Scarlet Imperial (12 page)

The man’s voice crept softly. “I won’t wake anyone.”

Frustration made her savage. She whispered, “If you track that white rug, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

His feet shuffled on the threshold. “I got to stay with you. I got orders.”

She shouldn’t be afraid of him; there was nothing to fear but the gun in his quavering hand. If she didn’t know the viciousness of a gun, how it could tear open a woman’s face, mute the laughter of a boy. If she could control her primitive terror in the face of this small piece of blued steel. She didn’t dare risk defying it. She accepted his decision. “I’ll lay newspapers.” The ones she’d wrapped about the box were still in the foyer basket. He feared a trick but she knew no tricks. Not with a gun in his dirty hand. She pulled the papers out, made stepping stones to the corridor door. “Stay on the paper,” she ordered. “And keep quiet.”

She lit the corridor, moved without sound past Gavin’s door to her own room. The little man followed. She was burning with fury. Only the wieldy revolver gave him any strength. A man with one gesture could render the craven ineffective. If she dared, possibly she herself could. She didn’t dare.

He followed her to the very door of the closet. She had a momentary quaver as she turned her back on him, lifted her arms to the shelf. Quickly she took down the florist’s box. The weight was right, yes. He wouldn’t open it, it wasn’t for him, he was only the messenger. She clutched it, waited while he backed away from the door. If when she handed it to him, she could smash it against his wrist. If for that long, she could conquer her fear.

The man might have known the circle of her thoughts. He half-whispered, “Put it on that table.” His pale eyes were glistening.

She set it on the table, watched helplessly while his left hand clutched out for it. His right hand didn’t forget the gun, his finger was too near the trigger.

She spoke to divert him. “Take it and hurry. If my husband wakes—” She let the words carry their own implication.

“I’m going.”

She moved.

“You stay here.” He showed his yellowed teeth.

She remained quiet as he scuttled to the door. Then she spoke, spoke out of desperation. “I’ll see you out.” She must know for certain he had gone, that he wasn’t lurking. She couldn’t sleep unless she herself closed him out. She brooked no interference as she walked towards him. “I won’t have you tracking the white rugs.” She passed him before he could speak again. She could hear his wet footsteps soft after her. Down the corridor, past that closed door, into the living room. His steps crackling the paper. She didn’t go into the foyer. She stood on the threshold, let him pass her. “You’d better hurry. The police are watching the house.”

He smiled slyly, “They let me come in.”

Whatever credentials he had shown must have been accurate.

She said, “Maybe they won’t let you go out.”

His eyes were pinpricks in his shabby face. “You better hadn’t say anything about me.” He licked the corner of his mouth. “They might ask you how you come by what’s in this box.”

She heard the door close. She didn’t move. She didn’t move until long after he must be gone.

He didn’t have the Scarlet Imperial. How soon would he discover that fact? What would he do then? She shivered. He was a hireling; behind him was someone who would coldly hire a man to kill. She wouldn’t face another one of them tonight. She wouldn’t answer the phone or door. Not if Towner himself were pounding outside. She knew why the cold enveloped her, even to her inner heart. Towner. Something had happened to him. He’d never allow this margin of error, this near loss of what he wanted. She saw him again bowing over Feather’s beauty. Could Bry have sent Feather to take care of Towner?

She knelt, gathered the papers from the living room floor. She was on her knees, crumpling them, when the shadow in the doorway fell across her. She looked up quickly. “You startled me,” she whispered.

“What are you doing at this hour of night? Housecleaning?”

She returned quietly, “Why are you awake?”

He rubbed his arm. “This waked me. Maybe your sulfa will cure it but it hurts like hell trying.”

She knew she shouldn’t tell him. It was the last thing she should tell him at this hour and in his condition. But there was compulsion to speak. If she didn’t now, immediately, he would never believe.

She said, “Your box is gone.”

His mouth slacked open. “Gone? The Imp? It can’t be gone.”

She was very quiet, as if by so being, it might quiet him. “When a man holds a gun at me, I’m not brave.”

He looked down on her, incredulous.

“I gave him the box.”

Belief hardened the lines of his mouth. He turned on his heel. She stumbled to her feet, hurried after him. “Gavin! What are you going to do?”

He was pulling off his pajama coat.

She cried out, “Gavin, no! You can’t go after him. Not tonight. He’s too far ahead of you.”

His voice was slate. “I know the sort of places to look for Pottsy.”

“It wasn’t Pottsy.”

He stopped buttoning his shirt. “Who was it?”

“The messenger. That terrible little man who pretended he was a messenger yesterday.”

“Why did you let him in?” he demanded.

“Richards called from downstairs. I’d just gone to bed. He said there was a police detective to see me.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

She was quick. “I didn’t want you to face the police.”

“When you knew he wasn’t the police?”

She said flatly, “He held the gun on me. I told you I wasn’t brave. Not at the point of a gun.”

He began buttoning the shirt again. “Describe him.”

She took a breath. “He’s an undersized man, a dirty little scrawny man. His teeth are foul. I’ve never seen his hair. He whines. And his shoes, he has broken shoes. He’s nervous.” She shook her head. “Maybe I could have talked my way out of it but I don’t like a nervous gun.”

He took his tie from the bureau.

She cried again, “You can’t go out. You aren’t fit. Besides you’ll never be able to find him. New York isn’t a village.”

“I’ll find Pottsy. Pottsy will know him.” His mouth wasn’t pleasant. “Pottsy’ll have his eyes on the ball. Where mine would be if I hadn’t let you coop me up here with this scratch.”

She said coldly, “The police are watching this house.”

“How did he get in?”

“They passed him. As a police detective. He warned me not to report him. Because the police might like to know how I came by the box.”

He said, “If you’ll get out of here, I’ll finish dressing. If you don’t, I’ll finish dressing anyway.”

His eyes were without feeling. She turned and went out. She walked into the living room, sat there on the couch, cold, unmoving. She shouldn’t let him go out. She should tell him now that the unclean man didn’t have the Imperial, that it was only the box he had taken. She couldn’t tell him. She had to save it for Towner, for Dekertian. And she knew, knew as definitely as if he stood before her and told her with his own tongue, that it would make no difference to Gavin if she did speak. He would go after that man. Because the man had dared. Because the miserable messenger was a danger to be hunted down now, in fury’s heat.

She started when he stood before her. She said, “I think you’re crazy.”

“I don’t expect you to understand.” He had regained his humor, his face was alive. There was the smell of excitement about him.

“How do you expect to get by the police?” He laughed. “That’s my least trouble. Your friend, Mr. Smith, can certainly go out if an old pal of his calls from Grand Central. Here between trains.”

She didn’t deny that he’d get past the police. He could do anything while the dare was upon him. He didn’t know how to be safe, now that he’d kicked off safeness; his recklessness would guerdon him. She said, “You can’t come back in here tonight. I wouldn’t let anyone in again tonight.”

“Stick to that, precious. Not anyone.” He buttoned his coat, set his hat on his head. “I’ll report tomorrow.”

She followed him to the door. “You shouldn’t go. You really shouldn’t.” It was a crumb to her conscience.

He laughed joyfully. “I have my reputation to maintain, Liza. I’m thinking I’ve been civilized too damn long.” His eyes smiled down at her, smiled as if she were something special. Before she knew, he had stooped and kissed her. He was gone quickly, the slam of the door banging with his laughter.

She put her hand to her mouth as if it hurt. Her breath said desperately, “Gavin.” But she knew he was gone.

She held her hand to her mouth but it wasn’t her mouth that hurt, it was something deep within her. She couldn’t care for Gavin; he was everything that she wanted to forget. He was the corner of her life that she would turn past and never look back upon once the Imperial was returned to Iran. He couldn’t spoil things now. She wanted only what other girls of her years took for granted, everyday happenings. Some day love. Not his kind of love, fraught with ever present danger. Ordinary love. She’d never had anything like others had, not since she was a little girl. Because Gavin had kissed her, she couldn’t ache for him.

She turned out the lights, hurried back to her bedroom. She lay on the bed, her eyes closed. She was safe, entirely safe. No one could get in the apartment. The bolt on the back door, the Yale lock on the front, the inaccessible windows.

He must come back. He was wild and crazy but he was too vital to die. If he died she had sent him to death. It didn’t matter what he had done. He mustn’t die. She would give him the Imp.

She didn’t care about Towner; she’d never cared about Towner. He’d taken her in when she was desperate, starving, lost. He’d brought her back to life, to food and clothes and sleep in a bed, not on blood-wet cobbles. He’d nursed her to sanity. But she had paid her debt. She’d worked for him for five years now. Without her help he’d never have found the Koskowsky pearls. Without her he wouldn’t have possession of the Chu jade, the breathlessly beautiful pale jade of antiquity.

She didn’t have to hold the Imp for Towner. He didn’t want it for his collection. It was to be returned to Iran where it belonged. A task undertaken for his friend, Feroun Dekertian. And for her. She could tell Gavin the whole story. He wouldn’t want to withhold it from Dekertian when he knew the whole story. Gavin wasn’t bad, he wasn’t a thief like the Bey’s hirelings. He too would want to right the wrong.

And with the Scarlet Imperial returned, Dekertian would know Thad was innocent; he would then seek out who had killed Thad. He had promised Towner. Thad’s death would be avenged. It was all she could do now for Thad, but it would be done. Towner wouldn’t blame her for changing the orders if the end were the same.

If Gavin returned the Imperial to Dekertian, the truth of the death of Hester would be accepted; the killing of a thief in self-defence. Towner had diplomatic connections; he would take care of Gavin’s safety. She and Gavin …

Her foolish moments of wishing that Bry Brewer would seek her as a woman seemed babyish now. It hadn’t been Bry she wanted; it had been safety, a normal civilized life. She and Gavin could build that life once they were rid of the Imp; there was no reason why they couldn’t have it. He must be as wearied of the borderline as she. He’d known it longer than she; he had said it, since he was a boy in Galway.

She knew now why she’d hidden Gavin here; knowing he was her enemy, why she’d taken him in, fed and clothed him, lied for him. It hadn’t been for any of the reasons she’d dressed it in. It was because even in the antagonism of first meeting, heart had spoken.

That wasn’t a rustle at the window. No one could be soft-footing through the apartment. No one could have come in and hidden; Gavin had been in all day. Had he? He could have gone out, his topcoat was buttoned to his chin when she returned tonight. Had the cloth been damp at that time? She hadn’t touched him. If he had gone out, how did he get back in? Only by leaving open a door. The front way. He wouldn’t have gone that way. Not and be noticed by the elevator man. Not and be questioned by the police.

The back way. There’d be police on the back door too. He was smoothtongued; he’d have an excuse. He hadn’t known about the police. He might have gone down the back stairs, crept up again when he saw the disturbance below. While he was gone, someone could have slipped in the apartment.

Her breath was so loud. She tried to keep it soundless, to listen for rustling, for a muted footfall on the deep pile of the rugs. Her eyes were clenched tight. She dared not move. She was being absurd. How could anyone have entered today? The police were watching the house, no one could have slipped by them.

She mustn’t give way to nervous disorders. She knew that no one was here. Towner had no nerves; in a tight spot he remembered other days, halcyon days. Think of the Islands, of flaming beauty and the incongruous mildness of sea and wind. Think if she must of bombs screaming, of Thad the night before he flew away. To die, not in battle, but ignominiously in a dirty jail.

Think of the Islands and Gavin. She hadn’t dared love since Thad had gone. Towner had told her often, to love again wouldn’t be forgetting. Thad and she had been boy and girl. She had realized the truth of Towner’s words but she had been afraid. She had feared the hurt of losing the beloved, she had been hurt too young. Love brought its own courage. These months, this enforced quiet, clean life, had been curative. She could love now. If Towner didn’t take her away, if she could stay with Gavin perhaps there could be love.

She had heard something. Muffled tapping. Someone prying into the lock. The back door. She began to tremble. Fearfully, desperately she slid one hand out, snatched on the light. She couldn’t stand it any longer. Her mind scorned her cowardice but her will could not control it. Because she had faced too much violence since yesterday. Because when she was a child she had seen her mother, her father, her brother blown apart by guns in the hands of the bestial invaders. Because she had lain with the dead, pretending death, to escape the swarming dark beasts. She had never been able to forget the rooted terror, not even under Towner’s nursing. He knew; he had promised her under his protection she would never have to face violence. Had he forgotten her? She reached for the phone, but her hand fell. The bolt would hold. If it didn’t hold, would he come again, the dreadful little man with the snaggled teeth, the dirty eyes? The man who by now could have discovered the substitution, who would return with his twitching gun. The man she’d fooled twice, who wouldn’t dare fail a third time. The man who might be sent by El Bey.