Death of a Citizen

CHAPTER 21

I RECOGNIZED him instantly, of course; he wasn't a man you forgot. But there was a wild and crazy moment when I couldn't understand what he was doing there. All kinds of fantastic possibilities went through my mind in the space of a second or two. Then I made the logical connection: Tina had slipped away, Mac was here. It added up right, and it made me feel fine. I hadn't allowed myself to speculate too much about Tina's disappearance; but I discovered that it was a pleasure to be able to reassure myself that she hadn't deserted me, after all. She'd just gone for reinforcements.

I said, defending myself awkwardly, "Mac, for God's sake pull this female off me before one of these guns goes bang and kills her."

He closed the door, came forward, got a grip on the Chatham from behind, and applied some scientific leverage. I was interested to see that he knew how. One school of thought, during the war, had it that although he was great at picking, and setting up training programs for, dangerous men, Mac himself couldn't fight his way out of a lightweight airmail envelope.

"All right, Miss," he said. "Behave yourself now." Mary Frances stopped struggling in his grasp and stood there head down, panting. Her light-brown hair was a tangled cloud over her face, and there was a wide white gap between her sweater and skirt-but then, I suppose in actual life Joan of Arc went to the bonfire with stringy hair and dirty fingernails.

At the moment, I didn't care how the girl looked. She'd spoiled my Horatio-at-the-bridge act, to be sure, and made me look and feel pretty silly; but as things had turned out, it was just as well she'd interfered. I make a practice of seeing what I'm shooting at before I pull the trigger, so I probably wouldn't have fired at Mac in any case; but nevertheless, a girl who'll deliberately throw herself at two loaded guns doesn't have to comb her hair to earn my respect, no matter what her politics.

I looked from her to Mac, as he released her and stepped back. The funny thing was, he hadn't changed a bit. He was the same spare, gray man to whom I'd said goodbye in Washington, just before I picked up Beth and took off to get married. He might still have been wearing the same gray suit, for all I could tell. Oh, perhaps there was a shade more white in his closeclipped hair; perhaps the lines in his young-old face were a little more pronounced; perhaps his bleak gray eyes had retreated just a little into his skull-but they'd always been set deep beneath the dark eyebrows. I'd forgotten those eyebrows, startlingly black, seemingly immune to the aging process that had drawn the pigment from his hair. Or perhaps he dyed them for effect-there'd been some speculation about that, during the war, I remembered now, but I'd never believed it.

I said, "It's been a long time, sir."

He glanced at the guns I was holding. "Expecting trouble, Eric?"

"It seems indicated," I said. "For a moment, there, I thought you were it. Tina didn't tell me you were anywhere around."

Mac hesitated. "Well, she wasn't supposed to," he said dryly.

"I appreciate the confidence, sir," I said sourly. "There's nothing that cheers up the hired help like not knowing what the hell they're doing… Maybe, now that she's finally broken down and pried you out of hiding for me, you'll condescend to let me know what's going on." -

He smiled very faintly. "Hasn't she told you?"

"Tina?" I said. "Oh, you don't have to worry your head about Tina, sir. She never lets slip unauthorized information, not even in bed. I can recommend her, without reservations, for the Noble and Exalted Order of the Clam. All I know from her is that somebody's trying to murder Amos Darrel in Santa Fe, and that we're supposed to be misleading the forces of international Communism in some vague and beautiful way by acting as sitting ducks here in San Antonio-"

I broke off. Mary Frances Chatham had raised her head, and Mac was looking at me sharply.

"Amos Darrel?" he said. "Dr. Amos Darrel? You were told he's the target in Santa Fe?"

"Why, yes," I said. "Isn't that right?"

Mac didn't answer my question. Instead, he said curtly, after a moment's pause: "I wasn't aware you'd been given that information." He glanced at the girl. "And having been given it, you should know better than to discuss it before witnesses."

I winced. "Slap my wrist, sir. I guess I've forgotten my security training."

"We'll just have to see that she has no opportunity to tell her friends how much we know."

He looked hard at the girl. Her glance dropped, and she pushed the hair out of her face and began to straighten her clothes.

I said, "Well, there are a lot of questions I want to ask, but they'd better wait. We might have visitors any minute. Where's Tina?"

"She's around," Mac said. "Never mind Tina. She's following instructions."

I said, "I'll bet. Well, I'd love to have some instructions to follow, too. I'm getting just a little tired of playing this game of yours blindfolded."

He said, "Tina wasn't explicit, there wasn't time. Just what kind of trouble are you expecting here?"

"I don't know, exactly," I said. "I don't know just what they could want with Tina and me except revenge. But they've got something fancy in mind. Somebody real tricky is running their show."

"How many agents do you figure they have available?"

"I've seen three men and one woman."

"Descriptions?"

"A young fellow, drug-store-cowboy type or a reasonable facsimile, sideburns, black hat, driving a Plymouth hardtop. An older man with a moustache, in a four-wheel-drive jeep station wagon, white and green. A Harvard-Yale-Princeton type in a golf cap, driving a blue Morris two-door, with Shorty here acting as his blushing bride. There could be more, but those are the ones who've showed."

Mac frowned thoughtfully. "It sounds as if we might be slightly outnumbered, for the moment. Arrangements are being made, but in the meantime perhaps I~ should have a gun, if you can spare one." He smiled that thin smile of his. "It's a long time since I've taken active-part in one of these affairs, Eric. Let's see if I still remember how."

I gave him the little.38. "You hold the wooden part, sir," I said respectfully, "and pull that little metal dingus sticking out from the bottom."

He chuckled, and regarded the weapon in his hand for a moment. "This is a heavier caliber than you used to favor," he said.

"It's not mine," I said. "Spoils of war, sir. Tina got it from one of their agents-the one she had to kill."

"Ah, yes," Mac said. "The one using the alias of Herrera."

"That's right."

He glanced at me from beneath the dark eyebrows.

"So it was Tina who killed the girl? That, I think, is all we needed to know."

He lifted the snubnosed revolver, and aimed it at my chest.