The Revengers Page 8

  “Come in, Mr. Helm,” she said, stepping back. “I know you, of course. I mean, I know about you.”

  The room was larger than the one to which I’d been assigned. A double bed protruded from the wall to the left. The wall to the right had two doors, the nearer one of which stood open to reveal a bathroom. The farther door was closed. A table and a couple of chairs stood in front of the windows straight ahead. A rather fancy camera bag, equipped with a heavy strap with a rubber shoulder pad, held the place of honor on the table, with a woman’s purse playing second fiddle. I closed the hall door behind me and set down the attache case.

  “Yes, you know all about me, I gather,” I said as I straightened up with what I hoped was a friendly and reassuring grin. “And you’re not a damned bit reticent about what you know, I’m told.”

  “Is that what you’re here about, Mr. Helm?” She was still studying me cautiously. “You mentioned Bob Devine; was that just to get me to open the door for you?”

  I shook my head. “I’m a friend of Martha’s, as you undoubtedly know, among all the other things you know about me. I was just out there to see her. I thought you’d be interested in hearing about her husband’s death.”

  “I’ve already heard about it, thanks,” Eleanor Brand said a little defiantly. “Am I to under stand that you consider me to blame for it?”

  “Martha certainly did at first,” I said.

  She drew a long breath, and her face was troubled. “Yes, I know. I’m very sorry about that. I’m afraid Martha simply doesn’t understand that professional considerations must always take precedence over personal relationships.”

  I grinned at her. “A fancy way of saying that you’d doublecross your own mother for a scoop, not to mention a friend who trusted you.”

  She’d gone a little pale; she obviously found the conversation difficult, as she was meant to. She raised her head in a nice haughty way that reminded me strangely—since they were such totally different women—of Harriet Robinson, and said, “I don’t really think you’re in a position to criticize, Mr. Helm. Have you never sacrificed your personal feelings to your ... your professional work?” When I didn’t answer at once she said, “Anyway, scoop is a pretty corny and obsolete word.”

  I said, “As I told you, Martha did blame you, at first. However, I did a little detective work when I got out there. I determined that your magazine piece had nothing whatever to do with Bob’s death. He’d been playing around, as you know, and a jealous husband took a shotgun to him. So your conscience is quite clear, Miss Brand. I thought you’d like to know.”

  She looked at me for a moment. I saw that her eyes had become oddly shiny; and she turned abruptly and walked to the window and stood looking out. After a little, I went over to stand behind her. When she spoke, her voice was almost inaudible.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “About Bob Devine? He was a good man, a brave man, a tough and loyal partner where masculine relationships were concerned; but he always had a wandering eye. Some men can’t help being like that.”

  “No,” she said, “that wasn’t what I meant. It hasn’t been . . . very nice, thinking that I might be responsible for his death even though I didn’t like him very much; I thought Martha was throwing herself away on a man like that. But I certainly didn’t want him killed because of something I’d written about him, and I don’t understand why you should take the trouble to come all this way to ... to let me off the hook.”

  ‘'You mean,” I said, “because you’re a nosy writer-lady who’s written a nasty piece about me, too; so why didn’t I simply let you stew in your own guilt even if it was mistaken guilt?”

  She turned slowly to face me, the light behind her. Her shadowy mouth spoke to me quietly, “You’re a surprising man, but of course I learned that when I was researching you. But that’s what you’re deliberately working at right now, isn’t it? Surprising me and keeping me off balance?” There was a little pause and I reminded myself that, on the record, this was one of the least stupid ladies I was likely to meet in a long time. She went on in the same gentle voice, “What do you want from me, Mr. Helm? What are you hoping to gain by coming here? The article about you, the second in my series, will be published very shortly, you know that.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Well, then, if you know anything about publishing, and I know you do, you know it’s already too late for them to make any changes, let alone drop the piece completely. Even if I should ask. Even if you could persuade me to ask, or coerce me into asking. All you can do now to stop the truth about you from being read by everyone, all your hush-hush organization can do, is confiscate and destroy that whole issue of the magazine, if you have that much power and influence.”

  I said, aghast, “My God, lady! What do you think we live in, a police state or something? We wouldn’t dream of fracturing the first Amendment or challenging the power of the press. Really, Miss Brand, what an outlandish idea! You must have some other government in mind, and some other organization, like maybe the KGB.” I jerked my head toward the door nearby that, presumably, led into the adjoining room. “And talking about spies and spooks and snoops, don’t you think it’s about time to invite Junior to join the party? He must be getting lonely in there all by himself, eavesdropping on the grownups having fun next door.”

  She hesitated briefly, and turned her head. “All right, Warren,” she said.

  The door opened and the man I’d already had described to me came in. He was blond, all right, curly blond, and big, almost as tall as I and considerably wider. He had a big, tanned, blue-eyed, boyish face and he was wearing a blue-checked gingham sports shirt—or whatever chemical concoction passes for gingham these days—very snug white slacks, and white moccasin-type shoes of roughed-out leather, very sporty. He was carrying a pistol built around the same size hole as my recently acquired S and W but somewhat more substantial, with a four-inch barrel, manufactured by the competing firm of Colt Firearms, Inc. You can call it a handgun if you like, but to me that’s still an old in-term used only by real shooters under some circumstances; otherwise by phonies trying to sound knowledgeable about guns who don’t really know much about guns. To me they’re all pistols. If the magazine, or cylinder, goes round and round it’s a revolving pistol—the original old-time term—or revolver; if the magazine works up and down it’s an automatic pistol or automatic.

  Anyway, he had a gun. I watched him come, and stop a judicious distance away. The gun changed everything as it always does. It was too bad. She’d seemed like a fairly reasonable girl and for a little I’d hoped to be able to present my proposition in a civilized manner and persuade her to go along with it I made a final try.

  “Ask him to put it away, Miss Brand.”

  “Warren—”

  The blond man shook his head quickly, and aimed his weapon at me. “Not until I’ve made sure he isn’t armed, Elly. Don’t interfere. You asked me to come along for protection; now let me do it my way, please.” He jerked the gun upward. “Up with the hands, you. Over against the wall so I can check you out.”

  I drew a long breath. “I’m going to reach into my inside coat pocket very slowly,” I said. “I’m going to take out a small leather folder, the contents of which identify me as an agent of the United States Government. You are welcome to shoot any time. Fire away.”

  Moving very deliberately, I brought out the fancy ID we’re given to use if it becomes necessary to impress some law-enforcement officials we happen to encounter, and maybe an occasional civilian as well. I flipped it open, laid it on the table by the window and gave it a little shove so it slid toward him. He glanced at it and shook his head.

  “That means nothing,” he said. “We know what you people really are, government or no government. We know what you’re really here for, don’t we, Elly? We’ve been kind of expecting you. That’s why I came along, to protect her, not just to take pictures for her. Up with them, I said!”

  He did some more p
istol-waving. I was happy it was a double-action revolver he was holding, and that the hammer was down. Cocked, the weapon would already have fixed, the sloppy way he was handling it. He could still fire it by means of the self-cocking mechanism, using a long, strong pull on the trigger, but he would have to mean it.

  I was suddenly very tired of Mr. Warren Peterson and his menacing, careless weapon; Mr. Peterson who’d never learned the first lesson of practical pistolry, to wit, that you never point one at anything or anybody you don’t fully intend to shoot right now. I was even getting weary enough of him to do something very foolish about him.

  I told him softly, “Listen carefully. I am now going to walk right up to that thing you’re waving at me, amigo. Pull the trigger any time you feel like it. Please note that my hands are quite empty. I am not carrying a gun. If you want to shoot an unarmed man, be my guest.”

  “Mr. Helm—” That was Eleanor Brand. Her voice was strained.

  “Too late, Miss Brand,” I said without looking her way. “You can always remember that I asked you nicely to stop this; and that I have displayed no weapons whatever; and no hostility, either.”

  “Warren, please—”

  But I was already in motion and Warren Peterson was watching me approach and trying to make up his mind; he paid her no attention. His face was pale and his knuckles were white, holding the gun; except those of the trigger finger, which did not move. Then I was there. The muzzle rested against my chest. I reached up very slowly and carefully. I grasped the barrel and guided it gently to a point on my shirt slightly left of center.

  “Any time, friend,” I said, looking into his pale, uncertain face. “You’re right on target; you can’t miss. Fire at will . . . no? Okay, now I'm going to back away from you very slowly, holding your gun barrel firmly against me, just like this. You have a choice. You can continue to hang on, in which case we’ll have a nice little tug of war and the gun will fire and you’ll have a loud noise and a bloody dead man to your credit. Or you can simply let go.” I watched his uneasy blue eyes, “Ready? Here I go. Backing away now. Make up your cottonpicking mind.”

  It really was no contest. I should have been ashamed of myself. He was one of the no-kill kids produced by the current spate of anti-firearms propaganda; I’d sensed it and taken advantage of it. Some of them can’t even bring themselves to shoot in combat when they’re being shot at. Morally speaking the attitude was to his credit, I suppose; but what the hell was he doing, then, with a gun? But of course he’d never thought it out; they never do. It had never really occurred to him, when he picked up the weapon, that somebody might actually—Heaven forbid!— make him shoot it. To him it had only been a symbol of power, a magic scepter with which a lady was to be protected, not a real weapon capable of producing noise and blood. After a moment of agonizing hesitation—agonizing for both of us—he opened his hand reluctantly and the revolver was mine.

  I reversed it, hit the latch, swung out the cylinder, and shook the cartridges out onto the carpet. I closed the cylinder and took the weapon by the barrel once more, and held it out to him as if to return it. When he reached for it instinctively, quite bewildered now, I stepped in fast and clubbed him with the gun butt—and the hardest thing I’ve done in my life was to hold back just enough. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything as badly as I wanted to smash the big stupid bastard’s skull and then slug him a second time with all my strength just for personal satisfaction, as he went down. But I managed to hold back, and I stepped back to let him fall without hitting him again; but the frustrated desire was probably still on my face as I turned.

  Anyway, Eleanor Brand looked suddenly startled by whatever sinister expression it was she saw, or maybe it was the sight of her amateur bodyguard lying limp on the floor. She tried to run for the door. Dropping the empty revolver, I caught her in three steps. I got the right grip and applied the right pressure at the right point, so that she sighed and went slack in my arms. I carried her to the big bed and dropped her there, not too gently. I got out the drug kit, pulled up her rumpled skirt a little farther and gave her a short dose of unconsciousness in the thigh, right through her nice sheer panty hose. Then I went back to the unconscious man on the floor and gave him the full four-hour prescription in the arm; and he was damned lucky I didn’t use the stuff out of one of the other vials in the kit, the effects of which are permanent.

  I didn’t start to shake until they were both taken care of. Iron Man Helm.

  Chapter 8

  There had been enough in the needle I’d given Eleanor Brand to keep her under while I spread the materials from the attache case on the window table—after setting aside the camera bag and purse—and glanced through them to see just what I’d been handed and how it all hung together, if it did. I was aware of her on the bed, of course, and of the fact—facts—that her hair had gotten badly disordered, her suit skirt wasn’t quite where it should be; and that those all-in-one nylon nether garments aren’t quite as visually impenetrable as they might be. However, having found adequate sexual release with a considerably more spectacular lady quite recently, I wasn’t significantly aroused by this minor immodesty involving a young woman who wasn’t exactly a sexpot. I decided that, even moderately disheveled as she was, lying there, she would prefer not to have a strange male person adjusting her clothes on a phony pretense of tender gentlemanly solicitude.

  The man on the floor didn’t bother me a bit. I could hear him breathing, apparently quite normally, but if his brains started leaking out his ears, it was just too damned bad. There would hardly be enough of them to damage the carpet; and he’d never miss them anyway since he’d made no use of them when he had them.

  I was aware when she woke up. I was pleased by her first move as she very, very cautiously started working one foot around to where she could reach it and slip off her high-heeled shoe, the only weapon readily available to her. She obviously intended—second move—to leap out of bed and clobber the overconfident creep from behind as he sat at the table reading, sadly underestimating Ms. Eleanor Brand. In this topsy-turvy world where policemen actually discourage law-abiding citizens from resisting or obstructing criminals as they go their illegal ways, where helpless hostages have even been known to fall abjectly in love with their terrorist captors, I found her healthy, hostile reaction quite refreshing.

  “You’ll never make it, Elly,” I said, without turning my head.

  I heard her sigh softly and relax and lie back on the bed. After a while she asked, “Warren. Is he all right?”

  She was doing very well. After first exploring the possibility of immediate and effective action, just as she should have, she’d next demonstrated her concern, commendably, for her assistant or associate or lover or whatever the guy was to her.

  “Is it important?” I asked.

  There was a little pause, as if I'd shocked her. “He’s a human being, Mr. Helm.”

  I shook my head. “The world is made up of friends and enemies, Elly. Friends are human. Enemies aren’t. I’m a very friendly guy, normally. I love everybody until I’m given a reason not to. I might even have managed to love that muscle-bound creep, with an effort; but he saved me from straining my good nature to the limit by pointing a gun at me and making himself an enemy—not human. Open season. His choice, not mine.”

  “That’s a terrible way to think!”

  I kept on talking rather pedantically to give her time to get herself fully oriented after her short drugged sleep, “A colleague of mine once pointed out that in this new over-populated world we’re eventually going to have to overhaul all our old humanitarian standards. We can’t afford to preserve everybody any longer. There’s simply not that much room. We’ve got to make this crowded world a pleasant place for those who are willing to behave in a reasonable and considerate manner toward each other by promptly disposing of those who aren’t, one way or another. I do not consider pointing a gun at me reasonable and considerate behavior. I feel morally entitled—maybe even moral
ly obliged—to improve the world, at least my part of it, by eliminating the man who does it, since he’s made it quite clear that he’s willing to eliminate me.”

  “Warren wasn’t really . . . I mean, he’d never have pulled that trigger, you know that.”

  “If he’s not going to shoot it, what the hell is he doing with a gun in the first place? But in answer to your question, respiration seems to be normal. He should wake up in three hours or so.” I waited. It was time for her to try to learn what I was planning for her; but she was even better than I’d thought. She’d thought it all through, and she’d decided not to demean herself by asking frightened questions that would obviously be answered in the normal course of events. She could wait and see. Okay. A bright and proud and gutsy little girl; and one it would be a pleasure to keep alive, if I could persuade her to let me. I said, “COLREGS. Rule 18-a-iv. Does it mean anything to you?”

  She hesitated briefly, obviously tempted to ask if I’d slipped a cog or something; but she contented herself with a minimum answer, “No.”

  “Let me read you the pertinent section. Page 20, Coast Guard Publication CG-169, of May 1, 1977. Rule 18, responsibilities between vessels. Except where Rules 9, 10, and 13 otherwise require: a) A power-driven vessel underway shall keep out of the way of: (i) a vessel not under command; (ii) a vessel restricted in her ability to maneuver; (iii) a vessel engaged in fishing; (iv) a sailing vessel. Does that cast any light on the subject?”

  “I don’t even know what the subject is,” she said. “I think you’re crazy. What’s this all about?”

  I said, “I’ve been doing a little of your work for you, at least what I think is your current work. Somebody I asked, somebody fairly knowledgeable, considered this rule relevant and important. You can see no connection between this and anything you’re doing?”