Odor of Violets, Baynard Kendrick [best short novels .txt] 📗

footsteps easier.” He pushed forward a carved cigarette box. “Smoke? I understand you were to bring some Braille instructions to me.”

“They’re here. The Naval Intelligence requests that you memorize and destroy them as soon as possible, Captain Maclain. There are five vital points in here where an organized crew might sabotage the light, power, water, and sewage of this city. You’re an ex-Army Intelligence officer. I don’t need to tell you those would be dangerous papers for certain people to see.”

Maclain reached out one hand and papers rustled crisply. He spread the Braille embossed sheets flat on his desk and began to move his fingers over the lines, reading skillfully. He heard the scratch of a match. Tobacco smoke reached his nostrils. The room was silent until he turned the last of the sheets.

“I think I have it,” he said. “The instructions are perfectly clear. In the improbable event that New York is plunged into darkness and communication cut off, I know exactly where I’m to go, what I’m to do, and the men I’m to contact.”

“Good!” said the other. “Colonel Gray, the head of our defense plans, believes your ability to get around with your dog invaluable. Even under war conditions, a blind man could pass unquestioned where others might be suspected and stopped immediately. The vulnerable spots mentioned in there are in code. Before I leave would you care to name their locations for me as given you personally by Colonel Gray? I’d like to be sure you know.”

The Captain leaned back in his chair and locked his hands behind his head. “Let’s say I know them and leave it there.” He smiled slowly. “Did part of your mission here tonight consist of testing me?”

“You’re a cautious man, Captain,” the other said quickly. “It’s a trait we like to see!”

The Captain felt along a row of buttons beside his desk and pressed one. From a loud-speaker concealed behind a panel in the wall a voice announced: “When you hear the signal the time will be exactly ten twenty-three.”

“That’s a neat device, Captain. A hook-up with the time bureau, hey? Meridian 7-1212.”

“A direct wire,” Maclain explained. “I have to hear what I can’t see.”

“I regret I was late in arriving. I won’t detain you any longer.” Maclain heard the other rise. “The Army and Navy Intelligence both appreciate your co-operation. Colonel Gray suggested that I make myself known to you in case you might want further information after studying our instructions. I’m a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve, Captain Maclain, but you may have heard of me in my profession. I was on the stage for years—”

“Colonel Gray told me who you are,” said Maclain. “You underestimate your own fame. Anyone who ever attended a show has heard of Paul Gerente.”

CHAPTER IV

OLIVE-SKINNED GIRLS with dark laughing eyes came into the Italian Café. They were accompanied by quick-moving, sober-faced boys dressed in store clothes of foreign lines. They ate pizza and drank beer or black coffee, eyed Norma Tredwill curiously, and went away.

Babs’s galoshes had grown monstrously large. Norma kept glancing at them surreptitiously, wondering how many of the café’s customers had noticed them beside her on the floor. Since she had fled from Paul Gerente’s apartment more than an hour before, her normal power of reasoning had become dulled. She felt trapped in a situation demanding extreme acuteness, with nothing to help her but a nonfunctioning brain.

Her body was lethargic, too. She had been sitting too long in a straight-backed booth, her spine rigid, her slender feet pressed tightly flat against the floor. Restlessly she shifted her position. Tiny living needles pricked at her legs and arms as circulation was resumed once more.

“Madame does not like the pizza?”

A heavy-set Italian was bent over the table. She looked at him uncomprehendingly. His long white apron hid his clothes. At each corner of his wide mouth the wispy end of a horseshoe-shaped mustache drooped dolefully. He wiped his eyes slowly with the corner of his apron as though Norma’s attitude grieved him.

“Madame does not like the pizza?” he asked again, and pointed to the table in front of her. She understood then that he was referring to a large, untouched Italian tomato pie.

The sight of it made her ill, but she forced herself to smile. “I thought I was hungry when I came in,” she said lamely. “I guess I was just cold from the storm.”

“Si,” he said. “The storm she mak’ you cold. I get some coffee ver’ hot. She heat you up again.” He shuffled away before Norma could say no.

Two couples a few booths away were laughing softly and chattering in the liquid syllables of their mother tongue. Norma drew back into the seclusion of her own small cubicle and lifted Babs’s galoshes from the floor. Tugging with a quick frenzy, she tried to pull one of them on over her thin overshoe. A single try convinced her that it was much too small. When she tried to remove it, it stuck halfway.

The piece of expensive fur-trimmed footwear seemed malignantly stubborn. By exerting all her strength she finally managed to pull it free. When she looked up, the white-aproned proprietor was standing at the end of the table, coffee in hand, gazing unconcernedly at her silk-clad knee.

Norma uncrossed her legs and smoothed her skirt down carefully. Apparently her blind flight from Paul’s had led her unwittingly to the worst place she could have found. Seeking a quiet spot where she might gather her wits into line, she had blundered into a small pizzeria where her clothes and actions were objects of curiosity to patrons and proprietor. Once let her picture appear in the papers as Paul’s ex-wife, and a dozen Italians would remember her visit to the local café.

As she reflected on the events of the past two hours it was brought crushingly home to her that she was fleeing from something unknown; acting as though she or Babs had felled Paul Gerente with that