He closed the door, came forward, got a grip on the Chatham from behind, and applied some scientific leverage. I was interested to see that he knew how. One school of thought, during the war, had it that although he was great at picking, and setting up training programs for dangerous men, Mac himself couldn’t fight his way out of a lightweight airmail envelope.
“All right, Miss,” he said. “Behave yourself now.”
Mary Frances stopped struggling in his grasp and stood there head down, panting. Her light-brown hair was a tangled cloud over her face, and there was a wide white gap between her sweater and skirt—but then, I suppose in actual life Joan of Arc went to the bonfire with stringy hair and dirty fingernails.
At the moment, I didn’t care how the girl looked. She’d spoiled my Horatio-at-the-bridge act, to be sure, and made me look and feel pretty silly; but as things had turned out, it was just as well she’d interfered. I make a practice of seeing what I’m shooting at before I pull the trigger, so I probably wouldn’t have fired at Mac in any case; but nevertheless, a girl who’ll deliberately throw herself at two loaded guns doesn’t have to comb her hair to earn my respect, no matter what her politics.
I looked from her to Mac, as he released her and stepped back. The funny thing was, he hadn’t changed a bit. He was the same spare, gray man to whom I’d said goodbye in Washington, just before I picked up Beth and took off to get married. He might still have been wearing the same gray suit, for all I could tell. Oh, perhaps there was a shade more white in his close-clipped hair; perhaps the lines in his young-old face were a little more pronounced; perhaps his bleak gray eyes had retreated just a little into his skull—but they’d always been set deep beneath the dark eyebrows. I’d forgotten those eyebrows, startlingly black, seemingly immune to the aging process that had drawn the pigment from his hair. Or perhaps he dyed them for effect—there’d been some speculation about that, during the war, I remembered now, but I’d never believed it.
I said, “It’s been a long time, sir.”
He glanced at the guns I was holding. “Expecting trouble, Eric?”
“It seems indicated,” I said. “For a moment, there, I thought you were it. Tina didn’t tell me you were anywhere around.”
Mac hesitated. “Well, she wasn’t supposed to,” he said dryly.
“I appreciate the confidence, sir,” I said sourly. “There’s nothing that cheers up the hired help like not knowing what the hell they’re doing… Maybe, now that she’s finally broken down and pried you out of hiding for me, you’ll condescend to let me know what’s going on.”
He smiled very faintly. “Hasn’t she told you?”
“Tina?” I said. “Oh, you don’t have to worry your head about Tina, sir. She never lets slip unauthorized information, not even in bed. I can recommend her, without reservations, for the Noble and Exalted Order of the Clam. All I know from her is that somebody’s trying to murder Amos Darrel in Santa Fe, and that we’re supposed to be misleading the forces of international Communism in some vague and beautiful way by acting as sitting ducks here in San Antonio—”
I broke off. Mary Frances Chatham had raised her head, and Mac was looking at me sharply.
“Amos Darrel?” he said. “Dr. Amos Darrel? You were told he’s the target in Santa Fe?”
“Why, yes,” I said. “Isn’t that right?”
Mac didn’t answer my question. Instead, he said curtly, after a moment’s pause: “I wasn’t aware you’d been given that information.” He glanced at the girl. “And having been given it, you should know better than to discuss it before witnesses.”
I winced. “Slap my wrist, sir. I guess I’ve forgotten my security training.”
“We’ll just have to see that she has no opportunity to tell her friends how much we know.”
He looked hard at the girl. Her glance dropped, and she pushed the hair out of her face and began to straighten her clothes.
I said, “Well, there are a lot of questions I want to ask, but they’d better wait. We might have visitors any minute. Where’s Tina?”
“She’s around,” Mac said. “Never mind Tina. She’s following instructions.”
I said, “I’ll bet. Well, I’d love to have some instructions to follow, too. I’m getting just a little tired of playing this game of yours blindfolded.”
He said, “Tina wasn’t explicit, there wasn’t time. Just what kind of trouble are you expecting here?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” I said. “I don’t know just what they could want with Tina and me except revenge. But they’ve got something fancy in mind. Somebody real tricky is running their show.”
“How many agents do you figure they have available?”
“I’ve seen three men and one woman.”
“Descriptions?”
“A young fellow, drug-store-cowboy type or a reasonable facsimile, sideburns, black hat, driving a Plymouth hardtop. An older man with a moustache, in a four-wheel-drive jeep station wagon, white and green. A Harvard-Yale-Princeton type in a golf cap, driving a blue Morris two-door, with Shorty here acting as his blushing bride. There could be more, but those are the ones who’ve showed.”
Mac frowned thoughtfully. “It sounds as if we might be slightly outnumbered, for the moment. Arrangements are being made, but in the meantime perhaps I should have a gun, if you can spare one.” He smiled that thin smile of his. “It’s a long time since I’ve taken active part in one of these affairs, Eric. Let’s see if I still remember how.”
I gave him the little .38. “You hold the wooden part, sir,” I said respectfully, “and pull that little metal dingus sticking out from the bottom.”
He chuckled, and regarded the weapon in his hand for a moment. “This is a heavier caliber than you used to favor,” he said.
“It’s not mine,” I said. “Spoils of war, sir. Tina got it from one of their agents—the one she had to kill.”
“Ah, yes,” Mac said. “The one using the alias of Herrera.”
“That’s right!”
He glanced at me from beneath the dark eyebrows. “So it was Tina who killed the girl? That I think, is all we needed to know.”
He lifted the snubnosed revolver, and aimed it at my chest.
22
Staring at him incredulously, I heard him say, “Please drop your pistol on the bed, Eric. You won’t need it any more tonight... Sarah, attend to his weapon, if you please.”
I didn’t have to ask who Sarah was. That would be their code name for the tall girl standing nearby—the girl I’d known as Mary Frances. Well, I’d guessed somebody clever was behind all the fancy maneuvering, but... Mac, for God’s sake!
Yet, I must have suspected something, because the surprise wasn’t quite paralyzing. And I suppose he could take some credit for that; he’d seen to having me well indoctrinated, at one time. I don’t think any of us who went through the brutal wartime training program he set up can ever really be taken by surprise.
I was functioning again, and I looked at the little revolver with the big hole in the muzzle. And then I looked at Mac, and I grinned.
“Very neat, sir,” I murmured. “But you don’t really think I’d hand you a loaded gun, do you?”
I mean, it was the automatic reaction. I still was very far from comprehending what was happening and what it all meant. The simple fact was that a man was aiming a gun at me, and this, we’d had drilled into us, was a hostile act demanding instant and violent retaliation whenever possible. A man who aims a gun at you is a man who can kill you, and you don’t want to leave people like that standing around. To be sure, this was a man who, two seconds earlier, I’d have said I trusted implicitly; but a gun is a gun and a threat is a threat, and I’d been trained to react first and do my heavy thinking later. And it worked.
It worked well enough that his glance dropped to the weapon for the briefest instant. It was the wrong response. There’s only one answer to the old empty-gun gambit. It’s the same as for the look-out-there’s-somebody-
behind-you routine. You just pull the damn trigger. You may wind up with a dead man on the floor, but there’s a better chance of its not being you.
As he’d said, it had been a long time since he’d attended to these matters personally, and I guess he was rusty. He did look down. I still had the Colt Woodsman in my hand, muzzle down. I could have shot him, of course. That I didn’t was a matter of ballistics, not sentiment—I was quite through with sentiment for the night. But a .22 doesn’t pack enough punch to stop a man cold. He was holding a powerful weapon; he might still have managed to kill me, even if I’d put my little bullet squarely through his heart. I struck with the barrel instead, knocking the .38 from his hand.
His reaction was quick enough; he got my gun-wrist in some kind of a hasty lock, not a good one, but good enough that the girl had time to dart forward, grab my pistol by the barrel, and twist it backwards hard. Only the safety, still on, kept it from discharging. I had to let her take it from me; in another instant she’d have jammed and broken my finger in the trigger-guard. But Mac wasn’t big enough or young enough to hold me with the incomplete grip he had. I tore myself free and reached far out and clipped the girl, as she tried to back away with the gun, sending her sprawling. The .22 jumped out of her hand and slid under the bed.
I was aware that the door had burst open, but Mac was closer and had to be attended to first. He was trying to say something. I didn’t know what, or why he’d waste breath on speech at such a time. I was disappointed in him. He should have kept up on his own training system. I feinted, brushed his parry aside, and chopped him down like a tree. The girl was shouting something at me. I’d never heard such a garrulous bunch of conspirators. You’d have thought we were running a conference for radio and TV announcers instead of a fight.
Mac was at my feet, the back of his head exposed. Even without the reinforced shoes we used to wear whenever possible, one good kick would have done the job. But the girl was yelling instructions now, and other people were rushing towards us from the open door; there wasn’t time to make the kill.
They were all over me as I turned. I couldn’t reach the knife in my pocket. I’d spent too much time on Mac; I never got set to give them a real battle. There were too many of them; I knew they had me. There was nothing to do but grab a throat out of the melee and hang on. I used the guy as a shield in front and concentrated on squeezing the life out of him, trying to ignore the characters beating on my head and back. If I couldn’t get them all—and I couldn’t—I might as well do a good job on the one I had. We went down together. Presently I felt my fingers slipping. He was getting away from me, but not under his own power; and I didn’t think he’d be singing in the choir next Sunday. Well, neither would I...
When I came to, I was lying on one of the room’s twin beds. In the other bed, somebody was having trouble with his breathing. I can’t say it bothered me. I mean, it was a matter of professional pride. I hadn’t been very bright tonight. I’d been sentimental and gullible by turns, I’d let myself be licked and overpowered, but at least they couldn’t say they got me free of charge. I looked up to see Mac standing over me. I didn’t seem to have hurt him much. That was all right. I didn’t hate him. He’d taught us that, too. He used to say that hating an enemy was a waste of time and energy. It was only necessary to kill him.
“You damn explosive lunatic!” he said softly. There was an odd, possessive note in his voice. It sounded very much like pride, although that didn’t seem likely. “One forgets,” he murmured. “I should have remembered that I was dealing with one of my old wartime people, instead of this new crop of pampered incompetents. I shouldn’t have made the mistake of threatening you with a gun. How do you feel?”
It didn’t seem like the proper time for a recital of aches and pains. “I’ll probably live long enough to suit you,” I whispered. “However long—or short—that may be.”
He smiled. “You’re soft, Eric. You should have killed me when you had me down.”
“There wasn’t time.”
He chuckled. “You almost broke young Chatham’s neck.”
“My apologies for an incomplete job,” I whispered. “I’ll try to do better next time.”
“I should be angry with you. We went through four years of war together. Do you really think I’d…?” He checked himself. “I retract the question. The mistake was mine. I shouldn’t have tried to be clever with the gun. After all, you were taught to go for the throat when threatened, all of you, like savage dogs.”
I whispered, “What are you trying to say, sir?”
He said, “Use your head, Eric. You’re in your own room, in one of the best hotels in south Texas. There have been shouts and screams and violent blows. Where’s the house detective? Where are the police?” I watched his face and said nothing. He went on: “Does it seem likely, if I’m working for the people you think, that I’d also have the full cooperation of the authorities and the hotel management? We had the rooms on either side of you emptied, also above and below, to avoid any chance of having a guest killed by a stray bullet. That is why we closed in on you here, where we could control the surroundings. In the open, in a running fight, innocent people might have been hurt. At first we’d hoped to be able to approach you when you were alone and enlist your aid, but there was some doubt about your attitude, and anyway, you were never alone. So we laid our plans to take the two of you together. I’m glad it worked out this well. Knowing you, I was afraid we might have to kill you.”
I licked my lips, still watching him closely. “Sorry to have caused you concern.”
He smiled briefly, and said, “The F.B.I., as a matter of fact, isn’t at all happy about your position in this matter, which is why I took the trouble of getting some statements from you on the record… Oh, yes, there’s a microphone in the room.” He shook his head quickly, as if reproving himself. “No, I won’t pretend to be omniscient. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t quite sure where you stood myself, until I talked with you. After all, she’s quite beautiful. She’s made men forget their loyalties before now.”
“Tina?” I whispered.
He looked down at me. “Eric, just because an attractive woman gives you a fifteen-year-old recognition signal and a plausible story…! Tina left us just three weeks after you did, right after the war. She was discharged in Paris. She’s had no connection with us since. In fact, there’s strong evidence to indicate that she’s formed other connections... The next time somebody tries to engage you in criminal activities in my name, I wish you’d get in touch with me directly!”
“I certainly will,” I said drily. “Just leave a card with your address and telephone number.”
He sighed. “I suppose that’s a fair criticism.” He was silent briefly. Then he asked, “You believe me, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I believe you. I guess.”
I was tired, and I didn’t want to think about it any more. I didn’t want to think about Tina tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough.
23
In the morning, I woke up alone in the room. There was sunlight at the window. They’d cleaned up the place. It looked tidy and innocent, like a room in which nothing had ever happened—and when you came right down to it, not much had. There’d been a little scuffle, that was all. Suspense and surprise, deceit and disillusionment, in themselves don’t mark up the furniture.
The other bed was empty and neatly made up. I remembered vaguely hearing its erstwhile occupant being carted off to the hospital for some repair work on his larynx and windpipe. This should have made me feel terrible, of course—a bright and patriotic young fellow undergoing emergency surgery on my account. But as I’ve mentioned, we were never strong on esprit de corps. The dope should have had sense enough to keep his throat out of other people’s hands; and if he’d had any training at all, he’d been taught how to break a strangle-hold, either with a smashing upward drive of both arms—hands locked together—or finger by finger. It wasn’t my fault if he panicked and forgot his A.B.
C.s.
The whole affair seemed, in retrospect, like a remarkably stupid business; and my part in it had certainly been no less stupid—to put it very charitably— than anybody else’s. Well, you can’t be smart all the time, but I had to admit that some people seemed to maintain a slightly higher average than others.
There was a knock on the door, and Mac came in without waiting for my response, followed by another man, who closed the door and made certain it was locked before coming forward. He gave the impression of being a man who’d spent his life locking doors carefully before discussing matters of vast importance. Since Mac had said there was a mike in the room, and I had no reason to believe it had been removed, I wasn’t too impressed by this concern for locks and doors.
The man was, I judged, a well-preserved fifty, with the rangy, powerful build of a college football star who’d put on a little middle-aged weight and would have put on more if it hadn’t been for the rowing machine and the handball court. His face had a hint of Lincolnesque angularity, of which he was aware. It was the only angularity about him. In all other respects he was a real smoothie.
I was interested to see that he was carrying Tina’s handsome fur piece carefully folded. He held it gingerly, with a hint of dramatized embarrassment, the way some men handle anything recognizably feminine, as if they want to make damn sure you understand they’re not in the habit of fondling items of this kind and get no kick from it. You see them in the dress shops around December, putting on an act as if they thought the black lace Christmas lingerie would bite them.
I glanced at the mink stole as he laid it on the foot of the bed. It was a clue, no doubt, but I didn’t try to interpret it. It could have been taken off her body—alive or dead—or she could have dropped it as she made good her escape. And why had it been brought here and planted conspicuously on my bedclothes? That too, would become clear in due time. It was nothing worth wasting cerebral energy on until I knew more about it.
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