It was five days later that Paul, thoroughly bored with the apartment by this time, happened to be going through the music Warren had listed in his apartment player. Abruptly, he came across a title which caught his attention.
IN APPLE COMFORT ... vocal. Sung by Kantele.
Kantele . Suddenly the mental connection was made. It had been there in the list of local members of the Chantry Guild. Kantele Maki. And he remembered now, there was a girl who sang professionally under the single name Kantele . She was the girl with the book that he had first seen on the news broadcast, and after that at the Directory. He pressed the small black button alongside the initial letter of the song tide.
There was the barest second of a pause, and then the chimed music rose softly ringing from the player, interspersed by the cool, shifting silver of the voice he recognized.
In apple comfort, long I waited thee And long I thee in apple comfort waited. In lonely autumn and uncertain...
A sudden gasp from behind him made Paul shut off the player abruptly and turn about. He found himself facing the girl herself.
She stood a little to one side of a bookcase of old-fashioned volumes. But the bookcase, to Paul's surprise, was swung out from its usual place, revealing not a wall behind it, but an entrance to a small room furnished and equipped like an office. Seeing his gaze go to it, Kantele broke suddenly out of the rigidity that had been holding her, and, putting out a hand, pushed the bookcase back into position, closing the entrance. They stood, looking across the room at each other.
"I didn't know ..." she said. "I forgot you were living here now."
He watched her, curiously. She was noticeably pale.
"Did you think I was someone else?" he asked.
"Yes. I mean" - she said -"I thought you were Jase."
She was one of the kind who lie defiantly. He felt her untruthfulness across all the distance separating them.
"You've got a fine voice," he said. "I was playing that song of yours..."
"Yes. I heard you," she interrupted. "I - I'd rather you wouldn't play it, if you don't mind."
"Would you?" asked Paul.
"It has associations for me. If you don't mind..."
"I won't play it if you don't want me to, of course," said Paul. He walked toward her and then stopped suddenly, seeing her reflexively take the one step back from him that the wall behind her allowed.
"Jase..." she said. "Jase will be here at any minute."
Paul watched her, frowning a bit. He felt puzzled and a little exasperated by her, but also oddly touched, as he might be by anyone or anything defenseless that did not realize he meant it no harm. And that was odd too, because Kantele did not give the impression generally of defenselessness, but of wire-like courage. Paul was reaching to approach this problem in words when the sound of the opening front door of the apartment brought both their heads around in its direction.
Warren and the flat-bodied, crop-haired man Paul had seen in the news broadcast, and again leaving the apartment with Kantele the first time he had come to see Warren, had just come in. They headed straight for Paul and Kantele.
Chapter 7
"You didn't answer the door," said Warren, stopping before them and looking at Kantele.
"You didn't ring," said Paul.
"He means me - my apartment, next door," said Kantele, but without looking away from Warren to Paul. "I forgot he was here, Jase. I heard noise and I knew you were out. I stepped in from the office."
"Yes," said Warren. His thin, dark, bright face looked from her to Paul without smiling. "Well, you'd have met anyway. You know each other now? This is Paul Formain, Kantele. Paul, Kantele Maki."
"How do you do?" said Paul to her, and smiled. She gave a little spasm of a smile back.
"And this is Burton McLeod."
"McCloud?" echoed Paul, shaking hands with the flat-bodied man.
"Spelled McLeod, pronounced McCloud," said McLeod. His voice was mild and a little husky. His handgrip was dry and firm. His brown eyes were the lonely, sad, and savage eyes of a hawk on leash and perch. A week before, the hotel security man, Butler, had impressed Paul as dangerous. McLeod radiated dangerousness of a different order. If Butler was like a stiletto, needle-pointed and polished, then this man was scarred and heavy as some ancient broadsword.
While Paul and McLeod had been shaking hands,
Warren and Kantele had held each other's eyes for a long second. Now, suddenly, Warren turned away from her with a quickness that was almost like a shrug and took a small box from his pocket. He opened it in front of Paul.
Paul saw neat rows of white gelatin capsules within. Warren took one out and handing the box aside to McLeod, broke it and poured a white powder from it into his palm.
"Taste," said Warren. Paul frowned.
"It's quite harmless," said Warren. He dipped a finger in the powder himself, and put it to his tongue. Paul hesitated a second and then followed suit. He tasted sweetness.
"Sugar?" said Paul, looking at Warren.
"That's right." The Necromancer dusted off his hands over a nearby ash tray. "But to the man you'll be giving it to it'll be cocaine. I said" - Warren stared at Paul tightly - "it'll be cocaine. The minute you let the box into anyone's hands but your own. I mention this so that you'll realize you're legally in the clear in delivering it, as long as you keep it in your pocket until the last moment."
"You want me to deliver it?" asked Paul. "Who to?"
"You know how the Koh-i-Nor's laid out. I want you to take this box to suite 2309. Don't ask directions from the desk clerk or anyone else. Give it to the man you find there. If you run into any trouble . . ." Warren hesitated and glanced for a second at Kantele. "I don't expect you will. But if you do, there's a chess tournament going on on the sixtieth level in the banquet rooms there. Go up there and look for Kantele. She'll get you out."
He stopped talking. There was a moment of silence in the room.
"If it was cocaine," said Paul, "of course I wouldn't take it."
"You'll be carrying sugar," said Warren. His thin face seemed to flash for a second like a drawn blade in the brightness of the sunlight coming through the far windows of the room. "It'll be transmuted into the drug only after you deliver it. You can believe or not believe, go or part company with me, just as you like."
"I'll take it," said Paul. He held out his hand. McLeod gave him the box. "Twenty-three-o-nine?"
"Twenty-three-o-nine," said Warren. The eyes of all three followed him, Paul could feel in the muscles of his back, as he took the box and left the apartment.
The desk clerk he passed at the Koh-i-Nor was a stranger and did not look up as Paul went by. Paul took the elevator tube to the twenty-third level.
It turned out to be a level of modern-décor, semi-VIP suites. The type of establishments that would require income in excess of forty thousand a year to be supported without strain by their occupants. Paul walked down the wide, tiled hallway, coolly lighted by the high, blue-curtained windows at each end of it, until he came to a door marked with the numerals 2309. Below it in small letters were the two words service entrance.
Paul touched the door. It was not only unlocked but ajar. It swung noiselessly back into its wall recess at his touch. He stepped into the kitchen of the suite.
Voices broke on his ear from elsewhere in the suite. He stopped dead, and with a faint noise the door slid closed again behind him. One of the voices was an incisive, middle-aged tenor, sharp with emotion. The other was thick and deeper in tone, stumbling, sullen.