I Was Jack Mortimer

7

FROM THE FORCE with which he flung her down and her overwhelming sense of fear, she lay there crouching, staring at him in utter bewilderment. Also, possibly she hadn’t understood what he had said. Yet she guessed well enough, for initially she remained subdued and then finally made a movement as if to jump up, but fell back when she saw his expression, but only in order immediately to straighten herself up and cry out:

“Where’s Jack Mortimer?”

“Shut up!” he hissed, then he listened whether anyone in the corridor or in the adjacent rooms had been alerted by the shouting and slamming of the door. But everything was quiet. The woman, too, was now silent, only panic flickered in her eyes. He approached her slowly; she shrank back again. He stood in front of her and, staring down at her, formulated in his mind a few words to say in English.

“How did you get here?” he asked finally.

“Where’s Mortimer?” she mumbled again.

He gestured with his hand.

“Answer me!” he barked. “How did you get here? Were you the person who phoned earlier?”

She appeared not to understand him. He began to think that perhaps he hadn’t expressed himself clearly enough. At school he’d learnt English, but only for a fairly short time, and very superficially. He repeated slowly and clearly: “Did you phone earlier?”

“Yes,” she answered finally. “Who are you? Where’s Mortimer?” And she began once more, getting ever louder, to speak so quickly that he no longer understood her. With a flick of his hand he cut her short. She fell silent; only her eyes continued to flicker.

“I can’t tell you where Mortimer is,” he said.

“Why not?” she retorted. “How come you’re in his room? Why are his things lying about here?”

And she repeated her question when she noticed that he understood her poorly, and also added a few more.

“Can’t you speak German?” he asked. But when he realized that she hadn’t understood him, he said in English, “I’ve several things to ask you. When you answer, don’t say so much and”—at this point he didn’t know how to say “above all”—“not so quickly. Otherwise I won’t understand you. Who was…”—here he corrected himself—“Who is this Jack Mortimer?”

She replied with a question that he didn’t understand.

“I want to know,” he insisted, “who Jack Mortimer is.”

“Surely you must know that yourself!” she shouted. “You must!”

“No,” he said, “I don’t.”

She looked around wildly, was about to answer, but then merely pointed at Mortimer’s things.

“No,” he said. “Even so, I don’t know. But you’re going to tell me.” He thought for a moment, then took the letters from the table and held them out to her.

She immediately snatched at them and glanced at him in horror.

“Are these your letters?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Are these your letters?” he repeated. “Was he a friend of yours?”

She stayed silent and clutched the letters tightly in her hand.

“Was he a friend of yours?” he insisted. “Answer me!”

She broke into tears.

He turned away. The appearance of this woman had made his situation utterly intolerable. When he turned and looked at her again, the expression in her eyes was one of fury and unmitigated hatred.

“It’s not my fault,” he said, “that I’m now here instead of Mortimer. Believe me!”

Her eyes continued to flicker in hatred.

“It’s not my fault,” he repeated. “Do you understand?”

She remained silent.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Where did Jack Mortimer come from?” he asked finally.

He had to repeat the question twice before she answered, “From Paris.”

“And how,” he asked, “do you know him? Have you known him long?”

She didn’t reply.

“Listen,” he said, slowly searching for the right words, “you have to answer what I ask you!”

“You know it all yourself!” she retorted.

“No,” he said, “I told you already that I don’t, but you’re going to tell me. If not, I’m going to”—he searched for the right words for a moment—“make you. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to make you speak.”

He wanted to add that his position left him no choice, but this proved too difficult to translate. He reached for her hands and squeezed them together till she let out a cry.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and took a step back.

She again began to cry. He wished he hadn’t hurt her, and wanted to stroke her hair. She immediately flared up and lashed out at his hand. He shrugged his shoulders.

“So, I want an answer,” he said curtly. “Who are you?”

She clenched her teeth.

“What’s your name?” he repeated.

“None of your business!” she shouted. “I didn’t want to come to you. You’ve no right to ask my name!”

“Too bad,” he said. “You’ve got to tell me who you are!”

“No!”

“Yes,” he said, and reached for her hands again. She snatched them away.

“Well, what’s your name?” he asked.

“Jane,” she hissed.

He thought for a moment. Then he suddenly grabbed the letters out of her hand, flipped through them even though she was trying to snatch them back, found the one he wanted, and showed her the letter W.

She blushed to the roots of her hair.

“Well?” he asked.

“That’s my surname,” she mumbled. “I’m Jane Ward.”

“Since when,” he wanted to ask, “have people signed love letters with their surnames?” But again he couldn’t translate it. Looking hard at her, he pointedly touched with the tip of his shoe her evening bag, which was lying on the floor. Then he picked it up. She thought he was going to give it to her but he only pointed at the metal monogram, a W and an M.

She reddened even more, couldn’t think of anything to say, and merely tried to grab the bag. However, he drew it out of her reach, opened it hastily, saw a couple of letters inside and pulled them out. They were addressed to Mrs Winifred Montemayor: one to Vienna, the Hotel Imperial; the other was poste restante. Then he let her have the letters and the bag.

He had gained the upper hand. In the course of the next few minutes, while she was in a state of confusion and seeing that she had the bag in her possession so that she could wipe away her tearstains and powder her nose, he managed to drag her story out of her.

The name Montemayor was, of course, familiar to him. He even remembered having heard a couple of his records. He also questioned her about Mortimer. Only there wasn’t much she could tell him, except that he was the son of a banker and that she had known him fleetingly and had then met him in Paris once more.

Suddenly he realized that she was at his feet. She had slid down from the sofa, was clinging to him and imploring him to tell her where Mortimer was.

“Did you love him a lot?” he mumbled.

Then his eyes wandered round the room. He saw the two cigarette packets: Mortimer’s on the settee; and the second one, which the waiter had brought up, on the dining table.

He extricated himself from Winifred’s grip and went over to get himself a cigarette.

He hadn’t reached the table when a sound made him look around.

Winifred had jumped to her feet, run to the door, had flung it open and was now running through the lobby towards the exit door.

Before he could take even one step in pursuit, she had torn the exit door open and was about to run out, but instead let out an almighty cry and staggered back. A man in an evening suit came in. He banged the door shut after him and clapped his hand on her mouth to stifle the cry. She struggled for air. He grabbed her with his other, free hand and dragged her into the salon. His face was so distorted with rage, the likes of which Sponer had not seen before.

He glanced around, appeared not to notice Sponer at all, and dragged Winifred over to one of the windows. There he reached behind the curtains and yanked one of the curtains cords with such force that the whole rail came crashing down. He folded the rope double and began to lash the woman with it.

So far he hadn’t said a word; now, however, he began to accompany every word with a suppressed expletive. Under the blows Winifred’s thin evening dress immediately tore into shreds and red welts began to appear on her naked back. At first, when she had got her mouth free, she began to yell; however, the blows came down so thick and fast that she immediately found herself short of breath. She hid her face in her arms, stopped turning around and just groaned. The man continued to whip her.

At first Sponer observed the scene in bewilderment till his mind slowly began to comprehend what was going on. Above all he didn’t know what to make of the intruder. He now grabbed him by the shoulders, yelled at him and pushed him aside. Since the fellow nevertheless paid not the slightest attention to him and carried on lashing blindly, even catching him once or twice with the ends of the swishing rope, Sponer spun him round and with his clenched fist hit him square in the face.

The man went down immediately and the woman, too, whom he let go, fell down and lay there whimpering.

*

A couple of moments later the man began to move again, pressed his hand to his cheek, straightened himself up unsteadily and took two or three shaky steps towards Sponer.

Sponer recoiled and was ready to confront him again. However, this attack amounted to no more than that the man, in coming forward, lost his balance and merely tumbled into Sponer’s arms. Sponer pushed him away. The man took a couple of steps back, pulled out a handkerchief, pressed it to the spot where the punch had landed, and also felt his chin and the rest of his face while he eyed Sponer. Then he shook his head as though he wanted to shake something off; he began to sway again, but managed to hold onto the edge of the table. Sponer was ready to support him. The man, leaning on the table, looked at Sponer. “Who are you?” he asked.

Meanwhile Winifred had sat up, groaning, had pulled the tatters of her evening gown round her shoulders and was groping her way to the sofa. Sponer picked up the brocade cloak from the floor, approached her and threw it over her shoulders.

“Why did you hit her?” he asked the man.

“Because,” the man hissed, “she is my wife!”

“Are you Montemayor?”

“Yes.” He turned to face Winifred again and, leaning on the backrest, took a couple of steps towards her. “What did you want here?” he said in a cracked voice. “Didn’t you want to get to Mortimer?”

She shrank back even more as he approached. Sponer pushed him back.

“Leave her alone now,” he ordered. “How did you get here in the first place? How did you know your wife was here?”

“Because I heard her telephone just a while ago. Did you think,” he said, turning to Winifred, “I was asleep already? Didn’t it occur to you, I’d be expecting you to get in touch with that man?”

“What man?” she cried.

“Mortimer!”

“Where is Mortimer?”

“‘Where is Mortimer?’ she asks me!”

“Yes! He’s not here! He’s gone! Instead there’s this man here,” and she pointed at Sponer. Montemayor turned to Sponer; however, the woman went on to speak so quickly that Sponer could no longer understand her, nor the man when he answered. After that, the woman rattled on and cried ever louder, then she finally felt silent; only, her eyes kept darting from Montemayor to Sponer and back again.

Montemayor looked at Sponer.

“Are you Austrian?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sponer said after a pause.

“My wife,” Montemayor said in broken German, “says this is Mortimer’s room and these,” he pointed at the things scattered about, “are his clothes. Which they are. I know them from Paris, where he was wearing them. Where is Mortimer? How come you’re here?”

Sponer was silent for a moment, then he asked, “How is it that you speak German?”

“I studied music here.”

“In Vienna?”

“No, in Germany. So, who are you?”

“And you followed,” Sponer interrupted him, “your wife when you heard that she had phoned Mortimer?”

“Yes.”

“You said you suspected your wife would ring Jack Mortimer. What made you suspect that?”

“Because,” Montemayor replied, “even in Paris…”—and he turned to Winifred and shouted in English again—“Because even in Paris she wanted to get together with him, and because she, when we were coming here, had arranged that he’d follow. I knew all about it, I wasn’t born yesterday! And they wanted to meet here!”

Winifred glanced at him with an indescribable look on her face. “Why then,” she interrupted, “did you have to hit me if I wasn’t with Mortimer at all?”

“Because,” he yelled, “you wanted to be with him! Or maybe you didn’t want to be with him after all? Is he the one,” he said, pointing at Sponer, “you wanted to be with? How do you know him anyway?”

“I don’t know him at all! He was here when I came in, but he won’t say where Mortimer is!”

Montemayor looked at Sponer. “Well?” he asked. “Where is he?”

Sponer did not reply. Since these two, who knew Mortimer, had found him here, it made no sense to continue publicly playing Mortimer’s part to the end. It was madness to have taken it on in the first place. Because, in spite of all that he’d done, he had achieved nothing except to incriminate himself hopelessly and let the real murderer go absolutely scot-free.

He shrugged his shoulders, glanced around, went over to the table, took a cigarette and headed for the door.

Winifred sat up on the sofa, leapt to her feet, ran after Sponer and held him back by his arm.

“Where are you going?” she cried.

He looked at her, and a look of hatred came into his eyes. If it hadn’t been for this woman, he thought, if it hadn’t been for her obsession to see Mortimer, it might perhaps have been possible to fake the departure the next morning, to leave the hotel, take a cab, disappear, save himself. As it was, she had deceived her husband, saved the one who had shot her lover and ruined him, Sponer.

He turned to go.

“Where are you off to?” she cried.

He freed himself from her with a jerk. He looked at her pretty, vacuous face, staring back at him at close quarters; there was no other expression except obsession for the man with whom she wanted to double-cross her husband. Uncontrollable anger welled up in him. Had he been able to destroy her with the words he yelled into her face, he’d gladly have done so.

“Mortimer,” he yelled at her, “is dead!”

She collapsed straight away. While Montemayor, after a momentary shock, lifted her up and carried her to the sofa, Sponer went back to the table, filled a glass with water, dipped a napkin in it, and handed the napkin to Montemayor. Montemayor pressed it to her forehead. A few seconds later she came to and began to sob desperately, mumble something and cry out the same question over and over again. She was in total shock.

At last she buried her face in her hands and grew calmer, only now and again her whole body would convulse with a shudder.

Leaning against the table, Sponer looked at her closely.

“Listen,” he said finally, “I didn’t do it. I’m a taxi driver, my name’s Ferdinand Sponer. I’d never seen Mortimer until he got into my cab tonight. When I reached the Opera House, he was dead. I don’t know who shot him. I saw so little of what had happened that I said to myself, ‘If I’m unable to give any evidence, I’ll be taken for the murderer.’ I wanted to play Mortimer’s role to avoid being suspected myself. All I’ve achieved as a result is that I’ll be taken for the murderer. I can’t disprove it. You can report me. If you do that, however, you’ll ensure that the real murderer is never found.”

While he spoke, she had raised her head again and was staring at him wild-eyed. She couldn’t understand what he was saying. Montemayor interpreted it for her in a few words.

“You,” she shouted at Sponer, “killed Mortimer yourself!”

Sponer shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever for?” he asked. “I didn’t know him from Adam. All I know is what you told me. Do you think I did it because of his money? He hardly had any on him.” He took Mortimer’s wallet from the table, pulled out the cheque book and the little money that it contained, and threw them down. “There!” he said. “Or do you think it was because of his things? He only had these two suitcases and a few odds and ends on him.” He produced Mortimer’s passport and the Colt revolver, and also chucked them down, followed by the silver and a couple of cartridges. “That’s the lot,” he said. “Hardly worth killing for, is it? I didn’t do it, but neither do I know who might have done it.”

Winifred glanced at the things with horror, and Montemayor looked at them, too.

“Perhaps,” Montemayor said, “his fate just caught up with him.”

“What fate?” Sponer asked.

“He was,” said Montemayor, “after all, a gangster.”

“What was he?”

“A gangster, a criminal.”

“Who? Mortimer?”

“It’s not true!” Winifred cried.

“Yes, it is!” Montemayor shouted back. “He was every inch a gangster! His whole character proved it! His success with women proved it! The way in which he chased after you, and the way you reacted to him proved it! You knew that yourself anyway!”

“Me?”

“Yes, you! It was George Anstruther himself who told me that!”

“What did he tell you?”

“Everyone knows about it there!”

“A man of his wealth wouldn’t…”

“He had none any more! He was through! And if he wasn’t a criminal himself, he lived off the crimes of others! He sold stolen stocks and shares, he was in cahoots with crooks and I don’t know what else! He was in no danger of getting into trouble with the police, that’s for sure! Whom do the police go after over there do you think? Gangsters? They wouldn’t dare. But he did seem to run the risk of getting into trouble with his own kind, the crooks. Let’s face it, it’s the gangsters themselves who bump off one another, isn’t it?”

“Here in Europe? You must be mad!”

“No, not at all! He was gunned down. They saw a chance and took it. It wouldn’t even occur to the local police, who are quite ignorant of such things, to make the connection.”

“And who would have done it?”

“One of their own. Every so often they come over here, too; the world’s their oyster. And the art is to do it in a moving car! To hop on, fire, hop off without even the driver noticing, and…”

“He must have noticed it! You heard the shot, didn’t you?” she yelled at Sponer.

“There were three,” Sponer said coldly. “One in the throat, two in the chest.”

She was about to say something, but couldn’t. “And where,” she muttered at last, “is he now?”

“Mortimer?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He made a vague gesture.

“Where is he?” she yelled.

“Do you want to see him?” he asked. “You won’t be able to. No one will see him again.” He lit a cigarette and gave the woman who had ruined his life a cold, hard look.

“What do you mean?” she mumbled. “Where is he?”

“In the river,” he said. “The river’s long. It’ll take him some time to get to the sea. How should I know where Mortimer is now!”

She let out a cry, jumped up from the sofa, clenched her fists and pounced on him. He looked at her coldly without defending himself or trying to restrain her. The woman’s mortification was the dead man’s only revenge. But how long, Sponer thought to himself, is this going to go on for? I shall probably never taste freedom again. Whereas she?… In a few months, perhaps in a few weeks, she’ll go on deceiving her husband with another man, just as she did with Jack Mortimer.

He grabbed her wrists and shoved her away in exasperation.

She tumbled backwards, was about to say something, but swung around suddenly, rushed to the phone and grabbed the receiver. Montemayor was immediately at her side.

“What are you up to now?” he asked.

“Get the police!” she snapped.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said. However, she paid no attention to him whatever, lifted the receiver and had already opened her mouth to ask for connection when he snatched the receiver out of her hand.

“Leave it alone!” he commanded, and rang off.

“I wouldn’t dream of it!” she cried, and reached for the phone again.

He held the receiver firmly. “Stop it!” he cried.

“What’s come over you?” she shouted.

“You’re not going to phone!”

“Why not?”

“Because I, your husband, forbid you!”

“You’re no longer my husband, and there’s nothing you can forbid me!”

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Is that so? Maybe because you wanted to double-cross me, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Only you haven’t done it! Sure, you wanted to do it, but it didn’t quite work out, did it?”

“Let me phone!”

“No!”

“You no longer own me! I was already unfaithful to you in Paris!”

He laughed. “Really?” he said. “Do you think Mortimer would still have followed you here after that? It wouldn’t even have entered his head, I tell you. He wasn’t that type. Do you imagine he loved you? He didn’t love you. He only wanted to use you to hurt me, that’s all!”

“That’s a lie!” she shouted.

“I knew him better than you.”

“No, that’s not true! But even if it were, I’d still love him and hate you, because I can’t live with you any more!”

“You’ll just have to get used to it. You’re not a free agent. You haven’t been unfaithful to me and, rest assured, you won’t! Nor will I allow you to compromise yourself by contacting the police! No one need know that you’ve been here!”

“Not even the police?”

“Yes, that’s right. Because they’re just not going to know.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not going to report it to them!”

“You think you can stop me?”

“Yes.”

“No, you can’t!”

“You’ll be surprised! And I shan’t go to the police either. Because my reputation is worth more to me than yours and all this sordid murder of your lover. Have you mentioned your name downstairs at the reception? No! Does anyone here know who you are? Again, no! Therefore you’re not going to go out of your way to get mixed up in this affair! We’re going to leave the hotel, and no one will ever know who we were. Early tomorrow morning we’ll be off. This gentleman, the driver, too, for whom Mortimer’s role is equally…”

“Ha,” she snarled. “And you honestly believe that I—?”

“Go on…”

“—that I shall travel with you and not say word? That I shan’t immediately make a full statement and ensure that everything possible is done to catch Mortimer’s murderer?”

“Mortimer?” he bellowed. “I couldn’t care a toss about him, nor what happens to any of your lovers, never mind this man, who certainly isn’t Mortimer’s murderer!”

“He is!”

“No, and you’re not going to make a fool of me or get an innocent person into trouble.”

“He’s not innocent! He’s at least an accomplice!”

“No, he’s not, but even if he were, I couldn’t care less! I forbid you to compromise me! You better keep your mouth shut!”

“No, I won’t!”

They continued bawling and quarrelling like this on and on. For the most part Sponer didn’t understand what was going on; however, he saw that here was a chance for him. He doubted that Montemayor could succeed in gagging the woman for good, but this quarrel could certainly delay the investigation, at least till he could make his getaway. To where? Abroad. Anywhere.

Of course, were he to flee, there was the danger that they might catch him before he was across the border. He had mentioned his name to the two of them; true, they might not have registered it or might well have forgotten it, but they knew that he was a taxi driver. It would therefore be the easiest thing in the world to track him down. And that very moment his eyes lit on Mortimer’s passport that was lying on the table, and the idea occurred to him that it would possibly be easier to make his getaway using that rather than his own. At the border it would probably be the name of the suspect rather than that of the victim that was on the wanted list. He’d be safe only on Mortimer’s passport, at least until such time as the dead man’s name was reported everywhere in the papers.

He flipped open the passport. One passport photo is usually much like another, never mind the bearer. Moreover, the passports might very well be inspected en bloc, that is, collected up on the train, the names noted down, but the photos not checked for likeness with the bearers. And if it came to it, he could always try to swap his and Mortimer’s photo. Perhaps he could get away with it.

From the moment the idea with the passport occurred to him, his brain went into overdrive. He slipped the passport in his pocket, which the quarrelling pair didn’t notice. He moved towards the door. However, Winifred immediately shouted out. And, strange to say, so did Montemayor.

“Where are you going?” he cried. “Hold on!”

Sponer was already at the door. Montemayor, who was holding Winifred, couldn’t release his grip on her to stop him. Sponer rushed into the hallway, slammed the bedroom door behind him, grabbed his coat from the hook where the page boy had hung it, pulled the key from the main door, stepped into the hall while slamming the door behind him, turned the key in the lock twice and thrust it in his pocket. Only then, as he was running along the corridor and was putting his coat on, did he realize that it must have been part of Montemayor’s plan that he, Sponer, should stay in the hotel till the next morning and then leave, but only if he took Mortimer’s things with him. It was now, of course, too late for him to go back and get them. Nor did he expect the enraged woman to keep quiet for long. Everything was collapsing about his ears. There was nothing left for him but to flee. He rushed down the stairs past the porter, who was half asleep, and dashed out into the street. The illuminated clock on the Opera House showed nearly two.