The Wrong Venus (12 page)

Gun in hand, he ran down the hallway. In the kitchen, Madame Buffet was just getting off the floor, making too much forceful and bitter comment to be seriously hurt. He shot past her, locked the door leading into the alley, and threw the bolt. Turning, he helped her up. “You all right?”

“. . . littérature . . . merde . . . !”

“Is there another outside door?”

She shook her head.
“. . . maison de fous. . . .”

Colby yanked open drawers and closets, grabbed up an extension cord and a handful of dish towels, and ran back to the salon. The man was still out, with Kendall standing over him. He tied his legs together with the electrical cord and used the dish towels to bind his hands and gag him. Dudley stirred and sat up.

Colby reached for a pack of cigarettes on the table beside the recorder and lighted one, conscious of exhaustion and utter defeat. For twenty-four hours they had been plugging successive and ever-bigger holes in a dike that had been doomed to begin with, and now they were finished. Decaux knew Kendall was in here, and there was no way to get her out. The novel was worthless. So was their agreement with Dudley, and the six-thousand-dollar check they already had.

Martine still had the telegram. As calmly as though there had been no interruption, she flipped over to the last page and read it:
“Already have photographic coverage of expedition yacht and personnel adequate for all publicity purposes Signed Sabine Manning.”

For a moment no one moved. Then Dudley dropped to the floor and began stuffing the money back in the briefcase. He zipped it and headed for the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Martine demanded.

“Brazil,” he said. “For a start.”

“Merriman!” Her eyes flashed. “Come back here.”

“You may be crazy—”

“You’d go off and leave Kendall here to be killed?”

“What can I do about it?”

“Carry out the terms of your agreement. We need help to get her out of France, and it takes money.”

He stared at her. “You expect me to pay out more money for that goddam manuscript—now? After that telegram?”

“Merriman Dudley, we’ve been friends a long time, but if you go out that door we’re finished. We got that reporter out of your hair, then Lawrence got Kendall back, and the two of them saved your thirty thousand francs. So now it’s all for nothing because you want to chicken out and run. After all, what have we done for you lately?”

“Sauve qui peut,”
Colby said bitterly.

“What does that mean?”

“Take up the ladder, mate, I’m aboard.”

“Look—” Dudley protested.

“Never mind,” Martine said to Colby, “let him go.” She reached for her purse. Taking out her checkbook, she addressed Dudley with icy disdain, “But before you do, I want to buy that manuscript.”

“What?”

“Get your records and tell me exactly what you paid Sanborn and Kendall for writing it. I’ll give you a check payable to Sabine Manning for the full amount, and it’s mine.”

“Why?”

“Never mind why. Either honor your agreement or sell me the manuscript and get out of my way.”

Colby watched with awe. She was fantastic—not only as an actress, but as a gambler. This was the coldest bluff he had ever seen.

“Listen!” Dudley shouted. “You read the telegram! She’s not only gone nuts, but she’s in Nice! She could walk in here any minute!”

“We could still have it finished before she gets here.”

“What the hell good is it? We’ve run out of time. There’s no way we can keep her from finding out about it—”

Martine interrupted. “Then you will sell it?”

“Martine—if we delivered it to Holton Press in the next five minutes.” Dudley took a deep breath and tried again, desperation written on his face. “Look—they’ve got a sex novel we say she just finished, and in every newspaper in the Western hemisphere she’s on her soapbox trying to have it outlawed. They just might wonder—”

“Could you just give me a simple yes or no?”

“How do you expect to sell it?” Dudley cried out. “Without Sabine Manning’s name on it you won’t get your money back.”

“I’m waiting, Merriman.”

Up against the unanswerable, Dudley broke at last. “All right.” He slumped down on the sofa. “I’ll stay.”

“That’s better.” She smiled. “I appreciate your vote of confidence.”

“But let’s be sure we understand the agreement. I pay for the smuggling operation now, but the twenty thousand is no-cure-no-pay. You don’t get a dollar of it unless that manuscript goes to Holton Press with Miss Manning’s name on it.”

“Fair enough. We wouldn’t have taken the job unless we thought we could do it.” Her voice was confident, but the face thoughtful as she glanced at the man on the floor, and then toward Colby. Their eyes met, the knowledge unspoken between them. Now that Decaux knew Kendall was in here, getting her out alive was going to take something approximating a miracle.

And there was the further matter of keeping him and his mob from getting in. They had a gun—two of them, in fact—and both outside doors were locked. But there still remained the windows.

As though she’d been following his line of thought word for word, Martine asked Dudley, “Do all the windows have shutters?”

“Yes,” he said. “But anybody could tear one off.”

“Not without noise. Close and fasten all of them except that one.” She nodded to the one looking on the street. They won’t try to break in there with a street light in front of the house, and we want to be able to see out.”

“Okay.” Dudley went out.

She turned to Kendall. “Now, where would you like to work?”

“My same room. Second floor, just down the hall from the office.”

“Good. The recorder’s ready to go. Will you need any help running it?”

“I hope not. I’m going to dictate the first four hours from a hot bath.”

Martine opened her purse again. “Here’s a Dexedrine so you won’t fall asleep.” Kendall took the tablet, picked up the recorder, and hurried up the stairs.

Colby reached for another cigarette. “Remind me never to play poker with you.”

Martine’s face was still overlaid with that slightly frowning, thoughtful expression. “It wasn’t entirely bluff. I would have bought it.”

Colby stared, with a feeling he was lost. He and this girl had an ability to communicate without speech, up to a point, but now she was ahead of him. They’d had to hold Dudley to his agreement because they couldn’t abandon Kendall. In addition to the fact they both liked her, they were the ones who’d brought her into this death trap. But the manuscript?

“If you want to start a fire,” he said, “lighter fluid is cheaper.”

“No,” she said musingly. “You’re falling into Merriman’s trap, the canalized line of reasoning. The key to the whole thing, of course, is still Miss Manning, but no longer in the same way. The question is who is she now? What is she?”

“Instant Suetonius. We know that. Schliemann with fins.”

“No. I mean, precisely what happened to her?”

The crusade against sex? It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“Not to me,” she said.

“Look . . . she’s a plain, very shy woman, the eternal wallflower, rejected by everybody. She gets hurt, sure, but never really clobbered because she stays in her shell where they can’t reach her. Then Roberto rolls her in the hay, she loves it, falls for him like a ton of bricks, begins to open up and come out, as vulnerable as a shucked oyster, and bang—she gets it right between the eyes. That bastard, as many women as he’s left, you’d think he could do it with a little grace.”

“I’m not sure you’re right.” She smiled. “But I’m interested to hear you’re an authority on how to leave women.”

“I’m just a good listener. I was in Korea with a guy who was going to write a book on it.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t know, he could never seem to sharpen his timing. The last I heard, he’d left four, and his alimony bill was six thousand dollars a month. But why don’t you agree with it?”

“I’m not sure. Just a hunch. It’s too pat, anyway, a cliché.”

“Sure. But what’s a cliché except something that happens all the time? It’s standard situation nine-D right out of the stock bin, but it’s still true. She was probably pleading with him when he walked out on her and he got bugged and said something cruel, and the human race goes down swinging. She was right back where she started, only now it was a thousand times worse because she’d begun to think that somebody could care for her—”

“When do we get to the snowstorm, when her father won’t let her in the house with the baby?”

“Well, what do you think happened?”

“I don’t know,” she said, still lost in thought. “But Roberto doesn’t quite ring true, and neither does her telegram.” She stood up. “Give me about half an hour. I’ll be up in the office.”

Colby checked the man on the floor. He was heavy-shouldered, dark, about thirty, still unconscious but breathing all right. Colby pulled him over against the wall out of the way, looked at him again, shrugged, and put a sofa pillow under his head. He was just an instrument, one of the workmen.

Decaux was still across the street, along with one of the cars, deadly, inevitable, as impervious to annulment or modification as planetary motion. Colby let the drape fall back in place. Answer? Where was it? Smuggling Kendall out of France had sounded like an impossible project, but that was the good old days. Try smuggling her into the next block. Dudley came back. Colby gave him the automatic.

“Yell, if you hear anything,” he said. He went in search of Madame Buffet, retrieved his bag, and had a shower and a change of clothing. When he got to the office Martine had the Michelin road map of France spread out on the desk, along with her address book and a scratchpad covered with figures and what looked like several names with telephone numbers. She was just putting down the phone.

He perched on a corner of the desk and reached for a cigarette. “Ogden Nash was right. You can’t get there from here.”

“Sure you can.” She leaned back in the chair, tapping her teeth with the end of a pencil. “But to dispose of the easy part first, let’s start a half-mile from here. North Africa’s the best bet. It’s far enough away, and she can catch a plane or ship to the States with no trouble.
D’accord?”

“Sure. But how does she get there?”

“The same way you get in the Social Register or a floating crap game—money and connections.” She shuffled through her notes. “Here’s a number to call in Nice, a man named Jules Clavel. He has a finger in all kinds of rackets there and in Marseille. He made a fortune smuggling out of Tangier just after the war, and still has some good fast boats and contacts all along the African coast. His mistress is a friend of mine, and she’s already called him to establish our credentials. But before we phone, maybe you’d better knock on Kendall’s door and see if she can give us an approximate time she’ll be through.”

“Which is hers?”

“The next one on the right.”

The door was closed, but he could hear the murmur of her voice inside. He knocked twice before she heard him. “Come in,” she called. He pushed open the door. The black dress and her slip were on the bed, and an open suitcase on a stand at the foot of it. There was a typewriter on a stand near the dresser. The drapes were tightly drawn across the window, but the bathroom door was ajar. Through it he could hear the splash of water and her voice.

“. . . the immemorial dark tide of ecstasy and desire and the wild sweet singing in the blood period paragraph—
who is it?”

“Colby. Can you give us a rough idea when you’ll be finished? We’ve got to set up a timetable.”

“Hmmmmm—let’s see—forty-six pages to go. Seven tomorrow morning at the latest.
Quote Oh, Greg, Greg, Greg, unquote she whispered comma delirious with rapture comma—”

Thanks,” he said. He started out.

“—melting under the touch of hands that left their tracery of fire—
oh, Colby.”

He turned. “What?”

“In my bag there’s another bottle of bath salts, Prince Matchabelli, I think it is. Will you hand it to me?
Quote Oh, God, darling, unquote she gasped, quote I love it, I love it—”

He rooted through a welter of nylon and lace and located it while she went on dictating. “Here you go.” He reached it in around the door.

“—darling, darling, darling—
you’ll have to come a little closer.”

“You mean me,” he asked, “or Greg?”

“You . . . down a little . . . not quite yet . . . oh, go ahead and dump it in, I’m submerged.”

He went in. She was up to her shoulders in foam, the microphone held in one hand. The recorder was on a chair beside the tub, the clipboard with the rest of Sanborn’s manuscript propped up against it. She tore off a page and let it fall among the half dozen already scattered around the floor.

“—comma unquote the words squeezed and ragged with passion comma torn from her
—about a third of it, Colby—”

He uncapped the bottle and shook it over the tub. “You want me to stir it?”

“No, that’s all right.” A satiny and foam-bejeweled leg emerged, swishing the surface.
“—by his inexorably mounting cadence and that final swamping of all her senses under the onrushing flood of desire that was like torment demanding release—
could I have a puff on that?”

“Sure.” He perched on the side of the tub and held the cigarette between her lips. “Does writing that stuff have any aphrodisiac effect? I’d be off sex forever.”

“No.” She smiled and exhaled smoke. “After awhile you don’t even hear it.” She took another puff, pressed the microphone button, and went on,
“—comma aflame with that age-old exultation in the terrible urgency of his need for her—
thanks, Colby.”

“Not at all.” He set the bottle on the chair and got up.

“—Period With a gibbering little cry of unbearable ecstasy comma she thrust her hips upward against him comma—”

He went back to the office. He dialed the number in Nice, and in a few minutes was through to Clavel. He introduced himself and said he was a friend of Martine Randall.

“I know,” Clavel broke in. ‘”What do you need?”

Transportation, Colby replied. For himself? No, for a young lady whose doctor had prescribed a change of scene; she’d developed a strange allergy to crowds and to people wearing blue, and he thought perhaps North Africa—

“I’ve got a hunch I know who you mean,” Clavel said. “We have newspapers here too. Any particular place?”

“Anywhere she could catch a ship or plane to the United States without a stop in France. She’d need an entry stamp—and visa if it’s called for—to clear her on the way out.”

“We’ve got one of the top men. Passport, UN credentials—you name it.”

“She can use her own passport once she’s out of France.”

“We’ve got a boat leaving for Rabat Saturday night. How about that?”

This was Thursday; Saturday would be perfect, with plenty of leeway for getting there. “Good. Where could you pick her up?”

“There’s a cove west of Cannes. You’d better write this down.” He gave directions and exact mileage. Colby jotted it down. “Have her there at nine p.m.”

“Check,” Colby said. “And what’s the tab?”

‘Twenty-five thousand francs.”

“Okay. Now, there’s one more thing; there may be a price being offered around to take her somewhere else—”

“If we’re talking about the same girl, there is.”

“If the twenty-five thousand doesn’t top it, say so now. I want to pay her fare all the way across.”

“Forget it. I know the guy that’s after her, and we don’t do business with him. Have her there, the captain’ll wait five minutes, and that’s it.”

“He won’t have to wait at all. If she’s not there it’ll be in the papers.”

He hung up and repeated the conversation to Martine. “Good so far. Now, from here to Cannes?”

“That’s the easiest part of it.” She went on to explain. Roberto would take her; she’d already talked to him. He was out now looking for the vehicle, one of those pickup trucks with the camper body on it. She thought he could get a good used one for around six thousand francs.

Colby nodded. “Still good.”

“So. . . .” She smiled. “We’ve solved everything but the problem. Any ideas?”

“No. You couldn’t smuggle a hamster out of here as long as he’s there, and you can’t move him.”

“We have to move him, that’s the only solution. So approach it from there. What would induce him to go away?”

“Nothing on earth. Till he gets her. God knows how many people he’s killed, but this is the first time there’s ever been a witness—”

“Wait a minute!” she interrupted. She leaned back in the chair. Seconds stretched out as she continued to stare straight ahead of her, biting her lip. Then she sat up abruptly. “Colby! We’ve got it!”

She explained. It took five minutes, while he listened with increasing awe.

He whistled. “Mother, dear. But can we cast a production like that?”

“Why not? All we need is Henri, Roberto, the moving van, and four plain-clothes cops. I can do it on the phone in twenty minutes.”

Colby made a complete tour of the house from the attic downward to be sure there was no place they could get in after it was dark. When he came to the salon, he peered out. Decaux was still there, as well as one of the cars.

Dudley indicated the bound man lying against the wall. I think he wants to say something. Keeps trying to make a noise.”

Colby removed the gag and was greeted by a geyser of abuse in a Marseille accent.

“What’d he say?” Dudley asked.

“The only thing printable is that he wants to go to the john.”

“The hell with him.”

“Oh, I’ll take him. Give me the gun and you untie him. Just his arms, he can hop.”

Dudley loosed the bonds and stepped back. “Nearest one’s Miss Manning’s bathroom. Through that door and down the hall.”

Colby followed the man’s kangaroo progress with the gun centered on his back. Miss Manning’s rooms consisted of a book-lined study, a large bedroom carpeted with a shaggy white rug, and a bathroom that had been modernized and done over in coral and black. He looked around the study and bedroom, thinking of the unhappy spinster now completely withdrawn and made bitter by the final rejection. It was a shame.

They came back. “You are kidnapers,” the man said angrily as Dudley tied his hands again.

“That we are,” Colby agreed. “But who knows, perhaps you will return to your friends tomorrow.”

“You are dirty—” A mouthful of dish towel cut off the rest of his comment.

Madame Buffet made sandwiches and opened some bottles of wine. Kendall took hers in her room while she went on dictating. Colby and Martine ate at the desk in the office. She gave him a report. Everything was falling into place for H-hour, eight tomorrow morning.

She’d located four friends, three of them bit players in films, who were willing to impersonate inspectors from the Quai des Orfèvres for a half-hour for five hundred francs. Two of them looked a little like Jean Gabin, and it was one of these, Émile Voivin, who would have the speaking part. She’d rehearsed him in it. Roberto had called. He’d found a used pickup camper that could be had for fifty-two hundred francs. A cruise ship named the
Heraldic
was calling at Rabat a week from Saturday, bound for New York by way of Gibraltar, the West Indies, and Nassau. She’d made a reservation for first-class passage in Kendall’s name.

Roberto arrived in a taxi shortly after four P.M. They gave him the money for the truck, for the provisions he would need, and for Kendall’s steamship ticket, which he would pick up after he was certain he wasn’t being followed.

“They won’t follow anybody now,” Colby said. “They know where she is.”

They brought out the map of Paris and briefed him. “You’ll rendezvous at this point on the Rue Céleste at eight a.m.,” Martine went on. “That’s only four blocks from here and you don’t have to go through any traffic lights or cross any arterials to get here, which could wreck the timing. You park the pickup truck and get in the van with Henri. Voivin and the other three men will be in another car.

“Lawrence will arrive at the same time in my car. He’ll get in the back of the van. Henri will have an extra-large coverall he can put on over his suit, and a beret, the same things you’ll be wearing. As soon as he’s gone over it once more with Voivin, Henri will drive the van around here, going very fast once you’ve turned into this street and you’re visible to Decaux and his men. Voivin will leave exactly two minutes later. The timing has to be very precise. If Voivin gets here too soon we won’t fool him, and if he’s too late it could be very dangerous. Everything clear?”

“Yes,” Roberto said.

“Good. Here are the instructions for finding the cove after you get to Cannes. You can keep the truck, or sell it, whichever you wish. See you in the morning.”

Roberto left. Martine had found another recorder, one with a foot switch, and she began to transcribe the first of Kendall’s tapes. It seemed a waste of effort to Colby, typing a worthless manuscript, but they couldn’t sit and do nothing. The suspense of waiting for eight A.M. Would have them going up the wall.

Decaux disappeared from in front of the house, but there were two cars on station and the state of siege went on as night began. Madame Buffet made coffee. Dudley continued to watch in the now-darkened salon, alert for the first warning sounds of attempted entry. The house was silent except for the clatter of Martine's typewriter in the office. Colby took over. He was dead tired, now close to forty hours without sleep. He took one of Martine's Dexedrine tablets and came to life again.

Shortly after eleven the cook arrived in a taxi, identified himself, and was let in, carrying an armful of newspapers.
Voilà!

WHO IS BOUGIE? The headlines cried. WHERE IS BOUGIE? DID BOUGIE KILL PEPE? Was Bougie protecting her lover, the real assassin? Was Bougie a Russian spy, a Magyar princess, a reincarnated Viking, a publicity stunt by some American cereal manufacturer? At various times and places Bougie had spoken French with an American accent, English accent, German accent, Balkan accent, Vaudois accent, and the accents of four different provinces of France. The photograph was emblazoned on the front pages of most of them, and two carried a picture of Colby drawn by a police artist from the descriptions of eyewitnesses in the café at St.-Médard. He looked like the man who is always questioned by police after a series of mysterious stranglings. There was a picture of the café, with a dotted line showing the trajectory of the gendarme, and several photographs of Pepe Torreon, one without a blonde.

The briefcase now contained two million francs and bore an indecipherable coat of arms. Little credence was given in most circles, however, to the theory that Colby might have been implicated in the assassination of Rasputin.