XII
The Night Before
I saw Einarson and Grantham that evening, and spent several hours with them. The boy was fidgety, nervous, without confidence in the revolution’s success, though he tried to pretend he was taking things as a matter of course. Einarson was full of words. He gave us every detail of the next day’s plans. I was more interested in him than in what he was saying. He could put the revolution over, I thought, and I was willing to leave it to him. So while he talked I studied him, combing him over for weak spots.
I took him physically first—a tall, thick-bodied man in his prime, not as quick as he might have been, but strong and tough. He had an amply jawed, short-nosed, florid face that a fist wouldn’t bother much. He wasn’t fat, but he ate and drank too much to be hard-boiled, and your florid man can seldom stand much poking around the belt. So much for the gent’s body.
Mentally, he wasn’t a heavyweight. His revolution was crude stuff. It would get over chiefly because there wasn’t much opposition. He had plenty of willpower, I imagined, but I didn’t put a big number on that. People who haven’t much brains have to develop willpower to get anywhere. I didn’t know whether he had guts or not, but before an audience I guessed he’d make a grand showing, and most of this act would be before an audience. Off in a dark corner I had an idea he would go watery. He believed in himself—absolutely. That’s ninety percent of leadership, so there was no flaw in him there. He didn’t trust me. He had taken me in because as things turned out it was easier to do so than to shut the door against me.
He kept on talking about his plans. There was nothing to talk about. He was going to bring his soldiers in town in the early morning and take over the government. That was all the plan that was needed. The rest of it was the lettuce around the dish, but this lettuce part was the only part we could discuss. It was dull.
At eleven o’clock Einarson stopped talking and left us, making this sort of speech:
“Until four o’clock, gentlemen, when Muravia’s history begins.” He put a hand on my shoulder and commanded me: “Guard His Majesty!”
I said, “Uh-huh,” and immediately sent His Majesty to bed. He wasn’t going to sleep, but he was too young to confess it, so he went off willingly enough. I got a taxi and went out to Romaine’s.
She was like a child the night before a picnic. She kissed me and she kissed the servant Marya. She sat on my knees, beside me, on the floor, on all the chairs, changing her location every half-minute. She laughed and talked incessantly, about the revolution, about me, about herself, about anything at all. She nearly strangled herself trying to talk while swallowing wine. She lit her big cigarettes and forgot to smoke them, or forgot to stop smoking them until they scorched her lips. She sang lines from songs in half a dozen languages. She made puns and jokes and goofy rhymes.
I left at three o’clock. She went down to the door with me, pulled my head down to kiss my eyes and mouth.
“If anything goes wrong,” she said, “come to the prison. We’ll hold that until—”
“If it goes wrong enough I’ll be brought there,” I promised.
She wouldn’t joke now.
“I’m going there now,” she said. “I’m afraid Einarson’s got my house on his list.”
“Good idea,” I said. “If you hit a bad spot get word to me.”
I walked back to the hotel through the dark streets—the lights were turned off at midnight—without seeing a single other person, not even one of the gray-uniformed policemen. By the time I reached home rain was falling steadily.
In my room, I changed into heavier clothes and shoes, dug an extra gun—an automatic—out of my bag and hung it in a shoulder holster. Then I filled my pocket with enough ammunition to make me bowlegged, picked up hat and raincoat, and went upstairs to Lionel Grantham’s suite.
“It’s ten to four,” I told him. “We might as well go down to the plaza. Better put a gun in your pocket.”
He hadn’t slept. His handsome young face was as cool and pink and composed as it had been the first time I saw him, though his eyes were brighter now.
He got into an overcoat, and we went downstairs.