The Holcroft Covenant (7 page)

And then there was silence, and the line went dead.

Holcroft walked out of the bathroom and paused beneath the suspended telephone; it was barely moving now, but it had not stopped. It was an ugly sight, made macabre by the profusion of dull black tape that held the instrument together. As if the phone had been mummified, never to be used again.

He continued toward the bedroom door, then instinctively stopped and turned. Something had caught his eye, something he had not noticed before. The center drawer of the small writing desk was open. He looked closer. Inside the drawer was a sheet of paper.

His breathing stopped as he stared at the page below.

It couldn’t
be
. It was
insane
. The single sheet of paper was brownish yellow. With
age
. It was identical to the page that had been kept in a vault in Geneva for thirty years. The letter filled with threats written by fanatics who revered a martyr named Heinrich Clausen. The writing was the same; the odd Germanic printing of English words, the ink that was faded but still legible.

And what was legible was astonishing. For it had been written more than thirty years ago.

NOEL CLAUSEN-HOLCROFT NOTHING IS AS IT WAS FOR YOU. NOTHING CAN EVER BE THE SAME
.…

Before he read further, Noel picked up an edge of the page. It crumbled under his touch.

Oh, God! It
was
written thirty years ago!

And that fact made the remainder of the message frightening.

Noel grabbed the paper out of the drawer; it fell apart in his hand. He let the fragments fall to the floor.

“Goddamned maniacs!”
He slammed the drawer shut and ran out of the bedroom. Where was the telephone? Where the
hell
was the goddamned
telephone?
By the window—that was it; it was on the
kitchen
table by the fucking
window!

“
Maniacs!
” he screamed again at no one. But not really at no one: at a man in Geneva who had been on a train bound for Zurich. Maniacs might have written that page of garbage thirty years ago, but now, thirty years later, other maniacs had delivered it! They had broken into his home, invaded his privacy, touched his belongings.… God knows what else, he thought, thinking of Peter Baldwin, Esq. A man who had traveled thousands of
miles to see him, and talk with him … silence, a click, a dead telephone line.

He looked at his watch. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. What was it in Zurich? Six? Seven? The banks in Switzerland opened at eight. La Grande Banque de Genève had a branch in Zurich; Manfredi would be there.

The window. He was standing in front of the window where he had stood only minutes ago, waiting for Baldwin to come back on the phone. The
window
. Across the courtyard in the opposite apartment. The three brief flares of a match … the blond-haired woman in the window!

Holcroft put his hand in his pocket to make sure he had his keys. He did. He ran to the door, let himself out, raced for the elevator, and pushed the button. The indicator showed that the car was on the tenth floor; the arrow did not move.

God damn it!

He ran to the staircase and started down, taking the steps two at a time. He reached the ground floor and dashed out into the lobby.

“
Jesus
, Mr. Holcroft!” Jack stared at him. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“Do you know the doorman in the next building?” shouted Noel.

“Which one?”

“
Christ! That
one!” Holcroft gestured to the right.

“That’s three-eighty. Yeah, sure.”

“Come on with me!”

“Hey, wait a minute, Mr. Holcroft. I can’t leave here.”

“We’ll only be a minute. There’s twenty dollars in it for you.”

“Only a minute.…”

The doorman at three-eighty greeted them, understanding quickly that he was to give accurate information to Jack’s friend.

“I’m sorry, sir, but there’s no one in that apartment. Hasn’t been for almost three weeks. But I’m afraid it’s been rented; the new tenants will be coming in.…”

“There
is
someone there!” said Noel, trying to control himself. “A blond-haired woman. I’ve
got
to find out who she is.”

“A blond-haired woman? Kind of medium height, sort of good-looking, smokes a lot?”

“Yes, that’s the one! Who is she?”

“You live in your place long, mister?”

“What?”

“I mean, have you been there a long time?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I think maybe you’ve been drinking.…”

“What the hell are you talking about?! Who
is that woman?
”

“Not
is
, mister.
Was
. The blond woman you’re talking about was Mrs. Palatyne. She died a month ago.”

Noel sat in the chair in front of the window, staring across the courtyard. Someone was trying to drive him crazy. But why? It did not make sense! Fanatics, maniacs from thirty years ago, had sprung across three decades, commanding younger, unknown troops thirty years later. Again,
why?

He had called the St. Regis. Room four-eleven’s telephone was working, but it was continuously busy. And a woman he had seen clearly did not exist. But she did exist! And she was a part of it; he
knew
it.

He got out of the chair, walked to the strangely placed bar, and poured himself a drink. He looked at his watch; it was one-fifty. He had ten minutes to wait before the overseas operator would call him back; the bank could be reached at two
A.M.
, New York time. He carried his glass back to the chair in front of the window. On the way, he passed his FM radio. It was not where it usually was of course; that was why he noticed it. Absently, he turned it on. He liked music; it soothed him.

But it was words, not music, that he heard. The
rat-tat-tatting
beneath an announcer’s voice indicated one of those “all-news” stations. The dial had been changed. He should have known.
Nothing is as it was for you
.…

Something being said on the radio caught his attention. He turned quickly in the chair, part of his drink spilling onto his trousers.

“…  police have cordoned off the hotel’s entrances. Our reporter, Richard Dunlop, is on the scene, calling in from our mobile unit. Come in, Richard. What have you learned?”

There was a burst of static followed by the voice of an excited newscaster.

“The man’s name was Peter Baldwin, John. He was an Englishman. Arrived yesterday, or at least that’s when he registered at the St. Regis; the police are contacting the airlines for further information. As far as can be determined, he was over here on vacation. There was no listing of a company on the hotel registry card.”

“When did they discover the body?”

“About a half hour ago. A maintenance man went up to the room
to
check the telephone and found Mr. Baldwin sprawled out on the bed. The rumors here are wild and you don’t know what to believe, but the thing that’s stressed is the method of killing. Apparently, it was vicious, brutal. Baldwin was garroted, they said. A wire pulled through his throat. An hysterical maid from the fourth floor was heard screaming to the police that the room vas drenched with—”

“Was robbery the motive?” interrupted the anchorman, in the interests of taste.

“We haven’t been able to establish that. The police aren’t talking. I gather they’re waiting for someone from the British consulate to arrive.”

“Thank you, Richard Dunlop. We’ll stay in touch.… That was Richard Dunlop at the St. Regis Hotel, on Fifty-fifth Street in Manhattan. To repeat, a brutal murder took place at one of New York’s most fashionable hotels this morning. An Englishman named Peter Baldwin …”

Holcroft shot out of the chair, lurched at the radio, and turned it off. He stood above it, breathing rapidly. He did not want to admit to himself that he had heard what he had just heard. It was not anything he had really considered; it simply was not possible.

But it
was
possible. It was real; it had happened. It was death. The maniacs from thirty years ago were not caricatures, not figures from some melodrama. They were vicious killers. And they were deadly serious.

Peter Baldwin, Esq., had told him to cancel Geneva. Baldwin had interfered with the dream, with the covenant. And now he was dead, brutally killed with a wire through his throat.

With difficulty, Noel walked back to the chair and sat down. He raised his glass to his lips and drank several
long swallows of whiskey; the scotch did nothing for him. The pounding in his chest only accelerated.

A flare of a match! Across the courtyard, in the window! There she was! Silhouetted beyond the sheer curtains in a wash of dim light stood the blond-haired woman. She was staring across the way, staring at
him!
He got out of the chair, drawn hypnotically to the window, his face inches from the panes of glass. The woman nodded her head; she was slowly
nodding her head!
She was telling him something. She was telling him that what he perceived was the truth!

… 
The blond woman you’re talking about was Mrs. Palatyne, She died a month ago
.

A dead woman stood silhouetted in a window across the darkness and was sending him a terrible message. Oh, Christ, he was going
insane!

The telephone rang; the bell terrified him. He held his breath and lunged at the phone; he could not let it ring again. It did awful things to the silence.

“Mr. Holcroft, this is the overseas operator. I have your call to Zurich.…”

Noel listened in disbelief at the somber, accented voice from Switzerland. The man on the line was the manager of the Zurich branch of La Grande Banque de Genève. A
directeur
, he said twice, emphasizing his position.

“We mourn profoundly, Mr. Holcroft. We knew Herr Manfredi was not well, but we had no idea his illness had progressed so.”

“What are you talking about? What happened?”

“A terminal disease affects individuals differently. Our colleague was a vital man, an energetic man, and when such men cannot function in their normal fashions, it often leads to despondency and great depression.”

“What
happened?
”

“It was suicide, Mr. Holcroft. Herr Manfredi could not tolerate his incapacities.”

“Suicide?”

“There’s no point in speaking other than the truth. Ernst threw himself out of his hotel window. It was mercifully quick. At ten o’clock, La Grande Banque will suspend all business for one minute of mourning and reflection.”

“Oh, my
God
.…”

“However,” concluded the voice in Zurich, “all of Herr Manfredi’s accounts to which he gave his personal attention will be assumed by equally capable hands. We fully expect—”

Noel hung up the phone, cutting off the man’s words.
Accounts
 … 
will be assumed by equally capable hands
. Business as usual; a man was killed, but the affairs of Swiss finance were not to be interrupted. And he
was
killed.

Ernst Manfredi did not
throw
himself out of a hotel in Zurich. He was
thrown
out. Murdered by the men of Wolfsschanze.

For God’s sake,
why?
Then Holcroft remembered. Manfredi had dismissed the men of Wolfsschanze. He had told Noel the macabre threats were meaningless, the anguish of sick old men seeking atonement.

That had been Manfredi’s error. He had undoubtedly told his associates, the other directors of La Grande Banque, about the strange letter that had been delivered with the wax seals unbroken. Perhaps, in their presence, he had laughed at the men of Wolfsschanze.

The match! The flare of light! Across the courtyard the woman in the window nodded! Again—as if reading his thoughts—she was confirming the truth. A dead woman was telling him he was right!

She turned and walked away; all light went out in the window.

“Come back! Come
back!
” Holcroft screamed, his hands on the panes of glass. “Who
are
you?”

The telephone beneath him buzzed. Noel stared at it, as if it were a terrible thing in an unfamiliar place; it was both. Trembling, he picked it up.

“Mr. Holcroft, it’s Jack. I
think
I may know what the hell happened up at your place. I mean, I didn’t think about it before, but it kinda hit me a few minutes ago.”

“What was it?”

“A couple of nights ago these two guys came in. Locksmiths. Mr. Silverstein, on your floor, was having his lock changed. Louie told me about it, so I knew it was okay. Then I began to think. Why did they come at night? I mean, what with overtime and everything, why didn’t they come in the daytime? So I just called Louie at home. He said they came
yesterday
. So who the hell were those other guys.”