Tiger Milk Page 3
Berkeley dropped in at the solarium for a small sherry before dinner. She looked as cool as the evening, in flowery dinner dress and a waxy white flower behind one ear adding a touch of holiday mood.
Sitting at a table near the big window she idly turned the stem of her glass around in her fingers and regarded its burnished color absently. It was strange how that ivory tiger business kept returning to her consciousness.
She looked up suddenly as a shadow fell across her table. A square-set man in mess jacket was standing there stiffly. Even before he clicked his heels and inclined his head in a crisp little bow she knew that he was German.
“Good evening, please pardon. I am aide to Herr Colonel Starme. I present his compliments. Herr Colonel Starme asks permission to introduce himself at coffee in the west patio after dinner.”
He spoke in a precise metallic monotone like somebody who had learned English phonetically.
“Thank you,” she said pleasantly. “But I find myself engaged after dinner.”
“Your pardon!” He clicked his heels along with that snappy little bow and then pivoted sharply. Looking neither to right nor left he strode out of the solarium.
As Berkeley rose from the table a woman in smart white dinner gown turned from the bar to smile at her.
“Good for you,” she said clearly. “I’ll do the same if I get the chance.”
Berkeley paused. “Oh,” she said, “you mean the coffee invitation?”
“Yes. I love to see those lads hit a snag, any kind of a snag.” She extended her hand in a straightforward sort of way. “My name is Linda Baker. How do you do?”
Berkeley returned the easy informal greeting. She was attractive, Linda Baker, with a flawless white skin and dark hair brushed smoothly back from a low forehead. “I seem to be second fiddle around here,” she confided to Berkeley. “Colonel Starme has passed me up thus far.”
“There is no second fiddle to it,” said Berkeley. “I just looked easier to pick up. Who in heaven’s name is Colonel Starme?” Linda Baker tapped a cigarette on the bar. “Oh, a member of one of the numerous military missions in this country. He is extremely attractive, as a matter of fact. Tall and thin, with gray-blonde hair and a blond mustache waved at the ends. Dines in private and looks through anybody he meets with that ‘tomorrow-the-world-is-ours’ stare.”
“Tomorrow never comes, so I’ve heard,” said Berkeley. “Neither will coffee in the west patio.”
They smiled at each other again, then Berkeley continued on her way to the dining patio. Linda Baker had provided a friendly undertone to the evening that carried her along through dinner.
But afterwards she felt queerly restless. She did not know why. Perhaps it was because now she was almost on the last lap of the way home and her eagerness to get there was redoubled—like starting off at a walk and breaking into a run as you neared the front gate.
She stopped in the foyer and glanced across the street at the leafy green plaza. The girl impulsively decided that a good swinging walk around the plaza in the cool night air might be just what she needed.
She donned a light coat and stepped across the street to the park. And as she walked her thoughts returned to Tresh.
Tresh! She frowned slightly. He had sounded like a crank. Or else some shrewd underling might have played him for a sucker. With the best intelligence services in the world constantly striving to discover Nazi plans, John Tresh just came along and bought information like a block of votes in shanty-town. No, it did not sound reasonable.
And yet, in the course of his life, he must have been a shrewd bargainer who received full value for his money. Berkeley paused near the fountain in the center of the little plaza. It was pleasant here—cool and dewy and serenaded with a subdued splashing rhythm. She sat down on a bench for a moment and lighted a cigarette.
There was no wisdom, she reflected, in discounting what he said because it seemed irrational. Reason told her that he must be tilting at windmills—the fancies of a mind disordered by illness, strain, and brandy. But her intelligence did not let her close the door entirely.
The Ivory Tiger. The Ivory Tiger was being sent to America. Surely, somebody selling false information could have cooked up a better one than that.
She dropped her cigarette at her feet and stepped on it. Then just about to rise, her heart gave a sudden bound because a man had stopped right in front of her. A tall thin man in mess jacket was looking down at her with a slight smile. A handsome man with a blond mustache waxed at the ends. She knew instantly he must be Colonel Starme.
“Good evening!” he said. “You are enjoying a beautiful evening alone?”
He spoke English with a discernible accent, but with the measured clarity of a linguistic expert. Indeed, he looked like many well-bred Englishmen she had seen.
But there had been something confidently familiar in the way he had spoken, and there was that same note in the way he asked a brief cursory word of permission and then sat down beside her before it was granted.
“I am sorry,” said Berkeley, “but I was not waiting for company.”
Even as she started to rise she felt his grasp around her wrist and she was drawn down to the bench again. In that moment of acute embarrassment a great fact became clear to her. Before, in the solarium, his message had been courteous, but now he had done away with good form and it could be for only one reason. She had been heedless enough to stroll around alone after dark and that was bad form for a lady.
She disengaged her wrist coolly.
“You do not understand,” she said in a quiet tone. “I’m sure you do not wish to be annoying.”
“Let us stop talking this way,” he suggested. “Pleasant company for a lady is never annoying. You were waiting for that, were you not?”
Before, she had blamed herself. But now she felt her cheek begin to burn at his one-track stupidity. Anyone with halfway decent perception could see that he had made a mistake, but, no, not this Colonel Starme—women who walked about alone after a certain hour in this country of strict feminine taboos generally wished company and he recognized no exceptions.
She knew that if he took her wrist again she might lose her self-restraint. But even as she made another attempt to rise she heard the sound of footsteps. Somebody was striding along through the center of the plaza toward the hotel, a man casting a long lean shadow before him. She appraised him quickly, a dark-haired youngish man who looked as though he might be an American—and, instantly, he appeared to her like a spar in a tossing sea. An impulse raced into her mind and galvanized her into immediate action.
“I am waiting for my husband,” she said smoothly. “And here he is!”
She jumped to her feet and took a swift step toward the advancing figure. He paused as the girl came directly up to him and slipped her arm through his.
“You’re late, darling!” she exclaimed. “Terribly late. I was beginning to think I had lost my husband.”
He looked at her and then at the man in mess jacket standing silently by the bench. Berkeley dug her fingers twice against his arm.
“Am I, dear?” she heard him say. “I tried not to be.”
She let go a breath of relief. Now, that was an example of swift perception. She nodded toward Colonel Starme.
“May I present Colonel Starme?” she said. “My husband, Herr Colonel.”
Colonel Starme glanced at them both, his face expressionless. He took a short step and raised his hand in curt salute.
“Señor Britton,” he said, “Señora.”
Then he turned away and struck off for the hotel. Berkeley released that strange, hard right arm.
“Thank you,” she said. “It seemed the best way to end an embarrassing situation without loss of dignity. It was sporting of you to play it up.”
She could see him plainly enough in the irradiance of the night, now that she had a chance to regard him more fully. He had a blunt chin that lent a note of ruggedness to his lean face and his eyes were dark and s
hadowy.
“That’s quite all right,” he said. “But you don’t suppose Herr Colonel believed it, do you?”
“I don’t care much whether he does or not,” she returned. “The moral effect ought to be good for him.”
“He’s likely to regard it more as loss of face. Well, what happens now? Are you ready to divorce me, or can I be of further service?”
“Just as far as the hotel,” she told him. “I’ve defied convention enough for one night. I should explain that I ought to have known better—”
“You don’t need to explain to me,” he said. “Haven’t I trusted you our whole married life? By the way,” he asked, as they walked slowly back toward the hotel, “what was that name the Colonel called me Señor—what?”
“Britton,” said the girl. “It’s my name—Berkeley Britton.”
“When I arrived in town earlier this evening,” he informed her, “my name was Robert Luce.”
“Consider it your own again—with my deep thanks, Mr. Luce.”
As they reached the hotel the haunting strains of gypsy music came to their ears. In the patio four gypsy musicians were playing before the hotel guests.
Berkeley and Robert Luce listened to them from the archway of the patio. Their music had a strange wild rhythm, something that sprang from the rolling wheels of their caravans, the flash of silver daggers in the moonlight, the chanting singsong of some ageless crone as she bent over a stranger’s palm and coaxed prophecy from beyond the stars.
The haunting primitive strain was still tingling in her ears as they walked on through to the foyer. Luce also was leaving for Lisbon the next day with the Clipper as his goal. He must have arrived in Valleron by car because there had been no train since El Pajaro Azul.
“May I offer you a drink before I return to a bachelor’s existence?” he inquired.
“No, thank you,” said Berkeley. “But I do thank you for the way you stepped up to bat out there in the plaza.”
“No man could have done an easier thing,” said Luce.
His eyes were what she noticed first and foremost about him—black eyes, eyes like twin dark rapiers.
“I’ll do something for you some day,” smiled the girl.
“Good night, Miss Britton,” he said. “As we’re both heading for the Clipper, consider me entirely available during the next few days.”
A glimpse of white teeth appeared in his even, leisurely smile, then he strode off toward the stairs.
CHAPTER 4
It rained early the next morning—a quick short drenching downpour that swept over Valleron, hesitated long enough to pelt the town with cleansing freshness, and then passed over.
Berkeley sent a note to Mr. Tresh in midmorning as she had promised.
An answer seemed a long time coming. She glanced at her watch. She could not sit around all morning waiting for Tresh. There was the formality of appearing before the military commandant with her passport, for one thing. When a knock finally came at the door she was just about to pass up any further interview with John Tresh.
She expected to find his attendant there, but instead she saw the courteous, elderly hotel manager.
He bowed unsmiling. “Buenos dias, Señorita Britton,” he said. “You have sent a note to Señor Tresh?”
“Why, yes,” she said.
“El Señor Tresh is dead, Señorita.”
She stared at him. That simple statement of his came with the impact of a leaden weight.
“When?” she managed. “When did it happen?”
“Last night, Señorita Britton. The doctor says it was caused by too much a dose of sleeping potion in his brandy.”
“You mean Mr. Tresh’s attendant is responsible?”
He spread his hands wide. “Oh, but no! Señor Tresh do that himself. They say he always fix it himself.”
“I see,” said the girl slowly. “And is he—has he anybody to look after him?”
“We are to notify a lawyer in Madrid and also his son in the States.” He gave her his familiar bow. “We live to serve the Señorita Britton.”
She thought about Tresh as she walked slowly across the plaza on her way to have her passport checked. So he had fixed an overdose of a sleeping draught for himself. Accidentally, of course. He had not given any impression of contemplating suicide.
She stopped suddenly on the edge of the plaza as a new thought swept into her mind. She remembered afterwards how clear the Valleron street scene seemed, as though it had been lighted up by a streak of lightning—one of those heavy two-wheeled carts drawn by oxen was creaking slowly by with a ragged driver sitting on top of a wooden cask. At a sidewalk cafe across the street a waiter was wiping off the tables.
Yes, you could look at John Tresh as being a gullible sort of ex-big shot who conjured up fancies and paid money for all kinds of senseless information and was so careless that he could not even mix a sleeping draught properly.
Yes, that was one side of the picture. But suppose you took the other view; suppose Tresh was a shrewd and canny bargainer who actually had found a leak in some inner circle and nourished it expertly with bribes. Suppose he was not careless about things like sleeping draughts—then there was an entirely different picture. Whether it was right or not, there did exist a possibility that his weird information really was vital, that ne had not accidentally killed himself.
Suddenly Berkeley wanted desperately to get clear of this town. Get away. Get home.
She walked quickly across the street and into the office of the military commandant. He stood up behind his desk to greet her, a small sallow man in brown uniform with Sam Browne belt and a revolver holster.
He took her passport and seated himself. There was a list of names on his desk, evidently sent over from the hotel, and the little round army stamp that he used on passports was lying in plain sight. She waited for him to stamp and initial hers and was surprised to see him look up and shake his head.
“This passport,” he said, “say nothing of a husband.”
Berkeley started. “Husband!” she exclaimed.
“You have a husband, is it not so?”
“No!” she said. “Where did you ever get that idea?”
He held up a thin hand. “Please,” he said, “I can understand better if you speak slow. You say you have no husband. I have information that you do have a husband.”
“Your information is wrong.”
He remained politely silent. Berkeley became worried. What on earth was this? She had traveled a lot in her life. She had run into red tape and stupidity and nuisance regulations before.
“I tell you, Señor Capitan, I have no husband.” She smiled. “I wish I did. I am an American citizen leaving for Lisbon this afternoon. I thank you for your help and your courtesy. Will you please put your approval on my passport?”
“I am sorry,” he said, shrugging. “You will be permitted to leave the town with your husband, not otherwise.”
She looked at him as though he had spoken a fairly fluent passage from the Sanskrit. He either was crazy, or this regulation was. But nothing could change him.
“Please to bring your husband here,” he told her. “Then we will see.”
The girl felt herself trembling from a combination of sheer fury and panic. She bit her lip savagely and left the office. How could he have information that she had a husband?
Her eyes widened as she remembered that little exchange in the plaza last night—perhaps somebody had overheard that. If Robert Luce would help her to explain, it might set the officer’s silly mind straight.
She hastened back to the hotel and sent a porter off for Luce. In the little upstairs sitting room where yesterday afternoon she had met John Tresh she waited tensely.
He came promptly. She saw his lean, loose-knit figure swinging along the corridor and met him at the door.
“Good morning,” he greeted her. He paused, as his swift perception caught something disturbed in her manner. “What is it, Miss Britton?”
Luce looked thoughtfully at her and then away. Berkeley twisted her fingers together tightly.
“Miss Britton,” he said, “you haven’t the correct slant on this. Can’t you sec that it’s Colonel Starme’s work?”
“Starme? But I don’t understand.”
“The Nazis can have a lot of favors in Spain. This regulation of having your passport examined before you can leave the country is a slick little arrangement whereby the Nazis can detain any refugee they might want who is escaping to Portugal or the States. For example, some great chemist, or a dangerous political enemy. Starme has simply told the local military authority that you are to be detained.”
“It seems hard to believe,” said the girl shakily.
“On the contrary, it is not hard to believe,” corrected Robert Luce. “I’m not surprised at something like this. Herr Colonel Starme has a very high opinion of himself. You did not share it, down to the extent of dropping him for a fake husband. That evidently has offended our Colonel in both his dignity and his vanity, which, I should say, are his most vital spots. They can’t detain you long—a few days, perhaps. It’s just an attempt to embarrass you, I imagine.”
“A few days!” repeated Berkeley. She jumped to her feet and strode restlessly up and down. “If I miss the train today I’ll miss my Clipper.”
“There are other Clippers, Miss Britton.”
She swung around. “I must take this one. I simply must. To sit around here waiting for a Nazi to work off a petty vengeance—why, I couldn’t stand the thought of it!”
“That’s interesting,” said Luce. “What are your ideas?”
“I’ll get on that train anyhow,” the tall girl said crisply. “Well, you might get on the train and you might not,” he conceded. “But they look at all passports before they reach the frontier. And if you’re taken on the train you really are in a fix because breaking a regulation can snarl you in red tape a mile wide.”
Berkeley could see the danger of that. It was not smart to try to crash over a frontier, it was only desperate. Time! She could almost feel the minutes ticking away like sand filtering between her fingers.