Apparently Mrs. Drilling and daughter, although better equipped, felt much the same way, because they stopped at a trailer park on the outskirts of the city, made arrangements to desert their rolling home for the night, and drove in to register at the fanciest hotel in town. At least that was one possible explanation for their action. I didn't dismiss the possibility, however, that Mrs. Drilling might have other reasons for staying at the Queen Mary than just the desire to soak in a real tub and eat a meal she hadn't cooked herself.
Whatever her motives, I was glad for the chance to clean up in civilized surroundings, after spending too many mornings shaving out of a saucepan with mosquitoes chewing at my neck and ears. By paying for more accommodations than I really needed-well, Uncle Sam would get the bill eventually-I managed to get a room right down the hall from the Drilling menage. It would have been pleasant to have a leisurely drink and then spend plenty of time in the tiled bath, as Mrs. Drilling was probably doing, but I reminded myself that duty came before luxury, and made myself respectable as fast as possible. I guess I had a hunch that there might be some action, now that we'd put the great northern wilderness behind us.
It came almost before I'd finished buttoning my only white shirt and tying a conservative knot in my only necktie-I hadn't figured on needing much formal attire on the Black Hills job. The knock on the door had a timid sound, but I took the usual precautions answering it, remembering that both Elaine and Greg had been careless with doors. But the kid in the doorway had nothing in her hands. She looked up at me through her hornrimmed glasses, and showed me a mouthful of stainless steel in what was obviously meant to be a pretty smile.
"I hope you don't mind I means may I come in?" she said.
The first thing I noticed, after stepping back to let her enter, was that she'd finally got everything off her head except the hair. It was the first time since we'd met that I'd seen her without either curlers or some sort of patent covering of net or plastic or both. Unveiled and liberated, the hair hardly seemed worthy of all this protective concern. It didn't glow like neon, or spell out messages in Urdu, or dance the Twist around her scalp.
It was just normal, healthy, light-brown, young-girl hair, done up in a big puffball arrangement that made her face look very small, with tiny childish features. She was really a pretty kid, I realized, despite the glasses and braces- and kid wasn't quite the word, either.
I mean, she was wearing honest-to-God nylons and grownup white pumps with moderately high heels and little white gloves. Her dress was that kind of beltless, shapeless model that was known as a sack a few years ago and is now back in favor, I understand, under the title of shift. Whatever the name, it's a style that mostly looks like hell on older women, but being nice and simple, it can often look very cute on the young ones.
This was a jumper job, blue, with a ruffly, semi-transparent white blouse taking over the coverage duty at neck and arms. The straight dress made contact with her body only infrequently, but often enough to make it plain that while she might still technically be considered a child, the condition wasn't going to last very much longer. I'd closed the door with the two of us inside. Now, after looking her over, I gave an admiring whistle. I guess I was teasing her, but after all, it was a real improvement over the grubby jeans, shorts, and bastard pant-skirt outfits in which she'd been traveling. It deserved a little applause.
She turned pink and looked uncomfortable, and glanced nervously around the room, saw the two big beds, and looked away. She'd heard about beds. I gathered that, visiting a strange man's hotel room alone, she wasn't at all certain she wasn't going to get raped-and I had a hunch, despite her wary attitude, that she wasn't entirely certain it wouldn't be an interesting and worthwhile experience. She was young enough to be scared, but she was also old enough to be curious.
I said, "I gather you haven't come to see me because you want me to take you back to your dad. That's hardly a long.. distance traveling costume you've got on."
"No-no. I…" There was a little pause while she looked down at her pretty white pumps, with her pretty white gloves-or the small hands therein-gripping each other nervously. "I don't believe it!" she said abruptly, looking at me. "I told Mummy from the start I didn't believe it and I still don't!"
"What don't you believe?"
"That fight," she said. "I don't believe you faked it. And those men. I'm sure they were real convicts. I was with them longer than Mummy, going through the woods; I heard them talking. They weren't putting on an act for me, I know they weren't!"
I said, "Honey, you don't have to convince me. Have you told your mother this?"
"Of course I have!" Penny flushed. "Mummy says I'm just being silly. She says I'm just a big gullible baby. She says you're a very clever government agent, not a private detective at all, and that you're not to be trusted for one little minute."
I laughed. "That sounds like your ma, all right. And what do you think, Penny?"
She studied her toes again. "I… I think that if there's even a chance that you did save us from those men, all alone with nothing but a little stick, then you're a… pretty brave person, aren't you, Mr. Clevenger? And we owe you a great deal, don't we? And we should at least give you a chance to prove your good faith, shouldn't we? That's the least we can do. Maybe I am just being silly and naive. Maybe you are just a cold, calculating…" She stopped, embarrassed.
"A cold, calculating what?" I asked, grinning. "Sneak, snooper, fink? What was your mother's descriptive term for me?"
Penny looked shocked. "Oh, Mummy'd never say fink! She won't let me say it, even though all the other kids back home…" She stopped, realizing that she was drifting from the subject. She looked up at me with sudden, disconcerting steadiness. "Mummy says you don't really care what happens to me, and neither does Daddy. She says it's just an excuse so you can keep an eye on us for your government agency, whatever it is."
It was my turn to be embarrassed, watched by the steady blue eyes behind the hornrimmed glasses. I wished again, as I had before, that Mrs. Drilling had had the good sense to leave her offspring out of this. It was not a business for little girls, even little girls in grownup nylons and high heels. I made a show of shrugging my shoulders helplessly.
"It's impossible to convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced, Penny," I said, sounding pompous and fatherly.
"And it's very easy to convince somebody who does want to be convinced, isn't it? Particularly if they're… well, kind of young."
She was still watching me closely. She was a bright little girl. She was also, I thought, a lonely little girl, needing reassurance badly.
I said, "If you want to call your father long distance, there's the phone. Of course, if I'm lying, then he'll have been briefed to lie, too, won't he?"
She made a face. "That's not much help."
I said, "Hell, honey, there's never any help of the kind you're looking for. It's up to you. Either I'm a liar and a phony or I'm not. Don't ask me to make up your damn little mind for you."
After a moment she grinned. "It's hardly a question of my damn little mind, Mr. Clevenger. It's a question of my mother's damn little mind, isn't it? She's the one you want to convince." Penny drew a long breath. "Well, come to dinner with us and convince her."
I guess I looked surprised, which was all right. I was supposed to look surprised. I said, "What?"
"That's what I came to tell you. Maybe you're a phony and maybe you aren't, but if you did help us, back there in the woods, then you deserve a hearing. Well, you've got one. I pestered Mummy until she agreed to sit down and talk it over with you in a civilized way. We're all having dinner downstairs in the Voyageur Club at seven-thirty." She glanced at the little gold watch on her wrist. "That gives you just about half an hour to dig up some good evidence, Mr. Clevenger. Don't be late."
XIII
THE v0YAGEUR CLUB is to Montreal, I guess, what Stallmдstaregгrden is to Stockholm or Antoine's is to New Orleans- to drop the names of a couple of classy
restaurants I've been forced to visit in the line of duty. I found it a large, rambling, dimly-lighted room on the ground floor of the hotel. The waiters were dressed like old-time French-Canadians about to embark on a fur-trading expedition into the primitive American wilderness. There were old utensils and weapons hanging on the walls.
It was the kind of atmosphere that could seem either contrived and fakey, or just pleasantly and comfortably old-fashioned, depending on the skill with which it was handled and whether or not it was used to cover up deficiencies in the culinary department. My first impression was favorable, but I reserved judgment until I could see the service and taste the food.
Mrs. Drilling and Miss Drilling were already established at a table when I entered from the lobby. Before my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I had a little trouble telling them apart from across the room. They were dressed identically: Genevieve was wearing a jumper and blouse just like Penny's, and her hair was also combed up big. In theory, I suppose these mother-and-daughter outfits are a cute idea. In practice they never seem to work out well except on magazine covers; I suppose because a thirty-five-year-old woman isn't likely to look her best in something that makes a fifteen-year-old kid look like a living doll.
Genevieve looked up when I stopped by the table. Her eyes didn't exactly display the warm light of eager hospitality. She waited for me to speak.
I said, "This is real kind of you, ma'am."
She said in a neutral voice, "It wasn't my idea. My gullible daughter seems to be suffering from an acute attack of hero-worship. She's at the impressionable age."
"Oh, Mummy!" said Penny, pained.
"Sit down, Mr. Clevenger," Genevieve said. "The counsel for the defense has made me promise you a fair hearing, but maybe we should have a drink before you present your evidence and your arguments to the court."
"Yes, ma'am," I said, seating myself between the two ladies. "Reckon I could go for a martini, ma'am."
"Oh, no!" Genevieve protested. "Not a martini, Mr. Clevenger! That doesn't go with your Western act at all. Bourbon and branch water should be your tipple, or corn whiskey straight from the jug."
"Oh, Denver is a real modern city these days," I said. "We've got martinis and juvenile delinquents just like the rest of the country. And you don't sound as if you were approaching my case with an open mind, Judge Drilling, ma'am."
Penny said, "That's right, Mummy. You could at least try to sound unprejudiced."
Genevieve laughed. She was quite a pretty woman, I realized again, and her little-girl jumper costume didn't really go so badly with her wholesome, freckled type of good looks.
"All right," she said. "I'll try. Order me a martini, too, please, Mr. Clevenger, and a coke for Penny. Is it still raining out? I must say, it would be nice to see a little sunshine for a change…
We talked about the weather, and the country, and the roads we'd covered, and the fierce competitive spirit that seemed to burn, torch-like, in all Canadian drivers.
"It wouldn't be so bad if they'd just get out ahead and stay there!" Genevieve complained. "The minute you pass one, he's got to get back around you-but then he goes right to sleep again! So you've got to pass him again or poke along behind him at forty. By the time I've maneuvered sixteen feet of trailer around the same motorized cluck for the third time in ten miles, I'm ready to run him right off the road."
"Well, you handle that rig like an expert, ma'am," I said.
"I ought to," she said. "My father was a contractor. There wasn't a piece of machinery he used that I wasn't checked out on, Mr. Clevenger-that is, until we got rich and respectable and I was supposed to stay off the trucks and cats and look ladylike in a pale blue convertible with an automatic shift-" She broke off, and gave me a sharp glance. "You're a real confidence man, aren't you? You know just how to flatter a woman and get her talking about herself."
"Sure," I said. "Nothing softens them up like telling them they're swell truckdrivers. I've found the technique infallible, ma'am."
She laughed reluctantly, and stopped laughing. "Well, let's have it," she said. "I suppose you have a lot of phony identification cards and things that are supposed to convince me you aren't working for Uncle Sam in some clever and underhanded way."
Penny said, "Oh, Mummy! You promised you'd-"
"It's all right, darling," Genevieve said. "Mr. Clevenger has a tough hide, I'm sure. He doesn't mind my needling him a little. Well, Mr. Clevenger? Should we start with your private detective's license or permit or whatever you call it?" I showed it to her. She glanced at it and said, "A very handsome piece of work. Now, how about a pistol permit? You do have one, don't you, even though you don't have the gun with you? And a few credit cards, perhaps. Although that's pretty weak. Even I could get myself a credit card in the name of Clevenger if I wanted to."
Penny stirred uncomfortably. "Mummy, you're not being fair."
"Oh, I'm being very fair," her mother said. "Mr. Clevenger knows perfectly well that his documents mean nothing because any government agent could have them made up for any character he cared to impersonate. He's going to have to come up with better evidence than this." She smiled and patted her daughter's hand. "The fact that his Douglas Fairbanks routine is irresistible to teen-age girls hardly constitutes proof of his good intentions, darling."
I said, "Well, what about this, Mrs. Drilling?"
She looked at the paper I held out-a folded newspaper clipping-and at me. Then she took the clipping and unfolded it, frowned, studied it carefully, and looked up again suspiciously.
"I didn't see this item anywhere," she said. "I'd certainly have noticed it."
"Maybe you weren't looking at the right Winnipeg paper shortly after that little ruckus in the woods, ma'am. I just happened to come across it. Somebody'd left it behind at a roadside cafe."
This wasn't true, of course. Figuring I might have a chance to use it sooner or later, I'd phoned Mac to put somebody at tracking down all published news items bearing on the subject. They'd been rushed to a pickup spot-drop, if you want to be technical-here in Montreal as soon as it became clear we'd be passing through the city.
Penny was frowning at us. "What is it?"
"Oh, a little item I just knocked out on my portable printing press," I said. "It purports to be a news picture of two convicts who were recaptured in a rather battered state a few days after their escape from the penitentiary at Bran-don. Strictly counterfeit, of course, like all my documents. As your mother said back there, sooner or later we'll hear of the real escapees being taken in Labrador or British Columbia."
"Let me see!" The girl took the clipping from her mother's hand. "But those are the two men who tried to-"
I said, "Honey, don't look now but you're being naive. Naturally, if I'm going to fake a picture, I'll use faces you'll recognize. Look at your ma. She doesn't believe a word of it. And don't think she'll go hunting through old newspaper files to check it, either. She knows what she knows, and nothing's going to convince her otherwise." I sighed. "It's no use, Penny. I thank you for your good offices, but the court has already passed judgment and isn't about to reverse its verdict."
Penny turned indignantly to Genevieve. "But Mummy-"
"Let me see that again," Genevieve said. She frowned at the clipping for several seconds. Then she looked at me. "If that picture is genuine, I owe you an apology, don't I, Mr. Clevenger?"
"If," I said.
'9,Vell," she said, "is it?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "It is."
She hesitated. "I don't trust you," she said at last. "I don't trust you one little bit." Then she drew a long breath. "But I'll admit it begins to look as if I'd been a little hasty. What Penny bad to say about those men, and now this clipping… maybe you really did help us out of a very nasty situation, Mr. Clevenger. If so, please forgive me for jumping to conclusions."
It was a pretty good apology, as apologies go. I mean, she'd hedged a little, but on the whole I should have been pleased and satisfied-and I
would have been, if I hadn't found myself wondering just how long she'd been sitting on that speech before she'd found an excuse to deliver it. I had a sudden strong feeling that the whole scene had been planned in advance: that I'd been brought here by the daughter so the mother could apologize to me on one pretext or another, if not a newspaper clipping then something else.
It was a snide thought, but I found confirmation when I glanced at Penny's face. Instead of jumping up and down happily because her hero had been vindicated, she was looking uncomfortable and embarrassed, as if she wished herself miles away where she wouldn't have to watch her mother putting on a humble act for a man for some obscure adult reason.
I didn't spend too much time worrying about the reason. It promised to be an interesting evening, and it was starting out well. Once we got over the little awkwardness that followed Genevieve's apology, everything went gracefully. The service was smooth and efficient and the drinks were excellent. The salmon was as good as a fish can be, and you forget how good that is when you live away from the ocean for a while.
Penny was allowed a glass of wine with her meal, and presently, not much to my surprise, she showed signs of getting sleepy and was given the room key and sent up to bed. I ordered a cognac and Genevieve took something green and' sweet and minty. She raised her glass to me.
"Well, Mr. Clevenger?" she murmured.
"Well what, Mrs. Drilling?" I said.
She was smiling wryly. "Were we too obvious? We haven't had much practice at intrigue, you know. I think Penny did rather well, don't you?"
I studied her face for a moment. I said, "With a little practice, she'll be another Mata Hari-but don't forget that lady got shot. Two people have already died on this operation. Why not let me take the kid back to papa before she gets hurt playing in a grownup game?"
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