Stranger in the Dark Read online

  But outside in the courtyard panic gave way to curiosity, and so Larry waited for that strange pair to come out. It wasn’t a long wait. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes before they came into view, walking slowly as befitted a grieving widow with a solicitous cousin at her side. This time the woman passed so close Larry could make out the features underneath the veil. Holger Hansen seemed to have had good taste in women even if he wasn’t so fortunate in the cousin department. They made an incongruous pair, this slight, graceful widow and the huge, ugly man. Larry ducked his head and studied the wrist watch he didn’t see, and when he looked up again they had crossed the courtyard and were passing through the gates. He followed, fascinated by a puzzle that persisted in getting worse instead of better. A pair of uniformed policemen loitered at the gates and the ugly man nodded to them in passing. A few yards along the street he stopped and assisted the widow into a small black sedan.

  The same sedan! The sight of it made Larry want to yell. He wanted to shout at the policemen to stop that sedan before it drove away; he wanted to run back inside and tell Martinus Sorensen everything he knew … but what did he know? The memory of that tolerant smile held him rooted to the sidewalk. He’d had a chance to speak and kept silent. Who would believe him now? Who would believe that anyone would deliberately run down and kill a man by night and then walk boldly into police headquarters the next morning to claim the victim’s belongings?

  “Yes, Herre Willis. Thank you for your information, Herre Willis. We’ll investigate, of course. Meanwhile, we’ll see that this money is added to Hansen’s effects.”

  Larry could almost hear the dialogue that would accompany that smile, and it was amazing what a man could learn by listening to voices that weren’t there. Amazing and frightening, because it suddenly seemed that the morning sun had tumbled into the Kattegat and the wind blowing through the tails of his trench coat was straight from the polar regions. Who would believe that anyone would deliberately run down and kill a man by night and then walk boldly into police headquarters the next morning to claim the victim’s belongings … unless there should have been something unusual in those belongings? Something, for instance, like a long gray envelope and three remarkable bills?

  Now Larry knew why he’d felt such panic at the sight of the man in Sorensen’s office, and why it was so important that he shouldn’t be recognized now. The sunlight glinted off the windshield as the sedan came toward him. He turned aside and when he looked again it was gone; but it did seem that somebody should warn Hansen’s widow of the company she kept. Larry could think of only one possibility—McDonald.

  The guidebooks furnished by the first-class hotels for the edification of their guests provided an abundance of vital information: where to dine, what to drink, how to reach the Glyptoteket, the fish market, or the changing of the guard; but what they didn’t provide was how to find the answer to an accident that looked like murder, or the whereabouts of a man who was no more to Larry Willis than a name hurled at him on a street corner as the bell-tower chimes struck ten. All the guidebook could do for him now was to show the way back to that great square where a busy city was getting a good start on another day.

  In daylight the whole affair seemed fantastic. This was no sinister boiling pot of intrigue and sudden death; this was a bustling city composed of a curious blending of ultramodern office and apartment buildings and a charming collection of Renaissance towers and spires. Larry stood beside the Dragon Fountain and stared morosely at the corner where all his grief had been born in the darkness. At midmorning it was one of the busiest intersections in the city: the center of the shopping district, the terminus of the tour busses, the heart of the hotel area. Was this any place to run down and kill a sprinting fisherman? Was this any place for a fisherman to sprint?

  It was no more than a random thought, but Larry grabbed it by the tail and hung on. If he collected enough random thoughts, he might find a way out of this mess. There was the one he’d flirted with just a moment ago, something about McDonald. It wasn’t a Danish name. Was it American? Very likely. Hadn’t he been mistaken for this man McDonald, and weren’t Europeans noted for their ability to recognize an American on sight?

  Assuming, then, that McDonald was an American, the nature of the neighborhood became important. Holger Hansen was a Danish fisherman. What was he doing so far from his moorings at ten o’clock? There must be cheaper bars near the water front. Maybe it was just because Larry wanted it that way, but it now became wonderfully clear that the dead man had been out of his element. And why? The urgency of the name he’d cried told that story. Hansen was looking for a man named McDonald, not by chance but by design. Why else had he searched that corner with anxious eyes before going on to meet his death? Why else had he come to the corner at all?

  … McDonald, American. Larry stared across the square at the canopied windows of the Palace Hotel, and the germ of an idea that was going to keep him company all afternoon was born. Find McDonald and find the answer. It might be easier than it seemed….

  “Good morning. I’m looking for a man named McDonald, but I’m not sure of his hotel. Would you mind checking your register?”

  It wouldn’t be too easy, of course. The Palace was the handiest hotel, but it wasn’t the only hotel. The guidebook listed several dozen, including pensions.

  “Good morning. I’m looking for a man named McDonald, but I’m not sure of his hotel. Would you mind …?”

  It would be less wear and tear to pick up a phone and call all those hotels in the guidebook, but that wasn’t possible. There might be any number of McDonalds in Copenhagen, and the one Larry was looking for wasn’t the white haired historian from Glasgow or the two maiden ladies from Berwick-on-Tweed, … or the family of acrobats from Jersey City, … or the agricultural major from U.C.L.A.

  “Good afternoon. I’m looking for a man named McDonald, but I’m not sure of his hotel….”

  I’m not even sure that he has a hotel. He may live in a packing box or the trunk of an old sedan. A black sedan driven by a peculiar cousin who may be looking for me just as hard as I’m looking for a man to relieve me of a very warm three hundred dollars.

  “Good evening. I’m looking for a man named McDonald….”

  It was somewhere in the vicinity of five o’clock when Larry finally abandoned the search. At that hour nobody in Copenhagen seemed interested in anything more strenuous than a leisurely coffee or a beer and akvavit at one of the numerous sidewalk cafés, and by that time it was beginning to seem that the natives had the right idea. McDonald, American. Six or seven hours ago the thought was a stroke of brilliance, but now Larry wondered whatever possessed him to think he could locate a faceless man in a city of more than a million people. Turning away from still another registration desk that had yielded no McDonald whatsoever, he found himself face to face with a pair of heavy glass doors and a sign in English proclaiming the nearby presence of American cocktails. The melancholy hour was approaching, that lonely hour when a man who knew not a soul in the city had to dine alone, and for that he needed fortification.

  It was a real nice bar. No flowerpots, no candles, and no strolling troubadours. Just a lot of blue shadows and a bartender who took one look at Larry’s face and said:

  “What’ll it be, Mac? Dry Martini?”

  It was real nice, like coming home after a long voyage, and Larry began to feel better right away. Over in the corner a piano was feeling low down and blue so far from Dixie, and even to a man who’d never been south of St. Louis it sounded like the opening strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” This is where he should have been last night instead of standing on that street corner like a target for somebody else’s grief. A man could keep out of trouble in a place like this—no frightened sailors, no black sedans. Now that his eyes were getting used to the blue lights Larry began to look about for a familiar face. Some of the boys should be getting in for the conventions, and they’d be sure to gravitate to an American bar. Nothing
like meeting up with some of the boys to drive away those three-hundred-dollar jitters and lay the ghost of Holger Hansen….

  Then it came without warning, just like on a corner of the Radhuspladsen. It came with a voice and a tug at the arm, but this time the tug was gentle and the voice was soft. A girl. Larry somehow knew that it was a very pretty girl even before her words spun him about like a top.

  “Mac! I might have known that I’d find you here! What’s the idea of standing me up—?”

  It was then that Larry spilled his Martini.

  4.

  HE WAS RIGHT—THE GIRL WAS BEAUTIFUL. SHE HAD GRAY EYES, copper-colored hair, and a ridiculous little blue hat perched on the back of her head. Her lips pouted when she frowned, and she seemed awfully unhappy about the spilled drink. It didn’t bother Larry at all.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you were someone else.”

  … Mac. This walking dream thought he was someone called Mac! The name hadn’t meant a thing when the bartender used it, just a standard greeting of recognition for a brother a long way from home, but coming from this girl it changed the situation considerably. Coming from the girl it was like money from home.

  “Wait, don’t go!” Larry said, as she started to turn away. “Let me buy you a drink.”

  It was a crazy way to try to hold her. Any girl who looked the way this one looked would be an old hand at brushing off unwanted invitations, but at least she was nice about it.

  “Some other time,” she said smiling. “Just now I’m looking for a friend.”

  “A friend named McDonald?”

  That did it. Speak the magic word and watch the lady turn around.

  “Do you know him?” she asked.

  “No, but I’m looking for him, too. That gives us something in common, doesn’t it? Bartender!”

  Blame it on the Martinis. Without them Larry might have proceeded with more caution. A man with an expense account could run up a lot of grief for himself picking up strange girls at a bar, but this girl, of course, wasn’t exactly strange. Under the circumstances, she was more of an angel in disguise and not too much of a disguise at that. Before she could protest, he ordered another pair of drinks and asked to have them brought to one of the little tables near the bar. With a firm hand on her arm she couldn’t very well refuse.

  But she could be wary.

  “Who are you?” she demanded, the moment they were seated, “And why are you looking for Mac?”

  She was never going to believe a cold answer to that second question. Larry dug out his wallet and extracted another of those Prairie State business cards. “Lately I’ve been a little confused myself,” he admitted, “but that’s me in the lower corner, L. O. Willis. My friends call me Larry.”

  She frowned at the card and then at the Martinis the waiter placed on the table. “I’ll bet they do, Mr. Willis,” she said.

  “I sell farm equipment,” Larry explained.

  “So I see…. Well, I’m happy to have made your acquaintance, and if I ever need any farm equipment I’ll get in touch.”

  She started to get up, and Larry couldn’t have that.

  “What about McDonald?” he protested.

  “Oh, I doubt if he’ll be interested,” she said. “Mac’s not the rustic type.”

  The laughing eyes Larry didn’t mind, even though they were laughing at his expense. The smile was the nicest thing he’d seen in Copenhagen, and the accent—she had just a tantalizing touch of an accent—was music to his ears; but walking out on him was simply out of the question. In lieu of force, which would probably be frowned upon by the management, he knew only one way to get that foolish notion out of her pretty head.

  “I don’t want to see McDonald about farm equipment,” he said deliberately. “I want to see him because the ugly man in the black sedan ran over Holger Hansen and killed him last night, and now I don’t know what to do with the three hundred dollars.”

  Larry concluded his declaration with a long pull at his glass and watched the girl settle down in her chair again. She might have been running to catch the last train to Paradise, but she wasn’t going anywhere in the face of a statement like that. She was going to sit there, fascinated, while he spelled out all the details….

  When a thing happened, it had to begin somewhere. What happened to Larry Willis began in an American bar somewhere in Copenhagen with a piano in the background getting sentimental over “The Birth of the Blues,” and a girl in a crazy blue hat getting more and more intrigued with a story that must have sounded like a mixture of Martinis and imagination. He knew what was happening—that was the craziest part of all. Along with all the trouble he had, he had to get more.

  He could read her reactions on her face. At first she was stunned by that direct opening, then she began to smile, vaguely, like a woman who knows what’s troubling a lonely man. That was when he made the slip about Cathy being on his mind as he stood on that street corner. Cathy, his girl, who had married that plumber. It was a bad slip, but it was all the girl’s fault. That copper-colored hair was just the same shade. Further along the vague smile verged on laughter as he covered that bit about the sinister-faced man in the black sedan, but all of the concealed laughter died quite suddenly when he finished off the completed tale by producing the proof—a long gray envelope that put quick shadows in her eyes.

  It was good to have the story told at last. The piano player in the corner stopped for a break, and silence huddled close over a secret that now had two owners. Twenty-four hours in Copenhagen and Larry was already getting interested in the co-operative movement.

  “Three hundred dollars,” the girl said with a hollow voice. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Of course it didn’t make sense! It couldn’t possibly make sense without a key.

  “It might to your friend McDonald,” Larry suggested.

  Suspicion brightened the girl’s eyes. He couldn’t blame her for that.

  “I don’t see why,” she insisted. “That fisherman might not have called his name at all. You said it all happened quickly. You could be mistaken.”

  “I was not mistaken,” Larry said firmly.

  “Then he might have meant another McDonald.”

  “Another McDonald? How many McDonalds do you think there are in Copenhagen who look like me?”

  “But you don’t, not really. It’s just your hair, and your build, and that raincoat you’re wearing. Mac has one just like it.”

  Stubborn she was, right from the beginning. That’s when it began to happen. This was trouble, and the girl sensed it. What kind of trouble she didn’t know, but she was already fighting to keep her man out of it. Larry liked that, even if the fight was all for another man. As for the trench coat, he might have known the darned thing would get him into trouble.

  “Then you’ve never heard of Holger Hansen?” he said.

  “Never,” the girl answered.

  “And you can’t think of any reason why McDonald, your friend McDonald, that is, would have any dealings with him?”

  She hesitated. “If he has, he never mentioned the man to me.”

  “Who is McDonald, an American?”

  The girl nodded. “Yes, but he lives here in Copenhagen. He was a news correspondent before—”

  “Before what?”

  “Before what he does now. What does it matter?”

  It could matter a great deal. Discussing a problem always made it more transparent, and now Larry started thinking aloud.

  “News correspondent,” he mused. “He must have met a lot of people on a job like that, all sorts of people. Thieves, smugglers …”

  “This is Copenhagen, Mr. Willis, not Chicago!”

  “And so nobody ever breaks a law, I suppose! They have that big police yard just to keep track of lost bicycles! Can’t you see? Hansen must have been in some kind of trouble, desperate trouble. He knew McDonald and made an appointment with him—”

  This was pure conjecture, and the girl knew it
. “Sorry to contradict you, Mr. Willis,” she said, “but last night Mac had an appointment with me.”

  “Did he keep it?”

  Larry was sorry the instant he asked the question. The piano came up behind them again, spreading its melancholy mood like a plague, and Larry found himself wondering why the right man wasn’t on that corner last night and what could possibly induce any man to stand up this girl in the crazy blue hat. She seemed to be wondering, too. She turned the envelope over and over in her hands. “What do the police think?” she asked, and he had to admit that the police didn’t know anything about this affair because he’d turned tail and run at the sight of that ugly man in Sorensen’s office.

  “He might have seen me with Hansen,” he explained, “and if it’s this envelope he’s looking for I’d just as soon he didn’t see me again. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe there’s a simple explanation for this whole mess, and I’m just a bundle of nerves, but I have to make sure…. Where can I find McDonald?”

  He waited for an answer, but the girl didn’t seem to hear. She hadn’t taken her eyes from the gray envelope since its appearance put the damper on her sense of humor.

  “It’s fantastic!” she said. “It couldn’t be—!”

  “What couldn’t be?” Larry demanded.

  “Nothing. Nothing important…. I can give you Mac’s address, Mr. Willis, but I’m afraid it won’t do you much good. He’s not at home just now.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. When he failed to call for me last night, I called his apartment and got no answer. There’s been no answer all day. Oh, it doesn’t mean anything. Mac’s often called away on business without having time to tell me about it. I’ll get a call or a wire shortly.”