Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012
- Автор: Макдермид Вэл, Манфредо Лу
- Год: 2012
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012». Краткое содержание книги:
“Is that so?” he said.
She angled to face him, though he still kept her fingers clamped to his arm. She put her free hand on his lapel and fancied she could feel the indentations where his badge had pierced the fabric. “I could see you knew it. The way you asked about my professors’ views.”
“No, I was just... interested to hear them.” He looked confused.
“I shouldn’t have lied.” She meant it: A marshal would see lying as running. It would trigger the same impulse in him as in a tiger. She’d been wrong to think a friendly manner was enough. She understood now that only the truth would do. Only the truth would fool this man into thinking she was coming toward him. Or she wouldn’t have one hand pinioned to his arm now. “It’s just that... I wish I were a student,” she said. That was the truth, all right. “I wish it, but it’s far above my means. I was a servant to a rich woman. She gave me these clothes before the flu took her. Because she’d burned mine. I was the first in the house to get sick, you see. And in case the disease was on my clothes... None of us wanted the children to catch it.”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s who you lost, then?”
“Yes. Three children. Children I loved dearly — more than I knew.” That was a fact too. “And others in the household. Servants who were my friends. And so now I’m forced to go home. I had a job in a shirt factory there, and I suppose they’ll take me back.” She detested the false sympathy in his eyes. He knew all of this already, she was sure of it. “And so if you’d rather not join me... You were thinking I’m of a higher social class than I truly am.”
Suspicion crackled across his face. But when he glanced again at the other marshals, it was to shake his head slightly.
“It’s my pleasure to dine with you,” he said, “whether or not you’re a schoolgirl.”
She brushed away a few tears of stress. “Thank you,” she said. “If you’re sure. But... I don’t suppose you know of someplace else we could eat? Just a week ago I was in bed with fever. And the stink of fish from the luncheonette doesn’t agree with me. If there’s anyplace nearby?”
“Why yes, I know a spot, Miss—” He leaned so close they were nearly forehead to forehead. She could smell cinnamon gum on his breath. “What’s your name, then?”
She tilted her face so her lips were close to his, closer than was decent. The hairs stood up on her neck, but she smiled. “Antonella Gualtieri.”
She could see on his face that he knew it. That was good; he’d expect to get more honesty from her in the course of a long meal.
“Well, Miss Gualtieri, I’m Matthias Killy. There’s a good little place just a block from here. Let me offer you dinner there,” he said. “I hope you’ll be warm enough walking to it? I don’t know if you care for spirits, but you look as if you could do with a hot toddy.”
She nodded. Let him hope he’d loosen her tongue with alcohol.
The marshal’s face, still close to hers, seemed particularly sharp against the blur of movement behind him. He looked well pleased. He was clever and handsome, and it seemed to be bringing dividends. And if it didn’t, he had two armed men to back him up. That’s how marshals are.
Ella spotted a group of soldiers in tattered uniforms. Some were limping, others were bandaged or scarred. As they pushed close, she pretended to be jostled. The marshal let go of her hand on his arm and put it on her waist to steady her. She felt her loathing for him like insects crawling up her back.
As if she didn’t see the soldiers edging by, she stepped into their path. A boy around her age had been moving awkwardly, leaning on a stick. Ella made sure to hook his foot with hers so that he fell, crying out from the pain to his leg wound. Gushing sincere apologies for hurting him, she turned as if to help. The marshal shunted her aside to get a grip on the soldier and bring him to his feet. Ella took a step back, letting others bend to assist.
She turned to a white-masked couple. “It’s armistice!” She spoke in a husky whisper, as if overcome. She didn’t want the marshal to hear. “The soldiers say so. The war’s ended!”
Their eyes went round. The man pulled down his mask as if one salvation meant every salvation.
Ella could feel the marshal searching for her, and she turned to catch his eye and smile at him.
“Armistice?” a man near her repeated. His voice had the deep blare of a tuba.
Others crowded closer, and Ella heard the word posed again as a question and then as an answer. The marshal finished helping the lame soldier to one foot. He saw that Ella was a few people away from him now, but he didn’t seem anxious. The mask on the back of her head was fooling him, it seemed. And he was distracted: Around them, the word “armistice” flew from lip to lip, changing in tone from doubtful to certain. A man shouted it. Another whistled.
Ella joined in when some began to cheer. “Armistice!” ricocheted back from other parts of the terminal. People were screaming it, laughing it. They’d been praying to hear it, expecting the news at any moment. Strangers embraced. A cotton mask fell to Ella’s feet as couples shed them to kiss.
She was farther from the marshal now, but waved to show she was keeping track of him, staying close while he found the soldier’s walking stick. He looked hopeful, wanting as much as anyone to believe the war was over. She grinned as merrily as a person would if it were real news. She put out her hand as if to reach for his, but as she did, she opened a path for people to step in between them.
When they cut off the marshal’s view of her, she bent to pick up the white mask. Near it was a man’s tweed cap, flung into the air but not caught. She jerked it on and held the mask up over her mouth. She took another step backward, shedding her coat and letting it fall to be trampled. She couldn’t use the ticket in the pocket, anyway. The marshals would look for her on that train.
From a distance of fifteen or twenty feet, she saw the marshal’s panicked face. His head turned from side to side as he searched for her in a crowd gone delirious. His eyes slid over her, in her hat and mask. She hurried toward the exits, hoping he’d keep looking for the wrapover she no longer wore. He raised his hand and pointed to the row of doors. Not, Ella thought, because he saw her near them. It was because his men would get there sooner than he did.
But not before Ella slipped through.
2.
The man onstage finally quelled the shouts of Strike! Strike! Strike! Ella, standing on a bench against the back wall, watched him wave today’s Seattle Star. She’d seen the headline, UNDER WHICH FLAG? The general strike was, the paper warned, “a test of YOUR Americanism.”
The speaker slapped the front page. “Oh, he’s a fine one, our Mayor Ole Hanson. Says any man uses the word ‘workers’ is quoting Lenin. But Ole didn’t mind the word so much when he courted the working man’s vote, did he? Then, he was a friend of the workers. Grand things he said about us then. Is there a union hall he didn’t come to, a pancake breakfast that he missed? But votes are votes, and money’s money. And what they saved by cutting our pay all through the war? By breaking their promises to us after? It gave ’em plenty extra to stuff into politicians’ pockets. Case you wonder what’s that bulge in Ole’s pants. No, it ain’t that!” There was a roar of laughter. “It’s the raise they swore to give you.”
Ella looked over the sea of caps and rough jackets. A hundred and ten unions had voted aye to strike. Over a hundred thousand workers went out tomorrow.
“We’d get ours, they said, when the war ends. But Armistice was in November, and by my calendar now it’s February. And that money they promised? They’re giving it to the Minute Men of Seattle and the American Protective League. Thugs to round up union men. Jails from Ellensburg to Walla Walla filled with our boys — three months inside now, some of them, and no charges. And the Star asks us, which flag? Us?” He tossed the paper down, made a face like it had filth on it. “And see what else it says, there over the headline? MAYOR HANSON TO DEPUTIZE 10,000. Pictures every day of marshals boarding trains to come here. Because our strike, they tell us, was organized by Leon Trotsky himself.” He waved his arm. “Well, I don’t see Leon in here anyplace, do you, boys?”