Donald Hamilton: The Ravagers

"Sure."

The ocean was to our left as we came out of town. Well, actually the map said we were looking at the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and that the real ocean was way off to the north and east past the end of land, but it was enough salt water to impress an innocent New Mexico lad. Jenny drew a long breath, beside me.

"It's beautiful," she said, "but kind of scary. I always wonder what's out there under the surface."

"Fishes," I said. "And dead men's bones."

"Watch where you're driving," Naomi said behind me. "Don't turn here. We stay on the pavement for another couple of miles."

We followed the pavement past a bunch of deserted coal mines, and then we followed the gravel for a way, and then we were on dirt, and finally we wound up at another mine way out in the woods. It looked like any little old mine, east or west. I suppose an expert can tell at a glance what came out of them, but to me they all look alike, whether they once produced gold, silver, copper, or coal. There are the same dumps, the same wandering rusty tracks that once made sense to somebody, the same picturesque, crumbling hoists and elevators, and the same weathered shacks.

At least they look the same to me, and I always have the same thought when I see one: Now, there's a hell of a fine place to hide a body. Apparently it was a thought that had occurred to other people as well, unless I was doing Naomi and her unseen friend a grave injustice.

I had no real doubt about what we'd been brought here for, Jenny and I. The trouble was, there wasn't much I could do about it. The message still had to be delivered, and I was running out of carrier pigeons. Hans was dead. Jenny no longer qualified. That left only Naomi to carry the ball- Naomi, and Gaston Muir, an unknown quantity. My sense of self-preservation is as strong as anybody's, but we're not hired, after all, just to stay alive, although it's considered a reasonable secondary objective.

My primary objective, however, was to get the stuff onto Gaston Muir's boat. In order to accomplish this, I had to keep both Naomi and her accomplice unhurt and unsuspicious, and the only safe way was to sit where I was put and wait for somebody to lower the boom on me. It took them a long time to get around to it. I suppose they were waiting, among other things, for me to get bored and sleepy. I considered dozing off, but decided it would be out of character. Jenny, however, curled up in the car and went to sleep.

Then Naomi started to chatter brightly about one thing and another, and then, sitting on a log, I heard him coming up behind me. I found myself hoping he was a better sailor than he was a woodsman, or that boat would never get out of the harbor. I saw Jenny stir uneasily and come awake and look our way and see him-both car doors were open for ventilation-but she was, thank God, too late to call a warning. A gunbarrel touched the back of my head before she could open her mouth.

Muir, if it was Muir, had a deep voice. "Do not move, Mr. Clevenger," he said, behind me. He spoke to Naomi:

"You said he had a knife, girl. Get it. Then go watch the woman."

I started at the touch of the gun, as if he'd taken me completely by surprise. Naomi darted forward and got the little folding knife from my pocket and backed off, looking like the kitten that ate the robin, pleased and proud.

She pocketed the knife, produced her glass pistol, slipped a rubber cap or stopper of some kind off the muzzle, and moved where she could aim the thing at Jenny.

The situation was self-explanatory, and as a reasonably bright agent I'd have accepted the fact that I'd been double-crossed, and we could have gone on from there, skipping the corny dialogue. But I wasn't supposed to be a reasonably bright agent, I was supposed to be a reasonably dumb private detective, so I went through the motions of looking shocked and outraged.

"Hey, what is this?" I demanded. "Give me back my knife. Naomi, tell your pal he's making a mistake-"

Naomi laughed. "The mistake is yours, darling."

"Why, you treacherous little bitch!"

I made as if to lunge for her and tear her to pieces with my bare hands. It was very dramatic, and I was told to sit still or get shot, and I sat still and went through the you-can't-do-this-to-me routine, and the I'll-get-you-if-it's-the-last thing-I-do routine, and a couple of the other verbal gambits people are accustomed to perpetrate on TV when they have guns pointed at them unexpectedly. I mean, there's a whole literature on the subject, all of which assumes that the hero is an unstable idiot who's got to blow his top noisily every time his fellow-men, or women, prove unworthy of his childlike trust.

The man with the gun had moved around to where I could see him. He was a big, dark, middle-aged man with something of a belly on him. He was wearing a black seaman's cap, an old black suitcoat, a work shirt buttoned to the neck, and clean overalls. His gun was a Luger, old and worn but showing no rust or neglect. It was the first 7.65 mm. Luger I'd seen in a long time. You hear more about the heavier 9 mm. cartridge these days, but the 7.65 was once considered very modern and high-speed stuff, shooting a light bullet at well over a thousand feet a second when that was very rapid indeed for a pistol.

Gaston Muir, in contrast to his weapon, had a deliberate, slow-moving, almost gentle air. He let me rave a reasonable length of time, which was promising. I mean, if I'd been him, I'd have rapped me hard along the head with the gunbarrel to shut me up, but apparently he was a more kindly type. Maybe he even had objections to violence. It was an encouraging thought, but I didn't put too much stock in it. After all, he did have a gun.

"That is enough, Mr. Clevenger," he said at last. "I said, that is enough, man!"

I said, "Just do me one favor, Muir, if that's who you are?"

"I am Muir," he said. "What is the favor?"

I glared at Naomi. "Just let me get my hands on that slut for sixty seconds-"

Muir said, "Please, Mr. Clevenger. We sympathize with your disillusionment, but as a sensible person you must realize that there is no place for you beyond this point. If we were to take you farther, you would learn things you should not know. Now go over and join the lady, if you please."

I rose from my log, growling something blasphemous, and went over to stand beside Jenny, who'd got out of the car. She glanced at me, and looked at Muir, and licked her lips.

"What… what are you going to do with us?"

I was annoyed at her for asking. I mean, if he admitted frankly that he was going to take us into the mine and shoot and bury us where no one was likely to dig us up accidentally, what had we gained? And if he said he wasn't, how could we believe him? So why waste breath on a question that had only profitless answers, when the real answer was probably only a few steps and a few minutes away?

I guess I was really annoyed with her because, after almost two full nights and days in the same dress, she looked kind of wilted and wrinkled, as well as scared, and I was sorry for her. I didn't want to be sorry for her. I'd been sorry for Larry Fenton, and it had got me nothing but trouble. I reminded myself that Genevieve Drilling had bought chips in this game long before I had; there was no reason why she shouldn't stick around to see the last hand with the rest of us.

Naomi said, "What do you think we're going to do with you, Mummy-dear? You see that black hole in the hillside up there? Start climbing!" She waved her weapon at both of us. "You, too, Dave, darling."

Muir asked, "Where are the papers, girl?"

"On the back seat of the car."

"Are the keys in the car?"

"I think so."

"Make sure," Muir said. "And then get the coal oil lantern and the coil of rope that's in that shack over there. Behind the door. And put that un-Christian weapon away. There's no need for it here."