The Ravagers

V

WHEN I came out of the bathroom, dressed, she was standing at the gray window looking at the street four stories below. She made a rather intriguing picture there, in the pale dawn light, since she was wearing only the white silk shirt that, somehow, we'd never got around to taking off her. It had been an impromptu come-as-you-are kind of performance, as love scenes go. I couldn't help noting, as I crossed the room, that the improvised nightshirt wasn't quite as long as it would have been, had it been designed for a sleeping garment in the first place.

"Well, I'll get in touch with you in Brandon," I said, businesslike. I wasn't quite sure what our relationship was supposed to be now.

Elaine turned from the window to face me. After a moment she drew the rumpled shirt together in front and started to button it, more from a sense of tidiness, I gathered, than from any real feeling of modesty. There was, after all, no further reason for us to be modest with each other. She gave me a funny, wry smile.

"I suppose you think I'm a cheap little tramp," she said.

I said, "A man can't win around here. If he doesn't sleep with you, he's taking a slap at your appearance and if he does, he's maligning your character."

I half expected her to be angry, but she just grinned. Then she stopped grinning and said, "It's a lousy business, darling. I suppose you know what I'll do the minute you're out of the room. I'll take the glass you drank out of and send it in to have the fingerprints checked."

I laughed. "Well, I'm glad you said that. I was just trying to work up a plausible excuse for walking off with that bottle of Scotch you were pouring out of, so I could see what I could develop on it with my do-it-yourself detective kit. My boss has a few Washington connections that might be able to run down your prints for us."

"Not unless I wanted them run down," she said, smiling. "But help yourself. I think Mike Green already got a set, much more subtly, but I don't mind if you take one, too. Just don't let the liquor go to waste. That would be a crime." She watched me as I found a narrow paper bag in the nearby wastebasket, smoothed it out, and slipped the bottle inside. "Dave."

"Yes."

She was serious again. "What happens in bed never makes any difference. Not in my line of work. I hope you understand that."

"What are you trying to say?"

"Whether I like you or not has nothing to do with anything. If you're not a private detective from Denver, darling, please get in your little car and start driving very fast, any direction. Otherwise there'll be nothing but a small wet spot on the pavement, marked Clevenger."

I said, "It isn't nice of you to keep trying to scare me to death."

She shook her head quickly. "No, don't joke about it. This is big, darling, very big. If you're playing any tricks, you'll be squashed, and I'll help squash you. That's what I'm trying to say. And even if you are a private detective from Denver, and even if you have a very respectable principle and an excellent reason for hanging around, I'd still advise you to go home and work on some nice lucrative divorce case. Because if you get in the way we'll run over you like a steamroller. This woman has got hold of something that… well, it's terribly important. We have to get it back before it's compromised further. There's really no room for any private interests here."

She was very grave and, with her tousled black hair and abbreviated shirt, very cute. I said, "You sound practically subversive, doll. Big government has taken over, and there's no room for the lousy little private dick to make a few lousy little private bucks. Hell, that's dictatorship, that's communism. I'll speak to my senator." I reached out and tipped her face up and bent over to kiss her lightly on the mouth, saying: "See you in Brandon."

It was meant to be just a debonair parting gesture from a somewhat older man to a somewhat younger girl-let's not go into the exact age difference involved-but it went wrong. I don't mean that it developed into a passionate, clinging clinch, with breathless declarations of undying love. We weren't the breathless, clinging type. Watching us, you probably wouldn't have known anything had happened at all. And maybe it didn't happen then; maybe it had already happened while we made love and slept for a couple hours close together in the big hotel bed. Maybe we were just becoming aware of it now. But there was no mistaking it.

As a kiss, however, it lasted only a fraction of a second longer than the easy goodbye peck it had been intended to be. Separating, we looked at each other for a moment. I reached up and touched her mop of black hair.

"Elaine the fair," I said. "Elaine the lily maid of Astolat. Tennyson?"

"I think so," she said. "It isn't nice to make fun of me."

"You were kind of casual about letting me in here," I said. "Better start being careful with doors, lily maid, like Mike wasn't."

She grinned. "What can acid do to me that hasn't already been done?"

"At least you've still got a face, repulsive though it may be," I said. "We know a guy who hasn't."

Elaine drew a long breath, and said, "The Moosehead Lodge. Room 14."

"Sure," I said and went out without looking back.

Walking down the hail to the elevator, I wanted to sock the wall with my fist-or with my head, to knock some sense into it. It was such an unnecessary damn complication. I mean, the girl wasn't even particularly goodlooking.

Anyway, there was no place here, I told myself sternly, for emotional evolvement. I'd lied to her already, several times, and I was under orders to lie again and keep on lying-Mae had been quite specific on the point that other agencies could not be informed. And I wasn't even sure that Elaine hadn't lied to me, in return, or at least withheld part of the truth-a rather unpleasant part of the truth, that I was bound to investigate if I was going to do my job right. Everything would have been much simpler if I could have maintained an objective viewpoint. Well, that's what I got for going to bed with people for the wrong reasons.

Outside, it was a bleak morning with low, gray clouds. Sitting in the Volkswagen, I glanced through the newspaper I'd picked up in the hotel lobby, to bring myself up to date and also, I guess, to settle my thoughts before I got on the phone and made official conversation.

Newswise, it had been a frantic twenty-four hours, I gathered, that I'd spent on the road and in bed. South of the border, in the U.S.A., a jet airliner had blown up in midair, the Air Force had misplaced a bomber on a training mission, the Navy had announced an atomic sub missing and presumed lost, and two ships had collided in some harbor. Still farther south, in Mexico, a bus had fallen off a mountain. The international political scene was as loused-up as ever. I couldn't see that any of this was related to my mission, but it was a little early to tell, since I still didn't know exactly what my mission was.

Up here in Canada, things had been only a little quieter. A bush pilot was down in the brush somewhere to the north. A dynamite bomb had exploded in Montreal, in the province of Quebec, leading to speculations as to whether the French-speaking liberation movement was embarking on a new wave of terrorism. And closer to home-well, to the borrowed car in which I sat, that was as much home as I had-the penitentiary at Brandon had lost a couple of prisoners.

I frowned at the last item thoughtfully. It was definitely related to my mission, since it meant that the highways would probably be full of Canadian cops of all kinds, looking for the escaped convicts. I hoped they'd find them fast. Whatever it was I was supposed to do up here, I'd do it a lot easier without the local law looking over my shoulder.

There was a brief mention of a dead man found in a Regina motel-a United States citizen identified as Michael Green, of Napa, California. It was stated that, although death had apparently been caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative, the authorities were not quite satisfied with certain features of the case, and the investigation was being continued.

Nobody seemed to be interested in me sitting there. I drove off. Nobody seemed to be following me. I found a phone booth at the corner of a filling station that handled a brand of gasoline I'd never heard of before-White Rose, if it matters-and I stood inside the booth watching rain drip off the black VW while I talked.

"Say five-two, sir," I said. "Maybe a hundred and ten. Maybe twenty-five. Hair black. Eyes gray. Appendix scar. Small, crooked scar on right thigh that could have come from an old compound fracture. Maybe she fell out of a tree or something when she was a kid. She looks as if she'd have been the tree-climbing type." I knew there was something I'd forgotten. The funny thing was, I had to think a moment to remember it. "Oh, yes. She apparently had smallpox as a kid. It shows on her face."

Mac said dryly, two thousand miles away, "You seem to have made a thorough investigation, Eric. It wasn't really necessary. We have already checked on Miss Harms at Greg's request. She is perfectly genuine."

"Sure," I said. "Well, I couldn't take her word for it. I've got some fingerprints on a bottle, but under the circumstances I guess I'll just forget about what's outside and concentrate on what's inside, which happens to be pretty good Scotch. I see you got hold of your discreet official, sir. There is an announcement in the paper, but it doesn't say much. Did you happen to think to give them a dental description? I mean, there wasn't much in the way of a face or fingerprints to go by, and there's always a possibility that somebody's being very, very clever."

Mac said, "The possibility occurred to me, also. Gregory's identification is positive. We can dismiss the melodramatic idea of a substitution. With regard to this girl, we can check out the fingerprints you have, if you feel it's necessary."

I hesitated. "No," I said. "I think she's genuine, all right. But-"

"What is it that disturbs you, Eric? I gather you're not entirely satisfied."

I told myself not to be a sentimental dope. I was a coldblooded government agent on coldblooded government business, and no damn female could deflect me from my duty by a single degree.

"I don't like that acid, sir," I said. "Isn't it kind of out of character, for the subject we're watching? I mean, the Drilling subject."

Mac was silent for a moment, far away. Then he said slowly, "It seems to be a simple variation of the old ammonia technique. Silent and effective. If you first blind a man with a reagent that also causes excruciating, disabling pain, you can then deal with him at your leisure."

"Sure," I said. "But there are a couple of questions that bother me. Like, how would Mrs. Genevieve Drilling, housewife, learn about the old ammonia technique? And where would she get the drug-whatever it was, and however it was administered-that finished Greg off? I don't think the acid killed him."

Mac said, "It didn't. The cause of death was cyanide or some derivative, but we don't yet know exactly how it was administered. That angle is still under investigation. It could have been done with a dart fired from an airgun or spring gun, the kind that's often camouflaged as a man's cigarette case or a woman's compact. Or it could have been done quite simply with a hypodermic, if the murderer wanted to risk working in that close."

"I know," I said. "But now you're talking about real tricky spy stuff, sir. I didn't know we were dealing with a pro."

"Mrs. Drilling isn't a professional, but her male friend is."

"And just where is this guy Ruyter supposed to be hanging out with his ready stock of acids and poisons? Have we any reason to believe he's here in Regina?"

"We have no evidence that he isn't," Mac said. "At the moment we do not know, unfortunately, just where Mr. Ruyter is. Of course, if he should be in Regina, he could have committed the murder himself."

"It's a possibility," I said. "There's another possibility, sir, that I think we'd better consider."

"Go on."

I looked at the black Volkswagen in the rain, and I thought of a girl in black pants and a white shirt, and I thought of a girl in just a white shirt.

I said, "You said it was a variation of the old ammonia technique. But there's one big difference. The ammonia treatment generally wears off in time. As a rule it's employed by people who don't want to inflict permanent damage. But we've got a sadistic screwball loose here, somebody who likes to torment his, or her, victims before killing them." I hesitated, and went on stiffly: "Either that, or we've got somebody with a real big personal hate, say a girl with a marred face who's had a goodlooking man turn her down crushingly, with snide remarks about her disfigurement."