The Couple Next Door: Collected Short Mysteries

Preface by Tom Nolan

Unlike her husband, who wrote fiction almost exclusively in the first-person voice, Margaret Millar favored third-person narrative for nearly all her work. An exception was “Last Day in Lisbon,” a tale of a young American woman in wartorn Europe. No doubt the first-person mode gave a more immediate feel to this story of Elizabeth “Lizzie” Lane, a singer from New York who finds deadly espionage and unexpected romance in the neutral city of Lisbon, Portugal: a haven and departure point for refugees from many countries during World War II.

“Last Day in Lisbon,” though it shares some stylistic and structural elements with her early murder-mysteries, was unlike anything else in Margaret Millar’s oeuvre. What prompted her to write it (apparently in 1940 or ’41)? Was this the story she did at the behest of The American? (Interestingly, “Lisbon,” like “Mind Over Murder,” includes a male character named Ross.)

Set in a city its author never saw, “Lisbon” (published early in 1943 in Dell’s Five-Novels Monthly) suffers in spots from guide-book-style descriptions. But the text is enlivened by Margaret Millar’s wit (“I tried to make my voice crisp, but it wilted around the edges”) and pithy thumbnail-sketches: “She was so pale her face had a faint greenish lustre. I guessed she was about thirty and she looked every hour of it. She wore no makeup, her hair was black and untidily pinned into a bun at the back of her head, and her clothes were good but unflattering.”

And might the character of Duarte be a caricature of W. H. Auden, whom the Millars knew in Michigan and whom both would “use” in novels? “Lisbon”’s ambiguous cop bears a certain unkind likeness to the young English poet: “a thin, shrivelled little man with a lazy, insolent smile. He looked like a street urchin, and it was a shock to hear his voice. It was pure Oxford.”

Another British author, John Buchan, seems to have influenced the writing of “Last Day in Lisbon,” which echoes events and devices from that writer’s classic spy-thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps. A month or two after “Lisbon” was published, Kenneth Millar (already engaged in his lifelong “friendly and healthful competition” with his writer wife) would also draw on Steps for some of the feel and structure of his first, quickly-written novel, The Dark Tunnel — after which Ken Millar would join the US Navy and see actual service in the global conflict about which he and his wife had both just written fiction.

Last Day in Lisbon

From my seat in the brass and marble lobby of the Avenida Palace I had a view of two doors. The first, and the most important at that moment since it was after one o’clock, was the one which led into the dining room. Through it passed a steady stream of people, representing every country of Europe — a Serbian family who had checked in the day before and still looked weary and train-dusty; a group of French diplomats; a fat Jewess from Rumania who, during the two weeks I had seen her, had lost twenty pounds; a thin young, aristocratic looking Englishwoman, badly dressed in black crepe.

She came towards my chair, glaring impartially around the lobby, and sat down near me. Though we had seen each other frequently for two weeks she made no gesture of recognition but sat with her eyes fixed on the door which led in from the street.

Lisbon has a reputation for noise. Even the revolving door squeaked and groaned on its hinges, and over that you could hear the trains rumble into Central Station directly behind the hotel, and rumble out again having deposited the latest cargo of refugees. A little later the refugees would stream through the door, carrying their own baggage, looking faintly relieved but still uneasy, realizing that the end wasn’t yet in sight.

Their eyes said, “Well, here we are. We’ve gotten this far—”

Another rumble. The twelve-thirty overnight train from France, nearly an hour late as usual.

The Englishwoman lit a cigarette without taking her eyes from the door. I wondered idly if she was waiting for someone. It was the first time I had wondered about anyone or anything for two weeks, except myself. But now I could afford to wonder. Pinned to the inside of my dress was my Clipper ticket, my escape, my passage to home. It was there, pinned to my dress, and all I had to do was take a taxi to the airport in Cintra and get on the plane. A plane to New York.

The dining room was gradually emptying, but still I waited in my chair. I wanted to see the new arrivals from France. Perhaps there would be an American among them, someone I could talk to. I was tired of Portuguese.

They began to arrive, pouring through the door, jostling each other on the way to the desk, talking in French and some language I didn’t recognize: a prosperous looking couple with three children and a dog, the inevitable contingent of minor diplomats; a young man with bright red hair and wearing a grey shapeless suit was talking to an older man, incredibly thin and sick looking.

“Not bad,” the young man said, and his voice came straight from New York!

I watched them and so did the Englishwoman, though she was more nonchalant now, almost contemptuous.

They stopped at the desk. The older man did the talking while the young one stared around the lobby in pleased surprise. His eyes flicked over me and the Englishwoman, coming to rest at last on a tall, dark, beautiful girl a few feet to his right.

The girl was standing beside the desk as if she were waiting for someone. She had been there for some time, looking cool despite the silver foxes she was carrying over one brown arm. It was July and the silver foxes had me puzzled until I heard her speak to the clerk in Portuguese. She was a native, I decided, and she had seen too many cinemas.

As I watched I saw her move her arm suddenly and her handbag flew out of her hand and landed about a foot away from the young man with the red hair. She bent over, blushing, and began to ram the stuff back into the bag.

I got up and moved slowly towards the dining room, passing the desk just as the red-haired young man was leaping to the rescue of the handbag.

The girl was giggling inanely and talking in Portuguese with many pretty gestures of apology.

I brushed past and handed my doorkey to the clerk. As I turned to leave I thought I heard the girl say, “George Tobacco.”

“Quite all right,” the young man said pleasantly. “Sorry I don’t understand Portuguese.”

And then again, “George tobacco,” all mixed up with gestures and Portuguese and smiles.

I moved away without looking back and went into the dining room. I usually lunched late in order to avoid the crowds and have a table to myself by the windows.

From the window I could see the beginning of the Avenida da Liberdade, a vast boulevard with three roadways flanked by palm and judas trees and a small stream gurgling along the side. The Avenida is Lisbon’s Fifth Avenue, and even in the heat it was crowded with strolling couples dressed in the kind of clothes that had been fashionable in New York before I’d left for England two years previously. The fashions in Portugal move as slowly as everything else.

I ordered an omelette and sat back in my chair to while away the inevitable half-hour required by Lisbon cooks to make an omelette. I saw the dark beautiful girl come in, dangling the silver foxes over her arm. She had a man with her, a small fat Portuguese whom she called Pedro. They sat a couple of tables away with the girl facing me.

The young man with the red hair came in, too. He was alone and he carried a newspaper under his arm. He sat at the opposite end of the dining room and opened up his paper. I watched him as he read. It was pleasant to see an American again, especially a young one, and more especially since I had the Clipper ticket pinned inside my dress.

He scowled as he read, and then folded the paper and walked out without having ordered his lunch. I looked out the window again at the bronze statue of a man riding a horse.

A voice behind me said, “Miss Lane?”

I turned and saw the thin English-woman standing beside my table, smiling down at me. I didn’t like the smile. It was bright and false and half-coy, the smile of a woman who is going to ask a favor and knows she doesn’t deserve one.

“Yes,” I said as politely as possible. “Won’t you sit down? I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

She seemed surprised. “I’m Violet Featherstone. My father is the Honorable Cecil Featherstone.”

I had never heard of the Honorable Cecil Featherstone, but I managed to look impressed and at the same time signal the waiter to hurry up the omelette. The waiter nodded, smiled, and remained stationary.

“Lazy dogs,” said the Honorable Violet.

She sat back in her chair and the sun from the windows caught her face. She was so pale her skin had a faint greenish lustre. I guessed she was about thirty and she looked every hour of it. She wore no makeup, her hair was black and untidily pinned into a bun at the back of her head, and her clothes were good but unflattering. I had never seen her in anything but black.

She had a queer voice, not loud but penetrating, like a shouted whisper:

“Are you an American citizen?”

I said, yes. She waited for me to go on, so I added that I was a singer, that I’d been touring the music halls in England for nearly two years, that I’d dodged several bombs and wanted to go home.

She leaned across the table. “By Clipper? You’re expecting a seat on the Clipper?”

Again that urgent whisper. Looking back now I think the whisper was the first sign of danger that I recognized. There were other signs before that, I know now, but the urgency in the Honorable Violet’s voice was unmistakable. She was afraid.

“Aren’t you?” she repeated.

I nodded, trying to keep my hand from straying to the front of my dress to make sure the ticket was still there.

“You’re — anxious to get away?”

I smiled dryly. “You wouldn’t be knowing how anxious. Look out that window.”

Passing a few feet in front of the window was a swarthy man in civilian clothes. He carried a huge sign under his arm, and by twisting my neck a little I could read the top line of printing: “500,000 prisioneiros sovieticos” I couldn’t understand or speak Portuguese, but my college Spanish served its purpose, then and later. I read the rest of the sign aloud:

“Half a million Russian prisoners captured in four weeks of war; 10,000 tanks demolished.”

The swarthy gentleman passed on.

To my surprise the Honorable Violet was smiling. “Waste of paper,” she said. “Most Portuguese can’t read and those who can are too lazy to read.”

“Maybe,” I said. “In any case I want to get out before the Nazis get in.”

“There’s no danger.” She fumbled with the clasp of her purse for a moment. “I want your seat on the Clipper, the one you got this morning at nine o’clock, the one you have pinned to your dress. I’ll pay ten thousand dollars.”

I sat there, unable to move or speak.

“Life or death,” she said hoarsely. “It’s a matter of life or death. I’ve got to get out of here.”

I didn’t know what to do so I signalled to the waiter again to fill in time. He responded with a friendly wave of his hand. There was no use in shouting to him because he spoke no English — very few in Lisbon do — so I took a couple of escudos from my bag and waved them at him. It was like tossing a dime to a newsboy.

“Is that your answer?” Violet Featherstone whispered.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve waited some time for this ticket. I’m not high on the priorities list. Besides I wouldn’t know what to do with ten thousand dollars.”

She put her finger to her lips as the waiter approached. “What do you want, Miss Lane? I’ll tell him.”

“Food,” I said. “Just food.”

She snorted out a word, he snorted one back and it was arranged. At least he walked away very slowly and thoughtfully.

“Fifteen thousand,” she said. “And a promise that if anything happens to this country, you’ll be all right.”

“Being as how you’re a friend of Hitler?” I said.

“No, no, that’s not it. But I promise you. I have friends.”

“Hitler,” I said, “will be the one who counts.”

“Don’t give me your answer now. I’ll come to your room tonight.”

“You have my answer. No.”

She got up quickly and walked towards the door without looking around. I could tell by the way she walked she didn’t think I would hold out, and when she went out I caught a glimpse of her profile. The set of her face was grim but satisfied, as if she had done a good job under difficult circumstances and was congratulating herself.

I said, “Nuts to you, Honorable Violet,” secure in the knowledge that no one would understand me.

The dining room was almost deserted now and the only people near my table were the Portuguese couple, the dark girl who had dropped her purse, and her small fat friend, Pedro.

I found a certain pleasure in talking aloud so I looked straight at the girl and said, “I bet you go to the movies.”

She smiled very faintly and replied in a crisp English voice. “Frequently. I adore Clark Gable and George—”

Pedro turned around and gave me a black scowl. Then he spoke roughly in Portuguese first to the girl, then to the waiter. The waiter came at a trot and made out a check. With a final frown in my direction Pedro got up and walked out keeping his hand on the girl’s arm.

My omelette arrived, slightly jaundiced and watery in the middle. The waiter, stimulated by the tip I gave him, stood near the window and watched me with friendly interest. He had dark, intelligent eyes, and he looked as if he might lean over at any moment and quote Emily Post at me in clear, accurate English. I stood it as long as I could.

“Can you speak English?” I asked.

“Manuel,” he said with a broad smile.

“No English at all, Manuel?”

“Manuel Henriques.”

“Mine is Elizabeth Lane,” I said. “Now beat it.”

I made a gesture which he interpreted as meaning that I wanted my check. I didn’t argue. I was glad to get away from the omelette. I went out and collected my key and went upstairs.

Since I had expected to be in Lisbon no longer than two days I had taken the best room I could get. It was on the second floor and the front window boasted a view of the Largo de Camôes, the small square connecting the Avenida da Liberdade with the Rocio. I had a private bathroom, an easy chair, a radio and a telephone. To offset these advantages, the water in both hot and cold taps was lukewarm, the radio didn’t work, the telephone was useless because I couldn’t speak the language, and the towels never looked quite clean. I strongly suspected the chambermaid removed the towels each day, ran an iron over them, and brought them back.

She was there when I walked in, padding around in felt slippers, taking an occasional swipe at the furniture with her duster.

She was fat, slow and ugly, and every time she went in to clean the bathroom she made small noises in the back of her throat which evidently indicated she disapproved of bathing.

That day she seemed a little more cheerful than usual. She kept pointing towards the locked door which led into the adjoining room, and giggling.

“Maria,” I said, “you’ve been hitting the bottle again.”

She chose to construe this as meaning she was to leave and not bother finishing my room. I tried to explain but Maria was an opportunist and was already steaming down the hall.

I looked at the door which connected my room and the next and wondered what was so funny. The other room had been empty for several days. I decided that Maria was giggling because it was still empty and therefore didn’t require cleaning. It was the sort of joke which would appeal to a Portuguese servant.

I walked over to the door and put my ear to the keyhole. Someone was in the next room. There was a sound of breathing, quick, heavy breathing like a series of snorts. I moved my ear to make room for my eye. The lock was the old-fashioned kind with a good sized opening.

What I saw was the end of a bed and one foot dangling over the edge. It was a girl’s foot clad in a black suede shoe. As I watched, the foot moved a little and the snorting noises ceased.

I stood up, feeling uneasy and puzzled. That foot looked familiar and that room had been empty.

I picked up the telephone and poured my whole vocabulary into it. “Senhor! Senhor!”

“Senhor Mendez speaks,” came the smooth voice of the manager. “Is it that anything ails you?”

Mendez was a Portuguese who had learned English in France. The result was often confusing. But I welcomed him now, he was the only member of the hotel staff who spoke adequate English.

I opened my mouth to ask him if anyone had taken the room adjoining mine. At the same instant I heard footsteps through the door. I felt like a fool. Of course the room was booked, and the girl who had booked it had simply lain down for a rest. Now she was awake, walking around in her room.

I stalled off the concierge by saying, “There’s no hot water, Senhor.”

The footsteps stopped and began again. They were coming towards my door. Well, that was all right. Perhaps the girl was simply investigating my room through the keyhole as I had investigated hers.

“The water is dangerously hot,” said Senhor Mendez, “in some rooms. Perhaps not in your room, Miss Lane, but certainly in some rooms it is assuredly dangerously hot.”

I hung on to Mendez and kept my eye on the door. The knob began to turn slowly.

“Only this morning,” Mendez went on, “I said to Maria, ‘Maria, with the water as dangerously hot as it is, you must exercise caution.’”

“Put that phone down!”

The door had opened quickly and noiselessly. I was looking into the barrel of an automatic. That was all I saw at first, just the automatic pointing at me very steadily. I let out a gasp.

“You may well be transfixed with astonishment,” Senhor Mendez said warmly. “But that is what I said, ‘Of a certainty, Maria, the pipes will collapse—’”

“Put it down,” the man repeated. He moved the automatic to emphasize his command. “Now!”

I dragged my eyes away from the gun and put the telephone receiver back on the hook. The click it made was a horribly final sound.

I forced myself to look up again. The man was watching me warily. He looked young and desperate. His face had a shiny pallor and his eyes, almost hidden by the brim of a battered felt hat, were frightened, almost bewildered. He moved his head slightly, and I had a glimpse of red hair under the hat. That was how I recognized him, by his hair — his face seemed different from that of the young man who had picked up a purse and said “That’s quite all right. Sorry I don’t speak Portuguese.”

“Who are you?” he asked hoarsely.

I took a deep breath and practised voice control. The result was good. I sounded almost bored.

“Elizabeth Lane. Sorry, I didn’t quite catch your—”

His face didn’t change. “This your room?”

I said, “Yes.”

“American?”

I nodded. “New York. Same as you.”

His eyes narrowed. “How do you know?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. He pointed with his free hand towards the door that he’d come through. “This supposed to be locked?”

“Of course.” My voice control was no longer working so well and I had to clench my hands together to keep them from shaking. “It’s always locked.”

“Not today.” He looked at me and again I had the impression he was trying desperately to fit me into some puzzle. “How long have you been here?”

“Two weeks,” I said. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”

“Leaving?” He tasted the word and liked it. “Yeah? By Clipper?”

I nodded. I didn’t like the way he was watching me, speculatively.

“The room next door is mine,” he said.

“Indeed?”

“Yeah, indeed,” he said. “Want to see it?”

“No.”

“I must insist.”

His way of insisting was hard to resist. He took a step forward and gestured with the automatic.

I said, “Oh well, if you insist,” and got up. My knees folded but I stiffened them again and walked slowly towards the door. The automatic followed me.

“Like it?” he said.

“Very cozy—” My mouth closed with a snap.

There was a girl lying on the bed. She was naked except for a pair of stockings and black suede shoes. She was looking towards me, her eyes open in surprise, but she made no move to pull the sheet over her.

The young man was looking over my shoulder. He said, “Know the lady?”

My knees really folded this time. I sat down on the floor.

“I asked you if you knew the lady,” he repeated. “Don’t be afraid of hurting her feelings. She’s stone deaf and stone blind, and damn near stone cold.”

His voice was cruel and bitter.

My tongue lolled around my mouth fumbling for words. But I could only nod at him.

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

He bent over and put his free hand roughly on my shoulder. “Get up. Go and sit in that chair.”

I didn’t move.

“Get over to that chair!”

I whispered, “You wouldn’t — dare — shoot.”

“That’s right, I wouldn’t,” he said. “But I might crack your skull. Move.”

I moved, half-crawling, half-walking. When I reached the chair I began to cry. Without a word the young man wheeled round and went into the bathroom. When he came out he was carrying a glass of water.

“Cry into this,” he said nastily.

I drank the water and blew my nose. The diversion calmed me and my voice came back in a rush.

“I don’t know her. I saw her at the desk before lunch.”

“I picked up her purse,” he said.

“Yes. And—”

“And what?”

“I heard her say something to you, something in English.”

The sweat was beading on his forehead.

“What was it?”

“It sounded like ‘George Tobacco.’”

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “But she couldn’t have said it because I’d never seen her before in my life. I’ve never been in Lisbon before and I’ve never seen this girl before. Do you understand what this means?”

“Sure,” I said. “It means you’re scared silly.”

His face relaxed. For a minute I thought he was going to smile. “Scared silly. That’s right. I’ve got a corpse in my bed. And last night—”

“Not another one last night?” I said dryly, “Who knows? Maybe I’m on tonight’s program.”

“Last night,” he went on, paying no attention to my tone, “I was standing on the platform between two cars of the train, getting a breath of air. The door at the side was open and the train was travelling at full speed.”

“And somebody pushed you.”

“That’s right. Somebody pushed me.”

He said it without emphasis, almost without interest, as if he’d given up hope of convincing me and didn’t care whether I believed him or not.

But I did believe him. I believed him so much that I lost my voice, it stuck in my throat like a cold lump of fear.

“I got hold of the railing,” he said, still in that flat voice, “and here I am.”

“Who...who was it?”

“The pusher?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not even worried about that. What I want to know first is, why?” He glanced towards the bed, his eyes angry. “And why this girl? Why this girl?”

I turned my head away. “Because she spoke to you,” I said.

“Again why?” He looked at me, almost hesitantly. “You didn’t—”

“I didn’t,” I said as calmly as possible. “I don’t even know how she was — was killed.”

“Opium in some form. Probably morphine. Look at her eyes.”

“No, I won’t,” I said unsteadily. “No.”

“Pinpoint pupils.”

“Please. I don’t want to hear about it. Let me go back to my room.”

“Let you!” He gave a hard laugh and replaced the automatic in his pocket. “Stage prop. No cartridges. Go on back to your room.”

“Don’t order me around,” I said feebly. “What — what are you going to do with — that?”

“Do?” His eyes narrowed. “What in hell can I do? Any suggestions?”

“The broom closet.”

“Go on.”

“It’s at the end of the corridor. It’s big enough — for a body.”

There was a long silence after that. I sat looking down at my hands, feeling guilty and angry and frightened at the same time. The broom closet. That was no place for this girl with her dark beautiful hair and her eyes, gentle and surprised in death. Naked and dead in a broom closet—

I put my hands over my eyes.

“Yeah, I know,” the young man said. “You feel like hell for suggesting that. But it might save my life, if that means anything to you.”

“It doesn’t!”

“Well, all right, it doesn’t. How far is this closet?”

“A couple of yards beyond my room. Would she — be heavy?”

He didn’t answer that. He said crisply, “Will you help?”

“Me! No, please.”

“Okay. Go on back and relax. And thanks for the tip.”

I got up and moved towards the door. I didn’t look around but I heard him walk to the bed and I heard the squeak of springs as he bent over the girl.

“Wait,” I said. “Sometimes people — I mean, this is a busy corridor sometimes.”

“That’s what I meant by helping,” he said coldly. “I don’t need any two by four blonde to help me carry— Oh well, skip it.”

“I’ll let you know if the corridor’s clear,” I said and went back into my own room.

I stopped in front of the bureau for a minute to remove the traces of tears. Anger and humiliation had stung the color into my cheeks. The reaction had set in — I called myself a fool and a dupe — but I went out into the corridor anyway.

It was empty and I began to whistle “You’re Okay.” The door of the young man’s room opened slightly. At the same instant another door opened further down the hall and a small fat man emerged carrying a straw hat. An American diplomat, now gone from the hotel, had introduced the fat man to me as Mr. Henhoeffer, an ex-German ex-banker.

“Oh, Mr. Henhoeffer,” I said shrilly.

The fat man turned and peered suspiciously in my direction. When he recognized me his face splintered into smiles.

“Isn’t this a lovely day for a walk?” I cried, walking towards him. He waited for me. Even his smile didn’t hide his surprise — I had had to shake him off a number of times during the past two weeks.

He spoke English of a sort. He said, “Luffly. Almost as luffly as a certain young lady.”

“Oh, you old flatterer,” I yelled.

I was right up to him now, close enough to see his eyes, pig-small and stone-dead behind his smile.

I lowered my voice. “I was just going for a walk around the Rocio.”

“I, too,” Mr. Henhoeffer said warmly. “Perhaps we could go together?”

He held out his arm gallantly. I took it and nearly dragged him towards the steps. Mr. Henhoeffer, still surprised but willing, palpitated along beside me while I babbled inanities about the broadening effects of travel.

At the bottom of the steps I dropped his arm, murmured an excuse about forgetting my purse, and went back to the second floor, leaving a patiently puzzled Mr. Henhoeffer at the desk.

I walked down the hall, past Mr. Henhoeffer’s room and the room that I knew belonged to the Honorable Violet, and stopped in front of the young man’s door. I hissed gently through the crack.

He opened the door. He had wrapped the Portuguese girl in a sheet and flung her over his shoulder. He looked pale and grim and hot. It was only a few yards to the broom closet. I stayed in the corridor keeping my eyes glued to the top of the steps.

It was all over pretty fast. The man came back wiping his forehead with his handkerchief.

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

When I hesitated he swung round sharply. “Okay. Now pretend you’ve never seen me.”

“That suits me fine,” I said.

“For your own good.”

He put his handkerchief back in his pocket beside the gun. I noticed then he was still carrying his newspaper jammed into his other pocket. He saw me looking at it and ripped it out savagely and thrust it in front of my face.

On the front page was a picture of a middle-aged man in uniform and the caption in French: “Admiral Diamant a Suicide.”

“My last interview,” the young man said harshly. “I seem to be hard to take. Typhoid Tom Ross of the New York Examiner.”

“You are hard to take, Mr. Ross,” I said and walked away. I collected my purse and key from my room and went downstairs.

At the desk Senhor Mendez was telling Mr. Henhoeffer that Americanos were very, very reckless, they demanded the water hot to the point of pipe collapse.

“Baths,” he said. “Baths. Always baths.”

“I’m not reckless,” I said, handing him my key. “I’m going out for a walk to give the pipes a chance to collapse in my absence.”

The walk itself was enjoyable, the air windless and warm and scented with roses and camellias. Mr. Henhoeffer was not so enjoyable. He was, it developed shortly, addicted to pinching and heavy-handed compliments. He said he was crazy about Yankee girls (he pronounced it Yonky) they were as tortuous and intriguing as Lisbon itself.

We walked around Rocio Square which, Mr. Henhoeffer informed me, was also called Roly Poly Square because of the pavement. It was paved with black and white pebbles in an undulating snake-like design that made me a little seasick. The traffic was very heavy and Mr. Henhoeffer found it necessary to take my arm to thrust me out of the way of the innumerable taxis and trams, and to guide me past the hawkers, the shoe-shiners, the cameramen and the vendors of lottery tickets who approached us in swarms.

From the Rocio we went into the Praca de Figueira where the market thronged with bare-footed peasants carrying huge baskets on their heads. The smell here was not so pleasant — fish, sweat and rotting food. The food made Mr. Henhoeffer very sad.

“So much vitamins,” he said. “So much calories going to waste with poor hungry France a few hundred miles away.”

“It’s not your fault, Mr. Henhoeffer,” I said kindly. “Cheer up.”

“Never again will I cheer up,” Mr. Henhoeffer said, pinching my arm.

I didn’t argue. I just started to walk back to the hotel as fast as I could with Mr. Henhoeffer wheezing along beside me.

I said, “You were in the dining room for lunch?”

He looked at me sharply. “No. I was indisposed. I was in my room. Why do you ask?”

“I didn’t see you there,” I said. “I just wondered.”

“After the concentration camp my stomach is weak.” He patted his stomach tenderly.

I said, “Let’s go back and see if the hotel has blown up.”

He grabbed my arm. We both stopped. I saw that his face was very pale. “Blown up? You fear the war will come to this country?”

“The pipes,” I said.

“The pipes.” He let out his breath. “Ah, yes, the pipes.”

He walked on without speaking for some time. Then he began to tell me how Herr Hitler was ruining the women of Germany, how they had all lost their figures by working in the fields and factories, and how they were all enceinte.

We were back at the Largo de Camôens by this time and the hotel was almost directly across the road. But Mr. Henhoeffer stopped in front of a small shop which bore the sign: “American and English Magazines and Cigarettes.” The windows were grimy and the magazines were piled haphazardly on top of each other. At the front of the window were some photographs of American motion picture stars. It was to these that Mr. Henhoeffer directed his full attention. For the moment I was the forgotten woman, so I amused myself by strolling into the store and buying a package of cigarettes.

Standing in front of the counter with his back to me was Tom Ross. He was leafing through a copy of Punch.

Behind the counter stood a tall, cadaverous, middle-aged Englishman carrying on a one-sided conversation with Tom Ross in cockney.

“’E wasn’t any too pleased— Yes, miss?”

I told him what I wanted and waited for Tom Ross to turn around and speak. He didn’t. He merely raised his head, gave me a blank disinterested stare, and went back to his Punch.

I started to speak, but the Cockney didn’t give me a chance. He explained the tax on cigarettes and magazines, letting his h’s drop where they would.

Outside, Mr. Henhoeffer came to and looked around and missed me. Then he waddled into the store. He and the Cockney greeted each other effusively.

“I gort a beaut,” the Cockney announced with a broad wink. Mr. Henhoeffer leaned over the counter. “What is it?”

“Greta Garbo,” said the Cockney.

Mr. Henhoeffer’s face fell. “Not Myrna Loy?”

“Oo’s Myrna Loy?” the Cockney said contemptuously. “Now Greta Garbo—”

Greta Garbo was duly wrapped and paid for. I took Mr. Henhoeffer’s arm and we went out followed by the Cockney’s injunctions to “come again soon.”

At the desk of the hotel I ditched Mr. Henhoeffer and wandered into the main reading room. It was comfortably fitted with small desks and imitation leather chairs. In one of the chairs, almost hidden by a potted palm tree, was the Honorable Violet. She was writing a letter. When I walked over to her she put her hand over the letter, not very subtly.

“I won’t peek,” I said. “I just came over to tell you that my answer is still no and will continue to be no.”

She stood up, staring at me, and said in her honorable voice: “My dear young lady! What are you talking about?”

“The ticket.”

“What ticket?” she demanded. “I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about!”

I looked around the room. There was no one else within hearing distance.

“I must ask you to stop bothering me,” the Honorable Violet said haughtily. “I know you are having a difficult time obtaining a berth on the Clipper, but there is absolutely nothing I can do for you.”

She sat down and resumed her letter. I walked away very fast. I got my key from Mendez and went up to my room. I was trembling with anger.

Keeping my eyes turned away from the broom closet, I unlocked my door and went inside. The afternoon sun was pouring in both windows giving the room an appearance of artificial gaiety. I sat down on the edge of the bed.

I thought of home and the naked dead girl in the broom closet and the shiny pallor of Tom Ross’ face. I thought of Violet Featherstone as I’d seen her before lunch steadily watching the door, of the fat Portuguese Pedro.

I was back at the girl again. I remembered her smile, her soft voice, the twitch of her foot as she died.

I felt the tears pressing hard on my eyes, tears of anger and fear and bewilderment and self-pity. And homesickness. Tomorrow seemed far away. I wanted to leave then, to get away from them all. Then I heard the noise in Tom Ross’ room and the whisper through the keyhole:

“Miss Lane?”

I jumped up and opened the door.

He came in, this time without his hat and gun. He looked excited and more hopeful, and even managed a grin.

“Sorry,” he said.

“What for? Sit down.”

He sat down warily on the small chair beside the telephone table. I could tell from the way he watched me that something important had happened to him, and he didn’t know whether to trust me or not.

“Who’s your friend?” he asked with elaborate casualness.

“What friend?” I said coldly. “If you mean the man I went out with to save your skin, his name is Henhoeffer. He used to be a banker in Germany and he collects pictures of American actresses.”

“What did you talk about?”

I stared at him. “We talked about me, and Lisbon and the great army of pregnant women in Germany. Now tell me all about yourself.”

He ignored the irony. He said gravely. “I left Vichy last night. I have orders to return home. I wanted one really good interview to take back with me, and I got one yesterday. With Admiral Diamant.”

He paused and took out the copy of the newspaper containing the story of Diamant’s suicide.

“We talked impersonally — about Petain and the possibility of the Nazis demanding the French fleet, the ordinary things a correspondent wants to know. Then he told me he was going on leave soon and we began talking about holidays. He had been in Central America, he said. He owned a small island near Martinique. He had friends in New York and gave me a couple of telephone numbers.”

He was quiet for so long that I thought he’d forgotten me. I took out a cigarette and lit it.

“I wrote down the telephone numbers along with the rest of the interview and went back to my hotel to pack. Diamant was killing himself while I was packing. The paper says he had been despondent for some time. He left no suicide note.”

I looked at the picture of Diamant. He was a fat, cheerful looking man with shrewd little eyes.

“He wasn’t despondent,” Tom Ross said. “He was excited and talkative, not a suicidal type, and certainly not the type to kill himself without explaining at length why he was doing it.”

“So?” I said.

“So he was killed,” Tom said. “The rest of it you know. Someone tried to push me off the train. When that didn’t work, someone killed the girl and put her in my room.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The police,” Tom replied. “If I were arrested for murder I’d be in Portugal for some time, maybe forever. And somebody wants me here very badly.”

My voice came out thin and high. “They’ll try again.”

“That’s right.”

“Are you — being careful?”

He really grinned that time. “Yeah, I’m being careful as hell. The automatic is no longer a stage prop. It contains bullets. The problem is, what do I shoot at?”

“Where did you get the bullets?”

He took a long time to answer. It was as if he had closed the shutters over his face and only his eyes peered out, wary, and suspicious.

“So you’re a singer?” he said at last.

“Of a sort,” I said. “Who told you?”

“A friend.”

“Then you have friends?” I almost added, “Besides me.”

He said carefully, “I had two friends. One of them is dead.”

“The girl?”

“Yes.”

“But you’d never seen her before.”

“No.”

I got up and walked impatiently towards the window. “All right. Don’t tell me. I didn’t want to get mixed up in your own personal little mess. I don’t care if the whole French fleet scuttles itself. You’d better go back to your room. I want to pack.”

I looked out the window. There were no sounds of departure behind me. I turned around and found Tom Ross watching me.

“Well?” I said.

“I located Mr. George,” he said at last.

“Mr. George?”

“George Tobacco.”

I could feel my face stiffening, the suspicion pouring through my body like liquid air. “Well,” I said. “Quick work.”

“You didn’t do so badly yourself,” he said.

“Me?”

“Or did your friend Henhoeffer do it for you?”

I managed a cold laugh. “We can’t seem to trust each other. Why try?” When he didn’t answer I added, “I don’t know any George Tobacco, take it or leave it.”

“‘I gort a beaut,’” Tom quoted.

“The Cockney?” I said.

“Yes.”

He paused to let it sink in. I remembered the grimy windows, the piles of dusty magazines, the photographs. I remembered the tall, thin Englishman giving me my change out of a cash register, and over the cash register the small sign: E. George, Tobacco.

I kept my voice casual. “Well, it’s a small world. What did George Tobacco have to say?”

“He said,” Tom replied, “that I’m to lock my door, keep my windows closed, carry a gun and stay away from strangers until I get to Cintra in the morning and board the Clipper.”

“Sound advice. Hadn’t you better take it and stop pouring your story into my unwilling ears?”

“Yeah, but I may not get to Cintra.”

I raised one brow. “So?”

“You will, though.”

“So?”

He said nastily, “Stop the bored-and-beautiful act, Lizzie Lane. We’re playing bombs, not marbles.”

“Bombs?” I whispered. I sounded scared and I didn’t like that, so I added, “So you’re Tom Ross, the famous international spy.”

“I’d forgotten how wise you wise girls are. Now that you’ve reminded me you can skip it. And listen. The chances of me getting away are small. Your chances are better if you’re careful, if you don’t recognize me in front of anyone, if you can keep your mouth buttoned.”

“All right,” I said. “What do I do?”

“You phone down to the desk and tell the desk clerk you’ve discovered this door is unlocked. Make a fuss about it — it’s a natural thing to do and it may help to detract suspicion from you.”

“Suspicion?”

“That you’ve had anything to do with me.”

“But how will anyone else find out about the fuss I am about to make?” I demanded.

Tom said, “There’s hardly a desk clerk in Europe who isn’t being paid by the Nazis or the French or the British or all three. You tell the clerk and leave the rest to him.”

I was impressed but didn’t admit it. “And where is my Secret Message?”

“Better phone down now,” he said. “And one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Try having dinner tonight with your fat friend Henhoeffer.”

“Why?”

“So I’ll know where he is,” Tom said, and walked back into his own room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

I picked up the telephone and called Senhor Mendez. I didn’t have to do any faking to sound angry.

I bellowed, “I have just made an appalling discovery. Come up here at once and bring your keys.” Then I hung up.

Mendez arrived in three minutes and heaved himself into my room. I pointed to the door which connected my room with Tom’s.

“That,” I said haughtily, “is unlocked, and there is someone in the room. It sounds like a man.”

Mendez flourished his keys, flung himself at the door, locked it, bowed three times in my direction and said he was transfixed, horrified, and struck by thunder. He knew exactly, precisely how I felt. How could it have happened! What great grossness had been committed! Could I forgive him?

It was a question of forgiving him or listening to another speech, so I said, “Yes.”

Still he was not satisfied. There was a man in the adjoining room, but certainly. But such a man! An Americano, a fine young man, of unimpeachable character. Now would I forgive him?

“I forgive everybody,” I said weakly.

“And you have enough hot water?”

“Plenty,” I said. “Gallons of it.” I looked pointedly towards the door but still he lingered, his sad brown eyes regarding me woefully. He was smaller than I’d thought, no higher than my ear. His skin was very dark with the deep red-brown flush on his cheeks that I’d seen on peasant women at the market.

“Miss Lane is happy here?” he said.

“Happy isn’t quite the word.”

“We are too crowded, too busy to do our best for you at present. We are the bottleneck of Europe,” he added proudly. “Perhaps Miss Lane will return later when we are no longer the bottleneck?”

I said I’d do my best and put my hand on the doorknob. This time he took the hint and bowed himself out. I stood in the doorway and watched him waddle down the hall to the main staircase.

I was about to close my door again when I heard someone shouting in Portuguese in one of the rooms across the hall. A few seconds later the Honorable Violet’s door opened abruptly and Maria sailed into the corridor, her face twisting into grimaces like the India rubber man at Coney Island. The Honorable Violet came out, too, saw me standing there, and instantly became a lady again.

“Filthy dogs,” she said to me, with a contemptuous nod at Maria. “I told her she’d have to do my room properly or I’ll report her to the concierge.”

“Did you,” I said politely.

Maria giggled and shuffled off towards the broom closet.

“I hate dirt,” said the Honorable Violet.

Words stuck in my throat. I wanted to yell at Maria to stop her, but she kept on shuffling towards the closet.

“I hate dirt, too,” I shouted at the Honorable Violet. She looked a little surprised and annoyed, as if I were stealing her lines.

Maria had her hand on the doorknob of the closet. She gave it a leisurely turn. The door opened. The next instant Maria had fallen forward on her knees and was raising her hands to heaven and shouting at the top of her lungs.

The Honorable Violet emerged into the corridor.

“Wh-what’s she saying?” I managed to gasp.

“She’s praying,” Violet said curtly. “Maria!” She shouted at Maria in Portuguese, but Maria only redoubled her cries. Extremely annoyed, Violet walked towards her and gave her a stinging blow across the cheek. Then she looked inside the closet and saw the girl standing propped up in the corner shrouded in the sheet.

She staggered back and fell against Maria.

Maria was wailing, “Em pe! Em pe!”

Violet picked herself up and began brushing off her skirt quite calmly.

Mr. Henhoeffer now joined us. He was in his shirtsleeves and looked as if he had just awakened. Then the door of the room beside Violet’s opened abruptly and a man came out. He was quite young but he looked terribly ill. His face was grey and his suit hung loosely over his bones. I recognized him as the man who had come into the hotel with Tom Ross before lunch.

“What’s the matter here?” he asked in French. His voice was sick, too. He looked across the hall at me and repeated his question.

Tom completed the group. He came out of his room, yawning and stretching in a convincing manner.

“There’s a dead woman in there,” said the Honorable Violet in English. “Maria is praying because she thinks it’s Don Francisco Tregian. You know, the standing corpse of the Englishman buried here?” Violet was enjoying herself putting on an exhibition of the well-known British aplomb.

Tom and the Frenchman were at the closet door taking the girl out and laying her on the floor of the hall. Maria had simply vanished. Mr. Henhoeffer was absently pinching my arm and saying, “Tut, tut, tut.” None of us paid any attention to the Honorable Violet’s account of the Englishman who’d been buried standing up.

She caught on finally and changed her tune. “I shall inform Senhor Mendez,” she announced. “I expect this is a matter for the police. In any case we must all keep cool.”

She tripped down the step. For all her self-assurance, her face was the color of putty and her knees wobbled as she walked.

Tom got to his feet and wiped his forehead. “I could stand a drink. Anyone care to join me?”

Mr. Henhoeffer practically dropped me on the floor in his rush for a free drink.

The Frenchman hesitated. He looked as if he was going to faint.

“Rochat?” Tom said.

“Thank you,” Rochat said. “Yes, I don’t think a drink would matter now.”

We all went into Tom’s room. I was terrified that Tom might have left some evidence of the girl in his room. But the bed was neatly made and the pillows shaken out.

“Sit down, Miss—” Tom said.

“Lane,” I said. Tom introduced the Frenchman as Pierre Rochat, a French refugee he’d met on the train. Mr. Henhoeffer, drink in hand, introduced himself.

Rochat drank slowly, coughing a great deal between sips. I suspected he had T.B.

“Are you waiting for the Clipper?” I asked him.

He said no, and pointed to his chest. “They do not want people like me in your country.”

There was a long and uncomfortable silence broken finally by Rochat himself. “I don’t blame them. I don’t blame anyone for anything. We are all victims of an inexorable fate even as the young woman lying in the corridor.”

There was another silence. Even Mr. Henhoeffer, with his third free drink, was lost in gloom. I was glad when I heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside the door and the babble of voices all talking at once. Tom went over and opened the door.

Rochat made a hopeless gesture with his hands. “The police,” he said to me. “Possibly we shall be put in jail.” Rochat was not a cheerful man.

“Why should they put us in jail? We haven’t done anything,” I said.

“Fate,” Rochat said tersely. “Dead women do not walk into broom closets.”

“I haf been in many jails,” Mr. Henhoeffer mused. “Some I like, some I do not like. Have you effer been in jail, Miss Lane?”

I said no, the police weren’t smart enough to catch me.

“You joke,” Mr. Henhoeffer said glumly. “Ha, ha, ha.”

Tom came in again, followed by two men in uniform. One seemed to be an ordinary traffic cop, the kind I’d seen standing at street corners directing traffic with their clubs. He was quite tall for a Portuguese and had a small, black Chaplin mustache perched under his nose. His name was De Castro.

The smaller one, Duarte, was a thin, shrivelled little man with a lazy, insolent smile. He looked like a street urchin, and it was a shock to hear his voice. It was pure Oxford. “I am the official interpreter for the police department,” he announced, smiling around the room at each of us. “Mr. De Castro cannot speak English. Mr. De Castro is the investigator in authority.”

De Castro stared at us woodenly, then broke into a torrent of Portuguese. Duarte listened to him, never losing his smile.

He translated. “Mr. De Castro would like to know if any one of you recognize the unfortunate woman?” He pronounced it unfawtunit.

We were all silent. At last I said, “I don’t know her but I saw her in the dining room at lunch. She was lunching with a man, a Portuguese. She called him—”

“Ah?” Duarte said. He hurled the words at De Castro. Both of them stood looking down at me as I huddled in my chair.

“Who discovered the body?”

“The chambermaid,” I said unsteadily. “Her name is Maria. Miss Featherstone and I were in the hall and—”

Again he interrupted. “Where is Maria?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She just — vanished.”

“Ah?” Duarte said. “It is an unfortunate business all around. Mr. De Castro does not like to have foreigners murdered in Lisbon.”

“Foreigners?” I echoed. I could see Tom’s jaws tightening and Rochat leaning forward in his chair.

“The girl was not Portuguese?” Rochat said.

“Hardly,” Duarte smiled.

At this point Violet came in with Mendez and Manuel, the waiter. Apparently Manuel had seen the girl’s body. He was shaking all over and his skin had a peculiar, purplish-brown tinge. Mendez, trying to emulate Violet’s calmness, stood stiff and dignified beside Manuel.

He said apologetically to us all, “Manuel has a tenderness of heart. You will forgive him.”

Violet had sailed over to the two policemen and was giving them what sounded like a large piece of her mind. When she had finished the policeman nodded gravely and Violet turned to the rest of us and said:

“I have just informed these two louts that it is preposterous to suspect any of us of this — this murder—”

“Murder,” Mendez repeated weakly. The starch had gone out of him and he was sagging almost as badly as Manuel.

“—simply because we live in this particular corridor,” Violet continued. “None of us would be so foolish as to leave evidences of the crime in a place which would connect us with it immediately. I, for one, have never even seen this girl before.”

I handed it to Violet. She was one of the best liars I’ve ever heard.

“That’s funny,” I said coldly. “She was in the dining room at lunch, and so were you.”

Violet regarded me stonily. “Miss Lane apparently knows the girl. Go on, Miss Lane.”

“Ask the waiter,” I said.

Violet did. She shouted at Manuel in Portuguese. Duarte watched her lazily.

“Manuel says,” Violet translated, “that the girl had lunch in the dining room with some man. That makes everything quite simple, I think. The man gave her the poison and escaped.”

“Poison?” Tom said. “What kind of poison?”

Violet’s face had turned a lustrous light green. I thought she was going to faint, but she put out her hand and grasped the back of Rochat’s chair to steady herself.

Duarte said, “Mr. De Castro is of the opinion that morphine was administered to the girl.”

Tom was leaning against the wall, looking bored. “Yeah? Why not find the man then, as Miss Featherstone suggests? Perhaps Manuel could identify him.”

Manuel couldn’t have identified his own mother. He was standing with his face to the wall crying loudly and without shame. The rest of us sat frozen with embarrassment. Mr. Rochat studied the ceiling and kept repeating, “Lacrimae rerum, Lacrimae rerum.”

So it went on. We were in the room for another hour listening to Violet’s haughty protests and Manuel’s crying, and Mendez’s attempts to explain the girl’s death as a suicide. The policemen did not interrupt. At five o’clock De Castro yawned and walked to the door.

“Mr. De Castro is fatigued,” Duarte said, and started to follow De Castro to the door.

“But nothing has been settled!” Violet cried. “What is our position? Are we free to leave?”

Duarte turned around and smiled at her. “You’ll stay, of course.” He included me in the order.

“You incompetent ape,” I said. “You won’t even let me tell my story. You keep interrupting. You didn’t even ask the proper questions. You couldn’t solve a murder if you had ten eye-witnesses.”

I felt Rochat’s hand pressing my arm. I shook him off.

“I’ve got a seat on the Clipper and I’m leaving tomorrow! I’ve been waiting for two weeks.”

“You’re young,” Duarte said easily.

I opened my mouth to say more, but Rochat’s fingers pressed tight around my wrist.

“Please control yourself,” he said. “The Portuguese cannot be hurried.”

Duarte grinned and went out, and that was that. We all straggled back to our rooms. The girl’s body had been taken away but the sheet in which it had been wrapped lay beside the door of the broom closet in a crumpled heap. When I saw it my anger at the incompetence of the police boiled up in my throat. Incompetence — or worse, indifference.

And then I remembered something which had been nagging at me for the past two hours: Duarte hadn’t even asked us our names! Yet he had called both Violet and me by name.

I remembered Tom’s statement, “There isn’t a desk clerk in Europe who isn’t being paid by the Nazis or the French or the British. Or all three.”

But not Mendez, I thought, pleasant ineffectual little Mendez.

“—bull fight,” Mr. Henhoeffer was saying.

He was lingering beside my door, sad and not quite sober. I said “Pardon?”

“Would you go to the bullfight tonight?” he repeated.

I said I would if he could persuade Duarte to act as the bull, otherwise no.

Mr. Henhoeffer looked wistful. “A movie, perhaps? Or dinner?”

“Maybe,” I said, and backed into my room and closed the door. I took off my shoes and lay down on the bed.

The afternoon was hot and moist by that time, and the air was filled with the rumble of trains, the incessant blare of taxi horns and the shouting of hawkers.

I shut my eyes and thought of the dead girl. She was English, Duarte had said. What was she doing in Lisbon? How had she known Tom Ross well enough to warn him? Why was she lunching with the fat Portuguese, Pedro?

Had he poisoned her then? Or had he poisoned her at all? I thought of Violet’s remark, “The man gave her the poison and escaped.” How had Violet known the girl was poisoned?

I was turning dozens of questions in my mind when I became aware, suddenly and horribly, that there was someone in the room with me.

Someone was breathing deeply and heavily. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, it was just there, the sound of breathing.

My eyes were still closed, and in my effort to keep them closed my eyelids fluttered madly. Other people might be able to get away with feigning sleep, but not I.

I opened my eyes expecting to see anything at all, a ghost, an animal, Duarte. I didn’t expect what I did see — nothing, exactly nothing. But the breathing went on, evenly and heavily as before. The room was filled with sunshine and I could see into every corner, even into the clothes closet. There was no place where anyone could hide, except—

I leaped off the bed as if I’d been shot out of a cannon.

I said in a trembling but belligerent voice: “All right, you under the bed! What’s the idea?”

There was a small snort and the sound of someone rolling over. I leaned over and looked under the bed. Maria was staring up at me, eyes rolling.

I was so weak with relief that I began to giggle. After a time Maria began to giggle, too. Her fat body shook with laughter, and the bed shook, too, because she was still under it. I don’t know how long we laughed, me on my knees beside the bed and Maria lying under it. When I finally got myself reorganized I told her with gestures to come out and sit down. She came, slowly, still giggling and shaking and blinking the tears out of her eyes.

I sank into the chair beside the telephone table and my eyes fell on the telephone pad and pencil. Suddenly I had an idea which I have since regretted. I could speak neither Portuguese nor Spanish, but I could still write Spanish. And written Spanish is like written Portuguese. Now if Maria could read and write—

I picked up the pad and pencil and wrote in Spanish: “My name is Elizabeth Lane. What is your name?”

Maria nodded eagerly, took the pad, and reached for the pencil. She wrote slowly and laboriously, “Maria Henriques,” and handed the pad back to me. Both of us were trembling with excitement, I because I was sure Maria could provide some useful information, Maria because she considered it a wonderful new game.

“Did you see the dead girl before?” I wrote.

Maria pointed to the door which led into Tom Ross’ room and made motions of taking off her clothes. Then she wrote, “Love,” and giggled some more. I let that pass and grabbed the pencil again.

“Do you know what the girl’s name is?”

She shook her head.

“Was there anyone in the room with her?”

She shook her head again, not so vigorously this time.

“Anyone in the hall?”

She grinned, then drew down the corners of her mouth and threw up her head very haughtily. It was a perfect wordless description of the Honorable Violet.

“What was she doing?” I wrote.

Maria tossed her head around and made scolding sounds in her throat, then moved her hands as if she were sweeping. I was disappointed but I kept on.

“Did you see the girl go into Mr. Ross’ room?”

She shook her head. Then she wrote, “I saw a tall man. He was coming out.”

“Out of where?”

She imitated Violet again.

“Who was he?”

She didn’t know.

“Is Manuel Henriques your husband?”

She nodded.

“Did he know the girl?” She shook her head. “Did Mendez know her?”

She made a dive for the pencil. “Mendez knows. The girl has been here before. She comes to eat. Manuel says so. Manuel tells me about her before. He says, a dark beautiful English lady. Under the bed I remember this. I know it is the same lady. English ladies are not dark and beautiful much.”

She was exhausted with this effort and had to wipe the sweat off her forehead with her apron. She was beginning to look anxious too, as if she wanted to get away. She seemed frightened somehow by the mention of Mendez.

I wrote, “Will you tell me if Manuel tells you any more about the dead girl?”

She nodded and edged towards the door. I opened my purse and gave her all the Portuguese currency I had in my bag, a handful of escudos. Then I wrote, “Please don’t tell the police about seeing the girl in Mr. Ross’ room.”

She took the money and nodded cautiously. I went to the door and peered into the hall. There was no one in sight, so I motioned to her to go out quickly. She lumbered out and went towards the stairs.

Back in my room I gathered up the sheets of the telephone pad and rapped very softly on Tom’s door. I could hear him whistling Old Black Joe — “I’m coming. I’m coming, though my head is bending low” — and pretty soon the door opened and he came in, holding a penknife in his hand. I must have looked impressed, for he said:

“Practically the first thing you learn at prep school is how to pick locks with a knife. What do you want?”

I handed him the sheets. He scowled at them. “Well, what am I supposed to do? Eat them?”

“I’ll translate if you like,” I said smugly.

He sat in silence while I read off my conversation with Maria. Then he said, “Well, well,” in a voice that sounded like Rochat’s. It was hopeless, resigned.

“Too many people,” he said, “know too many things.”

I tried to make my voice crisp, but it wilted around the edges. “What of it? We’re learning.” He didn’t answer, so I said, “Tom.”

He raised his eyes. “Yeah?”

“I don’t like that policeman. Or Violet Featherstone.”

I told him about my conversation with her in the dining room.

“Write it down,” he barked.

“What?”

“Everything she said.”

“Why?” I asked, but he only frowned and handed me the pencil and an envelope. When I had finished I had something like this:

“I’m Violet Featherstone. My father is the Honorable Cecil Featherstone. Are you an American citizen? Are you expecting a seat on the Clipper? Are you anxious to get away? Most Portuguese can’t read or are too lazy to read. There’s no danger. I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars for your seat on the Clipper. It’s a matter of life or death. If anything happens to this country you’ll be all right. I have friends. I’ll come to your room tonight.”

Tom read it. I could see the excitement leap into his eyes.

“What was her voice like?” he said sharply.

“Hoarse,” I said. “Husky.”

“Loud or soft?”

“Both. It seemed to be out of control. As if she had stage fright.”

He seemed extremely pleased. “Loud and soft,” he repeated softly.

He gathered up the envelope and the sheets of paper, put them in the ashtray and lit a match. When they had burned he ground the ashes up very fine. Then he broke one of my cigarettes in two, smoked both ends and left the butts in the ashtray.

“Neat little lad,” I said.

He smiled wryly at me. “I’m learning,” he said, “to be careful. But I might not learn in time.”

“What do you mean?”

He adjusted his face to a careful blankness. “I mean that my interview with Admiral Diamant is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Vanished. Taken out of my brief case. Except” — he smiled grimly — “the last page. The last page is in my head. I burned it after I found the girl.”

“Why?” I whispered.

“Diamant’s telephone numbers,” he said.

There was a silence. I could hear my own breath rasping through my throat.

“The island?” I said at last. “Diamant’s island.”

Tom nodded. “He said he owned an island in the Caribbean near Martinique. I believed him. But I think the island has passed into Nazi hands.”

“Martinique,” I repeated.

“I believe Diamant was a patriot who decided that collaboration was the only possible course for France. Collaboration up to a point. But when the Germans bought, or swindled him out of, his island by their pseudo-legal methods, he balked — and died. When they took away his island he knew what it meant, America is next.”

I made a feeble gesture of protest. He paid no attention.

“When I came in this afternoon I looked up Martinique in the gazetteer in the reading room. Latitude, 14°46′ North, longitude 60°53′ West. And the telephone numbers Diamant gave me were 1535 N and 6127 W. Repeat them.”

I repeated them in a whisper.

“Again,” he commanded.

I said them again and once again, 1535, 6127.

“Diamant’s island is within bombing range of the Panama Canal. A Nazi submarine base in the Caribbean could play havoc with our shipping. Those numbers go to the Navy Department in Washington. Via me, if possible. If not, via you.”

I swallowed hard and said, “What if they don’t believe me? The Navy Department, I mean.”

“I don’t think,” Tom said slowly, “that it will be a terrific surprise to them.” He came over to me. “Take care of yourself,” he said and kissed me on the mouth and was gone before I could say a word.

I sat there with my hand to my mouth and felt like crying. I heard the lock slipping into place behind Tom. I didn’t move for a long time and then only because I heard a clock strike six.

I dragged myself out of the chair and began to dress for dinner. I was afraid even to go into the bathroom and take a bath. It was half-past six by the time I’d dressed and rubbed on rouge to cover my pallor. I think now the only thing that got me through that night was not patriotism, or courage, or my feeling for Tom or pity for the dead girl — it was my new white silk jersey dinner dress with the red cummerbund.

I locked my door and walked down the hall, the new dress swishing elegantly around my legs. Violet’s door was partly open and I saw her standing in front of the mirror smoothing her hair. She turned around and scowled at me. I scowled back and went on walking.

At the desk I handed my key to Senhor Mendez. He was busy registering several new arrivals, three men and two women who talked in a language I didn’t know, and who looked incredibly weary and dusty.

All the foreigners who came to the hotel looked tired, I thought.

Senhor Mendez took my key and told me how appalled, horrified, and so on, he was at the tragedy. He said it would ruin his business.

I said I didn’t think so and looked pointedly at the hotel register crammed with names and addresses.

Senhor Mendez blushed slightly. “Now, of course, we are very busy. That is natural.”

I was still glancing at the register. Every country in Europe was represented. The five who had just arrived were from Athens.

“Senhor,” I said.

Mendez looked uneasy, as if he wanted me to go away. “Miss Lane, I am extremely occupied,” he said.

“Senhor, I saw the girl who was murdered having her lunch here. You were at the desk. She went right past—”

He touched his forehead. “I have a memory the most execrable. I tell you from my heart—”

“I don’t like what’s happening around here,” I said. “First that door was unlocked. Then the murder. What next?”

“Nothing next,” he said weakly. “Most assuredly, Miss Lane, there will be nothing next.”

He bustled away as Mr. Henhoeffer came up and handed in his key. Mr. Henhoeffer had squeezed himself into a dinner jacket that he must have bought before his stomach became bloated with hunger. He came at me in a series of little bounces.

“What a most delightful surprise, Miss Lane!” he cried.

I told him it was a small world.

“Let us not be serious,” Mr. Henhoeffer said cheerfully. “Let us forget the world. I am most happy. First I see you, then I see Myrna Loy.”

“Oh?” I said. “When did she blow in?”

Mr. Henhoeffer gave his three polite little laughs, ha ha ha, and said Myrna Loy was at the cinema. We went into the dining room.

Without waiting for the headwaiter I led Mr. Henhoeffer past the platform where a five-piece string orchestra was strumming out a garbled version of “Trees.” We sat at the other end of the dining room, as far from the windows as I could get. I didn’t want to have to look at the table where the dead girl had sat with Pedro at lunch time.

Mr. Henhoeffer calf-eyed me across the table. “Such a luffly dress, Miss Lane.”

“Glad you like it,” I said. “I dressed specially for you.” I didn’t add, as I wanted to, “So that Tom will know exactly where you are tonight, because he doesn’t trust you.”

“And I for you,” Mr. Henhoeffer said with a sigh, looking down at his dinner coat stretched taut across his middle.

Mr. Henhoeffer had, happily, a one-track mind. When he was working on me he really worked. But as soon as the food arrived he forgot my existence and began to work his way methodically through the courses with the energy of a beaver cutting down trees.

The Honorable Violet came in late and alone. Her moments before the mirror had been in vain — her hair still straggled at the back, her slip was showing and her lipstick was smeared. She ignored Mr. Henhoeffer and me and sat down, surveying the room and its occupants like a nasty tempered queen.

Mr. Henhoeffer was in no need of being entertained, having just ploughed into his second charlotte russe, so I had lots of time on my hands. I used it staring at Violet until she had to look up and acknowledge me. I smiled sweetly, and we called it quits.

I asked Mr. Henhoeffer if he was enjoying himself. He looked at me as if he’d never seen me before and said, “I beg your pardon?”

“That’s all right,” I said.

I spent the rest of the meal thinking how simple it would be to be married to Mr. Henhoeffer if you could keep him at the table most of the time. It wouldn’t be at all simple to be married to Tom Ross, I thought grimly, it might even be hell.

But hell or not, I kept thinking about him and wondering whether he danced and how much time he spent dashing around foreign countries.

I felt a pinch on the back of my hand. Mr. Henhoeffer had returned to consciousness.

“You will need a coat,” he said dreamily, thinking of the charlotte russe. “The night will be cool. Perhaps it will rain.”

“I’ll get one,” I said.

Mr. Henhoeffer waited at the desk while I went upstairs. I heard Mr. Rochat in his room, coughing and repeating sonorous rhythmical sentences in French. I listened a minute, then rapped on his door. I heard the squeak of bedsprings as he got up. He opened the door, coughing and holding a handkerchief over his mouth.

“Is there anything I could — could get you?” I said feebly. “I heard you coughing.”

“Nothing, thank you,” he said in his sick voice. “You are very kind, Miss Lane.”

I blushed and felt foolish and wished I had the brains to mind my own business.

He must have sensed my embarrassment, for he said kindly, “I think all Americans are kind. Perhaps it is because you are a young race, a naïve race. When you see someone who is — is dying like me—”

“Please,” I said.

“—you think you can stave off fate. You do not believe in fate, in the inevitable. You all believe that if you are very good little boys and girls, St. Nicholas will fill your stockings.” He made a funny little noise which might have been a laugh or a cough.

I was getting mad. I could listen quite comfortably to my father haranguing me on American complacency, but to hear this man who was dying—

I took a deep breath. “Fate is one thing,” I said. “The ersatz stuff put up in cans by Mr. Hitler is another.”

“Do not take it personally,” Mr. Rochat said gently. “You will learn what I say is right.”

I said “Bosh!” and slammed my door behind me. I strode over to the closet and grabbed a coat from the rack. As I did so a dress fell off its hanger onto the floor.

It was the beige dress I’d worn that afternoon, the one that I’d been too tired to put away, that I’d left lying on top of the suitcase.

Nothing else in the closet looked different. I went carefully through my suitcase then through the drawers of my bureau. The lid on a jar of cleansing cream had been screwed on crookedly, and when I took off the lid I found the cream smooth and even. Not the way I’d left it.

I tried the door leading into Tom’s room and found it locked. Then I looked under the bed just to make sure. I would have felt better, or at least no worse, if I’d found someone in the room.

I sat down at the telephone table and tried to think. My room had been searched and the searcher hadn’t been any too skillful. Perhaps he’d been in a hurry. Or perhaps I had been intended to find evidences of the search, as a warning to me.

My eyes were fixed on the telephone pad, blankly at first, and then with growing horror. Because it was perfectly smooth, the thin onionskin paper was smooth, and it shouldn’t have been smooth! Maria and I had written on that pad. I dimly remembered removing the sheets we had written on and seeing the pencil indentations on the blank sheet below.

The blank sheet was gone now.

“We don’t stand a chance against them,” I heard my own voice whispering. “We’re amateurs. Tom won’t be coming back.”

I tried to think of what Maria and I had written last, what marks would be clearest on the blank sheet. When I remembered I wished I hadn’t. It was: “Please don’t tell the police about seeing the girl in Mr. Ross’ room.”

It couldn’t have been any worse. And that thought, strangely enough, made me feel less scared and like shouting “Do your damnedest!” at everyone.

I flung my red coat over my arm, went out into the hall and relocked my door. Downstairs I found Mr. Henhoeffer and Senhor Mendez discussing the German campaign in Russia. They broke off sharply when they saw me and Senhor Mendez arranged his face for my benefit into an arch smile.

“You attend the cinema and not the bull fight?” he said winningly.

I told him I didn’t like bull fights.

“But the espadas are gentle with the bulls, very gentle,” Mendez insisted. “We are not like the Spaniards. They are a viciously cruel race. Me, I do not like the Spaniards.”

“Obviously not,” I said. “Are you ready, Mr. Henhoeffer?”

Mr. Henhoeffer took my arm and we went off. I saw the Honorable Violet watching us from behind a palm tree in the lobby. As we passed her I said, “Boo!” very pleasantly and was rewarded by a haughty glare. I glared back.

Mr. Henhoeffer seemed puzzled by this exchange. “You do not like the English lady?” he asked.

“Of course I do,” I said. “I just like to play games.”

“Her father is what you Yonkies would call a big shot. He is in jail.”

I stopped walking. “In jail?”

“Oh, yes. He is concentrated, interned, as you say, in England. He talked too much,” Mr. Henhoeffer added sadly. “Senhor Mendez told me.”

“What did he talk about?”

“Democracy,” Mr. Henhoeffer said. “He didn’t like it.”

“Oh,” I paused. “I think I remember reading about it. What is his name?”

“Herbert, I think it is. I recall it because it is like my own name, Herman. Herbert, Herman. Very alike, yes?”

I said “Yes,” thinking of Violet’s words at lunch: “My father is the Honorable Cecil Featherstone.”

So what, I wondered. So the Honorable Violet was a congenital liar, or Mr. Henhoeffer’s memory was bad.

The cinema was only a few blocks down the Avenida so we walked there. The air was heavy with the scent of roses. All I could think of was Tom and funerals and more funerals and Tom. Where had he gone? Why hadn’t he locked himself in his room as Mr. George had advised?

The streets were filled with people on their way to movies or the bull fight, or just strolling. They all seemed friendly and happy and careless. Occasionally one of them called out at us seeing Mr. Henhoeffer’s dinner jacket and my long dress and red coat.

At the door of the theatre we could hear a vast clamor from inside, whistles, shouts, boos and the stamping of feet.

We sat down near the back of the house. The newsreel was on, showing King George and Queen Elizabeth reviewing troops at Aldershot. The audience seemed to be nicely divided, half of them for and half of them against. Mr. Henhoeffer got into the spirit of the thing immediately and began to clap and shout, “Bravo!” After that we had a view of Hitler on the Russian front and Mr. Henhoeffer went into reverse and shouted some insulting sounding words in German. It was one of the noisiest evenings I ever spent.

We came out about ten-thirty and Mr. Henhoeffer invited me to have coffee at a sidewalk cafe. I agreed, chiefly because I was afraid to go back to the hotel, afraid Tom wouldn’t be there and the police would.

Mr. Henhoeffer pulled out my chair with a little flourish. He ordered coffee and cognac and told me I was as pale and beautiful as a camellia. A couple of men sitting at the next table looked up when they heard us talking in English.

I said, “We mustn’t speak so loudly. You never know who is listening.”

“This is not Germany,” Mr. Henhoeffer protested. “There is no Gestapo in Portugal, and I am only telling you how you are beautiful.”

I changed the subject by asking him how he had gotten out of Germany.

“I left before the war,” he said. “I had friends. And” — he looked at me pointedly — “I had money.”

“Aren’t you afraid?” I asked.

He thumped the table with his fist. “Never have I been afraid! The Nazis do not want me and I do not want them. We are agreed.”

It sounded reasonable enough, from both viewpoints. It also sounded too easy, much too easy.

“Didn’t they come after you?” I asked.

“Oh, poof!” Mr. Henhoeffer said petulantly. “Are all Yonky girls serious like you? I talk of your beauty and you talk of the Nazis.”

I attached a smile to my face and looked around at the people near us. The first person I saw was Duarte. He was at a table a few yards away, watching me and smiling. I nodded distantly and turned aside.

A few seconds later I heard his voice in my ear. “You like our wine?”

“Are you following me?” I demanded.

Mr. Henhoeffer gave me a sickly grin, and told me I mustn’t forget my manners. He had a real respect for the police, even Portuguese.

“I come here every night,” Duarte said pleasantly. “To drink, to watch.”

“Watch what?” I said, gulping.

“Oh, people. Like Mr. Henhoeffer here. Mr. Henhoeffer and I are old friends.”

Mr. Henhoeffer smiled biliously and said nothing.

“You leave tomorrow,” Duarte said to me. It didn’t sound like a question or an order. It was a statement — with reservations: You leave tomorrow if you can, if you’re alive.

I said, “I think we’d better go back now, Mr. Henhoeffer. It’s late.”

Duarte stood and watched us leave. I could feel his eyes boring into my back as I walked away.

Mr. Henhoeffer and I walked in silence for some time. I looked back once or twice to see if we were being followed.

Mr. Henhoeffer was rather annoyed. “You fear the policeman, Duarte?”

“He looks sly,” I said.

“Oh, sly.” He shrugged, dismissing slyness as one of the lesser evils of policemen.

“I don’t believe he’s the interpreter,” I said. “I think he’s the big shot himself, using De Castro as a screen, thinking he’ll get more out of us.”

Mr. Henhoeffer gave me a sharp glance. “That is very shrewd, Miss Lane. I, too, have considered it. But you have nothing to fear. Duarte has only to look at you to know you are as innocent as a flower.”

I thought of the telephone pad, the sentence in Spanish in my handwriting: “Please don’t tell the police about seeing the girl in Mr. Ross’ room.”

Innocent as a flower. I said, “You reassure me.”

We had nearly reached the hotel now. Mr. Henhoeffer had recovered his amiability and was telling me about the bull fights he had seen in Porto. He said, “And to entice the bull out of the ring they surround him with beautiful beribboned cows.”

I thought that was a lovely piece of whimsy. “Just like a bull,” I said. “You men are all alike.”

The hotel lobby was nearly deserted when we arrived. Violet was still propped against her palm tree. I wondered whether she’d been sitting there all evening, but Violet was not the type of person of whom you asked inane personal questions.

Mendez was not at the desk. His place had been taken by a young man who spoke beautiful French, but no English. I got my key from him and went up to my room alone. Mr. Henhoeffer had discovered he was out of cigarettes and had gone out again.

When I unlocked my door I found that the lights which I had left on were now turned off. A gust of warm air blew out into the corridor. It had a queer sweetish odor that I didn’t recognize.

I stood there for a full minute, not daring to go inside. Then I closed my door quietly and went downstairs again, clinging to the bannister to steady myself. It was the sight of Violet Featherstone sitting beside the palm tree which calmed me somewhat. She was so aloof and contemptuous of her surroundings.

I swallowed my pride and walked straight over to her. “I know you don’t like me and I’m not crazy about you either, but I want to talk to s-s-somebody,” I said.

I was getting accustomed to surprises, but the Honorable Violet’s next words nearly knocked me out. Without moving her head or her mouth a fraction of an inch, she hissed:

“Go back to your room, you damn dumb little blonde.”

I stepped back, directly into the path of Mr. Henhoeffer. He didn’t even notice me. His eyes were glazed and his voice was a feeble bleat. Violet just stood there as though everything were as usual.

“Fire! Fire!” he croaked. “Fire!”

He staggered towards the desk. I ran after him, shouting, “Where? Where is it?”

He began to jabber in German, pointing and rolling his eyes. Senhor Mendez materialized behind the desk. The lobby seemed to come alive suddenly, the doors vomited out people.

Mendez reached across the desk and grabbed Mr. Henhoeffer’s arm. He spat out a word in German. Mr. Henhoeffer calmed down somewhat.

“A bomb,” he whispered. “A bomb. I heard it. I was nearly killed.”

“Where?” I shrieked.

“That shop. That English shop—”

I didn’t wait to hear more. I was running toward the door, dimly aware there were people following me. From the steps I could see the flames and smoke and the crowds pressing in close.

I ran along the street, and cried as I ran. My body felt light, almost weightless, as if the laws of gravity had been suspended to hurry me on my way to the shop with its grimy windows. I knew there’d be a body or parts of one. The long thin body of the Cockney. E. George, Tobacco.

I stopped running because I was bumping into people, and because in all that mass of humanity the only person I was aware of was Duarte. It was as if he’d been waiting for me there, for he turned instantly and caught my eye and shouldered his way through the crowd towards me. I backed away. I felt the heat of the flames on my face, I heard the shriek of sirens, the smash of glass, but I was conscious chiefly of Duarte coming toward me with that strange challenging smile.

He was near enough to touch me. I heard his voice faintly in my ears. “Bad fire. Go back. Go back. A man was killed.”

“Who was it?” I whispered.

He couldn’t hear me over the roar of fire, the shriek of sirens, but he sensed what the question was. He said, “Mr. George.”

I swung round and started back to the hotel. People swept past me toward the fire. They all looked the same to me, they were all thin and pale and English — hundreds of Georges. One of them grasped my hand and turned out to be Senhor Mendez. I shook him off.

At the door of the hotel I stopped and leaned against a pillar gasping for breath. I had been running for sanctuary, for safety — and the only sanctuary I had was my room with its two frail locks and the queer, sickening odor I couldn’t name. Tom was gone. Mr. George was gone. I was the only one left now.

In the street nearby I heard someone cough, and I thought of Mr. Rochat pointing to his chest and holding the handkerchief to his mouth. I thought of the French refugees machine-gunned on the roads, the shattered buildings I’d seen in London, the children playing beside bomb craters. I thought of the swarthy little man carrying his poster: “500,000 prisioneiros sovieticos.”

I opened the door and sailed into the hotel, blind mad. I kicked someone’s ankle as I strode up to the desk. The ankle belonged to the Honorable Violet and that made me feel better.

She said, “Really!” in her great-lady voice.

“Out of my way, duchess,” I said. “I’m in a hurry.”

“What a pity,” Violet drawled. “Everyone’s gone to see the fire and you’ll have to wait for your key.”

I held up my key. “Why aren’t you at the fire? You should be. An Englishman was killed, with a bomb. Bombs are quicker than morphine, aren’t they?”

Not a muscle in her face quivered.

I tried again. “I’m so interested in the English aristocracy. I’ve been looking up your family tree. I found lots of monkeys but not one Cecil Feather stone.”

Violet Featherstone was the most surprising person I’ve ever met. The only reaction I got from her was an annoyed frown and, “You pronounce Cecil as in trestle, not Cecil as in weasel.”

Then she turned her head away and began tapping her foot impatiently on the marble floor. I was too stunned to move.

Mendez came in then and scurried behind the desk. When Violet left I said casually. “You knew the owner of the shop that was burned, Senhor?”

He tugged at his collar and looked cautiously around the lobby. Then he leaned closer to me. “Not to say, know him. I have seen him. I have on one or two occasions talked to him.”

“But you didn’t know him?” I said dryly.

Mendez shrugged. “That is so. In Lisbon people come and go and go and come. So difficult—”

I walked away, knowing I wouldn’t get anything out of the slippery little Mendez. As I walked up the stairs Maria’s words came back to me: “Mendez knows the girl.” Mendez apparently had a habit of disowning his acquaintances as soon as they died. I had a most unpleasant vision of him viewing my battered body and saying, “I don’t actually know her.”

When I opened my door the funny smell floated out to me again, but I didn’t allow myself time to think about it. I was inside with my hand on the light switch before I could change my mind.

The light went on. Maria was lying on my bed with her throat slit.

She had one arm flung out and the blood was still flowing sluggishly down it and dripping on to the floor, playing a little tune, drip — plunk — plunk — drip, like a leaking tap.

I sat down and closed my eyes and put my hands over my ears, but I could still see her, lying there with her throat open, I could still hear the little tune, plunk — drip. Then other images joined Maria’s — Duarte smiling, the English girl wrapped in the sheet, Mr. Rochat, Duarte again. My ears were alive with voices:

“You leave tomorrow.”

“Cecil as in trestle—”

“Drip — plunk — plunk.”

“As innocent as a flower.”

“You will learn. You will learn.”

Drip—

I let my hands fall and opened my eyes. There was a new sound now, the creak of a board in the floor. It came from Tom’s room. I got up, hanging onto the back of my chair, and began to giggle.

I couldn’t stop. “Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,” I said, giggling, “Stole a pig, and away he run. Tom, Tom—”

And then he came through the door and I tried to go to him and found I was floating. Mr. Henhoeffer and I were floating together to New York — Mr. Henhoeffer had smuggled a pair of wings out of Germany — he had friends and money and so we were floating. He didn’t pinch me, he slapped my face, very hard.

“Wake up,” Tom was saying. “Please, darling!”

He slapped me again.

“Don’t,” I whispered. “Tom.”

He held me very quietly for a long time, stroking my hair, not talking. I pressed my face against his coat and floated again. This time I was with Tom and we were dancing and I was saying, “I love your coat. Your coat is different from all other coats—”

I opened my eyes and saw Tom looking down at me. He was grinning broadly and stroking my cheek.

I disentangled myself and said coldly, “I must have been raving. They turn out coats like yours by the million. I don’t even think it’s a nice color.”

“Liar.” He kissed me again, hard. Then he thrust me into a chair and went over to Maria. He mumbled something that sounded like “Sorry,” then he turned back to me.

“You’ll have to get out of here tonight, now. I can’t move her like the girl. We couldn’t get rid of the bloodstains.”

“They won’t let me go,” I whispered. “The police. Duarte.” I told him about the pages from the telephone pad, about meeting Duarte twice that night. I said I thought Duarte had taken the pages.

“Have you a dark dress? Get into it. Put your papers and money in your purse and grab a coat. A dark one.”

“No—” I protested.

“Hurry up,” he said grimly. “I’ll be back.”

He slipped back into his room. I got into a black wool dress and coat, and stuffed my purse with everything I could get into it. I was trying to close the zipper when I heard a soft knock on my door, the door that led into the corridor.

I couldn’t pretend to be asleep because my light was on and I knew it could be seen under the door. I called out, “Who’s there? I’m just undressing.”

“Pierre Rochat. I won’t bother you.” His voice was feeble and sad. “I wanted to apologize.”

He coughed for a minute. When he stopped I said, “That’s all right,” making my voice sound sleepy. “Goodnight, Mr. Rochat.”

He said, “Goodnight,” and moved across the hall. I heard his door close with a little click.

Tom came back wearing his hat and a topcoat with its pockets bulging. I began to pour out questions: “How are we going? Where are we going? There’s no place—”

He didn’t answer but went over to the side window, opened it wide, and looked out.

“You’re... you’re coming too?” I said.

He nodded.

“Won’t it look suspicious, both of us vanishing together?”

He turned around. “Six hours to go. If we get out now and stay out we’ll be all right. As for suspicions—” He glanced over to the bed where Maria lay. “That shows that they know, everything.”

“The police won’t let us go. When they find Maria they’ll arrest me.”

“If they find you,” Tom said. He had taken a coil of thin rope from his pocket and was tying it to the bedstead, talking half to himself, half to me. “The fire was a break. There won’t be anyone on this street and it’s only one floor down. Think you can make it?”

“Think I can?” I said bitterly. “I damn well have to.”

“Fine.” Tom smiled. “Turn out the light.”

I turned off the light, jammed my purse in my coat pocket and went to the window. Tom gave me his gloves of heavy pigskin. I put them on and flung one leg over the window sill.

Tom kissed me. “Don’t look down. See you later.”

Of course I looked down immediately. The street below was dimly lit, the lamps obscured by the thick foliage on the trees. As I looked I saw something move behind a tree and the light gleamed for an instant on a face turned up to my window.

I flung myself back into the room. “Someone down there,” I whispered hoarsely. “Someone—”

Tom grabbed my hand and pulled me through the door into his room. He peered out into the corridor and motioned me to come out.

I walked out toward the stairs. Tom was right behind me, moving swiftly and silently. He spoke one word, “Kitchen,” and then walked ahead of me. For all his speed he managed to appear quite casual as he made for the dining room. The clerk who was taking Mendez’ place behind the desk didn’t even look up as he passed, and the only other people in the lobby were the people who arrived from Athens. They were near the main door talking and gesticulating, probably about the fire.

The dining room was dark and I kept stumbling into chairs, but I knew the place well enough to reach the kitchen.

The light was off here, too, and I heard sounds of scuffling feet and whispered curses and deep, painful breathing. I could see nothing at all but I moved toward the sounds, raising my purse over my head ready to strike. My purse at its fullest is practically a lethal weapon, and I was prepared to use it when I heard a soft thud a few feet in front of me and Tom’s voice coming out of the darkness.

“Over here. Hurry.”

I stepped over something soft and squishy and followed the sound of Tom’s voice. He had opened the back door and a thin ribbon of yellow light streamed into the kitchen from a lamp outside the door.

Then we were in a narrow alley enclosed on each side by a high stone wall, and leading, I guessed, into Central Station. Tom stood a moment in the shadow of the wall, looking back at the door, holding one hand against his side. He had his automatic pointed toward the doorway.

“Are you hurt?” I whispered.

He moved to get between me and the door. The next instant I saw why.

The Honorable Violet was standing in the doorway. Her clothes were tom and the dim yellow light had jaundiced her face. She had a large, queer shaped piece of metal in her hand, and I didn’t know until I heard a “pop” that it was a pistol with a silencer attached.

Tom’s automatic clattered to the alley. Another “pop” and I felt something whiz past my ear, and then I was running, running as I’d never run before, down the alley with Tom behind me. We reached a curve and Tom pulled me up behind it and looked back. There was a third “pop,” very faint this time.

“Okay,” Tom said. “She’s not following.”

Right in front of us we heard a vast rumble and knew we must be somewhere in the station.

The next half-hour was confused. I was aware of swarms of people milling around us and the whistle and rumble of trains; I remember getting into a noisy taxi, and getting out, and getting into another noisy taxi. I remember going up and down hills at a crazy speed, and Tom holding his side and saying, “That damn little so-and-so got me in the ribs with her elbow.”

I didn’t ask where we were going. I sat with my head on Tom’s shoulder, and I could think of nothing but that we were safe, we were leaving Lisbon. I closed my eyes and the taxi rattled on.

When I woke up we were in the country and Tom and the taxi driver were conversing in very halting French. I sat up straight. To the left were huge hills massed with foliage. On the top of one distant hill in the pale light of the quarter moon gleamed a stone castle, overlooking a ravine.

Tom said Cintra was in the ravine. Beyond the next bend in the road Cintra itself came into view, clinging to the side of the hill, with a few lights glittering here and there.

Tom and the driver talked again, and instead of turning off into the city the driver kept on the main road, and we left Cintra behind. About five miles further on I began to smell the ocean and hear the roar of the surf. I opened the back window of the taxi and the moist air poured over my face, tangy and fresh.

In the dim moonlight the beach was silver and white against the black water. The taxi stopped and we got out. Tom paid the driver and he drove off. I remember watching the tail-light grow smaller and fainter and vanish altogether, and the feeling of panic came back to me. The beach was lonely, the water black.

“Tom—”

He turned toward me, but there was no comfort for me in his face. It too looked strange and grim and as pallid as the sand.

I whispered again, “Tom—”

“Now what?” he said crossly and the sound of his voice made everything all right again. It had just that blend of impatience and condescension men use the world over when their women develop nerves. I laughed with relief, and Tom laughed, too, and grabbed my arm. We began to walk.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Praia das Macas,” he said.

“But why?”

“That’s why.” He pointed across the sand to a small white stone cottage between us and the sea. I could see the dim outline of what seemed to be a fishing boat moored behind it. The cottage was dark. Tom approached it first, and as he was mounting the steps a light was turned on in one of the front rooms, and a minute later the door opened.

A man’s voice said, “Ross?”

Tom said, “Yeah,” and then to me, “Come on!”

I followed him up the steps and into the cottage, blinking my eyes in the sudden light. The door closed behind me. I looked around at the man who had closed it and my knees began to shake.

Because, unless I was stark staring mad, I was looking at the ghost of Mr. George.

I was absorbing my shocks better now. I said dully but politely, “How do you do? I thought you were dead.”

Mr. George’s ghost held up the lamp so I could see him better. Then he smiled and said, “You may pinch me or you may pinch yourself. Either will serve the purpose.”

“S-someone is dead,” I whispered.

Mr. George sobered. “A great many people are dead. In my profession you expect it.”

He turned and led the way into a small parlor which looked to me like the sitting room of a tiny English country pub, except for the orange tree growing in a tub near the window. Mr. George put the lamp on a table and brought me a glass of some sweet deep red wine.

“But the fire?” I asked. “And the bomb?”

Tom said, “Mr. George made the bomb.”

Mr. George smiled modestly. “It is a kind of little hobby of mine,” he said with magnificent understatement. “That particular bomb had been prepared for some time, waiting.”

“Waiting?” I repeated.

“Waiting for the time for Pedro or one of the many Pedros to come and get me. No bomb ever served a better purpose — it got the man who killed Alice and provided me with a painless entré to the obit columns. It was better for me to die. It does away with a number of small technicalities.” He turned to Tom and his voice was crisper. “Tell me what happened.”

Tom told him. When he had finished, Mr. George sat back in his chair and smiled.

“Violet’s a crack shot,” he mused.

“You know her?” I gasped.

“Very well indeed,” he replied. “Agents frequently know each other — in Prague I was well acquainted with a German agent — especially in capital cities like this where foreign agents are tripping over each other and over themselves.”

He filled my glass again. Despite the questions that were bubbling on my lips I was getting sleepy and my eyes kept closing except when I held my lids open rigidly. Finally I gave it up entirely and just listened to Tom and Mr. George discussing the events of the night. Their voices were a drowsy drone in my ears, but I managed to piece together some things that had been bothering me.

Tom had apparently gone to Mr. George’s shop early in the evening and Mr. George had given him the location of the cottage in case he needed sanctuary. He had even specified the taxi we were to take — the driver was an old friend of Mr. George’s. I learned also that Mendez, for a consideration, supplied Mr. George with a list of his new guests, their phone calls, mail, friends and behaviour. He did the same for anyone else who cared to meet his price.

I dimly remember Mr. George talking about the girl, Alice. “—a double spy, ostensibly for the Nazis, actually one of the best agents I’ve ever worked with, cool, intelligent, resourceful. Her husband was killed in Norway and the Intelligence Department sent her here because she had lived in Portugal when she was a child.”

I went to sleep thinking of Alice’s smile when she spoke to me across the table. And then I was standing on the desk in the hotel, wearing Tom’s pigskin gloves and singing, “Do you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?” until I was hoarse. The lobby was filled with people shouting at me, and in front of me was Violet, holding her pistol; and every time I stopped singing she shot at me and I had to start all over again. When I couldn’t sing any longer she shot me through the shoulder.

When I woke someone was grasping my shoulder and saying urgently, “Wake up, Lane!” The voice was unpleasantly familiar. It sounded like Violet’s voice in my dream, saying, “Sing it again!”

I propped my eyelids open and then let them fall again as quickly as possible. I began to sing in a quavering falsetto, “Oh, do you remember sweet Alice—”

The unpleasantly familiar voice said, “She’s tight as a tick. Lane, wake up.”

I knew then that I wasn’t asleep, that I wasn’t even crazy, that the Honorable Violet herself was sitting beside me and wanted me to wake up before she shot me. She wanted the numbers, of course. She’d already killed Tom and Mr. George.

Then the voice again. “What’s she been drinking? Vodka?”

My eyelids began to flutter and I kept swallowing hard. I couldn’t pretend any longer, so I sat up straight and opened my eyes.

I was still in the chair in Mr. George’s sitting room. Violet was standing beside the table pouring some water into a glass. Mr. George was there, too, watching Violet and smiling. There was no sign of Tom.

“Wh-what have you done with him?” I shouted at Mr. George. “You traitor!”

The Honorable Violet turned to me with an air of polite interest and handed me the glass of water. “Drink this and wake up. We have work to do.”

I didn’t move.

Violet said to Mr. George, “Haven’t you told her?”

“She went to sleep,” Mr. George replied. “Anyway, I thought she’d know by this time.”

“Everyone else may know,” Violet said nastily, “but not Lane.” She turned to me. “So you think I couldn’t have shot you at that distance with a Luger? In a better light I could have removed your eyelashes, one by one.”

Mr. George said, “Don’t boast, Violet. If you didn’t hammer it home to everyone that you were a crack shot, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

She looked at him steadily. “Cecil was suspicious before I let these two get away. I wouldn’t have lasted another week once Cecil had arrived.”

“Who is Cecil?” I said in a high thin squeak. “Who are you? Who’s anyone?”

“Violet Featherstone,” Violet said, looking slightly surprised as she had the first time I asked her name.

“But your father?”

Violet smiled. “My father is Herbert Featherstone, now in the care of His Majesty’s Government.”

“He is really interned?”

“Of course. Marvelous bait for the Nazis, as you can imagine. I was contacted less than a week after Herbert was arrested. I thought I’d take the job and see a bit of the world. Rome, Bucharest, and then here.”

“And now?” Mr. George said softly. “Now that you’re spotted?”

“Now,” Violet said carefully, “I disappear for a time and then turn up — where, George?”

Mr. George smiled at her. “Wherever the fishing schooner will take us.”

They were a wonderful pair, Mr. George with his little hobby, and Violet seeing a bit of the world. I must have been gaping with admiration because Violet blushed and abruptly changed the subject.

“Better relieve Ross, George.”

Mr. George went out.

“Relieve Tom?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“We’re expecting company,” Violet said tersely. She picked up her Luger from the table and balanced it in her hand. “Someone I want a crack at very badly — the man who got Alice. Not the man who poisoned her, Pedro was just a hired killer. I want Cecil, the man who ordered her to be killed, the man who saw her warn Tom Ross when she dropped her purse.”

“But why did she do it if Cecil was there?”

“She didn’t know him,” Violet said grimly. “But she knew Tom Ross from his description.”

“Description?”

“We were all warned by telephone last night that Ross was coming to Lisbon, all the Nazi agents, real and otherwise, including Alice and me. The foreign correspondents in unoccupied France are well watched. So, I may add, are French naval officers like Diamant. The Nazis know that the French navy, more than the army, is against them. So Diamant was watched, and Diamant talked — and the Nazi agents here were ordered to see that Diamant’s talking did no harm. We were told to get Ross.”

I sat shivering and silent.

“So I parked in the lobby and waited for him to come. Alice was there, too. She warned Tom Ross the best way she could. But Cecil saw her and I had to tell her that Cecil saw her. That’s where you came in.” She paused and drew in her breath.

“I wasn’t talking to you at lunch. I was talking to Alice. Pedro couldn’t speak English and I knew you wouldn’t catch on.”

I said in a small voice, “No, I didn’t. But I think Tom figured it out later when I told him what you said and how your voice sounded.”

“He’s a bright boy. Alice and I have used that method of communication for months and haven’t been spotted. Alice was the go-between for George and me. She’d come to lunch or dinner at the hotel, and I’d attach myself to someone at a nearby table and talk. It was simple and it worked.”

“You did it very well,” I said.

“Practice,” Violet said dryly. “And I always was a good liar. Alice, of course, could always get me to feed her. She didn’t stay at the hotel.” She paused again. “Well, I told her Cecil had come and that she was to get out right away, but it was too late.”

There was a silence, and then Tom came in. He gave me a sweet and decidedly sheepish smile. I stared at him coldly.

“Why didn’t you tell me about Violet?” I demanded.

Violet, said dryly, “Oh, come now, Lane. You wouldn’t begrudge a man his chance to be a hero in front of the girl he loves. Listen.”

She held up her hand and we were both quiet. Over the roar of the breakers we could hear a new sound, the sound of a motor, then the shriek of brakes. I looked at Violet. She was listening and smiling.

Mr. George came into the room carrying a gun.

“He’s come,” he said.

“Good,” Violet said calmly. “Is he alone?”

“Can’t tell. It’s too dark.”

Violet turned to Tom. “Take Lane into the kitchen and be quiet. You have a gun?”

Tom nodded and gave me a push out the door. I heard Violet say to Mr. George, “I knew he couldn’t resist coming.”

“It’s dangerous,” Mr. George said quietly. “For the two kids in there especially. You and I, well—”

“Dangerous,” Violet said. “But he doesn’t know they’re here. I told him I was going to track you down, that I had information about this cottage. I didn’t know the Americans would be here. How could Cecil know?”

The door closed then, and I was crouched in the dark kitchen with Tom beside me. The luminous dial on my watch said 4:45. I could hear Violet moving around in the hall beyond the door, then a soft knock at the front door and the creak of a hinge, Violet’s calm voice saying, “Hello, Cecil.”

I strained closer to the kitchen door. A voice I knew well, a gloomy, sick voice was saying, “Hello Violet. Put down your gun, please.”

“Are you alone, Cecil?” Violet asked.

They sounded like two old friends who understood each other very well.

“No, not alone.” The man I knew as Rochat stopped to cough, and I knew from the sound he was holding his handkerchief to his mouth. “Not alone. I brought two friends with me. One of them is at the back door, well armed I may add, and the other is in the car at the front. And they have orders to let no one but me out of this house, alive.”

“So?” Violet’s voice didn’t have a tremor. “Well, whatever happens, you’re through, Cecil. Your friends don’t like incompetence and failure. They’re suspicious of their French agents anyway, aren’t they? Yes, whatever happens you’re going to pay for killing Alice. That was a mistake.”

Rochat said, “You think so?”

“And Maria? You did that yourself, perhaps?”

“Yes,” Rochat said. “I’d paid her not to tell anyone that she saw me coming out of Ross’ room. Then Miss Lane paid her a little more than I did, and the upshot was that she had to die. However, that’s beside the point, Violet. You understand that certain deaths are inevitable.”

“Yours,” Violet said, calm and hard.

“Mine certainly. Yours, too. Perhaps the two Americans—”

“They’re gone.”

“It’s too late to lie.”

“But I have a friend with me. I imagine he’s got a gun pointing right at your head. That’s the worst of our business. We can’t trust each other.”

“Your friend, the Englishman?” Rochat laughed softly. “I’ve never seen him but I’ve heard things, here and there. A pity about his shop. I imagine the corpse was Pedro. Pedro seems to be missing.”

“It was Pedro,” Violet said grimly.

“I liked your method of communicating with Alice. Quite new to me. Too bad you’ll never use it again.”

“You’ve got delusions of grandeur,” Violet said contemptuously.

There was a silence, then a soft laugh. “Did you think I’d let you live when I have to die, Violet? Do you think I could bear to die knowing you were alive? I’d like to crush every flower, uproot every tree and blade of grass, because I don’t want anything to be alive after my time—”

“You’re mad, Cecil,” Violet said coolly. “I’ve always thought you were mad, even in Bucharest when I first met you.”

“Where are the Americans?”

“Gone.”

“I have only to call out, Violet, and have two men with submachine guns at my side. I believe you’re already acquainted with Duarte and De Castro. And more are coming. Where are the Americans?”

I felt the pressure of Tom’s fingers on my arm. Duarte here, with a submachine gun, Duarte—

“More are coming, Violet. I’m giving you your chance. Not one of you will get away, Violet, not one. We’re strong, we’re organized, and we can fight. Even when we’re dying we can fight your poor little race of shopkeepers—”

There was a “pop,” a sound like a cork being pulled out of a bottle of champagne, then a cough and a thud and a deep silence.

Tom opened the door. Rochat was lying on the floor of the hall and Violet was standing looking down at him. The air smelled of cordite.

We waited tensely, expecting the sharp staccato of a machine gun. But there was no noise from outside the house except the surf.

Mr. George came into the hall. Violet looked up and said, “Sorry.”

“They didn’t hear it,” Mr. George whispered. “The ocean covered the shot.”

“Then he did bring Duarte and De Castro?” Violet said.

Mr. George nodded. “They’re out there all right. I have suspected before now that Duarte was in their pay. And more coming.”

“Sorry,” Violet said again. “I guess I couldn’t stand that damned Fascist standing there telling me how well they can fight. Have I — wrecked our chances?”

Mr. George said, “No. No, wait.” He bent over Rochat and began tugging at the sleeves of his coat, talking as he worked. “We’re both tall, both thin.”

“You couldn’t fool Duarte like that. There’s not a chance.” Violet put her hand on his shoulder, but Mr. George thrust her away, none too gently. He had Rochat’s topcoat off now. There was blood on it.

“You must be mad!” Violet cried.

“No, wait.” He was buttoning the coat and picking up Rochat’s hat from the floor.

“You couldn’t fool a baby,” Violet said savagely.

“The darkness will cover me until I get to the car. One man is in the car, the other is at the back of the house. What I’m going to do is this: I’m going to walk halfway to the car. I’ll be safe until then. Violet, you’ll be at the window of the front bedroom upstairs. Ross, you’ll be at the kitchen window. When I’m halfway to the car, I’ll light a cigarette.”

“And then?” Violet said, calmly now.

“Then the man in the car will see that I’m not Cecil. He’ll be able to see my face, and anyway he’ll know that Cecil doesn’t smoke.”

“So?” Violet said.

“So he’ll shoot at me. And you, Violet — you’ll shoot him by the flash of his own gun.”

“Can’t be done,” Violet said flatly. “Can’t.”

“It has been done,” Mr. George said. “In the last war a German sniper got one of my men when he lit a match.”

“I’m not a sniper. I couldn’t risk— Oh, damn you, George.”

Mr. George knew he had won. He grinned and said, “Bless you, Violet. Get upstairs.”

Tom shoved me into a chair in the sitting room and turned down the wick of the lamp. And there I sat, like a bump on a log, while a man casually walked toward death and a woman stood at a window with her gun raised, her eyes straining into the darkness.

I heard the front door creak as it opened, footsteps descending the veranda steps, and then nothing — nothing but the sound of the ocean and the blood pounding against my ears.

I crept to the window, moved the blind a little, and looked out. I could see the dim outline of a car, I could see a man walking, stopping for a second, and then the sudden flare of a match.

From the car came a flash and a volley of quick sharp shots, a pause and another volley. A shadow was crawling towards the car like some wounded beast of the night.

From the kitchen I heard the crash of glass and a new kind of shot, deafeningly loud, and Tom’s voice cursing. He told me afterwards he shot Duarte when he moved out of the shadow of the house to run to the car. There was one more shot, the kind I’d come to know, the cork-out-of-a-bottle sound of Violet’s gun.

I don’t know how long I clung there to the window sill, frozen with fear, peering out into the darkness. I heard Violet come crashing down the stairs and out the front door, and I knew by the buoyant sound of her steps that she hadn’t missed.

I have heard Americans speak of the “decadent English upper classes,” but I’m sure they could never have met Violet Featherstone. It was Violet who sterilized Tom’s pen-knife and dug the bullet out of George’s arm and bandaged him with strips of a tablecloth.

“Will you two be able to handle the fishing smack, with George’s arm wounded?” Tom said.

Mr. George smiled impassively and touched his arm. “It’s my left arm, and it’s only a flesh wound. The weather’s good, and I can handle the tiller. Violet’s been sailing boats since she was a baby.”

Violet spoke softly. “We shall be all right.” It was hard not to believe her.

“But where are you going?” I said.

“You can’t reach England in a fishing smack.”

Violet smiled, almost for the first time since I had seen her. Her smile seemed to me to be a recognition of all peril and an answer to all fear. “We shall be all right,” she repeated. “The Atlantic is still a British ocean. I think we’ll sail due west into the shipping lanes. Ever since I was a girl I’ve wanted to sail due west into the Atlantic.” Her voice broke off, and she turned to Tom. “It’s nearly dawn. You’ve less than an hour to get to Cintra and board the Clipper. You must leave now.”

“Take my car,” said Mr. George. “I won’t be needing it. And Duarte’s car might be recognized.”

We said our goodbyes on the wharf behind the cottage. Violet had put on a pair of Mr. George’s trousers and a sweater, and was shaking out the great brown triangular sail of the fishing smack. The faint light from the east was turning the black water to the greyness of lead. I felt chilled and frightened for a moment. Our two friends were alive, and our enemies were dead. But the grey water sucking at the wharf seemed menacing and sullen, and the dark continent of Europe seemed menacing behind us.

Violet’s smile when she said goodbye reassured me. I shall never forget that warm, proud, invincible smile. She waved her hand as gaily as if she were going for a sail on the Thames, and turned back to her work. Tom and I shook hands with Mr. George. Neither of us said anything. We climbed up the bank to the car, and turned towards Cintra and the Clipper and the dawn...

The stewardess adjusted my safety belt and gave me a paper bag. I settled back in the seat and prepared to ask Tom the questions I hadn’t had time to ask before.

I said, “Tom.”

Tom opened his eyes very slightly.

“What about Mr. Henhoeffer?”

“He’s all right,” Tom said drowsily.

“Really a refugee?”

“Mmm.”

“Now that I’ve thought it all over, of course I know it couldn’t have been anyone else but Rochat who was responsible for Maria’s death. Remember when we were in my room and he knocked on my door and said he wanted to apologize?”

“Mmm.”

“That’s how he knew we were going to try to get away. He knew Maria was in my room dead, you see; so when I pretended I was just going to bed he knew I was lying, that I was going to get away if I could. He went out and waited to watch my window. Are you listening, Tom?”

No answer.

“Tom, are we — are we going to get married?”

Tom opened his eyes and said, “Sure,” and was asleep five seconds later.