Читать книгу The Day the World Ended - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 21
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ОглавлениеFor several moments I was dumbfounded. Suspect B had shown his hand! In spite of all my precautions, I had been tracked. We confronted one another in silence, then:
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, “and I can’t imagine where you have sprung from.”
“Easy answered.” Kluster rolled the unlighted cigar from one end of his flexible mouth to the other. “I mean we both belong in the same camp. And I didn’t spring from any place; I just walked up.”
“Walked up?”
“You said it. I came along beside the baby canyon. That was your route.”
“But I heard no sound.”
“I don’t make any sound when I don’t want to. Besides, you were busy.”
“Do you mean,” I demanded angrily, “that you have been following me?”
“No, sir. I got here first.”
“What!”
“You passed me by the little old cave back there. As soon as you were all set I crept up on you.”
Anger left me. The man’s imperturbable ill-humour was defeating. If, in spite of his surly friendliness, he “belonged” in the enemy camp, at least he was a comprehensible flesh-and-blood American citizen. Really, I hadn’t a scrap of evidence connecting him with the purpose of my journey, except his friendship with Mme. Yburg. After all, the Devil’s Elbow was open to the public; and amid all this phantasmagoria it was good to get to grips with sanity; therefore:
“At the moment, Mr. Kluster,” I said, “you definitely have the advantage. I don’t know how you got here, and I don’t know why you came here. I don’t even know who you are, except that your name is Kluster——”
As I spoke, he had been regarding me under drooping lids—lids which concealed a pair of lancet-keen gray eyes. Now, he interrupted, and:
“Wrong!” said he: “it isn’t! That’s the name in my passport, but Washington knows different.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“It’s easy. Your job’s covering the Felsenweir circus-newspaper commission, I guess. Mine’s the same—United States Secret Service. Name of Lonergan—John Lonergan. We might as well work together. I don’t want publicity at the wrong time.”
“But”—I was temporarily at a loss for words—“might I ask what Felsenweir has to do with the United States?”
“You might,” he returned sourly. “A newspaper man might ask any damn thing. Are you the Brian Woodville who went up the Rio Negro for the New York Bulletin?”
“I am.”
“Glad to know you better,” said this extraordinary individual. “How are you fixed from now on? We ought to pool notes.”
Perhaps, as coldly recorded, there would seem to be nothing in this interview on the Devil’s Elbow to have convinced any but a credulous fool that Mr. Aldous P. Kluster was what he now claimed to be. Yet, for my part, I never doubted him. I saw the man in a new light. Much that had been obscure became obvious. I experienced an intense curiosity; and:
“I am meeting Mme. Yburg for tea,” I replied truthfully, “and I am dining with M. Paul. Shall we meet somewhere later?”
“You bet we shall,” he replied. He glanced down at the Zeiss glasses. “Seen anything fresh?” he asked.
And, at the question, realizing that I stood on the brink of a precipice with a stranger—probably armed; how only one other knew of my presence there—the chauffeur, a suspicious character—I suffered a revulsion of sentiment.
“I’ve watched for hours,” Kluster (or Lonergan) went on. “Not from here. This look-out is a hundred per cent right. From three parts up the Mercuriusberg. I’ve seen the figures patrolling, but not a damn thing else.”
I laughed to hide embarrassment—silently cursing my cowardly qualms.
“I saw them to-day for the first time.”
He nodded, rolling the cigar between his lips.
“Didn’t know why you were coming here,” he murmured. “Plain enough now. I covered you early this morning. The gink driving the car fell for ten dollars and brought me here first! Listen. Mme. Yburg is clever. Play for safety. Paul beats me. But tell him nothing. Got it clear?”
“Perfectly.”
“I’ll go first, if it’s all the same to you, and send the car back. Don’t let the driver know you’re wise to him. And do your look-out from farther beyond where the sun doesn’t get your lenses. I don’t know what kind of things live in Felsenweir, but I guess they can see. Ten o’clock outside the Kurhaus. Some table left of the steps. I’ll look for you.”
