Delicate Ape by Dorothy B. Hughes Page B

knowing. “What do you want?” Piers asked suddenly.
    “Secretary Anstruther’s dispatch case.”
    “Why not go to him? Mind if I smoke?”
    “I do not mind,” David said. But the gun was steady until Piers had lighted and extinguished the match. The African said then, “Anstruther is dead.”
    Piers spoke with slow deliberation. “That information—if true—would be above value to many.”
    “Anstruther is dead.” He was like a statue of carved ebony. Piers could see his eyes, dark and fathomless. “He died on the Nubian desert. He and the unknown.”
    Piers remembered then. Fabian was of Nubian stock. It accounted for a drum beating a message from ancient Nubia to modern Equatorial Africa.
    “You know this?” Piers asked.
    “I know this.”
    Piers spoke out in dull anger. “Fabian sent him to his death.”
    “Fabian?” There was measure of surprise, incredulous surprise, in the question.
    “Fabian wired asking him to come at once to the Lake of the Crocodiles.”
    “Fabian sent no wire,” the dark man stated.
    “I saw it. Anstruther had planned to leave for the States. The wire came. He left instead for Equatorial with an unknown pilot, a German.”
    “This wire—what did it say?”
    “It said that Fabian wished to see him. We knew it was the border incidents. Anstruther would do anything for Fabian. He left at once.”
    David said, “Fabian was in Tibet. He could send no wire from the Lake of the Crocodiles. Show me the wire.”
    “I haven’t it.” It was safe. “Fabian’s name signed it.”
    “Fabian sent no wire,” he repeated steadily.
    Piers rose from the bed. The gun moved to cover him. “I want to talk with Fabian. I don’t know why he sent it. He hadn’t answered my request for an audience; he hadn’t reported the incidents to the Commission.”
    “He did not need help; he preferred to handle the incidents himself. They were not important unless made so. Making them so would threaten peace.” David paused. “Someone made use of his name. The plan was successful. Anstruther is dead. Why else was there a wire—if there was a wire—” His look was steady on Piers. “You have the dispatch case. You were seen with it in Alexandria. In it are the Secretary’s final decisions for this conference. It was on these he worked in Alexandria. We wish to see them before the conference opens.”
    Piers breathed deeply. He knew now what he had actually known since last night. It was the Anstruther memoranda. His supposition, based on what he had believed at the time was rational, that anyone noting the case in his possession would take for granted he carried it to the Secretary, was not valid longer. Because Anstruther’s disappearance had become established. “Secretary Anstruther carried his dispatch case on the flight. I may have been seen with my own, a similar one.”
    “Show me this similar one.”
    “I can’t.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I lost it. Last night.”
    The man’s smile was ironic.
    “I lost it on Broadway last night. There was an accident in front of the Paramount. A man named Johann Schmidt was struck by a taxicab. In the hubbub my case disappeared. I reported it to the police today.” He lifted his voice. “You can use that gun on me if you choose but I can’t show you either Anstruther’s dispatch case or my own. I have neither.”
    David put the gun into his pocket. “I did not come here to kill you, Mr. Hunt. I came to see certain papers. If you refuse to show them to me—”
    “You can search my room,” Piers said.
    “It has been searched.”
    “Search me if you like.” He remembered only then the letters he had taken.
    “You could not carry that many papers on you. No.” The head moved. “If you refuse now, we will wait. You will eventually lead us to where they are.”
    Piers’ mouth thinned. He would lead and the bushmen, even in tailored clothes, would follow without so much as a faint footfall heard. He wouldn’t lead