Matt Helm--The Interlopers

by Donald Hamilton

  I reached Francois Lake in the afternoon with plenty of time to spare, and found the lodge at which I was supposed to stay without any difficulty. It was some miles off the main highway on a small dirt road, but there were plenty of signs to point the way. The place, when I got there, consisted of a good-sized main building, half a dozen log cabins overlooking the outlet of the lake, and a dock with some boats. I checked in, rented one of the boats, and went fishing.

  There was just one hitch, when Hank refused to enter the boat. Apparently, he’d never ridden in one, and none of Mr. Smith’s canine experts had taken the trouble to check this aspect of his education. But he was a good dog, and I managed to coax him aboard, hoping that nobody was watching the performance, at least nobody who counted, like Stottman or the local contact I was to meet. Grant Nystrom’s rig sported a trailer hitch, and I’d been told that he’d used it for towing some kind of fishing boat, but that we didn’t have to worry about it since he hadn’t brought it along on this jaunt. But if Nystrom had owned a boat, his dog had probably been a seasoned sailor. My dog was making it quite clear that he wasn’t.

  He stood on the middle seat, very tense, ready to unload in a hurry if this crazy, unstable, waterborne vehicle should sink or explode. I talked to him reassuringly while I shoved off and got the motor started. He almost went over the side when the outboard fired; but gradually, as we swung out of the river and into the lake, he relaxed a bit and sat down to enjoy—or at least endure—the ride. I snapped some kind of a flashy lure to the end of my line, tossed it overboard, and settled down to tow it around the lake in a slow and purposeful manner, as if I really expected it to catch a fish.

  I trolled down the shore away from the lodge for half an hour, then cut across to the south side of the lake and came back, passing opposite the outlet and the lodge. I continued in that direction for another half hour, and turned back again, having seen no fish and very few fishermen. Reaching the spot opposite the lodge once more, I glanced at my watch and found that the time was a few minutes before six. I’d hit it about right, just a little early.

  I reeled in my well-traveled lure, exchanged it for a gaudy red-and-white spoon, and made a show of casting for a while. No fish were intrigued by this performance, either, which was just as well, since I wouldn’t have had time, now, to mess with one if I had managed to hook him. At a quarter past six, I cranked in my line once more, started up the motor, and headed straight across the lake toward the lodge I could see on the distant shore.

  It was a big lake. East and west it ran, according to my road map, for better than fifty miles; but even its narrow north-and-south dimension was impressive to a landlubber brought up in the relatively waterless areas of southwestern U.S.A. I was glad that the day was clear and calm, and that the rented motor was running strongly. I wouldn’t have wanted to have weather trouble on a body of water that size, or engine trouble either.

  “You and me both, pup,” I said, as Hank shifted position nervously. “Take it easy. We’ll be back on terra firma pretty soon.”

  I saw my contact coming. Another boat was approaching from the left—excuse me, from port—running down the lake on a course that would intersect mine about a quarter of a mile ahead. It was another open fishing boat, pretty much like my rental job, but slightly larger and with a somewhat bigger kicker hung on the stem. When we were within about thirty yards of each other, the other man cut his motor and I did the same. The boats ran on silently, losing speed until they lay still in the water, almost side by side.

  I saw that my contact was a big, red-faced, city-fisherman type with sunglasses. He was wearing a straw hat that had a number of glittering lures hooked to the band. A fancy tackle box was open on the seat beside him. I was aware of his eyes studying me and my dog appraisingly from behind the dark lenses. The way the luck had been running on this job, I reflected grimly, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to discover that this man had gone to high school with the real Nystrom, or raised the real Prince Hannibal from a pup.

  But if he had any doubts about our authenticity, he didn’t show it. He just went smoothly into the act that had been prepared for us.

  “Any luck?” he called.

  “Not even a strike,” I said, reading off the lines I had memorized in San Francisco. “How about you?”

  He shook his head. “I guess they’re just not biting.” He plunged into the identification routine: “Isn’t that a Labrador retriever? He’s a beauty. What’s his name?”

  “Yes, he’s a Lab,” I said. “His name is Hank.”

  “No, I mean his full name. He’s pedigreed, isn’t he?”

  These were the exact words Stottman should have used to me in the pet clinic in Pasco, only he hadn’t got a chance to. They were almost the words Pat Bellman had used to me earlier the same day. I wondered if, knowing the required gibberish, she had perhaps paraphrased it deliberately to confuse me. But anyway, it was nice to have a contact proceed strictly according to plan, for a change.

  I said, “His registered name is Avon’s Prince Hannibal of Holgate.” That took care of the identification part of the dialogue, and I went on casually, “Say, you don’t happen to have a jug of water or something. I forgot to bring anything to drink and I’m parched.”

  “I’ve got some beer,” he said. “Here, have one… No, no, it’s all right, I’ve got plenty more in the cooler. Well, I’m going to try that cove over there. Good luck.”

  “Same to you,” I said. “Thanks for the beer.”

  The red-faced man yanked his motor into life once more. I pulled the cap off the beer bottle, and raised the bottle in a salute, which he answered with a wave of his hand. I drank deeply, watching him draw away, riding out of my life, I hoped, as rapidly as he’d come into it. What happened to him next was none of my concern. Mr. Smith’s boys would presumably put a tail on him, hoping he’d lead them to other members of the local cell. Or maybe the Canadian authorities would take over. In any case, like Stottman and his partner, this man would be rounded up later, after we’d spotted the rest of Nystrom’s contacts.

  I wondered what the Canadians had worth spying on in this remote part of the north woods, but it wasn’t really any of my business. I drank some beer and it was flat. Well, that figured. You can’t keep capping and recapping a bottle without losing some of the fizz. I set the bottle on the seat, pried the cork liner out of the cap, took out a little tinfoil wafer similar to the one I’d obtained from Stottman, and hid it in the second stud of Hank’s collar. Then I carefully stuck the cork back into the cap, dropped the cap overboard, and watched it sink out of sight to where nobody would ever see that it had been tampered with. The beer I drank, flat or not, and the empty bottle I left in the bilge for the benefit of anybody who might have been watching through binoculars, from the shore.

  When I reached the dock, it was just about dark. The proprietor and his wife were climbing into a big outboard runabout. They said they were heading up the lake to have dinner with some friends, and asked if I minded holding the fort alone. I said I didn’t, and watched them disappear around the point. I whistled for Hank, and started for the cabin, and told him to shut up when he growled softly as we approached the door.

  It was nice of him to warn me, but I’d set a few indicators about the door before I left, and I already knew somebody had been inside and very likely still was.

  13

  I took a chance and let them catch me by surprise. I mean, having no inkling of their presence—well, admitting none—I walked right into the trap, just like any of those handsome, brave, bone-headed movie operatives who are forever strolling casually into dark rooms and getting clobbered by sinister gents hiding behind doors.

  This was another of the housekeeping cabins popular up here, and the room into which I sauntered innocently, dog at heel, was actually the kitchen. To my relief, the guy who stepped out behind me didn’t actually clobber me. Maybe he was afraid of what the dog would do if he used open violence, or maybe he just didn’t l
ike hitting people over the head unnecessarily. Anyway, he merely told me to set down the fishing tackle I was carrying, very carefully, and put my hands up, which I did.

  Then he hit a switch and the lights came on, dispelling the twilight gloom of the place. Nystrom Three appeared in the bedroom doorway, holding a familiar-looking .357 revolver—a mate to the one I was carrying—in a gingerly sort of way.

  “Close the door quick!” he snapped at the man behind me. “Don’t let the dog out!”

  I heard the door being shut, but I didn’t move or turn my head. There are advantages to dealing with amateurs, but there are disadvantages, too: they’re much more likely than pros to blow your head off accidentally. You don’t want to do anything to startle them as long as they’re pointing firearms in your direction, since as a rule they’ve never bothered to learn how much trigger pressure—or how little—it takes to make their guns go boom.

  I stood very still, therefore, while the man behind me reached around to get my .357 from its trick holster. Hank was sitting beside me, looking up and whining softly. He knew something was wrong, but he was a hunting dog. Just as the technical aspects of espionage were out of my line, so the K-9 routines were out of his. Pheasants he could handle, ducks were his meat, but these oddly behaving human beings baffled him. Instinct told him he should be doing something about them, but he’d had no training to tell him what.

  Nystrom Three had stepped into the little kitchen. As his former role required—the role he seemed to have abandoned now—he was a tall, skinny character with whitish hair, probably bleached for the part just like mine. For two men who were supposed to look like the same man, we didn’t look much like each other. At least I hoped I didn’t have that nervous, shifty-eyed, slack-lipped look.

  “Careful!” he snapped, as the other man moved behind me, doing something I couldn’t see. “Don’t take your eye off this guy! Don’t forget, he’s the bastard who stalked Mike Bird and killed him in cold blood: one shot from that hand-cannon at a hundred and fifty yards.”

  That eighty-yard shot was getting longer every day, I reflected wryly; but the attitude of the two men, particularly the one I could see, bothered me. I mean, I had been operating on the assumption that they couldn’t intend anything very drastic here, since I had collected only two of the five little tinfoil wafers Pat Bellman presumably had her eye on. Figuring that they needed me to get the other three, and knew it, I’d let myself be captured to see what kind of deal or arrangement they had in mind. Besides, I had plans for them, too, and this was the kind of discreet, off-the-road place I thought Mac would approve of. But there was a tenseness in the room that didn’t bear out my reassuring theories.

  The man behind me said, “Hell, if you’re scared of the guy, let’s finish him off now and get out of here with what we came for, before somebody comes.”

  I drew a long, cautious breath. Scratch another bright idea. Obviously there was something very wrong with my elaborate reasoning. The boys were playing for keeps.

  “There won’t be anybody,” Nystrom Three said. “The other cabins are empty, and the people running the lodge have gone out for the evening. I heard them talking. And we’re supposed to make this character tell us who he represents and what he’s up to before we get rid of him.

  But first let’s make sure he’s got the stuff we want. Get the collar off the dog.”

  The man behind me laughed shortly. “That’s sixty-seventy pounds of solid black pooch, and it’s got big white teeth. You’re supposed to be our dog expert; you get the collar off.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” the tall man said irritably. “It’s a Labrador; it won’t hurt you. They’re very friendly dogs.”

  “Swell, you prove it. Show me how friendly it is. Take the collar off it.”

  “All right,” Nystrom Three said contemptuously, “all right, if you’re afraid, you watch the man. I’ll handle the dog.”

  He stepped forward quickly and grabbed for Hank’s collar. It was no way to approach a strange dog, gentle or not, particularly one that was already suspicious. The pup dodged, jumping back and to the side; and crouched there warily. The muscular tail slashed from side to side in a very unfriendly fashion. I was a little startled, myself, to see my happy young retriever pup suddenly transformed into a reasonable facsimile of a junior-grade black panther about to spring.

  “Friendly, is he?” the man behind me said softly. “With friends like that, who needs enemies?”

  “Come here, you dumb mutt!” Nystrom Three was getting mad. He made another grab for the pup and got another lightninglike sideways jump for his pains. He took another step forward. Hank, trapped in a corner, showed his teeth in a snarl that, for his age, was really quite impressive. All along his back, the black hair stood on end; and when the tall man reached for him once more, he gave a sharp, savage little bark, and snapped at the outstretched hand warningly, indicating clearly that the next time he wouldn’t miss.

  Nystrom Three jumped back and yanked out the revolver he had put away.

  The man behind me said quickly, “If you shoot, we’ll have to get out of here fast. I thought you wanted to ask this guy some questions.”

  “All right, what’s your suggestion?”

  The unseen man nudged me with his gun. “It’s his dog; let him take the collar off it… Go on, friend. You see how it is. Either you take it off your live dog, or we’ll take it off your dead dog. Make up your mind.”

  I made a show of hesitating, and shrugged resignedly. “All right, all right, don’t hurt the pup. And go easy with that gunbarrel; you’re bruising my kidneys. And I’m going to have to get down on my knees. Your animal-loving friend has got him all worked up. I’ve got to get down to his level to win back his confidence. Okay?”

  “Okay, but don’t try anything.”

  I knelt on the floor. “Hank,” I said, holding out my hand, “Hank, come! Come on, there’s a good dog. Come!”

  The pup didn’t like it. At the moment, the human race held no attraction for him, any part of it. Things were all wrong in this room and he knew it. Even I might have gone wrong while he wasn’t looking. However, in the past week or so, he’d got into the habit of obeying me, and he’d had good training before that. He came.

  When he reached me, I scratched his ears for a moment, speaking to him soothingly and telling him what a good dog he was. Then I unbuckled the black leather collar with the shiny studs. I held it for a moment, then abruptly flicked it across the room, sliding it along the linoleum right ‘through the space between the tall man’s feet.

  “Hank!” I snapped.

  Other hunting dogs may go on the command “fetch,” but a retriever goes on his name. The pup went charging across the room after the collar, a black missile aimed straight at Nystrom Three.

  Another characteristic of amateurs, and one I was counting on, is that while they’re likely to shoot when they shouldn’t, they almost never shoot when they should. The tall man didn’t fire in the second during which he could have stopped the pup. The man behind me didn’t fire either, in the fraction of a second it took me to pivot and cut his legs from under him. Then I had the little knife out of my pocket. I flipped it open one-handed and drove it home, once to disable and a second time to kill.

  Across the room, there was a lot of scratching and several human gasps of fright. When I looked, Nystrom Three was on the floor, apparently sitting on top of the dog collar. He obviously thought he was being torn to shreds, and maybe he was, a little, but all the pup really wanted was the object he’d been sent after. In spite of earlier disagreements, he had nothing personal against the man, but he was a retriever and he’d been ordered to retrieve. Anybody who got in his way would just have to suffer the consequences.

  He seemed to be trying to dig the collar out from under the fallen man, who seemed to be trying to get away from him, but they were working at cross purposes and neither of them was gaining. I suppose it was funny, but I wasn’t laughing. For one thing, I had blo
od on my knuckles, and for another, the tall man was still waving the revolver around wildly, and there was no telling when it would go off and hurt somebody.

  I started forward, but the mess untangled itself before I could get there. The pup got his collar and came trotting toward me proudly, and Nystrom Three sat up and aimed the Colt .357 at me with the obvious intention of, at long last, using it for the purpose for which it was designed. I figured my chances, and they were pretty good. If he’d ever fired the gun before, the tremendous recoil of the Magnum cartridge had probably scared him into a permanent flinch that would keep him from hitting anything; and if he hadn’t, well, it takes a good man, in a time of crisis, to make good his first shot from a totally unfamiliar weapon. I didn’t have him figured for a good man, with a gun or anything else.

  Still, nobody likes to be shot at. As I decided that a dive to the left, toward the bedroom door, was a slightly better gamble than a dive to the right and the kitchen sink, I felt the familiar, sweaty sensation of fear. After all, experienced agents had met their deaths at the hands of clumsy amateurs. It could happen to me. I braced myself to move as the gun lined up, waiting for the last possible moment, so that he’d miss his first shot and, I hoped, not recover from the outsize kick in time for a second.

  But before I got to carry out this strategy the kitchen window broke with a dramatic crash. Amateur to the last, Nystrom Three stopped aiming at me and swung that way. I mean, a pro would first have shot the man under the gun and then turned to look.

  I didn’t look. Whoever had smashed the window could wait. Before the tall blond man in front of me could look back in my direction, I had him. I had his gun clamped firmly in my left hand; and I held it away from me while my right hand did the work with the little knife. I made quite sure of him, before looking toward the broken window.