I hurried down the stairs and let myself out into the street. Evening was beginning to come and, with it, the evening crowds. The little sidewalks, arched here and there by the poles supporting the iron filigree balconies, were gay with people. Across the street, victrola music came from a balcony bright with pink geraniums and white begonias. Two large policemen were carrying on a solemn conversation at the street corner. The Vieux Carré was almost as picturesque as a stage setting of it in a Broadway musical.
I passed the policemen and started up the next block towards the Montedoro. A girl was coming towards me. She was wearing a red suit which reminded me of Vera. Because I was thinking of Vera, I noticed her particularly. She wasn’t a bit like Vera. She was smaller and dark-skinned—Latin looking. But something about the movements, the rather thick legs, the demureness of her was familiar. She was almost up to me. When she was a few feet away, I recognized her as Mr. Brand’s wife, the “Bride” of Chichén-Itzá.
I stopped and smiled. “Hello, Mrs. Brand. I’ve just been visiting with your husband.”
She started and looked up at me sharply, as if I was a danger. Clutching her white pocket-book tightly, she made a move to go straight on. I turned and went with her.
“You don’t remember me. I’m Peter Duluth. Chichén-Itzá.”
She still did not answer. It occurred to me that I had never heard her talk. Perhaps she didn’t understand English.
“No me recuerda…?” I began.
We were passing a Gifte Shoppe whose window was prematurely lit up for the night. The bright illumination played on her little figure. My eyes took her in, the hefty legs, the red skirt, the rather flat chest. Her black hair, under a small white hat, was stiffly waved, quite unattractive. But beneath it, the dark, Indian face with its big swooning eyes was quiet and pretty as a flower.
Pretty as a flower. The words repeated themselves in my mind, and with staggering quickness the whole world seemed to go topsy-turvy. For a moment the implications of what had come to me paralyzed me into a kind of panic.
It couldn’t be, but it was.
Once again, more drastically than ever before in this demented affair, I had been fooled to the top of my bent. The wife of the “authentic Mr. Brand, the confidant of the United States Government, the uncle of Deborah,” to whom I had just entrusted the sample of ore, wasn’t a “wife” at all.
She was a little boy in denims, a boy with a burlap sack, a boy with a bird-cage, a boy with a light blue sedan and a gun.
I wasn’t walking with any Mrs. Brand. I was walking with Junior, dressed up as a demure maiden.
I realized then why the boy with the burlap sack had seemed familiar the first time I had set eyes on him outside my apartment in Mexico City. I realized a thousand things. But most virulent was the realization that I had fallen into a trap. I had betrayed Deborah Brand, after all. I had handed over the ore to an impostor, to Junior’s employer, to the murderer of Deborah and Lena, too, the smoothest crook I had ever encountered—to the Enemy.
Junior was hurrying along, trying to keep his face from me. The need for sudden and violent action was imperative. Without it, all would be lost. People were passing by in both directions, chattering, laughing. Ahead, on the corner of the block, the two policemen were still in solemn conclave.
In a flash I knew what to do.
Junior was almost running now. I kept at his side. We crossed the street. Just as we were abreast of the policemen, I snatched Junior’s white pocket-book and sent it spinning down the sidewalk. There would be a gun in it. I knew that. Junior always had a gun.
Both the policemen swung incredulously around. In that second I grabbed at Junior’s little white hat and stiffly waved hair and tugged. They both came off in my hand, revealing his boy’s black hair beneath. I threw the wig and the hat away. Junior squirmed around me and made a dash down the side-street.
I shouted to the policemen: “Wanted man. Impersonating a woman. Carrying concealed weapon.”
I sprinted after Junior and made a dive at him. In a couple of seconds both the policemen were panting around me. I tossed Junior into the arms of one of them. The street was littered with the contents of his pocket-book. Passers-by stared, stopped and then began to crowd. In a few moments, we were completely surrounded in a chaotic, craning mob.
The confusion was just what I needed. While one of the policemen was crying: “What’s going on here?” and the other, gripping Junior, was blowing his whistle, I ducked through the crowd and started to run back towards 1462B.
Junior was safely stowed. There was no question about that. No policeman in the world would release a boy unmasked in the street as a female impersonator without taking him to the station. He could be dealt with later.
Now I could think only of the ore and “Mr. Brand”.
The front door of 1462B was ajar. I must have left it that way. Surprise and humiliation at my own gullibility had turned to anger now. I was seething with rage as I climbed the stairs.
I reached the fourth floor. I knocked. Junior had been coming “home”. “Mr. Brand” would be expecting him. I banked on that.
I heard footsteps. The door opened. The big, red-headed hulk of “Mr. Brand” stood on the threshold.
“Why, Mr. Dulu…” he began.
But he didn’t say anything more. With all my strength behind it, I shot my right fist at his jaw. It made contact with a dull thud. He blinked stupidly and, spinning half round, crumpled backwards on to the floor of the hall.
I went in and kicked the door shut behind me. I could hear his heavy, erratic breathing as he floundered on the carpet. I jumped on him and hit him, once more, twice more, until he stopped moving.
I dragged him into the living-room. He was out cold now. I felt through his pockets for a gun. I found one. I put it in my own pocket. I whipped off his necktie and tied his hands. I pulled the belt from around his waist and knotted it tight around his ankles.
I ran into the workshop. I felt a kind of dizzy exhilaration. The ore sample was still there, gleaming dully on a table by the window.
Things had happened so quickly that there had been practically no time to think. Panting from my violent exertions, I pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
The ore was safe. At least there was that. But what else was there? With a twinge of anxiety, I thought: Junior. But where had he been? He wouldn’t risk a public appearance in his disguise unless it was absolutely necessary.
Had he been to the Montedoro? While “Mr. Brand” was taking care of me, had he been taking care of Vera?
I wasn’t in a mood to reflect before I acted. I hurried into the living-room, picked up the receiver and asked for the Montedoro Hotel.
Over startled clucks from the hotel operator, I said: “There’s a woman tied up in the bathroom of Room 617. Let her out and tell her to come round to 1462B Dauphine Street at once.”
I rang off. Now that I had phoned, the danger to Vera seemed less frightening. Maybe Junior had been to her room. But she wouldn’t have been there. Surely no one outside of a clairvoyant could have guessed that she was trussed up in my bathroom.
Probably by my muddled attack on her, I had saved her life.
My spirits soared. Because, although I was still confused, I was sure now that Vera had been on the right side, after all, had been on the side of the real Brand.
The real Brand. I stood in the middle of the long, untidy room with the “false Brand” unconscious at my feet. This was Brand’s apartment. And yet the “false Brand” had been able to use it as a trap to inveigle the ore sample out of me. What had happened to the real Brand?
There was an obvious solution to that. Brand, or Brand’s body, was probably right here in the apartment.
I hurried out into the little hallway. I went down it. It led to a bedroom. It was almost dark. I turned on a dim little lamp by the bed. No one was there. A door beyond led to a bathroom. The bathroom was empty, too. I was about to go back and search the workshop when I noticed a large closet in the corner.
I went to it and tried the door. It was locked, but the key was in the lock. I turned the key and opened the door.
As I did so, the body of a man half rolled out at my feet.
I dropped to my knees, easing him on to the carpet. His hands and legs were tied. Adhesive tape had been strapped across his mouth.
I pulled the tape off. It must have been painful, but I didn’t care about that. I was thinking of a man with his mouth taped shoved in that airless closet with clothes half smothering his nostrils.
He might well have been dead. He almost certainly would have been dead if I had not come when I did. But, leaning over him, I could trace the faint sound of breathing.
And he stirred. His arms quivered. He moved one leg cautiously. In the shadows which lay across the floor I could hardly see his face. I drew him closer to the light. As I did so, he opened his eyes.
He looked at me. I looked at him.
I should have realized it by then, but somehow it came as a shock. The false Brand had, of course, been the real Frank Liddon.
And the real Mr. Brand was looking dazedly up at me.
The real Mr. Brand was Bill Halliday.