The Infiltrators (13 page)

I shook my head. “She was for a little, whatever you want to call it, but she went back to her career and her pompous prick of a husband. A very nice, very conscientious lady with a strong sense of duty. Shall we catalogue my love life some other time when we have a month or two to spare?”

Madeleine laughed softly. “I’m sorry, it’s really none of my business. Just a nosy bitch.”

I said, “Locating the mine will be your first order of business when we get to Santa Fe. Well, after you’ve settled your private affairs with your dad’s lawyer. Assuming that you’re still willing to work along with us on this, of course.”

She said, “What else would I be doing, getting a job scrubbing floors somewhere?” The old bitterness was back in her voice as she went on harshly: “‘Expert scrubwoman seeks new position. University graduate and former member of the bar. Eight years of experience. Concrete prison floors our specialty. Last place of employment will supply glowing references.’” She shook her head abruptly. “Sorry. It keeps sneaking up on me. Yes, Mr. Helm, I will be happy to cooperate with your organization. All you have to do is keep me alive, although sometimes I wonder if I’m worth the trouble to you. Or to me.”

I grinned at her. “Let’s make a deal, Mrs. Ellershaw. I’ll skip the phony compliments if you skip the phony despair. You don’t have to work so hard for my sympathy. I’m a most sympathetic fellow.”

There was a little silence. Then she smiled reluctantly. “Ouch! I’ll consider myself spanked. I guess things really aren’t all that desperate, are they? I’ve still got four limbs and a head, and a nice man to drive me around and buy me clothes and feed me, at least for the time being… All right. I’ll make a thorough search of the records.”

“It’s more in your line than mine; I wouldn’t know where to start looking,” I said. “Every mining property within fifty miles of Santa Fe, and the name of the current owner—correction, the owner as of nine years ago. These are careful people; they wouldn’t have left it to chance. They had it all figured out how they were going to keep that bright and inquisitive young lady attorney, Mrs. Ellershaw, from nosing around afterwards; and they must have laid their plans for disposing of her scientific-genius husband with equal care. They’d have had a suitable place to take him, a good deep shaft where he’d never be found, and where they wouldn’t be spotted driving in and out.”

Madeleine swallowed. “I think it’s safe to assume that the property was actually owned by one of… of them, don’t you? I mean, you’d hardly go up to a friend or acquaintance and ask for the key to Starlight Number Three, or whatever, because you’d like to drop a dead body down it next Wednesday. But I also think we can assume that the man who had the property then probably has it now. He wouldn’t have sold it complete with an incriminating”—she stopped, and swallowed again, and forced herself to go on—“an incriminating s-skeleton for the new owner to find. So I’ll concentrate on the properties that have been in the same hands for that many years.”

It was kind of exciting to see the fine lawyer-mind beginning to function again in the once fine woman-body she’d also begun to take some pride in again after the years of neglect.

I said, “Then we’ll check your list against the names of everybody we turn up even remotely connected with the case. If the same name turns up on both lists, bingo.”

“Matt.”

I glanced at her. “Problem?”

She spoke wryly: “If I’d ever got up in court with a line of deduction as shaky as this—based on the dream of an exhausted and frightened girl, for heaven’s sake!—I’d have been laughed out of my profession.”

I said, “Lady, when you got up in court with plausible evidence and sensible logic you were drummed out of your profession and thrown into the can for a good many years, remember?”

She winced. “Well, it’s a point, I guess. What other wild flights of fancy do you want us to follow?”

“We haven’t finished with your husband,” I told her. “We’ve agreed to operate on the assumption that Roy Ellershaw was murdered, but his death doesn’t necessarily prove… I mean, thieves have fallen out before. He could have been silenced because he was involved with our mysterious villains in something big and dangerous, rather than because he wasn’t. We’re working from your instincts, so let’s have your instinctive verdict. Roy Ellershaw, guilty or innocent?”

“I’ve told you! Innocent!”

“But innocent of what? From what you’ve said, I gather that there actually was a bank box stuffed full of fat, mysterious envelopes full of mysterious papers. Put there by you. Given to you by him. Your husband. In a disturbed state of mind, you said. So just how innocent was he?” When she didn’t answer immediately, I said, “Think hard. Would the Roy Ellershaw you loved and married have stolen important classified scientific documents entrusted to his care, for any reason? Is there
any
way he could have rationalized such an act to himself, being the man he was?”

She hesitated. “But the papers
were
there, Matt! We’ve got to face—”

“We don’t got to face nothing, baby. If we don’t believe it, if we find it inconceivable, it just ain’t so. Give me an answer.”

“The answer is no!” she said with sudden vehemence. “No, no, no!”

“And having stolen them, whether for idealistic or mercenary purposes, could this man who loved you possibly have given them to you to hide for him, putting you into terrible danger—actually sending you to prison and ruining your career and life as it turned out? You’ve already answered that, I think, but say it again.”

“No!” she breathed. “Oh, God, no! That’s the incomprehensible thing, the horrible thing! It happened—it must have happened—but it couldn’t have happened. It didn’t make any sense at all. It wasn’t Roy at all, he just
couldn’t
have done it, any of it! But—”

I said harshly, “You just won’t play the goddamned game, Ellershaw. Never mind the lousy buts. He couldn’t have done it so he didn’t do it. We go on from there: he didn’t do what he was accused of. He didn’t do what you thought he’d done even though it almost killed you to think so. So just what the hell
did
Dr. Roy Ellershaw do during that time you sensed he was seriously troubled about something? Let’s take it in two pieces. First, what did he do? Second, why did he leave you, his beloved wife, stuck with it?”

“But if he didn’t steal anything—”

I shook my head irritably. “Who says he didn’t steal anything? Nobody said anything like that, lawyer girl. Keep your eye on the ball. What was it we really said? It wasn’t that at all. Sure he could have grabbed something if he thought it really needed grabbing. We merely agreed that he was incapable of stealing secret scientific documents for which he was responsible. So obviously what he stole, and had you put away for him, wasn’t scientific documents and he wasn’t responsible for them.”

There was a little silence. Madeleine shook her head in a bewildered way and said, “But several
CADRE
scientists testified at my trial…” She stopped, watching my face carefully. “Matt, are you trying to say that what Roy gave me to put in the bank, and what I did put there, wasn’t the material that figured in court? But that’s crazy!”

I shrugged. “Crazy or not, that’s where our logic leads us. And it explains a great many things, doesn’t it? Did you identify the stuff yourself? Could you identify it?”

She shook her head again. “As I said on the witness stand, I never really examined the materials Roy gave me. The envelopes looked the same. I had to admit that. But they were sealed, and I never looked inside. I told them that, too, but of course they didn’t believe me.” She licked her lips. “You mean… you mean I went to p-prison for helping to steal something I never really touched, something Roy never touched? You mean somebody took away the innocent papers Roy gave me to store for him and substituted the incriminating material on the strength of which I was convicted and sentenced? My God, that possibility never occurred to us!”

I said, “I told you you’d taken too much for granted. Of course, it’s just a theory so far, but it fits pretty well, doesn’t it? And of course we don’t really know how innocent the original box contents were. Clearly they were dangerous to somebody, or that somebody wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to get them back and kill or discredit anyone connected with taking them. That’s why you were pressed so hard to confess, of course. As long as you remained a respected and respectable member of the community you were a threat, but once you’d admitted to being a lousy sneaking spy, they didn’t really care whether you were locked up or walking around on parole or probation or whatever. Your word would have been worthless, just the shrill self-serving yapping of a confessed criminal.” I frowned. “The stuff that was used against you, I suppose it was properly identified.”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “Well, within the limits imposed by security. Only the envelopes were displayed in court, but the contents were described in general terms, by
CADRE
scientists having the proper impressive clearance, as coming from Roy’s laboratory. It was all research data referring to the new LS-system that was being developed at the time. We were told that LS stood for Laser Shield. When perfected, the system was supposed to make us all safe from enemy missiles, very sci-fi. I didn’t understand it, and I doubt that the jury did. All we understood was that it was terribly important to the safety of the country, and that anybody who’d let the Russians have it, and perhaps learn how to penetrate it, was a wicked traitor to America.” She shook her head quickly. “Legally speaking, I shouldn’t use the word traitor, although of course that’s what everybody was thinking. But in law treason is a very specific crime that’s very hard to prove. It requires two witnesses, among other things. They never tried to pin it on me, officially; they were satisfied with the lesser charges. But of course the implication was always there.”

I nodded. “But the invention involved was definitely a defensive weapon? It wasn’t anything that could possibly have tortured your husband’s conscience, as I suggested earlier?”

“That’s right.”

I said, “So there must have been a switch. Dr. Ellershaw got something and gave it to you for safekeeping, we still don’t know what or why. And something altogether different turned up in the hands of the prosecution to convict you.”

“But how could—”

“For heaven’s sake, Ellershaw!” I said irritably. “You’ve got a mind, why won’t you use it? What investigating officer probably opened that safe-deposit box and what do we know about him? The likeliest candidate is your friend Bennett, the fastest slap in the West, isn’t it? One of the finest specimens of negative integrity around. Either he got those envelopes in the normal course of his investigation and looked inside and saw how he could cash in on them if he could only arrange a convincing substitution, or he’d been bought in advance and told what to look for and what to do about it if he found it. Probably the latter; the people we’re dealing with obviously don’t leave things to chance. But it’s no wonder Bennett’s nervous about having you loose again, knowing how he framed you. He’d sleep much better now if he could have tormented you into running yesterday, and put an ‘accidental’ bullet into the back of your head.”

Madeleine shivered a little. “But what was in the box originally, Matt?”

I shook my head and said, “We can’t even guess, yet, what it was your husband stumbled on. All we know is that it made him some extremely dangerous enemies. Ask yourself how a dim bulb like Bennett ever got the job of Director of the Office of Federal Security, not to mention the political backing to make that outfit as big as it has become. Obviously, Bennett took his payoff in prestige and power—but of course whoever’s behind him probably had very good reasons for setting up a powerful law-enforcement agency run by an ambitious but not very bright man who’d jump obediently at the crack of the whip. And if they were that strong, whoever they are, providing Bennett with the top-secret pieces of paper he needed to destroy you wasn’t very difficult for them.”

Madeleine licked her lip. “It’s… kind of scary, isn’t it? People powerful enough to buy an agent of the OFS with promises and keep those promises. People ruthless enough to commit murder, and clever and influential enough to get away with it. People influential enough to rush a criminal case to trial and get somebody railroaded into the worst federal pen in the country on… on less than convincing evidence. And finally, people with access to secret materials in a high-security installation… It seems to have been, well, quite a can of worms that Roy opened up, somehow. So they kidnaped him—”

I interrupted: “My guess is that Bennett himself called your husband out of the house, claiming official OFS business of some kind, perhaps connected with the stuff in your bank box, the original material we still don’t know about. It seems very probable that Dr. Ellershaw had actually got in touch with Bennett quietly, knowing him through his security duties and wanting to report those dangerous discoveries, whatever they were, to somebody official as soon as possible. Your ivory-tower husband would probably have been naive enough to take for granted that, since Bennett was a government man, he could be trusted. Just as he apparently took for granted that if something was locked up in a safe-deposit box, it was safe. And it’s very likely that Bennett learned from your husband that he hadn’t confided in you at all; that you didn’t know what was in those sealed envelopes you’d put away for him in the box you’d hired for him.”

Madeleine nodded. “You’re probably right. That must be why they didn’t feel compelled to have me killed, too. As I said before, both of us dying or disappearing at once would have attracted too much attention, anyway. They were probably very happy to know I wasn’t much of a threat. I could just be got out of the way with a phony espionage charge to keep me from making a nuisance of myself. That also made Roy’s disappearance seem logical—it gave him a motive for vanishing, along with Bella, his Communist contact.” She hesitated. “Do you think Bella was, well, planted on us deliberately?”