“While you were in the office,” said Banner, “did you notice anything threatening?”
“Threatening? No, not a thing, Senator.”
“Perhaps you’d tell me what you were seeing Gosling about.”
“Of course I have no objection, Senator. I’m an exporter-importer. I’ve been seeing Gosling about clearing some shipments that have been going in and out of New Zealand. Governments are touchy these days about cargoes.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all, Senator.”
In a few minutes Banner was on his way back to the Idle Hour Club. As he entered the convivial surroundings and lumbered into the dining room, he found McKitrick waiting for him.
“The only thing about this case that’s plain,” said McKitrick abruptly, “is the motive. We know why Gosling was killed.”
“Do you?” Banner squeezed in behind a table and told a waiter he wanted some straight whiskey.
McKitrick said in a lower voice: “Gosling was collecting information on a spy who’s been selling all our secrets to the Russian Government. Gosling didn’t know exactly who it was, but he was getting dangerously close to that truth. Unfortunately the spy got to Gosling first. The Russian pistol is evidence of that.”
McKitrick stopped talking long enough to allow the waiter to place Banner’s whiskey before him.
“Yass?” Banner fired up another big stogie.
McKitrick continued: “I’ve been thinking about Gertrude Wagner. She admits she’s from East Germany. Her sympathies might easily lie with the Commies. We have only her word that she’d broken with them. What’s more to the point, Banner, she was in the room with Gosling when he was killed. The only person in the room with him. And she was holding the gun that killed him!”
“So?” muttered Banner. “Mebbe you can explain away the sealed envelope.” When McKitrick didn’t answer, Banner shrugged. “How was she able to shoot the gun through the envelope without making any holes in it?”
McKitrick sighed. “Times are getting brutal for us investigators when all a murderer has to do is send his victim a gun by mail and it does the killing for him.”
The wind coming across the Potomac River that afternoon had the icy sting of early winter on its breath.
Gertrude Wagner, wrapped up in a cloth coat, walking on the park path, stopped suddenly. She stared nervously around her. A man in an oystercolored balmacaan, who had been following her, veered around a turn in the path. When he saw her looking straight at him he hesitated for a fraction of a second, then he kept on coming, his pace more deliberate. Under the slant brim of his hat Gertrude could see the bright red hair. The wide shoulders were familiar.
She stood there until Odell came up to her. He grinned sheepishly. “Hello, Gertie. Mind if I walk the rest of the way with you?”
She drew back a pace as if she was afraid he might contaminate her. Her face looked pale and scared. “You’ve been following me,” she accused him.
Odell was sober. “To tell the truth, Gertie-”
“Why do you have to hound me? Can’t you leave me alone?”
“I’m not hounding you,” he said, disheartening to know that she had interpreted his actions that way.
“You are, Mr Odell. I haven’t been able to make a move since you came to the Legation without having your eyes on me. You people are watching me all the time, waiting to pounce on me for the least slip I make. I thought America was a free country, but the police watch you here as much as they do over there… You think I killed Mr Gosling!”
“Did it ever occur to you,” he said through clenched teeth, “that I might have other reasons for wanting to be near you?”
“What?” she said, hardly believing her ears. “What did you say?”
“You’re not hard to take, Gertie,” he said.
“Take?” she said in confusion. “Oh but-”
“You never gave me much encouragement. You always seemed to have so much on your mind, Gertie.”
“If that’s really true, Mr Odell, I’m sorry I – if I offended you just now.”
“If it’s really true! You don’t think I’m telling you the truth?”
“I can’t be sure of anything any more.”
“I was in that office to protect Mr Gosling – and you.” He looked at her steadily. “You believe me, Gertie.”
She looked back at him for a long moment, and he thought her eyes were watering.
She lowered her gaze. “Yes, Mr Odell, I do. I do believe you.”
“Well, then,” smiled Odell, “I hope you’re not doing anything tonight, as I want-”
“Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry. Not tonight. I have an appointment I can’t break. Shall we make it some other time?”
“Sure, Gertie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.” She smiled. “So long then.” She had her right hand in her coat pocket. She took it out and held it toward him. He grasped her palm. And then he felt that she had something in her hand – a slip of paper. When she drew her hand away she left it in his palm. He felt, with a rush of intuition, that everything was wrong. He pretended not to notice what she’d left in his hand. As she turned on her high heels to walk swiftly away from him, he thrust his own hand into his pocket.
He watched her go out of sight along the path, then he walked out of the park in the opposite direction. He was curious about what she was trying to convey to him. He went into the first street corner phone booth he came to and took the slip of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it.
The wrinkles of perplexity increased on his forehead.
The paper was blank except for two circles, a small one inside a much larger one, drawn on it in pencil.
Gertrude, the cold night wind whipping the coat about her knees, went up the legation steps. All the windows were dark. X Street was dark. Fumbling in her handbag, she took out a key, unlocked the front door, and slipped into the vestibule. It was all cold marble, like a mausoleum. She left the front door unlocked behind her as she went in, as if she was expecting someone else to follow her.
She flicked on a cigarette lighter to light her way up the plush carpeted stairway to the third floor. This was the floor on which the murder had been committed. She went into the office, tiptoeing past her desk in the reception room, going into the private office.
She looked at Gosling’s empty chair behind the desk. Gosling’s bloodied ghost still seemed to occupy it. And she shuddered.
She remembered a line from one of the newspapers … A nameless horror has stalked through the Legation…
The watch on her wrist ticked away loudly. She was painfully conscious of time. Everything had depended on time.
She did not know anyone was in the room with her until she heard the door between the offices click softly closed.
She turned around with a violent start. The cigarette lighter flicked out when she released her thumb. A shadow moved against the closed door.
“Is that you?” she gasped.
A powerful flashlight blinded her.
“Yes,” answered a voice. “Have you done all that was expected of you?”
She nodded miserably.
“Fine.” She heard a heartless chuckle.
And that was all she heard, for it is doubtful if she heard the two quick coughs before the lead slugs tore into her breast.
She was dead before she hit the floor.
McKitrick was saying: “The patrolman on the X Street beat saw the door of the Legation swinging open in the wind. He thought something was up, so he took a prowl through the building. He was the one who found her.”
Someberly Banner looked down at all that was left of Gertrude. “It’s a crying shame,” he muttered.
Odell sat gloomily on the edge of the desk. He roused himself up enough to say: “Well, this isn’t as puzzling as the first shooting. I talked to Gertie in the park this afternoon, Senator. She said she was going to meet someone tonight. Whoever it was just followed her in here and shot her. If I had any inkling this would happen, I never would have left her alone.”