Assignment — Stella Marni (12 page)

"And just who are you?" Durell asked.

"My, so direct. You're an American. Gosh, what a relief! I get so tired of listening to all the jabber in those gosh-awful tongues, and I'm
sure
they're all scandalizing me." She shook hands again, squeezing Durell's fingers tightly. "I'm Gerda Smith."

"Smith?"

"It was Schmidt once. Horrible.
Really,
I should have changed it
ages
ago. And yes, I'm the official greeter. Actually, I'm Mr. Damion's secretary, but these poor old souls who come here from just everywhere simply act like lost
sheep,
and John — I mean, Mr. Damion — he feels they should be made to feel right at home,"

"I'll bet you do a nice job of it, too," Durell said.

Her eyes narrowed instantly. "Is that a crack, friend?"

"None intended."

"Who are you, anyway?"

"Jones," Durell said. 'To see Mr. Damion."

"Selling anything? If you are, we don't need it, don't want it, and already have it."

"Not a salesman," Durell said.

She decided to be coy again. "I'll bet you're not a little old salesman, at that. I'll just bet you're another cop. But you don't look exactly like a cop, either." She cocked her head to one side and decided to frown prettily. It added a couple of years to her age. Then she took a deep breath, and standing as she was on the step above Durell, she made him feel he ought to back down a bit before he was accused of indecent advances. He stood still. Her figure was real, all her own.
"Are
you a cop?" she asked. "Maybe one of those G-men, I'll bet."

"No," Durell said.

"Is your name really Jones?"

He nodded. "To see Mr. Damion. He's the president of this organization, isn't he?"

Her plucked eyebrows were still puckered. "Are you a newspaperman?"

"No, Gerda. May I call you Gerda? I feel as if we may become friends. Is Damion in?"

"Yes, but the police have been asking and asking about that awful thing that happened to poor Mr. Greenwald, and he was such a nice man and so
generous
in his gifts to our little club. Really, Mr. Damion has had a trying night. And morning, too. I really feel sorry for Mr. Greenwald, don't you? I'm sure you read about it in the papers. A man like him, so
settled,
if you know what I mean, and just losing his
head
completely over that Marni bitch."

"Bitch?"

"Yes, and I don't apologize for my language! After all, she's not doing
any
of these poor people one
bit
of good, testifying the way she did yesterday, and what kind of gratitude is that, I ask you, when she was doing so well right here in this country that took her in when she didn't have a
penny,
and saying she wanted to go back and everything. So I say she's a bitch. And if I ever see her again I'll call that to her frozen old face, because she's the one to blame,
really,
for poor Mr. Greenwald getting killed and..."

"Hold it," Durell said. "Please."

She put her tiny hands on her tiny waist, still standing on the step above him. "Now don't tell me that chilly
creature's
got you all wrapped up for the deep freeze, too! Really, I..."

"Take it easy, Gerda. I'm just here to see Mr. Damion, remember? I'm not a cop, not a salesman, not a reporter. I'm a friend of Frank Greenwald's, though, and I need some information. Greenwald was pretty close to your Mr. Damion, wasn't he?"

"Well, lately, yes," she admitted dubiously. She pouted. "All right, then. His office is upstairs, second floor. Our rooms for overnight guests are just over them." Turning, she went up two steps, silver bells and bracelets jingling away, and then she stopped so suddenly that Durell bumped into her and he expected to hear her giggle and tell him not to get
fresh.
Instead, her brown eyes slid sidewise and she said in a voice that had no inflection at all: "If your real name is Durell, I'd suggest you be mighty careful."

It was a bombshell, and Durell paused and did not reply for a split second, which was too long, and he knew it was too late to cover his surprise.

"How do you know my name?"

"I'm sharp as tacks." Her eyes were bright and amused and not at all stupid. "The reason I mention it is there was a man here from the FBI, and his name is Blossom, and he was here practically at the
crack
of dawn, waking up Mr. Damion — Mr. Damion sleeps here, you know — and he asked if you had been around, and if you had, what did you want and where could he find you? And while he didn't exactly say you were a
criminal,
or anything like that, anybody could see he was no
friend
of yours, Mr. Durell, not with that tape over his nose and the nasty way he spoke about you."

"Did he tell you I was a friend of Frank Greenwald's?"

"He didn't say
who
or
what
you are, but he described you and made a real big point about telling me to telephone him the
minute
you set foot in here, if you ever did."

"And will you call him?" Durell asked.

She giggled. "My word, no. I just don't like that man."

"And you like me?"

She giggled again. "Himself is direct, sure enough, isn't he?" she asked herself aloud. "If himself is real nice and behaves good and takes Gerda to lunch, maybe Gerda might like himself, too."

"Not lunch," Durell said. "Make it dinner."

"It's a date. Seven-thirty," she said promptly. And then, as if she had just thought of it: "In case you're wondering about it, why I'm here at the crack of dawn, too, I mean, why, it's simple. I sleep here, too. And
not
with Mr. Damion."

"Good," Durell said. "May I see him now?"

"Sure enough."

She floated up the stairs without any sudden pauses this time, and Durell followed in the wake of silvery bells and a touch too much of perfume. There was a billiard room in the front of the second floor, then a card room occupied by two bearded old men playing chess, then several blank doors and a door to the rear that simply said: "John Damion." Gerda opened the door for him and stood aside, but not quite far enough, so that Durell had to brush past her in order to enter. Gerda winked and showed him the tip of her tongue between her white teeth and whispered, "Seven-thirty, honey," and led him into a tiny reception room and then through a room with a round conference table and more red leather chairs and then into a small office at the very end of the suite.

"Mr. Damion? This is Mr. Jones," Gerda said, and backed out.

John Damion had been standing at the window, staring at nothing more interesting that the blank brick wall of the house beyond. He was a tall, slender man with a ruddy face, a shock of thick white hair the color of yesterday's snow, and a neatly clipped white military mustache. His thick black brows and black eyes were in sharp contrast to his hair. He could have passed for a Wall Street broker, a retired Army colonel, the executive vice-president of a big corporation — anything but the good shepherd of a flock of lost and frightened sheep.

His eyes were worried and he tried to erase the frown in an effort to be pleasant and cordial. "Jones? I don't believe we've met, but if I can be of service to you ... I assume you have an inquiry about one of our refugees, perhaps employment..."

Durell waved a hand. "I'm sorry to impose upon your time. The name is Durell." He waited for the man's surprise to pass, noted Damion's quick, thrusting glance at the telephone, and said: "All I want is a few minutes of your time. In a way, Frank Greenwald referred me to you, last night Before you call Mr. Blossom, would you talk to me?"

"I can't see why not," Damion said slowly. He sat down behind his desk, spread his big workingman's hands flat, and stared at them for a moment, as if conscious that the rest of his neatly groomed appearance did not fit with those strong, gnarled hands. "I've answered a great many questions this morning about Frank, and I don't suppose a few more will do any harm. But I should warn you that Mr. Blossom specifically advised me against helping you in any way, Mr. Durell."

"Did he tell you why he holds that attitude?"

"No, he did not. His whole manner when he mentioned you was rather odd, I thought. I am an honest, law-abiding citizen, Mr. Durell, and I have a rather big job to do here, perhaps too big for me these days, but I don't want to do anything contrary to the public interest or to any law-enforcement agency that approaches me for co-operation. Still, I must say that Mr. Blossom's attitude was not calculated to win my friendship. I did not care for the way he spoke about Stella Marni or the rest of my troubled people here, and he would give me no guarantee that they would be safe if I were completely frank with him."

"So you weren't."

"I did not lie to him."

"But you didn't tell him the whole truth?" Durell asked.

Damion shook his head and shifted restlessly. "Perhaps if you could explain to me what your exact status is in this matter..."

"I'm a friend of Stella Marni. And Frank Greenwald."

Damion lifted his heavy black brows and shot him a curiously hard glance. "In spite of Stella's testimony yesterday?"

"I know that she is being forced to do what she does."

"She told you that?"

"Last night. And this morning."

"For God's sake, if you know where she's hiding..."

"I won't tell you," Durell interrupted. "I think I can convince her that she's knuckled under long enough. I think I can persuade her to make a fight of it, even at the risk of her father's safety. If I can get her to do that, the whole complexion of this thing will change. She's frightened now, she's accustomed to terror, to bowing her head to what she thinks is inevitable force. I want the chance to show her that things are different here, that somewhere along the line all of us have to make a stand."

Damion sank back in his chair. "Thank God. It's about time." He pushed thick fingers through his snowy hair, and they were shaking slightly. His eyes were keen and probing as he surveyed Durell's tall, competent figure. "I don't know who you really are, Mr. Durell, but Stella Marni does need help, a lot of it. I don't care what the papers say about her. She just happens to be one of the unlucky ones around here who are being forced to make a public example of themselves, for propaganda purposes. It was a setup for them, for those bastards who are making life miserable and worthless for these poor folks. Stella is beautiful, intelligent, and damned photogenic. A perfect propaganda vehicle for what they want her to say. So they took old Albert and gave her her orders: Do what we tell you, say what we tell you to say, or Albert gets buried. If he's not dead already. That wouldn't surprise me one little damned bit, either."

"Frank thought he knew where Albert Marni is being kept a prisoner," Durell said flatly.

"Yes."

"Do you have the same knowledge?"

Damion leaned heavily forward against his desk. "Just who are you, Mr. Durell? What is your interest in this? Is it personal, because of Stella? Or is it official?"

"A little of both."

"Official, then. How?"

Durell looked hard at the white-haired man. Damion's concern for the people under his care rang as true as fine steel. There was honesty in him, a deep concern, and a real desire to help. There were times when you had to take a man on surface evidence and trust him, Durell knew, and this meant trusting him with vital information and perhaps your very life. He had instinctively warmed toward this man, and he had not often been far wrong in his estimates of other men. It was a risk, but it was time for a calculated risk.

He said briefly: "I'm an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency branch of the State Department, Mr. Damion. We're interested in this matter unofficially. I am not here with any overt authority. Our jurisdiction conflicts with that of the Attorney General's office, and we have no intention of interfering with their work or of hampering their investigation of this matter in any way. Nevertheless, I'm looking into it We want to satisfy ourselves about the murder — possibly two murders — last night. One of the victims, Frank's brother, worked for us. He might die. We don't like to let somebody else pick up our marbles."

Damion drew a deep breath and looked at him with new respect. He spread his big hands on the desk again, chewed his while mustache for a moment, and stood up.

"I believe you've leveled with me," he said quietly. "So I'll admit I wasn't completely honest with Blossom. As I said, I didn't quite lie to him, but I didn't tell him everything, either. Frankly, I don't think he's working in Stella's interest. And while I know the national interest is over and above the fate of any single person, I'm convinced that Stella Marni is acting against her will in going back to Hungary and testifying as to her disillusionment here the way she has done. You see, Mr. Durell, I love Stella." Quickly he held up a huge hand. "Not the way Frank did. Or other men, I suppose. I'm old enough to be Stella's father. I helped Albert and Stella when they first arrived here, I got Albert a job, I gave Stella what assistance I could. She's a fine, sincere girl. I believe in her and I don't think I'm wrong about her. I suppose I could be, but I don't think so. And I don't believe that Blossom means to do her any good."

Durell waited. Damion drew another deep breath. "Frank Greenwald and I have been trying to identify the members of this coercion ring that's been terrorizing these people. Last night I spoke to Frank on the telephone — he was at Stella's apartment then."

"Yes, I was there," Durell said. "You told him something that excited him a lot."

"I suppose so. I told him I had a hunch as to where Albert Marni was hidden. We were to meet at a taproom not too far from here, on the water front. But he never showed up. I was a little late, I admit, but the bartender I questioned said he hadn't been there."