The Tide Can't Wait (9 page)

“All right,” Barr said. “It's her. It seems this Price is an old friend. According to Doddsby, anyway. He showed up today to see her. They just drove off together.”

“I can't see anything to get excited about,” Portia said. She stood back, her head cocked thoughtfully to one side as she arranged the roses. “There.”

“Nothing,” Barr conceded, “except that Price is the man Leon had hire Helgos to kill me the other night.”

Portia was reaching for the vase to lift it from the drainboard. Her hand stopped. “Do you really think he's working with Leon?”

“That's what I've been told. I'd like to think it, God knows. If there's anyone besides Roget mixed up in this, I want him to be connected with Roget. I don't want a three-cornered affair on my hands.”

“Where there's sugar, flies move in.” Portia carried the vase past Barr and set it on a table in the living room. “And you think that if he is working for Leon, you have to be afraid for Lenny?”

“Not physically,” Barr said. “He'd be a fool to try to hurt her, after making a display of himself as he did today. I'm afraid that she might talk to him.”

“She's no child. Just because he's an old friend doesn't mean that she's going to blurt out everything she knows. I see my old friends occasionally, but I don't …”

“Behave yourself!” he said.

Portia came back into the kitchen and stopped before Barr. She wore green slacks and a green turtle-neck sweater. They had both been washed innumerable times and were somewhat too small for her so that she looked even plumper than usual.

“I'm sorry, Rob. You really are worried. Go ahead and talk about it if it will help.” She went back to the sink and began to arrange a second vase.

Barr said, “You can see what would happen if she does talk to Price. She'd probably be letting Roget know what she's up to. She may have already, of course, but I don't think so.”

“How did this Tommy Price know where to find her?”

Barr caught her arm, forcing her to turn so that he could see her face. “Damn it, Portia, do you know something?”

“Rob! I told you I didn't last night. And you're pinching me.”

He took his hand away. He thought that she was lying again. “Price killed Helgos last night. He might do the same to Lenny.” He sounded as though he were talking to himself, arguing. “But I think she's relatively safe as things are.”

Portia went on arranging flowers, not indicating that she had even heard him. He said, “Did Roget ever mention this Price, or anyone like him?”

“Leon hasn't confided in me for some time—since before he went to San Francisco.”

She finished her arrangement and took it into the living room. When she returned, she put the teakettle on the stove. “I'll make us some coffee. Now go sit down and relax.”

Barr went. He knew better than to push her. He would get no place; he never had unless she wanted him to. He sat where he could watch her as she moved about her neat little kitchen. How many years had they known each other?

He remembered Portia as he had first seen her. A little slimmer then because of wartime diet, but not so slim as she had been shortly before, during the two years she had spent in a prison camp. And it had been sheer luck that they had put her in a camp instead of shooting her out of hand. Spies were usually shot summarily, but Portia had a way with her and, despite what they caught her doing in France, she talked herself out of the most dangerous part of the situation. Hard-bitten men had been known to lose their suspicions before that smile. Barr had done it himself at one time.

And then there was the end of the war and they had lost track of each other. They had met again when Barr returned to England, a university student. Portia had been at art school. Another lapse of time and Barr was ostensibly still a student—for the record—and Portia a commercial artist. He had been after Roget.

That was when Barr found out about Portia, about a postwar restlessness that art alone couldn't satisfy—a desire to have things that war and austerity denied her. The small income she had from her dead parents was not enough. She had learned things during the war, made contacts. A lot of people followed the path she took, but most of them turned into relatively harmless smugglers. A few became dangerous members of that society which felt no allegiance to anyone but themselves. He was sure Portia had gone with that group.

It was not a thing they discussed. There had been Leon Roget and Portia, and somehow Roget had slipped free.

Portia came in with the coffee and, as if reading his thoughts, said, “You don't believe me, do you, Rob? You never really have believed me since—that time.”

“I'm sorry, Portia. I can't believe you and I can't trust you.”

She set down his cup and joined him on the divan. “And I can't make you believe I've dropped it all—everything. That I'm out of it.”

“You can't get out of it. You aren't built that way.” He paused and added, “Any more than I'm built to stop loving you.”

She rubbed her hand against his cheek. He hadn't yet shaved and the movement made a soft crackling sound. “I'm glad of that, Rob.”

He said, “I had Stark tell Lenny that when she came down here you might contact her. I sent her here because you were here.”

“I guessed that. I could see your fine touch even before you showed up.”

“How did you know anything about her?”

She smiled. “Don't bark at me, Rob.”

“All right. Damn it, she came down here and contacted you. And there went my plan. Why? Did she get eager or—was she told to by someone other than me?”

Portia smiled again. “You may never know, Rob. Just as you may never really know whether—if she hadn't contacted me—I'd have played Leon's game for him or not.”

“I'll never know unless you tell me.”

“It wouldn't matter what I told you. Ever since Leon came back to England, you've suspected me of working with him.”

“When a woman feels toward a man the way you felt about Roget …”

She got up. “Damn you, that was a long time ago. Before I got to know you.”

“You helped him get away from me.”

She stood facing him, her breasts rising sharply. She was angry, but Barr didn't care. He was seeking information.

She said, “I was helping Leon in the same way your little friend probably helped him. I was an even bigger fool than she, because I knew what I was doing. Then the time came when I saw Leon for what he really was. Dirty, petty. I'm guessing Lenny was taken in by Leon—and I'm still guessing when I say that she's found out the truth about him, too. I don't think you have to worry.”

Barr said, “Even after you knew the truth about Leon, you let him get away from me.”

“You were the police.” She had never explained herself to him before, and now she talked quickly, as if eager to make him understand. “You were the other side. I never played the game of counterspy, not even for my own country during the war. I didn't talk when the Germans wanted me to talk and they were very persuasive, much more so than you. I had started with Leon and I finished with him—completed my part of the bargain. Until then, I could not betray him. But when it was done, I washed my hands of it—and of him. And that's why I won't help you, Rob. The only way I could help would be to go to Leon and pretend to be on his side. I won't help you, but I won't hurt you, either.”

“You love me—you've said so.”

“I love you. You love me. Would you deliberately set out to have me arrested or put in danger of being killed?”

“Don't be a fool.”

“Why then should I try to have you hurt? I didn't know about Helgos. If I knew anything now—and it would be an accident if I did—that I thought meant danger to you, I'd say so. But that's as far as I'll go, Rob. I'm out of it. I want to stay out.”

Barr said, “Let's drink our coffee. It's getting cold.”

“You damned fool,” Portia said. She sat beside him and kissed him. When he kissed her back, she murmured, “Don't forget the coffee.”

Barr said, “Warm up the coffee and put it in the thermos. The day's too nice to spend indoors.”

“Oh, are we going on a picnic?”

“Why not?”

She ran her hands over his bristly cheeks. “We wouldn't be looking for a Bentley at the same time, would we?”

“Sure,” Barr said. “Let's make a treasure hunt out of it.”

Barr returned to his cottage to shave and change his clothing. He found Johnny Griggs asleep on the sofa, snoring gently. But he hardly had the door closed when Griggs was on his feet, a statuette from a nearby table in his hand.

“Relax.”

Griggs grunted. Barr said, “Price and the girl he came to see drove off in a big Bentley.”

“I saw ‘em,” Johnny Griggs said. “They're picnicking about three miles from here.”

Barr could have kissed him. He said, “And how did you find that out?”

Grinning an evil grin, Griggs lighted a cigarette. “I saw you running for Portia Sloane's place and so I followed them. Used my own car, too. When they stopped driving and pulled into the woods, I thought, ‘E's goin' to give 'er what 'e gyve 'Elgos.' But 'e don't. They 'ad enough food to last a man a fortnight, they did. I saw they was goin' to eat it, so I came back. I just got well asleep when you slammed in.”

Barr winced at the description of his quiet entry. “Describe the place.”

He shaved and changed while he listened. Then he returned to Portia, letting Johnny Griggs catch up on his sleep. Portia had a hamper filled with sandwiches ready.

Barr drove leisurely until he reached the turnoff Griggs had described. There he cut the engine, took the car out of gear and coasted down the two small tracks that seemed to lead to nowhere. When the Bentley came in sight, he stopped the car.

“Let's go.”

“I'll be damned!”

He grinned. “Now when we see them, start talking. Look happy even if you aren't.”

Portia sniffed the light breeze filled with the warm scent of woods baking in a hot sun. She tucked her arm into his. “But I am happy.”

They walked side by side, chatting meaninglessly in low tones, apparently oblivious of their surroundings. When they came to the clearing, Barr managed to look surprised and slightly embarrassed.

“Oh! Sorry.”

Tommy Price looked up from where he bent over Lenny. “It isn't private.” His grin looked a little stiff. “Anyway, we were going as soon as the lady's clothes dry. She fell into the pond over there.”

Lenny lifted her head. “Hello, you two. Wasn't that idiotic of me?”

“Not on a day like this,” Barr said. “It's good for swimming. Come on, Portia, let's follow the stream.”

Lenny said quickly, “You aren't disturbing us.”

She didn't dare put it into words, but she wanted them to stay.

Tommy got up, brushing vaguely at his trousers. “Since you all seem to know one another, let me introduce myself. I'm Price.”

Barr took an extended hand as he gave his name. He studied Tommy frankly. He was just as Helgos and Griggs had described him—good looking in a rugged way. Yet there was something about him, a vagueness of expression, that took away any chance of handsomeness. And when he grinned, as he was doing now, he gave the impression of being too shy to press himself on anyone.

Barr said, “This is Miss Sloane. And we are going. We want to trace the stream.”

They started on, and Barr whispered, “Does he ring any bells?”

“No,” she said, “I never saw him before—Wait a minute. I did, too. At a show in one of the galleries on Bond Street. About a month ago. I remember that blond hair and that grin. He was buying quite a bit.”

“Seems likable,” Barr commented.

Portia said, “To Lenny, too, the way she was kissing him. Even so, she didn't seem to like our going, did she?”

“No,” Barr agreed. “Maybe it was because he was kissing her with his hands around her throat—and about ready to squeeze.”

• • •

Lenny was thinking about Tommy's hands as they drove back to the Dragon's Head. They were large and strong, competent hands from the way they rested on the steering wheel. She could feel them yet about her neck. They had been caressing her tenderly.

“It's been fun, Tommy.”

He laughed at her. “You're so close to being asleep, you don't even know where we are.”

She opened one eye wide. “At the inn,” she murmured, and yawned. She lay with her hair spread across the leather upholstery, one shoulder brushing his left arm.

Then he woke her by saying, “Lenny,” in a strangely tense voice.

She opened her eyes and focused them on his face. “I've been thinking about what you told me,” he said. “Are you sure? I mean, it all sounds sort of farfetched.”

She was suddenly wide-awake. “Tommy!” Having got up the courage to tell him, now she desperately wanted him to believe her. Because he was Tommy Price and someone strong to lean on. Whether he could help her or not, at least he was here to share the burden with her—the burden of knowing. “I'm sure, Tommy. Believe me, please. I didn't imagine that man in New York, or the one who came to my hotel in London, or—or Leon.”

He winced a little when she said “Leon,” because she had told him the circumstances under which she had realized the truth about Leon. “No, of course not,” he agreed. “And you think this Barr is part of it?”

“Yes. And Portia Sloane, too, somehow.”

“I've seen her,” Tommy said. “She's a whale of an artist. But you think Barr is here to check on you?”

She said, “Look at the way we were found today.”

“It could be,” Tommy agreed. Lenny felt relieved; he sounded less dubious now. He said, “If I can help, you know old Uncle Tommy …”