77 Rue Paradis (19 page)

“I mean it,” Baron said. He stepped forward and looked down at Gorssmann. He was trembling and he could not help it. He felt like kicking Gorssmann in his fat face. He did not like the man’s composure.

Gorssmann seemed to be debating about something. He looked up at Baron, then down at his feet. He unfolded his hands, then folded them again.

“All right,” he said, shrugging. “Arnold.” He nodded his head, waved his hand toward the rear of the room and the stairway, leading up to the balcony.

“Are you sure?” Arnold said. He rose from the settee, looked at Baron with slow amazement, then at Gorssmann.

“Go—hurry!” Gorssmann snapped.

Arnold frowned, walked on across the room. Baron watched him go, watched him start up the stairs. His heart beat and beat inside his chest, he could feel it beating, feel the push of blood and the heat of it in his neck and shoulders.

He heard Gorssmann’s chuckle. At the same instant he felt the arms come down around him. He fought with crazed frenzy, knowing the arms were Joseph’s, that he had been tricked. At the same time, he told himself he had to hang onto those papers. He kicked and cursed Gorssmann, trying with all his strength to get loose from Joseph.

Gorssmann nodded at Joseph. Baron was released. He sensed it, then felt it. A harsh, smashing blow caught him across the back of the neck. He flew sprawling past Hugo Gorssmann’s chair into abrupt darkness.

“He moved. Arnold, simply hold a gun on him. He knows there’s nothing he can do. Ah, yes—these are the papers we wanted!”

Baron looked up from where he lay on the floor. His head throbbed dully, and when he moved his head, his neck hurt. Otherwise, he was the same as before. Joseph stood a little way from him, watching him. Arnold sat on the settee with a gun resting on his knee. Gorssmann was thumbing through the sheaf of papers and the blueprints.

“You know, Baron,” Gorssmann said, “I just thought of something. It would take some daring, of course. And I won’t do it now, because I’ll have enough money from this to tide me over for some time. But the thought did occur. To me, that is.” He peered down at Baron, and strummed the papers across his enormous belly. “I could have perfect facsimiles made of these papers. Then I could sell them to different persons I know of all at the same time.”

Baron said nothing. He knelt, then stood, rubbing the back of his neck. He stared at Arnold, looked around the room. There was no sign of Bette. He went dead inside.

“Where is she?” he said. He sprang toward Gorssmann.

Joseph stepped in, grabbed his arm.

Gorssmann shook his head at Baron. He took his hat off, laid it on the chair, began waddling slowly up and down the room with the sheaf of papers in his hand. As Baron watched, Gorssmann seemed to expand in girth, if that was possible.

“Where is she?” Baron shouted. He cursed Gorssmann. He shouted curses at the man, feeling the futility of it deep inside him. Gorssmann did not even bother to look at him. “Tell me, damn you! Tell me! Where is my daughter?”

“Please,” Gorssmann said. “Relax, Baron. I always hold to my bargains. Believe me, yes. Always, thanks.”

He tried to get hold of himself and his voice leveled out. “All right,” he said. “Tell me where Bette is!”

Gorssmann did not answer.

The big man moved across the room to an empty bookcase beside the fireplace. There was a phone on one of the shelves. He looked across at Baron, grinned, and began a phone call that endured in a steady muttering from that corner of the room for over an hour.

Baron went through all the hell possible during this time, or thought he did. Arnold did not once move from the settee, and Baron lifted Gorssmann’s hat, dropped it to the floor, and sat down. Joseph came across the room and sat in the chair opposite Baron. They looked at each other and waited while Gorssmann muttered and mumbled and argued over the phone.

He was trying to settle some dispute.

Baron began to know then what those papers meant to these men. To Gorssmann in particular, but also to Arnold, and very likely to Joseph. He could not tell what kind of man Joseph was. There was really no telling. The deaf-mute’s immobile features gave no inkling of what went on in his head. He hardly ever looked at anybody, only seemed to wait and stare solemnly into space.

Baron tried to force his mind away from the one fact that drove him close to insanity during this time. If they would not produce Bette now, then it must be that they could not produce her.

He refused absolutely to admit that she was dead. They could not do such a thing. And Lili? He slumped in the chair, listening to the interminable, indistinguishable mutter of Gorssmann’s voice at the phone, trying in his mind to find some solution to the way these men acted.

He refused the obvious.

Finally Gorssmann hung up, returned to the center of the room, then came over and stood in front of Arnold. Baron knew better now than to try anything. It was hopeless. He did not want to admit this hopelessness, but it was there.

“It’s all settled,” Gorssmann said. “I had a time, but it is settled. Their radios were not in perfect order—something. Anyway, we have little to worry about now.”

Arnold gave a big sigh, relaxed on the settee. “I was worried, to tell the truth,” he said. “The man is unpredictable.”

“I know,” Gorssmann said. “A truly bad man to deal with.”

“You’re certain?”

Gorssmann shrugged, paced back and forth between the settee and the fireplace. “As certain as it’s possible to be. Of course, we must allow for the chance.”

Arnold stared at Gorssmann’s feet.

“Come, come!” Gorssmann said. “Think optimistically. Be like our good friend Baron.” He glanced at Baron, frowned. “What? You are no longer so optimistic, Baron?”

Baron said nothing.

“Hugo,” Arnold said. “How much longer? This waiting kills me, it tears the heart out of me.”

Gorssmann drew out his watch, glanced at it, put it away. It was a fat silver watch without a chain, carried in his vest pocket. It had a silver chain fob, very short.

“We can’t do a thing until dark. Until at least seven.” He cleared his throat. “Of course, I will go before then. Just before dark, that is.”

“You.”

Gorssmann nodded.

“Alone?”

Again Gorssmann nodded, paying no attention, it seemed.

“I might have known,” Arnold said. He was wearing a neat blue suit, light colored, and a yellow tie. His hair was very smooth and slick and dark. He seemed to turn into himself, sadly, forlornly.

“What?”

“What about me and Joseph?”

“You will wait here—with him.” He pointed at Baron and Baron saw the man’s eyes and knew the only way Gorssmann would ever be any good was dead.

“I see.”

“Listen, you fool!” Gorssmann snapped. “I have never let you down, have I? Do you think I am such a fool as to run out on you now, to try to? You ass—you unspeakable fool! Don’t you know I could never rest if I did? Don’t you know how— Listen. I will go and I will come back and we will have the money. I guarantee it.”

“All right, Hugo.”

“Yes. I planned this, and I planned it well. Things must progress in an orderly manner from start to finish.”

Things progressed very slowly. The afternoon passed in this manner and Baron realized that he walked a narrow ledge. He did not once move from the chair.

Joseph remained perfectly calm, only taking an occasional stroll around the room. Arnold had fits of bad depression, and held long arguments with Gorssmann that Gorssmann always won, one way or another.

“Listen, Arnold,” he said at last. “Understand me. It is getting later and I must depend on you. I must return here. You must trust me.”

“Where is Lili?” Baron said finally. It was the first time he had spoken in hours. Gorssmann had begun to show nerves now and his head snapped around at Baron.

“Kindly shut up,” he said.

Baron did shut up. There was nothing to say, nothing he could do.

By the time dusk fingered the windows, Gorssmann was in a bad state. He had placed the papers in a brief case, and he marched up and down the room with it, taking long swinging strides.

“I am going,” he announced at last.

Arnold came off the settee, running. He ran across the room and stood before Gorssmann.

“You won’t come back!” he screamed. “I know you. You will leave us here and we will sit with that person all night and all tomorrow and you will never come.”

Gorssmann swung the brief case hard. It caught Arnold across the side of the head with a loud splat, sent him spinning over against the wall with the gun dangling from his arm.

“You are a fool,” Gorssmann said slowly. “An utter fool!”

Joseph had not moved in his chair. He turned then and glanced toward Arnold. Their eyes met and Joseph nodded. Baron began to feel more ill than before. He had been thinking of Louis Follet. He knew now that Follet would not have waited at the café, even if he had ever come.

For fifteen minutes they sat there after Gorssmann left. Then Arnold rose and began to pace the floor with the gun in his hand. Occasionally he stood before Joseph and talked to him with the quick gestures of sign language. Whatever it was Joseph said, it seemed to frighten Arnold.

Baron knew that if he expected ever to do anything, it had to be with these two men and it had to be right away.

“He’s not coming back, you know,” he said to Arnold.

“Quiet,” Arnold said. “Don’t talk that way.”

Baron shrugged.

And sitting there like that, he summoned the ‘last of his strength and courage in an effort to think it out clearly, and face the issue the way it stood. He was certain now that Bette was not here. He could never admit to himself that she was dead. Why didn’t they kill him?

Somehow he had to get away. Right now Gorssmann was starting out to meet the head man, the same man Baron had been after all these years. But where? It was like a solemn voice inside his head threatening dark laughter.

“It’s true,” he said to Arnold. Arnold turned and came over and stood in front of him with the gun in his hand.

“What is true?” Arnold said.

“I’m not trying to frighten you,” Baron said. “But Hugo Gorssmann is not coming back. Can’t you see that? Why should he return here? It is foolish and you are a fool, just as Gorssmann said. Where is Lili?”

“She is gone. She has gone to Belgium. Hugo sent her on an errand.”

A piece of Baron chipped away. He swallowed, forcing a grin. “How do you know this is true?”

“Because!” Arnold cried. “It has to be true.”

“Sure. Where is my daughter, Bette? She was here, wasn’t she?”

Arnold looked at him and said nothing. The wheels were beginning to turn around inside his head, faster and faster. Baron could see this easily. He wished he could get his hands on that gun. Arnold carried it very loosely, carelessly. Joseph was preoccupied with some inner conflict. The man’s face twisted this way and that way and his gaze was glued to the ceiling.

“One thing,” Arnold said. “You can forget your daughter.”

He turned swiftly away, went over to Joseph, and began waving his hands again. He set the gun on a table by Joseph’s chair as he talked with the man.

Baron came out of the chair running. He struck Arnold across the back, reached for the gun, got it in his hand. Joseph was already lunging at him. Baron moved backward, tripped, sat down on the floor.

He took careful aim and pulled the trigger of the gun three times. He saw the slug tear into Joseph’s right knee. He saw the shock on the man’s face, the abrupt demolishment of satisfaction and orderliness, and Joseph sprawled on the floor. He clutched at his knee, felt of it, lay back and rolled and twisted on the floor with his mouth wide open, his tongue working in wild, silent screaming.

“Don’t move!” Baron said to Arnold.

Arnold did not move. He stood quite still, watching. His eyes were very bright, intense, his face deadly pale.

“I’ll kill you,” Baron said.

“Yes.”

Baron rose carefully from the floor, looking at Joseph. The man still lay there, twisting and groveling like some kind of animal, his mouth wide open screeching and screaming horrible silence. Blood trickled down his pants cuff and onto the floor, and as he moved about, it trailed in a bright stain on the flagstones, as a snail leaves a trail.