I couldn't afford to ignore the warning, or her display of curiosity about the films. It might mean nothing, of course, but I had to consider the possibility, at least, that these pix and the others I'd be taking in her company might have more significance than appeared on the surface. A few simple precautions seemed in order.
I sighed for my lost faith and innocence, went to the closet, and got out one of the metal.50-caliber cartridge boxes I use for preserving my main film supply. I dug out five unexposed rolls of Kodachrome and three unexposed rolls of black-and-white, still in the factory cartons. I sat down on the bed and opened the virgin film cartons carefully, breaking loose the adhesive with my knife without tearing the cardboard flaps.
Then I removed the unexposed films inside and carefully substituted the exposed films from the dresser. I glued the cartons shut again with patent stickum from my repair kit, and made a tiny identifying mark on each of the doctored cartons-a dot in the loop of the "a" in Kodak, if you must know-and buried all eight of them at the bottom of the box of fresh film, hoping I wouldn't grab one by mistake some day when I was in a hurry.
I turned to the new films, and drew each five-foot film strip completely out of its metal cartridge, exposing it to light so that, if developed, it would turn totally black. No one would ever be able to determine whether or not it had ever held a real photographic image. There's nothing as permanent and irrevocable as fogging a film, except killing a man.
I rolled all the films back into the cartridges by hand, got an empty camera, and one by one loaded them into the instrument, wound them a little way, and rewound them again. This gave the proper reverse curl to the leaders, as if they'd actually been used. I was getting pretty tricky now, but there's no sense pulling a gag like that unless you make it good. I marked each fogged roll with an authentic-looking number to correspond with the data~ in my notebook. Finally I put the film cartridges in a neat row on the dresser, where they looked exactly like the films that had stood there before.
Probably I was just wasting my time. However, I had plenty of film to spare, and if I was wrong there was little harm done. It seemed about time to start taking a few obvious precautions, anyway. I had to remember that the opposition had tested me carefully at least once and maybe twice-if little Mr. Carlsson wasn't exactly what he'd claimed to be. They'd found me stupid and harmless enough to let live, while Sara Lundgren had been killed. The difference was, presumably, that they had no further use for her, while they needed me for something.
I still didn't know with certainty what that something was. However, if yesterday was a reliable indication, I was going to be taking a lot of pictures in this northern country
– and I was going to be taking them under the very close supervision of a young lady whose motives weren't exactly clear, to put the matter with the greatest charity possible. It seemed just as well to make reasonably sure of retaining control of my pix until I could determine that everything I'd been told to photograph was completely innocuous. Not that it had much bearing on my primary job-Mac wouldn't give a damn what happened to my films-but I do take a certain pride in my photography, and I wasn't going to let it be used, unnecessarily, for purposes of which I didn't approve.
Finished, I crossed the ball and knocked on Lou's door. "I'm going downstairs," I called. "See you in the dining room."
"All right, darling."
The endearment made me feel like a calculating and suspicious beast, but one of the things you have to keep in mind in this work is that what happens in bed, no matter how pleasant it may be, has no bearing on what happens anywhere else. A woman may be sweet and wonderful under thbse circumstances, and still be dangerous as a rattlesnake with her clothes on. Cemeteries are full of men who forgot this basic principle.
When I crossed the small lobby, there was a girl speaking to the clerk at the desk. My interest in stray females was at a low ebb that morning, for reasons both emotional and glandular, and this one was wearing pants-bright plaid pants at that-so I didn't even bother to examine her rear view closely as I headed for the dining-room door Her voice caught me by surprise.
"Good morning, Cousin Matthias."
I swung around to face Elin von Hoffman. That ki could do the damndest things to herself and still be beauti ful. This morning, in the loud pants and a heavy gray sl~ sweater, without a trace of makeup besides that bus lipstick she'd worn the night before, she was still some thing to make you weep for your wasted life. She held out small key by its tag and chain.
"I brought your car," she said. "Those old Volvos w not much good, are they?"
"It runs," I said. "What do you expect for thirty crowi a day, a Mercedes 300SL?"
"Oh, you know sports cars?" she asked. "In Stockholm I have a Jaguar, from Britain. It is very handsome and exciting. I also have a little Lambretta which is much fun. That is a motor scooter, you know."
I said, "Yes. I know."
She laughed. "I am still trying to educate you, aren't I? Well, I must go."
"I'll drive you," I said.
"Oh, no. That is why I came, for the walk back. I love walking, and it is such a fine day."
"It looks kind of gray and windy to me."
"Yes," she said. "Those are the best."
So she was one of the rain-in-the-face kids. Well, she'd outgrow it; she had plenty of time. I said, "That's a matter of taste. Like walking."
"You say you like hunting. If you hunt, you must walk."
"I'll walk if I can't get a horse or a jeep," I said. "I don't mind a little hike, if there's a chance of a shot at the end of it. But not just for the sake of hiking."
She laughed again. "You Americans! Everything must show a profit, even walking… Good morning, Mrs. Taylor."
Lou had come down the stairs, in her working uniform of skirt and sweater and trench coat. Beside the taller, younger Swedish girl in her outdoor clothes, she looked surprisingly slight, almost fragile, although I had good reason to know that she didn't break easily. The thought, for some reason, was a little embarrassing at the moment. I saw the kid look from Lou to me and back again. She was young, but not that young; she saw something and understood it. I guess it usually shows, except on the really hardened sinners, which we were not. When Elin spoke again, there was noticeable stiffness in her voice.
"I was just leaving, Mrs. Taylor," she said. "Good-bye, Herr Helm. Your car is in the parking space across the street."
We watched her go out the door into the gray fall morn'- ing. The wind caught her hair as she came outside, and she brushed it out of her face, and tossed it back with a shake of her head, and went out of sight with the efficient, no nonsense stride of the practiced foot traveler, that you hardly ever see in America nowadays. Come to that, America never was much of a country for walkers and runners, at least after the frontier hit the Great Plains. There was just too damn much ground to cover efficiently on foot. Most of the old-timers sensibly preferred to ride. There are some real fancy foot pilgrimages on record, but if you check closely you'll find that in almost every case they start with a horse getting killed or stolen. Walking for fun is strictly a European custom.
"Who is that overgrown child?" Lou asked as we went on into the dining room. "I never got her name straight last night."