Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (48 page)

“Did the FBI know he was dead?”

“It was they who told me.”

He said slowly, “You are cleverer than I thought, Miss Metford. You know how to hit and when to hit. Am I supposed to be so alarmed and confused that you can persuade me to go to the FBI? Is that why you came here—to persuade me?”

“I had hoped you would go,” she said frankly, “but not for those reasons.”

“For what reasons, then?” He looked at her in amazement. “Did you really believe I was a traitor?”

“I believed you might still have a conscience.”

“Ah,” he said bitingly, “I thought you’d bring in conscience, somehow. You’ve the usual bourgeois weakness for lofty moral sentiment.”

He lifted the telephone and dialled. He was still watching her with amusement. Then, as he waited for the answer, he became the expressionless man again, the white-faced mask with the quiet, commanding voice. He identified the speaker at the other end of the wire carefully. “Jim? Ed speaking. I can’t leave here at the moment, and I’ve run out of cigarettes. Bring some over, and we can have a talk. Thanks.”

He replaced the receiver. “Disappointed?” he asked. “Well, you’ll probably hear more when Jim gets to the nearest cigar store and ’phones me in safety from there. But I doubt if you’ll understand any better than you did that time.”

Rona had risen to her feet.

“Leaving?” he asked with a smile.

“If you’ll unlock the door with the key you put in your pocket.”

“You take your defeat well,” he said. “You can go back and tell your friends in the FBI that this little attempt failed badly. I’m highly flattered that you thought I was so important.”

Rona took a step toward the door, but he barred the way.

“Not yet,” Orpen said. “I have some questions to ask you, Miss Metford. Sit down.”

The telephone rang.

“Jim was quick,” he said. At least, he thought with some satisfaction, they still paid attention to him. He lifted the receiver and answered, his voice confident. “Jim? Ed speaking. Sorry I couldn’t see you this week. Don’t worry, it was nothing serious—just a touch of grippe. I’m all right now. I want to see you soon. This evening? Good. I have a lot to tell you. And make it a party—invite Peter and the rest of the boys. I feel like a party... No, I’ve seen no one this week. No one. Except Mac. Did he say I was ill?—Seriously ill? He did? I thought that was the trouble. Well, you can’t trust what Mac says... I said you can’t trust what Mac says. Don’t worry about my health. And tell the others I don’t have to be looked after like an invalid. By the way, Mac isn’t in such good shape himself. No hope. The doctors have been with him. Yes, it’s serious... He called the doctors last night, I understand.” Orpen glanced over at Rona. “His girl brought me the news. I’m convinced she’s right. That has been one of my worries this week, frankly. Thought you’d like to know at once. See you later.”

Orpen stood for a few moments looking down at the ’phone. Well, he had given them the warning that Scott Ettley was now a danger to them. It might have been an exaggeration to say that Ettley had gone to the FBI last night. But Ettley was dead, and his evidence was silenced. And if I produce counter-evidence, Orpen thought, if I can show he was a traitor, that his lies were an attempt to mislead the Committee, to attack me, to endanger our work?—Yes, that is my case. Ettley’s death strengthens it.

He left the desk and came forward to where Rona was still standing. “Sit down,” he said quietly.

Rona looked at him with horror. She retreated a step. “I brought you news of Scott’s death,” she said, “and you’ve used it to—to—”

“To blacken Ettley and whitewash myself? But you are wrong, Miss Metford. Ettley was the traitor, not I.” He paused. He was listening, suddenly alert, to the sound of men’s voices on the staircase. A man’s footsteps were coming this way.

Rona said, “Your friends? They didn’t believe you after all. You are still ‘ill’ to them, Orpen.”

He turned on her, clamping his hand across her mouth, seizing her arm and twisting it behind her back. He looked desperately at the box on his desk, at the last list he had written and not yet destroyed. “Still!” he whispered, tightening his grip on her body, pressing her arm higher against her spine.

She tried to move her feet, to make even the smallest sound, but the pain silenced her. Last night the grip had tightened, last night... The terror and nausea surged back. Even as the doorbell rang, as she heard a voice—a voice that sounded like Paul’s, a voice calling “Rona!”—she sagged toward the floor. The voice, faint and fading into the black silence that fell over and around her, was gone. The pain was gone. The room stretched out endlessly; the door drew back and farther back, receding into the distance, smaller and still smaller until it vanished.

Orpen tightened his hold. Was her faint a pretence? He daren’t risk anything. He stood, holding the dead weight against his body, his hand still muffling her mouth.

In a little while, the knocking at the door stopped and the footsteps retreated. “No one there at all,” a man’s voice said. The footsteps were hurrying, growing fainter, becoming only a distant clatter.

Orpen moved then, dragging the girl to an armchair. Let her revive slowly, he thought; the more slowly, the safer it will be. He crossed quickly over to the door and stood there listening. But the footsteps had gone.

He lit a pipe, his hands trembling, his annoyance growing as he watched their fear. I have never used violence in my life, he thought. I’m unnerved, that’s all. Ettley’s treachery, my danger, the danger to the Party—they’ve all unnerved me. He looked down at Rona. And this girl, too, he thought, the way she has of talking, the way she twists my words... I have never used violence in my life, he repeated, trying to calm himself. But he thought of what the girl would say if she heard him. She would say, “You have known of violence committed, you have seen comrades disappear and never asked questions, you have abandoned Jack and silenced the doubts over his death, you have—” Stop this, he told himself, stop this!

He stared down at the girl. Yes, he could begin to see how she had weakened Ettley. It was she who had killed Ettley. He stared down at the white face, at the soft dark hair.

She opened her eyes, her lips parted, she put a hand to her throat. Slowly, she tried to sit up. She looked around helplessly, then she looked at him.

Silently, he brought her a glass of water. His movements were decided once more, his face was calm. He drew a chair up to face her. “Now,” he said quietly, almost gently, “tell me what Scott told you. All of it.” He reached toward the small table at her elbow and picked up a battered pack of cigarettes. He offered her one, saying with a pleasant smile that he didn’t smoke cigarettes himself and that these were remainders from a party last week. Rona refused the slightly bent, crumpled cigarette. She felt sick, but she didn’t give that as an excuse. He must not know how the touch of his hand on her arm, the feeling of his fingers on her flesh could make her so afraid—afraid beyond all reason, beyond all control.

She looked at the window. “Please,” she said. “There’s no air in the room. I can’t breathe.”

He rose. He hesitated. Then he opened the door into the small darkened room which lay at the back of the house. Here, a suitcase lay on the floor beside the disordered bed, and clothes and books and papers were heaped around it. He stepped carefully over the litter. (I’ll have to clear this up, now, he was thinking. He could even smile grimly at the evidence of flight scattered around him.) He reached the windows and opened the heavy shutters. Then he unlocked the window quickly, and lowered its upper half a few inches. He drew back against the folded shutters and looked down into the courtyard with its high wall. The superintendent’s dog was there, a large brute that guarded the fire escape as if Orpen had trained it himself. Orpen’s smile deepened.

He came back into the living-room. The girl was sitting as he had left her. All the fight in her is gone, he thought, all her resistance. He said, with great good humour, glancing back at the opened window, “That will have to do meanwhile. However, this state of siege will soon be over. In fact, it is over. For whoever came to the door was not interested in me. Only in you, Miss Metford. And he wasn’t even sure if you were here. So no one knows that you are here. Isn’t that right?”

He sat down on the chair facing her, drawing it nearer. “Now, before I leave for my meeting, tell me about Scott Ettley. I must know. You understand?” His voice was kindly, reassuring. There was a small smile on the thin lips. But the grey eyes behind the glasses were cold and hard.

26

Paul Haydn ran down the narrow stairs from Orpen’s apartment. Behind him, quick enough, but paying more attention to torn linoleum and sloping treads, was the superintendent. The noise they made brought a woman on to the third-floor landing, with a pot of potatoes still in her hand. “What d’you think you are?” she yelled after them, leaning over the shaking handrail. “House-wreckers?” And having registered her protest, and underlined it with a sharply banged door, she retired to mash the potatoes.

In the hall, Paul paid no attention to the superintendent, but went straight to the ’phone that hung on the wall. He found a nickel and dialled the Tysons’ number. As he expected, there was no answer. Rona was gone. Perhaps she was delayed, he thought, perhaps she’s only now on her way here. He tried to imagine where she would have left Barbara for safety, but that question beat him completely. Well, he thought, I’ll get hold of Roger Brownlee. He can check up with his friends at the FBI and find out where Rona is—after all, they are supposed to be keeping an eye on her.

“Have you change?” he asked the superintendent, holding out the loose money he had found in his pocket—a fifty cent piece and a clutter of pennies.

The man shook his head. “I know!” he said, suddenly helpful, and opened the front door eagerly. “Hey, there!” he called to the workmen. “Any of you guys got a nickel or a dime? We’re stuck, here.”

One of the workmen rose quickly and came over to the house. “Sure,” he said. He ran up the steps, fumbling in his pocket.

“Thanks,” Paul Haydn said. “This is kind of important.” He nodded gratefully to the red-haired young man in work-stained jeans and white cotton undershirt, and turned once more to the ’phone.

The man hesitated in the doorway, his back to the bright street now settled into midday silence. He caught a brief sign from the superintendent. Then he said, “Any water to drink around here?” The easy grin on his round, good-natured face had gone. His eyes asked a different question.

“Sure,” the superintendent said quickly. “Help yourself.” He pointed to a door at the back of the hall. “I’ll find you a spare bottle,” he said, following the workman. The two men disappeared down the basement steps.

The sunlight streamed over the threshold, picking out the cracks on the yellowed wall, the streaks of dust on the dingy linoleum. Paul waited, the receiver at his ear, listening to the repeated signal that told him Brownlee’s office was as empty as this narrow hall. He stood there, listening long after he knew it was hopeless, his eyes dark with worry, his jaw clenched. Then he hooked the receiver on to its box. But he still stood there, staring at the cracked plaster and the dust-streaked floor.

“You know,” the superintendent said as he returned to the hall. “Orpen’s up there, all right.” He glanced at the red-haired workman who stood at his elbow. “I heard him moving around this morning when I was up on the top floor fixing the light.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me before?” Paul asked angrily.

“Wouldn’t have done you much good,” the superintendent said. “He’s playing possum. The minute he hears someone, he’s silent as death. Guess he wants to pretend he’s visiting his aunt in the country.”

Paul Haydn frowned. A thoughtful look came over his face.

“Having trouble with bill collectors?” he suggested, but he obviously didn’t believe what he said.

The superintendent looked Haydn up and down. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s about it, I guess.”

“You know,” Paul said, “it might be an idea to call a cop and see what’s wrong upstairs. Orpen could be ill.” He smiled grimly. “We might even have to hammer our way in. What about borrowing a pick-axe?” he asked the workman, who seemed to enjoy spending the last ten minutes of his lunchtime just standing around listening.

The red-haired man stared at him and then looked at the superintendent.

“Forget it,” Paul said. “At the moment I’ve other things to think about than a man who doesn’t answer his doorbell.” He looked angrily out into the street.

“I’ve been wondering about that girl,” the red-haired man said. “Was she wearing a blue dress?”

Paul looked at the man helplessly. “I couldn’t say.” Rona didn’t wear much blue, he remembered.

“Did she—” began the workman, but light footsteps at the door interrupted him. He turned quickly around. He saw a white-haired man, thin, medium height, alert face, coming into the house.

“Something wrong, Paul?” the newcomer was saying.

Haydn straightened up. “You’re damned well right,” he said angrily to Roger Brownlee. “Rona isn’t here.”

“That’s odd,” Brownlee said. “I saw the agent who is keeping an eye on her sitting in a car parked along the street. He wouldn’t be sitting there so calmly if she weren’t here.” He glanced at the superintendent and the red-haired man in work clothes. “I’ll call the FBI. They’ve slipped up.” He looked again at the superintendent. “Paul, you run out and talk to the man in the grey Plymouth, I think he’s the same guy you met last night.”

Paul glanced up the staircase behind him. “I’d rather start talking to Orpen,” he said grimly.

“We’ve got to be sure I’m right,” Brownlee said.

Then the superintendent took a step forward. “What’s your problem?” he asked. His voice had lost its drawl. “Perhaps it’s our problem, too.”

The red-haired workman said, “A dark-haired girl in a blue dress went upstairs over half an hour ago. That right?” He looked at the superintendent for confirmation.

Paul took a step forward.