It was going on ten by the time I got back to The Canterbury. Connelly and I had lingered over pie and coffee, then walked along the river. Sometimes we’d talked, but much of the time had been spent in comfortable silence. The autumn night was so still we could hear the rush of the water. Stars spangled the surface. It had been a long time since I enjoyed that kind of evening.
The hotel lobby felt stuffy by contrast. A handful of men stood at the bar in the lounge. Bartoz sat in his usual spot facing the door. I’d never noticed him there after dinner. At sight of me, his chin lifted.
It might have been acknowledgment. It might have been a summons. The answer came as I continued toward the stairs. He rose at once to join me.
“You could have informed the police about me. You didn’t. You could have caused the count trouble. You didn’t. I think there is something useful I must do for you.” His words were hurried. “The man you were following last night, the one you lost because of me, I know where he’ll be soon. He meets with a hotel guest.”
“Perry?”
He looked startled. “Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve watched them. Twice. Always the evening after Perry throws a package from the window. Always about this time. They meet in a bar. I can show you, but we must hurry. Perry went out minutes before you came in.”
I’d been set up often enough to know he could be baiting a trap.
“What street?”
Bartoz shook his head. “I don’t know street names. That way.” He gestured.
I made a show of looking at the clock behind the reception desk.
“My cousin’s ready to have a baby any minute. Just let me check to see if she’s gone to the hospital.”
It was the sort of thing a man wasn’t likely to question. Using a house phone while Bartoz watched from a distance, I dialed Tucker’s private number.
“I’m going out with Bartoz,” I said when Frances answered. “If I’m not back by midnight, call the number I give you and tell the woman who answers who I left with.”
Rachel would still be up. She’d call Pearlie. The two of them would move faster and more effectively than the police. Unless she was out, in which case I’d be up a creek.
I walked back toward the man with the eye patch. Uneasiness tugged at my gut. By not going upstairs, I’d sacrificed the chance to tuck my Smith & Wesson into my purse, but I kept my .22 automatic under the DeSoto’s passenger seat. All I had to do was reach my car a few steps ahead of Bartoz and transfer it to the door pocket.
“If we take my car we can catch up, maybe even get there before him,” I said as we stepped out into the night.
Bartoz nodded. If he’d said we could walk, I’d have faced a hard decision. I’d put odds I could trust him at two-to-one. It was covering the one that might keep me alive.
As we neared the DeSoto, I hurried ahead.
“Got to clear some things out of the seat,” I called over my shoulder.
With one hand I picked up the clipboard and magazine I kept on the passenger side. With the other I slid the automatic from under the seat. Its reassuring angles disappeared into the door pocket next to me just as Bartoz opened the door on the opposite side. I pitched the other items into the back.
“Nice car,” observed Bartoz as I turned the key. It was the closest he’d come to social niceties.
“Reliable, too. Which way?”
He pointed south.
“After some railroad tracks you’ll turn east.”
Was he testing my nerve? He was routing me past my own office.
“Why did you follow Perry the first time? Did you think he was plotting to harm the count?”
“I heard movement in the hall one night. Very late and very quiet — a bad combination. I watched and saw someone throw something out. Perry. When he returned to his room, I went down the back way. There was a man in the street moving... not like a bum. Leaving. Accomplishing something.
“Turn here.”
It was warm enough that our windows were down. Bartoz lighted a cigarette.
“The group that I told you about had approached the count about speaking. I wasn’t sure what game Perry played. I’ve kept my eye on him.” He flicked some ashes off. “An apt expression in my case, don’t you think?”
If he was making it up, he spun as good a tale as I did.
“Twice before now, I’ve seen him leave without the woman. Late, but not too late. Like this. There’s a way a man moves when he wants to get somewhere without attracting attention.”
“The way he carries his shoulders.”
“Yes. Naturally, I followed. He came here, where we’re going. Turn.”
We were south of where I’d had supper with Connelly. The area was a mixture, homes and mid-sized businesses. Things were run-down here, but not as disreputable as they became closer to Wayne.
“Tell me about the Frenchwoman.”
“Frenchwoman? Ah, you mean Madame Houdin. She’s American, though she’s lived away long enough to be mistaken for French. Her husband’s family was very old, with extensive lands.
“He was a painter. One of some reputation. The count had one of Houdin’s works in his grand salon. After Paris fell, Houdin joined a partisan group. He was killed. She fled to keep the boy safe, I assume.”
His intact left eye slid toward me. If he was playing a game tonight, part of his brain would now be occupied wondering why I’d asked.
At his direction I made a few more turns and parked across from the sort of bar which drew clerks and shop owners rather than workingmen. It would be a good place for meeting without being noticed.
If Perry had come here. If Bartoz wasn’t inventing it all. He finished his cigarette and lighted another.
“You told me you were in the alley the night you attacked me because you were protecting the count. Going to one of the meetings across the river. What you didn’t explain, is why he goes out the back way.”
The man beside me was silent so long I started to suspect he was having trouble fabricating an answer. When he finally spoke, however, his voice sagged with the weariness of truth.
“He doesn’t want anyone to know the women are unprotected.”
“In a good hotel? With locks on the doors and people around?”
“When he was away fighting, near the end, the Germans came to his house in the country. Only a few peasants — farm workers — and some elderly servants were there to defend it. They were slaughtered. Some German officers broke down the door. They raped the count’s sister. They were trying to do the same to his wife. Julitta shot one. I was in the attic, delirious with fever from my wounds. They tell me I crawled down and shot the other.”
A man came out of the bar we were watching. It was Perry. He paused where light from inside caught his face. He touched the breast of his jacket.
“He’s got something under there,” I said. Wrong place for a gun. “Did he have it when he left the hotel?”
“No. The man he meets gives him something. The first time I followed, there was a truck parked in front. It made nice camouflage for me to go closer and watch. I saw.”
“Any idea what it is the man gives him?”
“Money, perhaps? I think Mr. Perry is stealing things from the hotel. From the rooms.” His tone was disinterested.
Perry tosses something out a hotel window.... An accomplice retrieves it.... A night or two later, Perry meets a man in a bar and the man gives him something. According to Bartoz, both parts have happened more than once. And in the daytime, someone who might be Perry wearing phony moles and a phony mustache asks about getting quick copies of jewelry.
Could Perry be coming here to pick up copies and stroll nonchalantly into The Canterbury with them tucked into his pocket?
Maybe. It might just make sense.
“You’re not worried he might harm the count?”
Bartoz sneered.
“I was. I watched. Perry is a thief and a leech who lives off women, nothing more.”
The man we were talking about looked around. He started to walk.
“Does he go back to the hotel when he leaves here?” I asked quickly.
“Yes.”
“Directly?”
“Yes.”
“And the other man?”
“Has a car.”
Meaning Bartoz had no idea where he went. Even as I tried to decide my next move, another man emerged from the bar. Bartoz touched my arm.
“There. Him.”
The man turned in a different direction than Perry. He walked with his elbows out like the man from the alley.
“I want to see where he goes. You can go on back, see if Perry turns up. A trolley will stop at that sign there in a couple of minutes. It runs right past the hotel.”
“The man who came out, if he deals in stolen goods, could be dangerous. I’ll come too.”
“Thanks, but I can manage.”
“You’ll lose him if you argue. Go.”