Uncertain Voyage Read online

  We all hope you are having a wonderful trip. Do stop in and tell us about it when you return.

  With all best wishes,

  Joe Carmichael

  “What on earth,” thought Melissa, completely bewildered. She began to read the letter a second time, still rather stupidly, because she had no idea what Joe Carmichael meant or to what cables he was alluding. “Lost itinerary?” she echoed blankly. “I haven’t lost any itineraries.” As if to confirm this she opened her purse and brought out her typed list of arrivals and departures and displayed it to an invisible audience. But this was unsatisfying because the Carmichael Travel Agency was thousands of miles away and could neither see nor hear her.

  She began reading the letter again. Obviously her travel agent was laboring under the delusion that she’d lost her itinerary and that she’d been suspended somewhere in Europe with no idea of where to go next, or on which train or plane. Laboring under this delusion he had cabled her a replacement copy. But to whom had he sent it? She’d received no cables from anyone, and certainly not from the Carmichael Agency.

  She’d certainly not asked for one, either.

  What on earth could they be writing about?

  “Now hold on, Melissa,” she told herself, and letter in hand went into the small sitting room and sat down. “Try logic,” she suggested sternly. Why did they believe her list was lost? Someone had told them so. Charles? But Charles wouldn’t use her name, and anyway Charles was in Massachusetts where he obviously was in no position to receive a cablegram addressed to her in Europe.

  For that matter, Mr. Carmichael made it clear that the cable signed with her name had come from Europe.

  A chill of astonishment gripped Melissa. Someone here in Europe must have cabled Joe Carmichael—in Melissa’s name—and then received the cable for her. Someone who wanted to know where she was going, what planes she would be taking, where she was to stay, and for how long.

  The Copenhagen police? But they would never have signed her name to a cable even if they had known where to send one. It had taken them three days to trace her from the border to the hotel, the policeman had said so.

  Adam? She looked at the date on the letter. But she had already met Adam when this letter was written on July first, and Adam need only have asked.

  The Pale One…

  “Now stop being ridiculous,” Melissa thought with scorn. “That was Copenhagen, and you are imagining things again. There is no Pale One in Paris. Besides, how could that little man possibly know about the Carmichael Agency in Bruxton, Massachusetts?”

  Letter in hand she left the sitting room and walked into the wire elevator to be carried slowly, majestically to the second floor. She unlocked the door and walked in, tossing coat and key to the bed. No, really, it was inconceivable, she must be losing her grip to think such a thing because there was no possible way of anyone in Europe connecting her with the Carmichael Agency back in America, there was absolutely no—

  Her glance fell to her suitcase under the sink and she stiffened. “Oh God,” she thought drearily, as her eyes met the first bright label which she had affixed to her suitcase before leaving New York. In clear blue letters printed on white gum were emblazoned the words CARMICHAEL TRAVEL AGENCY, BRUXTON, MASSACHUSETTS. That label had been on her suitcase for two weeks, the words had moved with her from New York to Bremerhaven, to Hamburg, to Copenhagen, and to Paris, carried openly through air terminals, railway stations, customs, and hotel lobbies.

  Were they really that clever?

  She had almost forgotten Stearns again. Stearns had happened to her three cities ago in this necklace of countries she was spanning, he and his book were no more than a suppressed dread now, a blurred shadow on her consciousness.

  Was she being followed then in Paris, too? Had it really been The Pale One at Le Bourget?

  She felt suddenly dizzy and sat down, and then as the full implications of the letter overwhelmed her she felt abruptly and acutely nauseated. She stumbled to the sink and was violently ill into the washbasin.

  8

  It had grown dark outside. Drained and stupefied, she drew the heavy flowered curtains across the window and sat in the darkness shivering from weakness as well as fear. She had drawn the curtains to take shelter but of course there was no one following her; it was her sick imagination that insisted she was under some kind of surveillance. Life wasn’t like this. She had arrived here in Paris precisely seven hours ago, and she had been managing splendidly by herself. It didn’t make sense to end her evening retching in a hotel basin, it had to be something she’d eaten on the plane or in the restaurant. It couldn’t be the letter.

  She lighted a cigarette and contemplated the letter that lay open on the writing table across from her. It said—she closed her eyes, repeating the contents to herself, and then to check on her accuracy she reached for the sheet of paper and brought it to the bed with her. Dear Mrs. Aubrey—

  Yes, she had recalled the words accurately but it was their meaning that eluded her. She could not face the implications. “Look here,” she said aloud, as if to God, “I’m just one American tourist traveling abroad for three weeks, why should anything like this happen to me?”

  “I’m not being followed,” she told herself stubbornly. “Why should I be, what have I done?”

  And awfullest of all—who were they?

  She felt exhausted from the conflict going on inside of her. There was a part of her so aware of the letter’s meaning that it had sent her, reeling with shock, to the washbasin; and there was a part of her that struggled desperately to find lies with which to conceal and rationalize the situation. For if she accepted the implications of this letter then she would have to acknowledge that The Pale One had been following her in Copenhagen and that he might be following her in Paris, too, that someone knew of her connection with Stearns and that she was therefore in grave danger. But to acknowledge danger was to face terror and loss: the unendurable loss of the small sense of security she must cling to, a loss of her identity and the greatest possible loss of all, her life. In that direction lay panic and disintegration. Nor could she go home. It was not just the money involved in her trip, nor the sense of defeat that would be carried back with her, but she felt utterly helpless about even the mechanics of changing her plans. Where did one go to change reservations? To whom did one speak? It shattered her even to consider such a change.

  She crept to the curtains and parted them, half expecting to meet a face on the other side of the pane but there was only darkness and the blank cement wall of the next building. She walked to her door and opened it, but there was no sudden rustle of movement in the empty, dimly lit hall. She went back into her dark room and sat down on the bed, achingly tired and afraid even of the darkness now because there was nothing else on which to focus her fears. After a while in her despair she began to pound her pillow and every blow was a blow at Stearns. She had found someone to blame, and this—mercifully—distracted her.

  * * *

  —

  She awoke to the sound of a buzzer—it was nearly nine o’clock and the sun was shining. Removing the receiver from the hook she was told in mangled English that she had not breakfasted yet and that breakfast was being served in the small alcove off the lobby. Melissa dressed and went downstairs to discover a room filled with small tables behind the elevator: a woman brought her a decanter of steaming black coffee and a tray of croissants. The coffee had the effect of awakening Melissa from the nightmare of the preceding night so that she began to look upon this new day with curiosity, to admit its existence, and to admit herself as a person into its existence. She began to realize what she must do, and tentatively she drew out her map, feeling crafty and artful and hopeful. It might be possible to exploit desperation, to draw upon the same atavistic cunning that an animal used when it scented danger and must identify it for survival. When she had finished her coffee and cigarett
e she left the hotel, map in hand, to look for the curved street up which she had wandered in innocence the evening before. Crossing the Boulevard Saint Michel she turned into the Rue Danton and began to walk slowly its narrow thoroughfare, but although she openly consulted her map and stopped frequently to look with interest in the shop windows the real purpose of her trip was not exploration. By carefully choosing the shop windows into which she peered she was trying to observe the people behind her who did not pass her by. It proved more difficult than she’d foreseen because there were already a large number of tourists on the street who shared her inclination to browse among the displays of books, prints and objets d’art. Still, almost all tourists traveled in pairs and before she reached the end of the Rue Danton Melissa had singled out one single, distant shadow that remained stubbornly behind her and was reflected in each window at which she paused. Approaching the end of the street she found what she was looking for—a narrow alley between two shops—and allowing herself to be caught up by a group of camera-slung tourists she walked with them past the alley and then separated herself and ducked in among its shadows.

  She stood and waited.

  Several people passed, and then the lone man, and there was no longer any doubt: at sight of him Melissa drew in her breath sharply. She knew at last, and was horrified. Certainly if the letter had not alerted her she would never have noticed him—never—for he was no longer wearing woolly brown tweed. The rimless spectacles and the pale thin profile were the same, but in Paris The Pale One had changed to black serge.

  Adam would not have approved of this suit, either, she thought with wan humor.

  She turned and ran blindly down the alley, barely averting garbage pails, a cat, and a fire escape until she came out upon another street, and then another, and reached the Boulevard Saint Michel and flagged down an empty taxi. “Galerie Lafayette,” she gasped, jumping inside; it was a name high on her list of places to visit, and she knew that it lay on the other side of the Seine and at some distance away.

  So she really was being followed…She had been followed in Copenhagen and now she was being followed here in Paris. It was actually happening; she could no longer pretend that it was not true, or rationalize it away. She was being followed. Her mind reeled at this, and because it was no longer coincidence or supposition or conjecture, it held the shock of finality. She could no longer escape a proven fact or continue to weave deceits: it was actual, it was real. “They’re following me, Melissa Aubrey,” she whispered, and began to shiver at the horror of it.

  “Pardon?” said the cab driver.

  She shook her head. They had crossed the Seine and were passing a huge hotel whose sidewalks were filled with café tables under a bright awning. She said suddenly, “I will get out here.”

  She paid the driver. She was certain the cab had not been followed, but she chose a table beside the street where she could see everyone who passed. Ordering a vermouth from the waiter she lighted a cigarette with shaking hands. She needed people now, she felt tight inside and very frightened; fear always fragmented her and then isolated her and so she sat very still, trying to draw strength from the people around her so that she need not lose the small precarious amount of steadiness remaining in her.

  It was Stearns’ book that had led her to this. Stearns had been murdered for it, and once it was discovered that he had given the book to her—why, then, she would be murdered, too. If they put two and two together, if they learn for instance that you also go to Majorca, and that we sat at the same table….Yet it all seemed so long ago. Time could never be measured by clocks or calendars on a journey like this, and Stearns had happened to her a century ago, before Hamburg, before Copenhagen, but above all before Adam. Since then the meaning and the urgency of Stearns had faded into near-oblivion. She had never wanted to remember him, anyway.

  Surely she ought to go to the police now, she thought, but if she could not herself believe in Stearns’ reality, would she really be capable of forcing the French police to believe in it? There was nothing provable about the encounter except a book, a worn paperback volume of Emerson’s essays that still seemed a joke to her.

  Damn Stearns, she thought.

  The police would say, “This is very interesting, you traveled aboard a ship with this man, you met him on A deck at ten o’clock during the evening before the ship docked at Cherbourg, and between then and dawn the man was murdered?” They would hold her for questioning, they would ask why she believed she was being followed. Why? Because she had several times seen this man in Copenhagen, she would reply, and now he was here in Paris. Could she prove it was the same man? Only by a man named Adam who might or might not remember The Pale One, and who could be found somewhere in Norway—or was it Sweden or Finland by now? The police could of course contact the Anglo-Majorcan Export Company to ask them if they knew of Stearns, or expected a book of essays, but if Stearns really was a secret agent then it was possible that his name was not Stearns at all. Besides, she could herself contact the Anglo-Majorcan Export Company if she cared to—if she wanted to—if it was important enough—because in a little more than forty-eight hours she would be flying to Palma and could discover for herself if such a company existed.

  But at the heart of her dilemma lay the knowledge that she was as afraid of going to the police as she was of The Pale One. Jolted, she felt of too little significance to act. The police were real, and she was not, and if she went to them she would have to go now, today, in a few minutes, while the implications of The Pale One’s presence could be postponed until she felt stronger. She did not speak French, she did not know where to find the Seurat or whom to see there, she was sure that she would be kept waiting and then treated with hostility. She was far too frightened to convince strangers of her suspicions, she wanted only to find relief from her terror by obliterating it. A police inquisition could only bring new stress, and already anxiety was turning her into a cipher.

  The waiter brought her vermouth and placed it on the table. She paid him, hoping he didn’t notice her trembling hands but by now all sense of realness was dropping from her fragment by fragment. If only she could feel real, if only Stearns could feel real to her! And Adam, was he also going to slip away from her into an unfathomable silence of time, as Stearns had done? When she returned home would she also have to call him back by conscious and deliberate invocations of will, by trancelike starings at the skeletal remains of a rose, by a closing of her eyes to summon back some residual image left behind in the retina? Her heart ached at this concept of loss. She tried to recall Adam now, and couldn’t, he was absolutely gone, and tears of grief filled her eyes. There was again nothing solid or provable to which she could cling, and in panic she looked out at the people passing by, her eyes imploring just one of them to bestow upon her a second glance that would give her back her realness. She found no one, and finding no one began to take her evil game seriously, to bank her very existence upon discovering one—just one—whose gaze would assure her that she was real, that she had substance, that she was sitting here at this café table in Paris. But although throngs of people streamed past her, their glances remained fixed upon the street ahead of them, ignoring her, or moved with deep interest to the table next to Melissa.

  She turned, curious to see what captured those coveted glances, and saw that it was not an object or an activity but a woman, a woman like herself—but much younger, and very beautiful with the glowing radiance of cared-for American youth. Everything about her was exquisite: her long crossed silken legs, her dark suit, the shining blonde hair, the profile of her flawless face. With a dark flush burning her cheeks Melissa returned to her drink. Now at last, in one stroke, she was rendered invisible and there was no hope at all, but by comparison she felt diminished and unseen, but above all tired and old. How could she ever have attracted Adam? Nor could she summon back Adam’s belief in her as a shield now because if Adam passed today it would be at this gorgeous creatu
re he would look, not at her. She knew this, and denied even this reassurance—denied every possible reassurance of her existence—Melissa turned upon herself with revulsion and began plunging knives of hatred into a self that now appeared contemptible and pitiful. As she plunged down into this spiraling void of nothingness she wanted to cry out “Adam!” but he was not there, and in his place sat this woman who was precisely the sort of woman Adam was accustomed to enjoying—he had said so: poised, sophisticated, knowledgeable. And Adam was above all fastidious: had it been an absence of such goddesses that led him to cultivate Melissa instead, who was neither poised, sophisticated nor knowledgeable? Had she been for him in Copenhagen only a compromise, a passing convenience?

  She shuddered.

  Or would he—and this was the most contemptible thought of all—would he still choose Melissa because she was the more available?

  She reeled at this insight. Did he—for sport—prefer playing Prince Charming to a Cinderella because it indulged his sense of superiority and flattered his ego? Once she had bravely said to him, “I must be very different from the women you know at home.” And he had said nothing, he had not even condescended to deny it.

  Once he had said, “I would tell the man to find someone more trusting, more gullible than I…Now if he could find someone like you—inexperienced, unworldly, and traveling alone—”

  Her flush darkened as she stared unseeingly into her drink. It chilled her to realize that anything so real could change like this, it was like holding a many-faceted jewel and by one swift manipulation of the fingers seeing it rendered opaque, dark, and lusterless. “Was it,” she wondered unsteadily, “a star-crossed meeting in Copenhagen, or was it a cheap pickup between a man looking for sex and a woman looking for reassurance?”