Matt Helm--The Interlopers (8 page)

Libby gave a nice little feminine shudder. “Don’t! If I’d thought you’d really have to use a gun, ever, I’d never have dreamed of asking you to work with us… But anyway, you’re safe! And I suppose Mr. Stottman is taking care of… of the evidence, so you’ll have nothing to worry about from the police.”

I said, “Sure, Mr. Stottman is being a big help. A great big help. Incidentally, what happened to the car you were driving when I last saw you? If I’d recognized that gaudy yellow bucket as yours in Pasco, we wouldn’t have had to chase you clear to Seattle.”

On the assumption that she was on my side, for reasons still to be determined, I was warning her not to ask me any embarrassing questions on this particular subject. The slightest, briefest hint of a frown let me know that I should have recognized the yellow Cadillac. Chalk one error to Mr. Smith’s closemouthed lads and their compulsive security. I guess I was lucky to have got the name of the girl out of them, let alone the brand of her transportation. Well, we could hope Stottman wouldn’t check the auto-registration files for the date of purchase.

Libby said quickly, “Why, I told you I was getting a new convertible. You just don’t listen, darling! And you haven’t said
why
you had to come here—not that I’m not awfully glad to see you.”

I jerked my head toward the door. “Ask our friend over there. He’s got a problem. You may be able to help him with it.”

She looked at Stottman. “What can I do for you, Mr. Stottman.”

The plump man hesitated, and asked formally: “Do you know this man, Miss Meredith?”

“Know him?” She frowned. “Of course I know him! Why, I was the one who recruited him down in San Francisco, when we were asked to supply a courier with a background that would let him do a lot of traveling without being questioned. You know I know him. That’s why I was picked to run down to Pasco and check on his double for you!” Libby glanced my way. “Darling, what
is
this, anyway?”

I laughed. “Mr. Stottman has doubles on the mind, Libby. He figures if one guy was trying an impersonation, two might be. He wants to be absolutely sure I’m me. Am I?”

“Of course you are. Don’t be silly!”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “I know who I am. Tell him… Go on, tell him. Put it on the record officially.”

Libby looked coldly at Stottman. “I don’t know what this is all about and it’s perfectly ridiculous… Oh, all right! I hereby certify and depose that this man is Grant Nystrom himself, not a substitute or imitation. Okay, Mr. Stottman? Or would you like for me to make out an affidavit and have it witnessed and notarized and recorded at the county court house?” The stout man didn’t answer. Libby turned back to me. “Has he made delivery yet, Grant?”

“Hell, no,” I said. “That’s why I had to bring him here, two hundred miles in the dark, for God’s sake! It’s like pulling teeth to make Mr. Stottman turn loose of anything, but maybe if we both plead with him, we can get hold of whatever lousy little scraps of information his cell has managed to scrounge up around here, so I can get back on the road in time to pick up the important stuff waiting for me up north.”

It worked. My belittling of his contribution hit Stottman in his professional pride, and he said quickly: “Lousy little scraps of information, indeed! I’ll have you know I have the key to NCS right here”—he slapped his coat pocket—“and without it, whatever data you get farther north will be absolutely meaningless.”

The initials meant nothing to me. I had been briefed about no organization, system, or object known as NCS, but on this murky mission, that was just about par for the course. Obviously it was something, like Libby Meredith’s name, that was supposed to be quite familiar to me—that is, to Grant Nystrom—but on the other hand, it didn’t seem to be anything I was expected to comment on, so I just said, “All right. It’s great stuff if you say so. Now, if you’re satisfied I’m me, hand it over.”

Stottman hesitated. His little brown eyes were unhappy and uncertain. He glanced toward Libby, who said sharply: “What is it now? If you’re still not convinced, we can have somebody else flown up from San Francisco to confirm my identification. Of course, it will cause enough delay to throw Grant’s schedule completely out of kilter, but I’m sure nobody’ll mind that as long as it makes you happy, Mr. Stottman!”

I felt rather sorry for the victim of her sarcasm. He was, in spite of his unprepossessing appearance, a good agent: good enough to respect his own hunches. His hunch was that I was a phony no matter who vouched for me. However, he’d run his protest as far as he could without making a lot of trouble for himself if he was wrong. He might be a good agent, but he was also enough of an organization man to know when to stop pushing. He shrugged his plump shoulders.

“Very well,” he said, and took from his pocket a familiar brown-glass jar which, I could see now, was full of large tablets of some kind. “Here you are, Nystrom… Wait a minute. Just how was the delivery supposed to be made?”

I sighed, like a man nearing the end of his patience. “I was supposed to be sitting there in the clinic with my dog on leash, waiting to see the vet. You were supposed to say: ‘Isn’t that a Labrador retriever? He’s a beauty. What’s his name?’ And I was supposed to say: ‘Yes, he’s a Lab. His name is Hank.’”

I looked sharply at Stottman. “And what was your next line?”

“I was supposed to say: ‘No, I mean his full name. He’s pedigreed, isn’t he?’”

I said, “And then I was supposed to tell you that the pup’s registered name was Avon’s Prince Hannibal of Holgate. My God. The people who dream up these long-winded identification routines ought to try them in the field sometime.”

Stottman didn’t smile. “And then, Mr. Nystrom?”

“Then you were supposed to turn away and raise hell with the nurse about that bottle of dog-vitamins, saying that you’d got them there yesterday but she hadn’t given you the brand you’d asked for. The girl would presumably apologize and start to get you the right stuff, and I’d get up quickly and say, ‘Are those Pet-Tabs, miss? That’s what my dog gets and I’m almost out of them. I’ll take them.’ And that would be that. Okay?”

“And what’s in the bottle besides vitamins, Nystrom?” His little eyes were watching me closely, still suspicious.

I shrugged. “That’s none of my business, friend. I know how it’s packed and how I’m supposed to carry it and where I’m supposed to turn it over to somebody else, but what it is, I don’t know and don’t want to know. Of course, you’ve just told me it’s a magic key of some kind, but I’m going to forget that as fast as I can. The less I know, the fewer people shoot at me, I hope. I’ve been target once too often on this trip already.”

Again I’d disappointed him by making the right response. I held out my hand. After a moment’s pause, he shrugged, gave me the bottle, turned and started for the door.

As the door closed behind him, I looked toward Libby Meredith and started to speak, but she shook her head quickly and put her finger to her lips. With the same finger, she then pointed to the little table by the door. Stottman’s hat lay there: one of the oldest tricks in the world.

I grinned, stuck the vitamin bottle into my pocket, stepped forward, and took the woman into my arms, doing what seemed indicated. She did not resist or protest; in fact she seemed to feel it was an interesting project, worthy of her cooperation. We were both convincingly flushed and disheveled, both breathing hard, when the door burst open. We jumped apart in a suitably startled and embarrassed manner.

“Really, Mr. Stottman!” Libby said indignantly.

“I’m sorry. I forgot my hat.” Stottman looked at us bleakly for a moment. What he’d hoped to catch us doing, instead of what we’d been doing, I couldn’t imagine and probably he couldn’t either. He’d just felt obliged to give it a try. Behind him, in the hallway, I saw the brown-faced man called Pete. “My apologies,” Stottman said, backing out of the room once more.

After he’d gone, I checked the door to make sure that, this time, the lock was set and the latch had caught. I turned to face Libby Meredith.

“Now what?” I asked.

Then I saw that she was calmly unbuttoning her blouse. She looked amused at my expression. “It’s what they expect, isn’t it?” she murmured. “We wouldn’t want to disappoint them, would we?”

We didn’t.

I awoke to find myself lying in a big motel bed without any clothes on, with a naked woman for company. Morally speaking, it was no doubt very shocking, but we don’t do much moral speaking in this line of work. I was more concerned with the professional aspects of the situation.

Ungrateful and unappreciative though it might seem, after the pleasant night we’d just spent together, I couldn’t help wondering just what the glamorous Miss Meredith really wanted from me. I mean, it hadn’t been essential for her to go to bed with me as part of the act—in fact it hadn’t been necessary at all—and I’ve long since given up the notion that I’m so irresistible that any woman who meets me just naturally grabs at any excuse to get out of her clothes and into my arms. I’ve found it much safer to assume that ladies who act in this uninhibited manner probably have nasty, ulterior motives for their behavior.

“What’s your name, darling?” Libby Meredith’s voice interrupted my wandering, early-morning thoughts. “And I don’t mean Grant Nystrom.”

I turned my head to look at her. She was being very casual about security. I certainly don’t make a fetish of it myself, but I am aware that there are such things as electronic eavesdropping gadgets that can easily be installed in motel rooms. She read my thoughts and laughed at me.

“Relax, darling. I’m a very important person in the organization. They still trust me implicitly; they don’t suspect a thing. I’m sure they wouldn’t bother to put a microphone in my room.”

It was a naive little speech for anyone as deeply involved with a lot of unpleasant people as she seemed to be.

I said, “If by organization you mean this Russian west coast espionage outfit we’re trying to trip up, this is the first I’ve heard of any Communist group having implicit faith in any of its members, particularly amateur help playing at intrigue just for kicks.”

I was trying it for size. Apparently it fit well enough, or she wanted me to think it did, because she didn’t get very mad. A truly dedicated idealist, whether radical or reactionary, will blow his stack violently if you accuse him of being a thrill-seeking political amateur. Miss Meredith merely narrowed her eyes slightly.

“Don’t be obnoxious, darling. I helped you out of a lot of trouble last night. You might at least be grateful enough to be polite.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” I said. “I always take off my manners with my pants. And I’m grateful enough for the trouble you helped me out of, but that doesn’t keep me from wondering about the trouble you’re helping me into.” I reached out thoughtfully and drew a finger across her breast, incompletely covered by the sheet. “I mean, Miss Meredith, it was a lovely evening. Now what am I expected to do to pay for it?”

Her eyes remained narrow a moment longer; then she laughed softly. “I think I’m going to like you,” she murmured. “Grant was sweet but he wasn’t very bright. A woman gets bored with a man who has implicit faith in her. Poor Grant.”

“Sure,” I said. “Poor Grant. Did you get bored enough with him to set him up for murder?”

Still she didn’t get mad. “No,” she said quietly, “no, just bored enough to con him into betraying his country. I mean—” She hesitated, and made a wry little face. “—I mean, when you get a man like that trailing you around with big sheepy eyes and offering to do anything in the world for you, the temptation to take him at his word is hard to resist. But I didn’t know I was putting his life in danger. In fact, they promised me that, as a courier, he’d be running no real risk except, of course, of going to jail. And there wasn’t even much chance of that, they said, if he used his head.”

“And you believed them?”

“Why not? The whole business had turned out to be pretty much a drag, as far as I was concerned. I mean, I’d gone into it for excitement, mostly, but all it was was a bunch of mousy little men and drab little women making a big deal of sneaking around snapping pictures of dull documents snitched from dusty files. No sex, no shooting, no nothing. I was about to ditch them and take up shoplifting or something for real kicks when… when Grant disappeared. And then a couple of government men were waiting for me, a day or two later, and they took me to see the poor damn guy and his poor damn dog…” She stopped. After a little, she said, “They just looked so damn
dead!
Do you know what I mean?”

“I know,” I said. “So you decided to change sides and give the government boys a hand, by way of atonement.”

“Atonement, hell!” she said. “Those lousy red bastards promised me he would be safe, didn’t they? I’m going to wreck their lousy red spy ring, every crummy cell of it, clear up to Point Barrow, Alaska. Well, Anchorage. I don’t think they’ve got anybody much north of there, this particular gang anyway. And I’m going to take care of anybody else who had anything to do with Grant’s death! You still haven’t told me your name.”

The sudden change of subject caught me off balance. I stalled by asking, “Didn’t they tell you in San Francisco?”

“Those government boy scouts? Everything was a big secret to them. All they’d say was that they’d picked somebody to take Grant’s place, and that this somebody needed all the information about Grant and his route and his instructions that I could supply.” She paused. “Oh, they did show me your picture after you’d had your hair bleached. They asked what I thought of the resemblance. I had to tell them I didn’t think it was very close.”

I grinned. “Well, that figures. They wouldn’t tell me much about you, either. What little I got, I got the hard way, and it’s a good thing I did. They’ve got a serious epidemic of professional lockjaw in that department.”

“It isn’t your department?”

“No, thank God,” I said. “I’m just kind of out on loan to them temporarily.”

“But you are a government man, too?”

“That’s right.”

She smiled. “This is a hell of a place for a public servant, darling, in bed with a female subversive—even if she’s a reformed female subversive.”