The Essential Noir Bundle, page 147
“We can die,” Lionel Grantham said gently.
There wasn’t the least bit of sense to that crack. Nobody was here to die. They were all here because it was so unlikely that anybody would have to die, except perhaps a few of Einarson’s soldiers. That’s the sensible view of the boy’s speech. But it’s God’s own truth that even I—a middle-aged detective who had forgotten what it was like to believe in fairies—felt suddenly warm inside my wet clothes. And if anybody had said to me, “This boy is a real king,” I wouldn’t have argued the point.
An abrupt hush came in the murmuring around us, leaving only the rustle of rain, and the tramp, tramp, tramp of orderly marching up the street—Einarson’s men. Everybody commenced to talk at once, happily, expectantly, cheered by the approach of those whose part it was to do the heavy work.
An officer in a glistening slicker pushed through the crowd—a small, dapper boy with too large a sword. He saluted Grantham elaborately, and said in English, of which he seemed proud, “Colonel Einarson’s respects, Mister, and this progress goes betune.”
I wondered what the last word meant.
Grantham smiled and said, “Convey my thanks to Colonel Einarson.”
The banker appeared again, bold enough now to join us. Others who had been at the meeting appeared. We made an inner group around the statue, with the mob around us—more easily seen now in the gray of early morning. I didn’t see the countryman into whose face Einarson had spat.
The rain soaked us. We shifted our feet, shivered, and talked. Daylight came slowly, showing more and more who stood around us wet and curious-eyed. On the edge of the crowd men burst into cheers. The rest of them took it up. They forgot their wet misery, laughed and danced, hugged and kissed one another. A bearded man in a leather coat came to us, bowed to Grantham, and explained that Einarson’s own regiment could be seen occupying the Administration Building.
Day came fully. The mob around us opened to make way for an automobile that was surrounded by a squad of cavalrymen. It stopped in front of us. Colonel Einarson, holding a bare sword in his hand, stepped out of the car, saluted, and held the door open for Grantham and me. He followed us in, smelling of victory like a chorus girl of Coty. The cavalrymen closed around the car again, and we were driven to the Administration Building, through a crowd that yelled and ran red-faced and happy after us. It was all quite theatrical.
“The city is ours,” said Einarson, leaning forward in his seat, his sword’s point on the car floor, his hands on its hilt. “The President, the Deputies, nearly every official of importance, is taken. Not a single shot fired, not a window broken!”
He was proud of his revolution, and I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t sure that he might not have brains, after all. He had had sense enough to park his civilian adherents in the plaza until his soldiers had done their work.
We got out at the Administration Building, walking up the steps between rows of infantrymen at present-arms, rain sparkling on their fixed bayonets. More green-uniformed soldiers presented arms along the corridors. We went into an elaborately furnished dining room, where fifteen or twenty officers stood up to receive us. There were lots of speeches made. Everybody was triumphant. All through breakfast there was much talking. I didn’t understand any of it.
After the meal we went to the Deputies’ Chamber, a large, oval room with curved rows of benches and desks facing a raised platform. Besides three desks on the platform, some twenty chairs had been put there, facing the curved seats. Our breakfast party occupied these chairs. I noticed that Grantham and I were the only civilians on the platform. None of our fellow conspirators were there, except those who were in Einarson’s army. I wasn’t so fond of that.
Grantham sat in the first row of chairs, between Einarson and me. We looked down on the Deputies. There were perhaps a hundred of them distributed among the curved benches, split sharply in two groups. Half of them, on the right side of the room, were revolutionists. They stood up and hurrahed at us. The other half, on the left, were prisoners. Most of them seemed to have dressed hurriedly.
Around the room, shoulder to shoulder against the wall except on the platform and where the doors were, stood Einarson’s soldiers.
An old man came in between two soldiers—a mild-eyed old gentleman, bald, stooped, with a wrinkled, clean-shaven, scholarly face.
“Doctor Semich,” Grantham whispered.
The President’s guards took him to the center one of the three desks on the platform. He paid no attention to us who were sitting on the platform, and he did not sit down.
A red-haired Deputy—one of the revolutionary party—got up and talked. His fellows cheered when he had finished. The President spoke—three words in a very dry, very calm voice, and left the platform to walk back the way he had come, the two soldiers accompanying him.
“Refused to resign,” Grantham informed me.
The red-haired Deputy came up on the platform and took the center desk. The legislative machinery began to grind. Men talked briefly, apparently to the point—revolutionists. None of the prisoner Deputies rose. A vote was taken. A few of the in-wrongs didn’t vote. Most of them seemed to vote with the ins.
“They’ve revoked the constitution,” Grantham whispered.
The Deputies were hurrahing again—those who were there voluntarily. Einarson leaned over and mumbled to Grantham and me, “That is as far as we may safely go today. It leaves all in our hands.”
“Time to listen to a suggestion?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Will you excuse us a moment?” I said to Grantham, and got up and walked to one of the rear corners of the platform.
Einarson followed me, frowning suspiciously.
“Why not give Grantham his crown now?” I asked when we were standing in the corner, my right shoulder touching his left, half facing each other, half facing the corner, our backs to the officers who sat on the platform, the nearest less than ten feet away. “Push it through. You can do it. There’ll be a howl, of course. Tomorrow, as a concession to that howl, you’ll make him abdicate. You’ll get credit for that. You’ll be fifty percent stronger with the people. Then you will be in a position to make it look as if the revolution was his party, and that you were the patriot who kept this newcomer from grabbing the throne. Meanwhile you’ll be dictator, and whatever else you want to be when the time comes. See what I mean? Let him bear the brunt. You catch yours on the rebound.”
He liked the idea, but he didn’t like it to come from me. His little dark eyes pried into mine. “Why should you suggest this?” he asked.
“What do you care? I promise you he’ll abdicate within twenty-four hours.”
He smiled under his mustache and raised his head. I knew a major in the A.E.F. who always raised his head like that when he was going to issue an unpleasant order. I spoke quickly. “My raincoat—do you see it’s folded over my left arm?”
He said nothing, but his eyelids crept together.
“You can’t see my left hand,” I went on.
His eyes were slits, but he said nothing.
“There’s an automatic in it,” I wound up.
“Well?” he asked contemptuously.
“Nothing, only—get funny, and I’ll let your guts out.”
“Ach!”—he didn’t take me seriously—“and after that?”
“I don’t know. Think it over carefully, Einarson. I’ve deliberately put myself in a position where I’ve got to go ahead if you don’t give in. I can kill you before you do anything. I’m going to do it if you don’t give Grantham his crown now. Understand? I’ve got to. Maybe—most likely—your boys would get me afterward, but you’d be dead. If I back down now, you’ll certainly have me shot. So I can’t back down. If neither of us backs down, we’ll both take the leap. I’ve gone too far to weaken now. You’ll have to give in. Think it over.”
He thought it over. Some of the color washed out of his face, and a little rippling movement appeared in the flesh of his chin. I crowded him along by moving the raincoat enough to show him the muzzle of the gun that actually was there in my left hand. I had the big heater—he hadn’t nerve enough to take a chance on dying in his hour of victory.
He strode across the platform to the desk at which the redhead sat, drove the redhead away with a snarl and a gesture, leaned over the desk, and bellowed down into the chamber. I stood a little to one side of him, a little behind, so no one could get between us.
No Deputy made a sound for a long minute after the Colonel’s bellow had stopped. Then one of the anti-revolutionists jumped to his feet and yelped bitterly. Einarson pointed a long brown finger at him. Two soldiers left their places by the wall, took the Deputy roughly by neck and arms, and dragged him out. Another Deputy stood up, talked, and was removed. After the fifth drag-out everything was peaceful. Einarson put a question and got a unanimous answer.
He turned to me, his gaze darting from my face to my raincoat and back, and said, “That is done.”
“We’ll have the coronation now,” I commanded.
I missed most of the ceremony. I was busy keeping my hold on the florid officer, but finally Lionel Grantham was officially installed as Lionel the First, King of Muravia. Einarson and I congratulated him, or whatever it was, together. Then I took the officer aside.
“We’re going to take a walk,” I said. “No foolishness. Take me out of a side door.”
I had him now, almost without needing the gun. He would have to deal quietly with Grantham and me—kill us without any publicity—if he were to avoid being laughed at—this man who had let himself be stuck up and robbed of a throne in the middle of his army.
We went roundabout from the Administration Building to the Hotel of the Republic without meeting anyone who knew us. The population was all in the plaza. We found the hotel deserted. I made him run the elevator to my floor, and herded him to my room.
I tried the door, found it unlocked, let go the knob, and told him to go in. He pushed the door open and stopped.
Romaine Frankl was sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed, sewing a button on one of my union suits.
I prodded Einarson into the room and closed the door. Romaine looked at him and at the automatic that was now uncovered in my hand. With burlesque disappointment she said, “Oh, you haven’t killed him yet!”
Colonel Einarson stiffened. He had an audience now—one that saw his humiliation. He was likely to do something. I’d have to handle him with gloves, or—maybe the other way was better. I kicked him on the ankle and snarled, “Get over in the corner and sit down!”
He spun around to me. I jabbed the muzzle of the pistol in his face, grinding his lip between it and his teeth. When his head jerked back I slammed him in the belly with my other fist. He grabbed for air with a wide mouth. I pushed him over to a chair in one corner.
Romaine laughed and shook a finger at me, saying, “You’re a rowdy!”
“What else can I do?” I protested, chiefly for my prisoner’s benefit. “When somebody’s watching him he gets notions that he’s a hero. I stuck him up and made him crown the boy king. But this bird has still got the army, which is the government. I can’t let go of him, or both Lionel the Once and I will gather lead. It hurts me more than it does him to have to knock him around, but I can’t help myself. I’ve got to keep him sensible.”
“You’re doing wrong by him,” she replied. “You’ve got no right to mistreat him. The only polite thing for you to do is to cut his throat in a gentlemanly manner.”
“Ach!” Einarson’s lungs were working again.
“Shut up,” I yelled at him, “or I’ll knock you double-jointed.”
He glared at me, and I asked the girl, “What’ll we do with him? I’d be glad to cut his throat, but the trouble is, his army might avenge him, and I’m not a fellow who likes to have anybody’s army avenging on him.”
“We’ll give him to Vasilije,” she said, swinging her feet over the side of the bed and standing up. “He’ll know what to do.”
“Where is he?”
“Upstairs in Grantham’s suite, finishing his morning nap.”
Then she said lightly, casually, as if she hadn’t been thinking seriously about it, “So you had the boy crowned?”
“I did. You want it for your Vasilije? Good! We want five million American dollars for our abdication. Grantham put in three to finance the doings, and he deserves a profit. He’s been regularly elected by the Deputies. He’s got no real backing here, but he can get support from the neighbors. Don’t overlook that. There are a couple of countries not a million miles away that would gladly send in an army to support a legitimate king in exchange for whatever concessions they liked. But Lionel the First isn’t unreasonable. He thinks it would be better for you to have a native ruler. All he asks is a decent provision from the government. Five million is low enough, and he’ll abdicate tomorrow. Tell that to your Vasilije.”
She went around me to avoid passing between my gun and its target, stood on tiptoe to kiss my ear, and said, “You and your king are brigands. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She went out.
“Ten millions,” Colonel Einarson said.
“I can’t trust you now,” I said. “You’d pay us off in front of a firing squad.”
“You can trust this pig Djudakovich?”
“He’s got no reason to hate us.”
“He will when he’s told of you and his Romaine.”
I laughed.
“Besides, how can he be king? Ach! What is his promise to pay if he cannot become in a position to pay? Suppose even I am dead. What will he do with my army? Ach! You have seen the pig! What kind of king is he?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I’m told he was a good Minister of Police because inefficiency would spoil his comfort. Maybe he’d be a good king for the same reason. I’ve seen him once. He’s a bloated mountain, but there’s nothing ridiculous about him. He weighs a ton, and moves without shaking the floor. I’d be afraid to try on him what I did to you.”
This insult brought the soldier up on his feet, very tall and straight. His eyes burned at me while his mouth hardened in a thin line. He was going to make trouble for me before I was rid of him.
The door opened and Vasilije Djudakovich came in, followed by the girl. I grinned at the fat Minister. He nodded without smiling. His little dark eyes moved coldly from me to Einarson.
The girl said, “The government will give Lionel the First a draft for four million dollars, American, on either a Vienna or Athens bank, in exchange for his abdication.” She dropped her official tone and added, “That’s every nickel I could get out of him.”
“You and your Vasilije are a couple of rotten bargain hunters,” I complained. “But we’ll take it. We’ve got to have a special train to Saloniki—one that will put us across the border before the abdication goes into effect.”
“That will be arranged,” she promised.
“Good! Now to do all this your Vasilije has got to take the army away from Einarson. Can he do it?”
“Ach!” Colonel Einarson reared up his head, swelled his thick chest. “That is precisely what he has got to do!”
The fat man grumbled sleepily through his yellow beard. Romaine came over and put a hand on my arm.
“Vasilije wants a private talk with Einarson. Leave it to him.”
I agreed and offered Djudakovich my automatic. He paid no attention to the gun or to me. He was looking with a clammy sort of patience at the officer. I went out with the girl and closed the door. At the foot of the stairs I took her by the shoulders.
“Can I trust your Vasilije?” I asked.
“Oh my dear, he could handle half a dozen Einarsons.”
“I don’t mean that. He won’t try to gyp me?”
“Why should you start worrying about that now?”
“He doesn’t seem to be exactly all broken out with friendliness.”
She laughed, and twisted her face around to bite at one of my hands.
“He’s got ideals,” she explained. “He despises you and your king for a pair of adventurers who are making a profit out of his country’s troubles. That’s why he’s so sniffy. But he’ll keep his word.”
Maybe he would, I thought, but he hadn’t given me his word—the girl had.
“I’m going over to see His Majesty,” I said. “I won’t be long—then I’ll join you up in his suite. What was the idea of the sewing act? I had no buttons off.”
“You did,” she contradicted me, rummaging in my pocket for cigarettes. “I pulled one off when one of our men told me you and Einarson were headed this way. I thought it would look domestic.”
I found my king in a wine and gold drawing-room in the Executive Residence, surrounded by Muravia’s socially and politically ambitious. Uniforms were still in the majority, but a sprinkling of civilians had finally got to him, along with their wives and daughters. He was too occupied to see me for a few minutes, so I stood around, looking the folks over. Particularly one—a tall girl in black, who stood apart from the others, at a window.
I noticed her first because she was beautiful in face and body, and then I studied her more closely because of the expression in the brown eyes with which she watched the new king. If ever anybody looked proud of anybody else, this girl did of Grantham. The way she stood there, alone by the window, and looked at him—he would have had to be at least a combination of Apollo, Socrates, and Alexander to deserve half of it. Valeska Radnjak, I supposed.
I looked at the boy. His face was proud and flushed, and every two seconds turned toward the girl at the window while he listened to the jabbering of the worshipful group around him. I knew he wasn’t any Apollo-Socrates-Alexander, but he managed to look the part. He had found a spot in the world that he liked. I was half sorry he couldn’t hang on to it, but my regrets didn’t keep me from deciding that I had wasted enough time.
