The Devastators (13 page)

“Okay, Vadya. It was just a notion. I thought I’d better check it out. Well, we’d better get out of here. Just let me pick up my own stuff and wipe off a few fingerprints. No sense making things too easy for the British constabulary—”

I stopped talking and put my finger to my lips. Somebody had been passing in the hall outside. At least I’d thought they were passing, but then the footsteps had stopped. I waved a hand at Vadya. She nodded, reached down to slip off her pumps and, moving very quietly in her stocking feet, on tiptoe, she vanished into the bathroom. I looked around quickly. The dead girl looked convincingly poisoned with her glass beside her. I went over to my own broken glass and arranged myself carefully on the rug, closed my eyes, and started breathing as shallowly as I could.

There was a wait of at least three full minutes, as the person in the hall stood silent, presumably listening. At last I heard the sound of a key being inserted into the lock, and the door opened.

It went as smoothly as if we’d rehearsed it for hours. I heard our visitor enter and lock the door again and come forward. I heard him set something on the table. He paused briefly by Nancy’s body, and came over to me. I had placed myself so that, because of the table and chair, he had to make his approach from the bathroom side. As he stopped above me, in approximately the right position, I stirred very slightly and let out a feeble moan.

I heard him jump back, startled. There was a quick, predatory movement beyond him, a faint scuffle, a choked-off gasp, and some ugly, muffled, cracking and snapping sounds, followed by a kind of expiring sigh and the sound of a body slumping to the floor.

I heard Vadya’s voice: “You can get up now, Matthew.”

I rose and brushed myself off. She was calmly putting her pumps back on. The scarf she’d worn about her shoulders now hung from her hand, twisted into a kind of rope. Obviously, it wasn’t as fragile as it looked. A man in a dark suit lay face down on the rug between us with a broken neck. He looked very dead. It seemed unnecessarily drastic, but I made no complaint. It wasn’t as if the guy had been a particular friend of mine. I did, however, wonder briefly if she’d had some reason for silencing him permanently—or maybe it was just an object lesson to show me that, when it came to garottes, two could play.

I glanced toward the table. A bottle stood there, identical with the one on the dresser except that, presumably, the contents were safe to drink.

I said, “My apologies, ma’am. This character seems to have come to do the switch job I accused you of. Do you know him?”

She rolled him over with her toe, looked at him, and shook her head. “No, do you?”

Her denial sounded convincing, but then, I reminded myself, her denials always did. I regarded our visitor—well, to be accurate, Nancy Glenmore’s visitor. He was a big, dark man with a broad, Slavic face. I had seen the face before.

“I won’t say I know him,” I said, “but I saw him this afternoon. He’s the guy who was tailing us in a souped-up Mini when we went for that little spin in Crowe-Barham’s Rolls.”

Vadya was touching her hair into place. She shook the creases out of her scarf and draped it gracefully about her shoulders again, frowning at the man on the floor. “When you saw him, was he alone?”

“No, but I didn’t get a good look at the man with him.”

“That means there may still be another nearby. We must watch for him as we leave. But first I think we should take a quick look around.”

I made my voice casual: “For what?”

Vadya glanced at me. “Don’t be stupid, darling. Maybe this one did come only to switch bottles, but maybe he came to find something, also. He must have had some motive for poisoning the girl, must he not? You search the room and check that purse, there’s a good boy. I will search the girl—”

“Leave the kid alone,” I said.

There was a brief silence. Vadya straightened up deliberately and swung away from the body on the floor to face me.

“So there was something,” she murmured. “And you have it.”

“There
was
something,” I said. “I have it.”

She was a pro. There were a dozen questions she undoubtedly wanted to ask, but she hesitated only a moment. Obviously, I would tell her about it when I damn well felt like it, if I ever did. In the meantime, questioning me would be useless and humiliating. She shrugged.

“In that case,” she said, “there is no more for us to do here, is there?”

She walked to the door. I followed her, and let her out. I couldn’t help looking back before I joined her in the hall and pulled the door shut behind us. The kid still lay on the floor, in her rumpled, modernized Glenmore kilts. Beyond her lay the man who was probably most directly responsible for her death. At least his attempted bottle-switch seemed to point toward his being the one who’d planted the poison in the first place. You could call his fate a retribution of sorts, but it didn’t really help Nancy Glenmore much.

The slow London twilight was fading when we came outside, having aroused no apparent interest in our progress down the stairs and through the lobby. Nobody followed us away from the hotel. For the moment it wasn’t raining, and the streets were drying, but it seemed a little chilly for Vadya in her sleeveless dress. Presumably she was capable of catching cold just like an ordinary woman. My gentlemanly instincts made me turn on the Spitfire’s heater for her as we drove away, but I got no thanks for it. She was busy powdering her nose with the aid of the little mirror in her purse.

Presently, she closed the purse with a snap. “There is no sign of the little Austin, but we have a 3.8 Jaguar behind us,” she reported. “Three men. Somehow I think it is your British friends. They seem to lean toward honest faces and elaborate transportation.”

I had already spotted the black sedan following us. “I’ll check with Les,” I said. “He did mention having a Jag available, and I want to call him anyway.”

“Crowe-Barham?” Her voice held a wary note. “What are you cooking up with him now, darling? Your last cooperative venture wasn’t very comfortable for me.”

I grinned. “You’re a suspicious Communist bitch,” I said, “and a sadistic one. If you wouldn’t go around killing people unnecessarily, I wouldn’t have to plead with other people to intercede with the police. Or would you rather have us dodging cops clear to Scotland?”

She glanced at me sharply at this mention of our destination, and was silent. I found a phone and parked beside it. As I closed myself into the booth, I saw that the Jaguar had stopped to wait a block behind us, lights out. I decided they were just a little too conspicuous and obvious to be true. They were being clever. Everybody in London was being clever except me, and it was about time I started.

I managed to figure out the combination of the instrument in front of me—some of those British pay phones have more pushbuttons than an old Chrysler transmission—and I got a secretary on the line, identified myself by name, and asked for Les, as I had done once before that day. This time my request got me a funny little pause, as if I’d said something unexpected. After a bit, a male voice I did not recognize spoke in my ear.

“This is Charles Stark,” it said. I remembered being told by Les that a Colonel Stark was his current boss. The voice went on: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, making a face at Vadya, who was watching me from the car. Obviously, I’d run into a man who went by the book, silly passwords and all. The Anglo-American identification routine thought up by some brilliant bureaucrat required me to answer the passage from the Declaration of Independence with one from the Magna Carta, and I gave the Colonel a good one: “No taxes, except the customary ones, shall be levied except with the consent of a council of prelates and greater barons.”

“Very good, Mr. Helm. Do I understand that you were asking for Crowe-Barham?”

“That’s correct, sir.” It never hurts to sir them when they have pompous voices and military titles. “Why, is something wrong, sir?”

“We hope not, Mr. Helm,” said Colonel Stark heavily. “However, Crowe-Barham did not report in earlier this evening as his schedule required. He has not yet been heard from. When last seen, he was leaving Claridge’s in your company and that of a certain lady, if I may misuse the word slightly…”

After I’d finished with the Colonel, I made a quick call to our local relay man, asking him to pass the latest developments on to Washington, along with a couple of questions to which I needed answers. When I got back into the roadster, Vadya was powdering her nose again, keeping an eye on the sedan up the block. She glanced at me rather suspiciously, but asked no questions. That’s one thing to be said for dealing with a professional, even one whose motives are undependable and whose politics are deplorable: at least you avoid the yak-yak you’d get from an inquisitive amateur. Vadya started to close the purse as I sent us away.

“Keep it open,” I said. “I’m going to try to lose them. Keep me posted.”

“Yes, of course.” She raised the mirror again. “They just turned on their lights. They are following, about a block behind.”

“What did you do with Crowe-Barham?” I asked.

She did not take her eyes from the little mirror. “But really, darling! What dreadful crime have I committed now? Is he missing?”

“Apparently. I was just talking with his boss, a Colonel Stark, who thinks you’re no lady.”

She laughed. “How ungenerous of the Colonel. But am I then to be held responsible for every person dead and missing in the city of London tonight?… They made that turn. They are still behind us. Two blocks behind now. Drive a little faster. Did Colonel Stark accuse me of having made away with his aristocratic operative?”

“He kind of accused both of us. Anyway, he ordered us to report to his office for questioning, immediately.”

She glanced at me. “You do not seem to be rushing in that direction, darling. Not unless they have changed their place of business since I was last informed.”

“I take my orders from elsewhere,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’re eager to have a chat with the guy, either.”

“Well, not exactly. What makes him think we have harmed poor Sir Leslie?”

“Les is several hours overdue. And he was last seen with us, leaving Claridge’s. However, you and I both know he was okay an hour later when he dropped me off. And according to Stark, Les did not take you back to the hotel; at least neither you nor the car were seen there again. And it’s not a car anybody’s likely to overlook. Rolls-Royces aren’t that common, even in London.”

Vadya said calmly, “I think you lost them on that turn… Naturally we were not seen to return to Claridge’s. Was I to walk in the front door of that so snooty hotel, and through that so snooty lobby, wrapped in a too-big man’s coat, with my hair hanging in my eyes and my stockings sagging around my ankles? I had Sir Leslie let me out half a block away, and I slipped into the building by… well, never mind. I may want to use that entrance again some time.” She closed her purse. “Yes, they missed us. They just went straight on by the intersection back there. Make a right turn ahead, and then perhaps a left, and I do not think we will see them again. Where would I have got this dress, if I had not been back to my room? Tell Stark to look in 443 and he will find your coat on the bed.”

“Sure,” I said. “Now break out a map of London, there’s one on that shelf under the dash, and tell me how to hit the main highway north.”

I heard paper rustle as I drove. Her voice came again: “You said the man we just left dead in that room was following the Rolls-Royce when you saw him earlier. Perhaps this man helped to trap Sir Leslie after I left him.”

“Or before you left him,” I said.

“What do you mean by that?” she demanded.

I said, “You were in the back seat, and I’d given you back your little gun, remember? Perhaps you held up Les, and turned him over to the driver of the Austin and his unidentified pal, after which your now-dead friend drove you back to the hotel so you could change, while he went on to poison Nancy Glenmore for you. And then you killed him so he couldn’t betray you to me.”

She laughed easily. “Yes, I am a terrible person, darling. Will you kill me now for my crimes, or will you wait until we reach Scotland? And in the meantime can you tell me the name of this park on our right?… Ah, there is a sign. Now I see where we are. Just keep straight on until you come to a great boulevard, and turn right.” She glanced at me. “Well, Matthew? Do I live or die?”

I grinned. “I think that’s a very interesting theory I just proposed. I’m quite proud of it. It might even be true. If I find it is, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, just get your hand away from that gun in your brassiere, please, and let me concentrate on my driving.”

She laughed again. I felt her relax beside me. After a little, she glanced over her shoulder and said in a different tone, “For a pair of foreigners in a very small car, we certainly made it look easy to lose three local operatives in a fast and powerful automobile, did we not? One might almost think we were supposed to lose them.”

“You don’t miss anything, do you?” I said. “I think Colonel Stark is being very clever. I don’t think he expected us to call him at all; certainly he didn’t expect us to turn ourselves in just because we were asked. I think that when Les turned up missing after last being seen with us, Stark had my car located and a beeper planted in it—you know, one of those dinguses that send out a signal to an electronic receiver. Les said his boss was fond of fancy equipment. The Jag was just for show. We were supposed to see it, and lose it, and think ourselves in the clear. Now Stark and his boys can settle down to track us on their radar screens at a safe distance.”

“And what do you suggest we do about it?”

“Do?” I said. “Don’t be silly. We do nothing. As long as Stark thinks we’re leading him in a profitable direction, he’ll make sure we have a clear track. We won’t have to worry about being picked up by the police, whether for murder or speeding. Sorry we couldn’t stop for your things, but I’ll buy you a toothbrush in the morning.”