Read Online A Chorus of Detectives by Barbara Paul - Free Book Online Page B

Antanas quietly opened the door. His face was as serious as always, but Mrs. Bukaitis was quick to notice his eyes were dancing. The man had come! After disappointing them twice, this time he had come!
    There were nine people in Antanas’s room. Eight of them Mrs. Bukaitis knew; a few nodded to her, but no one spoke. The ninth person was a man she’d never seen before. He was leaning against the far wall, a small table covered with unfamiliar objects in front of him. The room’s two chairs were taken; Mrs. Bukaitis sat on the floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. The poorly lighted room was chilly and damp; someone was coughing.
    They waited without speaking until two more people had joined them. Then Antanas announced it was time to begin. The silence in the room was tense as the stranger stepped up to the small table and began to demonstrate how to build a bomb.
    Emmy Destinn waved a hand impatiently through the cloud of cigarette smoke that drifted over from the next table and tried to concentrate on what Antonio Scotti was saying. It was difficult; he’d more or less been saying the same thing for the past fifteen years.
    â€œShe has new lover!” Scotti moaned. “She does not tell me, but I know it! Why does she do this to me?”
    â€œToto, you’re being silly. She probably just had something to do today.”
    â€œOh yes, she has something to do today! She has to see him instead of me!”
    â€œYou can’t expect Gerry to spend every free minute with you,” Emmy pointed out, bored to death with the subject. “Be reasonable.”
    But Scotti didn’t hear, caught up as he was in his perennial lament. He enjoyed his role of persistent suitor, Emmy thought, and he played it to the hilt. Emmy suddenly found herself thinking about another man. He was a man from whom she’d parted after a years-long affair, and the parting had not been amicable. Scotti knew about the affair, but it hadn’t seemed to occur to him that his lament about his own romantic misfortunes might be a source of pain to her. He would have done better to choose a different confidante.
    Scotti was off on a nostalgic journey now, remembering all the good times. Emmy tired of hearing of the perpetual wonderfulness of Geraldine Farrar and let her attention wander. They were in a large basement room. Someone had hung a few pictures on the brick walls and placed several overly optimistic potted ferns here and there about the place. The small tables and their uncomfortable chairs were shoved close together; at one end of the room was a Lilliputian bandstand, little more than a low platform. The place was only half full; it was early yet.
    Emmy was not comfortable there. She objected to having to break the law to get a drink; but ever since last year, when the United States of America in its infinite wisdom decided to make the consumption of alcoholic beverages illegal, these semi-hidden little speakeasies were the only answer. On a Saturday night the place would be packed. In a few hours three or four musicians would squeeze on to the tiny bandstand and start playing that ragtime or Dixieland or whatever they called it. Emmy could enjoy that kind of music for about ten minutes before she started getting bored; she couldn’t understand Rosa Ponselle’s enthusiasm for it. But then Rosa liked being different. Oh, yes. Rosa worked at being different.
    â€œAll through her marriage I wait for her,” Scotti was complaining. “I marry no one! I wait for Gerry.” He broke off long enough to admire the shortness of the skirt a young woman was wearing. “She knows I am waiting.” He managed to establish eye contact with the young woman. “But does it make any difference to her? No!” A husky young man stepped in front of the woman and glared darkly at Scotti, who turned smoothly back to Emmy. “She has no heart, that woman.”
    â€œAnd yet you managed to