. He did not know the code. Never in her life had
she had to make so great an effort as she made now in order to stand up
casually, carelessly, with no hint of excitement. To stand up without
haste or alarm, and to say easily, “Go get a car and bring it to the
door. I’ll meet you there.”

He went out. . . . Till tonight he had found it easy enough to fake it.
Night by night he had been able to sit here and listen, look knowing,
say nothing, be curt and assured. That was because there had been no
message for him before tonight. He had not realized last night that
there was to be one. He had not recognized it tonight.

On cat’s feet she went to the door, stole to the stairway, looked over.
She saw him go through the front door. She fled back to the library. New
York! Von Weitbrecht! Lynn was out of reach!

And there had been those patient hours of getting from her everything
she knew. He knew—he knew everything. Everything except what he was
surely after, the plans for concerted action which von Weitbrecht had
developed.

She phoned the camp. A voice answered. “Get me Booker.” He was not in
the office. “Get him at once. It is life or death.”

Fear crawled along her muscles but her mind was cold and deadly. If she
could get Booker! If she could not get him, it was up to her. Her arms
quivered, her stomach contracted, her knees shook. She stopped shaking.
All right!

She heard a car come round the drive. She was about to hang up. But
Booker answered.

She whispered into the phone. “Carl! You were right. He is an American.
I am alone with him. Come at once. Tell him Scovil has sent you to bring
him to von Weitbrecht. I will tell him Scovil has phoned saying you are
on the way. Take him away. You know what to do.”

Booker said only, “Can you hold him?”

“I can hold him.”

She put the phone back. She went to her bedroom. There was something she
had to get.




                             Chapter Eight


Garrett waited in a sedan outside the lighted veranda, his fingers
impatient on the wheel. What was delaying Mathilde? He could find the
camp without her but could not afford the time to go to camp—he must go
straight to the back road he had traveled with Booker. Somewhere there,
doubtless at the bottom of the ski tow, the trail up the mountain must
begin. It looked as if he and Mathilde must climb that mountain by night
and in a rainstorm. Or could they intercept Scovil? Or would it be
wisest, after all, to go to camp and pick up Booker? Or had Scovil
already got to Booker?

Scovil had a gun. Garrett had in his pocket the revolver he had taken
from the bookshop and there was an automatic in Mathilde’s bag. He had
better send her back to get it. . . . Why didn’t she come? He drove
round the circle to head back toward the gate. The door opened and
Mathilde came running down the steps and out on the lawn, apparently
thinking that he had started without her. She was screaming, “Erich!”

He stopped and she came up to the window, breathing hard. “Lynn phoned.
He is with von Weitbrecht. He is sending Booker to take us to them.”

Scovil sending Booker to take him to von Weitbrecht? “Where did he phone
from?”

“I don’t know. Probably the camp. He must have gone there.”

How long since Scovil had rushed downstairs while he and Mathilde rolled
on the floor? The broadcast was to have lasted half an hour, but could
only have been half-finished when he shut it off. Fifteen minutes of
broadcast, and possibly five minutes talking with Scovil’s daughter.
About twenty-five minutes all told. That was time enough for Scovil to
get to camp, but certainly far from enough for him to reach von
Weitbrecht on his mountain. Or had he previously arranged to have von
Weitbrecht come down from the mountain?

He did not know where Scovil had been this afternoon—anything could
have happened. It was quite possible that Scovil had talked Booker into
joining his rebellion. Now Booker was supposed to be on his way here.
No!

He opened the far door. “Get in, Mathilde.”

“I told Lynn we would come with Booker.”

“Get in!”

She came round to the door but stood there. “Erich! Booker is coming to
take us to von Weitbrecht. This is what you have been waiting for.”

Yes, the crux of the matter was that Booker was on his way. The entire
margin permitted him to work in was the time before Booker could arrive.
He got out and stood beside her in the rain. “Something smells very
fishy, Mathilde. I think that Booker has enlisted with Scovil. Get in
the car!”

She did not move. She started to say something but his impatience boiled
over. “Do what I tell you!” He seized her arm.

At that touch Mathilde stiffened and stepped swiftly back. A premonition
flashed along his nerves. He thrust a shoulder at her breast and his
fist had started for her jaw when she fired. Pain leaped along his arm
and his eyes were blinded but the fist got home. She went down on the
lawn and he threw himself across her. She was knocked out. He picked her
up and bundled her headlong into the car.

He drove away from Scovil’s at full speed, swerved up the first road
fork, and stopped. She was still unconscious—maybe she had hit her head
as she went down. He flexed his left arm. It seemed to be on fire and
the hand was clumsy—getting Mathilde out of the car was a hard job.
Handkerchiefs. He had two; he folded them across her mouth and bound
them in place with his necktie. Oh, yes, his raincoat! He stripped it
off and managed to tie her elbows with the sleeves.

Booker! Also, the servants would have heard that shot. Among a thousand
things he did not know was which of the servants, if in fact any of
them, were part of the machine. But Mathilde had penetrated his
impersonation. Unquestionably she had told Scovil on the phone. But had
it been Scovil? It could have been Booker.

The blood that dripped from his wrist must be coming from his shoulder.
There was not much of it; it was unimportant. He had to hobble her. But
how? He ripped off the greater part of her white skirt, rolled it
spirally, and tied it round her knees.

Could you kill a woman by hitting her on the jaw? Probably not—and too
bad. His left arm was not much use, when he picked her up—the same arm
he had hurt getting off the train. He got her inside, half on and half
off the front seat. He accelerated down the slippery road.

He was, at last, doing what he had been sent to do. How much time? Just
as much as it would take Booker to get from wherever he was to Scovil’s.
Five minutes, one minute, half an hour—he had that much lead. He did
not know how to find the road that led to the trail up the mountain. He
could not take Mathilde with him. And, on the wheel, his left hand was
getting numb.

                     *      *      *      *      *

There was supposed to be a lieutenant of State police at the
Cottersville barracks but he wasn’t on duty. The sergeant who was in
charge felt his responsibilities keenly and was a droll fellow besides.
Connie had reached the ultimate granite of despair. She had gone over
everything; she had pleaded with him, she had had hysterics, and now she
was just stubborn. She would keep repeating it all till they did
something. The other one, the trooper, seemed a little less incredulous
than the sergeant.

“We’re the helpfulest people,” the sergeant said. “Once I sent four men
to a barn outside of Lee where fiends were murdering somebody, and when
they got there what was it? It was a dear little baby screech owl
hollering for its mamma. Or take Lyman here, once he delivered a lady
two pounds of cat meat sixty miles in forty-two—”

“Please shut up!” Connie begged him. “Are you going to do anything?”

“Do anything about what?”

She covered her eyes. “What have I been telling you for hours?”

“Sister,” he said, in the kindest way, as if giving her permission to
wheel her doll along the sidewalk, “you told me just one thing, that
your guy stood you up. It shows he’s got bum taste but it could happen
to any girl. The rest of it—well, sister, sometimes we get a day off, I
been to the movies quite a lot—”

She was beyond desperation, she was just going to make him do it. “Bill
and I lay there above that piece of abandoned road and saw that truck—”

“You know, George,” the trooper said, “there is that piece of old road.
I know what she means. Seven miles northwest of Windham.”

“Yeah. She seen a truck there. She seen a car, too. Could of been
anything from a road inspector taking his cut up to _Tom Swift among the
Hijackers_. Did you ever go back and see it some more, sister?”

“No. And we were walking up the Taylor Mountain trail, and here was a
thug and he knocked Bill down—”

The trooper said, “Well, there’s this, George. That piece of road is
about a quarter of a mile from where the back road comes down from Camp
Ryegate.”

The sergeant gave him a glance that would have withered foliage at forty
rods. “Yeah, Lyman, I noticed she’s a blonde. Camp Ryegate! You was
swimming there yourself last Thursday. Booker’s a nice guy and he always
plays ball with us. There’s the phone. Maybe you want to call Booker up
and ask him if he’s seen a newspaper guy that belongs to sister. Tell
him sister thinks he’s a kidnapper.”

“What does somebody have to do to get you started?” Connie asked.

“Lyman, he only needs a blonde. Look, babe. Tell me somebody stole your
car while you was away, necking. Tell me you heard a shot, even if it
was only a backfire. Tell me anything I can make sense of. I got six of
the boys asleep upstairs right now, and here’s Lyman who’s always rarin’
to pick up any Jack the Ripper any blonde says she seen. But don’t come
in here on a rainy night and say there’s a Nazi wanderin’ loose in
Berkshire County, and the third reel of a spy film playin’ in my back
yard, and headquarters of the underworld on top of Taylor Mountain—”

Connie slumped in her chair. It was that way. She had done her utmost
and he didn’t believe her. She began to shake again, all over.

“What do you want us to do?”

That was Lyman. Connie sat up again, with no hope. “I thought you did
things. If he’s missing, don’t you send out word? Don’t you put it on
the radio? Don’t you start looking for him? If I tell you about Camp
Ryegate, and this spy, and what happened on the trail—don’t you start
investigating what I’ve said?”

“Tell you what,” the sergeant said. “If your boy friend don’t come home
tonight—he will, but if he don’t—you tell the Windham cops.”

Lyman said, “About this road—I’d be willing to look into it—”

Connie breathed deep—if he would, at least that would be a start. The
sergeant snorted. “Eleven-twenty. O.K., Lyman, your trick lasts till
midnight and I’m willin’ to give it to you. But the rest comes out of
your sleep.”

Lyman got a slicker from a closet. “If you haven’t been sniffing snow,
if the boy friend is right about that truck coming regular—well, you
drive me out there and we’ll see.”

She was already half out of the door. “What are we waiting for?” But the
sergeant called her back, grinning. “Got a hatpin, sister? I never had
no trouble with Lyman on a back road, but then I ain’t a blonde.”

Lyman settled beside her in Gail’s coupé. “Comical, ain’t he? Well, I
don’t believe a word of it, either, and I never loved waitin’ in the
rain, but I’m taking a chance you ain’t as cockeyed as you talk.”

“But just one of you!” she said hopelessly. “There must be dozens of
them—there were four that night. I thought you’d turn out the whole
force.”

Lyman—was it his first or his last name?—was affronted. “You don’t
think they’ll show up with a tank?”

Bill said that the truck rendezvous was regular, some time after
midnight. The Cottersville barracks were about ten miles from Windham
and Lyman had said that piece of road was seven miles on the other side.
Seventeen miles, eleven-twenty.

Bill darling! The road and the rain and the headlights blacked out for a
moment but she fought the dizziness down. This was all improbable, a
midnight drive through a deluge, nothing sure or even sensible, no hope
that Bill would be there, that she could do anything for him—but she
would not scream, she would make this policeman understand. She brushed
a wet sleeve across her eyes, clamped her mouth shut, and kept going.

                     *      *      *      *      *

It was toward the middle of the afternoon when Bill Jay realized that he
wasn’t going to get out of this alive. Up till then there had been the
fool’s notion that they would let him go when they got the aviator away.
But the simple, bedrock fact was that he had blundered into too
important a setup, he had found out too much. He knew that when he saw
von Weitbrecht come out into the cleared space, with the man who had the
cauliflower ear.

Cauliflower Ear was the thug they had met on the trail. Bill was morally
certain that it was Booker who had hit him on the head last night but he
did not see Booker till later in the day . . . This place was a half
basement under the log-cabin lodge at the bottom of the ski tow. The
walls were thick concrete, the beams were big logs, the door was made of
puncheons bolted together—everything was as solid as a penitentiary.
There was nothing in it but drums of thick rope and heavier drums of
steel cable, and it was safe to leave Bill Jay or anyone else here
unbound. In each wall a two-foot steel ventilator was set in the
concrete, and these let in a dim light and permitted him, by standing on
a cable drum, to see the clearing, the end of the trail, the back road
curving in, and a wall of trees. That was what he had to look at while
he figured out a hundred ways in which he could have avoided disaster if
he had been intelligent.

Cauliflower Ear had brought him breakfast and lunch—cold coffee and
sandwiches neatly wrapped in the Ryegate Inn’s lace-paper napkins and
thoughtfully garnished with olives and potato chips. Each time he had
crouched by the door and leaped, and each time Cauliflower had silently
slapped him down. The day wore on—no one was in sight anywhere, nothing
moved and there was no sound, and it looked like a hot afternoon outside
but the cellar was as delightfully cool as a grave. It must have been
midafternoon when, from a side grating, he saw two figures come out of
the trees at the far end of the clearing. One of them was soon
recognizable as Cauliflower Ear. Then, as they approached, the other
was, incredibly, Herr Gustave von Weitbrecht. Bill Jay had seen him in
San Francisco and Detroit—and now Bill Jay, that great reporter, that
blank cartridge, recognized him at sight.

So that was why the trail had been guarded. That was why an escaped Nazi
had come to Windham. So the simple truth about Camp Ryegate and Mr. Carl
Booker was clear and beautiful. Also, in much too simple words, here was
why the great reporter was not going to see Connie again.

From an end grating he saw Cauliflower drive off down the road in a
station wagon, and those occasional footsteps overhead would be Herr von
Weitbrecht, finance officer of various Nazi organizations, manager of
industrial sabotage and contriver of labor unrest, director of many
single-minded, industrious men who were working to defeat the United
States. Herr von Weitbrecht was taking his ease at a pleasant summer
resort while the United States looked for him. What a witness for the
prosecution Bill Jay could be! So he had all afternoon to remember how
many chances he had had to use his head, and how many times he had not
used it.

A half hour later a car came up the road and stopped a few rods from the
lodge, and this was Mr. Lynn Scovil getting out of it. Mr. Lynn Scovil,
the great peace lover, the prophet of defeat, the friend of Christian
Fronters and Germany-Is-Our-Friend committees and any fool or rogue who
would listen to him. Mr. Scovil was in a tearing hurry. He ran up the
steps and there were voices coming through the floor. Bill shoved and
sweated till he was able to pile one cable drum on another and, standing
on it, bring his head to within a few inches of the ceiling. But the
voices were deadened—he couldn’t make out a word. Mr. Lynn Scovil and
Herr von Weitbrecht seemed to be quarreling but none of it came through
the floor.

He was weak with impotent anger. You might respect this Lieutenant
Römer, who after all was a soldier. You hated von Weitbrecht but hated
him coldly, as an enemy of your country, to be disposed of as you would
dispose of vermin. But you couldn’t hate Scovil coldly. If Bill Jay, who
wasn’t going to see tomorrow morning, could have his wish, what would he
take? Well, it would be good to hold Connie in his arms again. It would
be good to get just five minutes at a telephone and arrange, before you
died, to have von Weitbrecht and Booker and Römer gathered in. But best
of all would be to get one minute, sixty small seconds, with your hands
free and Scovil in front of you.

Connie would forget Bill Jay before long, she would marry someone else.
But what she could never forget was a father who had preached peace and
loved America at every microphone while he worked in secret places with
Nazi agents . . . For God’s sake, don’t think of Connie!

Footsteps padded on the floor, and then that pretty pair were outside
again. Fifty yards away, at Scovil’s car, they were saying
unintelligible but violent things to each other. Scovil’s face was
contorted and the handsome _saboteur_ looked dangerous. Then Scovil
flung out his hands in some climactic curse, got in the car, and drove
away. Coming back, von Weitbrecht passed a few feet from Bill’s grating.

It must have been about six o’clock when Scovil was back again. Von
Weitbrecht leaped down the stairs to meet him at the road, the fight
taking up just where it had left off. But another car came up and here
was Carl Booker, sitting behind the wheel and watching. Booker looked as
vigilant as a cougar and fully as dangerous. Suddenly he was out of the
car, crossing the little space at an angle, and the other two had made a
sudden tableau. There was a gun in von Weitbrecht’s hand and Scovil
looked as if a wire had pulled him up standing. They were going to begin
shooting each other—and that was just fine. But they didn’t. Scovil
emitted an inarticulate sound, between a scream and a bellow, and got
back into his car. He shouted something else and drove away, the big
roadster skidding when it touched the gravel of the road. Booker
laughed. It was not a sweet laugh.

Booker and von Weitbrecht walked back to the lodge. They stopped ten
feet from the grating and were talking—but in German. Why hadn’t the
great reporter learned German? Because he was a blank cartridge, a
triply damned fool. He heard a name several times: Köchlin—but was
Köchlin a man or a city or just what?

“_Köchlin muss bestimmt heut’ abend hier kommen_,” von Weitbrecht said.

“_Ja, heut’ abend. Aber Scovil_—”

“_Wenn Sie nicht mit Scovil fertig werden können, werde ich_ . . .”

Well, somebody named Köchlin was to come here tonight. Something was to
happen tonight . . . Yeah. A lot of things were to happen tonight.

And tonight, it developed, the condemned man was not going to get the
traditional hearty meal. Just after dark the storm broke in a half hour
of fury, then settled down to a pounding rain. But no supper came . . .
He realized that he was walking up and down in the thick, cold dark;
sixteen steps and his hands touched one wall, turn, sixteen steps back,
then the far wall. Like a man in a cell. Why not? Only this wasn’t a
cell, it was the death house. Stop it, Jay! Keep hold of your nerve! He
stopped pacing, but not for long—he had to keep in motion. Yes, he’d
understand the poor devils in the death house, after this. Would he?
There wasn’t going to be anything after this.

Time had no end, it simply went on flowing in the dark . . . A beam of
light slanting across the grating halted his march. He glued himself to
that grating. A car was coming up the road. It didn’t come as far as
before. It stopped outside the clearing, the lights swung; he guessed it
was being backed into some bushes, then the lights went out. No one came
to the lodge. No one moved. There was no sound. Had von Weitbrecht heard
or seen that car? No way of telling, and no way of knowing who was in
the car . . . He stayed there, his senses razor-sharp, his despair lost
in a total watchfulness. Time went on flowing in the dark.

Far down the trail headlights glinted from the foliage—here, there,
disappearing, coming closer. A car came out into the clearing, and the
footsteps that would be von Weitbrecht’s hurried across the floor and
down the steps. The engine of the car had not been shut off, the
headlights still made a long beam in the rain. The figure that came into
the beam was von Weitbrecht. There was a loud oath and another figure
came into the light but Bill could not identify it. They were
gesticulating; von Weitbrecht was almost dancing. Then there was a third
figure, also unidentifiable. From the hidden car maybe? They moved, and
light and shadow and rain distorted them.

A spurt of orange flame cut across the darkness and one of the
silhouetted figures fell sprawling. The car’s lights were switched off
and the engine stopped. Bill strained his ears and eyes to make out
more, but there was only the rain. After a while a dim figure came to
the steps and someone was walking overhead again. Then the lights of the
car that was hidden down the road went on and slid downhill among trees.
It looked as if it was the driver of the second car who had got his.

Bill went back to pacing in the dark. Only now he had seen a murder.
Patches of his skin twitched and sometimes the muscles of his thighs
quivered. Out there in the rain was a dead man, a murdered man . . .
Before long there would be another one.

Time and the rain went on. He was just a waiting dread. There were
lights again and he pressed against his grating. Another car.
Flashlights came across the clearing and along the wall. There was a
shuffling at the door.

This was it. How sweet Connie’s lips had been, how soft her arms, how
promising her breast. Well, this was it. He crouched beside the door and
flung himself headlong as it opened. There were two of them. They got
him down. They tied his wrists and ankles. They shoved something thick
into his mouth. They carried him out into the rain and shoved him
head-first into a car. That would be Cauliflower’s station wagon. It
started off.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Gail woke to cold and darkness, unable to believe she had been asleep.
It was unlikely that fear and loathing could be blotted out ever so
briefly. But they had been, for now they were rushing back again. She
had been asleep and had had no covers over her, for she was shivering
with cold as well as fear. She switched on a light. Ten minutes to
twelve. Then she could have slept only a few minutes. She got out of bed
and, barefooted, went to Connie’s room. It was dark and Connie was not
there. No light downstairs. She turned on the hall lights and stood at
the head of the stairs, afraid. She called “Connie!” and her voice
echoed through emptiness. She ran downstairs and had to get all the
rooms lighted—wall brackets, bridge lamps, everything. Panic swept over
her and she didn’t know why, except that she was alone.

She froze to stone. Something was moving on the porch, making a soft,
slithering, formless noise. She could not move nor even scream. The door
swung inward and a woman being carried by a man came through it. The
well-remembered voice said, “Lock the door, Gail,” and this was John
Page and the woman was Mathilde Winkler. They went down in a heap on the
hall floor and Mathilde Winkler was writhing and thrashing, and John
Page got his shoulder across her and held her down.

“Lock the door. Get a rope.”

This was some scene in a trance, but his voice was concentrated
excitement and concentrated command. Completely dazed, Gail shut and
locked the door. She cried out now, for there was blood on John Page’s
cheek, on his coat, on his hands and wrists. Mathilde was straining on
the floor, trying to roll, trying to get away—a bundle of violent,
twisting effort. Gail now saw that there was blood on her face too, that
her arms were pinioned, that her skirt had been torn off, that her knees
were tied. As she stared, whatever held those knees was wrenched away
and Mathilde began to kick wildly. But this was real!—the woman was
being hurt, she was fighting. John Page sprawled across those thrashing
legs and held them to the floor. He shouted, “Get a rope!”

His voice would have got obedience from a statue. Still trance-bound,
Gail ran down cellar and got a piece of clothesline. John Page took it
and drew Mathilde’s straining ankles together and tied them. “Knife!”
Gail rushed to the kitchen for a butcher knife. He cut the rope at the
knot, ripped away the raincoat that had pinioned Mathilde’s arms, and
tied her wrists behind her back. While she struggled, something that had
been tied round her mouth slipped away and she screamed—a meaningless
cry of rage, like something heard in the woods at night. Page replaced
the gag—it had been tied with his necktie. He got to his feet and
stooped to lift Mathilde. Slow drops of blood fell from his left wrist.
He was clumsy. He knelt again, slipped his right arm under Mathilde and
stood up. She was trussed but still struggled on his shoulder.

“Some closet you can lock!” he said.

The words came thinly to Gail’s paralyzed mind. She glanced upstairs and
at once he was staggering up. She followed, pointing to the closet off
Connie’s room. Mathilde was making choked, rabid noises behind the gag.
He shoved her in on the floor, closed the door, turned the key and put
it in his pocket, and ran downstairs, shouting, “Come on, Gail.”

In the downstairs hall, he said, “My hand is useless. You must drive the
car for me.” He said that at the height of urgency. But then he fastened
an iron discipline on himself. The incredible, shattering excitement
reached a lull. His eyes stopped blazing and they saw her for the first
time. “You can’t drive a car in a nightgown,” he said accusingly. “Go
get some clothes on. Hurry. You must help me and there is no time.”

Reality was beginning to come through the nightmare but she still found
no meaning in this scene. But she contrived to say, “You’re hurt!”

He took his left hand in his right and looked at it. Gail too bent over
it and several slow drops of blood fell on her nightgown. She saw that,
besides the rain which had soaked it, his light jacket was stained with
blood. “Yes,” he said quietly, “we’d better tie it up.” His eyes
searched the house. “Move fast. But put on some clothes.”

He rushed upstairs again and she heard him switching off the lights she
had turned on. The nearest clothes were in the shop. She got a sweater
and skirt, stripped off the nightgown, and at least was covered when he
came in to turn out these lights too. He said “Hurry!” and went out. She
turned on the lights long enough to see a pair of Connie’s tennis
sneakers under a counter, slid her feet into them, turned off the lights
again, and went out to find bandages.

By the light of a single desk lamp in the bookshop John Page was taking
off his jacket and his white shirt sleeve was bloody. He laid down a
revolver on the desk—and at last her shocked mind remembered what he
was. She stopped short and the rolls of gauze fell from her hand.

He looked up. “Don’t be a fool,” he said. “If you had any real doubts
about me, you would have been screaming long since. Move fast!” He
slipped the shirt off and, wadding it, wiped his arm free of blood to
show an ugly, open-lipped, curving wound that ran almost from the elbow
to the shoulder. Blood slowly ebbed back to the wound. “It’s nothing,”
he said. “Tie it above and below and strap some gauze across it.”

He sat down with the revolver near his right hand, pulled the telephone
to him, stretched his left arm along the desk for her to work on. He
called the toll operator, asked for a number in Washington, and sat
waiting. Her mind whirling with surprise, dread, and stunned relief, she
was aware of his total alertness. He sat motionless but he was electric,
resolute, reaching out toward some fixed purpose. He had the whole of
this room and this moment in his mind; at the same time he was already
far away, making toward some consummation.

He said, “I can’t help it—I’ve got to risk your life. I can’t swing it
alone. She made that certain when she winged me.”

Gail stared. “She shot you? Mathilde Winkler?”

“She’s a Nazi . . . My God, Gail, not iodine! It’s not a cut finger.”

She shook her head clear of dizziness. She laid gauze squares across the
wound and began to bind them in place with a bandage. “I can’t—will you
tell me what—I don’t understand . . .” She stopped and drew a long
breath. “I was asleep. Please tell me what is happening. I thought
you—”

He swore into the phone. “Good God, girl, it’s only Washington I want,
after all.” After a while someone answered and he said, “Headquarters
call.” Another voice, and he repeated, “Headquarters call,” and the
wounded arm hardened with his impatience. He muttered, “All hell could
explode in this room while we wait for telephone operators.” She saw
that he was afraid of something and her own shapeless fears returned.
But he got through at last.

“Garrett speaking—Captain James Garrett.” His eyes moved to hers for a
moment. “I must have Major Spence at once . . . No, let it go, there
isn’t time. Get this down and get Spence on the job . . . This is James
Garrett . . . Yes. I’m at Windham, Massachusetts.”

He turned his head aside to whisper, “Well, you too, Gail.” Then, to the
phone, “The job has blown up in my face. Phone the Boston FBI to get
here—and anyone you can reach who is nearer. They can fly to
Pittsfield. How long will it take them? . . . Two hours and a half is
three hours too long. I’ll do what I can. I’ll get the State police—if
there’s time. Phone them to take orders from me. Cottersville Barracks.
Now write this down. A man named Lynn Scovil . . .” He spelled it out.
“His house, called Pinnacle Manor, six miles out of Windham on the
Greenfield road. That’s the main thing. Get everyone. Get Scovil
especially—at the moment, he’s loose with a gun. Now, on the Vermont
road, a place called Camp Ryegate, also the Ryegate Inn. If anything has
happened—if I’m not on hand—take the whole place over, get everybody.
Especially the proprietor, named Carl Booker.”

He spelled that name too. Gail had stopped bandaging his arm to stare at
his alert face. He was concentrated on the swiftest explanation—but her
mind was again trancelike—dazed with the incredible unreality that was
unfolding.

“Booker is after me too. He may get me. Now, send a man to the College
Bookshop in Windham, just off the common, to the south. A woman named
Mathilde Winkler—W-i-n-k-l-e-r—will be locked in a closet upstairs. If
I don’t pick up the FBI at Scovil’s, I will at that bookshop. Maybe.”

He paused with that word, then went on. “Spence is to telephone New York
to pick up the Forwarding Company at once. It’s possible that the
Winkler woman has already phoned them. At any rate, don’t wait any
longer; pull everything in New York right now.” He said something
incomprehensible about a truck line, and then Gail heard her own name.
“If she makes contact with them, they are to do whatever she says—I
will have instructed her. If she doesn’t, they are to scour the
countryside till they find her. Now, there remains von Weitbrecht.”

He muttered to Gail, “Faster!” Then, to Washington, “I almost had von
Weitbrecht when I was discovered. He isn’t far off. I’m starting for him
now . . . What?” He shouted, “Can you handle it from a desk in
Washington? I’m starting to find him now. . . . What good would it do
for you to take him? He would shut up. He must be made to spill his
stuff. To me. He thinks I’m a Nazi . . . Oh, the hell with you.”

He banged the phone down, stood up, put on the sodden jacket. “That’s
who I am, Gail.” He put the revolver in his pocket, turned out the desk
lamp, thus making the whole house dark, and took her hand. “Take me out
the back door. Fast.”

Leading him, she felt her way to the back door. He slid it open, looked
out, then whispered, “Come on,” and they were going down the shadow of
the porch. His car was in the drive. “Start it—hurry!” She got behind
the wheel. “Get away from this house. Then the Vermont road, the road we
came in on.”

When they had gone about a mile, he had her stop. “We had to get away
from the house—Booker might have found me there at any moment,” he
said. “This is it, Gail. I don’t know who is after me or how close. But
from now on—well, you must understand there’s a chance neither of us
will come out of it. It’s damned dangerous. I’ve got no right to call on
you for help. You’ve got no right to refuse.”

But by now her heart had slowed down, she was less excited than at any
time since she had heard the first slurring noise on the porch. “I’m not
refusing,” she said. “Tell me what to do.”

He didn’t even say, “Good!” He said merely, “There’s some back road from
Camp Ryegate to a kind of lodge or shelter where the ski tow up Taylor
Mountain begins.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Well, find it. I’m probably going up Taylor Mountain.”

“Am I going with you?”

“Only to the ski tow. You’ll wait for me there. Alone. And ready to
drive like hell if anything happens. Get started.”

She got started, her mind clear and her heart uplifted. She had caught
something of his exalted concentration. The background of her thinking
was a jumble of chaotic fragments that were beginning to fall into
place—Lynn, Bill Jay’s ideas, the fears and suspicions of many months,
the mysteries of the last few days, above all the dark bewilderment of
the John Page whose name had been Römer, the Nazi flyer who had come
bleeding into her house and turned out to be Captain James Garrett of
the United States Army. But the foreground was the headlights stabbing
through the steady rain, and a silent, fixed attention to what James
Garrett was saying.

“We’re after a Nazi named von Weitbrecht. He’s on Taylor Mountain—or
else he isn’t. If no one has reached him in the last hour, he thinks I
am Erich Köchlin, sent from Germany to give his orders. My whole job has
been to find him and pump him. If someone has reached him—well,
there’ll be nothing to do but play it as the cards fall . . . It would
be nice to know how I tipped my hand to Mathilde Winkler. Let that go.
Now, if I’m—if you have to finish it alone. There are some things you
must tell my little playmates, when they find you.”

She listened. An appalling summary of Lynn Scovil’s purposes with the
peace movement. A synopsis of Mathilde Winkler as an agent of the
Forwarding Company. The truck line as the means of communication. A code
on short-wave broadcasts from Berlin—“I didn’t know it, and if G2 knew
it I should have been drilled—but they can crack it.” . . . Sickness,
disgust and horror buffeted her but she fought them down. Then, very
suddenly, she realized that he was telling her all this in the
expectation that in a few minutes—before the two and a half hours he
had calculated at the phone were over—he might be dead. He was giving
her instructions as his representative. Ice closed over her and a slow
shudder rippled down her arms. Stop that! If he could be unafraid, she
could listen quietly.

He had a single moment of bitterness, when he finished. “But if I don’t
reach von Weitbrecht, the whole thing will just be farce. Just the
grotesque failure of a man born to make mistakes when the pinch comes.”

Gail said, “Here’s where we turn off for the lodge. It’s about two
miles.”

“Turn up the road and stop for a moment.”

With the engine stopped and the lights out, the world was empty. Rain
made a steady swishing and the darkness was impenetrable. The night was
straight from a delirium. It could not possibly happen. Treason and
death and the world turned upside down could not possibly be real.

He said nothing for a moment. Then, “I’ll stand on the running board.
Drive slowly. Tell me when we’re near the lodge and we’ll turn off the
lights again.” He sat motionless. Just rain and darkness. But behind
them terror was gathering like the crest of a wave. “Damn my arm!” he
said angrily. “Gail, where are your lips?”

But one arm came round her shoulders and her own arms were strong . . .
Finally, his serene whisper, “So, my dear . . . Let’s get started.”

He stood on the right-hand running board, his injured arm clamped over
the window ledge. She knew that the revolver was in his right hand. The
headlights swayed up the narrow, twisting road, under the arched
branches of trees. He would be drenched with rain. A wild laughter rose
to her lips—that, in the shadow of death, she should think of his
discomfort in the rain—but she suppressed it.

Up and round, swaying, the tires sliding in mud. Gail’s breathing
shortened and her hands grew tense and stiff on the wheel. This was a
progress toward pure horror. Not terror—the amazing thing was that she
no longer felt any fear—just horror, just the unspeakable. It was ahead
of them, it had to be faced.

She whispered, “We’re getting there.” His voice was clear and without
strain. “Turn off the lights.” In the dark they crept forward. The
rutted road was lighter than the trees and the rain. “Stop,” he said. “I
see the roof.”

She stopped and the rain went on falling. James Garrett came to the
window beside her. “I’m a fool clear through to the end—I have no
flashlight . . . The trail begins straight across, at the far end?”

“Yes . . . Look, there is a car parked just ahead.”

He vanished and time came to a full stop. Gail was mere sentience. Then
his head was at the window again. “I recognized it,” he said curtly.
“Turn the car round and head it down the road. There can be no one here
or we would have been—stopped—before now. You must simply wait, Gail.
It will be dreadful but you must wait. If anything comes up the
road—get past them and get home—get out somehow, anyhow. If I come
back first, all right. If someone else comes down from the mountain
before I do, you must use your head—”

She did not scream. She said, “Someone is coming!”

So even sentience ended, in a distillation of pure horror. Whoever it
was came round the car that was parked ahead of them; Garrett leaped far
from the window and, dimly, she saw his hand go up. “Scovil?” he said,
softly.

“_Nein. Ist das Herr Köchlin?_”

“_Aber ja! Von Weitbrecht?_”

“_Ja. Heil Hitler!_”

“_Heil Hitler!_”

Gail’s breath came back raggedly, at the unmistakable triumph, the
overmastering triumph in Garrett’s voice. At once he swung the rear door
of the sedan open. “_Geschwind!_”

The two of them were in the rear seat. He leaned forward. “Get back to
the main road as fast as possible. Take chances. Then drive up and down
any highway but stay away from Windham till I tell you. Keep
going—don’t stop for anything. Wherever there is likely to be traffic.”

She swung the car round and got it started downhill, the lights probing
the rain again. In the ecstasy of deliverance, the release from that
clotted horror, the knowledge that for a moment the incalculable risk
had been surmounted, she found it still more difficult to think, to see
clearly, even to breathe. Excitement had quadrupled, was beating a pulse
in her ears, in her throat. And Garrett’s voice had that pulsing
triumph, like a trumpet of victory:—

“Now, Herr von Weitbrecht, you must be fast. You must tell me all you
have planned, where it stands, what is under way, what remains to be
done . . .”

                     *      *      *      *      *

Booker said, “You’re sure it was a shot?”

“Yes.” The house man nodded twice. “Right here, near the front door. But
when I got here, there was no one. They are gone, Mr. Page, Miss Winkler
. . .”

Booker turned and ran down the steps, back to his car. If it was a shot,
Mathilde must have fired it. But it had failed—she had missed—the
American knew he was recognized—the American was loose.

He could not know how much the American might have learned.

Back to camp? Not yet. There was one place where the American had been,
where he had been twice. Where he had ordered the reporter grabbed. The
bookshop . . .

Booker stopped his car a block away and crept up the back alley,
crouching at the corner of the garage. The house was black. And the
American might be inside, with a gun. He would have taken Mathilde
Winkler’s gun. Booker pulled out his own gun, got through a gap in the
hedge, crept up the back steps. The doorknob turned in his hand. He took
a step inside. Nothing. Step by step, pause by pause, his ears
straining. No. If anyone were downstairs it would have happened by now.

On hands and knees he crept upstairs. A bedroom, empty. Another bedroom,
empty. No one was in this house. He stood in the center of the room.
Something was moving! On the floor. No. Behind a door. A soft, repeated,
shuffling sound, as if someone were rolling on the floor.

He waited. The sound went on. “Mathilde!” he called.

Nothing. But the soft, rolling sound redoubled. He turned on a shaded
lamp. It was behind the closet door. The door was locked. He strained at
it.

He looked round. Screw driver. No, hammer and pliers. He ran downstairs,
got a kitchen light on, found tools in a drawer. He went back upstairs
and began to take the hinges off that closet door.




                              Chapter Nine


There was a clump of hazel at the side of the old road, opposite the cut
where Connie and Bill had watched the meeting of truck and car less than
a week ago. Lyman—she had learned that that was his first name, that he
was Trooper Lyman Sharp—had parked the car, Gail’s coupé, just back of
that hazel. They were sitting on the sodden ground and the hazel
probably kept off some of the rain but rivulets of drainage from the
road flowed around them. Huddled in her slicker, Connie clasped her
knees and shook. She seemed to have been shaking for hours. Would she
ever be warm again?

“You scared or just cold?” Lyman inquired.

“Both. Shut up.”

Did he think she was cast iron? How simple and hopeful the world had
been when she had lain here beside Bill! That midnight meeting had
scared her, but the terror was nothing compared to this weight of
despair. That night, the principal question had been whether Bill was
going to kiss her! What might they have done to him by now? She bent her
wet forehead down to her wet sleeve and tried to shut out the terrible
images of what they might have done, but she couldn’t shut them out. And
twenty-four hours ago he had kissed her good night, and had said, “See
you in the morning.”

“You better make good, sister,” Lyman said gloomily, “or it will be me,
not the State, that pays to have this uniform cleaned.”

Her tortured nerves tried to explode in a laugh that would have meant
hysterics but she managed to hold it back. But maybe that was the best
thing to think of, a policeman’s muddy uniform. Or how foul with mud she
was. She was dry down to the waist but from there on she was
water-soaked . . .

She dug her fingers into his arm. Headlights had turned into the road
from the end that was nearer the camp. “They turned them off, before,”
she whispered.

“Takin’ a chance on the rain. O.K., sister, just don’t move.”

Move? What with? Brilliant light passed across the clump of hazel and
the falling rain showed clear. The beam slid on down the abandoned road,
tires passed not ten feet from her eyes, and the darkness was redoubled.
The car went on, then stopped, hardly a hundred feet away. The lights
went out. She couldn’t see anything. She could just hear the rain
swishing at the road.

Lyman was fumbling at his belt. He said cheerfully, “Just sit here. But
if I yell for you, come ahellin’.”

He slid through the hazel to the road and Connie diminished to pure
fear. Something was turning and twisting and, dazedly, she realized that
that was her stomach—and a light showed down the road and a shout came
through the rain, “Come on, babe!” She was out on the road, stumbling,
running.

It was a station wagon. The trooper was pointing a flashlight at two men
who were standing by the radiator with their hands in the air. Her
breath was coming in racking gasps, and Lyman said, “Hold this on them
while I look for fleas.” He gave her the flashlight, said “Keep it
steady,” and began to whistle a tuneless note between his teeth. One of
them, under a slicker, was wearing a Camp Ryegate uniform—and Connie’s
stomach twisted again when she recognized the other one as the thug with
a cauliflower ear they had seen on the trail. Lyman came up behind them.
“I rolled a seven,” he remarked, and took a revolver from the man she
didn’t recognize. “This is an Eagle Scout”—and he took an automatic
from Cauliflower Ear. “That will do to ask questions about. Hold it
steady, babe.” He took his own gun in the other hand and got a pair of
handcuffs from his pocket and clicked them round the wrists of the
uniformed man. Connie managed half a scream but Lyman had seen
Cauliflower Ear move too. He batted him over the head with the barrel of
his revolver. The man’s knees buckled and he went down in the mud.

Connie dropped the flashlight, fell on it, picked it up. Lyman got down
on one knee beside the huddled figure and in the circle of light she saw
that his face was angry. But he was still talking amiably. “We could use
some rope. See if there’s some in the car, sister.”

She jerked forward on leaden legs, turned the flashlight into the
station wagon, and screamed, “Bill!” The bound figure arched and rolled.
“He’s here,” she cried weakly, “he’s alive,” and climbed into the
station wagon. “Darling! It’s all right! I’ve got a cop.” She dropped
the damn flashlight, and there was something tied over Bill’s face, and
she couldn’t see and her hands wouldn’t work. She clawed at that gag,
and Trooper Lyman Sharp roared, “Get heavy on that rope!”

The thing came off. Bill grunted, “Do what you’re told, Connie.” But
there wasn’t any rope. Yes—there was one round his ankles and through
tears she fumbled at that. Got it! She climbed over Bill, slid out of
the car and gave the rope to Lyman, and the flashlight jiggled in her
hand. “Hold it, babe,” Lyman said with the sweetest reasonableness, and
Cauliflower Ear had a bloody head, but she held the flashlight somehow
and Lyman got his wrists tied.

“Get your guy,” he suggested and stood up. Connie leaped to the end gate
of the station wagon, and poor Bill was trying to get out without any
hands. She managed to prop the flashlight in the corner but she had
begun to cry and her fingers kept slipping at the knots. Bill said,
“Heads up, Connie,” and the rope came free. Instantly Bill was over the
end gate. She followed, sprawling in the road, but got up and hung on to
him. He put an arm round her. She heard the queerest sound. It turned
out to be Connie Scovil, crying.

“A truck will be here any minute,” Bill was saying desperately.

Lyman said, “Yeah,” thoughtfully, and “We better get back in the bushes
. . .” The man with the handcuffs leaped for the side of the road. Lyman
kicked his feet from under him, pulled him up by the collar, and hit him
in the face. “Try that again and you’ll come down sick,” he said. “Sit
down by your buddy and count sheep. . . . You two check so far,” he
informed Connie. “We’re on schedule, so we’ll pile back in the bushes
and hold hands—”

Bill shouted, “There’s a handful of spies loose—”

Lyman said, “I can hear you.” He stopped for the flashlight, which had
slipped from Connie’s hand. “State property, babe, I’d have to pay for
it . . . You two got your story pat, haven’t you? Well—”

“Trooper,” Bill broke in, “up on Taylor Mountain there’s a man that the
United States Secret Service is looking for. There’s half a dozen others
on the prod in Windham this minute; we’ve got to notify—”

“I come for a car and a truck. I only got the car,” Lyman sighed. “Well,
you take sister and her car and go notify. Stop at the first phone and
call the barracks and tell them to send me a helper to hold my tools.”

“Can you take that truck?”

“Sometimes I need a second bite,” Lyman said modestly. “Phone first.
Then go right on in to the barracks and tell the sergeant what’s on your
mind. And look, brother, you stay there till I get back. All I know
about you is just what sister tells me.”

Bill was just short of dancing with impatience. “That truck could turn
in here any second. Look, I’ve got to have a gun—”

“Gun? What for?”

“These babies were wearing them, weren’t they? You think it may not be
lodge night for the others?”

Lyman said nothing. Bill’s arm tightened round Connie and she clung
harder. She became aware of the rain again and how black the night was.
Lyman said, “Oh well, I’m a setup for blondes. Here.” He handed Bill
something in the dark, and it must have been a gun. Bill said, “Where’s
that car?” Lyman said, “Wait a minute. . . . Stop somewhere and buy
sister a candy bar. She’s got one coming to her.”

Bill roared, “Where’s that car?” and Connie contrived to say, “I’ll show
you.” Even on his arm, she was staggering. Her mind went on and off like
a light; she felt as if she were only partly on the ground, she seemed
to be bumping off it into the air, like a child’s balloon. Bill said,
“This is Gail’s car,” in surprise, and left her to get into it herself.
She managed to. He got behind the wheel, backed the coupé out into the
road, and they were off with a skid.

They came out on the highway. Seven miles. Bill said, “It’s not only the
cops we’ve got to talk to. The FBI will listen to me now. I know what’s
up . . .”

Connie crumpled. The road in the headlights began to revolve, then there
wasn’t any light at all. Somebody was speaking from a long way off and
it turned out to be Bill. He was saying, “Darling!” and she managed, at
the far edge, not to faint after all. The car stopped, the headlights
poking their long finger through the rain, and Bill had his arms round
her. She flung her arms round his neck and hung on. Nothing else was
important. Here they were and the world had lost danger and despair. She
pressed against him, she couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t hold him
tight enough. She was crying and laughing and in the dark she could see
part of his face. “I’m scared,” she said, “I’m no good, darling, I’m
letting you down. I keep going to pieces—I’m no damn good.” Bill said,
“Yes, you’re a frail wench—that’s how you saved my life.” A sob shook
her and she clung. “I think there’s time to kiss me,” she murmured. He
kissed her.

So she wasn’t crying any more or even shivering. Her head was on his
shoulder and their cheeks were together—let the rain fall, nothing bad
could happen now. She had come back from the hopeless place.

“All right,” she said, “let’s go do what the professor said.”

He got started. Also he began to speak. “We’ll telephone Cottersville,
all right. But there are things to do and no time for talk. We’ll
telephone everybody we think of, but it’s up to me. Remember von
Weitbrecht?”

“I remember everything you ever said.”

“He was up on the mountain. That’s why I got knocked down on the trail.
It turns out to be a lot wilder than my wildest guess—”

“My father—”

“He was in it, all right. And Römer. I figure out that the whole thing
is Römer and von Weitbrecht getting together. Something big is going on.
Big enough to take a lot of stopping. The first thing is, locate Römer.
If I’m right he’s around here somewhere still, he hasn’t got away,
that’s why I was grabbed—”

“He was at Pinnacle Manor tonight. I saw him. I went there before I went
to the police. Mathilde Winkler was there too—”

“If I was bright, I’d have spotted her too. Well, we’ll try to get
Pinnacle Manor looked into. Maybe we’d better—”

“I don’t know where my father is. I went there looking for him. He
wasn’t there. At least, they said he wasn’t there.”

“He wasn’t there.” Bill’s voice softened with something grave and
compassionate. The tone made her wonder. But Bill stopped the car long
enough to gather her in his arms again and kiss her. So it wasn’t worth
while to wonder about anything. The impossible had turned out to be
possible, after all.

                     *      *      *      *      *

They had fatally lost time at the bookshop and they went on losing time.
Mathilde knew that it must be Booker whose voice reached her through the
door. She heard him working at the hinges and at last the door came off.
He pulled her out on the bedroom floor, got her gag off, got the ropes
off her. She gasped, “He is gone. Both of them,” and lay there. Booker
lifted her to her feet but she toppled over on the bed.

“What has happened?” he kept demanding. “Why did you not shoot him?
Where did he go?”

She managed to say, “I shot him.” She rolled over on her back. Her jaw
hurt unbearably. There was an aching bruise on her breast. “But he hit
me and brought me here. They have gone. He will reach von Weitbrecht.
Where is Lynn?”

Booker seemed stunned. “How long was this? How long ago?”

“Ten minutes. Hours. I can’t tell. But he will have to go to the
mountaintop to get von Weitbrecht. You can still stop him—”

“No. All afternoon von Weitbrecht has been at the lodge. If the American
has been gone even fifteen minutes, he can already be there—” He
stopped, then said, “Camp!” and ran out of the room. “I will telephone.”

Mathilde’s mind careened and almost slipped into the dark. She fought
down the faintness. She must think—think now, think fast, and think
right. Something could still be saved. She got off the bed and tottered,
dizziness billowing in her. Stop it! She saw that her dress was torn—in
fact, was almost torn away. A glance in the mirror dissipated her
faintness and brought back intelligence. Her face was swollen out of
shape and her hair was wild. There was blood—not her blood!—on her
face and throat, and on the torn bodice of her white dress, and on her
slip. She had only one shoe and her stockings were in shreds.

Booker must do what he could about the American. She must tell
headquarters. And . . . she must get away. She took off the ruined dress
and slip. She washed rapidly, sat at a dressing table to comb her hair
and powder her cheeks, took a dress from the closet she had been locked
in and put it on, found stockings in the bureau and brogues in the
closet.

Downstairs she found Booker prowling in the bookshop, a pistol in his
hand. “Neither Fritz nor Josef is at camp. That means they have gone to
meet the truck. I could not talk to anyone I trust. But at least the
police have not been—”

“The police will come here,” she said, able at last to think coldly.
“Two women live in this house. Neither is here. One of them went with
him—”

“You hit him.” Booker pointed to squares of gauze and a bloodstained
shirt.

“In the arm, it seems,” she said curtly. “This has finished us, Carl. He
has had time to notify anyone he cared to. Watch all the doors.” She sat
down at the telephone and put in a call to New York.

She wasn’t afraid. All that counted was to warn the Company. She could
see Booker pacing in the hall, leaning forward on the balls of his feet.
He moved like an animal and there was a brutish quality in his face. “No
one must come in while I am telephoning,” she called to him.

It took a long time to complete that call . . . How swift the overturn
had been! For a few minutes she had held success in her hands. There had
been needed only to kill him. She had failed. It meant a mortal wound to
the system. Last week’s losses would be trifling compared to what would
happen now.

“What is keeping you?” Booker shouted.

She could not share his desperation, for what mattered now? Two minutes,
two hours, two days—with the end certain, the exact time mattered
little. But the fragments of what could still be saved depended on this
telephone in the house of the enemy . . . It was taking an abnormally
long time. There was always someone to take calls at the Company, and at
this late hour the circuits should be clear. New York operators murmured
from time to time, silence succeeded them, finally a brisk voice said,
“Interoceanic Forwarding Company.”

Mathilde put back the phone. “He got there first,” she said, for that
was not the way phone calls were to be answered. They had held up the
call long enough to put someone on the trail here.

“Come on, Carl,” she said.

He ran out. She followed, not knowing what to do. What now?

But Booker must make the attempt. She must set him to find—well, what
was the American’s name? John Page, Friedrich Römer, Erich Köchlin—all
false names. But they had done the job.

Booker took the road toward Camp Ryegate. “There is enough at camp to
hang us all,” he said. He was hunched over the wheel, his gun on the
seat between them. Poor simple soul! It didn’t need whatever might be at
camp. They were lost.

But Lynn! Lynn had got away, he was free. He might even have got von
Weitbrecht away before Köchlin got there. He had started out to do just
that. The American might, even now, be kept from his goal.

“If von Weitbrecht is at the lodge, go there. Turn round, Carl, at once.
We have still got a chance to save the most important thing.”

“No,” he growled, “the camp!”

“Lynn went to get von Weitbrecht more than half an hour before—before I
found out about the American. Lynn may have—must have—got him away.”

“I had just come from the lodge when you phoned me.”

His voice went guttural with a harsh violence. Alarm woke in her. “Lynn
had not been there? He didn’t get to von Weitbrecht?”

“There is no point in going there,” Booker said. “Scovil is dead.”

“Dead?” she repeated stupidly, ice closing round her.

“What did you expect? Only today you told me he was not safe.” Booker
was bellowing. “Scovil threatened us both this afternoon—von Weitbrecht
and me. Tonight he came back, flourishing a gun. He ordered von
Weitbrecht to go with him. Well, we had made up our minds. I was waiting
for him. I shot him.”

Mathilde lay back, spent and without sensation. Of course that was what
he had wanted to do, the American, to turn them against each other. He
had succeeded. Lynn was dead. The last hope was dead too. But Lynn was
dead.

Booker stopped the car. This was where the road led off the highway to
Camp Ryegate and a neon sign burned red in the rain. He stared at it.
Mathilde lay back in the seat, indifferent to anything. She shuddered at
the thought of rain falling on Lynn’s body. Suddenly the car shot off
down the highway at full speed. “I don’t dare go in,” Booker said. “They
may be already there. We must save ourselves.”

She could afford no time for grief. Her mind came awake. “Where are you
going?” He said, “Where is there to go? There is nothing we can do.” She
said quickly, “We can go to Lynn’s and burn things. We can cover up.”

“Yes. That will be safe for a while.”

Oh, very far from safe! It was the irony of this total defeat that only
she was able to estimate the resourcefulness and quickness of the
American. She did not know his name but he was up to his job . . .
Booker turned the car round and began the long drive to Lynn’s. She sat
nerveless, estimating expedients, calculating chances. The job now was
to survive as long as possible.

Fifty yards short of the stone gateway, she made him stop. “I represent
the Company, Carl,” she said. “I will wait here. I will stop anyone who
comes. Go through Lynn’s desk and safe. Burn anything you recognize—no,
burn everything. My bags are packed. Bring them here.”

She saw him, in the headlights, turn through the gates. She waited for a
moment, then got behind the wheel, swung the car round, and drove away.
Perhaps the American would be waiting for Booker. So much the better. If
only one of them were to be killed, on the whole she would rather have
it Booker, who had killed Lynn. But maybe luck would be gracious, just
once, to the woman who had failed in everything and would fail in the
flight she was now beginning. Maybe luck would arrange to have them kill
each other.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Gail made out a little of the talk in the seat behind her. Most of it
was in German, all of it in whispers. It went on and on. It seemed as if
she had been driving down rainy roads forever—but all excitement,
pressure and apprehension were gone. A steady exhilaration had taken
their place, that John Page, whose name was James Garrett, had done what
he had been sent to do. Von Weitbrecht’s gun was on the seat beside her.
Garrett had explained to him that she, “_diese reizende Dame_,” must be
on guard while they talked and had passed it to her. She had murmured,
“I don’t know how to use it,” and he had touched her shoulder and said,
“The point is, he does.” It was in harmony with this incredible
night—this night out of nightmare or phantasy—and, like other parts of
the night, showed the prompt ingenuity of James Garrett. And the most
incredible part was that, in complete belief, an enemy of the United
States was pouring out the secrets of his trade to an officer of the
United States Army. Now, in this car.

At last he leaned over to say, “All right—go back to the bookshop.” He
was finished, then he had what he wanted. His voice was calm but had the
same tone of triumph she had heard when he met von Weitbrecht.

She swung the car in a wide arch, and whispered, “How is your arm?”

“Hurts like hell.”

His lips touched her ear and passed across her hair. She was more alive
than she had ever been before—the rain was the rhythm of a love song
and, while he sat beside an unsuspecting, outmaneuvered and defeated
enemy, he had time left over to think of her.

Fifteen minutes later they reached Windham. She turned into the square
and Garrett said, urgently, “Stop!” She stopped, and alarm had been
brought back by his tone. He said, “_Hier ist etwas los!_” and then, to
her, “We left no lights.”

Yes, there were lights upstairs and down . . . He was out of the car and
she was alone with the spy. She had enough German to say, “_Ducken sie
sich!_” and von Weitbrecht flopped down on the floor of the car. She
heard him breathing hard. She clutched the pistol and her alarm ranged
ahead of James Garrett, who had not hesitated to investigate the unknown
hazard of that house. Mathilde, she thought, or Booker! But it might be,
it had to be, Connie. Her fingers gripped the cold steel of the gun and
she strained to see what might be happening a hundred yards away. In
this quiet town! No policeman walked his beat, no householder’s window
opened on the dark.

He was back. “Drive to Scovil’s.”

“Was it Connie?”

“I had forgotten Connie! No.” He leaned close, whispering. “The door is
down and Mathilde is gone. Booker got here. I can’t let von Weitbrecht
out of sight.”

He spoke over the back of the seat, to the man who was lying on the
floor, admonishing him not to be seen. He seemed to be staring through
all the windows at once and she saw the gun in his good hand . . . How
long had she been driving through the rain?

“Steady,” he murmured. “This is just the final sprint.”

“I’m all right.”

“This one has been scared for a week—he will be no trouble. But
Mathilde and Booker do not scare. And it would be convenient to know why
we have not encountered Scovil.”

She knew now the desperation which those three names signified. He was
blindly hunting them in the dark, and in the same dark they must be
recklessly hunting him. Was he doing the right thing? Should he not have
got away from Windham now, with the information he had got from von
Weitbrecht?

“If I were a neat workman I should have learned who was dangerous at the
house,” he said. “We’ll have to leave it to the dice.” His voice was
tranquil and he held his wrist watch to the cowl light. “Too bad.
Another half hour and we could hope that Washington would beat us to the
house.”

He was so obviously calm that she could not be afraid, but her muscles
were tense and her senses were honed to a sharp edge. Time was
extinguished again; there was only rainy road flowing into the
headlights . . . Till the stone gateposts at the entrance of Lynn’s
drive were silhouetted against shrubbery, and Garrett said, “Stop here.”

He leaned over and spoke to von Weitbrecht on the floor, forbidding him
to show himself, no matter what happened. “You’ll have to take care of
our two-cent Hitler,” he whispered to Gail. Then he got out and stood on
the running board, clamping the elbow of his wounded arm over the window
sill. “Drive slowly . . . All right, roll the bones.”

She let in the clutch. They rolled through the gate and took the
curving, uphill drive. She could hear the soft murmur of the engine and
the lights picked out trees, clumps of shrubbery, stretches of lawn.
Then she could see the house—lights on the veranda, on two floors, at
the stables. He said, “Wait,” and she stopped. Nothing happened, and
presently he said “O.K.,” and they crept forward again. The drive
divided where the circle in front of the veranda began, and he said
“Stop,” again. He was staring at the house and there was neither sound
nor movement. The light from the veranda reached the grassy circle and
diminished toward the wings. “Go on around,” he said, and she put the
car in motion. It came round the circle and she stopped it at the steps
of the terrace, the headlights pointing down the drive.

“Well,” he said, “someone had better check up.”

He stepped off the running board. With his shoulders hunched as if he
were facing a high wind, he stepped into the light. Nothing happened. He
moved fast at an angle across the terrace and disappeared down the near
wing. At once the fear she had not been feeling overwhelmed her. He had
gone and she was alone with—with the two-cent Hitler. She grabbed for
the pistol at her side, got the door open, and got out. She stood there
while moment added itself to moment intolerably and nothing whatever
happened. A guttural whisper, tense and terrified, came from the car,
asking what was going on. She contrived to say, “Be quiet!” And still
nothing happened. Except that she could not possibly stand any more.

The front door opened and Garrett came out on the veranda and the blood
in her veins could move again. He crossed the steps and started down
them. “All clear,” he called, “not even a servant . . .” At that moment
he reached the terrace and at that moment flame spurted from the
arborvitæ at the far corner and the night was cleft open by the thunder
of a shot.

Her mind registered everything in slow motion. Garrett dropped behind
the granite balustrade and was shouting, “Lie down, Gail!” She saw his
gun come round a curved stone pillar, and he fired in the direction of
the shot. A voice came out of the arborvitæ: “_Von Weitbrecht! Er ist
Amerikaner!_” Again that flame bloomed in the arborvitæ.

Gail turned toward the car—too late. Powerful arms pinioned her. She
managed to drop the pistol before von Weitbrecht could wrench it from
her. She hung on to him, clawing and kicking. He tried to throw her off
but she would not let go, and as she spun she saw Garrett stand up in
the yellow light, fire into the dark, and step forward across that level
space, from which another shot came as he started. Her head rocked and
an elbow locked under her chin. There was a new glare from somewhere and
she beat an unavailing fist against the strength that was overwhelming
her. She heard a shout and the arm round her throat slackened. She saw
von Weitbrecht slump down—incredibly—Bill Jay was here. He had smashed
a gun down on von Weitbrecht’s head. She was free and Bill leaped past
her, raising his gun.

She had strength enough to turn to him. “He is an American!” she
screamed. She knocked his arm upward and the gun went off in the air.
“He is an army officer!” She hung on to Bill, crying “help him!” Then
she slumped away—and Garrett fired again into the arborvitæ and the
edge of it was shaken, and he turned back, shouting to Jay.

“Don’t shoot, you fool! Gail, are you all right?”

Something was crawling on the grass, almost at her feet. It was von
Weitbrecht, inching forward. Then Garrett came running back and flung
himself on the German. Bill Jay hesitated, then followed him. Into this
crazed scene came a flying figure in white from a car at the edge of the
circle. It was Connie. Connie stopped short and faced around. There was
a shrill sound—a siren. A motorcycle slithered across the grass, then
another one. Behind them was the white car of the State police, half a
dozen figures in uniform, and someone shouting “Garrett! Is Garrett
here?” Figures were running to the veranda, to the cars, to this little
group clotted in the light.

Garrett stood up. “I’m Garrett. There’s no one in the house—but make
sure. I’ve shot someone in the shrubbery.”

Another siren screeched and more figures were coming on the run. Connie
had reached Bill. It was probably Connie whose voice came crazily above
the confusion: “This must be the marines.”

Then they were all in the house, and Gail’s mind rocked with motion and
uproar. State troopers were sweeping through all the rooms, voices
clashed, someone was at a telephone. People swirled round Garrett, who
was giving orders. Chaos stopped short for a moment when a sergeant came
back and said, “No one anywhere in the house or on the grounds. The guy
in the hedge isn’t dead.” Garrett ran out and then came back again.

“That is Booker—from Camp Ryegate. It leaves Winkler. And Scovil. . . .
Lieutenant, you must get on to the camp. Get the roads out of town
blocked. We want Scovil most of all.”

Bill Jay came out of the corner, where he had been trying hard to get
Connie quieted. “Wait!” he said. “Has anybody been to the lodge? There’s
a car there.” He took Garrett off to one side . . . Gail leaned over in
her chair and quietly fainted.

                     *      *      *      *      *

It was two-fifteen when Garrett first thought to look at his watch—when
Jay told him about the shooting at the lodge. Half an hour later a
detachment of FBI men arrived. It was just three-thirty when Garrett
came out of the library, all arrangements made. The FBI had taken von
Weitbrecht away. The State police had sent Booker to a hospital. Scovil
was unquestionably dead. Mathilde had got away—but not for long. A
series of telegrams had been sent and he had talked to Major Spence in
Washington, on the phone.

And the thing was done.

He went downstairs to the drawing room. Logs were burning in the
fireplace—that would be Jay’s work—and the two women were sitting
close to them. Jay had got food and whisky. They did not look altogether
sunk.

But they looked—well, unbelievable. Jay’s jacket and trousers were
ripped; his face was crisscrossed with scratches; there were rope burns
on his wrists. Connie had washed the mud from her face and arms but her
dress was stiff with it from the waist down; her stockings were in
tatters; her hair was plastered tight against her head. Her sodden shoes
were on the hearth and the tennis sneakers that Gail had worn were
beside them. Gail’s hair too was drenched but the wetting had only made
it curl wildly. It was unmistakably apparent that she had nothing on but
the skirt and sweater she had snatched at the shop; her bare legs were
scratched and muddy; her face was bruised. All three of them were pale,
sunken-eyed, and desperately in need of sleep. But they were, at last,
composed. . . . Garrett suddenly realized that he had on neither a shirt
nor a coat. He tried to remember about that shirt. Oh yes, at the
bookshop. There had been blood on it. And on Gail’s nightgown.

“I should order you all into a hospital,” he said. “Or,” thoughtfully,
“at least give you a quartermaster’s voucher for some clothes.”

Gail turned from the fire. She was very pale but her eyes were clear.
“What about your arm?” she asked. That brought it back to mind. It
weighed a ton and it was burning from finger tips to elbow. He looked at
the muddy bandage—which she had put on. His knees went weak. “That’s
right,” he said unsteadily, “there was something about my arm.”

He sat down more abruptly than he had meant to and his head swam. “Give
him a drink,” Gail said quickly. Jay filled a tumbler with whisky and
held it out to him. He gulped half of it. Steadiness came back. “We’re
into the king row,” he said. “This is the end of it. You won’t be tossed
into any more riots.”

Jay said, “Can I take Connie home now? Can we go . . . sir?” He had a
little trouble with the last word—still. “There’s something—you
understand—”

Connie stood up. The fire was bright behind her; she looked frail
but—unconquered. “Why don’t you say it? Is anything likely to scare me
now, after tonight? I don’t have to have anything prettied up for me.
You mean my father. It’s not only that they’re looking for him. You
mean—something has happened to him.”

Jay hesitated but Garrett said, “We aren’t sure yet. We think so.”

“He’s—dead?”

“That’s what we think.”

Her cheeks were the color of ash. She looked square at Bill Jay. “You
aren’t dead. Remember, I thought you were.” A single tear rolled down
her cheek. “Would I want him to be alive?” She walked over to Jay. “But
don’t ever leave me alone again. Not for one night, not even for the
rest of tonight.”

Jay stood with an arm round her waist. “Let me take her home.”

Garrett stood up. “After I’ve thanked her.” He touched the thin shoulder
and shook her hand. He turned to Jay. “You get thanked too. I had to
work fast—I had to have you grabbed, you were too bright. It worked out
better than I deserve. Thanks. Your girl gets a good deal of a man.”

Jay shook his hand. “Not very bright. I just had a phobia of being
pushed around.”

“It’s a useful phobia.”

“You’re pretty useful,” Jay said wryly. “Come on, Connie. You need
sleep.”

They went out. Gail yawned suddenly in the firelight. “Sleep! That was
last month, wasn’t it . . . Is it true that Lynn has been—killed?”

“We’ll know pretty soon. They had Jay locked in the cellar of the lodge.
Before they took him away—which must have been a few minutes before we
got there—somebody was shot near the lodge. That was his car we saw
there. Either Booker or von Weitbrecht could have done it. I don’t know
why.”

So that while Gail and he were there, the body of Lynn Scovil had been
somewhere near, dragged into the underbrush or hidden at the lodge. The
man she had been engaged to, the man she had been fleeing from when she
had stopped to pick up a fugitive from the police on a Vermont road.
Garrett looked at her with a hard scrutiny. She met his gaze.

“He won’t be telling any more Bunds that America needs a new
leadership,” she said. She could not possibly have spoken more coldly.
Her eyes darkened with a momentary horror, then cleared. “Tell me what’s
happening now, James.” The faintest premonition of laughter warmed her
voice. “If I have a little trouble with your name, my dear, remember
you’ve had difficulties with it too.”

“It will settle down to Jim . . . Why, they’re busy in New York
gathering in the headquarters these people were directed from. They have
taken over Camp Ryegate and are going through it to see what they can
find. I’ve put them to work on the truck line. They’ll pick up Mathilde
somewhere, before long. A lot of people will be picked up after tonight.
Scovil is dead—and you’re right about that. No more crowds will be
cheering that handsome face. The peace front has been broken—the fools,
the little dupes, the smart boys, the busy people who are so
co-operative with organizations like the Forwarding Company. But
mainly—what I was sent to do was done by the time we got back to the
bookshop with von Weitbrecht. That front is broken too. Even before I
get to Washington, they’ll be rounding up his helpers. It was a neatly
fitted scheme—wide and deep and threatening. But we’ll shake them down
like apples from a tree. Into the basket.”

“You’re going straight to Washington.”

“I’m ordered to report by noon. And I’m going back to my job . . . I
told you the truth yesterday. A man’s fiancée should know his trade—I’m
a metallurgist, I’m in the Ordnance Corps for the duration. I’m better
at it than I’ve managed to be at Intelligence. I’ve had to make too much
of this up along the way.”

“For an amateur,” she said, “you seem to improvise fairly well.” There
was more warmth in her eyes. “By noon! That doesn’t leave you much time.
Surely you’d better stop at a hospital somewhere.”

“Not if your medicine cabinet runs to another bandage. But I’ll take you
home—if you’ll drive me there again. Put on your shoes.”

The current of silent accord between them was running free. She slid her
bare feet into the sneakers. “They’re Connie’s . . . I’m all she has for
parents now. She’ll need kindness.”

“Will she need anything more than Bill Jay?”

Gail yawned widely, with sudden forthrightness. “We’ll all need sleep.
I’d forgotten there was sleep in the world. You have the most
astonishing knack for disturbing my nights.”

In the hall he told an FBI man that he was going to Windham for an hour,
and took her upstairs. The door of Mathilde’s room was open. Her bags
were in an orderly row on the floor. They had been packed when he
instructed Mathilde to accompany him to New York, when he was still an
agent of the Reich. A long time ago. “If you want dry clothes,” he said,
“this is Mathilde’s baggage.”

She shook her head. “Thanks, I’ll wait. Besides, from the beginning I’ve
been more concerned about your clothes. You need a shirt, my dear.”

“I’ve got several and they aren’t Scovil’s.” They went on to his room.
“I bought them with Forwarding Company money. Just before you ordered me
out of town.”

He could get into one of them, though his arm was stiff and fiery, but
found that he could not knot the tie. Her lips gentle, Gail said, “Let
me.” She tied his shoes too and helped him into his coat. Her eyes were
expectant . . . But not in this house!

They went downstairs and out to the sedan. The rain had stopped but the
shrubbery dripped heavily. Troopers were coming in. He waved to them and
Gail drove away. The dark closed round them, except for the glow of the
cowl light on her grave face.

A mile or so down the highway she pulled off the road and stopped. A
faint gray had begun to show in the east and the outline of the window
had sharpened. He turned to her but she said, “No—wait!” took his hand,
and lay back, musing. “So much of this has been in an automobile! And so
much of it late at night. . . . Wait, my dear. I’m feeling very
expectant, and I was that first night, too, from Manchester on. That was
extremely forward of me—or farseeing. But this time it’s morning. We’ve
driven all night; we’ve spent the night together. What a wedding night,
Jim! When I went to bed I thought I wouldn’t see you again. Then when I
woke up, there you were . . . bleeding.” She choked on that word,
snatched her hand away, and covered her face. “Your blood fell on me!
. . . I’ve waited long enough.”

She fled into his arms, her breast arching up, her face raised . . .
After a while she had stopped sobbing and was alive in his arms.

The grayness grew, the window showed more plainly, and in a few minutes
he would be able to see her plain. She turned her cheek away to whisper,
“By noon! Then the latest you can leave Springfield is the nine-o’clock
plane—”

“We were talking plane schedules that night,” he said. “Have you any
idea how lovely you looked? Almost as beautiful as now—”

“There was a highway patrolman, at the window. That was the moment when
it all began. But—” she yawned again—“I had had more sleep the night
before.”

He said, “This is the continuation,” and kissed her . . . Ever since he
had reached Windham he seemed to have been calculating schedules. “Can
you make that plane by nine o’clock?”

She sat up out of his embrace. “It would be disgraceful if I
couldn’t—after the speed we’ve held to. But there’s a lot to do. You
said fiancée—I’d rather spell it _bride_. We’ll certainly have to stand
up with Connie before you leave. We might as well save time—”

“Connie too? Today?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Neither of you will have so much as a trousseau.”

“All Connie has ever needed was a skirt. I have a skirt.” She glanced at
its wrinkled disorder. “All I need is a bath.”

He went on calculating minutes. “G2 is staffed with stern men. If we get
Connie launched, there may not be time for us. You may have to remain a
widow till we get to Washington—”

Gail was laughing. A State trooper had shot past them on a motorcycle,
had stopped down the road, and was turning round. He started back.

“Back to the beginning,” she said. “He thinks we’re necking. What a
suspicious mind!” She started the engine, leaned over to kiss him, and
murmured, “For that matter, I could skip the bath.”

                                THE END




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.

              [The end of _Advance Agent_ by John August]