Quest for Anna Klein, The Read Online Free Page B

souls,” Clayton repeated. He was silent for a moment, then his gaze took on an unexpected urgency. “All your travels, the nature of your business, your command of several languages. It struck me last night at Delmonico’s that you’d be the perfect man for a secret mission.”
    â€œA secret mission; I can see it now,” Danforth said with a laugh. “Sipping a kümmel at the Hermitage. Meeting shadowy figures on a park bench in Vienna. Learning how to make invisible ink.”
    â€œThat would be equal parts baking soda and water,” Clayton said matter-of-factly. “Write with a toothpick on white paper. Then hold the paper to a heat source, and your message will appear in brown.”
    â€œYou’re kidding me,” Danforth said.
    â€œNot at all,” Clayton said quite gravely. He took a sip from his drink. “So now you know how to make invisible ink, Tom.”
    Danforth waved his hand dismissively. “Forgive me, Robert, but this all sounds like play-acting.”
    â€œBelieve me, it’s more serious than that,” Clayton said solemnly. “It might even have an influence on history.”
    â€œAn influence on history?” Danforth asked. “That’s an ambitious project, even for you.”
    â€œProject,” Clayton said. “That’s a good word for it. We’ll call it that from now on. The Project.” He glanced at his watch. “Sevenforty-five,” he said with a quick smile. “Our lives pass so quickly, don’t they, Tom?”
    Danforth gave no response to this deadly familiar philosophical aside and instead took a sip of his drink.
    At the front of the bar, a few more customers came in: a couple of men who were obviously regulars, and a bedraggled young woman who seemed unsure if she was in the right place.
    â€œWe have so little time to make lasting memories,” Clayton added.
    Danforth watched as the men huddled up to the bar and left the woman to stand alone, looking frazzled and forlorn, like an animal cut from the herd because it was sick or wounded. In the woman’s case, it seemed due to some mental confusion or dis-orientation. She stared about almost vacantly, her gaze wandering the room in uncertain fits and starts, as if she were following the flight of an invisible butterfly.
    There was something poignant in the scene, Danforth thought. “We’re like animals, really,” he said, almost to himself.
    â€œAnimals?” Clayton asked. “In what way?”
    The woman now seemed to be overtaken by the throes of a manic seizure, her movements very quick and contorted. A few people at the bar had begun to watch her. Some were grinning in a cruel way that completely undercut the great Communist romance; these noble workers were no more generous to this fellow lost soul than they would be to one another when the wolf was at the door.
    â€œIn the way we have no mercy for the weak,” Danforth said as he watched the scene play out at the front of the bar.
    Clayton laughed. “You’re a sentimentalist, Tom. What the Irish call a harp.”
    â€œMaybe I am,” Danforth admitted.
    The people at the bar were now entirely taken up in cruel amusement, watching with jagged smiles as the woman pulledoff her wool cap, dropped it, picked it up, worked to find a place for it, found that place in the pocket of her coat. Her every movement betrayed her solitary vagabondage, how in this teeming city, she was wandering alone.
    â€œMaybe I am,” Danforth repeated.
    By the time Clayton turned around to face her, the woman had unwound a ragged scarf from her neck and was tromping back toward the rear of the bar.
    â€œThe city is full of nuts,” Clayton said. He appeared mildly annoyed that Danforth continued to be distracted by the woman. “If she comes this way, just give her a few coins.” He drew a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and thumped one out.