deal. Mothers were much better sources of information than was generally believed, not for what they said, but for what they did not say, for subjects that were changed abruptly.
It was twenty minutes past nine. Bray wondered if he could reach Appleton's mother and talk with her. The house might be watched, but not on a priority basis. A car parked in the Square with a view of the brownstone, one man, possibly two. If there were such men and he took them out, the Matarese would know he was in Boston; he was not ready for that. Still, the mother might provide a short cut, a name, an incident, something he could trace quickly; there was so little time. Mr. B. A. Vickery was expected at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, but when he got there he had to bring leverage with him. At the optimum, he had to have his own hostage; he had to have Joshua Appleton, IV.
There was no hope. There was nothing not worth trying. There was instinct.
The steep climb up Chestnut Street toward Louisburg Square was marked by progressively quieter blocks. It was as if one were leaving a profane world to enter a sacred one; garish neons were replaced by the muted flickering of gas lamps, the cobblestone streets washed clean. He reached the Square, staying in the shadows of a brick building on the corner.
He took out a pair of small binoculars from his attach6 case and raised them to his eyes, focusing the powerful Zeiss-Icon lenses on each stationary car in the streets around the fenced-in park that was the center of Louisburg Square.
There was no one.
Bray put the binoculars back in his attach6 case, left the shadows of the brick building, and walked down the peaceful street toward the Appleton brownstone. The stately houses surrounding the small park with the wroughtiron fence and gate were quiet. The night air was bitterly cold now, the gas lamps flickering more rapidly with the intermittent gusts of winter wind; windows were closed, fires burning in the hearths of Louisburg Square. It was a different world, remote, almost isolated, certainly at peace with itself.
He climbed the white stone steps and rang the bell. The carriage lamps on either side of the door threw more light than he cared for.
He heard the sound of footsteps; a nurse opened the door and he knew instantly that the woman recognized him; it was in the short, involuntary gasp that escaped her lips, in the brief widening of her eyelids. It explained why no one was on the street, the guard was inside the house.
"Mrs. Appleton, please?" "I'm afraid she's retired." The nurse started to close the door. Scofield jammed his left foot into the base, his shoulder against the heavy black panel, and forced it open.
"I'm afraid you know who I am," he said, stepping inside, dropping his attach6 case.
The woman pivoted, her right hand plunging into the pocket of her uniform. Bray countered, pushing her farther into her own pivot, gripping her wrist, twisting it downward and away from her body. She screamed.
Scofield yanked her to the floor, his knee crashing up into the base of her spine. With his left arm, he viced her neck from behind, forearm across her shoulder blades, and pulled up violently as she fell; ten more pounds of pressure and he would have broken her neck. But he did not
want to do that. He wanted this woman alive; she collapsed unconscious to the floor.
He crouched in silence, removing the short-barrelled revolver from the nurse's pocket, waiting for sounds or signs of people. The scream had to have been heard by anyone inside the house.
There was nothing-there was something, but it was so faint he could not fathom what it was-he saw a telephone next to the staircase and crept over to pick it up. There was only the hum of a dial tone; no one was using the phone. Perhaps the woman had told the truth; it was entirely possible that Mrs. Appleton had retired. He'd know shortly.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
First, he had to know something else. He went back to the nurse, pulled her across the floor under the hallway light, and ripped apart the front of her uniform. He tore the slip and brassiere beneath, pushed up her left breast, and studied the flesh.
There it was. The small, jagged blue circle as Taleniekov had described it. The birthmark that was no birthmark at all, but instead, the mark of the Matarese.