Dark Wanton

1: Tango-3

"Yes, Mr. Quayle." She got up.

Quayle said: "Thank you, Antoinette."

She adjusted her glasses. She smiled a small, vague smile. She said: "Thank you, Mr. Quayle."

She went out.

Quayle lighted a cigarette. He thought to himself that in any event he had started something which must, of necessity, lead somewhere or other. The thing to do was to get started.

He began to think about Antoinette Brown. He grinned. He told himself that one day Antoinette was going to make a lot of trouble for some man. One day... when she began to get wise to herself...

At six o'clock Quayle sent for Frewin.

Frewin came into the office; closed the door quietly behind him; stood in his usual indolent manner, leaning against the wall.

Quayle asked: "Have you talked to Antoinette?"

Frewin nodded.

Quayle said: "The position's clarified a little. Now I know more or less what I'm doing." He told Frewin about the telephone call he had received in the early part of the afternoon.

Frewin said: "I see. So it's like that. Did you think it was like that— before you had the call, I mean?"

"I've always had the idea more or less," said Quayle, "but nothing much to support it." He went on: "You can carry on from there." He grinned. "I think this is one of those things that you'll handle very successfully, Michael. You know what must happen?"

Frewin nodded. "I know what you mean."

Quayle said: "I'll be going away for a few days. I'm going to Germany. I may be away two days; I may be away a week. I don't know. But I'd like this thing cleared up quickly."

Frewin smiled. He asked: "How do I clear a thing like this up quickly? All sorts of things will have to happen."

"Maybe," said Quayle. "But I have no doubt you'll make them happen."

Frewin said: "All right. Tell me something— why are you using this girl Brown on this thing?"

Quayle c****d one eyebrow. "You suggested her, I didn't. It was you who said she rated as one of our best operatives."

Frewin said: "I know. But I didn't understand the implications of this job then."

Quayle lighted a cigarette. He settled himself back comfortably in his chair. He smiled almost benignly at his assistant.

He said: "You don't like Antoinette Brown, do you, Michael?"

Frewin shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose I don't. But that doesn't mean that she's not a good operative for normal work.

Quayle asked softly: "Why don't you like her?"

Frewin shrugged his shoulders again. "She's either too good to be true or she's one hell of a hypocrite. And I don't like women who are hypocrites."

Quayle's smile broadened. "Do we care," he said; "provided they do their job as efficiently as Antoinette Brown does, and keep their mouths shut as tightly as she always has? But tell me why she's either too good to be true or a hypocrite, Michael."

Frewin said: "It's her general attitude towards life. I've watched her for quite a while— especially during the Nüremberg days. She doesn't seem at all interested in any of the things that interest a normal woman. But she's too uninterested. No ordinary normal woman can be as uninterested in the things that make people tick over as she is, without either being slightly mental or fearfully hypocritical."

Quayle said: "You're talking about s*x of course, aren't you, Michael?"

Frewin nodded. "Of course I am. Everybody in the world thinks somehow— sometime— about s*x except, apparently, Miss Brown. Yet, if she wants to produce some feminine attribute that's going to get her some place in her job she can produce it."

Quayle asked quietly: "Then why worry?"

Frewin frowned a little. "I'm not worrying," he said.

Quayle knocked the ash from his cigarette delicately into the ash-tray in front of him. "Well, so long as the job's done, your likes and dislikes don't matter. In point of fact I think when people are doing the sort of work that you and she will be doing a little dislike doesn't hurt." He grinned mischievously. "She doesn't like you a lot," he concluded.

"I know. The fact doesn't keep me awake at night."

Quayle said: "I thought it wouldn't."

"And," continued Frewin, "I'm not interested in what she does or she doesn't think, because she's not working with me; she's going to do what she's told."

Quayle nodded. "Precisely," he said.

Frewin asked: "Anything else?"

Quayle said: "About the other woman, something interesting has turned up having regard to that telephone call. If you want anybody to use as a stooge— if you know what I mean— it seems that Kiernan was attracted to a woman called Aurora Francis who worked under the Control in Germany when he was out there. Brown told me that. It seems that Francis is coming back to England to-morrow. Now, if it's of any use to you, and you feel that you'd like to use her as an unconscious contact, do so."

Frewin said: "I'll remember that."

Quayle got up and stretched. "Good luck, Michael," he said. "Keep it as clean as you can. And I'd like it all tied up in three or four days whichever way you have to do it."

Frewin moved away from the wall. He asked: "Even if it's the hard way?"

"Even if it's the hard way," said Quayle. "Life's hard anyway."

Frewin nodded. He went out.

Quayle sat down at his desk; lighted another cigarette.

The Mordaunt Hotel is a very good hotel of the second class sort. An old-fashioned family hotel, its suites are comfortable and the service still good and respectful in days when suites are usually small and stuffy and service exists when you can get it— if you can.

At seven-thirty Antoinette Brown was looking at herself in the cheval mirror in her bedroom on the first floor. She was wearing an attractive black evening frock. She thought she looked "very nice." She came as near to feeling annoyed as she ever did when the telephone rang and reception told her that Mr. Michael Frewin wanted to see her.

She asked that he should be sent up to her sitting-room; then she powdered her nose; put on her glasses; looked at herself in the mirror; took the glasses off; went into the sitting-room.

When Frewin came in she was sitting demurely in an arm-chair reading a copy of the Tatler. He closed the door behind him; put his hat on a chair.

He said: "Good evening. I hope I'm not disturbing you. But it was important to see you."

She got up. "If you say so, it must be important, Mr. Frewin."

He wondered for a moment whether there was a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

She went on: "Please sit down and I'll get you a cigarette."

Frewin said: "Thanks. I'll smoke one of my own." He took his case from his pocket; lighted a cigarette. He went on: "I had a talk with Mr. Quayle this afternoon. It seems that you told him that a woman named Aurora Francis who knew Mr. Kiernan in Nüremberg would be arriving to-morrow afternoon at Victoria. Is that right?"

She nodded.

Frewin said: "I haven't quite made up my mind exactly what action I'm going to take, but in the meantime I think it would be a very good idea if you confined yourself to some general tactics without particularising too much, and you can report to me all the time. When the situation hardens— if it does harden— I'll be able to give you more definite instructions."

"Very well, Mr. Frewin." Her voice was efficient.

He took a sheet of closely-typed quarto paper out of his pocket. He said: "I've made some notes here. Some general notes of what's in my mind. Some notes on what one might call the opening gambit in this business. I want you to read them, memorise them; then destroy the paper. Really, everything's rather vague at the moment. I can't help that. I don't suppose it'll be vague for very long." He smiled at her.

She said: "I don't suppose so, Mr. Frewin. I've noticed in any operation where you've been concerned, everything is inclined to be very definite."

Frewin thought there was something in her voice that he didn't like. He said: "I don't know that I'm particularly interested in what you notice or don't notice. All I'm interested in is that you do what you're told."

"Quite. I always do, don't I, Mr. Frewin? In any event, I've never had any complaints from Mr. Quayle about the methods I've used in my work. I've often wondered..." Her voice tailed off into nothingness.

Frewin asked: "You've often wondered what?"

"I've often wondered why you are so unnecessarily unpleasant. One would have imagined that in our sort of work a normal co-operation would have been much more desirable than the sort of armed neutrality"— she smiled quickly at him—"which you always manage to bring into any working association with me."

For some reason which he didn't know Frewin found himself rather angry. He thought that Antoinette Brown was rather like an eel— something that you could never quite get hold of.

He got up. "I'm sorry if you don't like working with me. But that's how it is. We've got to work together, and things being as they are you'll work in my way."

She said quietly: "If you say so, Mr. Frewin."

He asked: "You don't like me, do you?"

She said softly: "No, Mr. Frewin."

He picked up his hat. "If you have anything to-morrow night you'd better ring through to my apartment. You've got the number. You've got all the places where I'm likely to be at any time during next week. Good-night."

She said: "Good-night."

Frewin went out. In the corridor, for some inexplicable reason, he felt a sense of frustration and annoyance. He wondered why.

Saturday

IT is doubtful if any one would have noticed Miss Antoinette Brown sitting at the corner table in the refreshment room at Victoria Station. But there are not a very great number of people extraordinarily sensitive to the auras of young women who used the refreshment room at Victoria Station at four o'clock in the afternoon.

If it is difficult to give a picture of Antoinette it is because she was a difficult person to describe. In the office of the Civil Service department to which she had been attached until the day before, she was nicknamed, as Michael Frewin had told Quayle, the Practical Virgin. The reason for that nickname was obvious. Antoinette was practical and she was a virgin.

She was practical because she possessed a quiet analytical mind and an extremely active brain. She knew a lot because she liked knowing things and if she didn't know anything about any given subject she looked it up. In this manner one may acquire a great deal of extraneous knowledge; a certain philosophy of life. I am not suggesting for one moment that Antoinette Brown's philosophy of life was even plausible, but it was definitely hers and she liked it.

Women liked her because they trusted her, because she was honest— or seemed to be honest— and because she never attempted to steal their men. But, in fact, this was not a virtue on her part, because her attitude towards men was somewhat strange as we shall see. I do not mean that she disliked men as a s*x. She merely disliked s*x.

This might lead you to believe that men were entirely uninterested in Miss Antoinette Brown. If you believed this, again you would be wrong— very wrong! They were interested in her for a diversity of reasons. Some of them thought that she was a little cocky and prone to over-value herself in her office capacity. Some of them disliked her because she had a flair for discovering their mistakes, and even though she would point out the discovery to them personally and in a most charming way, they didn't like it. It made them feel a trifle inferior and no man likes to feel like that. The more clever men with whom she came in contact in the course of her work— men who did not make mistakes; men whose jobs were sufficiently important to enable them to regard Antoinette in her secretarial capacity as a relatively unimportant person— were often annoyed because when, in a moment of (as they afterwards thought) mental aberration, they asked her to lunch or dinner, they found that her reactions were not what they thought they would have been. And for any attempt at familiarity— a stolen kiss in the taxicab, a surreptitious arm about the waist or the straying hand which seeks the solace of a feminine knee— she had the sting of a wasp.