“How’d you get that?” I asked.
He showed me his grin. I was losing faith in that grin. I didn’t think Nick was really a nice friendly man. I was remembering an agent named Ames, who’d been found dead on a lonely beach with a broken neck. Robin Rosten didn’t quite have the hands for that job, but Nick did.
“Man,” he said, “when Miz Rosten sends a Cadillac with a uniformed chauffeur to check out a guest that’s going cruising with her, nobody asks no questions.”
I said, “I bet you look real sharp in a chauffeur’s cap, Nick.”
He gave me a quick suspicious glance, and said coldly, “Miz Rosten say for you to shave and put on something that don’t make you look like a tinhorn gambler—something shipshape, like. And a pair of rubber-soled shoes. She wants you on deck as soon as we’re under way.”
I said, “My compliments to Mrs. Rosten, and will you forward my apologies for forgetting to bring my yachting cap?”
“Never mind all the caps,” he said, unsmiling. “Just remember the shoes, man. She don’t allow no leather shoes on her nice teak deck.”
“Sure,” I said. “I guess I’ve got a pair of gumshoes somewhere. Before you go, brief me on how to flush that damn john. I couldn’t make it work.”
He glanced into the bathroom and looked at me grimly. Obviously landlubbers were a cross he had to bear, but he didn’t have to like it.
“I told you, before you pump, you’ve got to open the cocks, both of them. One lets the waste out; the other lets seawater in to flush it clean.” He looked at my uncomprehending face. “Seacocks,” he said wearily. “Like valves, man.”
“Oh, valves,” I said. “I dig you now, man. I didn’t know what the hell you were talking about. Cocks, for God’s sake. But why not just leave them open?”
“If she heels over hard in a breeze, she might take some water aboard.”
“You mean the damn boat could sink just because somebody went to the can? That doesn’t seem like very good planning.”
He showed me his big teeth. “Don’t you go getting ideas. You ain’t going to scuttle her just by leaving those seacocks open. It just kind of splashes around and gets things wet if there’s a sea running. So when you’re through, you close them, hear, after you’ve pumped out all the water. There’s bad weather down the coast and we might get a little blow—”
A distant voice that I recognized, Robin’s voice, called from somewhere above us. “Nick, come here!”
“Coming, ma’am.” He moved quickly to the door, and looked back. “Remember the shoes,” he said. “She’s mighty particular about that deck, Miz Rosten is.”
After he had left, bolting the door behind him, I moved to look out the porthole over the bunk. There was gray daylight outside; the sky was overcast. I was looking straight at the high, flaring bow of the power cruiser called Osprey, which was rolling quite heavily even in the sheltered harbor. I wondered where the waves were coming from. There didn’t seem to be that much wind blowing.
A man ran shoreward along the dock. He was wearing tennis shoes, white ducks, and a yachting cap. I recognized Louis Rosten. Apparently he’d come home, regardless of his fears. Reaching land, he vanished from sight behind the bulk of the powerboat. A moment later a small sports car that I recognized came into view with Rosten at the wheel. It drove up the hill and out of sight past the big house.
While I was puzzling over this, I heard footsteps in the passageway outside. The door opened. I turned to see Robin Rosten standing there with Nick behind her. In front of her was Teddy Michaelis with her arm twisted up between her shoulder blades and tears of pain running down her small face. Robin gave her a shove that sent her across the cabin.
“There’s company for you, my actor friend,” Robin said to me. “You can have a lot of fun explaining to her that you’re an agent named Helm working for the U.S. Government. She seems to be under the impression that you’re a killer named Petroni whom she’s hired for some nefarious purpose she now regrets. She came here to warn me against you. I think it’s really very sweet of her.” The taller woman turned to Nick. “Lock them up. We’ll shove off as soon as Louis comes back from hiding the little fool’s car.”
18
When I was brought on deck a couple of hours later, the shoreline from which we’d departed was a low, misty mass off to the right, the way we were heading—to starboard, if you want to be technical about it. I knew it was our shoreline because I’d been keeping track of it through the cabin porthole when Nick came to get me. There was another vague land mass off to the left, presumably the opposite shore of Chesapeake Bay, although it could have been an island.
There seemed to be a moderate breeze from behind us, but strangely enough, the waves were coming from ahead, moving up the Bay to meet us in long, oily swells that made the schooner pitch and roll uneasily as she plowed southward under power.
When I emerged from the hatch or companionway or whatever sailors call the opening in the deckhouse that leads up and out from the main cabin, Louis Rosten was doing something seamanlike at the mainmast. He didn’t look at me. Big Nick guided me towards Robin, at the wheel. This was located at the aftermost end of the cockpit, a sunken Roman bathtub sort of depression in the wide deck, with seats all around. Under the seats were slat-front lockers labeled LIFE PRESERVERS. Well, it was nice to know where to look in time of need.
I’m neither a seaman nor a weatherman, but those big rollers coming in against the wind didn’t make me very happy. I couldn’t help remembering that, according to the newspaper, a tropical disturbance was moving up the coast, and that Nick had said we might run into a bit of weather. The Freya looked very big to be handled efficiently, in a serious blow, by the few people visible on deck, one a prisoner.
“Here he is, ma’am,” Nick said.
Robin looked up from the compass, and took in my tight, sporty Petroni slacks and flashy zipper jacket. “Well, that’s a slight improvement, but you still look like a racetrack tout,” she murmured. There was a small silence, while we both remembered, I guess, various intimacies that had passed between us before I lost interest in my surroundings the night before. Anyway, I did. She patted the schooner’s steering wheel. “Take the helm. That’ll keep your hands busy,” she said, and laughed. “Take the helm, Helm.”
I stepped forward and took the spokes in my hands. It was like taking the reins of a spirited horse. I felt the surging pressures of the rudder and the throb of the big diesel—if I hadn’t already learned, from Washington, that the Freya had a diesel auxiliary, I’d have known by the stink of the exhaust blowing in over the stern.
Robin backed off, reached down, and picked up the handsome double-barreled shotgun with which she’d threatened me last night. She was wearing jeans, I noted, not the newfangled whitish kind, but the old-fashioned blue, and a navy blue turtleneck sweater. There was a bright scarf tied over her hair. Women in pants leave me cold as a rule, but she looked tall and handsome and piratical, a queen of the Spanish Main. She sat down at the side of the cockpit with her weapon across her knees, aimed at me.
“Hold her a little east of south, about 160 degrees magnetic,” she said to me, and to Nick, “I’ll watch him. You go help Mr. Rosten set the main. Sing out when you’re ready and we’ll bring her into the wind... Watch your course there, quartermaster!”
I’d let the Freya swing off, deliberately. Well, let’s say the big schooner had wanted to go and I’d let her. She was the most boat I’d ever handled. Under other circumstances, it would have been kind of exciting to steer her—not that there wasn’t a certain amount of excitement here. I glanced at the steady muzzle of the shotgun and spun the wheel the other way.
“Easy, sailor,” Robin said. “Just a few spokes at a time. You can’t throw an eighty-foot schooner around like a sailing dinghy. There. Hold that. Watch your compass. Meet her when she starts to swing... That’s better. We’ll make a helmsman of you yet, Mr. Government agent.”
“Yes’m,” I said. �
�Or should I say aye-aye.”
“Matthew,” she said, “or whatever your name is.”
“Yes, Robin,” I said.
“You should have known. You should have known I’d never encourage a cheap Chicago hood to put his hands on me.”
“If that’s flattery,” I said, “I thank you.”
“Would you have gone to bed with me? As Petroni?”
I said, “Do people have names in bed?”
“Then you would,” she said. “You’d have gone that far.”
“You’ve gone pretty far yourself, Robin,” I said. “You’ve got a lot of people very upset.”
“I guess I have.” She was silent for a moment. “Like your little blonde roommate, for instance. How is the little idiot?”
“Mad at me, scared of you, and sorry for herself,” I said.
Robin glanced forward to where her husband, with Nick at his side, was still working away at the nautical mysteries surrounding the base of the tall mainmast.
“So it wasn’t Louis who wanted me dead, after all,” she murmured. “You let me think—”
I kept my face expressionless. I saw Louis throw a glance our way, obviously wondering what we were talking about. His eyes were afraid.
“I never said it was Louis,” I reminded Robin. “You were so positive, why should I argue? As Petroni, I protect my clients, lady.”
She laughed. “Your client? That silly, unbalanced little girl? And you’re not Petroni now, so stop calling me lady.”
“Good God,” I said. “I never met a bunch of people so sensitive about what they were called.”
She was watching my face. “You really made a very unconvincing gangster, Matt Helm.”
I grinned. “You made a very handsome mermaid, Robin Rosten.”
She grimaced. “You didn’t have to be so damn drastic. You didn’t have to throw me in the water, and get my car stuck, and leave me to dig it out alone. You deliberately arranged for me to make a gruesome spectacle of myself in front of—” She stopped. “Oh, I see!”
“Right,” I said. “It had to look good; it had to look as if I were really getting rough, to separate the sheep from the goats. It worked, didn’t it? The Michaelis kid broke under the strain and showed she didn’t really want anybody killed, for all her big talk. The people I was after wouldn’t care who I killed; they’d killed before. We lost a man named Ames down here a while back. Remember Ames, Robin? He liked portable radios. He was also pretty good at cooking over a campfire.”
“I remember a man with a radio,” she said calmly. “He wasn’t going under that name. He never got a chance to build a fire, if that’s what he was doing on the beach at night. We thought he had something else in mind.”
I looked at her for a long moment. I guess I was saying good-bye to some hope; I guess I’d been waiting for her to deny knowing anything about Ames.
“Anyway,” I said, “my demonstration was convincing enough, and humiliating enough, that you didn’t want any more. You dropped the respectable mask and fed me a mickey to stop me, like any movie conspirator.”
She laughed. “You flatter yourself, Matt, darling, if you think your silly hoodlum antics frightened me into revealing myself.”
“All right, then you got mad and lost your head; it amounts to the same thing. I got you to show your hand. You could have kept me busy for days trying to figure out if it was you I wanted, or Louis, or somebody else, but you didn’t. You came right out into the open. That’s what counts.”
She looked at me curiously. “Why, you sound quite pleased with yourself.”
“Why shouldn’t I be pleased?” I asked confidently. At least I hoped I sounded confident. “As long as you were the rich and respectable Mrs. Louis Rosten, and behaved accordingly, I couldn’t do much except harass you a bit, hoping you’d betray yourself—if you were the one I was after. Now I know you are; I’ve even got you to stick your neck out.” I glanced at her. “It’s a real pretty neck; it’s going to hurt me to use the axe. But that’s the way the stick floats, as the old mountain men used to say. Do you know what my boss said when he sent me on this job?”
“No.” Her voice had hardened. “What did he say?”
“We were talking in Washington, only a few days ago,” I said. “The chief told me, ‘There are some people not forty miles from here who have to be taught not to monkey with the buzz saw when it’s busy cutting wood.’” I shook my head sadly. “You shouldn’t have interfered, Robin. The man Ames was after, well, we took care of him later, overseas. So what good did it do him, your helping him get away? As for Ames himself, you amateurs are all alike. You get a good racket going, and then you start killing the wrong people. It’s too bad. Bye, bye, Robin.”
She got to her feet, facing me, with the shotgun ready. “Don’t you mean bye, bye, Matthew, darling? You seem to be forgetting something.” Her voice was harsh. “You seem to be forgetting who’s got what. I’m the one who’s got the axe, darling. Right here in my hands, if I choose to use it.”
I grinned at her cockily. “Amateur, just amateur. Waving a gun and talking loudly, just like all the rest of them. Robin, I’m ashamed of you. Don’t be a two-bit Borgia, honey, do it big. If you’re going to shoot me, pull the trigger, for God’s sake. Get blood all over your pretty teak deck. Go ahead!” I laughed. “That’s what I thought! I’m a pro, Robin, I’ve seen a million of you, and you’re all alike. You talk a swell murder, but when it comes to a cold-blood showdown—pffft. Like a toy balloon with a pin in it. Just pffft.” I made a very rude noise.
Her face was tight and pale under the smooth tan. “You take some awful chances, darling. Let me tell you something: the only reason I don’t kill you is that I have other plans for you. There may even come a time when you’ll wish I had pulled the trigger!”
“Talk,” I said. “Just talk. Blah, blah, blah. There’s something about holding a loaded gun that gives all amateurs verbal diarrhea. Just what is this terrible fate you have in store for me?”
She started to speak angrily, and checked herself, realizing, I guess, that I’d been deliberately trying to make her lose her temper. There was a little silence, broken by a shout from Big Nick.
“Ready with the main!”
Robin glanced that way, drew a long breath, and turned back to me. “All right, sailor. Let’s see what you’ve learned. Bring her around easy, right up into the wind.”
I swung the schooner’s bow around, and the two men at the mast cranked up the big mainsail by means of a winch, and ran forward to set some other sails, while two thousand square feet of canvas, more or less, danced and flapped over my head, supporting a varnished spar the size of a telephone pole: the main boom. It was the biggest timber I’d ever seen swinging loose like that, and it made me very nervous. The tall mast and the immense sail didn’t add to my peace of mind.
“Aren’t you kind of shorthanded to handle a boat this size under sail?” I asked. “Three people don’t seem like much of a crew.”
She was watching the progress of the work forward. “We’ll pick up three more tonight,” she said absently, not really thinking. “Well, two that can help work the ship—” She stopped, and glanced at me quickly. “Damn you!” she said. “Well, now you know.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The guy who can’t help is named Michaelis, I suppose, the missing Norman you were telling me about last night. I heard about him in Washington. Well, that’s none of my business until I’m told differently.” I hoped my voice sounded easy and casual. She had to be made to think Ames was my big concern, not Michaelis. “I suppose that’s why we’re setting the sails, so that tonight we can cut the motor and run into Mendenhall Island silently and pick him up with his jailers. That’s the place, isn’t it, the one you told me about last night?”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s the place, darling. I had to say something to keep your mind off your drink.”
“And after Mendenhall,” I said, “where?”
She didn’t answer at o
nce. She’d stepped off to one side so she could see clearly. “Belay, there!” she shouted. “You’ve got it fouled! Slack off the peak halfway... All clear, hoist away.” Then she turned to look at me deliberately. “We’ll head out through the Chesapeake Capes. A freighter will meet us at sea. They’ll take all of you on board—you, Matt, in place of the woman I promised them, the one you killed. They’ll be very glad to have you, I assure you... Nick, come here. Take him below.”
19
Nick closed and bolted the cabin door behind me. I stood there for a moment, frowning. By pushing hard, I’d gained some interesting information, but I’d lost something, too. I’d annoyed my dark goddess, my pirate queen, and she’d banished me from her sight. If I’d been nicer, more flattering, less inquisitive, maybe she’d have let me stay on deck. Well, there wasn’t much to be accomplished there at the moment, not against Big Nick and a doublebarreled shotgun. Not bare-handed...
“What is it?” Teddy Michaelis asked fearfully, sitting up in the bunk. “What did she want with you? What happened?”
I regarded her thoughtfully. Her short, pale hair was mussed and her small face was tear-streaked. She was wearing a kind of green linen romper suit, with a shortsleeved tunic and knee pants. I don’t know who dreams up these cute female costumes; I’d rather not know. All she needed was a little shovel and a tin bucket with Donald Duck on it and a sandpile to play in. As an ally in a desperate situation, she looked pretty hopeless.
A change in the schooner’s motion made me reach for the dresser to steady myself. We were turning south again. The ship took a definite list to starboard as the sails filled. I sat down on the edge of the bunk beside the kid.
“Thunderbird sent you, didn’t he?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I said, “Don’t try to kid me. You’d never have thought of it yourself, not in a million years—warning Mrs. Rosten, I mean. You must have spilled your guts to young Orcutt last night after leaving my hotel room. You broke down and told him how wicked and crazy you’d been, and he showed you, sternly, where your duty lay. Am I right?”
Murderers' Row Page 12