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Contest!
(continued)
Part IV
Bill stood silently, watching the receding forms of his so newly met acquaintance and his assailants. Here I am, he thought bitterly, utterly impotent. I might as well not have any arms, for all the good they do. He was a wooden toy, whose carver had been to lazy to create joints for it, whose limbs would be forever frozen. A wooden toy, to be tossed helpless about in the world until someone saw fit to throw it in the fire for fuel. Then, at least, he would do some good.
“Are you all right?” It was the woman, Mimi. In the excitement, Bill had almost forgotten her name. Though of course, he reflected with a wry smile, he would have only to look at her nametag to remind himself.
He nodded, initially wordless. It was as if the thugs had stolen not only Chucho, but Bill’s voice. With effort, he recovered it. “I’m okay. How are you?”
“I’ll be all right,” she answered brusquely. She surveyed the scene before them. Broken glass littered the ground, but the merchandise had been left untouched, as if protected by some unearthly force. “They sure made a mess, didn’t they?”
Her nonchalance was somehow disturbing. Passive, almost, uncaring and self-absorbed. Disquieted, Bill searched for an explanation for his unease. Then it came to him:
“Aren’t you going to call the police?” He gazed at Mimi’s face, waiting for some flicker of emotion that betrayed her outward innocence — guilt, nervousness, perhaps malevolence.
But she only laughed with seeming startlement. “I can’t believe myself. An event like this, and here I stand like a complete fool.” She reached quickly for the phone and dialed, speaking in rapid fire to the person on the other end of the line. Bill observed that quite a crowd had assembled outside the shop, yet no one ventured inside to offer assistance or make curious demands for explanations. Too scared, he thought grimly to himself. As if we were anyone to be afraid of.
Then he revised this assertion; certainly he was innocent, completely harmless, but what about Mimi? He had no proof of her benevolence. She seemed naŒve enough, Bill reflected, but even children could be given orders to kill, and carry them out, not knowing what they did or the consequences of their actions. Their hearts innocent, but their victims dead just the same.
“What about the alarm system?” Bill asked intently, the moment Mimi put down the phone.
A shadow seemed to cross her face, her features grew instantly troubled. “You’re right,” she said quietly, the roughness gone. “It should have sounded, of course it should have! But why didn’t it?” She looked into Bill’s eyes, mouth open in shock. Any attraction between them had fled for the time being.
“You tell me,” Bill said, his uneasiness about Mimi increasing. If only he could tell. If only she would give herself away. Somehow, being certain of her treachery would be preferable to this agonizing uncertainty.
“Well,” she replied, her brow furrowed in what appeared to be deep concentration, “someone must have disarmed it.”
“But who?” Bill demanded, probing gently. His skills as a journalist were returning slowly as the once sharp edges of his memory of the break-in and kidnapping softened in his mind, blurred out of reality and into a mere story.
“I can think of only one possibility,” Mimi said. “I have, at times, heard my boss, Mr. Cowperton, whispering on the phone to someone about outside threats. He never mentioned anyone by name, but he did refer several times to someone he called only ’that infernal Italian fashion designer.’”
Part V
“Surely that cannot be the answer,” protested the young man. Such an assertion offended his rather conservative sensibilities. That an Italian fashion designer could take a malevolent interest in an electronics shop was not a part of his experience; therefore he could not conceive it. Hence confusion, hence disbelief. Yet somehow he mustered the voice to put forth the seeming irrationality of the situation and, indeed, of the proprietor’s explanation.
Her response was to stamp her foot, a gesture that became her, not so much childish or spoilt as genuine and slightly rebellious. Returned she, “I didn’t know it was my place to explain that which is perfectly sensible and obvious — that which, in other words, needs no explanation. Furthermore, nor did I think I was expected to put forth the correct explanation, which I clearly do not possess, but rather to put forward what I did know.”
Bill was quite taken aback, but he was secretly quite pleased. The woman had a sharp tongue, but it was steered not by anger but by wit and intelligence. Given the circumstances, of course, little of lasting consequence could be expected to pass between them; however, in the future, were he to encounter another woman like her, love might dawn again.
Mimi watched him expectantly, and he cleared his throat. “You are quick to chide me, but it is nothing I do not deserve,” Bill told her. “I would that you could forgive me. Indeed, please explain further.”
She shook her head. “I know nothing more about it. I only mentioned the fashion designer because, to my knowledge, he — or, perhaps, she — is my Mr. Cowperton’s only threat that I have heard tell of. Oh, here are the police! Do come in! Yes, you can see what damage was done. No, nothing stolen. What, fingerprints? Yes, please, go right ahead.”
Mimi turned back to Bill, and in spite of her fetching look, he averted his eyes. “I should go,” he said. “I’ve stopped here longer than I meant to have. I have important business to see to.”
She smiled gravely in return. “Well, if you must go, then you must. Here, take the tape recorders.” She slipped them and the batteries into a paper bag and held it out to Bill.
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly take both!” he cried, feeling remorse that his purchase had been so ill-timed, had perhaps even brought about, by some supernatural circumstance, the kidnapping of Mr. Martinez.
Mimi shook her head. “Perhaps you shall encounter your friend again, and then you can return his tape recorder to him.” She turned back to her desk. “I have other matters to attend to, at any rate.”
Bill bowed humbly and retreated from the shop, taking pains to avoid the broken glass, not to step into the path of the diligent police officers, who were busily dusting the shards, or get trampled by throng outside the shop. Once more he stepped into the brisk day outside. This time, however, he was prepared.
It had not, of course, bypassed his mind that he was scheduled to interview an Italian fashion designer — in fact, if the reader excuses the questionable use of a definite article here, the Italian fashion designer! Though Bill had never heard anyone call Armando Saladucci “infernal", who else could be the sinister stranger of Mimi’s eavesdropped telephone conversations? Yet Bill was a rational man living in a world that dwelt in a time that was the offspring of the Age of Reason: the Age of Doubt, the Age of Cynicism. He found impossible a connection between Chucho Martinez, Armando Saladucci, and the electronics shop; therefore, the notion must be dismissed.
He continued to the hotel, feeling once more to be a man of the world, out to slay dragons and generally prove himself worthy.
Part VI
At the door to the hotel, Bill Markham paused, though only for an instant. The building loomed over him and the street on which he stood, impassive to the humans whose daily business it oversaw, to the humans whose population teemed within its cold sturdy walls. “Quite a doozy,” Bill murmured to himself. “A right doozy of a world, where a man spends all his time in places totally unaware of his existence.”
As he pushed through the revolving door, he allowed himself a brief fantasy. What if, by some miraculous power, the walls were sentient — that they not only sensed the human life about them, but observed them, critiqued them, judged them! How amazing it would be if objects once considered inanimate could interact with him, Bill Markham! Rather than interview persons such as Armando Saladucci, who had little time to spare, he could simply ask their shoes where they had been, their toothbrushes what they had eaten, even their beds who had slept in them!
Bill approached the front desk, his footsteps echoing in the empty lobby. Mrs. Velum smiled her tiny lipped smile at him and tapped her fingernails on the desk at a rapid pace. “There you are again, sir. I’ll let Mr. Saladucci know that you’re on your way up. Suite 3701. One of our penthouse suites.”
Bill nodded at her and walked briskly for the elevators. Now that he had his tape recorder, there was no excuse for further delay. As he walked away, he heard a quiet but gravelly voice say, sounding most irritated, “Do stop that incessant tapping!”
Bill turned his head. He had been certain that, aside from himself and Mrs. Velum, the lobby was quite empty. Mrs. Velum seemed not to have noticed anything out of the ordinary, and Bill was certain that the voice could not have been hers. “My brain just must not be upright today,” Bill thought, dismissing the incident.
He rode the elevator to the thirty-seventh floor in peace and walked coolly, professionally, to Suite 3701. Once there, he knocked three times: Rat tat tat. And then, he heard, from inside the suite, the sound of someone rising heavily from a chair and walking toward the door.
The door swung open with a creak, and there stood Armando Saladucci. Bill recognized him from dozens of photographs of him that had once hung in Emory Watkins’ office at The Tribune. Mr. Saladucci appeared to be about forty years old, balding, but with a dark, well-kempt moustache. He wore a garish turquoise and orange flowered kimono.
“Signor Markham, I presume,” Armando Saladucci said in dry, slightly accented English. “I trust you are ready for the interview now?”
“Yes, sir,” Bill answered politely. “Sir, I’m sorry I was late.”
“It is of no significance,” Mr. Saladucci said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Care for a cigar?” He motioned Bill to sit down in a heavily cushioned armchair, and he himself took the sofa across the way and arranged himself in a careful sprawl across the cushions. The room was dark, the curtains drawn. Mr. Saladucci lit a cigar. “Pictures first?” he asked the young journalist.
“I’m afraid it’s not a photo piece,” Bill apologized. “We’re just a small paper. Text only, no room for pictures, my boss told me.”
“Very well,” Armando Saladucci said with a sigh. “All right then, I suppose you’re out to find the skeletons in my closet.”
“Two skeletons, very much alive, to be precise.”
Bill looked around in amazement, for the words had been spoken, apparently, by nobody! Certainly he had said nothing. Armando Saladucci’s face had grown pale. It was clear that he had heard the strange voice, too.
Insight struck Bill like a lightning bolt. The walls were speaking to him, just as he had imagined. Down in the lobby, the front desk had complained of Mrs. Velum’s incessant tap-tapping of her fingernails. Now someone — or, rather, something — in Mr. Saladucci’s suite was speaking to him. And, if one were to judge by context alone, it could be none other than the closet!
Part VII
“But which closet?” Bill murmured to himself, puzzling over the curious situation; for there must be many closets in a suite so large. “And who, who?”
“It’s no good hooting like an owl when you obviously are not,” said the fashion designer, red as a beet and more irate.
“I’m sorry,” Bill said again, very perplexed indeed. “I only thought I heard someone say that there are two other people hidden in a closet in this apartment.”
“Ah, probably just a false alarm,” said Armando calmly. A smoke ring from his cigar circled his head like a halo for a moment, before floating away. He pointed his cigar at the smoke alarm above the door. “See that?”
“Yes, sir,” said Bill, not at all sure what it was he was supposed to see.
“A smoke alarm, yes?” said the fashion designer crossly. “But here I am, smoking a cigar, and it does nothing. An alarm most false indeed!”
“I did think,” Bill ventured timidly, “that a false alarm sounded when it shouldn’t have.”
“It’s both kinds,” snapped the other. “A sin of falsehood or a sin of omission — it’s all lies in the end!”
“Ah, yes,” Bill said, almost to himself. “Then the alarm in the electronics shop, that didn’t go off at the break-in — I suppose that must have been a false alarm as well!”
“Eh? What’s that?” growled the fashion designer. “Another false alarm? The world is full of them. As for what I was saying about the so-called prisoners in the closet — another false alarm! Of the other sort, of course.”
At that moment, however, a loud crash emanated from the living room coat closet, and two people tumbled out, bound hands, feet, and mouths with curtain sashes.
“Why, it’s Chucho and Mimi!” Bill exclaimed. “But what are they doing in your closet, Mr. Saladucci?”
“These supposed friends of yours are the most mischievous of crooks!” shouted the fashion designer indignantly. “My very good friend, Mr. Cowperton, owns the electronics shop you mentioned earlier, but he is also, in secret, an excellent designer of fine sleepwear. We have our differences of opinion, but we have a fine partnership.
“That one,” he continued, pointing to Chucho, “is from a third party clothing design firm. He was attempting to infiltrate our secret sleepwear warehouse and steal the highest of fashion secrets!
“And that one,” he went on, pointing to Mimi, “was trusted for so long by Mr. Cowperton to keep our secrets, but now it appears that she was trying to infiltrate the trade as well, and make herself rich off it. I had no choice but to send my thugs to capture them.”
From Chucho and Mimi came indignant shouts. Bill looked at them, then at Armando, confused. “But,” he protested, “how am I to know the truth if I do not hear both sides of the story?”
Armando frowned, but he said, “Very well, I will unbind the crooks.” He untied the curtain sashes with some difficulty, finally resorting to tugging at the knots with his teeth.
“It’s not true!” Mimi cried. “He’s the crook. He kidnapped Chucho and me!”
“He’s the criminal,” Chucho said, now quite sulky. “I was hired by Mr. Cowperton to protect the shop. We have an understanding — the hive mind, you know — and he’s the one after the secrets!”
Bill was quite overwhelmed by the stories, which seemed not to overlap at all. Musn’t some truth be shared? “If only my brain were upright today,” he said. “If only, if only...”
And the room seemed suddenly to whirl around him, slowly at first, and then faster, faster, until Bill could no longer stand.
He woke in his own bed, with his cat sitting on his chest. “Why it’s all just been a queer dream!” he exclaimed. “How very marvelous. And look how late it is! It’s almost time for tea!” So he roused himself, and he and the cat went and had a fine tea together. But Bill never forgot the wonderful adventures he had had.
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