Death Takes a Bow (28 page)

“Please,” Mrs. North said. “I think maybe the person I want is there. I'm sorry to wake you.”

“You're wasting your time,” the man told her. But he walked toward the elevator and said, “What floor?”

“I don't mind,” Mrs. North said. “It won't be much time, really. Fourth.”

The man closed the door and looked dully at nothing and ran the elevator up. He opened the doors and said, “Four” with weariness and clanged the elevator doors closed almost on Mrs. North's heels. It was only after the elevator had gone down, leaving her in a peculiarly deserted corridor, that Mrs. North began to wonder whether she was being very wise. Because if she was right, she was not going to be popular and the fourth floor of an apparently deserted office building was a lonely place to be unpopular in. But probably, she decided, looking at the arrow which pointed toward rooms 410 to 422, the elevator operator was right, and she was merely wasting her time. She began to hope she was, and told herself not to be silly.

She went along, looking for 418 and expecting to find that it, like the other doors, showed no light through ground glass. She came to 418 and read the gold lettering on the ground glass and found that there was a light behind it. And, furthermore, the door was not quite closed. Mrs. North was conscious of a sharp, unmistakable, disappointment. She was pretty sure, new, that she was being unwise. At the least, she should have told Jerry. Or Bill. Or even the nieces.

But if she went back now she would seem very foolish to herself, and that was always an uncomfortable feeling. And perhaps, after all, there would be merely a stenographer in the outer office. Mrs. North opened the door.

The door opened on a small room with a railing across it. There was a desk behind the railing, but it was a vacant desk; it was a clean, Saturday afternoon desk. To the left, as Mrs. North faced the railing, the wall was blank, but to the right there was a door. The door was closed, but there was a light behind it; and then Mrs. North heard voices. One was a man's voice, and she heard it first.

“I think you are not telling the truth,” the voice, light for a man's voice, said. “There is no reason why you should not tell the truth to me. We are on the same side.”

“I don't know what you mean,” the other voice said. It was a woman's voice; it was Mrs. Paul Williams' voice. It sounded as if Mrs. Williams was nervous.

“Please,” the man said. Then his voice got low. Mrs. North went to the door and put her ear to the ground glass. “—for the side we are both on,” the man finished. “You must tell me.”

“I think you've gone crazy,” Mrs. Williams said. “I don't know what you're talking about. I'll call the police.”

“Please,” the voice said. “That would be very foolish. The police are stupid; they would not understand. I would show them—”

Mrs. North listened eagerly, but the man did not say what he would show them. Presumably he showed whatever it was to Mrs. Williams.

“You're making a mistake,” Mrs. Williams said. “I don't know anything about it—about any of it. What country do you think you are in?”

That was puzzling. Mrs. North pressed tight to the door in order to hear what country the man thought he was in. She steadied herself by holding onto the knob, and she must—she realized afterward that she must—have turned it. Because the door opened and Mrs. North, swinging on it like a child on a fence gate, swept violently into the room. She brought up with a jar when the door struck a doorstop.

Mrs. Williams was sitting in her own office, at her own desk. The little dark man with the funny name was standing beside her, at the end of the desk, holding something. As Mrs. North crashed in several things happened.

The man whirled away from Mrs. Williams and faced the door, and as he turned something dropped from his hand. It dropped to the floor and broke with the thin clatter of glass. And in Bandelman Jung's other hand there was a pistol, and it was pointed at Mrs. North.

For a moment the three stared at one another and then Mrs. North, in a strange, alarmed voice, said, “Oh!”

“So,” Bandelman Jung said, “they sent you. They are fools!”

“He's got a gun,” Mrs. Williams said. Her voice was high and nervous. “He's got a gun. I think he's gone crazy.”

“A woman
!” Jung said, and there was surprised contempt in his tone. “They sent a woman!” He made a kind of snorting noise. It was almost, Mrs. North thought in a moment of alarmed lucidity, as if he had said
“Bah
!”

“Who sent me?” she said. “I didn't come to see you.”

“You followed me,” Jung told her, with contempt. “The other one I fooled, but I did not know they would send a woman. The softlings.”

“What?” Mrs. North said.

“I tell you,” Mrs. Williams said, “he's gone crazy. He was threatening to kill me. Like he killed—”

“Shut up!” Jung told her. “I have killed plenty. Watch out I do not kill you.”

He was, Mrs. North thought, still a preposterous little man. The pistol was too big for him, the words were too big for him. He was a small, absurd gesture. She wanted to laugh.

“I don't believe it,” she said. “You haven't killed plenty. You're—you're too little.”

He glared at her, and the pistol was an immediate threat. Mrs. North looked at his eyes and they were small, frightening eyes. They were blank in a strange fashion, as if they were solid and opaque. It came over Mrs. North, frighteningly, that she was making a terrible mistake. Little Mr. Jung was not at all funny.

“You believe it,” he told her. The words were a command. “You better believe it. You are a softling.”

There wasn't any such word, Mrs. North told herself. The fact gave her an odd, tenuous, feeling of superiority. She looked again at Mr. Jung's eyes, and again at the pistol, and the feeling vanished.

“All right,” she said, “I believe it.”

She tried to make it sound conversational.

“I could kill you both,” Mr. Jung said. “She is a traitor. You are from the police. I could kill you both and get away.”

“He's mad,” Mrs. Williams said. “He's completely mad. A traitor!”

“You,” Mr. Jung told her, “you I would like to kill. But that is not for me. If I am told, yes. I should like to kill you.”

It was, Mrs. North decided, entirely bewildering. She had come here with a theory, and thinking to ask two questions, and it had, at the last moment, seemed as if there might be some danger in it. But there was nothing in her plans about a little man with opaque eyes, and a gun; nothing about a conversation which seemed to be about incomprehensible things—about “traitors” and killing people one was told to kill.

She looked helplessly at Mrs. Williams, who was sitting with both hands on the desk. It occurred to Mrs. North that Mrs. Williams had been told to keep both hands on the desk.

“He came in raving,” Mrs. Williams said. Her voice was less shrill than it had been. “He's like—like a bad melodrama. He keeps accusing me of preposterous things … of being an agent for the Nazis; of—”

“You will be quiet,” Jung said. As he said it he struck, snake-like, with his free hand. His open hand struck Mrs. Williams across the mouth. After a second, blood trickled slowly from her mouth. She put a hand up to it and brought the hand away again and looked at the blood on it with surprised eyes.

“No!” Mrs. North said. “You can't—you—”

“She is a fool,” Jung said. “She should keep her mouth shut. Give me your gun.”

Mrs. North shook her head.

“I haven't got a gun,” she said. “Why should I have a gun?”

“You're police,” Jung told her. “You have a gun. Give it to me!”

Mrs. North was still holding the door, but her first swinging rush into the room had carried her a little beyond it, so that now she was holding the knob behind her. Jung came toward her and, involuntarily, she shrank back. As she shrank, the door began to close behind her.

“I haven't any gun,” she said. “I haven't anything to do with the police. I came to see Mrs. Williams. I didn't know you were here.”

She spoke rapidly, trying to reassure him; trying by simple words about facts to reassure herself. And as she spoke she continued to shrink back, closing the door as she retreated. Then the door met pressure.

She was staring at Mr. Jung, advancing with his pistol, and his face was a mirror suddenly, telling her that somebody was behind her. Somebody of whom Mr. Jung was afraid. Mr. Jung was not advancing toward her now. He was retreating, slowly, the gun leveled. The eyes were opaque as before, but the lines around them made them change expression. Mr. Jung was afraid.

“Drop it!” a voice said behind Mrs. North. It was a fine voice for Mrs. North to hear. She stepped back into the room, pulling the door with her, and let Bill Weigand come in. Weigand had his own automatic drawn and it was pointing at Jung. “Drop it!” Weigand commanded. “Get it, Mullins!”

Mullins was behind Weigand. No, Mullins was beside Weigand.

“No!” Jung said. The word was like a scream. “No! You never get me.
Schwein
!”

The last was sibilant, like a whip in the air.

The gun in Jung's hand went up to Jung's head.

“You never get me!” he said, again. Pam North, frozen against the partly opened door, waited for the horrible thing to happen.

But the moment hung. It was too long; somewhere the timing had gone wrong. Jung stood with the pistol against his head and stared at Weigand and Mullins, and the moment hung. And then Weigand spoke and his voice sounded tired.

“Oh, get it, Mullins,” he said.

Mullins was in front of Weigand now, although skirting the line of fire between Weigand's gun and the little dark man. He moved across toward the little man, and he was in no hurry, and he spoke without excitement.

“O.K., little man,” Mullins said. “Give it to papa.”

Mullins held out his hand for it, and the little man stared at him. And then, under the dark skin, there was a slowly increasing redness.

“For heaven's sake!” Mrs. North thought to herself. “He's blushing!”

And then she heard the words and realized that she had spoken aloud again, and the little man's opaque eyes turned to her with a kind of horrible embarrassment. And then he lowered the gun from his head and held it out to Mullins. And as Mullins took it, the little dark man did the strangest thing of all. He began to cry.

“Oh,” Weigand said, “for God's sake!”

He looked at Pam North, and she could see contempt and pity in his eyes.

“All right, Mullins,” Weigand said. “Take him along. Get him out of here.”

“Come along, guy,” Mullins said. “Come with papa.”

The little man was even smaller than he had been, with the large Mullins beside him, with a large Mullins hand closed on his thin arm. He was disproportionately small. As he and Mullins went out she turned to watch him, and then turned back to Weigand.

“He seems so little,” she said. “And helpless, somehow. To have done all that. Why did he?”

“He's an agent,” Mrs. Williams said. “A spy. He must have killed Sproul because—oh, of something Sproul knew about spies in this country. Or something Sproul did in France. They must have had Jung follow him here. You heard what he said.”

This last was to Mrs. North.

“Yes,” Mrs. North said. “He could kill people if he was told to. That fits in. Was it that way?”

This last was to Weigand. He nodded.

“He was a spy,” Weigand said. “A little spy, doing little odd jobs. It was—oh, half make-believe and half real. The people he helped are real enough—and dangerous enough, and they used him. For little things. But he made himself believe they were important; he—well, dramatized himself. He was—call him a borderline spy. And probably a borderline case, in addition. But part of it was real. But it wasn't real enough, finally, to make him kill himself. And then he realized, I guess, that the dangerous, desperate man he thought he was, was mostly make-believe. And so he was upset and embarrassed.”

Weigand seemed to Pam North to be talking to fill in time. And not everything that he was saying made sense.

“But killing Sproul wasn't a little thing,” she said. “And it wasn't a make-believe thing.”

Weigand shook his head, slowly.

“No,” he said. “Murder isn't a little thing. I suppose it was getting mixed up in murder that finally frightened Jung, and brought him here and made him talk wildly.” He smiled suddenly at Pam. “Mullins and I were outside quite a while,” he said. “Listening.” He paused again, and took up the thread. “He was like a boy playing Indian,” he said. “Like a boy who suddenly discovers that one of the other Indians is really dead. That it isn't a game.”

“You're generous,” Mrs. Williams said, suddenly. She said it with a faint contempt in her voice. “You make a good many allowances—for murder. And murderers.”

Weigand looked at her and shook his head.

“No, Mrs. Williams,” he said. “I don't make many allowances for murderers. I can't, you know. Even if I appreciate their motives—understand a little of how they must have felt—I can't make allowances. Not and stay a policeman.”

There was something puzzling in the way he said it; about the tone of his voice. Mrs. North looked at him oddly and with a half-familiar, unhappy feeling. It was as if pain which had seemed to be aver had returned. Weigand was looking at Mrs. Williams still.

“But of course,” he said, “Jung wasn't a murderer, Mrs. Williams. We both know that, don't we?”

There was a peculiar alteration in Mrs. Williams' expression. She was staring at Weigand.

“I don't—” she began.

“Oh, yes,” Weigand said. His voice sounded tired again. “You know what I mean, Mrs. Williams. Mrs. Sproul.”