“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 anymore. 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 once. 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.”
NINETEEN
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 double-barreled 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 short-sleeved 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?”
She flushed. “Well, Billy did say-”
“Sure,” I said. “I suppose the two of you decided it would look better if you came alone. But the point is, he knew where you were going this morning. When you turn up missing, what do you figure he’ll do?”
“Do?” Her voice was sharp. “He won’t do anything. He’s never done anything in his life except talk! He’s just a stuffed shirt, a pompous, moralizing prig; and I told him so last night. I told him he wasn’t my conscience, and if he thought I was going to humble myself in front of his snooty aunt or cousin or whatever she is-I told him I wasn’t going to do anything of the kind!”
“But you did,” I pointed out.
She licked her lips. She was still trying to see herself as a ruthless, conscienceless little adventuress, but her better nature was making it rough.
“Well, I-I don’t know what got into me,” she said defensively. “I didn’t mean-when I got into the car I hadn’t the slightest intention of coming. I mean, who does he think he is, lecturing me like that!” She sniffed, on the verge of tears. “It’s all his fault. If it hadn’t been for him, if he hadn’t taken it so big, I’d never have dreamed of coming to see her this morning! I’d have been safe now instead of-” She stopped.
“I see,” I said. “In other words, he doesn’t know where you were going. So we can’t expect much help from him.”
She gulped, and nodded miserably. Well, I hadn’t really hoped for much from young Orcutt, any more than I’d counted on somebody checking at the hotel, learning I was missing, and taking action in time. It would be hard to say what action they could take without taking a chance of interfering with the job I was supposed to do. Jean had been supposed to make it on her own; presumably the same applied to me.
“Matt,” the kid said. “That’s your real name, isn’t it? Matt?”
“That’s right. Matt Helm, agent extraordinary, at your service, ma’am.”
“Extraordinary!” she said. “I don’t see anything extraordinary about you, getting yourself caught here like a- like a rat in a floating trap!” She glared at me, angry again. “You fake! You-you sheep in wolf’s clothing! Pretending to be a-I knew all the time there was something phony about you!”
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, I did! You don’t think I really meant for you to kill-you don’t think I was serious, do you? I knew all the time-I was just kidding you along, for laughs!” She sniffed and rubbed her nose with her forefinger. “I’m not fooling anybody, am I? What’s going to happen to us, Matt? What’s that woman going to do to us?”
“Well,” I said, “first of all, I gather, she’s going to take us to meet a gentleman in whom you’ve expressed a certain interest.”
She frowned. “A gentleman?”
“A scientific sort of gent, named Michaelis.”
“Papa?” Her eyes became wide and round. “You mean, he’s-” She stopped, afraid to say the word.
“Alive?” I said. “Oh, yes, he’s alive. They wouldn’t kill him; he’s much too valuable. He may not be in perfect health-don’t forget he’s been a prisoner for some weeks
– but he’s undoubtedly alive.”
She licked her lips, watching my face. “But-but that’s wonderful, isn’t it? He’s alive!”
“Yeah,” I said flatly. “It’s wonderful, I guess.”
“Matt, what’s the matter? I don’t understand-”
