"It's not quite the same thing! This is… I don't know what it is, but it certainly isn't a game!"
"No, and you're not a football, either. But the principle remains." I looked around for something you find in most hotel rooms. It wasn't in plain sight, but I found it in a dresser drawer-a Gideon Bible. I placed my hand upon it and looked the woman in the eye. "What I have told you is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God."
I put the Bible away. There was a little silence; then Gail shook her head quickly. It was corn and she was no goose; she wasn't going to swallow it.
"Mary Jane obviously didn't want you to have it," she said. "I can't just take your word. If you had something to prove-"
I said, "It would take me anywhere from a couple of hours to a day or two to get proof here that would satisfy you. That's too long to sit in this room watching to make sure you don't do something clever with what you're carrying, or just something perverse to spite me. We'd both get pretty damn tired of it, not to mention such details as eating, sleeping, and going to the john. I'll tell you this. Mary Jane's feeling against me was probably personal. We got at cross purposes once, we got our signals mixed…" I told her about the incident in San Antonio. "That was before she was assigned a job that involved undressing in public and got over being embarrassed by the idea. I know of no other reason why she should have acted the way she did tonight."
That was still the truth, if only just barely. I didn't know of a reason, even though Mac's attitude had indicated there might be one.
Gail hesitated, watching me. "What were you and Janie doing in San Antonio?"
I said, "That comes under the heading of classified information."
"What branch of the government do you work for?"
"Same answer."
She said, "If you're really a government man, why did you have to smuggle me through immigration with a pretend gun in my ribs?"
I said, "For one thing, I was afraid they might separate us before I got my story told and confirmed; I didn't want to let you out of my sight. For another thing, my chief doesn't like us letting other government agencies into the act when it isn't absolutely necessary." I paused, and went on: "Gail, I've already told you more than I should. There are a million questions you could ask, most of which I couldn't answer, either because I don't know the answer or because I'm not free to give it. And at the end of it, you'd still have to look at me and decide whether I was lying or telling the truth. So let's not waste the time. Make up your mind. Are you going to trust me or aren't you?"
I saw at once that I'd overdone it. The word 'trust' killed it. You can use it once, kind of diffidently, but essentially it's a dirty, conniving, treacherous, sneaking word these days. If you ask somebody to trust you, twice, he knows you're playing him for a sucker-if he's smart, and she was smart. Nobody was going to put one over on her.
"No!" she said.
I drew a long breath. "Well, in that case… It seems that every time I meet one of the Springer girls, I have to ask her to take her clothes off."
She stared at me, shocked. "My dear man-"
I took a step forward. "As they said in that place: all the way, Gail. All the way."
She took a step backwards and wound up against the dresser. She drew herself up in a dignified way. "Really-" I said, "You're being pretty silly. You're not Mary Jane. You can't possibly be embarrassed, not a woman who's had four husbands and a Sam Gunther, at the very least. Incidentally, if you try to scream or go for the phone or anything like that, you'll wind up sitting on the floor with all the wind knocked out of you."
She said angrily, "You wouldn't dare! If you think you can bluff me again-"
There was that, of course. I was starting from behind; I'd already bluffed her once, with a ball-point pen, and it rankled. She wasn't going to fall for my tough-guy act again. She knew that behind my crusty exterior lurked a marshmallow heart.
If it had only been a matter of searching her, I might still have tried to work it our peacefully, but she not only had to be made to give me something, she had to be made to tell me something. I had to impress her, somehow, with my fundamentally vicious nature. Now she was talking again, in her haughty and indignant way, and her attitude gave me a pain, anyway. I just reached out and yanked the dress off her.
VII
It didn't come off quite as easily as that, of course. It wasn't a movie break-away garment or a stripper's dress with a smooth-working full-length zipper. It was a smart and expensive and well-constructed cocktail dress of strong material-as I said my grandmother used that shiny figured stuff for upholstery purposes-so I had to get a good grip and pull down quite hard, twice, slantingly right and left, just to break it loose from her shoulders and out from under her furs.
She took a moment to realize what was happening; then she grabbed for the dress as it tore away, and we had a breathless and undignified struggle over the garment before I captured her wrists and got them into my left hand. With my right, I got another grip on the slick, heavy brocade, which had slipped to her waist as we wrestled. Holding her by the wrists, I gave a long, slashing, sideways jerk that ripped open the seam down the side. A final tug burst it apart at the hem, and I had it all. I stepped back, releasing her. She started after me instinctively, reaching out, but checked herself, realizing, I guess, that even if she could get it back, the crumpled rag I was holding wouldn't do her much good.
We faced each other like that. She looked kind of silly standing there in her furs, her long white gloves, her blue high-heeled pumps-plus brassiere, pantie-girdle and stockings. She looked like one of those leggy pin-ups, you see in bars and garages, that are always getting their skirts snagged on barbed-wire fences in interesting ways. But she wasn't quite as young as those models. Not that there was anything aged about her face and figure. She just wasn't a laughing, teasing kid, that's all. She was a grown woman, humiliated and furious.
I said, "All the way, Gail."
She started to speak and couldn't; she was too angry. And the terrible thing is there was nothing she could do about it, dressed as she now was, that wouldn't look perfectly ridiculous and at the same time rather provocative. She had the sense to know it, and she drew a long, uneven breath, and forced a rueful smile with all the warmth and sincerity of a Borgia kiss.
"Well!" she breathed. "A man of direct action!"
"I gave you a chance," I said. "I gave you every chance in the world. You wouldn't believe me, not even with the Bible thrown in. Now I ask you again, do you give me what I'm looking for or do I have to strip you completely to get it?"
She glanced down and grimaced. "Damn you. That dress cost me a hundred and seventy-five dollars last week in Dallas. I'd never worn it before." After a moment, she said wryly, "Well, I can't see much point in putting up a losing battle for my girdle and bra. Here."
She reached two fingers inside her brassiere, pulled something out and gave it to me. I took it and found it to be a small metal cylinder wrapped in something sticky, like double-faced Scotch tape. That would make it easy to hide, under the hair or elsewhere; it would stay put. Inside the cylinder was a tight roll of microfilm. I don't know how the undercover professions got along before the stuff was invented.
I glanced up briefly. Gail had peeled off her long gloves and was removing her mink jacket, which was smart if not modest. A fashionable lady, gloved and furred for the street, who suddenly misplaces her dress, is a rather comical sight, but there's nothing funny about a beautiful woman in stockings and undergarments. It can be irresistible, or it can be merely embarrassing, but it isn't funny. She came to stand beside me-now deliberately unselfconscious about her half-clad state-and took cigarettes and a lighter from her purse on the dresser. I didn't stop her.