The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (15 page)

She was alone in her apartment, very small and white, and she had been crying.

'Hiram Oh, Hiram, my friend,' she cried, 'they have

Peter. They have
him....'

Holliday felt his heart sink. He said: 'Heidi
...
how do you know
...
? Have you heard anything ?'

'A
man came,' said Heidi, her tone dull and despairing.
'I
know him. I know who he is. One of them here in Prague. He was very polite. He said very little. He only suggested that perhaps now was the time to begin to discuss the return of the Furstenhof moneys,
Devisen,
as he called it, to Germany, where they belonged....'

'Give it to them
...
for the child
...'

Heidi shook her head sadly. 'It would be no use. I know them. They would not give him up. He is in the line to the Austrian throne. Oh, Hiram, cannot you get him back for me ?'

'Have you told Captain Ovenecka ?'

Heidi nodded. 'Yes. He swe
ars that the boy could not have
been taken over the border, th
at he will get him back. But in
the meantime
...
if they should kill him '

Through Hiram's mind pa
ssed a picture of the stalwart,
capable, splendid-lookin
g Captain with the lean jaw and
flashing eyes, and his own insign
ificant figure as he had caught
it in his mirror, and suddenly he broke, and cried: 'Oh
, Heidi,
Heidi, he will. The Captain will find him. Heidi, I can do
nothing. I am a fraud and a fa
ke. I can't go on this way. You
must see the truth. I'm just wh
at I look like. Nothing I A fat
fool. Don't you see ? You cannot build on me. Honestly, Heidi,
I would die for you, but that woul
dn't get us Peter. I'll go back
where I belong. I
...
I can't help you, Heidi
'

She had sighed quietly, patted his cheek and said: 'No, no, my dear friend. You must not say that. There
...
there are forces of evil let loose upon this earth, somehow beyond the control of human beings - yet
...'

But in the cab, returning to his hotel, Hiram had made up his mind. It was ten o'clock, and he stopped at the
portier's
desk and demanded a telegraph blank. On it he wrote:

'Beauheld, Sentipapers, New York - resign present job is copy-desk still open Holliday.' Finis to adventure!

How Hiram Holliday Pulled the Beard and Saw Again

Hiram was preparing to hand the cable to the
portier,
when he was aware that there was a man standing close beside him. Instinctively he looked up and saw that it was the Man with the False Beard. And without an instant's hesitation he reached around with his right arm, secured a firm grip with his fingers in the coarse, reddish hair, and yanked.

Later on he realized that a thousand thoughts had spun through his head between the sight of the man and his deed. There had been his memory of the despair on Heidi's face, his own helplessness, his deep-rooted conviction that this man held the key to the mystery, the notion that, unmasked, he
might
recognize him as one of the guests at the party, even the wild, desperate thought that the stripping of the absurd
crepe
beard from his chin might at least start a chain of circumstances that would lead to the vanished child. Or perhaps mostly there had been in him the terrible aching necessity to
do
something....

That which then happened he never forgot as long as he lived. He had a momentary vision of the man's face lurching violently forward towards his own, his outraged, frightened eyes nearly popping from their deep-shadowed sockets. And Hiram was in the grip of such horror as he had never known before. For the big, bushy beard so loosely and wrongly applied and which should have come off and revealed the face beneath, had resisted the powerful pull of his fingers. 'Oh, my God!' rang through Hiram. 'It isn't false.
It's real!'

The next moment he had received a buffet on the side of the ear delivered with the flat of the hand that spilled him to the floor on his back and sent a thousand bells to clanging in his head, and the man was standing over him blazing with wrath and indignation, releasing a torrent of Czech and waving his arms wildly.

Suddenly Hiram cried out, but not from pain. It was as though the blow had burst something, a thick, opaque, rubbery veil that had lain clamped over his mind, rent it through and let in a light so bright and terrifying that he hardly dared look at it. But look at it he must
...
alone
...
away from the noise and clamour of the now excited lobby. Oh, if this fool's gesture had involved him in something that would hold him back, keep him from pursuing that bright and dazzling light. But now he could think again. He raised himself, swaying to his knees and shouted to the
portier'.
'Drunk
...
'm drunk. Terribl’
sorry. Never had any of that dam Slivowitz liquor before. Tell him'm drunk. 'Pologize. Make any restitution. Never happen me before. Humble 'pologies. Tell him for Gossakes
...'

The
portier
seized the man by the arm and Hiram saw him lean his mouth close to his ear and speak to him. The man seemed to calm down a little, and still muttering and waving his arms, he went on through the lobby and disappeared in the rear.

'Mm drunk, porter,' Hiram said, rising to his feet, or pulled there, rather, by the tremendous power of what had suddenly been born within him. 'Mus' excuse me. Not used to that stuff. Who
...
who is he, porter ? Mus' send him a li'l present.'

Amusement was fighting with indignation on the
portier's
face. He said: 'That was Dr Otto Chirpaty. He is a dentist, a very respected one. He has an office here in the rear of the hotel. Do you not think you had better go to your room, sir
?'

'Yes
...
yes
...
go my room
...
sleep dam' stuff off. For Gossakes, porter, one thing more. Is the Doctor a little deaf?'

'Yes, yes
...'
said the
portier,
anxious to be rid of him. 'He is hard of hearing.'

The light waxed and grew until Hiram did not think he could stand it any more. He suffered himself to be led by the arm by a bell-boy, and not until he was safely in his room with the door closed did he realize that in one hand he held the unsent telegram to his managing editor, and in his other some strands of coarse, reddish hair.

Then he ranged his room like a man gone mad, now at his desk scribbling on a pad, now pacing around and around, tugging at his hair as hard as he had pulled at the red-brown beard, and crying out:

'Fool! Fool! Romantic, forsaken fool! Idiot! The beard!
The beard
is
the key! You t
hought all the time that it was
false,
but it was real.
Appearances
...
appearances, you de
luded, romantic fool! You'v
e been thinking in terms of the
beard. You looked for Heidi
barred in some old dungeon and
found her safe in a modern apartment house. Because a man's
beard was a different colour
from his hair you concluded it
was false because your
head is full of damned romantic
nonsense. False
...
true.. . . True
...
false....
Oh, God, help
me to think clearly now. I must
...
I must
...
I can feel it.
It's there
...
the truth, if I will
only see it. Steady, Holliday,
steady. You must be steady
now or it may be too late. Now
again. If that which is false is tru
e, then that which appears true may be false
'

He dashed back to the desk where he had wr
itten a number
of names on a sheet of p
aper: 'Madame Lola Strakova....
Count Mario d'Aquila
...'
He began to shout again

'Great God, Holliday.
Because the Count looks like a
dancing-partner and has slicked hair and white teeth and a little moustache, and the woman black hair and a painted face and popping eyes, and both look like movie villains, you've
made
them villains. Now
..
now
...
apply the test of the beard to them. The beard looked false and was true. They looked evil, therefore we will set them down as good. What have
we?
Wait
...
wait
...
start from the beginning
.

The Man with
the False Beard has a real beard and is an innocent and respected dentist who is a little deaf - remember the incident of the porter who leaned close to talk to him the first time you saw him. What was he doing at Podebradova
35?
He was answering a night call from a sufferer from which you also saw him returning. He encountered Madame Strakova bound for the party and inquired a direction from her, and because he was deaf their heads were together. And because she looked like a casting director's idea of a villainness.... You fool, you fool.
...
And you've been working on a picture-paper for fourteen years and seen photographs of hundreds of murderers and murderesses who looked like kindly, innocent people, and celebrity after celebrity who might, if dressed badly, be taken for a thug. Wait
...
wait now. False is real. Finish it, Holliday, finish it. The Count and Madame Strakova are decent, innocent people. And they were
telling the truth
! She was ill. And because she was Heidi's best friend, and the Count was her fiance, he
would
insist upon seeing
her
home. She
did
take
a drug. He did
work
at
the Embassy. They had nothing to do with the stealing of the child.
Nothing I
Then who .
.. who ?'

He began to pace the room again, hitting his forehead with

the heel of his palm 'Who ? Think, Holliday,
think....

If evil can be good, good can be evil. Why not ? Why not ? But does it fit ? The Count who looked evil is good.
Then....
Ah! The Captain! The Captain! The handsome, heroic

Captain! And Oh, God,
wait! That jolly Virslany! The
child was taken by someone who was familiar to it and to Heidi, and who could move like a cat! Virslany! Virslany! That dance burlesque you saw him do. For all his weight, he was as light on his feet as a girl. Fat men usually are. But were they both ever out of the room together
...
? But they wouldn't have to be. Or would they ? There were times when I saw only one or the other. Or I
thought
I always saw
one....'

He suddenly in his room paced off the distance he remembered the hall had been, and then suddenly yelled: 'Of course! Of course! Fifteen seconds would suffice if they time it.
Fifteen seconds.
Virslany, of course. Can move as quietly as a puma. He leaves the room and goes down the corridor. The Captain begins to count. Virslany removes the child. If Peter awakes he is in the arms of his Uncle Anton who gave him his white teddy bear. Nor would the nurse be alarmed if she were aroused and saw him with the child. Well then. A step to the service door. At the count of fifteen, the Captain has gone there and is waiting,
outside.
Virslany hands the child over and in a few seconds is back in the drawing-room. It
fits!...
It fits!
..
.

'But then what ? Where to ? How ? The Captain was never gone long enough. Never! The
chauffeurs out front saw no one
- nothing And yet he got the child away. The link....
The link is missing.... I have it, but I haven't it. I'll go
mad....'

His wanderings brought him back to his papers where above the names he had printed in large letters: '
false is true -
true is false - evil is good - good is evil. . . .'