The Intriguers

xxiv.

The lodge was a pleasant, rambling hostelry overlooking the marina and the Waterway. Our ground-floor room was in one of the outlying buildings, white clapboard like the main structure which, I'd been told, had once been a rich gentlemen's fishing club. Entering, I went over to my suitcase to unpack some clean clothes. I was aware of Martha examining her tanned reflection in the big mirror on the bathroom door.,

"You'd better cover up if you go out again," I said. "You're pretty well cooked already."

"It doesn't hurt," she said. "I don't burn very easily. Did Uncle Hank tell you where Daddy's hiding?"

It was still a little difficult for me to think of Mac as anybody's daddy. "He told me," I said.

She glanced at me quickly. "But you're not telling me?"

"That's right," I said.

After a moment, she laughed. "Don't you trust me, Matt? Not even where my own parent is concerned?"

"Trust?" I said. "What's that? You're speaking to a pro, sweetheart. And as Lorna said, if you didn't know, it wasn't you who told, not even under torture or scopolamine. If anybody asks, refer them to me." I rearranged the remaining clothes in the suitcase a certain way, and closed the bag, making a mental note of its position on the luggage rack. "How about lunch? Are you hungry?"

"No, darling," she said. "I'm not hungry."

Her voice came from directly behind me. I turned, and there she was, smiling a little, all pinky-brown and shiny from the sun. She'd made it at last. The blue-striped bikini, discarded while my attention was elsewhere, lay in a little heap on the rug where she'd been standing.

I made a little whistling sound to indicate my appreciation of the view that was being offered me. "Why is it," I asked, "that every time I start talking about food, the girl gets one of her nymphomaniac spells…

Much later, lying on the bed beside me, she said softly, "Matt. Are you awake?"

"Uh-uh. Now I am."

"You've been asleep for hours."

"Must be all that sun," I said. "Or something."

"Now I'm getting hungry," she said. "It must be almost dinnertime. Matt."

"Yes?"

"If anything should happen-"

"Call him Matthew after his daddy," I said. "Or Matilda. I'll even make an honest woman of you if you insist."

She giggled. "That's not what I meant!"

"There's no indication that anybody knows where we are or gives a damn," I said. "All we have to do now is stall for a couple of days-your dad is a punctuality fiend, meaning people don't keep appointments with him either late or early. On the night of the sixteenth of the month we take a little boat ride with a guide the admiral has lined up for us. Then I looked discreetly away so as not to intrude on the happy family reunion. Okay?"

"I suppose so." She drew a long breath. "That means if nothing happens… well, it's almost over, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said. "One way or another, it's almost over."

"It's been kind of nice," she said slowly. "Actually. It started out so awfully, but it ended up being… well, kind of nice. I want you to remember that, no matter what happens."

First the standard striptease, I thought, and now the ancient no-matter-what-happens-it-was-nice speech. Every clichй in the book. Amateurs!

"I'll remember," I said. "Shall we flip for who gets the first shower?"

"Matt."

I looked at her. "What?"

"Take me seriously. Please."

"I've never taken you any other way, Borden," I said. "You can remember that, no matter what happens."

When I came out of the shower, she was still lying naked on the bed approximately where I'd left her, but my suitcase had been disturbed. I suppose I should have been happy. Things were working out very well, just the way Mac had planned them, if I was reading his mind correctly. The funny thing was, I didn't feel nearly as triumphant as I should have. I guess the trouble was that it didn't seem quite fair, two old experts at intrigue like Mac and me ganging up on a young beginner. Of course fairness was, as always, totally irrelevant.

I watched her get dressed in the blue sleeveless dress we'd bought her in Phoenix, Arizona, the one with the pleated skirt. It was rather intriguing to watch the amateur mind at work. Obviously, if I had any suspicions of her at all, after the last amorous interlude, her choice of costume would lull them now. I was supposed to figure that, if she was expecting a hectic night full of action, she'd have put on slacks, not the only pretty dress she owned here in Florida. Finished, she smiled her confident Mata Han smile and presented herself for inspection and approval.

"Nice," I said. "The admiral will like it, too."

"Are we going to see Uncle Hank?"

"After dinner," I said. He wants me to make arrangements with the guide; and there's some kind of a political meeting he wants me to listen in on, for some reason. I'm sure he won't mind your coming along." Actually, I wasn't a bit sure; but I didn't give a damn if he did mind. I didn't work for Congressman Priest. I glanced at my watch. "Well, maybe we'd better get started since we have to be back here before eight. He told me to come by boat and stay inconspicuous."

"Why do you call him 'admiral'?" she asked curiously. "He never made the stars, you know. He didn't want to."

I said, "He may be captain to the US Navy, but he's admiral to me."

It seemed odd, driving the station wagon without the weight of the boat and trailer dragging behind. We had dinner at the other end of the island, in a dark supper-club kind of place I'd spotted, driving by the night before. It turned out to be passable as to food but terrible as to service. I can see why a waitress might have trouble bringing a steak before it's ready, but why it should take her most of an hour to write out a check always baffles me. Well, somebody once told me it's a theory: they think the customer will feel rushed and insulted if the bill is presented with the coffee. All I can say is that any enterprising girl who wants to try insulting me like that is going to wind up in possession of a much larger tip than the haughty serving lady who makes me wait all night before she condescends to take my lousy money.

In this case, however, it worked out pretty well, saving me from having to think of other ways of stalling. It was ten minutes of eight, and the light was fading, when we reached the new development on the way back. I slowed down as we approached the stone posts of the Priest gateway, just beyond.

"Is there a place I can hide this hearse, not too far away, from which we can reach the kitchen door without climbing any barbed-wire fences?" I asked.

Martha glanced at me sharply. "I thought you said you were supposed to come by water."

"I did. So, being a suspicious secret-agent type, I'll come by land. Anyway, it's late and you're not really dressed for a boat ride."

"You can't possibly suspect Uncle Hank-"

"Who can't? I don't even trust me around the block..

My God, look at the limousines in the admiral's driveway! Even if I wasn't feeling shy, I wouldn't dare park my cheesy little six-thousand-dollar Chevy in there. Those aristocratic heaps would snub it and hurt its feelings."

"If you turn right just around the curve up ahead, there's an old lane leading down to the water."

I stopped the station wagon near the end of the lane, backed it in between two trees and went around to open the door for Martha. She led me down the lane, which ended abruptly at a concrete embankment. Beyond was the Waterway. I could see the Priest dock to the right, the little outboard boat with the funny name, and the big sportfisherman, through a chain-link fence. The outriggers and tuna tower made a tricky, lacy pattern against the darkening sky.

Martha made her way along the embankment to the fence. She gathered her brief, pleated skirt around her thighs so it wouldn't snag, with one hand, and, holding on with the other, swung herself around the end of the fence, four feet above the water. She waited for me to follow, less gracefully. We stole along the Priest seawall to the dock, and took the path that led up to the house. A slight black man of indeterminate age, not young, not elderly, opened the screen door to admit us.

"Why, it's Jarrel!" Martha said. "You must be the guide we've been talking about. Matt, this is Jarrel White. He knows every local water moccasin and alligator by its first name, and I wouldn't be surprised if he'd poached a few in his time."

The black man grinned. "Now, Miss Marty, who'd waste time poaching water moccasins?"

"Where does Uncle Hank want us, Jarrel?"

"On the back porch, Miss Marty. That door over there. Well, you know. You can sit on the old sofa in the corner. There's a window open to the living room and you can hear all you want." He opened the door for us, and looked at me. "I'll be talking with you after all those folks are gone, Mr. Helm," he said softly.

"Sure."

The kitchen door closed noiselessly. Martha and I stood for a moment in the darkness, that seemed darker for the pattern of light thrown by an open window halfway down the porch, from which came the sound of men's voices. I heard Priest's quarterdeck tones greeting somebody and offering a drink.

"Doesn't sound as if they've got down to business yet," I whispered to the girl beside me. "Whatever the business of the evening may be. Doesn't your Uncle Hank believe in air-conditioning?"

"Oh, he's got it, but it's a pleasant spring evening, and he doesn't turn it on unless he has to. Deep down, I think he feels that if God had meant us to be cool in Florida, He wouldn't have made it hot in the first place." She hesitated, and touched my shoulder lightly. "Matt."

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry."

The needle went into my biceps. It was a healthy jab that must have rammed home the plunger of the hypodermic syringe she'd stolen from my suitcase, with the same motion. The trouble with carrying weapons of any kind is that somebody may get hold of them and use them against you, but this is also something you can turn to your advantage if you work it right.

I had plenty of performances on which to pattern my own: Hollingshead's and Sheriff Rullington's to mention only two. I'd even had the stuff used against me before, on an assignment not too long ago. I knew exactly how it was supposed to feel and how fast it was supposed to act. I gave a little start, reached instinctively for the instrument that had punctured my skin, now being withdrawn; but I never finished the movement. Instead, I let myself slump helplessly, hoping she'd catch me, which she did, easing me gently to the floor.

"I'm sorry," I heard her breathe. "I'm so sorry, darling, but I have to do it. You understand that I have to do it, don't you9.

For a neat ending, that should have been all, but she didn't leave. She stood beside my presumably unconscious body for interminable minutes. I realized she was listening to the laughter and chatter drifting through the open window, probably waiting for a clue to the purpose of the meeting, but like most meetings it was slow in starting. At last she made a small, irritated, breathy sound indicating that her time or her patience had run out. I heard the sound of her sandals receding, very soft and stealthy, along the porch. There was a faint, metallic rattling that after a moment I identified as the noise of a screen door hook being released. A door creaked, and she was gone.

I lay quite still. I didn't think she'd slip back to check on me, but there was no sense in taking chances. After several minutes, there was a sputtering sound from the direction of the dock: a good-sized outboard motor starting up, and moving off along the Waterway…