Tales From Gavagan's Bar (32 page)

             
Just as I came in, the row reached its peak. Mintz flew completely off the handle, called in one of the Persian police, and said he wanted Hamid questioned. Now, in case you don't know it, the methods of the Persian police are far from gentle. I didn't blame old Hamid a bit for turning pale at the prospect, but he was only a dirty old gang-boss of peasants, and Mintz the representative of a powerful corporation, so they were about to take him away when I cut in with the suggestion that the office record would show very clearly whether Hamid had been paid or not. Then it developed that the files were locked in the big boss's private safe, and he'd gone off up-country and wouldn't be back till Tuesday.

             
Well, I used to be in the Army Counter-intelligence, you know, and in training for that, one of the courses they give you is safe-breaking. I suppose I paid about as much attention to it as the average student, which was enough to get me by. But I did know something about cracking a simple safe with a tumbler lock, and that was the kind the big boss had. So I shooed everybody out of the office except Mintz—he sat there making nasty cracks—and I went to work on the safe. I found I had forgotten most of what I knew, so that it took me over two hours. It must have been a fairly unpleasant two hours for Hamid, sitting outside there with that Persian cop, licking his chops and just waiting for the opportunity to start pulling out fingernails. But at the end of it, the safe door swung open without any intervention of reaching through the fourth dimension into a three-dimensional object.

             
In the safe, as you might expect, were not only records showing Hamid Abadi hadn't been paid, but also a memo from the big boss to Mari Sanjari, the secretary, saying: "Be sure to pay Hamid for his gang." Mari had just tucked everything into the safe and slammed the door when the big boss left.

             
The big point about the affair was Hamid's gratitude. He kissed my hand and wanted to kiss my face, which I didn't like a bit, because he smelled of turmeric. He told me how grateful he was, and pushed into my hand a little gold amulet on a chain. "It open all locked places to you," he said, in his version of English.

             
The thing is flat and oval and has on it something that looks like a hand, only it's a pretty crude one, holding something that might be a sword and might be a cross. But if it's a sword, the point is blunt, and if it's a cross, it's being held upside down. There's some lettering on it, what kind I don't know; it might have been made by a spider leaving footprints.

             
I thought the gift was a pretty touching expression of the old boy's gratitude. Even the intrinsic value of the gold made it valuable in a place like Iran. But I didn't try to refuse it; that would have been an unbearable insult to a Persian. I simply looped the chain through my own key chain and carried it around as a pocket piece. With the story of Mintz and the safe-cracking job, it made good cocktail party conversation.

             
The first time it made anything more was after a cocktail party where I stayed late, had a few drinks too many, and no dinner but the canapes. I confess, I was more than half-seas over, maybe three-quarters. When I got home, I stuck my key in the lock, only I didn't realize till later it wasn't my key, it was the amulet Hamid gave me. The door swung right open. The instant I stumbled through, I realized something was wrong.

             
A gust of rain hit me in the face, and it had been a fine night outside. Moreover, my feet were not on a hardwood floor, but on cobbles, and the night was as black as the inside
of a billy goat, with open sky overhead. I want to tell you that when people say a shock like that knocks you sober all at once, they're crazy. I was still more than half-fried, and everything was sort of reeling around me, but after a couple of minutes the rain on my head and getting my eyes accustomed to the dark enabled me to see where I was.

             
I was in a stone-paved courtyard with a building about five stories high forming an L around it, and a tree growing out of the stones at the angle where the end of the L met the next building. There was a door and some windows looking on the court, but they were completely black and silent. Behind me a high wall cut off the view, and I had apparently come through a kind of gate in it.

             
I thought that if I could go through that gate in one direction, I could in the other, so I opened it. Nothing happened—that is, nothing except that I found myself in a narrow street, not very long, with the shadowy forms of buildings at either end, all of them as black and silent as though this were a deserted city. I was staggering a little and when I put my hand against the wall it struck some kind of sign, so I snapped my lighter to have a look at it. In letters about four inches high it said, "Impasse du Petit Jesus," and I want to tell you that stopped me cold.

             
As I said, I wasn't in very good shape for figuring things out, but before I had time to figure anything out, a searchlight beam went across the sky, then another and another, and the most awful pandemonium broke out all around, all sorts of sirens, not like sirens in this country, but a high pitched "Eeeep-eeep-eeepy," and some kind of sound truck with dim lights went past on one of the cross streets at the end, "eeping" like mad. There were more searchlight beams against the bottom of the clouds, and off in the distance something that sounded like gunfire, and then a heavier explosion, and there was a vivid flash of light behind the buildings in the distance.

             
I was getting sober enough to decide that I didn't like any part of this combination of being soaked and maybe socked, when there was a crash as though the whole sky had fallen in,
stones went whizzing past my ears, and most of one of the buildings farther down the Alley of the Little Jesus slid into the street and began to burn. I remember thinking how lucky I was they had used a low-power bomb as I ran toward the place, because a big one would have totally demolished me along with most of the buildings on the street.

             
Windows were coming open all around and doors too, I suppose, but because I was in the street already, I got to the bombed house first. I heard a woman's voice screaming for help from somewhere near the top of the pile of rubble, and what with the alcohol in me and the excitement, I never thought of doing anything but starting to climb toward the voice. Just as I got near the top, there was another boom which must have been gas catching somewhere, because bright blue flames began to come up, one of them catching me painfully on the hand.

             
Just beyond was the woman, her head sticking out, and even though she was disheveled and screaming I could see by the light of the fires that she was one of the loveliest objects I have ever put my eyes on. I wrenched at the stones and pieces of wood to get her clear. She stopped screaming and said: "Hurry, Monsieur, for the love of God. I am not hurt, but imprisoned."

             
I don't know how long I was at it. All I know is that I wasn't paying attention to anything but trying to get her out, and the fire seemed to be gaining on both of us in spite of the rain. Just as I got a big piece of board and pried loose the bent bedstead that was holding her down, a couple of guys in those funny brass helmets French firemen wear were there beside me, hauling us both out and down a short ladder they had run up the side of the rubble heap. Quite a little crowd had collected at the bottom and they cheered me, the only time such a thing has happened since I hit a home run while I was playing third base for my high school team.

             
They got a coat around the girl, who had been in a nightgown. She said: "I am called Antoinette Violanta. At present, as you see, I have no home, but if Monsieur will tell me his name and where he is staying, I can notify him of
where to come to receive my thanks."

             
"My name's Allen," I told her, "but—well—I don't exactly know—"

             
"Ah, Monsieur is an American?" she said. "You speak French very purely, very correctly."

             
"Thank you," I said, seeing that she apparently really wanted to make something of it, and being not in the least unwilling. "Is it possible, Mile. Violanta, that I could accompany you—"

             
Everybody except the firemen who were working on the burning house had been crowding round. Now one of those damned French policemen touched me on the arm. I suppose he must have noticed my hesitation about giving an address.

             
"Monsieur is very brave, very strong. May I see Monsieur's card of identity?
C'est la guerre."

             
I pulled out my wallet and handed him my old C.I.C. card from the war, which I've found is always good identification because it puts you on the side of the law. He looked at it with a flashlight, and I could see his eyebrows wiggle. He bowed to both of us.

             
"Will Monsieur and Madame accompany me to the Mairie of the Arrondisement?" he said. "A matter of records, after which quarters will be provided for you, Madame, as a person distressed."

             
He led the way to the damndest old jalopy of a car I ever saw, but I wasn't paying much attention to it, because I was too busy talking to Antoinette Violanta. It seemed she was a dramatic student and lived in what they called a
pension,
which is a kind of boarding house. The Mairie was a big brown building, with blackout curtains at the windows, where they took us into an official room and a clerk took down our names. The cop who had brought us whispered something to him; he asked to see my identity card again, then took it with him and went out. I sat down and talked to Antoinette Violanta some more.

             
After a long wait he came back and bowed to her. "Mile. Violanta," he said, "it has been arranged to provide you with a room in the Mairie itself for this night."

             
She said good night and let me hold her hand for a minute. It occurred to me that I didn't have any place to go, but I wasn't allowed to bother about that, because almost as soon as she got out of the room the clerk came back, followed by another cop and a big old papa of a Frenchman with a bald head and handlebar moustaches, dressed in a black silk robe. He sat down behind a desk, picked up the identity card and looked at me:

             
"M. Allen," he said, "you swear that the information in this document is correct?"

             
"Certainly," I told him. "It's official. The photograph matches, doesn't it?"

             
"M. Allen, you are extraordinarily well-developed for a man of such tender years."

             
"I don't know about the years being tender," I said. "I'm thirty-four; born in 1915."

             
"Evidently. And you are a sergeant in the Counterintelligence Corps of the American army, the 63rd Division?"

             
"Yes."

             
"M. Allen, you will oblige me by telling me where the 63rd Division is engaged."

             
"Why, we went in to cut off the Colmar pocket first," I said, "and then up into the Saar, with the Seventh Army."

             
The cops looked at me as though I had something dirty, and the old guy banged his fist on the desk. "Assassin! Perjurer! Spy!" he shouted, "Confess! You are in the pay of the Boches!"

             
"I'll confess nothing of the sort—" I began, but he cut me off: "Double liar! We have confirmed the facts telephon-ically. In the army of our gallant allies, the Americans, there is no 63rd Division and no Counter-intelligence Corps. A mistake? You Boches always make them, to the little adding those of a true grandeur, in the effort to distract—such as setting your birthdate at an hour which would render you three years old."

             
He waved dramatically at the calendar on the wall, and all at once I understood why the car we came in looked like such an antique and all the clothes of the people seemed a
little funny. The top sheet was for July 1918.

             
I hadn't a word to say. The magistrate shook his finger at me. "Evidently the building in the Impasse du Petit Jesus was blown up by you, assassin, instead of a bomb from one of your airplanes. The ruins will be searched to discover the reason. Place him in a cell until this is done. And you, spy, remember that all is lost."