He said, ‘I didn’t exactly suggest that and you know it. But how do you know she hadn’t some special man-friend up in New York?’
‘I told you,’ she said wearily. ‘I know Rosemary. If there’d been anyone, I’d have known. Even if she hadn’t told me. Women get a kind of instinct that way.’
Shaw flicked ash off his cigarette. ‘D’you know,’ he said thoughtfully, looking into her eyes, ‘I’ve just an idea you’re holding back on something. And I wish you wouldn’t do that. I need your help — badly.’
‘But I’m not — I’m not holding back on anything—’
‘Just a minute, Miss O’Malley. You were pretty vehement that Rosemary didn’t go up to New York on an illicit week-end. A shade too vehement. I want to know a little more about it. It could be extremely important.’
The girl’s face had tightened up and she’d gone a little white around the mouth. Shaw was convinced he’d hit some kind of nail on the head. But she shook her head obstinately and said, ‘Look, I’ve told you all I know! Why d’you need my help so badly anyway? Why not ask Rosemary?’ She caught her breath suddenly and stared at him, her expression changing to one of real alarm as she watched his face. ‘Commander Shaw, just what is up? Has anything happened to Rosemary? Has she — disappeared?’
He said gently, ‘It’s on Rosemary’s account that I want your help. You could give me a lead. I’m sure you could.’
She demanded, ‘Will you please tell me what’s happened?’
He nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I will. Rosemary Houston is dead. Murdered. I found the body myself. That’s all I can tell you. Now — have you anything to add to what you’ve already said?’
He had been brutal and he knew it; but it had been absolutely intentional — and, for the second time in little over twenty-four hours, it worked.
Patricia’s face had gone a ghastly colour and she had got up from the arm of the chair and turned away. She said in a flat voice, ‘She can’t be dead. Not Rosemary. I don’t believe you.’
Shaw said grimly, ‘I’m afraid you must. There’s quite a lot I can’t tell you, but you must believe me when I say that I’m here partly to help find out who killed her. Anything, any lead, that you can give me may be the thing we’re looking for to put us right. Just think that over.’
She lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old one and pulled at it hard, inhaling deeply. She closed her eyes and seemed to sway a little. Shaw got up quickly but she opened her eyes again and put out a hand to steady herself and he saw the tears that had been behind her lids. She said, ‘We were very close, you know. I’m sorry. Yes, I do want to help.’
‘Then you’d better tell me what you haven’t told me so far. There is something else, isn’t there?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘there is. I can’t see that it’s all that vital, though.’
‘Tell me and then I’ll know.’
‘All right,’ she said in a brittle tone. ‘I guess I’ll have to, now. There was a man. I didn’t like him, didn’t trust him. I never met him, mind you, but I saw him with her a couple of times in restaurants up in New York and that was enough. I guess I sum people up fast, always could.… This one had what they used to call a corner-boy look. I think you’d know the sort if you met him. He was… dangerous. Like a cornered steer, you know? But kind of smooth with it. Damnably attractive in a caveman way, I’ll say that for him, and he seemed to carry a — a kind of aura of power and self-assurance. And self-assertion. I’d say he was the sort who only cared about himself.’ She drew a long, shuddering breath. ‘She was going to get let down badly, but you couldn’t tell her. I–I think he almost picked her up in a restaurant, here in Washington. It wasn’t like her to fall for that kind of thing and I just couldn’t understand it. Well, she — she used to go to New York to meet him.… I was trying to cover up for her when you asked, you can’t blame me for that, I guess. And you mustn’t think she was really like that. I told you the honest truth that far. This was the man, you see — the one she’d do that sort of thing for… only I guess she was making a real sucker out of herself over the guy. I told her, but she wouldn’t listen.’
‘Where did she stay with him, do you know?’
‘She never told me, but I overheard once… she was phoning from here. The Shamrock, on West 104th.’
‘And his name?’
‘Fleck,’ she said. ‘Rudolf Fleck. He was a German. It was all very secret, except from me, and even I don’t know anything about this Fleck, where he lived or worked and that. It had to be like that, and I guess you’ll know why… and Rosemary knew how to keep things that way…’
And that, Shaw thought as he left the apartment a little later and walked back to the Columbia Grand, was something Rosemary Houston would indeed have had to be very, very circumspect about. The world’s intelligence services weren’t at all keen on their active agents forming close personal liaisons with foreign nationals, not unless those foreign nationals had been screened — and somehow it didn’t quite sound as if Rudolf Fleck could have been. At any rate, Pullman hadn’t mentioned him as a known contact. And Fleck was a German… once again, Germany crept into the picture — and Germany, of course, had its Communists. Like Otto Keiler.
Many people saw Shaw leave the block on Rainbow Boulevard but only one man cared: The bulbous-nosed man who had followed him there earlier. As Shaw came out of the foyer the nosey man moved away in the opposite direction. Shaw glanced at him without much interest. After Shaw had gone two shadowy figures moved out from a side street and joined the nosey man. They were both fair men, with chunky figures, and tough. One had a scar running from his left cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. But they were nothing special; they were mere passers-by in the night, mingling with many others, and no one noticed them particularly.
‘Okay,’ Nosey murmured. ‘Let’s go. You know what to do. It’s just the broad. New York don’t want the Britisher touched — yet. The broad’s different. Maybe she’ll be useful without being too dangerous, tell us what that guy’s got his hooks Into.’
They drifted back along the road towards Number 1391.
Chapter Eight
The muted but insistent bell of that maroon-coloured telephone broke into Shaw’s slumber next morning and as he reached out sleepily for the instrument he glanced at his wrist-watch. 9 a.m. He’d overslept.
He cradled the handset against his cheek. ‘Shaw,’ he said.
A woman’s pert, chummy voice crooned at him. ‘Oh, Commander Shaw. Good morning… sorry to disturb you, sir, but I have a call from the Pentagon. Do you wish to—’
Suddenly very wide awake and feeling a curious prickling of alarm for no reason whatever, he was about to say he would take the call when there was a sudden series of disturbances in his ear and, faintly in the distance, he heard Pullman’s voice demanding, ‘Get that goddam female off the line.’ Pullman was cut off suddenly and the crooning voice, a little less chummy now, said, ‘You’re through.’ After that the other voice came back, loudly, Pullman’s voice. Pullman’s voice with an edge to it. ‘Shaw. There’s been a hitch. Come right over.’