the car, ready to thrust again. A blade hasn’t got the shocking power of a bullet. I might still have a fight on my hands.
I needn’t have worried. He was through for the night. He dropped the club and put both hands to his stomach and looked down fearfully, as if expecting a horrible display of gushing blood and torn entrails. There was, of course, nothing of the sort. I’d done a clean, tidy job. After making sure of this, he looked up reproachfully. The light from the sky caught his face. I’d never met him before, although we’d come close earlier in the evening; but I’d seen his picture and read his official description in Washington. It just wasn’t my night for being right. On top of my other goofs, I’d miscalculated badly when I figured there was only one man around who’d like me to drop dead because of the way I’d loused up the night’s work. I’d forgotten Alan, our tender-hearted, lovesick young man in Maryland.
SEVEN
HE WAS A good-looking kid, if you like them with dark, wavy hair and soulful expressions. Well, agents are needed in all shapes and sizes, and I suppose Mac had use for a pretty boy when he took this one on.
I got a gun off him: the standard little sawed-off, aluminum-framed, five-shot Smith and Wesson.38 that’s issued to us whenever the job doesn’t require anything esoteric in the way of firearms. You can get the equivalent Colt if you insist. It shoots six times but is a little harder to hide, being that much thicker. The general feeling is, if you can’t do it with five shots, you probably can’t do it at all.
Then I picked up the club he’d tried to use on me. It was a kendo stick, a kind of overgrown policeman’s billy, with a leather wrist loop, only you don’t use it around the wrist. You just loop it over your thumb a certain way, easy to release, so that the man who grabs the stick hasn’t got you, too. Of course, taking a stick away from a good Japanese-trained kendo man doesn’t come under the heading of healthful exercise. The karate and judo experts, who’ll cheerfully go up against a knife, will back off from a thirty-inch stick in the hands of a man who knows how to use it.
I tossed it into the car. It was kind of pitiful, actually. They come out of training having learned a few miraculous chops with the edge of the hand, a few blows with a magic stick, and they think they’re invulnerable and invincible.
I said, ”Very poor technique, Alan. You sounded like a bull elk coming through the brush, and your attack was lousy. Why didn’t you use the gun?“
He didn’t answer. He just stood there holding his stomach with both hands, staring at me sullenly.
I asked, ”How were you planning to explain all the weapons to the cops?“
He licked his lips. ”I have a license for the gun. I was supposed to have brought it along to protect Jean-she was going under the name of Ellington, Mrs. Laura Ellington. She was supposed to have been threatened by somebody, somebody in her past. She wouldn’t tell me the details; she pleaded with me not to ask questions, just help her hide out in a safe place until-“ He shrugged imperceptibly. ”That was the cover story I was supposed to give out after I discovered that she’d been-attacked.“
”But you didn’t give out?“
He spoke dully. ”When I came in, she was dead. I-I guess I lost my head. There were some people from one of the units who’d seen you leave. I told them to call the police. I started after you. When I caught up with you, you’d already been arrested by the state troopers. I just – followed, hoping for a chance-“ He stopped.
”Sure,“ I said. ”Well, get in the car.“
He was still holding himself. He didn’t want to move. He was afraid he’d fall apart if he moved. I shrugged, closed the trunk and the hood, got in and started the motor.
”Make up your mind,“ I said. ”Stay here if you like. I’m leaving now.“
He came around the car, walking very gingerly. I opened the door for him. He eased himself to the seat. 1 didn’t really like reaching across him to close the door-he could have been shamming- but he didn’t take advantage of the opening. I started the car.
”Where-“ He licked his lips and started over. ”Where are you taking me?“
”To the nearest phone. For advice and assistance. Watch the roads so you can tell them how to pick up your car.“ I glanced at him. ”It might help if you told me precisely what’s bugging you, to use the vernacular.“
”Why,“ he said, surprised, ”why, you killed her!“ He turned to look at me. ”Didn’t you?“
”Well,“ I said, ”she died.“
”She wasn’t supposed to die! You killed her!“
I started to speak again, and stopped. There was no point in arguing about it. What he thought didn’t really matter any more, anyway. He was hospital-bound and out of it. There were other people whose opinions were of more importance to me, one person in particular. I hoped he’d be more open-minded on the subject, but I wasn’t really counting on it.
I found an all-night filling station with a phone booth. I parked the Falcon by the booth, since there was no reason to be coy.
”Don’t move,“ I said to Alan, ”don’t talk, and don’t think-there’s no really good evidence that you know how. If you have to die, do it quietly.“
He gave me a look full of hate, sitting there holding himself. That was all right. He was mad enough to stay alive if he could manage, which was the way I wanted to keep him. I glanced at my watch as I got out of the car, and saw that he’d already made it for seventeen minutes. Wounded there, they go pretty fast if they go at all. Apparently none of the major abdominal blood vessels had been damaged, which gave him a good chance of surviving, properly cared for.
I closed the door of the booth behind me. The light came on, making me feel like an illuminated target at the end of a long, dark rifle range. I couldn’t help wondering how many other dangerous characters I’d casually overlooked, with hatred in their hearts for one M. Helm. Well, they’d just have to line up and await their turns.
I put my coin into the slot, got the operator, and told her the number. A minute or so later I had Mac on the wire.
There’s a rumor to the effect that he does sleep, but nobody’s ever caught him at it, to my knowledge.
”Eric here,“ I said. ”Is Dr. Perry just our beating-up specialist, or does he know about belly wounds, too?“
He didn’t ask any foolish questions. He just gave me the answer. ”Dr. Perry is a capable all-around surgeon.“
I said, ”Well, you’d better load him into a fast car with a good driver. Send them east out of Washington on U.S. 50. Tell Perry it’s a puncture wound a few inches below the navel. The weapon was approximately half an inch wide by six inches long, clean and sharp. It went in most of the way. I have some other things to report, but as soon as I hang up here, I’ll head for the big highway and come west towards Washington at the legal speed- considering the state of my passenger, I don’t want to attract attention by driving faster. Give them a description of my car and tell them to flash their lights twice when they see me in the other lane. Okay. I’ll wait while you get them going, sir.“
”Very well.“
I stood at the silent phone, looking out through the glass of the booth. The filling station wasn’t doing much business at this hour. In the little Ford, Alan sat motionless, staring straight ahead. Presently Mac came back on the line.
”It’s a 3.8 Jaguar sedan,“ he said. ”The parking lights burn when the headlights are on, European fashion: two small lights below and slightly outside two large ones. They will be coming fast, so they want you to keep your car’s interior light on for easier identification.“
”That’ll cut my vision down,“ I said. ”They’ll have to do the spotting.“
”They are prepared to,“ he said. ”The description of the weapon corresponds with a knife recently issued to you. I gather you didn’t fall on it yourself.“
I said, ”Hell, I haven’t cut myself on one of my own knives since I was a kid. It’s Alan, sir. He came for me with a club. I gather he calls it love.“
There was a little pause. ”Couldn’t you have handled him with less damage, Eric?“
I could see my face in the glass of the booth. It looked lean and hard and ugly-that is to say, it looked pretty much as usual. ”I told you, he was trying to scramble my brains with a shillelagh, sir.“
”Even so, it seems a little drastic.“ Mac hesitated briefly. ”You seem to have had a busy evening, Eric. I’ve had a call from Chicago. They, in turn, have had a call from the county authorities near Annapolis, Maryland. About a certain Mr. Peters, alias Petroni. The word murder was mentioned. Perhaps you’d care to explain.“
I said, ”The patient died on the operating table, sir.“
”So I gathered, after making cautious inquiries. You were arrested, I understand?“
”Yes, sir, but they turned me loose.“
”Well, that’s something.“ His voice was dry. ”What’s Alan’s condition?“
”Pretty good, I’d say. No signs of excessive internal hemorrhage. With surgery and antibiotics, he ought to make it.“
”Yes. Nevertheless, he will be incapacitated for weeks, maybe months. And Jean is dead. What happened there? Did your hand slip?“
”I don’t think so, sir. She just gave a little gasp and folded up. By the time I’d caught her and eased her to the floor, she was dead.“
”There was no heart condition. Dr. Perry checked her thoroughly. Jean was physically sound.“
”And psychologically?“
”What do you mean?“
”She was scared,“ I said. ”She didn’t like what she had to face, either at my hands or the opposition’s. She’d bad it, sir. She was sick of looking in the mirror and seeing a drunken slob. She could hardly face the thought of looking in the mirror and seeing a beat-up drunken slob. As for the rest of the job-well, I have a hunch she was simply trying not to think of it at all.“
”Dr. Klein examined her, too, and passed her.“
”Who’s Klein, our new psychiatrist? They come and they go, don’t they? Well, I have no degree in any branch of medicine, but I know a scared and fed-up female when I see one, sir.“
Mac said coldly, ”Jean was a good agent and an excellent actress. She was supposed to act frightened and shaky. What are you trying to say, Eric? That it wasn’t your fault that she died? That she simply died of fright?“
I gripped the telephone hard. It was no time to get mad. It never is. ”No, sir,“ I said. ”It was my job and my responsibility, sure. I simply don’t believe I killed her by hitting her too hard. I don’t think my hand slipped. I’d like an investigation.“
”It will certainly be investigated, as soon as we can confer with the local authorities without the risk of publicity. I’m told an autopsy will be performed. I’ll try to get a copy of the findings. But in the meantime we have Jean dead and Alan seriously injured, at your hands. That is two agents put out of commission in one night, Eric. The enemy seldom does better.“
”No, sir,“ I said. ”Maybe I should have gone to Texas.“
The minute I said it, meaning only to say something suitably humble and rueful, I knew it was a mistake. I knew it by the quality of the silence that followed.
”I see,“ Mac said slowly, at last. ”I see. That is how you feel, Eric? That was Dr. Klein’s theory. When an agent makes a serious error, as you know, we review his record immediately. I called up Klein at once, when Chicago called me.“
I said, ”I grant the error. I’ve got to; Jean’s dead. But there’s nothing wrong with my record, sir.“
”No, except the sheer quantity of it. Since you came back to us, after your wife left you a few years ago, you’ve had no real time off at all. Fatigue, was Klein’s immediate diagnosis.“
”The hell with Klein,“ I said. ”We fought the whole damn war without a headshrinker in attendance. And the hell with fatigue, too. I haven’t asked for any leave, have I? Not until this time-“
”Precisely,“ Mac said. ”Fatigue and subconscious resentment, Klein said. And, probably, what he referred to as a mild superman complex. I don’t like the term, Eric, but I have seen it happen
