The Terminators by Donald Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

thoughts about this far-out impersonation drama dreamed up by me, in which she had the starring role. Maybe she'd even had some second thoughts about me.
    "Well?" she said.
    "I think they fell for it," I said. "Your gangway performance was great. I think you convinced them that Madeleine Barth has returned from the grave, a little shaky and very self-conscious about her disheveled appearance, but very much alive. Anyway, the blond thug sent his kid helper ashore at the last moment; or maybe the orders came from someone else on this ship. We can hope he went to summon reinforcements, now that getting rid of Mrs. Barth has turned out to be more difficult than expected."
    Diana frowned. "That's a hope?"
    "Well, if it's true, it means they bought your act," I said. "It also means they're short-handed here on board, until the reserves report for duty. And it means that one of the only two people we're fairly sure can identify you— well, unidentify you—isn't around for the moment."
    She hesitated, and said a little uncertainly, "Of course you know best, but should we . . . should we be talking like this, Mr. Helm?"
    "Talking?" I said. "What do you mean?"
    "Well, if we were overheard. . . . There are things like microphones and such, aren't there?"
    I grinned. "Swell. We're going to make a first-class operative of you, Diana Lawrence. However, I checked both cabins when I first came aboard, as well as I could. I think they're clean."
    "Oh."
    We stood there for a moment, silent. It had been a rushed acquaintanceship all the way. This was the first time we'd really had an opportunity to stop and see each other clearly. I don't know how I looked, but if it was anything like I felt, it was terrible. She looked even worse, if possible, if only Because girls are kind of supposed to be neater and prettier than boys. Now, after being dressed up in another woman's sodden, slightly too small clothes and run several blocks through heavy rain she looked hopelessly bedraggled and at the same time a little ridiculous, like the old movie in which the comic gets caught in a thunder-shower in his cheap new suit and it shrinks on him.
    The thought seemed to occur to her at the same time and she glanced down at herself wryly. A funny little smile twitched the comers of her pale lips as she looked up once more.
    "We're a pair of clowns, aren't we?" she said. "You'd better get into something dry before you freeze to death. Helm?"
    "Yes."
    "Why?"
    "Why what?"
    "Why are you doing it?" she asked. "On this mission, you're contract labor, if you don't mind my saying so. It's nothing to you. Why did you go to the trouble of working out this elaborate scheme to retrieve the disaster, our disaster, and practically cram it down our throats."
    I hesitated. I couldn't tell her, of course, that I was doing it largely Because of Denison; but there were other reasons. "Nobody dies for nothing," I said.
    "What?"
    "It's an old saying we have," I said. "People die, sure. It can't always be helped. But we can see to it that everyone who dies, dies for something. Well, Evelyn Benson died. Maybe I could have saved her. Maybe I should have. So I didn't have things carefully explained to me. So I wasn't warned. So what? Guys like me aren't supposed to have to be warned. If you must know, I was just too goddamned cocksure that I had it all figured out, that if anybody came to kill, he'd come for me. Okay. She's dead. It's too late for me to do anything about that. But I can try to see that whatever she wanted done gets done, even without her."
    Diana Lawrence was watching me oddly. "You're a . .. a funny man," she said. "I mean—"
    "Hilarious," I said. "I'll keep you in stitches clear up the coast. Stay here. I mean that. Don't even stick your head out of this cabin—particularly not your head. Somebody might recognize it, or what would be worse, not recognize it, if you follow me. You're Madeleine Barth sleeping off the effects of a mild concussion and a cold midnight