Donald Hamilton: The Ravagers

"I know," I said. "I hope they know it, too. There's nothing I hate like being shot by my friends."

"It's a chance you will have to take," Mac said. "As a matter of fact, other agencies have not been informed of our participation, and are not to be informed. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," I said, because it was the easiest thing to say, not because it was the truth.

I LAY IN the campground bushes for over an hour, gaining patience from the fact that somebody in the silver trailer had insomnia, indigestion, or a guilty conscience. I could hear a person moving around in there restlessly, from time to time. It was two in the morning by now, late to hope to see anything, but finally the trailer door opened and the shadowy figure of a woman appeared.

Her face was only a vague blur in the darkness. Her figure was even less discernible, being camouflaged by some kind of an elaborate, voluminous robe or housecoat. Once on the ground, she had to stop and get a fresh grip on the long skirts to keep them from dragging. While she was doing this, a small voice called to her from inside the trailer. It seemed to paralyze her for a moment. She stood perfectly still; then she replied without looking back.

"It's all right, Penny," she said clearly. "I'm just closing the car windows. It's starting to rain. You go back to sleep, darling."

She moved over to the Ford pickup, got in, pulled the tail of her garment in after her, closed the door, and cranked up the windows. She sat there for a while. The truck was parked looking my way. The night was too dark for me to make out her features through the windshield glass, let alone her expression, but I could see enough to know when she suddenly buried her face in her hands and bent over the steering wheel, obviously crying. Well, anybody can cry, and a woman who had recently committed a brutal murder might well want to have her reaction out where her child couldn't see her and ask why.

I reminded myself that it wasn't proved that Mrs. Genevieve Drilling had killed anybody, and that I wasn't here to prove it. From Mac's instructions, I deduced that I was supposed to gain the lady's trust and confidence for some altogether different purpose, as yet undisclosed. The fact that she could break down and cry was a promising sign. It indicated that an absorbent male shoulder might not be altogether unwelcome, if properly presented.

I suppose this was a cold-blooded way of regarding a fellow-human in distress, a woman in tears. If I hadn't been cold and damp and cramped, lying there, I might have been ashamed of myself. As it was, I just wished she'd blow her nose and switch on a light so I could get a real look at her, and then climb back into her little tin box on wheels SO I could leave without being spotted.

A sound behind me drove these unprofessional thoughts from my mind. There was a faint rustling and scuffling back there, indicating that I no longer had this part of the grove to myself. Somebody else was crawling up to take a peek. Then that person was suddenly quiet, as Mrs. Drilling got out of the truck and moved back to the trailer. She drew a sleeve across her eyes, reached up to pat her hair smoothed, squared her shoulders, opened the door, and made her way inside, leaving me still without a clear impression of her face and figure.

I lay very still. She'd said it was starting to rain. It hadn't been when she said it, but it was now. The sound of raindrops was a murmur all through the woods, but I could hear the man behind me get up and move away. Cautiously, I turned myself around and squirmed after him. The rain helped, making the dead leaves soft and silent and helping to cover any noise I made, but after a little of it I wasn't so sure I wouldn't have preferred to crawl on dry ground and take my chances.

The man ahead of me seemed to be fairly tall, and he moved like a reasonably young man, but he was either bald or very blond and crewcut: I could see his bare head gleaming faintly in the darkness even when I couldn't distinguish the outlines of his body. He wasn't much good in the woods. He made plenty of noise and he didn't seem to be quite sure where he was going. After a while he stopped in a baffled way, looking around. He whistled softly.

Another man spoke up from some bushes to the left. "Over here, Larry. Well?"

"Christ, I'm soaked. This is a cold damn country."

"Who cares about you? What about the woman?"

"She's still with us. I guess she's too smart to attract attention by pulling out after paying to stay the night. She was sitting out in the truck for some reason. Looked like she was crying." The tall man laughed scornfully. "Remorse, do you figure? Jeez, what a job she did on that poor guy's face, if it was she."

"If you hadn't let them slip away from you we'd know for sure."

"Hell, they were at the dentist! Who ever got away from a dentist in less than an hour?"

The unseen man said, "I wonder where the dead guy fits in, hanging around her. Well, fit. I guess he fits in nothing but a coffin, now. A closed coffin." I heard him get up. "Now that we've put her to bed, we'd better get on the phone and let them know the party's getting rough. Come

On."

I gave the pair plenty of time to get clear. That made me thoroughly drenched by the time I'd crept back to check on the trailer again. Apparently Mrs. Drilling had found the crying jag relaxing. She wasn't moving around in there any more. I decided it was safe to leave her until morning, while I dried myself off and tried to find something to eat. My last meal had been a drive-in hamburger a couple of hundred miles south. My last sleep had been further away than that, but sleep, of course, means nothing to us iron men of the undercover professions. At least that's the theory on which we're supposed to operate.

It was a segregated campground: the peasants with tents were separated from the aristocrats with trailers. I'd been assigned a space pretty well over to the other side of the wooded area, and I'd pitched my tent to establish my claim before sneaking off to play Indian in the brush. The little Volkswagen was parked facing the front of the tent. From a distance it looked very good to me: it looked like dry clothes and a chocolate bar to ward off starvation until something more substantial could be obtained.

As I moved closer, however, the car suddenly began to look less good. There was somebody in it, a woman, by the hair. My first thought was that somehow the woman I'd been watching had beat me here-after all, I knew of no other woman in the case. Then she saw me coming and got out to meet me, and I saw that she was considerably smaller and wirier than Genevieve Drilling.

She stood by the car, waiting for me to reach her. I could make out that she was wearing dark pants and a light trench coat and light gloves. Her hair seemed to be black or very dark. Waiting, she pulled up a kind of hood to protect it from the rain.

"You're Clevenger?" she said as I stopped in front of her. "That's what it says on the registration. David P. Clevenger, of Denver, Colorado."

"That's me," I said. "Now let's talk about you."

"Not here," she said. "The Victoria Hotel, room four-eleven. Just as soon as you get cleaned up. You can't go through the lobby that muddy."

"The Victoria Hotel," I said. "What makes you think I'll come?"

She smiled. She seemed to have nice white teeth; they showed up well in the darkness. I had the impression she might look quite attractive if I could see her clearly.

"Oh, you'll come," she said. "Or would you rather tell the Regina police what you were doing in a room at The Plainsman Motel with a dead body? Of course, the body had been dead for quite a while before you sneaked up and picked the lock to get in, but I don't really think you want to be called upon to explain your behavior officially, in a foreign country. Room four-eleven, Mr. Clevenger."