«Johann said a man would come one day and talk of a strange arrangement. I was to be nice to him and remember everything he said.»
12
Holcroft awoke with a start, for several seconds not sure where he was; then he remembered. Gretchen Beaumont had led him into the bedroom with that incredible statement. He had tried to press her, tried to learn what else her brother had said, but she was in no state to answer clearly. She was in a frenzy, needing the sex desperately; she could concentrate on nothing else.
They had made love maniacally, she the aggressor, writhing on the bed at fever pitch, beneath him, above him, beside him. She’d been insatiable; no amount of exploration and penetration could gratify her. At one point she had screamed, clasping her legs around his waist, her fingers digging into his shoulders long after he was capable of response. And then his exhaustion had caught up with him. He’d fallen into a deep but troubled sleep.
Now he was awake, and he did not know what had interrupted that sleep. There’d been a noise, not loud, but sharp and penetrating, and he did not know what it was or where it came from.
Suddenly, he realized he was alone in the bed. He raised his head. The room was dark, the door closed, a dim line of light at the bottom.
«Gretchen?…» There was no reply; no one else was in the room.
He threw the covers off and got out of the bed, steadying his weakened legs, feeling drained, disoriented. He lurched for the door and yanked it open. Beyond, in the small living room, a single table lamp was on, its light casting shadows against the walls and the floor.
There was the noise again! A metallic sound that echoed throughout the house, but it did not come from inside the house. He ran to a living-room window and peered through the glass. Under the spill of a streetlamp he could see the figure of a man standing by the hood of his rented car, a flashlight in his hand.
Before he knew what was happening, he heard a muffled voice from somewhere else outside, and the beam of light shot up at the window. At him. Instinctively, he pulled his hand up to shield his eyes. The light went out, and he saw the man race toward a car parked diagonally across the street. He had not noticed that car, his concentration so complete on his own and on the unknown man with the flashlight. Now he tried to focus on this automobile; there was a figure in the front seat. He could not distinguish anything but the outline of the head and shoulders.
The running man reached the door on the street side, pulled it open, and climbed in behind the wheel. The engine roared; the car shot forward, then skidded into a U-turn before it sped away.
Briefly, in the wash of light from the streetlamp, Noel saw the person in the seat next to the driver. For less than a second the face in the window was no more than twenty yards away, racing by.
It was Gretchen Beaumont. Her eyes stared ahead through the windshield, her head nodding as if she were talking rapidly.
Several lights went on in various houses across from the Beaumont residence. The roar of the engine and the screeching of the tires had been a sudden, unwelcome intrusion on the peaceful street in Portsea. Concerned faces appeared in the windows, peering outside.
Holcroft stepped back. He was naked, and he realized that being seen naked in Commander Beaumont’s living room in the middle of the night while Commander Beaumont was away would not be to anyone’s advantage, least of all his own.
Where had she gone? What was she doing? What was the sound he had heard?
There was no time to think about such things; he had to get away from the Beaumont house. He turned from the window and ran back to the bedroom, adjusting his eyes to the dim light, trying to find a light switch or a lamp. He remembered that in the frenzy of their love-making, Gretchen had swung her hand above his head into the shade of the bedside light, sending it to the floor. He knelt down, groping until he found it. It was on its side, the bulb protected by the linen shade surrounding it. He snapped it on. Light filled the room, its spill washing up from the floor. There were elongated shadows and patches of darkness, but he could see his clothes draped over an armchair, his socks and shorts by the bed.
He stood up and dressed as rapidly as he could. Where was his jacket? He looked about, remembering vaguely that Gretchen had slipped it off his arms and dropped it near the door. Yes, there it was. He walked across the room toward it, glancing briefly at his reflection in the large mirror above the bureau.
He froze, his eyes riveted on a photograph in a silver frame on the bureau. It was of a man in naval uniform.
The face. He had seen it before. Not long ago. Weeks … days, perhaps. He was not sure where from, but he was certain he knew that face. He walked to the bureau and studied the photograph.
It was the eyebrows! They were odd, different; they stood out as an entity in themselves … like an incongruous cornice above an undefined tapestry. They were heavy, a thick profusion of black-and-white hair interwoven … salt and pepper. Eyes that blinked open suddenly, eyes that stared up at him. He remembered!
The plane to Rio de Janeiro! And something else. The face from that moment on the plane to Brazil prodded another memory—a memory of violence. But a blurred, racing figure was all he recalled.
Noel turned the silver frame over and clawed at the surface until he loosened the backing. He slid it out of the groove and removed the photograph. He saw minute indentations on the glossy surface; he turned it over. There was writing. He held it up to catch the light and, for a moment, stopped breathing. The words were German: NEUAUFBAU ODER TOD.
Like the face in the picture, he’d seen these words before! But they were meaningless to him; German words that meant nothing … yet he had seen them!
Bewildered, he folded the photograph and stuffed it into his trouser pocket.
He opened a closet door, shoved the silver frame between folded clothes on the shelf, picked up his jacket, and went into the living room. He knew he should get out of the house as fast as he could, but his curiosity about the man in the photograph consumed him. He had to know something about him.
There were two doors, in the near and far walls of the living room. One was open and led to the kitchen; the other was closed. He opened it and walked into the commander’s study. He turned on a light; photographs of ships and men were everywhere, along with citations and military decorations. Commander Beaumont was a career officer of no mean standing. A bitter divorce followed by a questionable marriage might have created messy personal problems for the man, but the Royal Navy had obviously overlooked them. The latest citation was only six weeks old: for outstanding leadership in coastal patrols off the Balearic Islands during a week of gale-force seas.
A cursory look at the papers on the desk and in the drawers added nothing. Two bank books showed accounts in four figures, neither more than three thousand pounds; a letter from his former wife’s solicitor demanded property in Scotland; there were assorted copies of ships’ logs and sailing schedules.
Holcroft wanted to stay in that room a while longer, to look more thoroughly for clues to the strange man with the odd eyebrows, but he knew he dared not. He had already tested the situation beyond reason; he had to get out.
He left the house and looked across the way, up to the windows that only minutes ago had been filled with lights and curious faces. There were no lights now, no faces; sleep had returned to Portsea. He walked rapidly down the path and swung the gate open, annoyed that the hinges squeaked. He opened the door of the rented car, and quickly got behind the wheel. He turned the key in the ignition.
Nothing. He turned it again. And again and again. Nothing!