Day of the Guns

Chapter 14

Rain tapping the window woke me up at seven. Outside it was another soggy, dull day, but it was Sunday and the streets were practically empty. It was like being in a ball park after the game was over, nothing left but the debris of cigarette and candy wrappers and a handful of lackadaisical keepers trying to clean up.

I shaved, went downstairs for breakfast, had the desk send up a typewriter then wrote out a report in triplicate, sealed it in an envelope and dropped it down the chute by the elevator. Martin Grady was going to have a lot of interesting reading. So was Wally Gibbons. So would the public. It was about time.

At noon I went down to the street to a pay phone and put in a call to Thomas Watford. There was a touch of anger in his voice and he told me that unless I turned myself into the office there would be trouble. Since the Minner affair they wanted me out of the way before there were any more complications.

I said, “How did the Soviets react?”

“It was they who hushed it up,” he said laconically. “They chose to announce that it was a personal disagreement between three former friends that led to the killing.”

“And the city police?”

“They accepted it, of course, under our instructions. However, with the bullets from the gun and the money they found certain facts are evident and will be useful, but we are not going to allow anyone else to pursue this case.”

“Meaning me?”

“Meaning you, Mr. Mann. I think it will be better if you are placed in custody in view of the situation last night. There is no need for unnecessary deaths.”

“You wanted a target, buddy.”

“Not any longer.”

“Tough.”

He waited a few seconds then said, “It might be well if I gave you a certain piece of information. Friday afternoon a congressional committee started proceedings against Martin Grady and those in his employ. He will be subpoenaed this week and his entire organization investigated.”

I laughed at him. “They’ll get their fingers burned, Watford. Martin Grady reaches into pretty high places. Sometimes he does it with money, other times with means that are slightly immoral but very necessary to get the edge he needs. Some of those congressmen can be leaving themselves wide open. I hope they have a private practice to retire to.”

“The Congress of the United States is not to be intimidated.”

“They’re only men, buddy. If some are afraid to do things the right way, private individuals will do it for them. All Grady has to do is give them the true picture of a few instances and the lid will come down hard. But thanks for the warning anyway.”

“You will be under indictment yourself, Mr. Mann.”

“That won’t be anything new either.”

“It will keep you out of our hair.”

“I’ll make a deal with you.”

“No deals.”

“You have no choice,” I told him. He didn’t answer, but he was still listening. “Call off the dogs until tomorrow. If the air isn’t cleared by then I’ll be around. Well?”

He took his time, finally saying, “All right. Nothing can happen on a Sunday, I’m sure.”

“I’m glad you are,” I said.

I ducked out of the booth, got across the street to the diagonal corner and looked at my watch. It took the police car forty-five seconds to get there. Thomas Watford’s methods of tracing a call could use some polishing up. Hell, I gave him enough time.

Wasting a rainy Sunday in the city wasn’t easy. It took two double features in Times Square movie houses to bring me up to supper and then I had another hour before the Grenoble Theater opened. To kill off the minutes I walked there, running the pieces of the puzzle through my mind trying to get it to make sense.

War was like that. You stopped the other guy without having to know his schemes or intentions. You just stopped him and it ended right there. If you didn’t, he took over and you’d find out what he wanted the hard way. So now we did it from back to front. Find a killer. Find Vidor Churis and you found who sent him. It wouldn’t be hard to make him talk. I knew enough ways myself. It might take a little time, but that would just make him talk louder and faster. Find out how the Soviets arranged for the leak in our security. Kill Rondine and you stopped the leak. But you had to break up their organization to do it or they’d find another way.

At seven the ticket window opened and I bought the first pasteboard. One more time through the movie and I’d know all the dialog. I was even beginning to make sense out of it already.

I sat there in the semidarkness of the theater with my hand to my face trying to look bored. No more than twenty people came in before the lights dimmed and the picture started. None of them was him.

Had it not been for the slightly furtive manner of the guy I never would have spotted him, but the uneasy glance around he gave and the way he picked his seat was enough. He could have taken the one I had if I hadn’t been there first. Instead, he took the back row on the opposite side, walked through the empty row to the side aisle and sat down. His hands were in his lap and I knew he wasn’t taking any chances either.

There was one advantage going for me. If I had to take him in here he’d be engrossed in the picture. You could see the way he was settling down, nodding at the dialog, pleased with the action the way a kid would be at a cowboy show.

How’s your hand, you pig? I thought.

My watch said almost eight. If I were going to move, it would have to be now. A fake trip to the men’s room to see if he was covering himself with anyone else, take that one first, then get back to Churis. I wrapped my fingers around the butt of the .45 and thumbed the hammer back off half-cock.

Then the first move came from his side. Another man moved into the darkness of the comer, leaned over and spoke to Churis and I caught a glimpse of white as he passed something to him. He couldn’t see it there, got up and went around the curtain to the lobby.

Damn!

I took the risk of being seen and lifted the heavy drapes behind my head. The two of them were standing there, Churis with his forefinger at a still, awkward angle as he held the note, the other guy facing him as though he was always saying “Oh!” His mouth was round, all right. There was the puckered scar tissue from a burn all around it and when he wasn’t speaking he held it in that peculiar way that made him look as if he had a hole in his face.

When Churis finished the note he took a quick look around, struck a match and let the paper flare up until it reached his fingers, then dropped the pieces in a standing ash tray filled with sand, stirring up the charred bits into powder. He nodded for the other one to follow him and went out the front door.

I gave them ten seconds, no more. When I spotted them they were on the comer looking for a cab. I saw one coming, going the other way, crossed the street and flagged it down.

When I got in I pointed to the pair still on the comer and told the driver, “Go up a block and swing around. When those guys grab a taxi, follow it.”

The driver looked at my face and gave me a grin. “Police business?”

“Damn right,” I said.

“Think it’ll be a chase?”

“No.”

“Look, if those are the punks who have been pulling a stick-up on the cabbies I can have them locked in tight in five seconds.”

“Never mind, I’ll take care of it.”

“Sure, officer. You want help you can use my radio. We’re the only outfit that’s got ’em,” he said proudly.

“Just follow them.”

He went ahead, made the turn and headed back as Churis and the other one were climbing in a cab. They headed downtown toward the Village with us a half-block behind, well screened by the traffic. The street they turned in was one of the ones due for demolition, a remnant of the original section, now a flat-faced mass of crumbling brownstone and wood of odd shapes and sizes.

Some of the top floors facing north had skylights built into them for the benefit of the artist bunch that seemed to find this place so fascinating and the air was filled with the smells of cooking kept down by the mantle of misty air that lay like a blanket over the city. Each streetlight was a yellow glow encased in haze, throwing no light at all. A yellow-haired guy with a sweater over his shoulders like a cape strutted by walking a collie, but, outside him, the street was deserted.

I got out on the corner, paid off the cab after spotting the building they went into and stood across the street waiting to see if any lights flashed on in the building. None did, so the chances were their apartment faced the back. There were three floors in the building, the cellar being closed with a padlock on the outside.

Two minutes went by.

I crossed over and went inside.

Kids were bawling on the first floor so that wouldn’t be it. On the second floor the strong odor of garlic-charged spaghetti sauce seeped out under the door from the front apartment and the sounds of some kind of soirée from the back one.

That left one possible. The top rear apartment.

The lower stairs had creaked and groaned all the way up and I didn’t want to announce myself to a funeral. I went back down, into the next building and ran up to the top floor. Somebody peered out the door on the second landing when they heard my feet, but went back inside after I passed him. When I reached the door that led to the roof I squeezed the handle, fought it until the latch gave and swung the door outward on rusty hinges.

At the rampart between the two buildings I swung my legs over, grabbed the tiles and let myself down as far as I could go and dropped the remaining two feet to the next level. I hit easily, but stood there anyway in case they heard the thump, the rod in my hand pointed at the kiosk door on the roof. They’d be dead if they came at me through there, not knowing where I stood.

Nothing happened so I started across the roof, trying to keep the gravel from crunching under my feet. I was almost at the door when I saw the pinpoint of light in the roof and made out a V-shaped skylight that had been painted black on the inside. I eased over, knelt down beside it and put my eye close to the one spot that a brush had missed.

They were there all right, talking rapidly in Russian, Vidor Churis pacing the floor like a caged animal. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a flat automatic, checked it absently and put it back, only to glance at his watch. I looked at my own. It was almost eight-thirty.

A quiet Sunday night.

Right on the half-hour he picked up the phone and when he did I plastered my ear to the window to see if I could catch the clicks of the dial and read off the number he was calling. I couldn’t get it all, but I got part of the conversation. It was in English, this time, garbled, but one word came out loud and clear.

Selwick.

He said something else I didn’t get then I heard him hang up and went back to peering through the peephole. Once again the conversation switched languages and Churis was giving the other one instructions. He was reaching for his coat and the other was nodding until Churis was done talking, then he walked over to a chair, switched on the TV and Churis left.

I didn’t bother about noise now. I ran to the door, grabbed the knob and the damn thing came off in my hand! I had to check myself to take it easy and fit it back on the square shaft that protruded through the door. When I did I had to stick the .45 back in the holster to use both hands to turn it. Long ago the door had warped and only opened a foot, but it could have been wide open without doing me any good. From the sill to the landing the stairs were piled high with boxes and the remains of broken baby carriages and there was no way of getting through the mess at all.

Downstairs an outside door slammed shut and I knew Vidor Churis was gone on an assignment. But the other one would know whom he called. I got back to the skylight, saw the guy still in front of the TV with the sound up loud, felt for the metal edge of the glass and hoped it wasn’t locked.

This time I was lucky. It lifted. I set it in place, got a length of broom handle from the junk in the doorway and held it ready. I lifted the skylight, propped it and was through it before the guy in the chair heard me. He came up with a startled yell, stood there immobile as I hit the floor and fell, then made a dash for a table across the room and I knew he was going for a gun. He had it in his hand as I got the .45 out and when he spun around I shot him right through the middle and he folded over backward knocking the table and lamp sidewise in a heap.

Even then he tried to lift the gun, but couldn’t do it. He was dying with his intestines all churned to pieces and hanging out his back and he was still trying to kill me. I knelt down beside him and smelled the fetid odor of his breath mixing with the blood that was spilling onto the floor.

“Churis,” I said. “Where did he go?”

All he did was hate me with his eyes, his mouth in that startled “O” shape, but white now and twisting with pain.

I put the .45 next to the other hole in his belly. “You won’t die any quicker,” I said, “But you’ll hurt more.”

He knew I would do it. He could read my eyes the way I could his and all the fear in his mind overflowed into one garbled, unfinished sentence. “Selwick... the girl...”

Then he died.

And I knew whom he had called.

Rondine. Edith Caine. If they couldn’t play with Selwick any more they’d make sure he died before he figured out that he had been made a sucker.

I stood there in the middle of the room trying to sort out the possibles, my ears listening hard for the first sound of a siren. From downstairs came a burst of roaring laughter and everybody joining into a raucous party song. Here in the room the TV was going above normal. I let a couple of minutes pass and then I got it. The .45 made a big bang, but for once nobody heard it. Noise was the commonplace here and the other racket drowned it out.

The possibility then. On schedule, Churis called Rondine and was told Selwick could be induced to go to her place and Churis could take him there. How would they do it? Alexis had enough toxic goodies in his apartment to knock off a hundred people, but would have to be better than that.

No, Rondine knew the ropes. She’d be subtle about it. Some of the other things were lining up now. Like the sodium pentothal, truth serum. How easy it could be if Selwick did have to take an occasional needle for his illness. She could switch contents, put Selwick out and question him until she had the answers.

That was Rondine, all right.

Okay, cutie, here Icome.

I went to the door, not the usual door, but a steel, fireproof affair double-locked with heavy Yales and a barrel bolt. Vidor Churis wasn’t taking any chances on somebody busting in on him. He should have thought of doing more to the skylight than painting it black.

I eased out and let the door close behind me. The cops would have a fine time breaking in to see what the stench was that was coming from behind it.

I called Burton Selwick’s apartment from a drugstore and got the clipped voice of a servant on the other end. He said no, he was sorry, but Mr. Selwick had left a short time before. I identified myself as Dr. Lane attached to the American Embassy, saying that I had treated Mr. Selwick when he had his last attack and idly wondered if my British colleague had called earlier. He had wanted to check Mr. Selwick before he attended Monday’s session. Both embassies were naturally concerned.

The servant said yes, Mr. Selwick left in response to a phone call from a woman without saying where he was going. Almost as a second thought I inquired if his employer had been taking the dosage by hypodermic as was prescribed. The man on the other end was quite certain since he had seen marks on his arms at various times.

When I put the phone back the picture was clear and bright. They had been getting Selwick under a needle and extracting the information from him. Now he’d be ready for another dosage and the next day’s plans would be right out in the open.

Then exit Selwick in a convenient “accident.”

I got a cab and reached Edith Caine’s apartment at nine forty-five. The stake-outs had changed, but I spotted them and got inside and looked for the other. He hadn’t changed. He was still watching the elevator cables from the floor below and I went past him on the stairway.

I leaned on the bell and waited, hearing her feet come across the floor. She opened the door, took a sudden sharp breath and bit her lower lip between her teeth. Her face was drawn with fear and something else, shadows underlining her eyes, her body tense. But even then she was beautiful, so damn beautiful that when I killed her I was going to be killing myself.

She had on a skirt and blouse, part of the suit combinations she had always liked so well, a wide leather belt at her waist. She always used to keep her rod there in a professional-type holster, but this time it was someplace else. Too bad, honey.

“It’s here, Rondine. Time has run out,” I said.

Rondine-Edith Caine held the door open so I could step inside. I did, but I pushed her ahead of me where I could see her. I’d never let her get behind me again. She looked at the gun in my hand, shook her head slowly and said nothing, simply walked straight into the living room and sat in the middle of the couch with her legs together and a sad expression on her face.

I checked each of the rooms quickly, never letting her out of my sight, then went back and sat across from her. “Tell me about it, Rondine.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” she said simply.

“What happened to the real Edith Caine, honey? What did the dead Diana Caine do that you could hold it over the Caine family’s heads? That’s the interesting part of the story. What’s going to happen when it comes out?”

There were real tears in her eyes now and she was going to play the part right down to the end. I would have liked it better had she reverted to her true character, the one with the gun who could shoot a guy who loved her.

“Please stop it, Tiger.”

“Why? I like to see you suffer. It’s paying off for all those twenty years I had to.”

“Tiger... what are you going to do?”

“Kill you.”

She bit into her lip again. “Just... like that.”

“No, I’ll wait for the other to come. You aren’t the only one.”

The act again. The expression like she didn’t understand and the quick lowering of her head so I wouldn’t see what she was thinking. When she straightened up she wiped her eyes and said, “May I go to the bathroom? I look... terrible, I know.”

Ah, vanity. Even in the face of death they had to look pretty. But if she was looking for razor blades she’d have to get them out of my pocket where I dropped them before. “Sure, go ahead,” I said.

She got up, went to the bathroom, closed the door and I heard the sound of water running in the basin. I sat there thinking of how I was going to do it when I knew what was happening and raced to the door. She opened it before I could put my shoulder to it and I said, “Damn you, Rondine,” because she had won again. I had forgotten that she had an extension telephone in there beside the tub.

“Nice. You got a call through. So now they won’t be here. Churis will take him someplace else.”

“Tiger...” she said, a curious note in her voice.

“I could make you talk, Rondine, but there isn’t any time. Your pain level is too high. You could hold out too long. I saw you do it when the maquis had you and I got you out. I could kill you here, but I might not make it out in time to get Selwick off the hook and that means our whole country would take a fall. So we’ll go out of here together and when I shoot you I’ll shoot Vidor Churis too, and tie it all up in a nice, neat package.”

“Selwick?”

I gave her a shove toward the closet. “Don’t play coy with me, baby. Your boys have him and I know where he’ll be taken. We have the Embassy and all their other buildings covered including most residences now. So he goes in one place where he’ll be worked on... Churis’s apartment.”

“You almost had it made, Rondine. You called Selwick to come here, had Churis ready to move in behind him and between the two of you it would have been done. But you managed to intercept Churis and I can see him going up to Selwick on the street downstairs with the story that you had to leave and would meet him someplace else and your killer friend, Vidor Churis, was instructed to lead him there. Like a sheep to the slaughter. Okay, kid, we’ll meet him. I’ve already been at Vidor’s apartment and left a dead man behind to watch the place. Get your damn coat on.”

I called a cab and asked for one to stand by downstairs. Both the stake-outs had been walking and if it was timed right we could be in a cab and gone before they got to their car.

Once again I bypassed the guy on the floor below, took the elevator down the rest of the way and saw the cab pulling up outside. I pushed Rondine through the door, got us into the cab and told him to take off in a hurry and only gave him the address after we made the turn. Back down the block and too late, the stake-outs were trying to swing around in the street and were blocked by traffic.

There was no activity on Churis’s block at all. Nobody had heard the shot and nobody investigated yet, otherwise a prowl car would still be on the scene and half the neighborhood trying for a look at the premises. I gave the cabbie ten bucks and told him to wait. He was glad to.

Keeping Rondine ahead of me, I nudged her up the stairs. Each time she tried to speak I shut her up curtly. She was terrified now. She saw death written all over my face and knew I was a part of it. She knew what I was going to do and she was tasting it already.

At the door I stopped. I had forgotten about the mammoth feature of the thing. Inside, the TV was going loud enough to make any sound I made impossible to hear, but if they were there already they’d keep it up. Churis would guess what had happened and would be ready for a break in the attempt.

But not the way I was going to do it.

I got out one of the pellets Ernie Bentley had given me, the one with the ring around it. I used wads of paper from the junk on the stairs, wedged the pellet between the knob and the door jamb, wetting it down with a half full can of black paint, squeezing the mess until it had the consistency of mud and the capability of directing the charge where I wanted it to go.

Part of it I left exposed, took a cigarette from Rondine’s bag while she stood there with amazement and terror a rigid mask on her face. I tore off a stub, lit it, set it on the exposed part of the pellet and moved her flat against the wall with me.

It was over in a minute, but when the thing went off, the concussion slammed against my eardrums like a sledge. The door flew inward, splinters flying everywhere, gray, choking smoke filling the hall. I grabbed her arm, spun her into the room first, shoved her aside and stood there with the .45 aimed at emptiness.

The dead guy was still saying “Oh,” on the floor and downstairs doors were opening and voices yelling to ask what the hell was going on up there. I shouted back that it was all right... the oven blew but nobody was hurt and there was no damage. In a little while they’d be coming up to see for themselves.

And I was at the end of the road right then. The fox had been foxed. I lifted the gun and pointed it right at her head. She never moved. Too much had happened too fast and she seemed to be in a state of shock. Her eyes were on the body a long time and when they reached me they seemed lifeless.

You’re getting old, Rondine, I thought. Plastic surgery can help the body, but the mind stays the same, getting older each day until you can’t take it any more.

I couldn’t do it alone now. I’d have to call in the others. I’d get wrung for it but it would be worth it. I went to the phone, the gun still on Rondine. I dialed Colonel Corbinet’s number and held on until he answered. His voice said, “Hello... hello?”

Very slowly I put the phone back without answering him. On a pad beside the phone was a sheet of doodle paper and on it was written an address, a familiar address.

Gretchen Lark’s.

I grinned at the scratching Vidor Churis had made and knew what they had planned. Cute. Real cute. She was watching me now and some of the shock had left her eyes. I walked over, pointed out the door and when she left, stayed right behind her with the gun in her back. To a couple of nosy kids on the floor below I said my friend was upstairs taking care of the mess and with the TV still on loud they nodded and went back to their party stinking of beer.

In the cab the driver said, “What was that racket back there?”

“Crazy Village party.”

“Always like that around here,” he said.

Yeah. On Sunday, too. What else can happen on a quiet Sunday?

She couldn’t contain herself any longer. Her clenched fist went to her mouth and the tears came, coursing down her cheeks. Huge, gulping sobs wracked her body and with an impulsive move she slammed her hand against me and if I hadn’t grabbed it in mid-air it would have been over there in a fat mushroom of flame.

I squeezed her wrist and said, “Don’t be anxious to die ahead of time. I still have two more of those nice little charges and impact sets them off. They’re right in my pocket, honey, and a small jar blows them.”

Instinctively, she pulled away, the fear back in her eyes. I told the cabbie to let us out on the next corner, paid him off while we were still two blocks away and held Rondine’s arm while we walked. I wanted her in top shape when we got there.

And there would be time. They wouldn’t kill Gretchen Lark or Selwick until she was there to give the order. It would have to be planned somehow, a love-nest suicide pact, and it would look logical as hell and only we would know the difference. There would be a ring of truth to it... a lovely woman painter doing a portrait of a famous man for whom she worked, the two of them falling in love, realizing the futility of it all, him with a wife in England and an illness that could kill him at any time. So they take the big out together. Just a quick dosage of strychnine forced down their throats would do the trick. It was available and the thing suicides would use.

But first they’d wait for the master planner to show. Selwick would have to be forced to talk first. I explained it to her, letting Rondine see how much of it I had down pat, watched her go white as each sentence came out of me and saw her nearly get sick when I described how I had killed Alexis Minner and the two others. She stumbled and almost fell and I laughed and kept on with the story.

I said, “If I had killed you at first I could have stopped it cold right then, but I wanted to louse up your organization, Rondine. So far I did pretty well. You’ve gone all week trying to dump me because the critical time in the U.N. comes this week and you couldn’t have anybody standing in the way of all those grand Soviet sneak plans. Nobody. You could guard against the agency boys but not against me.”

We were outside the building then. She looked at me and said one word, softly: “Fool.”

I prodded her. “Inside. You know where she lives.”

At the door I took the .45 out and whispered, “Knock.”

With some hesitancy she tapped on the door. Inside there was a sudden movement, the sound of feet on the floor and Gretchen said in a voice that was tinged with fear, “Yes... who is it?”

Behind her Churis would be standing with a gun, making her speak. She had a right to be scared. I tapped Rondine with the nose of the gun and stepped out of the way.

Rondine said, “Edith... Edith Caine.”

A chain rattled on the door and a lock clicked. The door opened and when Gretchen saw Edith her face changed, went from relief to fear again, then I shoved her into Gretchen so they both hit the floor in a jumble of arms and legs and there in a comer with a gun in his hand was Vidor Churis and the first shot he got off went across my side with a searing, white hot stab of pain.

He only got the first one. The .45 caught him right at the bridge of the nose and everything seemed to come apart from there on up. Skull, brains and blood sprayed the wall like a bright wet flower and he flung his hands out so violently with the death jerk the Tokarev flew halfway across the room.

I ran to the door, slammed it shut, jerked Rondine to her feet and threw her violently into a chair so she could look at the figure of Burton Selwick in the chair facing her, eyes closed in a peaceful sleep, one sleeve rolled up above the elbow and a tiny red dot in the vein showing where the needle had gone in. Behind me, still gasping from the fall, Gretchen was getting up, but I didn’t take my eyes off Rondine.

“Want to question him, baby? Want to see what they laid out for tomorrow’s session? Think it can do you any good now? Or aren’t you curious any more? I’d think you’d want to know what he’d have to say just to satisfy yourself.”

“Tiger...”

“Shut up, Rondine. It makes nice listening. You were the one putting the squeeze on the old boy. We’ll just back-check to be sure, but chances are you had him to your place many a time and needled him into a dream sleep supposedly to relax him and made him talk under the drug. Nice, baby, but not nice enough. You were the one who laid out the play to have me dumped. You were the one who knew where I’d be and how I’d move. You were trapped from the first second I saw you there in the restaurant and had to move from any angle at all to get rid of me without exposing yourself. The only thing I can’t understand is why you moved so badly. You used to be a great operator. You could nearly outthink anybody. You could work in ways a person wouldn’t dream of. You could scheme and plan and come up with a dilly in seconds... none of this crude stuff like contract killers. You would have known I could outthink you and be ready for something like sending a squad to nail me in bed. Why so stupid, Rondine?”

There was no fear at all in her eyes now. Instead, there was just the quiet acquiescence, resignation and deep, deep pity.

“I’m not Rondine,” she said.

And I knew she was telling the truth!

There by the easel with the stems of her paintbrushes sticking out of the neck was a peculiarly colored pale blue bottle half filled with solvent and it was exactly the same as those filled with sodium pentothal that I had found in Alex Minner’s cabinet!

From behind me Gretchen Lark said, “You really aren’t very smart, Tiger. Throw your gun on the chair.”

I didn’t have to turn around to be sure. I knew she had me lined up. I eased the hammer down on the .45 and did what she told me to. The move made the bullet crease on my side blaze into life again and I clamped my teeth together. The belt on my raincoat was too tight and I began to feel sick.

Gretchen Lark walked around the side of me, pointed the gun at a chair near the wall and said, “Sit down.”

Sweat was running into my eyes and dripping from my nose. I nodded, undid the belt of the coat, took it off and threw it next to Edith Caine. Then I sat down. I knew what she was waiting for. She had to make this look right and she was going to set it up. It wouldn’t be too hard. I had enough kills behind me to make me look like a madman. The story would be easy. Selwick had come for a portrait sitting when Churis came in to drop him. I had charged in and during the resulting gunfight everybody but Gretchen got knocked off. She could even inflict a minor wound on herself to make it look good and the story would be believed.

The thought was there in her mind because she picked up Vidor Churis’s gun and weighed it in her hand. Smilingly, Gretchen said, “The house is empty at this moment. If you’re hoping someone heard the shots you’ll be wrong, Tiger.”

I looked at Edith Caine sitting there so quietly. “I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.”

“Yes, you have,” Gretchen told me. “But you did spoil a wonderful situation.”

“Great.”

“Don’t you know how I was able to move against you, Tiger?”

I did now, but I let her say it.

“Burton was a lonely man. He was sick and overworked as well. His only real pleasure and chance to relax was when he came here to sit for his portrait. There were many things he took for his illness, but being a nurse I was able to prescribe other things too. They relieved his pain, of course, but with the use of simple truth serums, sodium pentothal, I extracted every secret he had and he never realized it. That’s how I knew about you. He told me of meeting you the first day he saw you. He was sick then and came here to relax. When he mentioned the name Rondine which you called Edith here we realized what might happen. You see, Rondine isn’t exactly unknown to us either.”

“Then, it was Edith who told Burton Selwick that she was to meet you at your hotel and later he told me under deep sleep and we tried to kill you there. You handled yourself well, Tiger.”

“Unfortunately, your friend had to die for you. I visited Edith at her apartment and saw the matches you left behind. That was very clumsy of you... or was it deliberate?” She thought a moment and nodded. “Yes, that is it. You did it deliberately thinking what you did about her. Or was it unconsciously, Tiger?”

She was right the last time.

“It was I who arranged for those so-called ‘contract killers.’ They weren’t very good at all and after all the money we spent! I knew you’d go to her apartment that one night and had those men ready. I thought I had them ready again when you took me home from the Hall of the Two Sisters.”

Gretchen smiled again, and dramatically paced the room, the gun never leaving my stomach where it was aimed. In her pacing she stopped by the window, perched on the sill and changed guns in her hands so she had Churis’s pointed at me with her right.

“Funny,” she said, “all those elaborate plans that never seemed to work out and at the last moment you walk in all by yourself with an idiotic idea and turn your back on me. How strange fate is.”

“Where is Rondine, Gretchen?” I said.

“Dead. A long time ago. She was shot by one of our agents when she tried to get some papers back to England that would possibly grant her some protection for her past crimes.”

No, she wasn’t dead. She was very much alive, sitting ten feet away facing me and I loved her with all my heart and knew she loved me. I said, “Who was Rondine, Edith?” because I had to know.

Her eyes were directly on mine, loving, forgiving, sorry that it had to come out this way. “Rondine was my oldest sister Diana. She didn’t die in an air raid. She defected to the Nazis and worked for them against her own people. She was considered dead by the family and her name is never mentioned. She was the one shame they ever had.”

She smiled, her eyes wet. “They tell me I look exactly like her, Tiger. I know what it must have meant to you to see me so suddenly. But I couldn’t tell you, do you understand?” Her voice was soft, compassionate.

I still couldn’t believe it. That was Rondine sitting there!

“Tiger... I couldn’t expose what Rondine did to my family. I couldn’t hurt them that much. I just had to put up with it.”

“And I lost a good friend because you didn’t have the nerve to talk.” I couldn’t keep the coldness out of my tone.

She dropped her eyes momentarily. “I–I’m sorry.”

There was an amused smile on Gretchen’s face as she listened to us, the gun never wavering in her hand. She had the back of Edith’s head and my stomach in perfect target and she could afford the amusement. But I couldn’t look at Edith Caine in that chair and believe what she was telling me!

There was one thing I saw. Edith was looking at Gretchen’s reflection in the glass of a framed picture on the wall and one hand was already in the pocket of my coat. When it came out she had one of the pellets in her fingers and was getting it set on her knuckle and I felt a chill go over me that took all the fire out of my side and made me want to turn inside out.

I tried to yell for her not to do it but by then it was already done. She flipped the pellet back over her head toward Gretchen Lark’s feet and she never noticed it coming. The moment I let myself go to the floor, Edith did too and if Gretchen got off a shot it was drowned out in the wild blast from across the room. The violence of the explosion threw furniture all over and tumbled the chair over Edith into me and knocked the unconscious figure of Burton Selwick into a stack of paintings, completely oblivious to whatever happened.

I shoved the chair away, got up and reached for Edith. There were smudges on her face and a trickle of blood coming down her cheek, but no more. She touched my face once, ran to Selwick to make sure he was all right, then we both turned to look at the hole where the window had been.

Someplace down below Gretchen Lark would be lying in fragments.

She turned, looked at me, knowing I hadn’t taken my eyes off her for a long while, frowned at what she saw there and tried to speak. I beat her to it. “It could have been a beautiful plant, kid. Gretchen wasn’t going to knock you off because you two pulled it together. She sat there with a gun on us and could have killed us any time, the sooner the better. She was just letting you have your fun until you gave the signal. But you protected your own hide again, just like that last time. To come out clean with me you saw an angle and played it. You knew I had those damn things in my coat and took the big chance, just the way Rondine always did. If it went right you knew you could get me to fall for that phony story because I love you and would be sucker enough to let it lie.”

I had the .45 back in my hand again and the hammer was back.

She saw it.

But she wasn’t afraid.

She said, “Do you really love me, Tiger?”

“Yes, I really do, Rondine, and now you get it.”

“I love you, Tiger. As I told you before, I loved you from the first time I saw you. Did Rondine love you that way too?”

“Yes, Rondine, that’s the way you always did.” I lifted the snout of the gun.

“You made love to her many times, didn’t you?”

Her hands went to her jacket, took it off and threw it on the floor. Slowly, she undid her blouse, pulled it out of her skirt and let it follow. In that strange way women have, she reached behind her back and unfastened the snaps on her bra and took it away deliberately, her breasts full and lovely, bursting with pride at having been relieved of their restraint.

I felt the gun in my hand shake and held it steady.

“No good, Rondine, the act won’t work. You tried the same one before.”

My words didn’t stop her. Her fingers felt for the zipper on the side of the skirt, found it and pulled it down. She moved her hips, swayed and the skirt fell in a heap at her feet and with her thumbs she pushed down the slip on top of it.

Damn, my hand was no good, no good at all! The palm was slippery with sweat and muscles jerked and pulled up my back. My eyes seemed to burn and something was churning inside my mind. I felt an involuntary message of habit from my brain trying to tell my fingers to move, to pull the trigger, to kill her, kill her, kill her before it was too late, but my finger wouldn’t move.

The last act of the tableau was complete because she had the wisp of pink nylon in her hand and she was naked before me, beautiful, lovely, desirable, legs as graceful and firm as a statue, belly flat and moving with the swell of her breathing, breasts hard and flamingly pink-tipped now, chestnut hair still soft and gleaming, skin satin-sweet and waiting.

The gun began to get too heavy to hold and I let it down. She was going to win after all. Two dead and one unconscious at our feet and she could still do this.

She said, “If you had Rondine then you’ll know now for sure, Tiger.”

I couldn’t stop her when she walked to the couch. As languidly as a cat she lay down on it, her body and her eyes inviting me, wanting me. No, it was more than that. She was demanding me.

I had to. I was beyond choice. I loved her too much and too long. This was a Rondine I loved and had to have and to hell with the consequences.

She reached her arms up to me and smiled, the love in her eyes bright and shining. “Now you will find out, Tiger, my love. Now you will know,” she said to me. “You see... I’m still a virgin.”

And she was.