The wrong Venus Read online

  He smiled and apologized for disturbing her. He was English, be said, working for his company in Paris, and was on his way back from a trip to the Loire valley with his family. They’d had some car trouble down the road—

  “A wreck?”

  Oh, no, nothing serious; just an engine failure—one of the foskets had lifted in the crenelator. Colby knew little about cars, and cared less, but she wouldn’t be any expert either. He could replace it himself, he explained, but he needed the part. If she’d be kind enough to let him use the telephone to call his office—he’d pay, of course. While he was talking, he took out a fifty-franc note. It wouldn’t be over five at the most.

  Respect for the franc overcame a centuries-old pessimism toward the motives of all foreigners. She asked him to come in. The telephone was in the hall, near the front door, an old wall-mounted type. She stood nearby while he spoke to the operator, possibly to make sure it was Paris he was calling and not Melbourne or Tokyo.

  The phone rang only once on the other end, and was grabbed up immediately. They’d been sweating out the mission, all right. It was Martine.

  The woman was still listening. And Flanagan had called him Colby back in the cafe. “Monsieur Lawrence—” he said.

  “Oh, brother! We didn’t know whether you’d been killed, or arrested. They didn’t get her?”

  “No, everybody’s fine,” he went on in French. “We just had a little car trouble.” For the woman’s benefit, he explained about the fosket, and asked if somebody would pick one up at the Jaguar agency and have Monsieur Randall bring it out. Could he speak to Monsieur Randall? He needed an excuse to switch to English.

  “You’re calling from a farm?” she asked.

  “Oh, Randall? . . . Yes, I had to. We’re both on the lam now.” He glanced idly toward the woman. There wasn’t a chance she understood English. “I’ve got her stashed for the moment, but all the fuzz in this end of France is looking for us. She can’t move in that Jag, she’d be picked up in a mile. And she can’t go back there to the house. Those thugs have got it covered.”

  “Relax. I’ve been working on it since the papers came out. Just tell me where you are and leave the rest to me.”

  He quickly told her how to find the place, and asked, “What about Madame Ruffet and the cook? Will they leak?”

  “No. I bought ‘em off. They liked her, anyway.”

  “How’s Dudley?”

  “Better now. The doctor just left.”

  “He hasn’t heard anything yet. Wait’ll this morning hits the papers.”

  “God, that Flanagan. Hang tough, I’m on my way.”

  10

  Colby thanked the woman, took a couple of ten-franc notes from his wallet, and asked if she could sell him something to eat. His family had been stranded there in the disabled car since late last night, he explained, and everybody was hungry. He accompanied her to the kitchen, and she gave him a loaf of bread, a sausage, and a liter of wine. They didn't have a corkscrew, he said, so she pulled the cork for him, and he insisted they share a glass for her unforgettable kindness and in the interest of continued peace and goodwill between their two great countries. He went back to the road. The door had closed, but he was sure she would be watching from a window. It didn't matter. As soon as he was around the turn the house was out of sight.

  An old 2CV came up behind him just as he reached the bridge. He slowed. It went on past and around the next bend a quarter mile ahead, and the road was clear. He plunged off it into the willows. Kendall heard him approach, and turned, her face lighting up with joy at sight of the food. He handed her the bottle. She drank and passed it back to him. They broke the bread and sausage in two and sat down on the bank with the bottle between them.

  She took a bite of sausage and waved the chunk of bread toward the encircling willows. “And thou beside me singing in the wilderness—did you get through to the fort?”

  “Yes. Martine’s on her way.”

  “Does she have an idea?”

  “I think so, but I don’t know what. We’ll just have to sweat it out till she gets here.”

  “Well, with a pair of operators like you two working on it,” she said, “I won’t worry about it.”

  “What was the last thing you did worry about? Whether you’d be a forceps delivery?”

  “Colby, doll, you’re on this ledge, on this bank and shoal of time. You reach your hand around a corner, and there’s a little bird that puts a new day in it. You use it up, throw the rind back over your shoulder, and stick your hand around again. He puts another day in it, or he craps in it and you’re on your way to the showers. Who worries?”

  Colby drank some more of the wine and passed her the bottle. “You’re from Wyoming?”

  I grew up on a ranch near Jackson Hole, till they had me shod and shipped me east to school.”

  “Where’d you pick up the judo? And why?” It seemed a little superfluous, like adding bird shot to an atom bomb.

  “When I was a kid,” she said. “There was what I thought was an advertisement in The New Yorker. A big, strapping woman was demonstrating self-defense to a class of girls in a gym, and the caption said, “With this hold, no man will ever be able to toss you.’ I thought that was wonderful.” The bottle gurgled. “By the time I began to doubt the value of it, I was already an expert.”

  They finished the bread and sausage. She rinsed her fingers in the stream. “A very successful foraging expedition, Trooper Colby. You suppose Martine’ll bring additional commissary?”

  “She may.”

  “Good, an army marches on its stomach. Napoleon. Or was it Betty Crocker?” She drained the last of the wine, gave him a dazzling smile, and began to sing, waving the empty bottle.

  “We’re Sabine Manning’s heroes, we are riders of the night,

  We are bedroom-oriented, and we’d rather love than fight.”

  “What’s that?” Colby asked. “The Dudley Foundation hymn?”

  “Parody of an old army song Sanborn knew. We used to make up new lyrics when we got bored with the job.”

  “We’re her cute suburban houris, our reluctance is so slight

  That we’re always horizontal, to her publisher’s delight.

  We’re ever combat-ready, not burdened down with clothes,

  And mattress-seasoned veterans of a million words of prose.”

  She threw the bottle into the willows, and stretched. “Speaking of the horizontal, I think I’ll grab a few winks while there’s a lull in the action.” She lay back on the bank. Colby gave her his folded jacket for a pillow, and in five minutes she was sleeping peacefully. He looked at her and shook his head. In his life he’d run across a few blithe and unfettered spirits, but Kendall Flanagan was in a class by herself.

  He lighted his last cigarette and tried to think, but it only made his headache worse. There was no answer. She couldn’t stay here, she had nowhere to go, and she couldn’t get there if she did. She had as much chance of going unrecognized anywhere in France as the Eiffel Tower or Charles de Gaulle, and none whatever of leaving it. At any airport or frontier she’d be picked up on sight. And if she were a celebrity now, wait till St.-Médard hit the news; she was going to be the biggest thing since the discovery of grapes. He regarded it with awe. In the long history of French journalism, this was the first story that had everything—a beautiful girl, mystery, international intrigue, wealth, a jet-set playboy, love, clandestine rendezvous, and violent death.

  There was nothing to do but wait for Martine. Kendall was sleeping quietly. He eased upstream until he was just below the bridge and found a spot where he could peer out through the last screen of willows and still be invisible from the road. Two or three cars went by, and then a crash-helmeted gendarme on a motorcycle. A few minutes later there was another. He shivered. The whole countryside was probably swarming with them, like vengeful bees. In the next hour there were three more.

  The morning was well advanced now and growing quite warm, even here in the sha
de of the willows. He looked at his watch every few minutes. He heard another car coming downhill around the bend, but it was only an old truck with a high wooden body like a furniture van. Then it was slowing.

  He felt a quick stab of fear as it pulled onto the shoulder and stopped near the end of the bridge, directly in front of him. A black-mustached man wearing a beret and a blue denim coverall stepped out of the cab with a bottle of wine and a brown paper bag. They’d stopped for their casse-croûte, their coffee break.

  Colby heard the other door opening, and at the same moment the man with the bottle gestured downstream and trotted down off the road directly toward his hiding place. He whirled and ran.

  Kendall was still asleep in the little glade. He caught her shoulder, and when her eyes flew open he put a hand over her mouth and jerked his head. “Quick!” he whispered. She sprang up. He could already hear footsteps coming down the path toward them. There wasn’t time to make it across the glade and run on downstream. He grabbed up his jacket and the briefcase and they sprang into the willows just back of them. As they dropped flat behind the screen of leaves he remembered the motorcycle and swore under his breath, but there was nothing they could do about it now.

  He listened, conscious of the pounding of his heart. The man was still coming down the trail beside the stream. Then he froze.. Somebody else had come down along the side of the field, the way they had, and was pushing through the willows directly toward them. He was going to pass just beyond their outstretched legs and couldn’t fail to see them.

  “L’amour,” Kendall whispered. “Vive le sport.”

  He turned swiftly and took her in his arms, his head and shoulders above her to keep her face hidden as he crushed his lips to hers. Her body shifted slightly and the lips parted under his, while her arms locked about his neck and he felt himself drowning in an ocean of blondeness. The footsteps halted just beyond their feet. Blood pounded in his ears as he waited for the stammered Gallic apology and the flight.

  Instead, a glacial voice said, “It must be a revival of Tobacco Road.”

  His head jerked around. Framed in the opening in the willows just beyond the scenic splendor of Kendall Flanagan’s left leg was Martine. Beside her was Roberto Giannini. Roberto smiled admiringly. “Always the same old Colby.”

  “Shut up—!” Colby said. He tried to untangle himself from Kendall’s arms and sit up.

  “He can’t resist the bougainvillea and the wine-dark sea,” Martine said to Roberto. “Or the music of pigs rooting for truffles.”

  “Keep your pants on, darling—” Kendall began. At the same moment the dark-mustached man in the beret pushed through the willows from the other direction, halted abruptly, and turned away. “A thousand pardons, Monsieur!” Colby sighed.

  Comprehension dawned in Martine’s eyes. “Oh—you heard us coming?”

  “Of course.” He sat up and wearily indicated the man in the beret. “He was the only one I saw getting out of the truck. And we didn’t have time to run.”

  “And you were just doing it for the cause—do I feel like a fink!” Martine smiled sweetly at Kendall, and added, “Such wonderful actors, too. You could have fooled anybody.”

  “You should catch us when we’re eating regularly,” Kendall said. She stood up and smoothed down her dress.

  Colby had got to his feet. Roberto pushed forward with a broad smile and grabbed his hand. “Good old Colby. And always kissing the most beautiful girls—”

  Colby clapped him on the back and cut him off with a hearty greeting of his own. Try to knife me, you gilded beach-boy, and you’ll look like a dart board. “It’s great to see you! But where’s Sabine Manning?”

  The mobile Latin face started to freeze, but at the same instant Martine interrupted Colby. “We haven’t got much time if we’re going to get this thing off the ground.” She quickly performed the introductions. The man in the beret was Henri Michel. He owned the truck. Kendall reached for the paper bag and the bottle of wine he was carrying.

  “You, can eat lunch on the way,” Martine said. “Henri will drive.”

  “Where?” Colby asked.

  “Back to the Manning house.”

  “They’ll kill her. They’ve got it covered.”

  “No. I’ve got it all set up——” She started to explain, but Colby caught her arm and led her around the screen of willows out of sight of the others. It had been a long night, and for the moment he’d had it with Dudley’s sex novel in all its ramifications. When he tried to take her in his arms, however, he encountered only the thirty-seven elbows and unyielding square corners of a girl who has no intention of being kissed.

  “They’re different shades,” she pointed out. “I’m afraid they might clash.”

  He scrubbed at his lips with a handkerchief. “I tell you, it was only an act.”

  “Heavens, dear, I know it was. And real heads-up football, too. But what’s that got to do with it?”

  He shook his head, wondering bitterly how a man who’d been married twice could still regard logic as a weapon. He must be retarded. There seemed to be only two courses open. He discarded the first, which was to apologize for being right and which in the history of man had never worked yet, and threw everything into the masterful, or bulldozer, approach. In a minute the corners began to melt and flow back into pliable curves and her arms crept up around his neck.

  She smiled. “It was quite a night back at the ranch. Especially after we saw the papers.”

  “There was nothing to be afraid of. I had Flanagan to take care of me.”

  “That could have been one of the things that made it quite a night back at the ranch.”

  He was engrossed in the heady business of kissing her again. “Ummmmmhhhhhh?”

  “Knowing that she damn well might . . . Scrape! The radio’s right, you really do need a shave.”

  “The radio?”

  “You’re the dangerous-looking thug who speaks French with a Turkish accent and carries a million francs around in a briefcase. But listen—we’ve only got a minute. We’ve taken over the project.”

  “What?”

  “Merriman’s on the verge of collapse, he can’t take any more. He was going to run for it, so I made him an offer. For twenty thousand dollars plus expenses we’ll finish his book and get Kendall out of France”

  “Good God!” Colby interrupted. “How?”

  “Lawrence, please—it’s not as hard as it sounds. But there’s no time to explain now.” She called out to the others. “Everybody, let’s go.”

  They hurried back up the trail, Kendall mincing along as fast as she could on her bare feet and Colby still reeling from Martine’s bombshell. They came out to the last screen of willows just below the bridge and peered out. The road was clear.

  “Wait till we get set,” Martine said. She, Roberto, and Henri ran up onto the road. They opened the rear doors of the van, which had Michel Frères, Déménagements, lettered on its side. They looked both ways along the road and beckoned. Colby and Kendall broke from cover and ran. Roberto and Martine had already climbed in, and they helped Kendall up. Colby followed her. Henri grinned at them, said, “Allons,” and closed the door. Colby heard him run back and get in the cab. The truck lunged forward and began to gather speed.

  There was no light except that seeping in through the cracks around the doors, so it was a minute or two before he could see well enough to make out that the van contained a rather hideous sofa, an old leather-upholstered armchair, a rolled rug, two or three lamps, and a long wooden box that appeared to be empty except for some excelsior in the bottom of it. On one end of the sofa was a bundle of old clothing, apparently workers’ blue denims. He saw what she had in mind, and there was a good chance it would work—that far. But the rest of it was staggering.

  The truck rattled and swayed, threatening to throw them off their feet. Martine dropped into the armchair. Kendall sat on the sofa, still clutching the bottle of wine and the bag of food, while Roberto seated himse
lf on the floor in front of her.

  Colby perched on the corner of the box, dead tired after twenty-four hours of escalating crises, and looked at Martine. “But we’ll still have to get her out again.”

  “No problem,” Martine said. “They know she’s not in there now—or do if they can read three-inch headlines—so if she never came back, that’s the one place in France she couldn’t be hiding.” She turned to Kendall. “How long would it take you to wrap up the novel? Sanborn’s finished, and it’s a little over fifty pages.”

  “Three days, typing it,” Kendall replied. “With a recorder and some Dexedrine I could dictate it in twenty-four hours. Or less.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Nothing to it. He’s already written the story; I just slather on the mild rich prose. And correct the odd technical bit—he has a tendency to get lingerie mixed up with harness. Why?”

  “It’s going to take a lot of money to smuggle you out of France. So we finish the book, and Merriman—that is, Sabine Manning—pays for it.”

  Kendall grinned. “He’ll love that.”

  “He wins, too. If the police get you, he’s finished. Apparently they can’t trace you to the Manning house, or they would have already. There are some men staked out across the street, but I’m pretty sure they’re just the people who’re trying to kill you.”

  “Oh, that’s all? Anybody got a corkscrew?”

  Roberto produced a Swiss army knife from his pocket. Kendall passed him the bottle. Colby indicated the furniture, and asked Martine, “Where’d you get the props?”

  “From Roberto’s apartment,” she said. As soon as she’d seen the papers and realized they were going to need help—provided Colby and Kendall were able to survive the night without being killed by the kidnapers or arrested—she’d called mutual friends until she located him. He said he could get the moving van; Henri was a friend of his.

  When Colby had called, she’d arranged a rendezvous point, and left the Manning house in the Jaguar, followed, of course, by one of the mob that had it staked out. After she’d finally shaken him at a traffic light, she drove through the Bois until she was sure, and met them, leaving the Jaguar parked near the Invalides. She would pick it up again on the way in, so there would be nothing to connect her with the van at all.