Росс Макдональд - Trouble Follows Me

“We use the same principle in whistle signals. A six-second blast means one thing. A twelve-second blast means something else.”

“That’s right, it’s the same principle,” he admitted.

“Say the Army used your code. Wouldn’t it take a long time to pass on a little information? And wouldn’t the number of things you could say be pretty limited?”

He sipped his black coffee and lit a cigarette. “Sure, I admit that. That’s probably the reason the Army turned it down. That and the fact that I wasn’t a brass hat, or even a second lieutenant. But don’t forget that you could work it out much finer on the air, with clocks synchronized to one-fifth of a second. That gives you five hundred meanings per one hundred seconds, if you take a fifth of a second as your unit.”

“But then you’d still be limited to saying five hundred things and if your message was the five hundredth meaning you’d have to wait a hundred seconds between ticks. It would take you a hundred seconds to say it.”

“That’s right, too. It’s slow. But I never thought it could be anything but a special-purpose code.”

“And wouldn’t an enemy cryptanalyst catch on pretty fast to your limited list of prearranged meanings?”

“That’s where you’re wrong, boy. Unless he had a time-sense better than any I’ve ever heard of, your enemy cryptanalyst wouldn’t ever know he was listening to a code. That’s the beauty of it. It could be used in guerrilla warfare, by advance agents in enemy country. But say your enemy cryptanalyst had an ear like a chronometer, or caught on some other way and started to time the ticks, you could still fool him.”

“You could change your prearranged meanings at regular intervals, you mean?”

“Why not?” he said triumphantly. “You could change ’em every day. Say, you don’t think the Navy would be interested in this, do you? I still think it’s got possibilities.”

“Maybe it has. I can’t speak for the Navy. I can tell you what C.N.O. would say if you took it to them, though. They’d tell you it was fundamentally insecure because, in the first place, you know about it, and in the second place other people do. Me, for instance. Navy codes are originated by naval officers and by a few carefully chosen civilians, and they keep them under their hats.”

“By God, I never thought of that.” The light of triumph went out of his eyes like small sinking suns. “I’ve been shooting off my mouth all this time. Say, for all I know, maybe they’ve got it. Maybe they’re using it right now, and I don’t know anything about it.”

“Maybe they are. I wouldn’t know.”

I left him with whatever vicarious fulfilment he could squeeze out of that. His ideas had suggested a possibility to me which seemed worth investigating. Sue Sholto had worked in a broadcasting station.

But the moldering body of Sue Sholto and the problem to which her dead face had introduced me were in the Territory of Hawaii, and I was on a train in Arizona. There was a more recent corpse and a more immediate problem to occupy my mind. Why had Hatcher died, assuming that it wasn’t accident? And what, if any, were the relations between Hatcher and Anderson? Though I had no notion of what to do or say when I saw him, I sat in ambush in the club car waiting for Anderson to pass through to the diner, as if the mere sight of his face might suggest the key to the conundrum.

I waited a long time while the breakfast parade went by. Major Wright walking authoritatively on short legs. Rita Tessinger looking fresh and restless. Her mother with a complacent look of pleasant fatigue. The old lady from Grand Rapids armored in purple flowered silk against the menaces to her comfort which her quick old eyes found in every corner. Finally Mary looking very young and beautiful, and deceptively virginal.

I told her about the first two and omitted the third.

“You’re up early this morning,” she said.

“I slept well last night.”

“So did I. I dropped off as soon as my head hit the pillow.”

“And I am the emperor’s white horse and Halsey can ride me any time he wishes. I’ve already eaten breakfast. Shall I wait for you here?”

“Do.”

She went away, her hips moving as if in gentle reminiscence. In a grey flannel dress her body had regained its mystery, and the cycle of desire began again in me.

It was interrupted by the appearance of Miss Green, alone, in a green dress the color of artificial Easter grass and matching green shoes. When she came nearer I could see that she had added jade earrings to her travelling exhibition of jewelry. She looked sick.

“Good morning,” I said. “Have you seen Mr. Anderson this morning?”

“Didn’t you know? Mr. Anderson got off the train.”

“But he told me he was going through to L.A.”

“Oh, he was. But he made a long-distance call to one of his oil-fields, and they told him he better stay in New Mexico for a couple of days. So last night, or I guess it was early this morning, he got off at Gallup. He told me he was going to Albuquerque.”

“I wish I’d known. I would have liked to say good-bye to him. You don’t have his California address, do you?”

“No, he said he moves around so much. He’s got mine, though.” She giggled hoarsely. “Well, I guess I’ll go and see what they got for breakfast. See you later.”

I felt blocked and yet, to a certain extent, vindicated. Perhaps my questions, which had seemed asinine at the time even to me, had frightened him off the train. If I could get the FBI in Los Angeles to cooperate with me, he could be found and asked those questions again.

I went back to the Pullman and asked the porter if Anderson had taken his bags with him.

“No, suh, he told Miss Green to tell me to put them in the baggage car. She said that he’ll be going on to Los Angeles in a couple of days and they’re to be held for him there. Mr. Gordon only had one bag and I guess he took that with him.”

“Is Gordon gone too?”

“Yes, suh. It suits me.”

“Did the two of them leave together?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Drake. All I know is that they both got off at Gallup. Neither of them said a word to me.”

Three possibilities occurred to me besides the one I had suggested. Gordon was following Anderson. Anderson was following Gordon. Or one had killed the other and bundled his body off the train. Actual melodrama and violence had accustomed my mind to move easily among melodramatic and violent possibilities. The melodrama of the situation deepened when I made inquiries and found out that nobody had seen Gordon or Anderson leave the train.

Miss Green and Mary came back from the diner together, and I asked Miss Green if Anderson had made arrangements for his luggage in advance.

“He left me a note. It was under my pillow when I woke up this morning. It was a very nice letter, not just a note.”

“Are you sure he wrote it?”

“Of course I’m sure. Who else would write me a note?”

“Did you know his handwriting?”

“I don’t know. No, I guess I don’t. But I’m positive he wrote it. He said he was going to Albuquerque and to send his bags on to L.A.”

“Had he mentioned getting off the train before?”

“No. I was surprised when I got his note.”

“Where is it now?” I said.

“The note? Just a minute.” She went to her compartment and searched it. But she came back empty-handed.

“It’s gone,” she said. “I can’t understand it. I had it less than an hour ago.”

The unreal painted flesh of her aging face hid her thoughts from me. I couldn’t tell whether she was lying or not. Everything she said and did was artificial, slightly off the human center-line. The steady trembling of her hands was as if her nervous system had received a delicate and irreparable damage. A corpse returned to life after the tissues had decayed a little would have moved and spoken as she did, and had her taste in clothes.