“I’m glad to hear that. It won’t be too great an imposition, then, if we speak to her for a moment.”
Don Willie shook his finger at the policeman, his cheeks flushing with anger. “We will go to the bottom of this now. You don’t take my word, eh?” He strode to the hallway and cried, “Ilse! Please come here.” Wheeling about he pointed his finger again at Don Julio. “The maids will tell you she has been here. You want them waked up? You want to talk to my dogs, too? This is not the end of this thing.” Suddenly he turned and hurried to the fireplace, his body waddling with a suggestion of righteous confidence. “Here, here is her passport. I will show it to you.” He took a slim black book from the mantelpiece and thrust it angrily at Don Julio. “There! Examine it! See if she has left the country.”
Don Julio shrugged graciously. “I asked only if she had been here in the villa. I didn’t ask if she had left the country. Forgive me if I gave the impression of doubting your word.” He flipped open Ilse’s passport.
“Ach! It’s nothing,” Don Willie said with a generous wave of his hand. “We know each other too long for misunderstanding, eh?” But Beecher saw the tiny blisters of perspiration gleaming on his forehead.
Don Willie had made his first mistake, Beecher decided; he should have waited for Don Julio to ask him for the passport. And it shouldn’t have been so conveniently at hand. It would have been a nice touch to pretend it was lost or mislaid — then there could have been the business of searching through drawers and purses, of calling to flustered maids, of murmured speculations and puzzled frowns. But Don Willie had underscored the significance of the passport with a stupid flourish. And he realized that now.
He probably hadn’t wanted to tax his acting abilities any further; he had done a splendid job thus far, but enough was enough! Ring the curtain down with a last crisp bit of theater. Produce the absolving passport.
Don Julio flipped through it with mechanical skill, eyes narrowing as he examined the dates of entradas and salidas. “Yes, of course,” he said, and returned the book to Don Willie with the smart, approving gesture of a satisfied customs officer. “She most certainly has not left Spain.”
There was a light footstep in the hallway, and the three men turned their eyes alertly to the doorway as Ilse came into the room. She smiled politely at them as she turned to join Don Willie in front of the fireplace. She wore a brown tweed skirt and a yellow linen blouse, and her dark hair was brushed cleanly away from her forehead and held at the back of her neck with a narrow red ribbon. In the shadows of the tall mantelpiece her body seemed very slight and vulnerable.
Beecher sighed wearily; he felt sick and dispirited, and saddened intolerably by the effort she was making to meet his eyes, to smile at him, to control her trembling lips. Don Willie rubbed his hand up and down her back, massaging her delicate shoulder-blades with thick strong fingers. “You are cold,” he said gently. “I’m sorry they insist on disturbing you.”
“It’s all right. I was reading. What do you want?”
“God in heaven, I want nothing but my sleep,” Don Willie said, putting an arm about her shoulders. He raised his head and stared at Don Julio and Beecher. “Very well, here is the mysterious person who is causing so much trouble by sitting in her room and reading her book. Now what do you want of her?”
Don Julio glanced at Beecher. “Well, Mike?” He turned as he said this, and moved beyond the rim of light extended by the fireplace. He stood in shadow then, removed from the scene, but in a position to watch the faces and expressions of everyone in the room; his cold blue eyes flickered from Beecher to Ilse as he put a cigarette in his mouth and drew his lighter from his pocket. “Well, Mike?” he said once more, and lit his cigarette and blew a stream of smoke toward the dark ceiling. He stared at Beecher over the little flame of the lighter, a tentative and curious smile touching his lined, shadowed features.
Beecher sighed again, and looked sadly at Ilse. He had known what was coming from the minute Don Willie strode so confidently into the room; Willie couldn’t have brought off that bit of acting unless he had known that Beecher was alive. And only Ilse could have told him. Beecher had thought he would be fired with a sustaining hatred when she came on stage to play her part in the deception. But he didn’t hate her, he realized; he felt sorry for her. And he almost felt sorry for Don Willie.
“Tell the truth, Ilse,” he said.
“About what, Mike?” There was no expression at all in her small, pale face. “I don’t understand.”
“Please, Ilse,” he said wearily. “This won’t help. It’s no good.”
“I–I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Don Willie held her close against his powerful body. “Of course you don’t. And you are tired, I know.”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
“Last night you were happy, Ilse,” Beecher said quietly. “Remember? You knew you were free. There was nothing to be afraid of any more.”
She shook her head quickly. “I don’t know why you are saying these things,” she said, but her lips trembled as she spoke, and her eyes became dry and brilliant with pain. Don Willie was watching her closely. “I don’t see the use of all this,” he said hoarsely to Don Julio. “She has been sick. She needs her rest. Why do you upset her?”
Don Julio stood quietly in the shadows smoking his cigarette. There was a thoughtful, musing expression on his face; he might have been listening to a distant strain of music. “I agree with you,” he said mildly. “Mr. Beecher’s fantastic charges would seem to be unsupported. I apologize for disturbing you.” He walked to Beecher’s side and put a hand on his shoulder. “You will come with me to my office, please.”
“What’s going to happen to me?” Beecher said, without taking his eyes from Ilse’s face.
“You will be held for murder.”
“Then let’s go,” Beecher said. There was a chance that Ilse’s and Don Willie’s desperate lie might be difficult to disprove, he knew; her passport would be a strong prop for her story. There wasn’t much to contradict it. Beecher’s word, but not much else. A pair of GIs had seen her in Morocco, along with a frightened American tourist, and a sea-going smuggler. And their testimony would be counterbalanced by Don Willie’s maids who were obviously ready, through fear or bribery, to testify that Ilse had been in the villa all during the week. But Beecher wasn’t seriously worried about any of this.
He stood for a moment watching Ilse. She tried to meet his eyes, but couldn’t; she turned away from him, her body stiff and rigid within Don Willie’s arm, and he saw the tendons rising cruelly in her slender throat.
“You’re flying right back into your cage, Ilse,” he said gently. “You don’t have to. Don’t you remember what it was like to be free?”
“Please,” she said, and her voice was like that of someone straining on a rack. “I... I must go.”
“Yes!” Don Willie said sharply. “We have had enough of this.”
She slipped from his arms, the firelight gleaming on her slim bare legs, and walked swiftly to the doorway, her head high, and her hands clenched tightly at her sides. When she turned into the hallway they could hear her high heels clicking rapidly on the marble flagging, their sound fading toward the rear of the villa. But the tempo of her footsteps quickened suddenly; she was running then, Beecher knew, running frantically away from him. A door slammed heavily, shutting off the sharp clatter of her steps, and silence settled in the house.
Don Julio touched Beecher’s arm. “Please?”
“All right.”
Don Julio gave Don Willie a soft, smiling salute. “Good night. You must forgive this intrusion.”