He looked at it blankly. Obviously, when he had written it, he’d had something in mind. What? He couldn’t remember what he’d been doodling with when Mike Woolman’s ring at the door had come. He stared at it for a while, but nothing would evolve. He couldn’t keep his mind from Ronald Brett-Home and from the strange party at the Dempsey’s.
Nicolas Ferencsik. The Hungarian scientist and his dream of World Government. It came back to Quentin Jones then. He had thought of doing a short series of columns on World Government. He shook his head. He wouldn’t be able to do them now. Not until this matter was cleared up. If it was cleared up.
He’d have to get onto something else. He picked up his notebook and thumbed through it. Here was a couple of lines dealing with American dependence on the PX stores abroad. Quint Jones twisted his lips thoughtfully. And the bell rang.
He closed his eyes in pain. “What in the hell is this, Old Home Week?” He threw his notebook to the table and made his way to the door.
Two of them stood there. He had seen them before. Or at least their identical twins. Somehow they manage to look the same, anywhere in the world. One of them brought forth a wallet and nicked it open.
Quint sighed. “You didn’t have to show me the buzzer,” he said. Involuntarily, he looked down at their feet. The slightly older of the two flushed angrily.
Quint sighed. “Pardon me for a moment.” Leaving the door open he went back to the table, took up his notebook and a ball bearing pen and scribbled quickly, Humor bit: Evidently the gag about a cop having big feet is international, and cops everywhere conscious of the fact, and irritated by it.
They had entered behind him, without invitation, and the younger closed the door behind them. They wouldn’t have done that in England or any of the Scandinavian countries, nor in Canada or the States. No, come to think of it, Quint decided, there was many a city in the States where they might. Police were known to get delusions of grandeur in the supposedly super-free America, on occasion.
He said, motioning with his hand, “A seat, gentlemen?” He made another gesture in the direction of the bar. “Could I offer you a drink? A cognac? Beer? Scotch?”
They shook their heads. With regret, Quint decided, when he mentioned the whisky. Scotch whisky was currently the status drink in Spain. To impress the girl friend, in a bar, you ordered Scotch, in spite of the fact that it cost a dollar a throw while good Spanish brandy cost possibly five cents, and while the Scotch was almost certainly cut to ribbons and blended with cheap alcohol to stretch it out.
The one Quint had decided was the older said, “Senor Jones, Hablar espanol?”
Still in English, Quint said, “Well enough for every day purposes. To ask for a second round of beers in a bodega. To order in a restaurant, or buy things in the market. To pick up a girl and argue her into my way of thinking. But not to talk to police officers about any subject more important than a parking ticket. And you gentlemen don’t look as though you’re connected with the traffic department. I’ll stick to English. If it’s important, we can go on over to the American consulate for an interpreter.”
The older one grunted, and said in quite passable English, “You are a friend of Mr. Ronald Brett-Home.” It wasn’t exactly a question.
“An acquaintance,” Quint told him, resuming his own chair, and shooting his typewriter a look of disgust. He might as well give up, today. It wasn’t in the cards.
The detective’s eyebrows were raised. “We have information that you were a friend. Do you deny it?”
“It’s according to what you mean by friend. I’ve known him for maybe as long as a year. I average seeing him once or twice a month, at a party, or some such. I’ve never been to his home, he’s never been to mine.”
“When did you see him last?”
“I don’t know.”
The detective looked at him. Both of them looked at him.
Quint shrugged angrily. “We see each other from time to time at parties. I don’t know which one I saw him at last. We were never important to each other. We might both be at a party, or at the swimming pool at the British-American Club, or at some bar and never even speak.”
“Perhaps you did not like Mr. Brett-Home. Perhaps you were enemies.”
“No,” Quint sighed. A cop is a cop is a cop. “No, we weren’t enemies. I just told you. We hardly knew each other.”
“But you fought against each other.”
Quint looked at him blankly, then caught it. “Oh, you mean at the karate club? We both belonged to it, but usually I’d work out in the afternoon, and he’d come in later in the evening. When we occasionally were there at the same time, Hideka, the instructor, would usually pair us off. We had about the same build.”
The detective leaned forward a bit. “He was your superior at this Japanese fighting, perhaps?”
“We were about evenly matched.”
“But one understands that he had won awards.”
“He had a third Dan Black Belt which I understood he had taken the examinations for in Singapore. I’ve never had occasion to take examinations.” Quint shrugged. “I don’t know if I would if I had the opportunity. I mess around with karate for the exercise. I don’t take it seriously.”
The detective who spoke English looked at him sceptically. So, okay, let him think that it was a matter of sour grapes.
The younger detective came to his feet and strolled over to the window and stared down, as though bored at the conversation, at the traffic on Calle General Peron. There wasn’t much to see. Quint had picked the street partly because of its comparative quiet.
The other was saying, “From your attitude I assume you have learned of Mr. Brett-Home’s, ah, tragedy.”
“Yes.” What use was there in denying it?
“How did you know? It has not as yet been released to the press.”
“A friend told me.”
“What friend?” The Spanish cop’s air was cold.
He had just said that the news had not been released to the press. Where had Mike picked it up, then? Quint’s mind raced. Would it be a betrayal if he gave them the American reporter’s name?
The younger cop, who had been staring gloomily out the window, had left it and strolled over to stand for a moment before a reproduction of Velazquez’ Las Meninas. He grunted and sauntered about the room as though looking for more paintings, and thus killing time. The American columnist brought his attention back to the question.
He said, slowly, “I’m afraid I can’t reveal my source of information. I am a journalist, you know.” Calling himself a journalist was stretching a point, of course. He was a columnist, true enough, but not a newspaper man in the sense of being a reporter.
His questioner said dangerously, “Senor Jones, we do not deal with pleasant newspaper stories about parties, and marriage and divorce, and movie stars and other celebrities. We do not even deal with politics. We are dealing with murder. Now, one would like to know who told you of Mr. Brett-Home’s death.”
The younger cop had got to the side board and was shuffling through Quint’s morning mail.
“Hey!” Quint was on his feet. “Quieta!”
He came angrily up on the other, who did no more than raise a contemptuous, supercilious eyebrow at the American, continuing his inspection.
“Drop those letters!” Quint demanded angrily.
“My colleague doesn’t have English,” the other detective said, an undertone of both contempt and amusement in his voice.