Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

The room was quiet as Harry worked. It was a nice room, luxuriously furnished, because Sue got a whopping allowance from her family in Grosse Pointe. Now she gave almost all her money to the movement, but she had leased the apartment and furnished it before she had seen the light. Since it was on a very good block just off Park Avenue, in a converted town house with high-rent apartments and no doorman, it was a perfect place for making bombs.

Harry Argonaut, whose accent could have come from any part of the country, hadn’t told them yet who was going to take the machine to Newark. He gave out information sparingly and at the latest possible moment.

He was caressing the little machine lightly when the telephone rang.

Sue looked inquiringly at Harry, waiting for orders.

“Answer it,” he said.

She went over to the leather-topped English mahogany desk in front of the windows and picked up the phone. She was conscious of Harry Argonaut and Fred Drabner watching her intently in the lamplight. All the curtains were drawn and the room looked like evening.

“May I speak to Miss Marsh?” the man said on the phone.

“This is Miss Marsh.”

“This is Christopher Bagshot, Miss Marsh.”

“Who?”

“From the bookstore.”

“Oh, yes.” Her tone was noncommittal and she watched Harry Argonaut for signs.

“I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me tonight, Miss Marsh.”

She thought the man sounded strange, as though the simple sentence was for some reason costing him a great deal of effort to get out.

Harry Argonaut was moving his lips elaborately, silently mouthing the question, “Who is it?”

“Hold on for a moment, please, Mr. Bagshot,” Sue said. “A friend of mine is just leaving and I have to say goodbye.” She put her hand over the phone. “It’s a man called Bagshot,” she said to Harry. “He works in the bookstore on Madison Avenue.”

“What does he want?” Harry asked.

“He wants to take me to dinner tonight.”

“Let me think,” Harry said. That was one reliable thing about Harry—he always took time to size up every situation and figure out what advantage might be drawn from it. “Do you know him well?” he asked.

“I’ve spoken to him four or five times, that’s all.”

“Do you think he suspects anything?”

“Oh, no. He’s a harmless little man.” She regretted the little. Harry was no taller than Mr. Bagshot.

“Why is he calling at this hour on Saturday to ask you for dinner?”

Sue shrugged. “Maybe his girl stood him up and he’s lonely.”

“How did he get your telephone number?”

“It’s in the book, for one thing,” Sue said. She was used to Harry’s intense questioning by now. “And I have a charge account with him besides.”

“Get an unlisted number first thing Monday,” Harry said.

Sue nodded. She wondered if Bagshot was still on the phone.

Harry thought for thirty seconds, kneeling on the carpet, his eyes closed in concentration.

“Tell him you can’t give him an answer now,” he said, “but that you have to pass by his shop in a half hour or so and you’ll drop in and tell him then. Go ahead.”

Sue nodded. She didn’t know what was in Harry’s mind, but whatever it was, it was part of a greater plan.

“Mr. Bagshot,” she said, “are you still there?”

“Yes.” His voice was eager.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long, but—”

“Oh, that’s perfectly all right, Miss Marsh,” he said.

“I’m a little up in the air right now,” Sue said, “and I’m late for an appointment. But I’ll be passing by your shop in a half hour or so. I ought to be sorted out by then, and if I can possibly make it, I’d adore having dinner with you.” Being in the movement was a lot like being in the theater. The better you were as an actress, the more effective you were as a revolutionary.

“That’s fine, Miss Marsh,” Bagshot said. The way he said it, you could tell his life was full of postponements, if not worse. “I’ll be waiting.”

She hung up.

“Well done,” Harry Argonaut said.

She flushed with pleasure. Coming from him, that was high praise, indeed.

Without speaking, Harry got up off his knees and went to the hall closet and took out the blue tennis bag that a small boy had delivered to her apartment three days before. She had asked the boy no questions and had put the bag in the closet, hiding it behind a leather-and-canvas valise from Mark Cross that her father had given her as a Christmas present.

Harry brought the tennis bag into the living room and opened it. It was jammed with crumpled sheets of the Newark Evening News and the Newark Star-Ledger . While Sue and Fred Drabner watched him silently, he took out some of the newspapers and made a nest of those that remained and lovingly fitted the machine into the nest. Then he zipped up the bag and snapped a small padlock through the two overlapping eyelets in the brass zipper tags.

“Now,” he said to Sue, “you’re going to put on your nicest, most respectable dress and you’re going to walk over to Madison Avenue carrying the tennis bag. You’ll go into the shop and tell this fellow Bagshot that you haven’t been able to get hold of this man you have a tentative date with, but you’ll know definitely by six o’clock. You have some shopping to do, meanwhile, you say, and can you leave the bag there until you come back. You’ve got all that now?”

“Yes,” Sue said and repeated word for word what he had told her.

“It’s always safer policy,” Harry said, “to store material in a place other than the one where the material is assembled. That way, if one cover is broken, all the others remain intact.”

Sue wished Harry would let her take notes when he delivered his rare instructive generalities, but she knew it was out of the question.

“After you deposit the bag,” Harry Argonaut said, “you come back here. I will not be here and neither will Fred. At a quarter to six, your phone will ring. A voice you will not recognize will say, ‘I’ll meet you at a certain corner.’ If the person adds, ‘At the southwest corner of Twenty-third Street and Eighth Avenue, at six-thirty,’ you will do the following. You will add ten to twenty-three, that makes Thirty-third Street, subtract one from eight, that makes Seventh Avenue, you will add one hour to the time, that makes seven-thirty, and you will reverse the compass points, that makes northeast corner. Got it?”

“Repeat, please,” Sue said.

Harry repeated his instructions patiently. Then he made her repeat them back to him twice, until he was satisfied there would be no mistake. When he was certain that she knew what she was to do, he went on, “At six o’clock, you will go to the bookshop. You will tell the man that you’d be delighted to have dinner with him, but you have to go to a cocktail party, but that you’ll meet him at a restaurant at eight-fifteen. Choose the restaurant yourself. Make sure that it is a crowded one, where you are well known. After you have made the contact and delivered the bag, take a taxi downtown to the Village. Get out in front of a restaurant there. When the taxi has gone, hail another taxi and go to the restaurant where you’re going to meet the man from the bookstore.”

“All clear,” Sue said.

“Keep him out as late as possible. If he suggests going to his place, by all means do so. Just be back here at four A.M., for possible further instructions.”

Sue nodded, then frowned.

“What is it?” Harry asked. He was terribly alert, even for the smallest signs.

“I have no money for all those taxis,” Sue said. “I gave Fred my last ten dollars yesterday. And my allowance doesn’t come in before the first.”