The doorbell rang again. Liz started toward it.
“I’ll get it,” said Nick. “You stay out of line of the door. Get over in the corner. And this time do as I say.”
Liz stepped aside a little shamefacedly. Nick went to the door. “Who is it?” he called.
“Jefferson.” It was Abe, unmistakably. “But be careful how you open the door. Don’t make yourself a target.”
Nick clicked the latch and drew the heavy door in toward him, stepping back with it and using it as a shield. He let one eye peer cautiously around the edge to seek the dimly lit figure of Abe Jefferson, standing expectantly on the far side of the door frame.
“Get him, sergeant,” Jefferson said softly. There was a movement in the shrubbery behind him.
For one incredulous moment Nick thought the Chief of Police had ordered an attack on him. And the second moment almost proved it.
A sizzling bolt of lightning flashed into the room and lashed at the far wall before rebounding onto an overstuffed chair and then onto the carpeted floor. It lay there smoking and sizzling and giving off little tongues of flame.
“What the hell!” Liz cried out indignantly, and made a move toward the flaming object.
“Oh, for the luvva Christ do as I tell you and stay where you damn well are!” Nick roared back, even as he leapt with one arm outstretched to slam the door shut and the other reaching for the burning thing.
The flames flickered out as he touched it. It was a burnished assegai with a razor-sharp arrowhead of a tip, and it smelled of gasoline. If it had hit anyone, it could have killed. And if it had landed on something instantly flammable, it would have made the most godawful of messes.
Wheels screamed on the rough pavement outside and someone hammered on the door.
“Come on, Carter, let me in.” Abe Jefferson sounded plaintive. “I have a man going after him. Open up!”
Nick opened the door, still holding the wicked spear.
“You sure there aren’t any more? I thought it was your calling card.”
Abe Jefferson gave him a curdling look and closed the door behind him.
“It is not my calling card. Miss Ashton, I am so very sorry.”
Liz came out of her corner with the fight gone out of her.
“Abe, you look as though you haven’t slept for weeks. Sit down and have a drink.”
Jefferson sat down with a groan of exhaustion. “Thank you, but I do not drink on duty.”
“You’re not on duty in my house,” Liz said decisively, and poured him a healthy dose of imported Bourbon on the rocks. Nick fingered the still-warm assegai and told himself that incidents not of his own making had gone far enough.
Jefferson gulped his drink gratefully and sighed.
“I see there was no message attached to that,” he said. “But it was not aimed exclusively at you. Every American in town has had one of those tonight. Dick Webb of the Embassy caught one in the shoulder. The Patricks put out a fire in their living room. And Tad Fergus came home to find his bedroom smoldering. The others were like this — they fortunately did no damage. Some of them came with a message. The message said: ‘Yankee murderers go home.’ It is obvious that this town is at fever pitch. This is misguided retaliation.” He drained his glass and added, “At least, I hope it is misguided.”
“It’s misguided,” Nick said quietly, “but I don’t think it’s retaliation. Like the bombing of the Embassy. Did you know that the same bombs were used in the bombing of the Russian Embassy and ours?”
Jefferson stared at him. “We do not have facilities for comparing that sort of evidence,” he said stiffly. “That is not the report we had from Moscow.”
“No, perhaps not. But that’s the report we had from Moscow and our own laboratories. What’s happening is a calculated double-play. First put Americans in a bad light, then try to scare them off with this phony retaliation stuff. But we don’t scare off. And we don’t fall easily for put-up jobs. I was hoping you don’t, either. In the light of all that’s happened today... Oh, by the way, did Hakim get home safely?”
Abe Jefferson’s strained face broke into a smile. “Yes, thank God; at least that one thing went right. He spoke most highly of you. We put a watch on that herbalist’s shop, as you suggested. There are two little rooms upstairs and the old man lives in one of them, or so they tell us at the Beauty Shop. The crone who runs it, who calls herself Helene, knows practically everything that goes on in her neighborhood. She says that a man named Laszlo, whom she describes as being turtle-faced and snaky, has been occupying the other room on and off for the last six months. Sometimes she doesn’t see him for weeks, and then he comes and stays for several days. He returned yesterday, after an absence of a week or so, and then he must have gone out during the night since he came back twice again today — first quite early, soon after she opened, and then again between one-thirty and two. She also saw you, and described you as being very handsome and distinguished but rather high-nosed. ‘Thinks he’s bloody important,’ is what she said.” He grinned. His tiredness seemed to have peeled off him and his humorous eyes were alert.
“Very perceptive old bag,” Nick observed without rancor. “And since then?”
“Laszlo went out once, to eat. For the rest he seems to have been clinging to that room. As you know, we have no right or reason to search it or question him. Nor to tap the old man’s telephone, which we find has an extension upstairs. As for the various eavesdropping devices in your room, we found their source in the room above yours. Though we were ready to catch any hasty departures after we ripped the wires out, nobody left. And nobody was there. There was a tripping device to work a tape recorder when you used your telephone, and another slow-running recorder listening into your room. Obviously, whoever placed them there need only return at a convenient time to play back the tapes. So naturally we staked out the room and the corridors with subtly concealed individuals, and waited. Oh, we were most clever.” His tone dripped self-contempt. “The only person who came near the room was the electrician with a neat little tale of checking a short in the landing wires. He went about his business and left. It was not until hours later, when Stonewall came back to check on his men, that we realized an electrician was the very man for the job. By that time he had vanished. We have a description, but we have lost him completely.”
“Was anyone registered for that room? Were any outgoing calls made from it?”
Jefferson looked at Nick with a certain respect. “I’m afraid that is something that took us some time to think of, too. No, the room was supposed to be empty. This is not a busy time of year for the Hotel Independence — even though that is where everybody who is anybody at all stays when they come to Abimako. No calls have been made from it since it was last officially occupied. But the desk clerk — also something of a gossip, like the impossible Helene — saw the hotel’s electrician use the public phone booth in the lobby twice this morning. The first time was apparently while we were at the hospital. He is very vague about the second time; around lunchtime, he thinks.”
“So the chances are he was reporting to someone,” said Nick.
Liz glided about quietly, refilling the glasses and flashing approving looks alternately at Nick and Jefferson.
“It’s not that I want to drag myself into your exclusively male conversation,” she said at last, “but might not our knifer-with-the-embarrassed behind be able to shed some light on that? His orders surely must have come from whomever the electrician reported to.”