Dark Tunnel Page 8

  “He could if he wanted to. But you say you don’t know any reason why they should try to kill you.”

  “No doubt I’m an irritating type. I was indiscreet enough to blaspheme the organic totalitarian state at dinner. Then I beat Peter at foils. It’s barely possible that he was just trying to frighten me with the sabre to get back at me for that. It’s barely possible, too, that the automobile accident was an automobile accident.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to lay charges?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. But there’s not much evidence beyond my personal impressions and a pair of broken glasses. Before I do anything I want to know where Ruth comes into this. And we’ll see what we can find in Schneider’s office. When I get the Schneiders, I want to get them for keeps.”

  “So do I,” Alec said, and his mouth shut on the stem of his pipe like a mantrap on a leg.

  “Do you know anything against Schneider that you haven’t told me?”

  “Very little, unfortunately, and what evidence I have is what you’d call circumstantial, I suppose.”

  “What is it? You can hang a man on the right kind of circumstantial evidence.”

  “There are two things, really. One of them points in the general direction of Schneider, and the other points straight at him but doesn’t really prove anything. The first thing is this. When the Buchanan-Dineen bunch was rounded up in Detroit, a good deal of information was found in the hands of Nazi agents, information that was known only to certain men in the armed services and to members of our War Board.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “Largely material on Army and Navy training programs at the university, enrollment figures, length of courses, curriculum of the various programs. They had a detailed analysis of all the courses, A S T P, V-12, and the rest—meteorology, aeronautics, naval architecture, Asiatic and European languages, army engineering—the whole business.”

  “It sounds like a leak,” I said, “but not such a bad one.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” The intensity of his seriousness seemed to draw his eyes back into his head. “Information like that can tell a highly trained spy more about the long-range plans of the United Nations than a whole mail-car full of short-term official orders. The Nazis have men who can put two and two together and get twenty-two, men who do research in the history of the future. And stuff like that is perfect raw material for them.

  “I’ll give you an obvious example. Last spring the Army speeded up the A S T P course in Italian local government, and a couple of months later all the advanced students in that course were ordered away. Any spy who knew that and who knew his business could figure out where they were going, and why, and approximately when. The idea that enemy spies are interested chiefly in airplane plans and secret formulae is hardly more than a literary convention.”

  “I know. It’s just that it’s sometimes hard to recognize something important when it turns up in your own back yard.”

  “It’s important all right. A smart German who knew all about our A S T P courses and could correlate the knowledge with information from other sources could figure out a hell of a lot. He could predict with a reasonable degree of accuracy a lot of the things that we’ll be doing five years from now in Europe.”

  “In 1948? The war will be over long before then.”

  “No doubt it will, but the Nazis won’t be finished if they can help it. Himmler’s boys are laying plans now for carrying on underground even after Germany loses the war. But they’re not going to get any more information from us.”

  “You said there was something else, something that pointed directly at Schneider.”

  “Right. There’s a young man named Rudolf Fisher who lives in Detroit, a naturalized American of German birth. When the F.B.I. arrested Buchanan-Dineen and her little helpers, they picked up Rudolf for questioning. Evidently they had something which connected him with the Nazis, but they didn’t have enough to make it stick. Anyway, they released him after a day or two.”

  “What’s the connection with Schneider?”

  “Well, it may be a connection or it may not. I think it is. For the last two winters Schneider’s been giving an Extension Course in German language in Detroit, and Rudolf Fisher’s been enrolled in the course both times and had perfect attendance.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve been doing a research job on Schneider. But it’s in the files in the Extension office for anybody that wants to look for it. Now if Schneider’s a spy and Fisher was his go-between, Fisher’s enrollment in Schneider’s course would have given them a very neat and respectable excuse for meeting once a week.”

  “That’s supposing quite a lot. Fisher may simply have aspirations to culture.”

  “Then he chose a curious way to satisfy them. He was born in Germany and lived there until he was fifteen. What would a German want with a course in German conversation?”

  There was no answer to that. Alec went on: “So far this sounds pretty flimsy, too flimsy to turn over to the F.B.I. That’s why I want to search Schneider’s office. We may turn up something concrete.”

  “The F.B.I. could do a better job of searching.”

  “But I can’t set them on Schneider until I’m sure. You know what could happen to him if I raised a hue and cry, whether he’s guilty or innocent. Public opinion would force him out of his job. There’s been criticism of the university already for retaining a German on the staff. As I see it, there’s perhaps one chance in ten that he’s an innocent man, and I will not take the responsibility for wrecking a man’s life until I’m sure of my grounds.”

  “I see that,” I said. “But make it one chance in twenty that he’s innocent. And one chance in a thousand that he’d leave incriminating evidence in his office.”

  “I’m not sure that it’s so unlikely. So far as he knows, he’s above suspicion. And he’s going to hold his first Extension class in Detroit to-morrow night.”

  “Is Rudolf Fisher enrolled?”

  “I don’t know. Registration isn’t complete. But I gave Schneider the plans for the new A S T Program the day before yesterday, marked private and confidential, not to be copied and not to go out of his hands. He sent them back yesterday. If he copied them, the chances are the copy is in his office now, and if we can find it we’ll have the evidence we need.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Wait a minute. There’s something else we’ve got to find out, and we can attend to that first.” He looked at his watch. “It’s ten-twenty. We can’t enter Schneider’s office yet.”

  “One must observe the formalities, no doubt.”

  “There may be janitors in the building. In any case, we’d better wait.”

  “And while we’re waiting, we can try and find out if Ruth Esch has arrived.”

  “We’ve been thinking about the same thing,” Alec said.

  “What else should I be thinking about? I’ve been thinking about her ever since I met the train and nobody got off.”

  He turned in his chair and lifted the cradle phone from the shelf behind his head. He dialed a number and waited while the phone rang twice.

  Peter’s voice answered: “Professor Schneider’s residence.”

  “May I speak to Miss Ruth Esch?” Alec asked.

  “Miss Ruth Esch?”

  The line was silent for five seconds. Then Alec repeated, “Miss Ruth Esch.”

  “One moment, please,” Peter said.

  Alec put down the receiver and replaced the phone on the shelf. “Come on. My car’s out front.”

  In six or seven minutes we reached the base of the road that climbed Bingham Heights. Alec drove up a side road a few yards and parked the car in a shallow ditch.

  “We’ll sneak up on the bastards,” he said as we got out, “and see what we can see.”

  He went up the road to the heights like a locomotive on a grade, steady but p
uffing. I had less weight to carry but I felt the pace he set, and my heart had two reasons for pounding.

  He stopped at the cliffhead to look at the smashed fence. The cables were still down and two of the white posts were jagged like broken teeth. The front windows were lighted in the house across the road, but there was nobody in sight.

  “It looks as if he wanted to get through that fence quite badly,” Alec said.

  “He did get through.”

  “I suppose he figured he could jump out into the bushes and let you go over with the car. You said the door on your side wouldn’t open?”

  “It wouldn’t open. I think he jammed it when he shut it for me.”

  “We should have a look at that car to-morrow. I want to look at the door. And I want to look at the steering-gear, just to make sure that it wasn’t an accident.”

  “We’ll have to wade a creek to look at it, unless the wreckers can get it out.”

  “I can wade a creek. That sabre business sounds fantastic, and this accident on top of it sounds more fantastic.”

  “The Schneiders have fantastic personalities,” I said. “Shall we join them?”

  We walked beside the road under elms and maples. The drying grass rustled faintly under our feet, and the wind whispered in the trees with the autumnal voice of an old woman.

  “What in hell made you want to fence with young Schneider?” Alec said. “You’re not Sir Lancelot.”

  “Wait till you meet Peter. He makes your adrenal glands play like fountains. Incidentally, you’re not Edgar B. Hoover but I understand you’re hot on the spoor of some spies.”

  “Shut up,” Alec retorted pleasantly.

  We turned into the Schneider driveway, walking on the grass in the shadow of the arching trees. We avoided the open triangle of concrete in front of the house and walked quietly under the trees to the side. We stayed out of the fluorescent light that fell from the uncurtained windows and glared on the grass-blades of the lawn like white alkali dust.

  There was a light on the screened porch at the back and I crept forward a few feet and craned my neck to look into the porch. Dr. Schneider was sitting there in a deck-chair reading a newspaper.

  I moved back into the deep shadow where Alec was standing. Suddenly he put his hand on my arm and said, “What’s that?” in a hissing whisper.

  From the house came a ringing clash, repeated once and twice and three times in regular time, like the sound of harsh cymbals. I knew the sound—foils have a duller ring—and ran across the lawn on tiptoe towards the lighted window of the salle d’armes. Before I reached it, the clashing sabres ceased.

  I put my hands on the sill and stood on tiptoe to look into the room. The window was open but there was no sound.

  Then the harsh cymbals rang again, once and twice and three times and four in steady beat. I could see the sabres moving above the sill, so quickly that their flashing seemed to hang in the air like solid wheels of thin silver.

  I chinned myself on the sill to see the swordsmen and felt Alec’s heavy shoulder moved against the back of my thighs to take part of my weight. One of the swordsmen was Peter Schneider. His back was to me but I saw his blonde hair and the way he stood.

  The other swordsman was bareheaded, too, and faced me full in the light, a woman with green eyes and red hair that moved lightly on her head when she moved to parry and strike. Her breasts were sharp and steady beneath her raised arm and a blue flared skirt whirled round her knees in time with the whirling sabres. The woman looked dear to me and yet remote in the white air, like a lost thing found under water.

  The sabres must have clashed thirty times in unbroken sequence but the play went on. They stood bareheaded under the flashing blows as if they trusted each other utterly. The woman’s face looked dazzled and serene and Peter’s body moved like a dancer’s in love.

  The woman stepped back and lowered her sabre and Peter laid his weapon on the floor and stepped towards her. She came into his arms and I saw his face go down to hers. She dropped her sabre and her hand came round to the nape of his neck. Her knee pressed forward between his legs and they stood there swaying in passion.

  Alec took away his shoulder and my heels came down hard on the ground. I felt disemboweled and stuffed with kapok. A goblin monotone in the howling wilderness of my brain began to recite brisk little rhymes about what a four-letter day it was for me, and repeated them like a cracked record. Phut shut blut slut rut gut mut.

  Alec had pulled himself up to the window and I chinned myself beside him on the wide sill. The kiss was still going on, far beyond the Hays office maximum. A charming scene. A charming couple, Peter Schneider and Ruth Esch. I couldn’t see too much of them.

  Dr. Schneider made a sudden appearance in the doorway at the far end of the room. He seemed interested in the scene, too. He stood glaring.

  Then his mouth opened so that his false teeth glittered in his beard. He said in German in a loud voice: “Stop that!”

  The young lovers sprang apart like the two halves of an apple separated by a knife. I couldn’t see Peter’s face, but Ruth’s face looked pale and angry as she turned to face him.

  Dr. Schneider walked towards them ponderously and quickly, his black beard shaking on his chest. With a grunt he stooped and picked up the woman’s sabre and brought the flat of it down across her shoulders. I heard it swish in the air and he raised it for a second blow.

  Peter, in a voice like the yap of a dog, said a German word which implied that his father’s sexual practices improved on nature’s simple plan. Without waiting for a further development of the theory, I dropped to the grass and sprinted around the back of the house and onto the porch. I heard Alec pound up the steps behind me as I ran in the open back door.

  When I reached the door of the fencing room, Dr. Schneider was lying on the floor on his back. Peter was kneeling on his father’s outstretched arms and briskly slapping his face. Just a family party.

  “This will teach you to mind your business,” Peter said in German. The old man’s curses were muffled and he gasped for breath.

  The woman was standing above the two men, looking down at them. She glanced up and saw us and I stepped into the room with Alec at my shoulder. She fell back a pace and her hand flew to her mouth, but she said quite calmly then:

  “Peter, you have guests.”

  Peter came to his feet facing us in a single fluid motion. His face was scarlet with fury and for a moment he crouched slightly with his shoulder muscles bunched under his sweater as if he would leap at us. I wish he had.

  The woman touched his arm and said, “Please.”

  Peter drew a hand across his rage-puffed lips. Then he said, “Dr. Branch.”

  I heard the woman take a short, hard breath. She looked at me with wide green eyes in which bewilderment moved like water under wind. Had I changed so much?

  Before I could speak, Peter said, “Forgive me for being found in such an undignified position. My father is in his manic phase again. Happily it never lasts long, but I sometimes have to act decisively in order to avoid a Dostoevsky climax. Prince Myshkin, you know.”

  Dr. Schneider was getting to his feet, his face contorted with effort and indignation. “It is you who are insane!” he exploded in German. “You are insane and corrupt.”

  “Hold thy noise, pig-dog,” Peter said in German. “Or thou wilt be made to regret it.’

  “I regret begetting you. You are twisted and insane. And as for this thing—” The old man pointed at the woman with a stubby finger that vibrated in the air—“you will take this thing out of my house.”

  “Your house?”

  “Out of my house. To-night. I cannot stand it.”

  Dr. Schneider stamped to the door with his shoulders hunched as if in despair. I wondered what he despaired of. The woman stood straight and watched him go past us out of the room. Her eyes flared with hate like the green flame of copper foil.

  Peter turned to me and said, “My father is temporarily insa
ne, as I said. But pardon me, I believe you know my fiancée, Dr. Branch? Miss Ruth Esch.”

  She said, “Do you remember me, Bob? I’ve changed, I know. Though I said I would remain myself.” Her voice was harsher than it had been.

  “You haven’t changed at all,” I said. “I knew you right away.”

  But she had changed. Anyone changes in six years, and she had been in prison. Her hair was as bright as ever but her green eyes were not so clear. The bones of her face were more prominent and there were faint hollows in her cheeks and along the line of her jaw. Her skin was ravaged by time and the hardships she had undergone, and she looked older than she was.

  Yet the strong and delicate shape of her head was the same and her body was as I remembered it. Slim and straight as a boy’s, with small, high breasts and narrow hips and firm legs like a dancer’s. I stood and looked at her and wondered if I had dreamed I saw her kiss Peter Schneider. But he said she was his fiancée and she had not denied it. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Alec had not spoken till now. He said, “I’m afraid I don’t know Miss Esch, and Mr. Schneider.”

  “Mr. Judd,” I said to them.

  Ruth bowed stiffly and Peter clicked his heels. Alec’s frown deepened at that.

  My story was ready. “I came to inquire if Miss Esch had arrived safely. Mr. Judd was good enough to drive me out. We were just going to knock on the front door when we heard the sound of fighting. We came in without knocking.”

  Peter coolly looked me up and down. “Unwisely, perhaps? Do you frequently intervene in family crises with which you have nothing to do?”

  “I dislike patricide,” I said. “I dislike homicide of any kind.”

  Peter turned red again. He was turning red as regularly as a traffic light. But he spoke very calmly and precisely. “Good evening, Dr. Branch. And Mr. Judd. You have seen that Miss Esch has arrived safely and now, I believe, there is nothing to detain you.”

  I looked at Ruth and she turned away. There was a red weal across the back of her neck where the sabre had struck her. I said, “Ruth,” but she didn’t look at me.