Donald Hamilton: The Ravagers

I regarded her for a moment longer; then I swallowed the last of the sandwich and washed it down with the last of the drink and set the glass on the television set. I took two Canadian dollar bills from my wallet and laid them beside the glass.

"There you are," I said. "Nobody's obligated to nobody. If there's any change, give it to your home town Community Chest. I see you've got a phone, so you'll have no trouble calling the cops after I'm gone." I grinned at her and headed for the door. "See you in jail."

"Mr. Clevenger."

I stopped with my hand on the knob. "If it's got a question mark at the end of it, you're wasting your breath."

"I am working for the United States government, Mr. Clevenger. Uncle Whiskers, if you prefer."

I turned around. She had seated herself on the big double bed. As I came back across the room, she watched me closely for clues to what my reaction would be.

I went to stand over her and said grimly, "Well, I sure had to put on a big act to get that out of you, doll. Now show me something that says it besides you, and we're in business."

She shook her head. "We don't all carry little gold badges, Mr. Clevenger."

"I'm supposed to take your word for it?" I let her brace herself for an argument; then I shrugged. "Well, okay. I'm not hard to get along with. You come part way, I'll come part way. Maybe we'll get together eventually. I work for Western Investigation Services, 3001 Palomas Drive, Denver, Colorado."

She looked surprised. "A private detective?"

"That's right. Private investigator, private op, private eye, shamus, snooper, you name it."

"Can you prove it?"

I said, "You give proof, honey, you get proof. If your word's good, so's mine."

She laughed. "That doesn't necessarily follow."

I said, "Hell, it's easy enough to check, if you're really a government girl. All you have to do is pick up that phone and ask for long distance. Washington will have the dope back for you in the time it takes us to have another drink, if your bureaucracy's halfway on the ball."

She made no move toward the telephone; she didn't even look that way. She kept her eyes hard on me and said, "And Mike Green was a private investigator, too? You said he was in the same line of business."

She could have been leading me into a trap with the question. I gambled on the fact that Greg had been, for all his faults, a pro: he wasn't likely to have spilled any beans to a G-girl in pants.

"Sure," I said. "He worked for a West Coast outfit. They sometimes handle stuff for us out there, and vice versa, so when they called us for help my boss contacted me in Rapid City, where I was winding up some business, and told me to get the hell up here. Mike hadn't called his Los Angeles office when he was supposed to. They'd got worried and asked if we'd discreetly find out what was wrong." I grimaced. "They've got some weird notions of geography, out there in L.A. I think they figure anything east of the Rockies must be close to anything else east of the Rockies."

Elaine stared at me searchingly for several seconds; then she looked away and made herself comfortable on the bed. I wondered idly about the way women must be constructed differently from men, that makes them so happy sitting on their own feet. She looked up abruptly, hoping to catch me by surprise, I guess.

"Mike never gave me a hint of anything like this," she said. I didn't say anything, and she went on: "Of course, he did act pretty mysterious at times. I knew he wasn't just an insurance salesman seeing the sights. What was his interest in Mrs. Drilling? What's yours?"

I said truthfully, "I don't know yet."

"You're not denying that you're watching the woman, are you? After all, I saw you."

"Sure," I said. "I called Denver about Mike, and the boss sent me right out to check the camp for Drilling, to make sure she hadn't flown. He's contacting the coast to find out what the score is. I'll talk with him again in the morning." I frowned down at Elaine. "I don't suppose you'd care to tell me what kind of government business brings you here, Miss Harms."

She hesitated only briefly. "I don't see why not. You can pass the information along to your employer, with a word of warning. Mrs. Drilling has stolen some scientific documents of national importance. Her husband, scientist at a certain government project, apparently was a little careless with his briefcase at home. We are trying to get the contents back before she passes them to her lover, a man we know to be a foreign agent. We think she has made arrangements to join him somewhere in eastern Canada and escape with him overseas. We're also kind of interested in taking him, if it can be done without jeopardizing the main job, which is getting the papers back."

I said, "I suppose she's got rid of the stuff temporarily, or all you'd have to do is shake down her trailer and truck."

"As a matter of fact," Elaine said, "a thorough search was made, more or less surreptitiously and illegally I'm afraid, a couple of days ago. Nothing was found. She had three days to dispose of it after she left home, before she was located up in British Columbia. We think she must have mailed it to herself at some eastern address, and that she's now heading to pick it up. Anyway, we'll keep a close eye on her until we find it." Elaine looked up at me. "And you can tell your boss that any private agency that interferes is going to find itself in serious trouble."

I sighed. "Honey, you are the threateningest girl I ever did meet. First it was the Regina police and now, I suppose, it's the whole U.S. government. But I'll tell him. I'm sure he'll shake like a leaf. He's a very timid man, just like me."

The girl on the bed laughed. It was the first real, honest laugh I'd seen her give. It changed her face so you forgot the ways in which it missed perfection. She was really quite a nice-looking girl.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to sound pompous and official, but Mike Green caused us a lot of worry, hanging around the subject the way he did. We had to waste a lot of time on him, not knowing who he was."

"You didn't happen to see his murderer, while you were wasting all this time?"

She flushed slightly, as if I'd accused her of inefficiency, which of course I had. "No," she admitted. "No, when I got there this afternoon, he was already dead. But is there much doubt? I mean, there's only one logical candidate, isn't there?"

I said, "I wouldn't know. My information is limited. Well, I'll pass the warning word along when I talk to my boss in the morning. Now I'd better get out to camp and try to grab a few hours' sleep. My God, it's still raining! I hope I left the bedroll where it's dry. My tent isn't as waterproof as it might be." I glanced at my watch. "There's hardly enough of the night left to make it worth while blowing up that damn air mattress."

"You have a few hours yet. The Drilling woman hardly ever hits the road before nine o'clock." Elaine hesitated. Something in her attitude made me look at her sharply. She returned my look without expression, and patted the chenille spread on which she sat. "It's a big bed," she said.

It was one of those funny moments. The atmosphere of the room changed abruptly. She met my look with one that was half defiant, half challenging.

"It's a lonely damn profession," she said. I continued not to say anything. It was her party. She said, "Of course, if you'd rather not, okay. I mean, if you're being true to a wife or girlfriend, far be it from me to lead you astray. And if you only sleep with girls with peach-blossom complexions-" She stopped there, watching me.

I said, "And if I just happen to be tired from driving five hundred miles in eight hours? Those VW's aren't designed for road racing, you know."

Something changed in her eyes, turning them dull and opaque, like slate. "Well, it's as good an out as any," she said evenly. "Pardon me for being forward. Check with me in Brandon this evening. In case you forget the name, it's a town with a big provincial prison nearby. It's about a day's run east for Drilling unless she changes her driving habits drastically. Miss Elaine Harms. The Moosehead Lodge, Room 14. I'll be waiting to hear from you. You'd better come up with the name of your principal and some good reasons for butting into this case. My chief isn't fond of private interference."