Donald Hamilton - The Betrayers

Near us under the big tree, a dark, beautiful, but rather buxom young lady in a long, heavy, red brocade gown was doing a slow hula to the accompaniment of a ukulele, a steel guitar, a string bass, and an electrified instrument that looked like an autoharp on legs. I was rather startled to see that, below the regal gown, the lovely dancer's feet were bare. Beyond the band, far out at sea, a large ship was steaming slowly toward Honolulu harbor in the pinkish glow of the setting sun.

I said, "Look, there's a ship out there. Would that be the famous Lurline people have been telling me about?"

Jill didn't turn her head. "No, the Lurline arrives on Saturdays, in the morning and it's quite an occasion. You'll have to see it. All the boats and catamarans go out to meet her. It's a real nautical traffic jam, usually, with water skiers showing off and boys diving for coins and everybody yelling aloha. Real corny but kind of fun." She glanced over her shoulder. "There's supposed to be a transport ship due with troops for the Far East. Some of them stop off here. That must be it." She smiled at me. "And you weren't really looking at any ship, Mr. Helm."

I grinned. "Hula me no hulas. I've seen a girl wiggle her hips before." A waitress was hovering over us, wanting our orders. I said to Jill, "You name it, Miss Darn-icy. What goes with rum?"

"More rum, of course," she said, and looked up at the waitress. "Two Mai Tais, please… I think you'll like this drink, Mr. Helm."

"If it's got alcohol in it, I generally do," I said, and went on casually, "What the hell are those birds? They look like doves, but they act like sparrows."

Jill glanced at the birds picking up crumbs under the tables. "They are doves," she said. "We have two kinds, big ones and little ones. But you really should watch this dance, Mr. Helm. It's the real hula, not the grass-skirt shimmy all tourists seem to expect when they come to the Islands. Look at her hands. Aren't they graceful?"

"Hands? What hands?" I said. "Oh, you mean the hands. Oh, sure. Very graceful."

Jill laughed at my clowning, and I laughed with her, and we were off birds as quickly as we'd got on them. What it amounted to was that I'd given her an opening for the seabird-landbird password and she'd let it go by. This meant either that she wasn't the inside agent Mac had spoken of, or that she wasn't ready to reveal herself yet. Well, I hadn't really expected it to be that easy.

I asked, "Do you live here on Oahu, Miss Darnley?"

"I'd hardly be staying at a hotel if I did," she said. "Oahu isn't so big that you can't get home at night, wherever you are. No, I live in Hio. That's on the island of Hawaii, what we call the Big Island, the one with the volcano. Well, they're all volcanic, of course, but our volcano really works, from time to lime." She smiled. "And my name is Jill, Mr. Helm."

"Jill Darnley," I said. "Very nice. I'm Matt. How long are you staying in Honolulu, Jill?"

"Oh, a week or so. It depends. Did you say you knew something about skiing, Mr. Helm?… I mean, Matt."

"I didn't say, but I do. A little. Why?"

"Well, if you can ski, you'd probably have very little trouble with a surfboard. I mean, it's all a question of balance. And if you're getting up early again tomorrow, well, I could promote another board and show you.

It's really a fantastic sport. Out of this world. There's nothing quite like it. I mean, of course, if you want to."

I said, "Sure, but I hope you're not hinting that you want to be rid of me until tomorrow morning."

She said very quickly that of course she wasn't, then the Mai Tais arrived. The recommended drink turned out to consist of heroic quantities of rum in a large glass into which had been inserted some ice, a stick of fresh pineapple, and so help me, an orchid. Jill told me that Mai Tais were originally concocted with a wicked local brew called okolehao, distilled from the fermented root of the Ii plant, the same useful plant that provided the leaves for the famous grass skirts. However, oke, as it was called, was such violent stuff that it had been replaced by rum for tourist consumption, said Jill.

She was really a very informative girl. By the time we'd finished our Mai Tais at the hotel and a couple more rounds with dinner at Duke Kahanamoku's night club and had sat through the floor show there-with all the MC's local references explained to me by my blonde companion-I was practically a native Hawaiian myself. It was well after eleven when we got back to the Halekulani. We stopped in the lobby and looked at each other. There was an awkward little pause.

I cleared my throat and said, "How about a nightcap? I haven't any oke, but I've got a Mainland drink you may find tasty. We distill it from grain and call it bourbon."

She laughed. "Are you making fun of me, Matt? Have I been talking too much like a tour guide?" I didn't say anything. She stopped smiling and looked down and blushed a little, which showed promise. A kid who can blush on demand will go a long way in our trade, if she survives. "Well," she said. "Well, all right. Just a quick one."

We didn't say anything going up the stairs, but she slipped a hand under my arm, ostensibly for support. Maybe she really needed it. We'd both absorbed respectable amounts of rum during the course of the evening.

We stopped at my door, and she leaned against me sleepily while I unlocked it. Normally I'd have taken a precaution or two, entering the place again after having been out of it so long, but precautions weren't really feasible with the girl practically crawling into my pocket. They would have been wasted, anyway. No booby traps blew as we went inside; no hidden assassins leaped out at us.

I paused to lock the door. Jill detached herself from me and went on through the lanai into the bedroom part of the suite. When I turned to look at her, she was standing there, waiting, doing once more for me the lazy, provocative business of pushing back her long hair with both hands.

"I… I don't really want another drink, Matt," she said, letting her hands fall as she watched me approach.

"I didn't think you did," I said, stopping in front of her. "But a man's got to say something, doesn't he?"

"I suppose so." She smiled slowly. "Now help me out of this ridiculous garment.. Or maybe you'd better kiss me first."

"Sure."

I kissed her. She came breathlessly alive in my arms; it was an interesting performance, as a display of technique. I mean, she was putting on a pretty good show for an inexperienced kid, and suddenly I was disgusted with both of us and our phony passion.

She was too busy playing Jezebel to notice. She sighed and freed herself quickly, turned away, and pulled her lei off over her head and tossed it onto a nearby chair. The lose muu-muu dress dropped to the floor. She got rid of brassiere, panties, and sandals in what seemed like a single graceful motion, and swung back to face me expectantly.

I took a step backward. "Very good, Jill," I said. "Oh, very good indeed. Tell the Monk I said you did that extremely well." Her face turned pale. I said harshly, "Now you can get dressed again before you catch cold. I'm a big boy and I don't talk in my sleep. Seduction is for kids, honey, and I'm surprised the Monk would have you try it on an old hand like me. He must be slipping."

There was a little silence. I had to hand it to her, she didn't try any indignant, useless protests. She didn't try to persuade me she didn't know anybody called Monk and I was making a terrible mistake. She didn't say anything at all.

She just licked her lips and bent down to pick up her clothes and turned away from me again to put them back on. She took time to do it right, getting all the hooks and snaps and zippers fastened properly. Then she walked straight to the door and stopped, and looked back over her shoulder, speaking at last:.