Dan Marlowe - Doorway to Death

“Regardless-” Johnny swept an arm in an exasperated semicircle. “Your being here like this-”

“The circumstances of my being here need not concern you. Kindly remember that.”

“You're in trouble,” he said stubbornly.

“You will of course have to permit me to be the judge of that.” Again the cigarette pointed at his silence. “Why? Why this persistence? This solicitude?”

“I just got a feelin' you're my kind of people, that's all.”

“Listen to me a moment.” Her smile was pleasant but firm. “You're not a gentleman, but I would think a man in the better sense of the word. I want you to believe that I am in no more trouble than I have been at any time in the past ten years, let us say, and your help or offer of help is not indicated or requested. I have over-indulged myself in talking to you, because I have been lonely. You are more perceptive… yes, and more sensitive than I might reasonably have expected, and I have said more than I should at times. You have somehow succeeded in dredging up things I had thought more deeply submerged, but all this has got to stop. Now.” She waited, but Johnny sat motionless. “I will ask you one question, and then we will have an end to all this foolishness. What were you doing in Italy?” Johnny grinned at her. “Runnin' errands.” “For whom?”

He shrugged. “People with more brains 'n me. Seemed to be a lot of 'em.”

“What exactly were you doing?” “Is this a one-way street, ma'am? Are we tradin'?” She bit her lip. “Everything I pursue with you… this is all so foolish, all these little words about another time and another life-” Johnny outwaited her hesitation. “All right. And then once and for all, it is finished. There will be no further discussion, or probing. Is it understood?” “You might bring it up yourself.” “Don't trouble yourself with the possibility. Now what were you doing in Italy?”

It was his turn to hesitate. “I was along to shore up the timbers on a few undercover operations.”

She nodded matter-of-factly. “Placing you in a little different perspective, it becomes almost obvious. One has only to look at you bursting in all directions from that ridiculous uniform. I take it that you were not a man of peace, and that since you sit here now in appearance reasonably intact that you had the necessary qualifications to be a successful man of violence.”

“Includin' the attitude.”

Her hands had knitted themselves tightly together on the table, fingers interlaced. “It is important. I myself lacked it. And for whom did you commit these successful violences?”

“Originally for an unpublicized branch of U.S. Intelligence.”

She stared down at her hands. “I am… was Viennese. I had lived in Italy for years, although not recently at that time. I was recruited by a group in France to go back, for a purpose. I had a minor success or two, and then my purpose was discovered. I had no reason to expect differently, I suppose, but they treated me-well, despicably. I found that I was not so tough-fibred as I had imagined. I had a great deal of difficulty in re-orienting myself afterward.”

“Afterward?”

“After I was liberated.”

“And now?”

Her lips firmed. “We will not speak of now. We will not speak of Italy again. It has bad memories for me, and thinking of it or talking about it is not good for me. And now I am sure I must be keeping you from your duties.” She rose, and Johnny reluctantly followed suit. She held the door for him as he rolled the wagon out into the corridor, and then it closed quietly behind him.

He turned to stare thoughtfully at the impassive door panel. “Killain, you accident of nature,” he accused himself. “That's a lady in there. Not a woman, or a female, or a broad, or a twist, or a frail, or a skirt. A lady.” He pushed the silently moving oven down the corridor and around to the push-button means of descent.

In the kitchen the dinner hour rush was over; Johnny could see only a single red jacket and a sprinkling of whites behind the glistening steel tables. Hans was seated at Dutch's old desk, and Johnny drew off a mug of coffee at the big urn and walked over to him. He didn't particularly want the coffee, but he did want to talk to the first cook, who sat staring off into space, his hands idly shuffling a stack of loose invoices.

“You got the sugar, Hans?” Johnny upended a box and sat down beside him, and the tall man silently opened a drawer and removed two glassined envelopes which he handed to Johnny, who noted the tremor in the offering hand and the bloated lids on the redrimmed eyes. Hans's nerves seemed very nearly out of control.

“Freddie said anything yet?” Johnny asked him and watched the negative curl of the lip and the shake of the head.

“I dislike that man,” Hans said suddenly, then attempted to smile in self-disparagement of his own vehemence. “I shouldn't say that. He's within his rights in taking his time in making up his mind. Yet it means so much to me. And I have not been sleeping well. And I have not had word-” His voice trailed off, and his eyes came back to Johnny as if again becoming aware of his presence. “You'd think he'd realize the impossible position in which he places me. I'm neither fish nor fowl. I give orders, but where is the authority to enforce them?” He waved the bills in his hand at Johnny. “These tradesmen. What respect can they have for me?”

“It'll work out, Hans,” Johnny said soothingly. He sipped at the strong black coffee, and in his mind cast about for a lead-in remark in which to mention Myrna to Hans. He wanted a reaction from the first cook. An occasional raised voice was the only disturbance in the quiet kitchen, and up front a busboy went from counter to counter turning out the lights in the forward end of the long room. Darkness crept toward them, and the goose-necked light on the desk spotlighted their corner.

This is the way it must have been for Dutch, Johnny thought suddenly, sitting here targeted by this same light on the desk. He himself had walked in here many a morning through the service door and found the old man reading or nodding over his book. But the murderers had not come through the service door. Johnny frowned; why would old Dutch let himself be spotlighted in such a manner if he had heard the noise of entrance-even a key- from any unaccustomed direction? The old man was scarcely a fool. Unless he had been asleep.

Johnny stared at the far wall, trying to concentrate on a teasing tickle in the foreground of his mind. If Dutch had been asleep, the light would have been on, and the intruders would have been warned. But suppose Dutch had been awake and had switched off his light and had sat there in the dark watching them? Johnny shook his head; that didn't make sense, either, for if the old man had done that, why expose himself to them later? Unless it had seemed important….

He ran his eyes around the rectangular room. From where he sat he could see the fire door which led down to the storeroom below. He could see three of the tall windows which, though not barred, were always securely locked from the inside. He could see the small door leading into the bakery ovens which was locked only occasionally. It had been a bone of contention whether it had been locked that night. He could see the two massive walk-in boxes with their heavy steel corner bracings and their brass padlocks. He could see-

He stifled an impulse to jump to his feet; he could feel his pulse accelerate. He turned his head to look at the cook, and with an effort kept his voice casual. “Hans?”

The tall man looked up from his shuffled invoices. “Yes?”

“When'd you have the butcher last?”

Hans smiled sourly, as though reminded of another cross to bear. “He will be here in the morning. Another front office economy. Whoever heard of a hotel kitchen with a butcher being called in twice a week to dress out four days work in advance? Ridiculous. You simply cannot function-”