Donald Hamilton - The Devastators

A musical character in a tailcoat was beating out a Strauss waltz on the piano, using as much body English as if he was battling Tchaikovsky to a draw in Carnegie Hall. The girl was watching and listening, puffing industriously on a cigarette. Her health was her own problem, but I couldn't help thinking that if she had to smoke, she ought to learn to do a better job.

There was some green stuff in a glass on the table. It's been my experience that ladies who go for sweet minty drinks after dinner are apt to be somewhat more objectionable, in a prissy and hypocritical way, than those who slug down a good honest highball, but I won't propose it as an ironclad rule.. Nevertheless, my first impression wasn't favorable, and the thought of after-dinner drinks reminded me that I hadn't eaten since noon. Sleep, as opposed to merely employing a bed for its fringe benefits, so to speak, was something that had happened so long ago and far away that I'd forgotten the exact circumstances.

I got rid of a yawn while I could still do it without being rude, and moved forward. The girl looked around and saw me-and knew me, which was interesting. Well, sinister-looking gents six-feet-four aren't too common, and she could have been given a thumbnail sketch at the hotel desk. Or she could have been exposed to a more detailed dossier elsewhere.

"Miss Glenmore?" I said, stopping before her.

The piano player had finished sweeping Strauss under the rug, and was taking a break, so I didn't have to shout. The girl looked at me warily.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I'm Nancy Glenmore. Are you… are you Mr. Helm?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, and waited.

She hesitated, and said in a sudden, breathless way, "You'll probably think I'm crazy coming here like this, Mr. Helm-" She stopped.

"So who's prejudiced against insanity?" I said.

It threw her for a moment. Then she licked her lips and said, "Well, I saw a Mr. Walling early this afternoon. I wanted him to do some work for me, but he wouldn't take the job, he just told me a lot of stuff, and then he said he'd already made arrangements to see another member of the family later in the day, and why the devil didn't we all get together? He acted very funny, almost rude, as if… as if he thought I was trying to play some kind of a trick on him, but he did give me your name and London address-" She'd got all this stuff off very fast. Now she seemed to run down abruptly. Her big, greenish eyes watched me for a second or two. Then she went on in the same rapid-fire way: "Well, I just had a wild idea that you might be able to help me. I mean, that we might be able to help each other. You may have something I could use, while I… I may have something you want." Still staring up at me unblinkingly, she added, "To trace the family, I mean."

"Sure," I said. "To trace the family."

There was a little silence. I met her wide-eyed stare with a hard look of my own, and presently her glance dropped, but I didn't really need that token of guilt. Her double-talk spoke for itself. 1 may have something you want, could hardly be anything but a prelude to negotiations for Winnie's release. I felt reassured. Mac had ordered me not to wait too long for contact to be made, not beyond tomorrow noon, but here was my contact already, fiddling nervously with her cigarette and sipping at her crиme de menthe frappй. She spoke without looking up.

"It's quite a coincidence, isn't it? I mean, both of us calling on Mr. Walling the same day."

"Yeah," I said. "Coincidence."

"Well.., well, it looks as if we're kind of related, Mr. Helm, even if it is a long way back."

I remembered another girl in another country who'd claimed a distant kinship with me once, on another job, and almost got me killed. These ancient family ties, much too remote to bring up any inconvenient questions of incest, can come in very handy for a girl in our line of work-but maybe I was being overly cynical. Maybe she really was Nancy Glenmore, on a sentimental pilgrimage to our ancient Scottish stamping grounds, wearing the tartan as the Crusaders wore the cross. Maybe, but I didn't really believe it.

I said, "That's swell. As a stranger, I'd remain standing politely. As a relative, I'll sit, if you don't mind. I just got in from New York this morning, and it's been a long day."

"Oh, I am sorry!" she said quickly. "Please do sit down." I sat down. We got the drinks question settled and got a waiter to make it official. I lit another cigarette for her, the first having got itself stubbed out half-smoked, and we sat back and looked at each other with a kind of cautious interest. She was really quite a good-looking girl, in a jumpy and high-strung way. Her face displayed a little too much bone, but it was pretty good bone. Having once used a camera professionally, I couldn't help thinking that she'd photograph well, with her big eyes, strong cheekbones, and clean jawline.

Mentally, however, she was a mess. She had the jitters so badly I wanted to pat her shining dark head in a fatherly-well, cousinly-way and tell her for God's sake to relax.

The waiter put our drinks on the table. When he had gone, I said, "So you talked to Walling? I saw him, too, but he wouldn't help me, either." I kept my voice casual while I slipped her a fast one: "Kind of an antisocial gent, I thought. Kept looking at me through those slaty gray eyes of his like I was a bug on a pin."

She frowned quickly. "That's strange, I had a distinct impression Mr. Walling's eyes were blue."

Well, she'd passed that test. Either she had interviewed the real Walling or she'd been well briefed on his appearance. I shrugged. "The light was behind him. Maybe I made a mistake. Anyway, he wouldn't help me, either. He just referred me to a book in the library."

"I know. The Scots Peerage. It seems like a funny way of doing business."

"Uhuh, funny," I said, thinking of a dead man with his finger joints crushed and the back of his head beat in. "So your idea is that we should kind of pool our information?"

"Why, yes," she said, straight-faced. "That is, unless you have some objection."

"Hell, no," I said. "Let's pool. I've got an envelope full of stuff upstairs." I gave her a long, deliberate, appraising look, starting high and ending low. With my eyes on her slim ankles, I said, "Let's go up and look it over." What it probably amounted to, I reflected, was that Basil had had to scramble to find a suitable young lady to play my distant Scottish-American relative-that is, to lead me into the new trap he was undoubtedly preparing for me. He'd had to settle for an amateur, or an inexperienced neophyte. He'd had to brief her and dress her in a couple of hours, and as a result neither the girl nor her getup were quite up to professional standards.

She was nervous and scared, and her clothes were all so new I kept expecting to see an overlooked price tag somewhere. I'd caught sight of the sole of a shoe when she crossed her legs uneasily, and the factory slickness had barely been scratched. She couldn't have more than walked across a couple of sidewalks on it.

"I'll have a bottle and some ice sent up."

I raised my eyes abruptly to her face. She did not meet my glance. She said, "Well, I… I didn't bring my material with me."

I said, "Honey, you brought enough material for me." She didn't speak, and I said, "Okay, your place then. Where are you staying?"

"B-Brown's Hotel."

"Sure. Brown's it is. Give me a minute to get my things."

She hesitated uncertainly. I watched her. I'd made my lewd intentions perfectly clear. If she was just a nice young lady tourist after all, she'd at least postpone our genealogical consultation until daylight. More likely she'd slap my face indignantly and walk out on me. On the other hand, if she was Basil's emissary, she'd undoubtedly been told to be as obliging as necessary to get me where I was wanted. Chastity is not a highly regarded commodity in our line of business.