Delicate Ape by Dorothy B. Hughes Page A

“I’m carrying some important papers. I’m with the Peace Department. How do you feel about peace?”
    The brows scowled. “If they take the army out of Germany we’ll have war again in ten years. You can’t trust them Dutchies. They’re as bad as the Japs. You don’t see China letting Japan get any ideas of speaking out of turn, do you?”
    Piers shook his head. “They are wise enough to be forceful for the preservation of peace.”
    If Germany could have been eliminated entirely as a political unit as Japan had been. But there was only one strong voice in Eastern Asia. China. In Europe there were too many.
    They were approaching 42nd now. “Any door?” the driver asked.
    Piers said, “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll get off on Broadway. Lindy’s.” It would be as safe as taking the shuttle across town. The fat man might be watching Grand Central, expecting that maneuver. Broadway would be at its brightest, theaters opening their doors, taxis clustered, the police standing tall at every intersection.
    He paid off the driver at the restaurant.
    “Hope you don’t have no more trouble,” the man said. He purred away.
    Piers didn’t go inside the restaurant. He swung into the down stream towards the Astor. He was only mildly surprised to see Cassidy leaning against the newsstand.
    Cassidy asked, “Where you been?”
    “To the theater.” Piers gathered the early morning papers.
    “You give me the slip,” the detective said without rancor.
    Piers grinned at him.
    “If there’s been any murders tonight, you’ll be hauled in.”
    “I’ll produce an alibi,” Piers assured him. He glanced at the bar. But he was too fatigued to risk an encounter with Bianca Anstruther tonight. Or with von Eynar. Or even Gordon. He said, “I’m going to bed. Don’t you ever sleep?”
    “It’s nothing but a habit,” Cassidy proclaimed. He was half asleep on his tired feet.
    “I’m not going out again,” Piers told him. “You’d better turn in. Good night.” He went to the elevators, up to fifth, said “Good night” absently to the attendant. He walked the few paces to his door, set the key. He wondered what the squat man was doing now. He opened his room, closed the door after him.
    “Do not make a light.” The voice from the shadows was deep and it was cold. “What you see in my hand is a gun.”

IV
    T HE SHADOW WAS GIGANTIC , dark against the room dark. The blinking sign across Broadway lighted again and Piers could see the man. He said softly, tentatively, “Fabian?”
    “I am David. I am from Fabian.” He wasn’t giant. He was small and quiet and black as the night. “It is better we speak without lighting the room, Piers Hunt. Better we do not call attention to your room.”
    “Yes.” Piers flung the papers on the bed freeing his hands. But he had no intention of moving against a man with a gun. “Won’t you sit down?”
    “No.” The flickering light described him. The close-cropped graying head, the whiteness of teeth, the conservative English-tailored suit.
    “May I? I’m tired.”
    “As you will. But where you are please.”
    Piers sat on the bed. He pushed back his hat. Weariness crept over him, bone weariness. This man came from the man he wished to seek as friend, came as enemy. “You might as well put down the gun,” he said. “I’m not armed. I haven’t been armed since the day of peace.”
    David said, “I could take no chance of not obtaining what I came for.” He didn’t put away the gun. It gleamed, now dull, now bright, in the whim of Broadway. It was like a toy in the black hand.
    “How did you get into my room?” Piers asked.
    “Through a ruse,” David said.
    “And you knew I was stopping here?”
    “You have been followed.”
    “Yes.” He began to laugh, weakly, silently. “God, yes.” He forced a hold on himself. “Yours are better. I didn’t know about yours.” Africans from the bush. They would track a man and he would never know. He would die not