The bathroom door opened. Once slugged, twice shy. If I was going to be hit, it would not be from behind. My visitor was about my own age and height, though sporting muttonchops and Fu Manchu mustache; said his name was Marlowe. He had found me unconscious in a phone booth, he said, and had carried me to the sidewalk. I thanked him for his trouble.
“Get separated from anything?” he asked.
Nothing, it turned out, but the note. I looked at my watch. It was twenty after two. In this business, five minutes could seem like an hour.
“If you’re in a hurry,” Marlowe said, “I have an Alfa parked outside.”
As we drove downtown in Marlowe’s Alfa Romeo, I told him as much of the present business as a graduate Sociology student could be expected to assimilate.
“Why should Sol(l)ness steal a note containing information of a meeting he himself had arranged?” I asked, wanting to see what he would say.
“He didn’t want it around to be used as evidence against him.
Or — there’s another contingency we shouldn’t overlook — maybe it wasn’t Sol(l)ness. Maybe it was someone of whose existence neither of us is yet aware.”
Everything is a paradox they teach you in college, and after awhile you can’t see your own reflection in the mirror without thinking it’s someone else.
Marlowe gave the illusion of driving fast, but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. “Look at the facts,” he said. “There was about two hours between the time the man you assumed was Sol(l)ness left Markey’s room and the time you happened to make your visit.”
“Probably no more than an hour.”
“In which you slept.”
“Sleep and I are strangers. Can’t you go any faster?”
“I’m going as fast as the traffic will bear. It’s a common phenomenon not being aware of having slept. Let’s say you dozed off. From your own account there’s someone else it could have been. Someone who had as much opportunity and motive as Sol(l)ness. “
“You don’t think it’s — ?” I said, though the more I thought of it the more likely it seemed. “Even if you’re right, you’re wrong,” I said, throwing him a little paradox of my own.
It was two minutes past three o’clock when we pulled up to the Scandinavian Pavilion. I was getting out of the car when I noticed the mug who had slugged me (a mug who looked like the mug — he had changed the cut and color of his suit) coming out of the restaurant. “It’s him,” I said. “Sol(l)ness?” “Slugger,” I said. We watched him get into a cab. “It would be nice to know where he’s going,” I said. “I’ll follow him for you,” Marlowe said. We arranged to meet at Teachers College at six and Marlowe took off, leaving me to my business at the Pavilion.
The restaurant was dark as sin — candlelight gave the illusion of elegance — and three-quarters empty. I found Sweetheart sitting alone at a table in the back, drinking something green. There was another setting. “Where’s Sol(l)ness?” I asked her.
“Said he was going to the Men’s Room.” Her voice was thick.
“Such a nice man. He offered me the price of hope.”
“Did you get a confession?”
She nodded, then shook her head. “If he sees us together, don’t know what he’ll do.” She looked around nervously.
I found a place at the bar where I could keep tabs on them without being conspicuous. Five minutes went by and Sol(l)ness hadn’t returned. The bartender was staring so I ordered a shot of red-eye, which they didn’t have. In my old man’s day, they used to carry a special bottle of the poison for his private use. Just then a man who wasn’t Sol(l)ness, not the Sol(l)ness I knew, sat down at the table opposite Sweetheart. Whoever he was, I could see he was no stranger to her. I worried about the message I was getting. Nothing apparent to the eye. A scent as subtle as the memory of a breeze in a pall. The seismograph in me registered the first subterranean tremors of some evil working its way through the psychic underground of the room.
Sweetheart got up, holding her purse against her belly as if concealing something in one or the other, not too steady on her pins. I figured she’d be going to the Powder Room and I thought to head her off, took two steps and felt something hard against my ribs. “Act natural,” a voice with a slight accent instructed.
“Nature isn’t always right,” I said and sent him a special delivery message with my elbow. It hit neck and he folded. The next thing I knew there were waiters coming at me from all sides. An excessively polite fat man, chewing on a cigar, popped up and offered me his chair. I took the chair and held it out in front of me like a lion tamer while backing toward the door.
“If you put any value on your life, sir, you’ll put down that chair without a fuss.” The fat man had a small gun and was pointing it at me. I let go of the chair. The ox, tugging at the other end, sailed backwards across the room until a wall interrupted him.
“I never wanted the chair,” I said. “Your friend can have it if it means so much to him.”
“Sir, we have matters of mutual interest, I’m bound to say, that would be best discussed in the privacy of my office. Be so kind as to walk ahead, keeping your hands where I can see them. I am an excellent shot at close range.”
I thought I’d play along until I found out what his game was. His office looked more like a museum than an office, more like an antique shop than a museum. I don’t think there was an object in it, including the waste basket, that was less than a hundred years old. The fat man sat down behind an ornate desk that might have been used by one of the Borgias to write poison pen letters.
“Let me say, sir,” he said in an asthmatic voice, “you are a young man of exceptionally nice wit.” He laughed, folding his hands over his expansive stomach. “You are a man of action, which is the kind of man I admire. I hope you won’t take offense at my speaking so directly.”
“You didn’t bring me here to swell my head with compliments, I hope.”
“I did not, sir. I most certainly did not. I have a business proposition to make to you. Let me introduce myself. Heinrich Stockholm, Exporter-Importer, man of rare taste and discernment. And you, sir?”
“Charles Chan.”
“You are a character, sir. Indubitably, you are. The Chan, to whom you refer, is, if I’m not mistaken, an Oriental gentleman.”
“What are you, Stockholm, some kind of racist?”
The fat man nodded his head and one of his mugs jabbed the butt of a gun in my back. “I’m Charles X. Chan,” I said. “Illegitimate Occidental son of…” Anticipating another blow, I brought the side of my hand down sharply against the wrist of the mug who had been working me over, knocking the gun to the floor. I fell on the gun (a little trick I had learned from the old man), before Stockholm, fumbling with the drawer of his desk, could get to his weapon.
“All right,” I said, collecting guns. “Let’s everyone keep his hands in front of him. Stockholm, what do you know about Sol(l)ness?”
The fat man laughed his asthmatic laugh. “Egad, sir, it never fails to amaze me how the most intelligent and perspicacious of men confuse appearance and reality like schoolboys. It had been my impression, sir, that you were working for Sol(l)ness. And it had been your impression, correct me if I’m wrong, that Mr. Sol(l)ness and I were, so to speak, partners in crime. In point of fact, Sol(l)ness and I are working to somewhat different purpose. An amusing contretemps. You see we do have interests in common, sir, you and I.”