"I hoped that . . ." She caught herself; she must say Andre Messac, not Mickey Banet; she must remember that. She went on: "I hoped that Andre would return. He was taken to a concentration camp when the Germans occupied Paris." She paused. The man opposite was still tapping his pipe lightly, watching it. The small taps were like little periods, spacing and punctuating memories.
So many memories . . . Marcia's mind went swiftly back five years, to the great gray ship, the Normandie, pulling out away from the pier on one of her last trips. Her father, on the pier, waving and laughing. It was actually her last glimpse of him. Teresa, a school friend, and Teresa's aunt, their chaperon, beside her.
That day had launched the gay holiday voyage during which she had met Mickey.
There followed a packed and important—but very quickly passing—period of time. London and humid July weather and Mickey. Paris and August and Mickey. September and war, and Mickey telling her he loved her.
After that, naturally, she remained in France, and would not return to America with Teresa and her aunt, in spite of their pleading, in spite of the war, in spite of the frantic cables from her father. She could remember saying good-bye to Teresa and the older woman, in the wild turmoil of the Gare du Nord and her return to the small, very French hotel back of the Madeleine.
And then there was the first autumn of the war. She had walked with Mickey, lunched with Mickey, dined with Mickey; listened to Mickey practice at the great piano in his apartment for hours on end, and listened to Mickey and his friends talk of the war. She herself had been lulled as Paris was lulled that winter with the Maginot drug; but not Mickey and not a small select nucleus of his friends. All over Paris actually there were men who believed that they could see ahead; already that winter the seeds of what was later to be a vast organization for French resistance were sown.
She had not known actually, however, that Mickey was a part of that beginning movement. Up to then his only interest had been music; he was on the beginning wave of what would certainly have been a great career; already people were beginning to know his name, he had played in London and in New York with brilliant press notices; he was in fact returning from a series of American concert engagements including an almost spectacular reception at Carnegie Hall when Marcia met him on the ship. He was then a slender, gay, contentedly engrossed young man, with his tanned face and light, sun-streaked hair and gray eyes which, Marcia had always thought, were exactly the color of the sea, as deep, as clear, as changeable; he had no thought of politics, no thought of anything but music. And the war ended that.
It ended his career in the first place because it brought all the bright world of the thirties crashing to an end. It ended his career later for a more specific reason.
In May the Germans entered Paris; Mickey and three other men she had known were arrested.
Captain Svendsen was still tapping the pipe lightly and precisely upon the tray. It seemed strange that her memory could travel so many weary months while a man waited and tapped tobacco from his pipe. He said, lifting the pipe at last to frown into the bowclass="underline" "You were in Paris, then, when the war began? And you went to Marseilles?"
"I went to Marseilles later, that summer, after the Germans occupied Paris. I was with a friend—Madame Renal. She had a car and we drove to her villa. It was on a hill just outside Marseilles."
Again, as if a swift series of pictures flashed across some mental screen she remembered that flight from Paris. They had all intended to go together; at least that was what she thought when the plan was made. She and Mickey and Madame Renal—the kind, stout old Frenchwoman her father had cabled her to get in touch with; somehow, somewhere in business probably, he had known Madame Renal and her husband. Madame Renal had a car, gasoline and a villa near Marseilles; she was old and ill and she could not make the journey alone. Otherwise, Marcia would not have gone with her, for at the last Mickey did not come. She would never forget and she did not want to remember that day in Paris, the frantic, seething day of unutterable confusion while she tried to find Mickey, and in the end gave up and went with Madame Renal. They left Paris about nightfall; at five o'clock the next morning they were exactly three miles away, but by that time she could not have made her way back to the city. Mickey would find them; he knew where they were going; he knew the address—so Madame Renal assured her over and over again. Somewhere along the road they picked up three women, an old man and a cat. When they reached the villa, cold with its stony floors, Mickey was not there. A month later she learned that he had been arrested and sent to Germany.
The women drifted away; the old man and the cat stayed on with her and Madame Renal. The thought of those long, cold, waiting years was too close and too full of tragedy to bear remembering. She said to Captain Svendsen: "Andre finally escaped, just at the end of the war; he knew where I'd be, of course, and came to me there as soon as he could."
The Captain began to refill his pipe. "Wouldn't it have been better to wait in Lisbon until you could get passage directly home? If your people are there . . ."
It seemed to Marcia for an instant that the man sitting opposite her, watching her so closely over his pipe, was bent upon touching all the sore and poignant scars of the past years. She said: "My father died while I was in Marseilles; the first summer after the Germans entered Paris. I learned of it months later through the Red Cross."
There was a slight pause; then the Captain said: "I'm sorry, Miss Colfax. Go on, please."
Go on? Oh, yes, why had they taken passage on the little Portuguese ship bound for Buenos Aires instead of home? But how could she tell him or describe to him her anxiety about Mickey, the urgency of her wish for him to leave Europe, with all its inevitable and tragic souvenirs of war? New surroundings, any new surroundings, a fresh start, a different place . . . These things Mickey had to have, for his soul's sake. His eyes were alight, his face had looked young and gay again, and full of hope and vitality for the first time when he had brought her, actually, another man's passports and the news of the possibility of a Lisbon sailing.
Practically, however, there was another reason, one she hadn't talked of to Mickey. She said slowly: "He had suffered greatly; I wanted him to be away from Europe as soon as possible. Also . . ." She hesitated; the passport situation would have to remain as it was, at least until she had talked to Mickey and they had decided together to tell the truth of it; but there was no harm in telling Mickey's profession. She went on, being careful again to say "Andre": "Andre, as he may have told you, was a musician, a pianist. Perhaps the Germans knew that; perhaps it was merely one of their unspeakable forms of torture. In any case, you've seen his hands; his fingernails and the ends of his fingers . . ."
Her throat grew rigid and hard, so she stopped; the Captain nodded, his face hardened. "I saw them. I've seen several such."
"I want to get him to a plastic surgeon. I don't think he can ever play again; but there may be some hope. It seemed important to get him home, by any means that we could, as soon as possible."
"I see. Yes, I see that. There may be some hope. Miss Colfax, you are being quite frank with me?"
Mickey's passport was not Mickey's; she had not told him that. There had been, however, no other evasion. "Yes."
"And there is really nothing you can tell me of the murder of this man Castiogne?"
She wondered briefly if he had questioned her, urged her to talk in the hope that she might inadvertently give him some grain of information relating to Castiogne. She shook her head. "Nothing."
"Very well then . . ."
Someone knocked, interrupting him, and Captain Svendsen said: "Yes? Oh, Colonel Morgan. Will you come in?"