Collected Short Fiction, page 410
“It you like,” Barbee yielded. “Come along.”
Her arm slipped through his. Even the white fur. where it brushed his wrist, felt electric, exciting. This girl did things to him. He had believed himself impervious to women, and this simultaneous attraction and queer, lingering repulsion disturbed him.
Somewhat unsteadily, Barbee began:
“The tall, white-haired woman—the one standing alone, with the black glasses and the lonely face? She’s Mondrick’s wife. They say she was beautiful once. Used to go with him on field trips. But she has been blind for many years—somehow she was mauled by a leopard when they were on the Congo.”
“I see.” April Bell’s white face held sympathy. “And the others?”
“The plump woman in gray, just beyond, is some sort of cousin who acts as companion. And—see the old gent just lighting his pipe—only he’s too excited to strike a match? That’s old Ben Chittutn. Rex’s granddad, and the only relative he has. Runs a newstand back in Clarendon—it’s down on Center Street, just across from the Star building. He put Rex through school till he could make his own way. He has been saving for months to meet the Clipper.”
Barbee didn’t add that he himself had contributed ten dollars toward the ticket. The old fellow had at first refused to accept it. But Barbee insisted that it wasn’t for him, but only a tribute to Rex.
“And the rest?” urged April.
“The little fellow with the big nose is Nick Spivak’s father,” Barbee told her. “He has a tailor shop in Brooklyn, on Flatbush Avenue. And the proud-looking, dark-haired little woman is Mrs. Spivak. Nick’s the only son. He’s got over saying ‘woik’ and ‘goil,’ but he still thinks the world of them.
“Most of the others are friends of Mondrick. Fisher and Bennet. from the foundation—”
“The blonde?” intercepted April. “Smiling at you?”
“That’s Nora,” Barbee said. “Sam Quain’s wife.”
He had first met Nora the same night Sam did—it was at the freshman mixer during the registration week at Clarendon. Twelve years had changed her surprisingly little. She came smiling to them, leading Pat.
PATRICIA QUAIN was now five years old, and very proud of that fact. She had her mother’s wide blue eyes and corn-silk hair, but her stubborn face showed a reflection of Sam’s square chin. She was tugging back, peering hungrily into the gray sky.
“Mother—will daddy’s Clipper be safe in the clouds?”
“Of course, darling.” And Nora called: “Do you think they’ll be much longer, Will? I can hardly wait. Just think—I haven’t seen Sam for four years. Pat won’t know him.”
“Yes, I will, mother.” The child had Sam’s own stubborn determination. “I know my own daddy.”
“They’ve already landed,” Barbee said. “They’ll be taxiing in. Nora, this is Miss April Bell. She’s learning to be a sob sister. Anything you tell her may be used against you.”
“Really, Mr. Barbee!”
April’s protest was laughing. When the eyes of the two women met, however, Barbee sensed fire—something like the sudden burst of sparks when hard metal meets the grinding wheel. Smiling with angelic sweetness, they shook hands.
“Darling! I’m so happy to meet you.”
Barbee knew that they hated each other savagely.
“Mother,” said Pat, “may I touch the dear little kitten?”
“No, darling—please!”
Nora caught hastily at the little girl. But her pink little hand was already reaching eagerly. The black kitten blinked and spat and scratched. With a gasping sob that she stifled stubbornly, Pat drew back to her mother. “Mrs. Quain,” cooed April, “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t like you,” Pat said defiantly.
“There!” Shrill-voiced with excitement, old Ben Outturn limped past them, waving his pipe. “They’re coming in!”
The Spivaks ran to join the line on the pier’s edge. “Mama, there they come—and our Nick can fly with the best of them!”
“Come, mother,” urged Pat. “It’s daddy.”
Barbee was left beside April Bell.
“Fifi, you mustn’t.” She patted the kitten reprovingly. “You spoiled our interview.”
Barbee felt an impulse to follow Nora and explain that April was a stranger. He still had a tender spot for Nora. But April’s smile dazzled him again, and her voice chimed contritely:
“I’m sorry, Barbee—truly.”
“It’s all right,” said Barbee. “But how come the kitten?”
Her green-black eyes were once more searching, intense. For a moment Barbee felt a keyed-up, half-frightened alertness, as if the girl were playing some difficult and dangerous game. A cub reporter, of course, might be jittery about her first big assignment. But here, somehow the hunch sense was telling him, was something coldly and desperately deadly. That chilling shudder lapped at him again. After the merest instant, however, her frozen white face was alive again, and smiling.
“Fifi belongs to my aunt Agatha,” she told him brightly. “I’ve been staying with her and she had some shopping, so she left Fifi with me. She was to meet me here, but I guess the police wouldn’t let her through. Excuse me, and I’ll find if she’s come—and get rid of the little beast before she hurts somebody else.”
She hurried along the dock, searching the crowd of spectators on the platform. Barbee stared after her with a puzzled and uneasy interest. Even the lithe, free grace of her walk fascinated him. She was untamed.
Barbee shrugged uneasily and followed Nora to the group watching the great plane coming in. He was tired, and probably he had been drinking more than was good for him. It was only natural that he should feel a strong response to such a girl as April Bell. What man wouldn’t? She could certainly look forward to a successful journalistic career.
Nora brought her attention from the Clipper, asking:
“Is she important?”
“Just met her,” Barbee said. “She’s—unusual.”
“Don’t let her be,” Nora urged him. “She is—”
She paused as if to find a word for April Bell. The warm smile left her face and her hand moved unconsciously to draw Pat to her. She didn’t find the word.
“Don’t, Will!” she whispered. “Please!”
The engines of the incoming Clipper drowned her voice.
II.
OLD BEN CHITTUM led an eager rush toward the gangplank, with Papa and Mama Spivak at his heels. But police stopped them. Officials with brief cases hurried about importantly. The packed spectators on the platform craned their necks in impatient silence.
“Paul?” It was the voice of Mondrick’s blind wife, strained, as if with a sudden fear. “Paul?”
Barbee was watching eagerly. For Sam Quain’s bronze head and his blue-eyed, stubborn face. For quiet, thin, spectacled Nick Spivak. For Rex Chittum, with his genial grin and his dark, movie-star good looks. For old Mondrick himself, ruddy and stout and bald and grave.
The ambassador came down the gangplank, followed by a worried-looking aid. Other passengers followed. A bearded, hollow-eyed Jew, limping, with one arm slung. A nurse, with two blond, frightened children. Three hurried, well-fed businessmen.
But Mondrick and his associates still didn’t come.
The ambassador stopped in front of the line of mikes and cameras. Flash bulbs flickered, while he tried to strike poses that would draw emphasis from his paunch and his bald spot. Speaking into the mikes, while news cameras ground, he said nothing in careful diplomatic language. Then he hurried on, into the gray chill of the early dusk, with the worried aid tagging after him.
The newsmen were about to disperse when an airline official rushed to them from the Clipper. They began setting up their equipment again. A policeman came up to the little group about Barbee.
“Sorry, folks,” he said. “But we’ve got to clear the dock.”
“But we’re waiting for the expedition,” the blind woman protested anxiously. “Dr. Mondrick is my husband. We’re all relatives and friends—”
“Sorry, Mrs. Mondrick,” said the officer. “I don’t quite understand it myself. But your husband says that the dock has to be cleared before he comes off. Except for the newspaper and radio people. Let’s go quietly, please.”
“No,” little Pat said defiantly. “I want to see my daddy.”
Herself looking as frightened as the child, Nora led her away. Mama Spivak uttered a low, wailing cry and began to sob. Old Ben Chittum shook his black pipe and began a quavering protest:
“I rode the cars all the way just to see my son. And now, by gosh—”
Barbee shook his head.
“Better wait, Ben.” The old man limped after the others, muttering Barbee showed his press credentials, submitted to a swift search for concealed weapons, and joined the group of reporters. He found April Bell beside him.
THE BLACK KITTEN must have been returned to Aunt Agatha, for the snakeskin bag was closed now. The girl looked breathless and pale. She was watching the gangplank with an anxious, feverish intentness.
“The fools,” she whispered soundlessly.
She seemed to start when she became aware of Barbee’s searching glance. Her flame-haired head moved swiftly. For an instant he felt the tense, desperate readiness of a feral thing, crouched to leap. Then she smiled, and her green eyes lit with a gay comradeship.
“Waal, pard,” her electric voice assumed a stage drawl, “looks like we all have just about bulldogged a page one story. Hyar they come!”
Sam Quain led the way down the gangplank. Even in that first glimpse, Barbee saw that he had changed. His square-jawed face was burned dark, his blond hair bleached almost white. He looked tired, and a good deal more than four years older. And there was something else.
That something else was stamped also upon the three who followed.
A stained, battered topi covered Mondrick’s bald head. His heavy face sagged wearily, it was hollowed and pale. Barbee wondered if the explorer had been ill. Mondrick, he remembered, had suffered from asthma. Some old heart weakness had once forced him to leave their high camp in the Andes.
But even a very ill man might have been smiling upon this triumphant return to his country and his friends and his wife, with his life’s work done. And Mondrick’s haggard face looked grimly preoccupied.
Nick Spivak and Rex Chittum came out of the Clipper behind him. They also wore sun-bleached khaki. They were lean and brown and grave. Rex must have heard old Ben Chittum’s quavering hail from the police line at the end of the dock. But he gave no sign.
He and Nick were carrying, between them, a heavy, green-painted wooden box. It looked roughly but strongly made, as if by some village-bazaar craftsman. It was reinforced with iron straps, and the hand-forged hasp was secured with a heavy padlock. They lifted it by two riveted leather handles.
Mondrick turned anxiously to watch them bring it down the gangplank. He seemed to caution them to be careful, and he waited until they had brought it safe to his side. Then, with Sam Quain at his other arm, he led the way toward the waiting cameras.
Barbee suddenly recognized the extra “something” that stamped each of them. It was fear, and they were fighting it.
That was evident from every move. They were not elated victors returning to announce a new conquest of knowledge. They were tight-lipped veterans, calm and controlled, moving steadily into a desperate action.
“I wonder what’s in the box,” whispered April Bell.
“Whatever it is,” breathed Barbee, “the discovery doesn’t seem to have made them very happy. A fundamentalist might think they had stumbled into hell.”
“No,” said the girl. “Men aren’t that much afraid of hell!”
BARBEE saw Sam Quain’s eyes upon him. The tension of the moment checked his impulse to shout a greeting. He merely waved his hand. Sam nodded slightly. But the desperate, hostile alertness didn’t leave his face.
Mondrick stopped before the cameras. Flash bulbs flared under the gray dusk as he waited for the younger men to close in beside him. Barbee stared at his face under the pitiless flashes.
Mondrick was a shattered man. Sam and Nick and Rex were tough.
The frightful burden—whatever it was—had merely drawn and sobered and hardened them. But Mondrick was broken. His sagging face was haunted. His tired, jerky gesture betrayed ragged nerves.
“Gentlemen, thank you for waiting.”
His voice was low and tense and hoarse. Still dazzled from the flashlights, his eyes roved in a fearful way across the faces before him. He glanced at his three companions, at the green box, as if for reassurance.
“Because”—and it seemed to Barbee that his anxious voice was desperately hurried, as if he were fearful of being stopped—“because we have something to make public. Please broadcast my statement if you can. Film it. Get it on the wires and in your papers as soon as possible.”
“Sure, doc.” A radio announcer grinned. “That’s our business. Shoot.”
And a news cameraman demanded: “Anything to say about the war?”
“I’m hot going to talk about the war,” Mondrick said solemnly. “What I have to say is a good deal more important—but it may explain to you, after all, why wars are fought. It will explain a good deal that men have never understood, a good many things they have tried to deny.”
Mondrick caught his breath with a wheezing sound. Barbee remembered that old asthma. He saw the quick alarm on Sam Quain’s face. Sam offered a handkerchief, and Mondrick mopped sweat off his face—while a chill blast of the moist east wind set Barbee to shivering again.
“I’m going to tell you some stunning things, gentlemen,” Mondrick’s hoarse voice went on. “I am going to tell you about a masked and secret enemy, waiting unsuspected in your midst—an enemy far more insidious and far more deadly than any of your fifth columns. I’m going to tell you of the expected coming of a Black Messiah, whose appearance will be the signal for a savage and hideous and incredible rebellion.”
The weary man gasped painfully again.
“Prepare yourselves for a jolt, gentlemen. This is a terrible thing. You will be incredulous at first, as I was. But when you have seen the evidence, you’ll believe.
“My discovery—or ours”—and his hollow eyes glanced at the three—“solves many enigmas. Problems that have baffled the experts. And riddles so obvious, so much a part of our lives, that we are never conscious of them.
“Why is evil?”
His lead-hued face was a mask of pain.
“Have you ever sensed a malignant purpose behind misfortune? Have you wondered why nation after nation is crumbling at the very touch of armed conquest? Have some of you wondered, sometimes, at the division in yourselves—at the realization that your unconscious minds hold wells of black horror? Have you wondered—”
Mondrick labored for breath again, pressing both hands against his sides. An ominous tinge of blue had touched his face. His voice was shallow, strained, higher-keyed.
“I’ve no time for that catalogue,” he gasped. “But . . . listen!”
WITH A DISTURBED and uneasy quickness, Barbee looked about. The cameras were softly whirring. Mechanically, bewildered reporters were taking notes. He saw April Bell. She was standing in a frozen pose. White with pressure, both her hands gripped the top of her snakeskin bag. Dilated, green-black; her eyes stared at Mondrick with a peculiar intensity.
Barbee wondered about her for a moment. Why did she frighten him? Was his tired brain merely cloaking her with hallucinations? How much of what Mondrick called good was in her, and how much evil, and what was the point of conflict?
Mondrick straightened from his struggle for breath, resumed:
“Remember, this thing is no mere whim of the moment. I first suspected it twenty-five years ago. I was then a practicing psychiatrist. I gave up that career because the thing I suspected made a mockery of all I had been taught.
“I turned to other fields, seeking evidence to disprove what I suspected. It didn’t exist. Item by item, archaeology, anthropology, and ethnology supplied facts that confirmed the most terrible thing a man has ever feared.
“For many years I was alone. You will understand presently what that meant—and how extremely difficult it was to find aid. But I did find men that I could trust, and I trained them to share my work.”
Mondrick’s haggard face briefly tried to smile. He glanced once more at the hard, taut faces of Sam and Rex and Nick, and then a sudden paroxysm bent him double with the effort to breathe. Sam Ouain held his arm. In a moment, although more faintly, he spoke again:
“Forgive me. . . . I am subject to these attacks.” He mopped his face. “Still, we had only a very disturbing theory,” he went on. “We knew the world would require proof. That could exist only in the ashes of the past. Four years ago we went to the highlands of central Asia—to the area that appears to be the cradle of that hybrid breed we call mankind—to look for that proof.
“The newspapers have carried some hints of what we faced. The Chinese warned us to keep out. The Japanese hunted us as spies. Our camp was bombed by a Russian plane. Mongol brigands raided us. We almost perished of thirst, and we all but froze to death. It used to appear that the enemy already knew of us, and was determined to stop us before we even reached the proof.
“But these are tough boys with me!”
Mondrick bent to another gasping paroxysm.
“We found what we were looking for,” he wheezed triumphantly. “And we brought it back.” He nodded at the green wooden box, to which Nick and Rex still clung as if afraid that it would be snatched away. “And here it is.”
Once again Mondrick searched the faces before him. Barbee met his hollow eyes for an instant and saw in them the conflict of dreadful urgency and deadly fear. He knew that Mondrick wanted desperately to speak—to blurt out the bald facts—but was restrained by a dread of disbelief.
“Forgive me,” croaked Mondrick, “if these precautions seem melodramatic. You will understand in a moment that they are necessary. And now I must speak abruptly. I must spread the news as widely as possible before I am stopped.”
