Which made me pause on the sidewalk before the embassy of the United States of America and silently pledge the blood of an enemy — and the ease with which I’d shed it — to the defense of my country. However subtle the circumstances or untraditional the battlefield.
I rang the bell at the timber double door and it opened to a U.S. Marine in his dress blues. I told him I was Christopher Marlowe Cobb in search of Mr. Smith. Which suddenly sounded like a phony name to me. But after asking me politely to wait and closing the door in my face, it took only a few moments for him to return and invite me in.
I stepped into a marble foyer hung with an American flag and a framed Woodrow Wilson. The marine joined a similarly attired comrade — they were both sergeants — and they stood at parade rest, flanking the main staircase. In the center of the foyer was a large oaken desk with a telephone receiver prominent at the sitter’s right hand, the sitter being an apparent civilian in a dark blue sack suit, with the jacket buttoned up tight — even here late at night — and with the same close-cropped hair as the soldiers.
He nodded me to a wingback chair on the wall.
I sat, and soon there was a clattering of feet coming down the staircase. And then Smith.
He strode across the marble floor as I rose and he gave me his hand firmly. “Smith,” he said. “Ben.”
He was about fifty, with a shock of gray hair, a comfortable vision, like a Chicago City Hall reporter on deadline, his jacket somewhere else, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his tie askew. He was working late, and I wondered if he looked the same when Metcalf was around, who I had a feeling didn’t approve of his boys looking like Chicago City Hall reporters. I liked Smith for his casualness around the embassy, even more so if the boss wouldn’t approve but he was doing it anyway, after hours.
“Cobb,” I said. “Kit.”
“We got a little worried about you,” he said. “I dropped round to check on you at the Waldorf this evening.”
“It’s all in here,” I said, handing over the sealed envelope.
He nodded at my bandaged left cheek. He knew about the Schmiss beneath: “Set to unveil your sordid past at Heidelberg, are you?” he said.
“Things happened.”
“You want to go up?” Smith gave a slight toss of his head toward the staircase behind him.
I hesitated. I was feeling a little weary, having lately escaped a sinking ship and snuck around pretty seriously and killed a man wielding a knife.
Before I could answer, Smith said, “You probably have a story you don’t want to tell twice.”
“I wrote the highlights,” I said, nodding at the envelope in his hand.
“Got it,” he said. He cupped my elbow and turned me toward the front door, stepping up instantly beside me and putting an avuncular arm around my shoulder. We moved toward the night. “Hold down the fort, boys,” he said raising his voice to pitch the comment to the marines covering our retreat.
We pushed through the eight-paneled doors and stepped out onto the porch, and we stopped in its deep shadow.
He offered me a cigarette and we lit up and blew some smoke into the sooty London night air.
My loyal taxi was sitting at the near curb, a couple of automobile lengths north, at which, after our second, silent puff, Smith nodded. “Is that yours?” he said.
“Yes. Good man. Been with me through a lot tonight.”
Smith grunted. Then he asked a question about a thing I kept forgetting and he’d apparently waited for us to be alone to ask. He nodded toward my shirt, down near the belt line. The blood. I’d forgotten it again. “Is that yours?” he asked.
“Nope.”
He grunted again and took another drag on his Fatima. He said, “Metcalf’s somewhere out in the Irish Sea about now, but I’m to wire him at Holyhead if I hear from you.”
“Sounds like serious worry.”
“Of course.”
“Like you expected me to be dead.”
“That’s always our expectation.”
“You from Chicago?” I asked, trying to compliment him on his straight talk, though I realized he might not know what I was referring to.
But maybe he did. “You from Cleveland?” he answered, which was a curve ball that dropped in for a strike.
“Nope,” I said.
“Nope,” he said. “But thanks for thinking I might be.”
“I’ll give you the key to the city sometime,” I said.
“First you got to dine with the boss,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Good pudding for you, Kit Cobb.”
“Yeah?”
“He likes swank food. Carlton Hotel at six. Escoffier’s joint.”
“I’ll think of it as a last meal,” I said.
31
The next day I had a fine morning and afternoon at the Arundel doing what I tried to convince myself I still primarily did. I wrote newspaper stories. I finally finished a follow-up feature about life after having a steamship sunk out from under you. I curved and faded and even plausibly made up some of that one, seeing as my life after the sinking had some atypical and secret elements to it. Which was okay, since second-day, stretch-it-out-no-matter-what-it-takes stories after very big ones often were full of curves and fadeaways and lies, and it was just something you lived with as a reporter and you figured the Joes on the street who read you didn’t give a damn about that anyway, if the story was good. And I also wrote a pretty damn fine authentic eyewitness story about a Zeppelin raid on London. I got those telegraphed off and had a good hot bath, seeing as the blood of the Hun had seeped on through the shirt and also colored Kit Cobb. Though a little water cleared me of that deed just fine.
When I got out of the tub there was a knock on the door. I wrapped a towel around me and I went to the door, but I didn’t open it at once.
“Yes?” I said.
“Bellhop, Mr. Cobb. I have a parcel for you.” It was a thin, reedy voice, almost adolescent, and I remembered the bellhop on duty tonight looking very young.
I opened the door.
It was the bellhop.
And inside the parcel was a tuxedo and a note from Metcalf. Wear this. But watch your cigarette ash. It’s a rental.
So I got duded up in my monkey suit and went out in a taxicab to the Carlton Hotel, which seemed just like the place for Metcalf, since it was cut out of the same pâte pâtisserie as his embassy, with French Second Empire pavilion roofs and high mansards, and with a green slate dome foamed up on top to boot.
Metcalf was waiting in the vestibule inside the front doors on Pall Mall.
He brightened at the sight of me coming through, the fleshy wheatiness of him now a harmonious part of his decor, draped bespokenly as it was in the black and white of his tux.
He stepped to me and offered his hand, greeting me in full moniker, though he sounded devoid of irony, almost admiring: “Christopher Marlowe Cobb.”
I shook the hand. “Gentleman Jim Metcalf,” I said, also without irony.
He laughed. “My element, here,” he said. “I have good food for you.”
“And some information?” I said, a little regretful at once for pushing the business when he wanted to push the eats.
He took it in stride, the smile never faltering. “Of course,” he said. “In due time.”