“That’s all?”
“All except I thought the top of my head was coming off. And it still feels that way.” Anita smiled at him; even forming the smile caused her head to ache. “Darling, could you get me some aspirin?”
“Of course.” Kek went to the bar and came back with two pills and a glass of water. He watched Anita swallow them and took back the glass, setting it on the bar. He drew up a footstool and pulled it close, looking at her steadily.
“All right. Where was the cabdriver when you got into the cab? What did he say?”
“He says he was in a small restaurant bar down the street having lunch.” She looked at Kek and suddenly felt a wave of protectiveness sweep over her. How odd, she thought; a moment ago I was the one who felt protected! “Don’t look so serious, darling. I have a headache, is all. I’ll be fine in a short while.”
“Was anything missing you were carrying? Money?”
“Nothing. Oh, my shopping bag. I probably dropped it when I fainted—” She nodded. “I remember that, too. I remember that I said to myself that I was going to faint and I never had before.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s strange.” Anita frowned. “Now you mention it, I seem to also remember being in bed. Twice—”
“Twice?”
“I think so. The last time, I recall, I tried to reach down for the covers. I wanted to pull them over my head to make the cabdriver go away. He was shaking me, like my mother used to do to make me get up in time for school.”
“Did you get his number?”
Anita shook her head. “Darling, he had nothing to do with it, I’m sure. He was just an innocent bystander.” She looked at Kek, a smile on her face, but it was a worried smile, unsure of itself. “You’re the one who’s been reading the encyclopedia — what does it say about amnesia? You had to go that far to get to ‘elephant’...”
“As a matter of fact, I remember reading the section on amnesia,” Kek said quietly. It was obvious to Anita that Kek took the matter quite seriously; she knew he hated mysteries, or at least mysteries he did not concoct himself for some customs official or other. “It’s a form of hysteria and does have short forms, but you haven’t been suffering from amnesia.” He got to his feet, beginning to pace the room. “If you fainted, you certainly weren’t wandering around in a faint... Someone must have picked you up, put you in that cab. Which means that cab must have been at the Porte de Maillot when you fainted...”
“Darling,” Anita said firmly, “forget that cab! He couldn’t possibly have driven me around for four hours. Without being paid? It’s absurd.”
“Then another cab,” Kek said stubbornly. “If you remember the bed and covers, you should remember someone putting you in the cab.”
“The cab was the bed, or at least the second bed,” Anita said and remembered something else. She giggled and then cut it short as her head protested. “I remember I thought I was falling out of bed, but I was just sliding down in front of the back seat.”
“If somebody didn’t bring you to this last place and put you in the cab and then pay the driver to take you someplace—”
“Nobody did,” Anita said. “The driver wanted me out, believe me. If somebody had paid him to deliver me someplace, he would have done it and left me on the curb. No, someone probably saw an empty cab and dumped me in.” She smiled. “I’ve often thought of using empty cabs to get rid of lots of trash when I’m on the street.”
“Which still explains nothing,” Kek said. “Especially why you should faint in the first place.” He sighed. “You don’t remember anything?”
“Darling, I’ve said—”
“All right,” Kek said and came to his feet. He smiled apologetically. “In any event I shouldn’t be interrogating you. You get to bed. I’ll call a doctor.”
“I don’t need a doctor,” Anita insisted. “I never fainted in my life! It was—” She hesitated helplessly. “Well, I guess it was just one of those things.”
Kek stared at her a moment and then suddenly grinned. “You might be right. There’s one possibility we’ve completely overlooked. It might, indeed, be just one of those things. I’ll tell the doctor to bring along a rabbit when he comes...”
7
The smooth, deep, accented voice on the telephone was one Anita recognized, but it had somehow taken on an oddly sinister tone, as if the man at the other end of the line was trying to tell her something beyond the words he was employing. She glanced across the room. André, reading the morning newspaper, lowered it and looked at her inquisitively over the top. She raised her shoulders in a Gallic shrug of nonunderstanding, tapped ash from her cigarette into an ashtray, and returned her attention to the instrument.
“No, Señor Sanchez. M’sieu Huuygens isn’t here at the moment.”
“I know,” Sanchez said softly. “I saw him leave — waited until he left before I called, as a matter of fact.” There was the briefest of pauses. “Is anyone else there?”
Anita frowned. And what business is that of yours? she wondered.
“No,” she said evenly.
“Good,” Sanchez said. There was no surprise in the voice; he had been sure before he called that Anita was alone. There might, of course, have been a day servant, but that would scarcely interfere with his plans. “In any event, my business wasn’t with him, madame; it was with you.”
“With me?” Anita began to feel a faint stir of unease.
“Yes.” There was a brief pause again. “I understand you were so unfortunate as to be taken ill yesterday while shopping at the supermarket in the Porte de Maillot...”
The stirring came to a climax in a small electric shock.
“Go on.” Anita waited, suddenly alert. Across the room André sat a bit more erect, his newspaper forgotten, frowning at the expression on the girl’s face. The accented voice waited an appropriate number of seconds for proper effect and then continued smoothly.
“You must be curious as to what happened, where you were for those four hours or more between the supermarket and your coming awake in that taxicab...”
Anita suddenly found herself angry; her anger wiped away her fear. “What do you know about it?”
Sanchez chuckled, the small laugh of someone sharing an amusing experience with another. “Quite a bit, I assure you, madame. I was, believe me, in a position to take notice. In fact, I’m sure you would find it to your distinct advantage to discover exactly what I do know about yesterday.”
“And how do I go about that?”
“Very simply,” Sanchez said cooperatively. “You meet me.”
“You come here,” Anita said on impulse. Her voice clearly indicated that the burnt child shunned the fire.
“I’m afraid not.” Sanchez sounded more amused than regretful. “One never could guarantee not being interrupted. M’sieu Huuygens’ schedule, I imagine, must be rather elastic. Or other friends might drop in; or even trades people — you never did finish shopping yesterday, did you? All those possible interruptions... No, I suggest someplace where we will not be disturbed.”
“And if I don’t come?”
The lightness disappeared, replaced by an implacable coldness that threatened, and not lightly. “Then you will find out about those missing hours in what our American cousins call the hard way. No, madame, I suggest quite sincerely that you come. For your own well-being.”
Anita took a deep breath, wondering why she had been playing so hard to get. She had known from his first words that she would meet Sanchez where and when he wished.
“All right. Where?”
Sanchez hid his satisfaction behind a mask of suavity. “Suppose we do it this way — you descend the elevator of your building. You start to walk north on your side of the street, in the direction of the Porte Dauphine. You keep walking until I come along in a taxi and pick you up.”