Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (51 page)
Read Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) Online
Authors: Helen Macinnes
Tags: #Thriller, #Mystery, #Suspense
Then Brownlee’s voice became grim. “The smoke was increasing. Just as I thought I’d really have to hit him on the head and carry him out, the firemen came up the escape and started hacking away at the window frame. One of them shouted to us to come out. I obeyed, because you just don’t argue with a fireman when he has a job to do. But Orpen was trying to open a safe he had hidden at the back of a bookshelf. So a couple of men jumped into the room and grabbed him and forced him back toward the fire escape, just as the door disappeared and the flames entered his room. Orpen was shoved out on the fire escape beside me. I started climbing down. Orpen was yelling, “The suitcase, the suitcase.’ One of the firemen, perhaps to humour him, perhaps to get him down without any trouble, said ‘Okay, fellow. Here she comes,’ and he threw it through the window at Orpen’s feet.”
Brownlee paused. “I was looking back at Orpen. I saw the suitcase land and snap open. Orpen bent to close it, but he moved too quickly and he fell against it. The suitcase toppled on the edge of the fire escape and everything began to spill out of it. Something heavy—a steel box, I think—smashed down a few steps and then bounced between the railings into the courtyard. And the loose things scattered around at his feet, and hundreds of sheets of paper floated around and then blew over the tree in the yard. I began to laugh. Yes, I was laughing. And at that moment, he straightened up, still holding the lid of the suitcase so that it dangled from his hands. He looked at me. Then he looked at the city. He dropped the suitcase. And then he swung himself over the rail, and he let go, and he fell.”
There was a pause.
Then Paul said, “Did he know who you were?”
Brownlee shook his head. “No. I could have been—anybody.”
“Was that his reason?” Jon asked.
Brownlee said, “I don’t know. I’ve thought of ten reasons. By tomorrow, I’ll have thought of another five. Yet there’s one reason I keep coming back to. It’s the only one that makes any sense when I start thinking myself into Orpen’s character, Orpen’s beliefs. Then, I see his death as a confession. A confession of heresy, a confession of treachery to the Party.”
Paul leaned forward. “That’s almost what Rona said. She called his death an admission of guilt. To them. Not to us.”
“What else did she say?” Brownlee asked quickly.
“Not very much. To be quite frank, I was trying to get her mind away from Orpen. She did mention a telephone call, though. She seemed to think it was important.”
Brownlee nodded as if he had already learned about that. For a moment or two, he sat quite silent. Then he said, “Rona was right. Orpen was trying to justify himself by that call, but his friends didn’t believe him. Their reply was to put their plan into operation right away. The attempt to burn his room and destroy his records was a very plain answer.”
“A cold-blooded answer,” said Jon. He was thinking of his pupil Robert Cash, who would never believe this story. Cash was a romantic beginner in Communism, still seeing it in its most idealistic stage. Even Scott Ettley had been only half a Communist compared to the professional like Orpen. But Orpen had travelled the full road. He not only understood but accepted its final logic. “Yet Orpen must have thought of escape. The suitcase—his attempt to gather his documents together... Why didn’t he go on down that stairway, search for all the papers that had been scattered, and then disappear as he had plann—” Jon broke off. “But of course,” he added, “where could he go? What could he do? He rejected our world, and his world had condemned him. Is that it?” He looked at Brownlee for confirmation.
“Partly. But only partly. You are forgetting that Orpen was the complete Communist: he was a fully initiated member of a fanatical primitive religion. Recently, he had obviously committed some heresy. Whatever it was, it must have been something that the Party feared so much that it had to be rooted out at once and destroyed. Orpen was in the last stage of his revolt—perhaps it even had become only a protest against the sentence passed on him—when he packed that suitcase and thought of escape. But as he stood on that narrow iron platform with the empty suitcase dangling from his hand and watched his escape fail so ludicrously, his revolt was over. And with the end of his revolt, he returned to complete obedience. The Party was everything and he was nothing. He was guilty; even the suitcase which he now dropped at his feet was a witness against him. His escape and rebellion would have weakened the Party, just as his death would strengthen its discipline. So he admitted his guilt, fully, calmly, obediently. And he not only accepted the sentence that had been passed on him, but he went out to meet it. He executed himself.”
Again there was silence in the room.
“And what was in that suitcase?” Jon asked at last.
“It gave the FBI a fine paper-chase.”
“You don’t know if there was anything valuable after all?”
“We won’t be told,” Brownlee said with a smile. “Nor will we be told what the safe contained.”
“Then the room wasn’t burned out?”
“Only badly damaged. The firemen pumped a lot of water into it.”
“That’s going to be disappointing for Orpen’s friends,” Paul said thoughtfully.
“Yes. The police stopped one man trying a little too hard to get up to see the remains. He said he was a reporter. Another tried to climb the fire escape with a camera. I shouldn’t be surprised if a lawyer has appeared on the scene by this time, claiming to represent Orpen’s estate and wanting all his private papers intact.”
“Then there
is
something valuable in the safe,” Jon said.
“Looks like it.”
Paul said, “One day we’ll see the results when we pick up the morning paper and read about some new exposure of the enemy working underground—a sabotage plan discovered, a propaganda ring shown up, a carefully staged riot prevented, an attempt to create a ‘revolutionary situation’ beaten. And we’ll make a guess or two that we saw the beginning of that. It’s about all we’ll ever know.”
“That’s about all,” Roger Brownlee agreed. “But the evil that men do lives after them... Orpen isn’t dead yet, to a lot of people.” He rose, and held out his hand. “You at least can forget him,” he said to Jon.
“I’ll see you to the door,” Jon said.
“I must go too,” Paul said.
Jon looked at him. “No, you don’t. I’ve got some things I want to talk to you about.”
But Haydn followed them into the hall.
“Did you hear of Paul’s idea about giving up his job?” Jon asked. “He says he’s going to leave
Trend
. Isn’t that drastic? I’m against it.”
Roger Brownlee halted at the kitchen door. “Yes, he told me today.” He looked at Barbara in her high chair, and Rona sitting opposite her. “Hello, you two! How’s that egg custard, Barbara?” Ghastly, he thought, as he looked at the yellow goo in the rose-painted dish. But then he wasn’t an egg custard or milk pudding addict. Barbara seemed to be thriving on it, though. She turned her round pink face to smile at him as she took another spoonful. She aimed for her mouth but the spoon jabbed against her cheek. “Keep your eye on it,” he advised her. “It goes in the front door. I’ve tried for years, but the ear is no good at all.”
“Funny man?” Barbara asked Rona, and let her jawline be wiped free of custard.
Rona looked at the men grouped in the doorway. “Yes,” she said, and she began to smile.
“That’s Barbara’s polite way of trying to evade the fact that she didn’t understand one word you said,” Jon explained. Then he grinned as he added, “She must like the look of your face, though, or she wouldn’t have been polite.”
Brownlee said, “The only women who like the look of my face are always under two years old.” He was watching Rona as he spoke. “Goodbye,” he said, giving them both a warm smile as he turned away.
“Frankly, Paul,” he said, stopping in the hall to continue Jon’s discussion, “I don’t think you should give up your job, yet. I don’t know—and I hope I’m wrong—but I’ve a hunch that a lot of us may have to give up our jobs soon enough.” Then he moved towards the door. “After all, you’ve been doing useful work at
Trend
, and we need loyal editors. No good letting the Blackworths and Murrays have a clear field. That’s how your boss Weidler sees it, I’m sure. I know you were pretty upset this morning and wanted some action, but...” His voice faded.
* * *
Rona, watching Barbara finish the custard and try to scrape the rose off the plate, heard the distant goodbyes being made. Suddenly, she rose and went to the kitchen door. “Paul,” she called. “How does the story end?”
Paul came back. “The story?”
“The hippopotamus with the hat and the cherries and the bow?”
“Blue bow,” Barbara prompted.
“She’s been asking me all morning to finish it. And I can’t.”
Paul said awkwardly, “I guess I—I don’t know the end. I got stuck, too.”
Behind them, Barbara said, “Tell me a story, tell me a story.” She tried to struggle down from the high chair.
Jon returned. “Come on, Paul, let’s have another drink. I need one. You go ahead and pour it, while I call Peggy. And invent an end to that story, or we’ll never get this bundle to bed.” He lifted Barbara before she could fall, and carried her toward the telephone.
Rona said, “What did Roger Brownlee mean?” She looked at the table, lifted Barbara’s plate and then set it down again. “Did he mean you were going away? Again?” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word
war
. Instead, she said, “Does he think there will be—trouble?”
Paul said, “He’s a pessimistic kind of optimist.”
But no fool, she thought, no fool. She looked up at Paul. “Oh, no, Paul. Oh, no!”
“Time to worry about that when we come to it—if we come,” he said gently.
“Yes,” she said. She met his eyes. And she smiled for him. The tears in her eyes were for him too. She held out both her hands. “Oh, Paul!” she said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Helen MacInnes, whom the
Sunday Express
called ‘the Queen of spy writers’, was the author of many distinguished suspense novels.
Born in Scotland, she studied at the University of Glasgow and University College, London, then went to Oxford after her marriage to Gilbert Highet, the eminent critic and educator. In 1937 the Highets went to New York, and except during her husband’s war service, Helen MacInnes lived there ever since.
Since her first novel
Above Suspicion
was published in 1941 to immediate success, all her novels have been bestsellers;
The Salzburg Connection
was also a major film.
Helen MacInnes died in September 1985.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
HELEN MacINNES
A series of slick espionage thrillers from the
New York Times
bestselling “Queen of Spy Writers.”
Pray for a Brave Heart
Above Suspicion
Assignment in Brittany
North From Rome
Decision at Delphi
The Venetian Affair
The Salzburg Connection
Message From Málaga
While We Still Live
The Double Image
Horizon
Snare of the Hunter
Agent in Place
PRAISE FOR HELEN MacINNES
“The queen of spy writers.”
Sunday Express
“Definitely in the top class.”
Daily Mail
“The hallmarks of a MacInnes novel of suspense are as individual and as clearly stamped as a Hitchcock thriller.”
The New York Times
“A sophisticated thriller. The story builds up to an exciting climax.”
Times Literary Supplement
“Absorbing, vivid, often genuinely terrifying.”
Observer
“She can hang her cloak and dagger right up there with Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.”
Newsweek
“An atmosphere that is ready to explode with tension... a wonderfully readable book.”
The New Yorker
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
THE MATT HELM SERIES
BY DONALD HAMILTON
The long awaited return of the United States’ toughest special agent.
Death of a Citizen
(February 2013)
The Wrecking Crew
(February 2013)
The Removers
(April 2013)
The Silencers
(June 2013)
Murderers’ Row
(August 2013)
The Ambushers
(October 2013)
The Shadowers
(December 2013)
The Ravagers
(February 2014)
PRAISE FOR DONALD HAMILTON
“Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told.” Anthony Boucher,
The New York Times
“This series by Donald Hamilton is the top-ranking American secret agent fare, with its intelligent protagonist and an author who consistently writes in high style. Good writing, slick plotting and stimulating characters, all tartly flavored with wit.”
Book Week
“Matt Helm is as credible a man of violence as has ever figured in the fiction of intrigue.”
The New York Sunday Times
“Fast, tightly written, brutal, and very good...”
Milwaukee Journal
Table of Contents
Also Available from Titan Books
Chapter 1