“You understand me, don’t you?” There was a vehemence in her tone which he had not heard before. “You see how good a camouflage that is. I have used it always—and the more I use it the better it becomes.”
Her fingers were closed over his. They pressed hard, with a surprising strength, as if she were trying to drive home a point of argument. But their touch was disturbing; it sent through Otto’s arm the tingling, crepitant little shock which he could not forget.
“I . . . I understand quite,” he said uncertainly. “It is good.”
The fingers released his hand, but he could still feel their touch. She moved away from him and leaned over the desk and pulled the folder towards her. She opened it, turning over its contents one by one.
“There’s another here,” she said, “which you could have . . . a speech I made to the main Committee of the Anglo-Saxon Union . . . against the Bunds. . . .”
She stopped abruptly, staring down at a large portrait which covered a full page. Otto moved closer to her and leaned one hand on the desk and peered at the picture.
It was of Charles De Gaulle—and at the head of the page was the word “Kosmo.”
There was odd silence while she stared down at the photograph. Otto’s mind was divided: half of it wondered what this interest in the Frenchman might portend, the other was lost in contemplative admiration of the amazing contrasts between firm white skin and soft black velvet.
She straightened and turned to face him in a single swift movement. He stepped back, staring at her. The eyes had changed again, and when she spoke it was in the voice which had kept him at attention. She said:
“I had forgotten that Nils Jorgensen was to be a Kosmo Personality. When are they to take your photograph?”
Otto forced himself to meet the eyes. “To-morrow,” he said. “In the morning. At eleven o’clock.”
She went around the desk and sat in the chair. The eyes seemed never to leave his face. She closed the folder and put it back into the drawer from which she had taken it. She said:
“This is a matter of importance. It was foolish of me to let it slip my mind—extremely foolish.”
She paused for a moment, drawing a hand across her forehead. Otto stood rigid before the desk again: it was as if there had been no interlude.
“They will want to take a full-face photograph of you.” The voice and eyes might never have been other than these. “But it cannot be allowed: the wide publication of an excellent portrait can fix a face too firmly in too many minds, Captain—and while just now it is desirable enough to have Nils Jorgensen well known, it might not always be so. You follow?”
“I understand,” Otto said slowly. “Yes.” He wondered what was to come.
“Turn around,” she said suddenly. “Sideways; so that I can see your profile.”
Otto did not move at once, and she said: “Quick!” in a tone which brought instant action. He turned smartly to his right, like a parade-ground soldier, so that his left shoulder was to the desk. Under his cheekbones were two dull red patches. He was elaborately at attention.
He stood motionless for minutes which might have been hours. But she said at last:
“Now the other side.” He heard the rasp of a striking match, and while he wheeled in a full about-turn, saw that she was lighting a cigarette.
He was motionless again, his right shoulder now to the desk.
“Better.” She spoke almost at once this time. “Less character than the other. . . . All right.”
He knew that she meant him to face her and turned to do so. She said:
“You must only be taken in profile—right profile. And it would be useless merely to ask the man Etter to take you like that—we must be sure that he has to!”
Otto knew that he must speak now. He said carefully:
“There seems one way sure only.” He paused, but she merely nodded, and after a moment he went on. He was meeting her eyes now but he could read nothing in them. He said:
“With my face, on the right side, injured—” he was fumbling a little with his words—“with a bruising . . .”
She said: “Exactly,” and nothing more.
“It is simple,” he said—and turned from the desk and took two paces to the centre of the small room and stood looking about him with quick, darting glances. He was very straight—and he could feel eyes upon his back.
He chose the sharp, unrounded corner of the wall which jutted out to make a little alcove around the centre of the three inner doors. He crossed to it with quick, light steps and stood for a moment measuring his distance and then, bent nearly double, lunged at it with his head in a quick, viciously stabbing movement like the striking of a snake.
There was a bright flash of flame inside his skull, and a hollow sound in his ears and a stab of pain across his forehead, in the centre of his right eyebrow, which managed to be simultaneously vivid and numbing. He staggered. His mind rocked, but he knew everything that he was doing—even that he had lunged harder than was necessary.
With immense effort he stood upright. The floor rocked under his feet but he held himself steady with an iron wilclass="underline" he would not, he swore it behind jaw-muscles clenched into jutting wads of steel, so much as sway. He would turn in a moment and go back to the desk on unwavering feet.
He felt a warm trickling over his right cheek. He turned—and the floor rose up at him and he fell. He tried wildly to save himself this bitter indignity—and found himself ludicrous upon hands and knees, like an uncle playing pony for the children.
He heard a movement somewhere and reached out blindly and felt the arm of a heavy chair, comfortingly solid. Desperately, he dragged himself up on to the seat of it before he could be helped.
The effort seemed to take sight from him and there was a black whirling before his eyes. He muttered something and forced his head down low and felt the warm stream angle over his chin and drip upon his hands.
His head cleared and he raised it cautiously. He was alone in the room, but one of the inner doors stood open. He found blood on his hands and shirt and felt with tentative fingers at the eye. Above it was a hard swelling lump and below, over the high cheekbone, a soft dough-like puffiness.
She came through the open door carrying a small tray of bright metal upon which were a little bowl of china and other things which he could not see. He made a movement as if to stand but she quelled it with a gesture.
He leant back in the chair and mopped at the blood on his face with a handkerchief. The right temple was throbbing and his whole head ached a little—but it was nothing. He wished that he had lost an eye rather than fallen like that, awkward and ludicrous and abased.
She put the tray upon a side-table and moved this near to the chair. She took a little towel of linen from the tray and put it around his neck, above his collar, and in a moment was bathing the cut above his eye.
She ceased the bathing and said: “This will hurt,” and dabbed something cold upon the cut.
It did hurt—and while he was thinking about it, she took more wet cotton and wiped the dried blood from his cheek and chin. He said:
“You should not do this. It is all right. . . . I can do this.”
“Be quiet!” Her voice was so soft that it was almost a whisper.
She stood behind him and he could not see her, but he knew from the voice that her eyes had changed.
The towel was twitched from beneath his chin—and in a moment he felt her hand laid softly upon the uninjured side of his forehead and again he felt the curious tingling shock which came at her touch.
8 SAN FRANCISCO
And so Nils Jorgensen, resident and registered alien and hero of the Vulcania sinking and protégé of Carolyn Van Teller and subject of the best-to-date of the Kosmo Personality articles, was found a job by his influential benefactress and went forthwith to work in the office of Alvin Gray, millionaire builder and housing expert.
Alvin Gray’s headquarters were at Welham Park in the State of New Jersey, and there Nils Jorgensen joined the staff and rapidly showed marked aptitude for his work and became without effort a favourite with his colleagues and with Gray himself and also with numerous young and middle-aged residents of the pleasant little town, particularly the family with whom he lodged.
He was there for nearly a month before anything happened—and although Nils seemed always his quiet and simple and charming and industrious self, Otto was possessed by a seething fury of impatience. So much so, indeed, that at times he was hard pressed to keep the tension from showing in the face and behaviour of Nils: he bethought himself of Carolyn Van Teller’s advice about protective colouring and began upon comprehensive study of Democracy’s so-called viewpoint: he took distorted satisfaction, since his duty made him a liar, in being a really intensive-one. Since duty forbade his being violent against the foes of his country, he found fierce, ever-growing pleasure in being violent for them. It became a byword in the office—and even at the tennis-club, where he was regarded rightly as the choicest piece of luck they had had for many seasons—that one had to be careful what one said about the War in front of him. He flayed Isolationists with a rush of words, was rabid on the subject of the fifth column, stated flatly that defence workers who struck should be shot, and once went so far as to throw a house guest of Mrs. Vincent Perry’s into the lake for expressing admiration of Colonel Lindbergh.
And, by the end of the second week of this self-imposed training course in enemy viewpoint, he could quote—and frequently did—whole passages of Roosevelt, Churchill and De Gaulle in bitter arguments with any critic, however well-intentioned, of the Allied Cause or its defenders.