The Manual Of Detection Part 19

Arthur was calm as he watched the man opposite him. "Something you haven't told me yet? Something I need to know that I don't know already? Probably not, Ed. I'm the overseer. I'm the man who sees too much."

But there was something, Unwin knew. Penelope. Her existence was the thing Miss Greenwood was fighting to keep hidden from Arthur, and the fight had exhausted her. Would Lamech trade what he knew for his life?

"You were supposed to watch him," Arthur went on. "That was your job, Ed. But this isn't happening because you failed. It's happening because you've done so well."

Unwin went to Lamech, tried to feel for the hands that were choking him. His fingers blurred with the watcher's, pa.s.sing through them as though through a mist. Unwin was seized by cold panic. He screamed and grabbed at the air, punched at it.

"I just have to clean your office," Arthur said. "Tidy up a little."

Unwin closed his dreaming eyes, but he could not occlude the vision of the man thrashing where he sat. The dream insisted. In the watcher's office on the thirty-sixth floor, Lamech had died as he died here. His convulsions formed a weird geometry amid the fluttering papers. The pigeons were mesmerized.

Lamech was still trying to speak, but Arthur had begun sorting papers again. Unwin's senses went gray as the watcher's body stilled.

He felt himself lifted from the bed, felt the blanket falling off his body. He tried to catch it, but something s.n.a.t.c.hed him upward and away. The earphones landed on the pillow. He saw below him a great lavender dress and knew he lay in the arms of Miss Palsgrave. She cradled him like a child while she slipped his shoes onto his feet. Her breath was warm on his forehead. She put the record back in his briefcase and gave it to him; his arms were shaking as he took it.

At the far end of the archive, near the place where Unwin had entered, a pair of flashlight beams swept through the dark, casting broad ovals of light over the floor. Miss Palsgrave sighed to herself when she saw them, then tapped Unwin's hat back onto his head. She started walking. Underclerks slept undisturbed all around them.

How cold Unwin was! Through chattering teeth he said, "You used to work for the carnival. For Hoffmann."

Miss Palsgrave's voice sounded metallic and thin; it was a voice from a string-and-tin-can telephone. "For Caligari," she said. "Never for Hoffmann. After he staged his coup, I left."

"And defected to the Agency."

"The problem is not belonging to one or the other, Mr. Unwin-and there is always an Agency, always a Carnival to belong to. The problem is belonging for too long to either of them."

Unwin thought of the little square building that represented his own mind in Lamech's final dream. It had stood right at the edge of the carnival; might it be annexed in time? "Have I-" he said, but he did not know how to finish the question.

Miss Palsgrave looked down at him. In the dark he could see only the dull gleam of her eyes. "The sleeping king and the madman at the gates," she said. "On the one side a kind of order, on the other a kind of disorder. We need them both. That's how it's always been."

"But your boss-my boss. He's a murderer."

"The scales have tipped too far," Miss Palsgrave agreed. "When Hoffmann made a deal with the overseer, he stopped working for the carnival and started working for himself. Their deal fell apart on November twelfth because Sivart solved that case correctly and Hoffmann imagined he had been betrayed by his conspirator. Now the Agency oversteps its bounds while the carnival rots in the rain. Hoffmann's grown desperate over the years. He'll drown the city in nightmare just to have it for his own again."

They came to the enormous machine at the other end of the archive. Here the air smelled of wax and electricity. On a wheeled cart nearby was a row of freshly pressed phonograph records. Now that Unwin knew the truth of the Agency's overseer, he saw this place in a new light. A repository of the city's most private thoughts, fancies, and urges, all in the hands of a man who would coerce and torment to learn what he wanted to know, who would murder an old friend to keep his secrets safe. Unwin's own dreams were out there, he thought, along with those of anyone who had ever drawn the attention of the Agency's unblinking eye.

"How could you allow Arthur such . . ." He struggled to find the right word. ". . . such trespa.s.s?"

"There was a time when I thought it necessary," Miss Palsgrave said. "Hoffmann was too dangerous, and we needed every tool to fight him."

"And now?"

She seemed, for a moment, uncertain. "Now a lot of things must be changed."

The two detectives Unwin had seen on the elevator with Detective Screed-Peake and Crabtree-had arrived at the middle of the archive. They cast grim glances at the huge pink chair, the lamp, the rug. Peake smacked his flashlight against his palm and said, "Forgot my spare batteries."

"Hush up," said Crabtree, even louder.

The detectives were limping. Peake had cuts and bruises on his face, and Crabtree's green jacket was torn along one shoulder: Miss Benjamin must have neglected to warn them about the ninth step. They aimed their flashlights deeper into the archive. A few of the underclerks sat up, removed their headphones, and blinked into the light.

"Enoch and Arthur have both grown stupid and hungry," Miss Palsgrave said to Unwin. "Someone will have to see them unseated. Someone will have to restore the old balance."

"Not me," Unwin said.

Miss Palsgrave sighed. "No," she said. "I suppose not."

Behind the cart of phonographs was a caged platform-the dumbwaiter. Miss Palsgrave opened the wire mesh door with her free hand and gently set Unwin inside.

"Where do I go now?" Unwin asked.

She leaned close and said, "You go up."

She took hold of the rope that hung from the ceiling and began to pull. Unwin fell against the floor of the little car as it shot into the air. He was treated to a brief view of the archive from above, of the pink chair glowing under its lamp, of the underclerks waking and sitting up in their beds, and of Miss Palsgrave, formidable in her lavender dress, drawing him into the air by the force of her great arms as the detectives closed in on her.

Unwin had to remind himself to breathe as the pulley far above creaked under the strain. In that nothing-place between here and there, time slowed, hiccupped, leapt forward. He felt he was still separated from his body, an invisible specter in someone else's dream. Seams of light marking the secret doors into offices throughout the building flitted past. Unwin heard voices on the other sides of the walls, heard typewriters, footsteps. He was seeing the world from the other side now-from the center of mystery, out into the lighted place he had once inhabited.

The ascent ended abruptly, and his arrival was announced by the ringing of a little bell. Unwin tapped the wall in front of him, and a panel flew open. When he clambered out of the dumbwaiter, he found himself once again on the thirty-sixth floor, in the office of Edward Lamech.

The watcher's body was gone now, but Unwin was not alone. Detective Screed stood beside the desk, a few papers in his hands. When he saw Unwin, he stuffed the papers into his jacket pocket and drew his pistol, then shook his head as though to say that now, at last, he had seen it all.

"They always come back to the scene," he said.

SIXTEEN.

On Apprehension Woe to he who checkmates his opponent at last, only to discover they have been playing cribbage.

Screed looked Unwin up and down, his thin mustache bending with pleasure, or disdain, or both. "You look terrible," he said. "And again that hat on the thirty-sixth floor."

Screed's suit, navy blue, was identical to the one Unwin first saw him in. It had been cleaned and pressed, or exchanged for a pristine duplicate. If Emily had succeeded in bringing him the memo, Screed did nothing to acknowledge it. He patted Unwin down, keeping the pistol trained on him. He was thorough in his search, but all he came up with was the alarm clock from Unwin's jacket pocket. This he held gently for a moment, as though he thought it might explode. He shook it, put it to his ear, and stuffed it into his own pocket.

"I'm not much of a tough guy," he said, relaxing his grip on his pistol. "And we're both gentlemen, as I see it. So I'm going to put this away now, and we'll talk like gentlemen. Agreed?"

Without waiting for a reply, Screed put his pistol back in its shoulder holster. Then he closed his hand and struck Unwin in the jaw with a quick jab. Unwin fell back against the wall.

"That," Screed said, "was for getting into the wrong car yesterday."

Screed grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him out into the hall. The place was silent, the other watchers' doors all closed. They took the elevator to the lobby, and Screed led him around the corner to where his car was parked. With an unlit cigarette in his mouth, the detective drove them uptown, along the east side of City Park.

The somnambulists were all around them, on every block. They went insensibly through the streets, playing the lead roles in their own delirious dramas. A man in a business suit stood at the edge of the park throwing seeds over his head while a flock of pigeons descended upon him to feed. His face was covered with scratches, his suit soiled and torn. A nearby tree was full of young boys, all of them throwing paper airplanes made of newspaper pages. While Unwin watched, one of the boys leaned too far off his branch and fell.

Screed hit the horn and swerved to avoid an old woman crouched in the middle of the street, her hands covered in dirt. She had relocated a pile of soil onto the pavement and was planting flowers in it.

"People these days!" Screed said.

The detective seemed to think that nothing was out of the ordinary-that this was simply the chaos of the everyday. An enemy to messiness in all its forms, An enemy to messiness in all its forms, he had called himself. Maybe Hoffmann's version of the world was how Screed already imagined it to be. When they stopped at a traffic signal, he took the cigarette from his mouth and leaned forward to pick his teeth in the rearview mirror. he had called himself. Maybe Hoffmann's version of the world was how Screed already imagined it to be. When they stopped at a traffic signal, he took the cigarette from his mouth and leaned forward to pick his teeth in the rearview mirror.

Unwin rubbed his jaw where Screed had struck it. He considered the many accounts he had read of the wild a.s.sertions made by suspects after they were apprehended. Protestations of his own would only sound like the pleas of a desperate man, but he had to try to convince Screed of his innocence. "I sent you a memo," he told him. "Part of it was about Sivart's cases."

"Uh-huh," Screed said.

"I found out he was wrong about a lot of things. That most of his cases have never been solved correctly. You could be the one to fix the record, Detective Screed. We can still help one another."

"Oh, we are going to help one another," he said, accelerating through the intersection.

Screed reached into his jacket pocket and removed the pad of paper he had taken from Lamech's office, holding it so Unwin could see the top sheet. It had been rubbed with the flat of a pencil to reveal the impression left by words written on the previous page. Unwin recognized his own handwriting. The Gilbert, Room 202. The Gilbert, Room 202.

They parked across the street from the hotel. Screed directed him through the lobby to the restaurant, a dim, high-ceilinged room, crystal chandeliers coated in dust. The wallpaper, patterned with curlicues of gold specks, was stained yellow from years of tobacco smoke. On each table was a vase of withering lilies. They sat themselves in the back of the room.

"Your accomplice," Screed said, "has been under surveillance since shortly after she returned to the city two weeks ago. We lost track of her for a day here and there, but we know it's become her habit to take her meals at the Gilbert, where, as you know, she is currently lodged."

The restaurant was all but empty. A few old, well-dressed men sat at a table near the center of the room, speaking quietly. When Unwin could hear what they were mumbling, he heard only numbers. They were arguing about an account of some kind, or the dream of an account. Seated to Unwin's left, alone with his napkin tucked into his shirt collar, was the man with the pointy blond beard. He scrutinized an omelette while cutting small bites from it and chewing with measured care. When he saw Unwin look in his direction, he flashed him a glance of smug triumph.

"We will wait here for Miss Greenwood's arrival," Screed went on, "and you will greet her without rising from your seat. When she sees you, you will urge her to join us. When you speak of me, you will speak of me-in whatever sly, insinuating terms with which the two of you are accustomed to communicating-as one who has been brought into your plot to infiltrate the Agency."

Unwin had no choice but to play along. "She'll suspect something," he said. "Even if she does sit with us, she won't tell us anything."

"That's in your hands," Screed said. "I'm giving you a chance to help, Unwin. You should be grateful. Now drink some more, your gla.s.s is too full."

Screed had insisted on whiskey sours for both of them. There was no waiter in the place, but a red-jacketed bellhop-or a boy dreaming he was a bellhop-had filled in, taking the order and returning with the drinks. Unwin sipped from his gla.s.s and winced.

"Yes," Screed said, answering a question he must have silently posed to himself, "my biggest case yet." He took the maraschino cherry from his drink and plucked it from its stem with his teeth.

Just then the bellhop came back into the restaurant. The boy was oddly alert, and his actions more precise than those of the other sleepwalkers Unwin had seen. He went to the man with the blond beard and gestured with his thumb and pinkie open over his ear: a telephone call. The man with the blond beard looked annoyed but set down his fork, a bit of omelette still stuck to it, and rose from his chair. His napkin was dangling from his collar when he followed the bellhop into the lobby.

Unwin wondered whether it was the overseer on the phone, impatient for an update from his agent.

A minute later the bellhop came back. This time he had on his arm an old man in a tattered frock coat. He directed him to a table nearby, and the old man was about to sit when he saw Screed. He looked at Unwin, then at Screed again, then nodded and closed his eyes in solemn resignation.

It was Colonel Sherbrooke Baker. Like them, he was perfectly awake. "So you have me at last," he said. "Battered, world-weary, a lowly fugitive, and a threat to no one. But you have me, and now you demand my surrender."

Screed glowered at Unwin, as though he were somehow responsible and had better not try anything.

The colonel went on, "Once in the poor dregs of his life, the old wretch determines to take his meal in the company of his fellow men, and that is when you nab him. So be it. Better this than to die alone in my cell, wondering how long before I am found by room service, stiff in my chair, eyes gone to jelly."

Screed's mustache was twitching as Colonel Baker sat with them at their table.

"My name is Sherbrooke Thucydides Baker," he said. "I am eighty-nine years old. I am going to tell you the story of my first three deaths and how I was undone at last by the wiles of a madman and his treacherous agents."

Screed recognized the name-he knew Sivart's case files as well as anyone, if only out of envy. Slowly grasping the situation, he said, "You've made the smart choice, Baker. Why don't you start from the beginning?" He took the notepad from Lamech's office out of his pocket and gave it to Unwin. "You're a clerk," he said. "Write this down."

Unwin took a pencil from his briefcase and waited.

"She came late one night to my home," Baker began, "uninvited, unexpected. That Greenwood woman, from the carnival. I was busy at my polishing and would have shot her where she stood, if not for the plan she proposed. For a modest price, Enoch Hoffmann would oversee the faking of my death. It would be, she told me, the simplest of feats for the master illusionist. I saw immediately the advantages of such an arrangement."

Screed leaned forward, his elbows on the table. "Okay," he said, "so Hoffmann helped you with the phony funeral. I read the rest of it in the papers. All to fool your son."

The colonel took hold of the napkin and crushed it in his hand. His voice cracked as he said, "Leopold. My boy!"

"Easy now," Screed said, looking to make sure Unwin was getting it all down. "What about your second death?"

The colonel dropped the napkin onto his plate. "Hoffmann betrayed me. He was the one who contacted my brother, told him where I was, what I'd planned. Reginald came to stop me, to claim my treasures."

"You killed him," Screed said. "You stabbed him with that dagger, eight times."

"What a bore he was. How dreadful to see living boredom spilled from lips identical to yours. Forget the war, forget our childhood on the hilltop. Forget the hedgehog hunts; I despised them! Where was that, where?"

"You fled," Screed said, trying to keep him on track.

"I was dead again, and a murderer besides. I went to City Park, to that old fort. It pleased me to go there sometimes, in the autumn. I took my son, once, to show him the view from the battlements." The colonel chuckled to himself and drummed his hands against the edge of the table, as though to beat out the march of an approaching regiment.

Screed was at a loss. He sipped from his drink again, shaking his head.

"Sivart found you," Unwin tried. "You fled to the bridge."

"No, not to the bridge! To Hoffmann, to that carnival sideshow. He was in his tent at the fairgrounds, looking smug. There was a party going on. He invited me in, introduced me to the other guests. I remember there was a man who stood no taller than my knees, and some lascivious acrobats, and a woman with a hairless cat on a leash. I hated them all and showed them my teeth. He took me outside, sat me next to a fire, gave me a gla.s.s of brandy. I told him not to put on airs-anyone could see how lowly and mean were his circ.u.mstances. They say a magician never reveals his secrets, but out of spite he told me how he had encompa.s.sed my ruin."

"They found your coat in the river," Screed said.

"My son!" the colonel cried again, taking up the napkin and twisting it. "Greenwood found him. She was still working to finish Hoffmann's trick."

The man with the blond beard had come back into the restaurant, his napkin still tucked in his collar. He took in the scene instantly and came toward them with his beard thrust forward.

"Poor, poor Leopold," the colonel said. "He thought his father was dead. Everyone suspected him. Greenwood found him and told him he was done for, gave him my old coat to wear. There was no escape for him. A little lion, my son, he always was. He put the coat on. I should have been the one to go to the bridge. Not he!"

"Stop this!" cried the man with the blond beard. He grabbed Screed by the shoulder. "You must end your investigation, close the case. Orders from up top."

The three older gentlemen at the other table were looking around, troubled by all the noise but blind to its source. They spoke nervously in streams of inexplicable digits, their voices rising.

The colonel said, "Hoffmann would pose as my son, you see. It was the simplest of tricks for the master illusionist. I was dead, my brother was dead, and he would inherit everything. My collection, my home-he was going to throw nice parties there, he said. Not so lowly and mean anymore. He said he would drink brandy at my fireside."

The man with the blond beard circled the table and tried to s.n.a.t.c.h Unwin's pencil. Unwin kept hold of it until it snapped in two.

"He let me keep one thing," the colonel said. "Any one thing of my choosing." He withdrew the antique service revolver from his pocket. It shone from constant polishing and was worn to perfect smoothness, like an object come back from the sea. It was the brightest thing in the room.

"Cease, desist!" shouted the man with the blond beard, lunging at him.

The colonel responded to these words as though to a battle cry. He growled and locked arms with his adversary, spittle flying from his lips. Neither of the men was very strong; they circled one another in a jerky dance, the colonel straining backward to keep the beard from brushing his face. He fell, and the man with the blond beard fell with him. Then came the shot.

Colonel Baker rose to his knees. He took hold of the edge of the table and pulled himself up. The man with the blond beard remained on the floor. His teeth were chattering. It sounded, Unwin thought, like coins falling through a pay phone.