Delicate Ape by Dorothy B. Hughes Page A

before he dared move. If he could be sure of success, the game would be worth its candle. He couldn’t be. Not without Evanhurst or Fabian. There seemed little hope of Evanhurst. He moved from his chair, made a light and stretched himself on the bed. He went over the newspapers he had bought, rapidly, thoroughly. The delegation from Equatorial Africa wasn’t mentioned. There was only one item worth attention, a noted Washington columnist, one whose comments were above question, had written: “Secretary Anstruther remains in retirement pending the opening of the International Peace Conclave on Sunday.”
    Piers pushed away the papers. If the commentator would look into Bianca’s eyes his belief in his infallibility would be shattered. He flung away the newssheets; he might as well go out into the dinner and theater crowds. Dinner wasn’t important but the theater would black out memory for a too brief number of hours. First a shower and change of clothes.
    He pulled out the uppermost bureau drawer. He stood there, his hand tightening on the knob. The drawer had been searched. He opened each of the others in turn. They too had felt intrusive fingers. It was not that the contents were tumbled. It was rather the small disarrangement. Had not years of fending for himself in limited space given him an inordinate taste for order as against the time-wasting uselessness of disorder, he might not have noticed the intrusion.
    He went without haste to the clothes closet. The suits as well. The spacing was different. He pulled out his two suitcases, large and small, opened each in turn. The linings were intact. He hadn’t expected the consideration. Whoever had searched may have used a detector to make certain nothing was hidden. Yet a finger touch could have told that no papers were secreted. Whoever had searched was after papers, the papers of Secretary Anstruther. His lips curled away from his teeth. They could have spared themselves the deed. There were no papers here.
    It amused rather than angered him that his room had been searched. There was a bribe—if access had been result of bribery—wasted. Entrance might have been by a passkey, easy enough for one of the Smiths to make one. He bathed, dressed leisurely. He put on the dark suit again. It didn’t matter its repetition, not with his detective escort. Captain Devlin could lay hands on him without trouble of search. He pocketed his key, went out and walked the few steps to the elevator. There was no life visible, no sound here nor in the dim corridors stretching left and right. It was as silent as if it were a dwelling place on the Nubian desert. He touched the button again and he backed to the wall where he might be safe from surprise attack. The enemy had had access to this floor at some time today. They could return.
    The drop to the lobby was into a different world, a world of cacophony and light. It was reassuring. It even seemed safe. For a moment he hesitated, washed by its disinterested safeness. He could remain here; he didn’t have to wander tonight. It was absurd to be ridden by the hounds of fear on Broadway. Absurd that he dreaded to emerge from his fox’s hole, absurd to fear the street because of an accident pattern that must not be uncommon.
    He had hungered for years to return to this garish and, to him, precious sector of the universe. Crossing he had believed that here he could forget the ordeal ahead, a week of losing himself on Broadway would give the necessary therapeutic advantage he needed before the hour of reckoning. He should have belonged to the theater world. His mother had been a Piers, yes, but she had been Cornelia Piers’ own daughter. Not only had she married Horace Hunt, the leading character actor of his generation; she had not imported him into her world where he had no wish to be; she had joined his. Piers had been figuratively born in a trunk. That the trunk had been a luxurious one proved only that Horace Hunt had been a laborer