Nothing That Meets the Eye (46 page)

Jeff picked up the telephone again. “I would like to ring the George V, please.” After a few seconds, he had the George V switchboard. “May I speak with Monsieur Kyrogin, please? That's K-y-r-o-g-i-n.”

“One moment, sir.”

If the clerk demurred about ringing Kyrogin, Jeff was prepared to say that Monsieur Kyrogin was expecting his call, regardless of the hour.

“I am sorry, sir, there is no Monsieur Kyrogin here.”

“May I ask what time you are expecting him?” Jeff asked in a tone of confidence.

“We are not expecting him, sir. I have the reservations here before me. No one by the name of Kyrogin is expected.”

“I see. Thank you.” Jeff put the telephone down. That was a disappointment. Was the operator correct?

There was still the Inter-Continentale, and Jeff took up the phone again, and glanced at his watch. Exactly two
A.M.
Jeff asked the Lutetia operator to ring the Inter-Continentale for him and, when Jeff's telephone rang, went through the same procedure.

“One moment, sir,” said the Inter-Continentale operator. And then, after a moment, “He has not yet arrived, sir.”

Jeff smiled, relieved. “But you are expecting him—when?”

“Any moment, sir. The note here says he will be arriving tonight but possibly quite late.”

“May I leave a message? I would like him to ring Monsieur ­Cormack”—Jeff spelled this—“at the Hôtel Lutetia.” He gave his hotel's number, which was on a card by the telephone. “It is most important, tell him, and he may ring me when he comes in, at any hour tonight. Is this understood?”

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.”

Jeff was not at all sure Kyrogin would ring at any hour, not if he came in tired at three
A.M.
, not if he was in Paris this very minute, still with his suitcase, talking to the representative of some other firm, and maybe concluding a deal. Kyrogin would know what Jeff's message meant, and he would know the name Cormack from Ander-Mack. So what Jeff had to do tonight was ring every fifteen minutes or so, and hope to catch Kyrogin at the Inter-Continentale when he arrived and before he went to bed and refused to take any calls.

Jeff unpacked the rest of his things, put his attaché case on the writing table in his bedroom and his memo book on the oval table in the salon by the telephone. There was also a telephone by his bedside. Then he lifted the telephone again and ordered a large bottle of Vichy. “Just put it in my room, would you? I'm going down to the bar for a coffee.” Jeff suddenly wanted to get out of his room, to move around a little.

He took the stairs down. The first thing he saw, the first thing his eyes focused on, when he reached the lobby, was the girl. The girl again. Yes. With the long brown hair, and in the navy blue coat. She stood talking to the man behind the desk. Jeff wanted to speak with the clerk before he went into the bar, and he walked toward the desk with a deliberate casualness.

The clerk looked at him, and Jeff said:

“I'm expecting a telephone call at any moment. I'll be in the bar—at least for the next fifteen minutes.”

“Oui, monsieur,” said the clerk.

The girl recognized Jeff. “Well—hello again!” She looked a little tired, and worried.

Jeff smiled. “Hello again.” He went into the nearly empty bar, and took a stool at the counter. When the barman had finished polishing a glass, Jeff ordered a coffee.

“We are closing soon, sir, but there is just time for a coffee.”

The girl—Jeff could see half her figure, the back of her head and coat—stood with an indefinite air in front of the desk. Then she walked slowly with her suitcase and the carryall into the bar. She gave him barely a glance, and took one of the stools three distant from Jeff, occupied it by putting her handbag on it.

“Have you any fresh orange juice?” she asked the barman in English.

“I am sorry, mademoiselle, the bar is close,” said the barman in English also. He was again polishing glasses.

“A glass of water?” the girl asked.

“Certainly, miss.” The barman poured it and set it in front of her.

She was waiting for someone, Jeff supposed. Maybe the room reserved wasn't in her name. If so, the hotel perhaps couldn't let her take the room. Jeff concentrated on finishing his coffee, which was very hot.

Suddenly—Jeff felt it—the girl turned her eyes toward him.

“Can you imagine, I've had a room reserved here for at least two weeks, and because I'm a day early, maybe a typographical error on somebody's part, not mine—” She gave a sigh. “Well, I'm supposed to wait till noon tomorrow and take a seat in the lobby, unless some other hotel comes up with a room tonight, and it doesn't look like it, because they've already called three.”

This burst made Jeff dismount from his stool. His mind was dazzled by the memory of Phyl losing her temper in the same manner, talking in the same way. Jeff was also trying to think of a solution. Some fleabag hotel would have a room at this hour, but he didn't think the girl would want such a hotel. “That's tough.—There's not even a small room free here?”

“No! I've really asked.” She sipped her water with an air of disgust.

Jeff put a five-franc piece on the counter. “I'll speak with the desk, see what I can do,” he said to the girl, and went into the lobby.

The desk clerk, courteous as ever, said, “I know, Monsieur Cormack, it is a mistake with the date. By one day. But we simply have no room, not even a little one. There is only a cot in a servants' corridor—absurd! And the less good hotels—they are not even answering the telephone at this hour!” He shrugged.

“I see.” Jeff went back into the bar.

The girl looked at him with a faint hope in her face.

“No luck there. If it's just a matter of waiting . . .” He struggled with his words, reassured himself that his objective was to be helpful, and plunged ahead. “You could sit down more comfortably in my suite. I've got two rooms. In what's left of the night . . .”

The girl was hesitating, too tired to decide at once.

“We can speak to the desk, tell them you're in my suite, if you're expecting someone.”

“Yes, but I'm expecting someone tomorrow.—Frankly, I'd give anything just to wash my face,” the girl said in a whisper. She looked near tears.

Jeff smiled. “Come on, we'll tell the desk,” he said, and picked up her suitcase. He noticed that the panda was still in the carryall. At the desk, he said, “Mademoiselle has decided to wait in my apartment.”

The clerk looked a little surprised, then relieved that the problem had been solved. “Très bien, monsieur.” He nodded a good night to them.

They went up in the elevator, which was self-operating, and Jeff pulled out his key and opened the door.

He had left the lights on. He followed the girl into the salon with her suitcase, and closed the door. “Please make yourself at home.” He put her suitcase by the sofa. “The bathroom's beyond the bedroom. I think I've got to stay up all night for a business call, so it won't bother me at all if you walk through.”

“Thanks very much,” the girl said.

Then she was in the bathroom, her coat lay on the sofa, her suitcase was opened on the floor, and Jeff stood listening to the water running. He felt curiously stunned. Frightened, even. He didn't want to know if the girl was Phyl's daughter, he realized. He wasn't going to ask her anything that might lead to information about her mother.

Jeff picked up the telephone and asked for the Inter-Continentale again. Now it was 2:37
A.M.

“No, Monsieur Kyrogin has not arrived, sir,” said the male voice at the other end.

“Thank you.” Jeff felt suddenly discouraged. He imagined Kyrogin having been met at the airport by some enterprising fellow who had found out his arrival time, imagined them talking now in a bar or in the hotel room of the other man, and Kyrogin agreeing to the other man's proposal. They'd maybe toast it in vodka.

The girl came back. Jeff was still standing by the telephone.

She smiled, fresh-faced. “That was wonderful!”

Jeff nodded absently. He had been calculating flying time from Moscow. And could Kyrogin be at another hotel, not the Inter-Continentale, even though he'd made a reservation there? Of course he could be. “I'll go into the bedroom. So make yourself comfortable here. You probably want to sleep. I think that sofa's just about long enough.”

She had sat down on the sofa, slipped off her shoes. “Why do you have to stay up all night?” she asked with a childlike curiosity.

“Because—I'm trying to reach a man who's due in from Moscow. And he hasn't arrived at his hotel yet.”

“Moscow—you're a government official?”

“No, just an engineer.” Jeff smiled. “Would you like some mineral water? It's all I have to offer.” The Vichy stood in an ice bucket on the oval table.

The girl said she would, and Jeff poured it. He went to get a glass for himself from the bathroom. The girl had left her wash cloth spread on the basin rim, out of habit, probably. He took off his tie, opened his shirt collar, then took off his jacket. He went back to the anteroom and poured himself a glass of Vichy. He was thirsty.

“I'm going to have a shower,” he said. “If the telephone rings, give me a shout, would you? I'm not sure I'll be able to hear it.”

“Sure.”

Jeff showered, put on pajamas and because of the girl's presence put on also a seersucker dressing gown. He had closed the door to the salon, and now he knocked gently, in case she was asleep.

“Yes?”

He opened the door. The girl was half reclined on the sofa, still dressed, reading a magazine.

“It just occurred to me you might want a shower or a bath. Why not? Anyway you're not going to sit up all night, I hope.”

“I don't know. I suddenly don't feel sleepy. Second wind, maybe. It's so strange being here.”

Jeff gave a laugh. “It's a strange night. Or morning. I've got to try my quarry again in a minute and after that I'll be reading, too, so it won't bother me in the least if you walk through to the bathroom.”

“Thanks. Maybe I will.”

Jeff went into his room, this time did not quite close his door, and tried the Inter-Continentale again. The answer was the same. Now it was after three. What other hotel should he try? The Hilton? Should he ring Roissy and ask about incoming flights from Moscow? Abruptly Jeff remembered that he had a bottle of scotch in a plastic bag by his suitcase. He opened the bottle, and poured some into his glass.

Then he tapped on the half-open door again. “Hey . . .” The girl was still reading. “I don't even know your name.”

“Eileen.”

Eileen what? he wondered, then remembered that he didn't want to know. “Eileen—would you possibly like a nightcap? Scotch.”

“Yes! I think that would be nice.”

He added scotch to her Vichy water, then brought the bucket and offered it to her. “Ice down there.”

“Any luck with your phone calls?” She fished ice cubes out.

“No. No.” Jeff took a cigarette.

“What's it all about?—Or is it a secret?”

“Not unless you're a competitor. It's about setting up oil rigs in the White Sea. My firm does that—that kind of thing. We want the job.—And I have a good offer to make,” he added, as if thinking out loud or justifying himself, and he began walking slowly around the room. He remembered talking to Phyl about his work, just like this, but in those days he would have been smiling, would have gone to Phyl and kissed her, and then—

“You're a very serious man, aren't you?”

You haven't any time for me anymore, Jeff heard in his ears again. The girl's voice was like Phyl's, or her accent was, and there was a ringing quality in the higher tones, a resonance like that of a stringed instrument, that was also like Phyl's.

“I hope you make it,” the girl said. “The White Sea—I only know where the Baltic is.”

Jeff smiled. “The White Sea's north of that. The big port there's Archangel.” The girl was looking at him in awe, Jeff could see.

She took a swallow of her drink. “I wish I were here for something as sensible as that—as important as that.”

Jeff looked at his watch, wishing the time would pass faster, that it would be eight or nine
A.M.
, hours when people could do business. Maybe. “You're here on vacation?”

“I'm here to get married.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It's funny, isn't it? I mean, since I'm alone now. But my mother's due tomorrow and my—my fiancé's coming in a couple of days. We're going to Venice—for the wedding. Well, I'm not sure Mom's coming to Venice. She's funny.” The girl looked suddenly uncomfortable and glanced at Jeff with a nervous smile.

Mom was coming to this hotel, Jeff was thinking. He put out his cigarette, started to sit down and didn't. “She's funny?”

“Oh, she thinks I'm funny. Maybe it's true. But I'm not sure I want to get married. You see?”

Jeff supposed the young man was a “nice” young man, approved by her family. Jeff wasn't interested in asking anything about him. “If you're not sure, then why do you even consider marrying?”

“That's just it! That's the way I feel.—Do you think I could have just a little more scotch?”

“All you want,” Jeff said, and set the bottle on the table in front of the sofa. “You pour it.”

She poured an inch, the bottle slipped and more went in. Jeff brought the Vichy bottle.

“I wish I were someone else. I wish I weren't here. He's—” She stopped, frowning into space. “It's not so much him as the fact I don't want to get tied down. After all, I'm only eighteen.”

“Well . . . can't you postpone it?”

“Yes-s. Indefinitely. That's what I'd like to do.” She drank off all her glass. “You really wouldn't mind if I took a shower? That's what I need.” She stood up.