7

The smooth, deep, accented voice on the telephone was one Anita recognized, but it had somehow taken on an oddly sinister tone, as if the man at the other end of the line was trying to tell her something beyond the words he was employing. She glanced across the room. André, reading the morning newspaper, lowered it and looked at her inquisitively over the top. She raised her shoulders in a Gallic shrug of nonunderstanding, tapped ash from her cigarette into an ashtray, and returned her attention to the instrument.

“No, Señor Sanchez. M’sieu Huuygens isn’t here at the moment.”

“I know,” Sanchez said softly. “I saw him leave—waited until he left before I called, as a matter of fact.” There was the briefest of pauses. “Is anyone else there?”

Anita frowned. And what business is that of yours? she wondered.

“No,” she said evenly.

“Good,” Sanchez said. There was no surprise in the voice; he had been sure before he called that Anita was alone. There might, of course, have been a day servant, but that would scarcely interfere with his plans. “In any event, my business wasn’t with him, madame; it was with you.”

“With me?” Anita began to feel a faint stir of unease.

“Yes.” There was a brief pause again. “I understand you were so unfortunate as to be taken ill yesterday while shopping at the supermarket in the Porte de Maillot.…”

The stirring came to a climax in a small electric shock.

“Go on.” Anita waited, suddenly alert. Across the room André sat a bit more erect, his newspaper forgotten, frowning at the expression on the girl’s face. The accented voice waited an appropriate number of seconds for proper effect and then continued smoothly.

“You must be curious as to what happened, where you were for those four hours or more between the supermarket and your coming awake in that taxicab.…”

Anita suddenly found herself angry; her anger wiped away her fear. “What do you know about it?”

Sanchez chuckled, the small laugh of someone sharing an amusing experience with another. “Quite a bit, I assure you, madame. I was, believe me, in a position to take notice. In fact, I’m sure you would find it to your distinct advantage to discover exactly what I do know about yesterday.”

“And how do I go about that?”

“Very simply,” Sanchez said cooperatively. “You meet me.”

“You come here,” Anita said on impulse. Her voice clearly indicated that the burnt child shunned the fire.

“I’m afraid not.” Sanchez sounded more amused than regretful. “One never could guarantee not being interrupted. M’sieu Huuygens’ schedule, I imagine, must be rather elastic. Or other friends might drop in; or even trades people—you never did finish shopping yesterday, did you? All those possible interruptions.… No, I suggest someplace where we will not be disturbed.”

“And if I don’t come?”

The lightness disappeared, replaced by an implacable coldness that threatened, and not lightly. “Then you will find out about those missing hours in what our American cousins call the hard way. No, madame, I suggest quite sincerely that you come. For your own well-being.”

Anita took a deep breath, wondering why she had been playing so hard to get. She had known from his first words that she would meet Sanchez where and when he wished.

“All right. Where?”

Sanchez hid his satisfaction behind a mask of suavity. “Suppose we do it this way—you descend the elevator of your building. You start to walk north on your side of the street, in the direction of the Porte Dauphine. You keep walking until I come along in a taxi and pick you up.”

“All right.”

“And start now,” the voice said coldly. “I’ll be waiting.” The telephone clicked in her ear. She hung up and looked at the big man across the room. André laid aside his newspaper, aware that something was in the air. Anita’s face was expressionless.

“That was Sanchez—”

“Sanchez?”

“He wants to see me alone. About what happened yesterday.” She sounded more relieved than unhappy. “Which means, at least, I’m not losing my mind.” She smiled faintly. “He tried to sound threatening. As if I would be afraid of what he’s going to tell me.”

André snorted and came to his feet, towering in the room. He started to roll down his shirt sleeves, preparatory to putting on his jacket.

“Afraid? Threatening?” Paris was not Barcelona, nor Sanchez Duarte and his boys. André buttoned his cuffs and reached for his jacket. “Either the little man is joking or he’s suddenly gotten delusions of grandeur. I’ll squeeze him through his own right ear like a baker decorating a cake!”

Anita shuddered at the description but shook her head decisively. “No. You stay right here. To begin with, he seems to know what happened at the market yesterday, and I need to know—”

“You’ll know,” André said grimly and slipped into his jacket. “He’ll tell you everything, including his grandmother’s birthday!”

“You will stay right here!” Anita suddenly sounded irked. “I’m sure Kek wouldn’t want Sanchez to know you’re in Paris.”

“Why on earth not?” André demanded, amazed. “The deal’s dead, so what’s the difference?”

“Because if they found out you helped kill it, they wouldn’t be very happy about it.”

“So let them be unhappy,” André suggested. “It’s good for the soul. And will help them appreciate happiness, when they ever see it.” He came back to the subject. “Let me meet Sanchez instead of you. He’ll tell me about yesterday, don’t worry. And have a week or so in a hospital for his sins as a dividend. He won’t—”

Anita held up her hand; the look on her face silenced him.

“He won’t what? So you push him around, so what? You won’t kill him, and even if you did, how on earth would that help? All it would do is to bring in police, which is the last thing any of us want. And if he didn’t tell you about yesterday? Then I’d never know.”

“But—”

“Anyway,” Anita went on, “he won’t harm me. This is Paris in the daytime, not the Casbah at midnight. And I can handle Señor Sanchez. Besides,” she added, “he would be sure I’d leave a note for Kek telling him where I was going, and he’d also be sure the world would be too small a place for him if anything happened to me.” She smiled at André. “Don’t worry. I’ll be safe.”

“All right,” André said doubtfully. “But—”

“And don’t try to follow me,” Anita said briskly, reaching for her purse. Now that she was ready to leave for the meeting, she seemed almost businesslike about it. “He’s somewhere close enough to the building to have seen Kek leave and to be ready to pick me up. He’d spot you in five seconds. That build of yours doesn’t exactly lend itself to hiding,” she added, not unkindly.

André sighed, defeated. “I suppose you’re right.”

Another thought came to Anita. She paused. “And one more thing. I don’t want Kek to know of this.”

André stared in astonishment. “Why on earth not?”

“I don’t want him to worry. He had enough worry over yesterday. Tell him I went out to meet an old girlfriend who’s come to town and called.” She looked at André seriously. “That’s more than a simple request—that’s a plea. Please don’t try to help me by telling Kek.”

“But—” André rubbed one fist into the palm of the other and stared at the rug. He hated being in a helpless position. He suddenly remembered something else and looked up. “You can’t go. You’ve got to stay here. The doctor’s coming again in an hour.”

“I doubt I’ll need him,” Anita said and took a light coat from the closet. She put it on and moved to the door. Her voice was dry. “I have a strong feeling Señor Sanchez can explain yesterday much better than any doctor.”

“But Kek said you should—”

“However,” Anita added with her pixie grin, her hand on the knob, “if the doctor brings a rabbit with him, put it in the icebox and we’ll have it for dinner.” Her face became sober. “And no word to Kek. You promise?”

“I—” Her violet eyes were fixed on his. André sighed and shook his head. “No word to Kek. I promise.”

“Thank you.” She closed the door behind her.

André stood and stared at the panel in indecision and then made up his mind. Maybe no word to Kek, but that didn’t mean he had to stay home with his thumb in his ear! He reached into the closet for his cap and then put his eye to the peephole. The elevator was just engulfing Anita. He nodded in satisfaction, waited until the cab door had slid shut, and left the apartment almost at a run. The stairway was the only thing for it; he took the steps three at a time, swinging around landings with the newel post as a pivot, clattering downward with no regard for the silence normally preserved in such an edifice. He burst through the door to the lobby and slowed down to a more respectable pace, walking almost sedately to the street door and peering cautiously around the lintel.

It was impossible! Anita was nowhere in sight!

He turned and marched back to the desk of the little concierge; the tiny man was pointedly paying no attention to his antics. It had finally come across to him that this uncouth monster actually was a friend of M’sieu Huuygens, hard as that was to understand, and that he was also slightly mad, as witness the manner in which he had just entered the lobby. He became aware that he could not avoid the giant forever and looked up, tense as always with this horror. The ogre was glaring at him as if something were his fault.

“What happened to madame?”

The concierge stared. He had expected anything but this. “What?”

André’s voice tightened. It promised action in a hurry if a satisfactory response was not tendered, and at once. “I said, what happened to madame?”

The concierge stared. What had happened to madame was what every tenant in the building prayed would happen to them once in a while. He drew himself up.

“Madame came down in the elevator and a cab pulled up just as she came to the door, and that’s just luck at this hour, and she took it, naturally, and—”

But he was talking to empty air. André had stamped back to the door and out into the street. He stared down the sidewalk, swearing under his breath. But then, he was forced to concede, whatever else he was, Sanchez had never been stupid. How better to reduce the chances of being trailed than to allow the minimum of time for the opposition to find means of trailing? The concierge was right; taxis were rare in the area. He marched back into the lobby and savagely punched the button for the elevator. The fact that the cab was not waiting did nothing to improve his temper. He peered through the glass; at long last he noted the cables descending silently in the gloom of the shaft. A moment later the door opened with its usual diffidence; he entered, glaring downward. The gnome shuddered, closed the door as quickly as he could, and pushed the lever over.

André was borne aloft, kicking himself mentally for having missed Anita in the lobby. And, far worse, for having made that idiotic promise.…