Matt Helm--The Interlopers

by Donald Hamilton

  Stottman’s face, and his .25 caliber automatic, were watching me from the opening. The pudgy man and I stared at each other for a moment, while I caught my breath.

  “You’re pretty handy with that sticker,” Stottman said calmly. “You’re pretty handy with lots of things, for a mere courier. And it’s funny that your dog doesn’t know boats, isn’t it? And that your girlfriend has been driving her yellow Caddy almost eight months, but you didn’t recognize it. Don’t you think that’s funny, Mr. Nystrom?”

  It was obvious that he’d found the answers for which he had been searching. He had enough to go on now, and he’d never give up until he’d demonstrated to his superiors that I was not the man they’d sent on this mission. There was nothing else to do, so I shot him through the head with the dead man’s gun, left-handed, before he could pull the trigger of his little pocket pistol.

  14

  When things had settled down a bit—in my mind, at least—I became aware of something nudging me in the side as I crouched against the wall, watching the door and windows and listening intently, knowing I wasn’t out of trouble yet. After all, Stottman had had a partner, and until I learned what Pete-the-Indian was up to, I couldn’t afford to relax.

  The bump in my side came again. I looked and saw the black pup with the collar still in his mouth. He was sitting beside me, trying to deliver it stylishly to hand as he’d been taught, instead of just dropping it at my feet. His expression said what the hell, I’d sent him for this lousy strap, wasn’t I ever going to take it from him?

  I drew a long breath, took the collar, and buckled it around his neck. It was very quiet in the cabin after the deafening report of the .357 Magnum. At least I thought it was quiet, but I realized that if there were any significant noises, hostile or otherwise, I probably couldn’t hear them, the way my ears were ringing. It’s a bad enough gun to fire outdoors; indoors it’s just too damn loud. I patted the pup and looked him over for damage.

  “Everything okay, Prince Hannibal?” I asked.

  He grinned at me and swung his big tail back and forth cheerfully by way of answer. As far as he was concerned, everything was fine. Something had been badly wrong here, but it had got fixed. Well, I couldn’t argue with that. It had got fixed, all right.

  I rose and looked grimly down at Nystrom Three for a moment. Then I walked over and looked at the other man, for whom I’d never even concocted a name. I raised him gently with my foot so I could see his face. It seemed too bad to knife a man to death and walk off without ever really seeing what he looked like.

  His face was just the face of a dead man. I got my revolver from his jacket pocket. The pup wanted to sniff the blood and was offended when I called him off sharply; he couldn’t see that he’d done anything to get mad about.

  I went to the door and listened some more, doing a better job of it as my hearing returned to normal. I still couldn’t hear anything except the splashing of little waves down at the boat docks. Of course, dealing with an Indian, I most likely wouldn’t hear him until he was on top of me, if he came. But the pup, whose senses were a lot sharper than mine, didn’t seem to detect anything out in the dark worth warning me about.

  I took the chance, and slipped out the door, accompanied by my black, four-legged shadow. I made a swing around the premises, finding nobody. It was a quiet night, with only a light breeze blowing, but if the shot had been heard at any of the other resorts along the lake, it hadn’t aroused enough curiosity to lead to action. Well, that’s often the case with a single shot, particularly one muffled inside four walls. People outside aren’t quite sure they heard it in the first place, so they just listen briefly and, if the sound is not repeated, forget about it.

  At last I went over to look at Stottman where he lay outside the kitchen window, still clutching his toy pistol. It wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated. Sometimes, with a head shot, those souped-up Magnum loads will blow a man’s brains right out the back of his skull, but this bullet had simply done its work without any spectacular frills. Since there was no mess to amount to anything, it was feasible for me to consider changing the overall picture—retouching it judiciously, so to speak—in the interest of international diplomacy.

  But first I regarded the plump man for a moment, with a vague sense of embarrassment. I mean, I hadn’t dealt quite fairly with him. I’d taken advantage of him. I’d known that he’d hesitate before shooting me because there were so many things about me that he still wanted to find out; while there had been nothing about him that I really needed to learn. Well, fairness is not a principle that rates very highly in our profession.

  I picked him up, after putting his little pistol back into his pocket, and carried him inside. Dragging him would have been easier, but I didn’t want to plow up the ground unnecessarily. I arranged him artistically on the kitchen linoleum and placed my bloody knife in his hand. I hated to leave it—it had been given to me by a woman, now dead, who’d once meant a good deal to me—but this was no time for sentimentality. The .357 revolver with one fired cartridge in the cylinder, belonging to Nystrom Three, I wiped clean of my fingerprints and put into the hand of its owner, who had a holster to match.

  The idea I was trying to convey, of course, was that Stottman had knifed the other two men in the room, but one had managed to shoot him before dying. It wasn’t watertight by any means. A paraffin test, for instance, would probably show that Nystrom Three hadn’t been shooting any guns lately. There was a broken window to explain, and perhaps some blood spots on the ground outside. By the time the bodies were discovered and the proprietors were questioned there would also be, I hoped, a mystery man who couldn’t be found; a totally vanished tall character with a dog, who’d rented the cabin for the night and then driven off in the camper rig leaving carnage behind him.

  Any good cop who wanted the right answer could find it if he looked, but that wasn’t the point. I was arranging a nice, safe, discreet answer for a cop under orders not to look.

  I went into the bedroom to get my belongings. Since I hadn’t unpacked, except to dig out some fishing gear, it didn’t take long. I was just starting for the kitchen, bag in hand, when the pup growled softly, the hackles rising along his back. I set down my duffel bag with extreme care, and drew the short-barreled Colt revolver from under my waistband.

  I heard the outside door swing open slowly. Then I heard a startled and quite audible feminine gasp of shock and dismay.

  When I stepped into the doorway between the two rooms, Pat Bellman was standing just inside the other door. She was wearing the same or another pair of faded jeans, a short cowboy jacket of the same durable material, and some kind of a checked cotton shirt, red and white. She was standing there as if she’d been suddenly struck by paralysis, very pale, with a look of horror on her face as she stared at the small, crowded, bloody battlefield before her.

  “That’s my girl,” I said. She didn’t even look up at the sound of my voice; she just kept on staring. I went on: “Stay just like that. Don’t move a muscle, or the body-count will rise to four practically instantaneously.”

  She didn’t move. I went over and checked her for weapons. There weren’t any, or, if there were, they were small and well hidden. When I stopped in front of her, she raised her eyes slowly to my face, and licked her colorless lips.

  “You… you killed them!”

  “Don’t say that,” I protested, hurt. “Here I’ve just gone to a lot of trouble to make it look as if they killed each other…”

  “You killed them!” she whispered, unheeding. “All of them! Just like you killed Mike Bird. What kind of a murdering monster are you?” Her voice rose in a shrill, hysterical way on the last words.

  I looked down at her for a moment. I’d been kind of taken with her for a while, I remembered, but it seemed a long time ago. Now I was, to say the least, disenchanted with her; and I guess a reaction of sorts was setting in. Even in my line of work, three dead men in less than a minute is a shade over the quota. Anyway
, I obviously had to do something fast to keep her from throwing a noisy wingding in here. I’ll admit I welcomed the excuse.

  I changed my revolver from my right hand to my left, drew back the hand thus freed, and slapped her face, once, just about as hard as I could without breaking my hand or her neck. She staggered aside and almost fell over the nameless man lying face down nearby. She caught herself, gagged, and moved away from the corpse, putting a belated hand to her cheek.

  “You hypocritical little phony!” I was surprised to hear that my own voice was noticeably shaky. Like I say, reaction. I went on harshly: “First you smiled at me and sent me out to where your sniper was waiting to shoot me down! When that failed, you dispatched a couple of other boys to take care of me… Oh, yes, they made it quite clear what their orders were! And then, for God’s sake, then, after trying twice to have me killed, you have the unmitigated, gold-plated gall to come in here and complain because all your inefficient assassins bungled their jobs and got themselves dead! Just what kind of monster are you, Skinny?”

  She licked her pale lips once more, not looking at me directly. “I never thought… we never expected…”

  “What? That somebody might object to being murdered for your convenience?”

  “It was… it was such a lot of money.” Her voice was almost inaudible. “Such a lot of money. Fifty thousand dollars. And we thought it would be… would be kind of fun. Exciting.”

  It wasn’t the same old grim racket anymore, I reflected sourly. All kinds of people were taking it up for kicks. Or pretending to.

  I asked. “Who was going to pay you all this money?”

  She didn’t seem to hear me. She said in a choked voice: “Fun! Oh, my God! They’re dead! They’re all dead, and it was all my idea. But I never dreamed…”

  Her face changed abruptly. She gulped, and turned toward the door in sudden distress. Her problem was obvious, and I stepped aside and let her stumble out into the dark. The sounds she made out there were quite convincing, so I took advantage of her momentary helplessness to retrieve my bag, tackle box, and fishing rod. I made sure I’d left nothing behind that I didn’t want to leave, turned out the lights, and locked the door. When I came to Pat Bellman, she was still doubled up with cramps, but they weren’t producing much anymore. I waited for her to recover. At last she fumbled in her pants pocket for a Kleenex and wiped her mouth and turned to face me.

  “Damn you,” she said shakily. “Damn you, you didn’t have to stand there watching!”

  I said, “Skinny, cut it out. Of course I had to stand there watching. And you’ll lay off the proud-lady routine or I’ll smack your face again.”

  She licked her lips, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’d better get things perfectly clear, Miss Bellman. You’re not a fine lady who can demand respect and consideration from the gentlemen around her. You’re not a nice girl who can expect the nice boys to look the other way politely while she upchucks her dinner. You’re a murdering bitch who’s been caught in the act, and I’m the guy you tried to murder—or have murdered. Remember that, and conduct yourself accordingly, and maybe we’ll get along without any more slugging or shooting. Where’s your car?”

  She hesitated, apparently considering some kind of argument or protest, but she decided against it. “Back along the dirt road about a mile and a half. I ran it off into the woods where it couldn’t be seen.”

  “Let’s hope you did a good job, so it’ll still be here when you come back for it. If you come back.”

  “What… what are you going to do with me?”

  I said, “Whatever’s necessary to make you tell me about fifty grand, and the people who were willing to pay it, and what they thought they were buying for it.” She started to speak, and I interrupted her: “But not here.”

  I led her to the truck. Thirty minutes later we were on the main highway heading west toward Prince Rupert and the coast.

  15

  The phone booth was pretty exposed, standing near the highway in the bare dirt parking area serving a small roadside restaurant, now closed for the night. However, I didn’t have much choice. I wanted to get a warning message through as soon as possible, now that we were a reasonable distance from the scene of my latest crimes, and this was the only facility we’d encountered in over an hour. Up ahead, according to my information, were some sixty miles of construction work, where the highway through the coastal mountains, formerly a gravel road, was being rebuilt and paved.

  My chances of finding any kind of a suitable communications center along the torn-up stretch didn’t seem promising; and while Mr. Smith’s fine young men were supposed to be keeping a cautious watch over me and reporting my progress and my problems, I never like to count on other outfits to do things right if I can get our own people on the job. After everything that had happened tonight, if I loused up the mission, it didn’t seem likely that it would be on account of a mere phone call.

  I drove into the lot, therefore, and jockeyed the rig around until I could more or less cover both cab doors from the booth. The girl beside me stirred uneasily.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Just making sure I can nail you if you make a break while I’m on the phone.” I looked at her and put a mean grin on my face. “You remember that guy back there with the hole in his head? I hope you appreciate that I made that shot left-handed—and while he had the drop on me, or thought he had. I’m even better with my right hand. Give it a try if you like. I’ll bet you don’t make ten yards, measuring from the sill of the car door to the nearest point of your body, wherever it falls.”

  I waited, but she made no response, and I went over to the booth and called our relay man in Vancouver, keeping an eye on the truck and the highway at the same time, as best I could.

  When Vancouver answered I said, “Eric here. Three packages, perishable. Francois Lake. McAllister Lodge, Cabin Number One. Got it?”

  “Got it. Sounds like you’ve been a busy little man. What do you want, a pickup-and-disposal squad?”

  “Not if it can be avoided. If they just disappear, people will ask questions I’d rather not have to answer. How much international pressure can we apply through channels? It would be very nice if the local authorities could give out that the boys obviously killed each other off, for reasons unknown. I’ve got it set up to look that way, more or less. A mystery man who rented the cabin is being sought for questioning, but not very hard, since it’s all cut and dried. Can do?”

  “I’ll forward your recommendation. It’s supposed to be a hands-across-the-border job, so maybe we can swing it for you. Anything else?”

  “Yes. What the hell is NCS?”

  The man in Vancouver laughed. “If I knew that, I certainly wouldn’t blab it over the phone. The Northwest Coastal System is one of the biggest secrets on this continent since the Manhattan project.”

  “Sure,” I said. “A secret everybody knows except the poor suckers trying to protect it, like us.”

  “Not me, friend,” said the man in Vancouver. “And not you. Protecting systems is other people’s work. We’re protecting a man, remember?”

  “Keep talking.”

  “Never mind NCS. We want the Woodman, and we want him dead; dead enough so that he can’t fire his little rifle a few months from now at a very well-known gent—exact identity not yet determined—about to assume a very important office. It’s been a rough summer and we’d hate to see a worse autumn. This country just can’t take any more snipers mowing down any more popular citizens. If it happens while election hysteria is still upon us, indications are that the lid will blow off. Our job—your job—is to head the Woodman off at the pass, and to hell with NCS. You don’t have to announce this to Mr.

  Smith and his merry men, but on the other hand, you don’t want to forget it for a moment. Message received?”

  “Received and understood,” I said. I’d been about to ask a silly question about the mysterious Woodman to whom he’d re
ferred, but when he’d repeated the nickname I’d caught on: it was just one of the in-jokes that circulate through an organization like ours, easy enough to dig if you remembered that wood translates to Holz in German. I just said, to put it on the official record: “In other words, I have now been instructed that chopping the Woodman down to size takes priority over dealing with secret information no matter how priceless and irreplaceable.”

  “You have been so instructed. Sleep well.”

  “And pleasant dreams to you,” I said. “Eric out.”

  I hung up. No cars had passed on the highway, and Pat Bellman hadn’t moved. I got back on the seat beside her and drove off, keeping an eye on the big, truck-type mirror on my left, the one outside the cab she couldn’t see me watching. No lights appeared in the glass, but I kept catching ghostly hints of movement far back on the road behind us. Well, that figured.

  I mean, the girl beside me had seemed like a very competent person when I’d first met her in Pasco. She’d set me up for murder with cold-blooded efficiency. Yet tonight she’d treated me to a brainless-ingenue performance that would have shamed a high-school melodrama. She’d walked in on me too carelessly, acted too shocked and stunned by the gory scene in the cottage, and lost her dinner too dramatically.

  Lots of girls in the business can blush and weep and faint on demand. A determined young lady, trying to create an impression of total helplessness, might even manage to puke as required. I hadn’t believed her act even before I’d spotted a car running dark behind us. Now the question was: just what did she and her accomplice have in mind for me, and where did they intend to try it? It occurred to me that there was no reason for me to await their pleasure.

  I put my foot on the brake as a roadside sign flashed into the headlights, advising of a campground ahead. Pat Bellman glanced at me quickly but did not speak.