Assignment Burma Girl
Page 19
“So you hired the Lahpet Hao assassin to booby-trap Locke’s place.”
Lowbridge nodded. “Yes.”
“And committed murder. And tried to kill me at Eva’s.”
“It was done on foreign territory. You can’t try me for murder. It’s not within the jurisdiction—”
“We’ll find a way,” Durell said.
Lowbridge stared. “Then you’d have to frame me—”
“That can be done,” Durell said.
There was a long moment of silence.
Then Lowbridge drew a deep breath.
“You don’t leave me any way out, do you?”
“I don’t intend to,” Durell said.
It would happen now, Durell thought.
At any moment.
He could almost hear the churning thoughts in the other’s mind. Lowbridge was desperate. He saw no way out, as Durell intended it to be. And then there came an unexpected break for him.
A voice called, “Chet? Chester? Are you there?”
It was a harsh, querulous old man’s voice, and Mr. Smith followed, hurrying down the rustic steps from the house above. Lowbridge turned his head and stared. The old man came gasping and tottering across the path to where Lowbridge stood.
“Chester, I want to warn you to be sensible. There are some serious charges against you—”
“They’re all lies, sir.”
“Is that Durell with you?” the old man asked, peering.
“Go back to the house, please,” Durell said.
“Nonsense. What’s going on here, with just the two of you? I won’t have it. My own judgment and integrity is at stake. I—”
“Don’t—” Durell began warningly.
And then it was too late.
The old man had hurried to Lowbridge’s side, and Lowbridge moved fast to take advantage of it. His arm shot out and caught the old man and threw him off balance, dragging him in front of his body as a shield. At the same moment, he pulled his gun free and began to retreat across the lock, turning the gun toward Durell. The old man began to yell in a thin, outraged voice, struggling like a bony doll in Lowbridge’s grip. Lowbridge’s arm abruptly choked off the old man’s yells.
“Now,” Lowbridge gasped. “Now we’ll see who dies—”
Durell drew his gun, but Smith’s body was flailing in front of the other man. Lowbridge fired, the sound explosive in the peaceful night. But the old man’s flapping arm struck the gun up and the shot screamed across the canal toward the trees. Lowbridge cursed and the old man wriggled free, staggering. Lowbridge tried to straighten and fire at Durell again.
Durell did not give him a second chance.
His first bullet slammed Lowbridge back over the path on top of the canal lock. Lowbridge fired wildly, and then Durell’s second bullet knocked him back again. Lowbridge screamed and fell from the lock into the canal water below. There was a single splash, nothing else.
Durell let out a slow breath and walked over to where Mr. Smith was trying to rise. Durell helped the old man to his feet.
“Are you all right, sir?"
The old man nodded, shaken. “He was guilty? He confessed to you?”
Durell walked to the edge of the canal. Lowbridge’s body was dark, without human shape, in the quiet water.
“He said enough,” he told the old man.
It was midnight when he left his car at the garage and walked the short block back to his apartment. Durell did not bother to see if anyone followed him. He had spent an hour with McFee and the Senator and old Mr. Smith.
There was a newspaper man at the Senator’s party who wanted to get a close look at Chet Lowbridge’s body, but he was not permitted more than a distant glance at the dead man. The reporter was told that Lowbridge had committed suicide because of financial problems. Shortly after that, Durell drove back to the District.
He went into his apartment building, by the front door this time, and his habitual glance up and down the tree-lined street was only perfunctory. When he entered his apartment, he turned on the lights at once, felt the chill rawness of the midnight April breeze blowing across the park, and closed the windows in the living room.
It was not until he turned toward the bedroom that he realized, for one of the rare times in his business, that he had allowed himself to be careless.
Someone was in his apartment.
In the bedroom.
“Sam?”
A pang of tension held him motionless for a moment His start of surprise gave way, however, to a quick flood of relief in the next moment.
“Sam?” the girl called again.
It was Deirdre.
“Don’t put on the light,” she said.
He paused in the bedroom doorway and stared at her, his figure a tall silhouette against the fights of the living room. She was in his bed. Her dark hair was a wide, glossy fan against the pillow, and her shoulders, bare where she held the cover under her chin, were smooth and graceful and perfect. He could only stare at her in gratitude and relief.
She made a small sound. “Well?”
“How did you get in here?” he asked.
She laughed. “McFee lent me his key. Isn’t he a darling? He agreed with me when I said I thought you needed to see me, sweetheart.”
“I need you every night, Deirdre,” he said.
“Well, then, don’t just stand there.”
He moved toward her and sat down on the edge of the bed. Her arms came up and around him in a quick, hungry gesture that belied the lightness of her voice. He kissed her with a sense of wonder. Deirdre had never done anything like this before. All at once, as he held her in his arms and knew that she was his, and always would be, he felt the weight of his oppression lift and dissipate.
Her mouth was soft and yielding, moving against his. "Welcome home, darling, she whispered.
Table of Contents
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Thirteen
Fourteen