He filled his pipe, and considered phoning Emily one last time. But it seemed pointless. She knew where he was, or could find out by asking the operator, and if she wanted to see him, she would ring.
Then, as he paced, worrying about Emily, troubled about the speech that must be written, something else occurred to him.
He strode to the telephone and asked to be connected with the portier’s desk in the lobby.
‘Yes? This is the portier.’
‘This is Andrew Craig. Tell me-the keys to the Stratman suite-Miss Emily Stratman-Professor Stratman-are both their keys in the box? I’m trying to find out if either one has returned to the hotel yet.’
‘One second, Mr. Craig.’
Craig waited, holding the receiver to his ear, and then the portier was back on the line. ‘Both keys are missing, so they must both be in. I would-one second, please hold-’ Craig heard indistinct voices, and then the portier again. ‘My colleague behind the desk tells me that Professor Stratman took his key and went up to his suite no more than ten minutes ago. And he says he believes that Miss Stratman came for her key about-it was shortly after the noon hour. So-’
‘Thank you,’ said Craig.
He hung up. That was it, then. Emily had been in her room all this while, and returned to answer his call, and had then had a change of heart and stayed away from the telephone. The important thing she had to tell him would not be told. Their reunion was not to take place.
Suddenly Craig was weary of pursuit and disappointment. If she was this way, then it was this way she would always be, and there would be no making her over. He had not the energy for these ups and downs. He would forget her. That would be for the best.
He decided that he would go downstairs, have a few drinks and a snack in the Winter Garden, and after that, there might be time enough to outline some sort of acceptance speech-a brief, conversational speech larded with the literary clichés and double-talk (where man became Man) expected on these occasions, and then, at last, it would be time to dress for the final Ceremony.
But when Craig arrived at the elevator, and pressed the button, he knew that his destination was not the Winter Garden but the Stratman suite.
Quickly traversing the red-striped corridor carpet of the third floor, he reached her front door with every intention of buzzing and knocking until Emily was forced to make an appearance and engage in a showdown, but then he found that the front door was ajar. This was better, he decided at once. He would simply walk in on her and corner her, before she could temporize and equivocate, and he then would have it out with her. As he reached for the knob, the door moved away from his touch.
A stooped chambermaid, in clean but faded green, carrying a pail of suds and brushes, a mop clenched awkwardly, was opening the door to leave.
Craig stepped aside for her, nodding politely. ‘Miss Stratman is expecting me,’ he explained, because he felt that an explanation was needed.
The chambermaid muttered an incomprehensible phrase in Swedish, and waited for Craig to enter, and then she closed the door after him.
In the entry hall, Craig hesitated on the frontier of propriety. One did not barge into other people’s private quarters unannounced, unless one was Leah, but then Craig justified his act by remembering that he had telephoned Emily often enough, and that she had wanted to see him. If she now suffered timidity or doubt, at least one of them should be the aggressor.
Nevertheless, he felt uncertain of his position as he went into the sitting-room. He looked about. The room was vacant, and quiet except for the ticking of a clock. He moved past the sofa to what he recalled to be Emily’s bedroom door, intending to call her or rap, when he was arrested by the torn note held upright between the telephone and lamp. The upper half of the note had been crossed out. It read:
Had to suddenly go out to a business lunch. See you soon. Room service says your gown will be back at 3. Love, UNCLE MAX.
Beneath these crossed out sentences was a later communique:
2.20. Liebchen-Have returned from lunch and want to rest. Do not let me oversleep. Wake me before 4 o’clock. UNCLE MAX.
Craig straightened. Emily was not in after all. He felt ashamed for having mistrusted her, and equally ashamed at this intrusion on her privacy. Whatever had detained her, he told himself, was her own business, and if she intended to telephone him, she would do so before the Ceremony. He felt better now. To hell with the Winter Garden. He would return to his room and outline the speech and wait for her.
Simultaneous with his decision came the sound of the front door buzzer. His first thought was: Emily, at last. Then his second thought corrected the first: she would not buzz, for she had a key. Well, he had no business here. He would see who it was-Emily’s gown being returned by the valet, no doubt-he would accept it, hang it up, allow old Stratman his nap, and then leave.
When he hurried into the entry to answer the buzzer, he noticed that a single sheet of white typing paper had been slipped through the crack at the bottom of the front door. He stooped to pick it up, not intending to invade privacy further by reading the typewritten message, intending only to place the message on the table, when Emily’s name leaped out of the page at him.
He read the typed words set down entirely in capital letters:
PROF. STRATMAN: IF YOU WISH TO KNOW THE WHEREABOUTS OF YOUR NIECE EMILY STRATMAN THEN OPEN THE PARCEL IMMEDIATELY AND LISTEN TO A FRIEND.
The cords in Craig’s throat constricted. The words on the sheet in his hands were bland and harmless words, but the effect was ominous. Like all Americans, so isolated from the everyday intrigues of the Old World, Craig was conditioned by lurid fiction and film, to believe that such skulduggery was as extinct as history. To even project the possibility of conspiracy, on a level lower than unreal high government circles, was to cast aside maturity and sophistication. Automatically, to one raised as he had been, all machination was the façade of what was more familiar and innocent-the practical joke.
At once, Craig rejected menace and prepared for the unfolding of the joke. He opened the front door to admit the page with his parcel. But there was no one there, which tended to confirm the joke. He poked his head into the corridor and searched off right and then left. The corridor was empty. And then his shoe bumped the parcel on the corridor floor.
Taking up the small, light parcel, meaning to place it with the ridiculous message on the entry table, he was nagged by an urgency to reread the message. Now he did so, and now he sensed jeopardy. What corroborated the threat of the message was Emily’s actual absence. She had said that she would be back in her suite at 12.30, but it was past 2.30. The thing to do, he knew, was to awaken Professor Stratman-message and parcel were directed to him-and be reproved for interrupting an old man’s rest with collegiate nonsense. His instinct was to obey the message himself, and, at worst, be accursed for a meddlesome fool. And if it was not a joke? His instinct was reinforced by a deep emotion: his stake in Emily was, by this time, as great as Stratman’s stake.
Foregoing further vacillation, Craig tugged at the strand of twine around the grey parcel, tore it off, and then peeled away the paper.
When he was finished, he held in his hand a miniature tape recorder, no more than four by five inches, constructed of black plastic. To the lower left, in white lettering, were the words ‘Record… Play… Stop’ with a tiny lever set at ‘Stop’. A slot above revealed the miniscule tape inside. And next to that was a knob with lettering beneath that read ‘Manual Rewind’. There was no trade name on the plastic machine. Craig turned it over. On the back, in a corner, imprinted black on black, were the words ‘Made in Stettin’. And then Craig saw that a coil of wire was attached to the device, and at its end, a plastic earplug, which was the speaker.