Fallen Sparrow (3 page)

That was another reason to see Barby. He poured a second drink from the tray load which the dumb girl had left on his desk. One thing about Geoffrey, he bought the best brandy. The girl hadn’t brought in his bag but he didn’t need it. Plenty of clean stuff in the drawers and he’d shaved closely before arriving. It had helped to pass the hitching time of those final hours. He had to show Barby that he was a man again. He could stand up straight and his knees didn’t flap; his waistline might be thin and his stomach flat but it wasn’t the thin and flat of weakness; it was the shape of a man who’d been in the saddle under a summer sky for months. “Heigh ho, Silver,” he yodeled. The toast brown tweed his mother had ordered after his return didn’t hang like a shroud now; his shoulders filled it.

He’d pick up Barby and they’d do the town. He would take one night off and she’d be patient until he could repeat. She hadn’t been exactly patient when he was sick last year but she would be now. He could tell her now what he’d been unable to talk of then. He could say what she had meant to him in those torturous unending days; how buried in uncleanness, he had fastened to the memory of her cleanness; how strangled by all that was ugly in spirit and flesh, remembrance of her beauty had been a talisman. He wouldn’t say it like that to her; it would sound too corny; but he could make her see it. He was cured now; he could think of Spain, mention it. Now she could know that it was only by holding fast to her that he had retained sanity and the will to live. Now she could know that he couldn’t die because he must return to her.

He’d ask her tonight to marry him and he’d explain that he couldn’t see her for a week, maybe two. He wouldn’t tell her why; no one would know that. But she’d realize it was something important. She might even be able to give him a hint. If Louie had been playing around with a real society crowd, he’d have run into Barby Taviton. Kit had introduced them at his sickbed last year.

He took his top coat and hat again from the foyer closet, let himself out of the apartment. The elevator man was new; elevator men were as changeable as second maids, but the same red-faced doorman of five months ago exchanged welcome with him after whistling a cab.

The overhead sky had a look of snow above the mist red skyline. He gave the number on Fifth. The Tavitons were even too good to live on Park.

The Taviton butler nosed him as if he were Chris McKittrick’s son. It wasn’t a personal insult; he gave everyone a glint as if they’d come up from the gutter.

Kit didn’t want to ram the man’s teeth down his throat tonight. He was too satisfied over the nearness of Barby.

He said, “Good evening, Johns,” just as if it hadn’t been years. “Miss Barbara?”

“In the library, Mr. McKittrick.”

He evaded the man’s intent to announce him; he wanted this to be surprise. He had the library door open before Johns could lay away his coat and hat. His spirits went down as fast as they’d gone up. He’d been a dope to think she’d be alone, to think he could gallop over to her apartment like a cowboy to his girl’s ranch and find her waiting around for him. Barby didn’t know she was all he had left, that she must fill the hole of friendship as well as love now; she couldn’t know how he particularly needed her tonight after Tobin’s slap-down. The room was too filled with extraneous matter of Hamiltons and Montefierrows and Benedicts and Van Rensselaers. And strangers. There were too many dress uniforms, too many white ties and fragrant shoulders, roses in winter, mixed drinks in priceless fragile glass.

Barby cried, “Kit?” She was by the open fireplace and she was beautiful as remembered. Her corn colored hair was blown as if the wind stirred in it; her silver eyes had ebon lashes sticking out an inch; her body that a man could dream of was sheathed in furry velvet. She came across to him and the others turned at her voice. “Kit!”

“I’m real,” he assured her.

She had his shoulders, her chin tilted, the line of her throat not ending until the deep slash of the velvet ended, between her breasts. “Kit, darling, you’re looking marvelous!” She kissed him. He didn’t kiss her the way he wanted to, not with everyone cramming around, even the Dowager Taviton and Burr.

There were two who didn’t join the welcomers, two men, and it was they he saw, not his friends. He saw them and he smelled the charnel house of Spain. The old one with the bald head, the shawled knees, the winter-ravaged face, didn’t move from the chair. The young one, arrogant yellow head glistening, didn’t move from his lounge on the mantelpiece. They were strangers; they watched, the old one sad; the young one amused; while Kit answered questions and kissed and clasped hands. And he watched too, over the white shoulders, around the white ties; watched until his black eyes met the bright blue eyes of the young one. He laughed louder, gayer than need be, at one of Benedict’s heavy witticisms. Because his stomach was queasy meeting those eyes; but his knees were solid and his hand firm. He’d seen Blue Eyes before or plenty of his brothers. They were piloting Messerschmitts and they were quite as daring and much more accurate than an idealistic Black Irishman in the International Brigade. He laughed loud to know that he could see one face to face without bolting in panic.

He retained Barby’s hand. “Of course I’ll have a drink.” He followed Ab Hamilton to the table. It was Mrs. Taviton who made the introductions. “Kit—Dr. Skaas.” The old one let his lashless chocolate eyes droop in resignation. “And Otto Skaas.”

Kit’s eyes were level with Blue Eyes, his shoulders as broad, his muscles as hard and lean. They were equals now. More than Blue Eyes could possibly know. They were equals not only because he was strong again, but because he was no longer a passionate idealist; he wasn’t even what had been a civilized man. He’d learned from them; he’d kissed the new civilization too. They could never hurt him again. He’d held out on them and he’d won.

He didn’t know if he’d ever seen this one before. But he didn’t shake hands with him. He held the iced glass in his right hand and Barby’s fingers in his left, and he said, “How d’y do,” without turning a hair. He managed to say it pleasantly, carelessly. What was a yellow-haired, blue-eyed Bavarian doing in Barby’s library? His tails and tie were no disguise, not if you knew them as Kit had. He should have worn the oak leaf, not a blood-colored carnation.

Barby said, “Why didn’t you phone, Kit? I could have told you to dress. We’re all on our way to the Refugee Benefit. You could join us.”

He forgot the birdman behind them. He said, “I didn’t think to dress. Only got in this evening. I’m out of the habit—ranches aren’t fancy.” Nor prison camps.

Everyone was talking at once but he heard only Blue Eyes’ so-British accents. Someone was explaining, “Geoffrey Wilhite is Kit’s stepfather, y’know—”

So Geoff had met the Skaases. Geoff was another innocent like Burr Taviton; they wouldn’t recognize. More cluttering and chattering. Otto Skaas bowing over Barby. Kit didn’t have her fingers now but their remembered touch was spice against his palm and she was near enough for him to be drunk on black velvet perfume. And then Vera was saying, “Why shouldn’t Kit come with us? What if he isn’t dressed? You aren’t expected to dress when you’re traveling. The refugees certainly don’t care.” She was saying a lot of things, mostly that the Tavitons and the Benedicts and the Wilhites could go to the opening of the opera in overalls if they chose. And he was agreeing to go because he couldn’t run out the whole pack of them no matter how much he wanted solitude and Barby. It was better to join for the evening than not to see her at all. He would segregate her from this later.

The current was twisted as they crowded into the foyer for wraps, leaving the old Skaas and the elder Tavitons to follow. He found himself swept into the Hamilton town car on Jane’s arm while Otto Skaas with insolent and lone assurance escorted Barby into the Taviton brougham beyond. He didn’t like it but he didn’t mind as much as he should. That was the drinks and the warmth and the perfume; winter and reality were shut away decisively from these people. Besides he wasn’t worried about the stranger; he knew Barby too well for that. He did ask as if he didn’t care very much, “Who the hell is Otto Skaas?”

Everyone answered him and it didn’t matter much who said it or what was said for they were all telling him the same thing and they all thought the question was funny and that he was asking it because Barby was his girl. But he dropped back by Ab as they stood in the first silver trickle of snow, waiting for the women to precede them under the canopy into the jewel box of the shining towered hotel. And he asked Ab, “Who the hell is Otto Skaas?”

Ab said, “Yes, he’s too interested in Barby.” Ab didn’t like the birdman either. Ab was Kit’s friend even if Kit had fallen in love with his girl six years ago during Junior Week. Ab hadn’t changed in the years; he was still shy and serious; he still had that small apprehensive dart between his brows as if waiting a blow he knew would fall but not when. And his voice still had that hopeless warmth when he uttered Barby’s name.

Kit said, “I want to know more than that.”

Ab laughed but it wasn’t in amusement. There was bitterness in it as there would always be something disharmonic in his laughter. “He’s a refugee. Where have you been that you don’t know about our refugees? Have you a little refugee in your home? No? You’re not in the swim, my friend. No home complete without one. But you can’t have the Skaases. They’re the Tavitons’.”

Kit was not just curious. His face was sober.

Ab reassured him, “No, I’m not a Fascist. Heaven forbid, Kit. I’ve nothing but the utmost respect and pity for the poor victims who’ve come over here and are doing their damnedest to build themselves some kind of refuge in exile. But—”

“Always a but.”

Ab’s gray eyes narrowed. “A big one. We’re getting the Continental riffraff. That’s to be expected, I presume, with other playgrounds turned to bomb grounds.”

Kit said, “If the fools who take them up can’t spot the breed, they deserve to be rooked. But you’re not classing the Skaases there?”

“No.”

They stood together, half hidden by palms, ignoring the perpetual motion of furs and toppers sweeping toward the gilt elevators.

Ab repeated, “No. I don’t know.”

“Who do they say they are?”

“The uncle is Dr. Christian Skaas, Norwegian chemist. Crippled as he is, he escaped from a prison camp—” Ab looked at Kit and hurried over that. He didn’t know Kit had recovered. “He’s to have a chair at the University of Chicago in the fall. Otto had to run out of Germany fast when his uncle got away. Automatically that put his name on the proscribed list.”

“And you don’t believe it,” Kit stated.

“Do you mind?” Ab lifted his shoulders. “I don’t.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Kit said quietly.

“I haven’t a damn thing to go on. They’re friends of Prince Felix Andrassy, live in the same apartment. All our friends raised hell until they exhumed Prince Felix out of Paris. There can’t be anything wrong in the old man. Christian Skaas isn’t an unknown; he won the Nobel prize in ’28. And it can’t be a ringer for him. Everyone knows about the chemical he invented that made him bald as an onion. The eyebrows are false. But between you and me, Kit, my hunch is that the nephew is a refugee from the Reich’s inner circle and will be welcomed home with open arms as soon as he brushes off his job in this country. It might have been just weltschmerz for a good accent that used to send him over to the German Library of Information in his spare time.”

Kit said lightly, “How do you learn these things, Ab?”

“I’m working these days,” he admitted. There was a shy pride in his face. “I’m with the Department of Justice. I asked Sidney Dantone to give me a job and he did.” He continued, “And it may not have been homesickness.”

“How do you tie him to Skaas?”

“The old man might be in a spot.” Ab spoke softly. “Maybe they’re holding his family hostage and he has to play ball. There were young grand-daughters—”

Kit felt cold run through him.

Ab jerked his head. “They must have run out of gas.”

Barby and young Skaas had just come through the revolving door. Her hair was starred with snow, her lovely face lifted to the man in joy.

Kit shoved Ab forward. He called out, “Been waiting for you. Held up in traffic?”

She didn’t allow the momentary annoyance to remain in her eyes. She took his arm. “How sweet of you to wait.”

They crushed into the elevator. She shouldn’t have been annoyed. She shouldn’t want to be with Otto Skaas.

The others of their party were already seated at one great table in the crowded ball room. The benefit for the refugees was a success. Everyone and everyone who knew anyone was there. Even a supercolossal movie wouldn’t have done it with more mocking detail, jewels and wine, terrapin and winter roses, privilege and decadent luxury. The elder Tavitons and Dr. Skaas had evidently arrived while he and Ab spoke below. The scientist sat between host and hostess, his lashless eyes downcast, as if the mockery were not to be borne, counterpoised by memory of hunger and cold and trembling death.

Kit didn’t intend that Barby should escape him; he didn’t know how it happened that he was facing her across a glittering width of table, facing her and Blue Eyes’ insolence. Ab hadn’t run away. He was by Kit, in the next chair, and his face was in shadow. None but he and Christian Skaas seemed to realize the Masque of Death. Kit wanted to reassure them that he too could feel but that he didn’t dare. He had to keep that shoved down. When he felt, he was forced to do something; he couldn’t just talk about it, worry it like a bone. And he couldn’t take on any more now, not until he found out who’d done Louie in, and why. Particularly not until he knew if he were a part of it. He hadn’t considered that before meeting Otto Skaas; now, cold-spined, he wasn’t certain. Louie was the only one who had shared any part of his secret; maybe they hadn’t given up as easily as he’d thought. Unconsciously he found himself listening for footsteps, for lurching, limping steps. He shook his head with ferocity. He was over that.

His eyes went around the room. He wasn’t surprised to see Tobin dressed up like a trained ape; that was why the police couldn’t find out what happened to their own; they were too busy helping society stage a refugee circus. He swerved his head suddenly to Ab. “Who is that girl?”