"Child yourself, honey bunch," I said. "From my advanced age, twenty-two doesn't look much younger than twenty-six."
"Well, you ought to know, grandpa," sh amp; said, smiling. "You were right in there looking, at dinner last night."
I seated her at a table by a window. "My interest was purely aesthetic," I said firmly. "I was admiring her as a photographer. You must admit she's so beautiful it hurts."
"Beautiful!" Lou was shocked. "That gawky-" She stopped abruptly. "Yes, I see what you mean. Although I don't go for the nature-girl type myself." She grimaced. "You hear about Sweden being such an immoral country; how do they manage to grow up with that damn dewy look? I never looked like that, and I can tell you, I was innocent as hell practically to the day I married."
"Practically?" I said.
She smiled at me across the table. "Don't be nosy. If you must know, Hal and I anticipated the ceremony slightly. As he put it, you wouldn't buy a car without driving it around the block, would you?".
"Nice, diplomatic Hal," I murmured.
She said, "Oh, I didn't mind. I… learned a lot from Hal. He was pretty conceited, sometimes, and he couldn't always be bothered with being kind, but we both knew he needed me. He was a strange person, very brilliant, but temperamental and erratic. Sometimes I wondered if.
you know, I wasn't quite sure that I really meant anything to him except, well, a convenience. But you can forgive a man a great many things, Matt, when the last thing he does, with a machine gun spitting in his face, is to turn and do his best to protect you with his body. He saved my life, remember that."
She was very intent, very serious, and I knew she was trying to tell me something important. "I'll remember it," I said. "And I'll make no more derogatory remarks about Mr. Taylor. Okay?"
Lou smiled quickly. "I didn't mean to sound as if.
Well, maybe I did." She brought out her long cigarette holder, loaded it, and applied a match before I could act like a gentleman. "Now," she said, "you tell me about your wife and we'll have all that out of the way."
I glanced at her. "I never told you I had a wife."
"I know you didn't, darling. It was very deceitful of
– you, but I already had the information. You have a wife and three children, two boys and a girl. Your wife is getting a divorce in Reno on the grounds of mental cruelty, after fifteen years of marriage. It certainly took her a long time to discover that you're a brute."
I said, "Beth is a nice, sweet, bright, somewhat inhibited New England girl. She thinks wars are fought by brave men in handsome uniforms, engaging each other in open combat according to the rules of civilized warfare and good sportsmanship. Even so, she thinks it's dreadful. She was very glad that I'd spent the war behind a desk in a public information office and hadn't killed anybody. That was the story I told around, under orders. When she learned it wasn't the truth, she couldn't make the adjustment. I wasn't the same person; I wasn't the man she'd married. I wasn't even anybody she'd want to marry. There was nothing left but to call it a day." I glanced out the window, and saw with relief that our transportation was outside. The conversation had been getting slightly personal. "Finish up your coffee quick," I said. "Our escort is waiting."
I used more color on the job today because of the bad light. Black-and-white depends largely on highlights and shadows, not only for effects, but even for sharp details. On a cloudy day, it's hard to get useful black-and-white shots of intricate industrial subjects, particularly with a small camera that, necessarily, doesn't yield the ultimate in sharpness. Color, on the other hand, is almost easier to handle on a cloudy day than otherwise, since it doesn't tolerate or require strong contrasts of light and shade. With color, the colors themselves provide the necessary contrasts. If you don't insist on gaudiness, you can get some wonderful color stuff under lousy weather conditions.
We had a little rain, but not enough to drive us to cover; and we finished up around two o'clock without having stopped to eat. I spent the ride back to town worrying about the tipping problem, and settled by shaking hands with Lindstrцm, our young guide, and thanking him for all his trouble. Then I slipped the middle-aged driver five crowns, the equivalent of a buck, which didn't seem to excite him tremendously, but he didn't throw it away, either.
"Let's get something to eat uptown," I said to Lou after we'd hauled my stuff up the stairs. "I'm getting kind of tired of the hotel food."
"All right," she said, "just give me a couple of minutes to change my socks and scrape the mud off my shoes."
I went into my room to wash up-also to perform my little switch routine with the day's films. Then I went out to the car. I never like to drive a car that's been standing around, while I'm on a job, without first giving it a quick inspection, and this one had spent the night far from home.
The Volvo was standing in the hotel parking space with nothing but somebody's Triumph motorcycle for company. I walked around the little sedan once and looked inside; it was empty except for a rug or blanket provided by the management, which had slid off the rear seat onto the floor. I decided to take a chance on the doors; generally, if they have the vehicle booby-trapped, they prefer to let you get inside before they blow you up, since the explosion has a better crack at you in a confined space.
Nothing happened when I opened the door. I got the hood open. The little four-cylinder mill looked all right to me. There didn't seem to be any unnecessary wiring around the starter or its switch. I crouched to look underneath for signs that the brakes had been tampered with. There weren't any, but something was dripping out of the differential housing.
I went around to the rear and held my hand under the drip and brought it out again. The stuff wasn't any legitimate lubricant I'd ever met. It was thin and bright red like blood. Still crouching there, frowning, I saw that the source of it wasn't the differential housing at all. The stuff came from farther forward. It was dripping through the floor boards of the car onto the drive-shaft and running back.
Chapter Eighteen
HE WAS LYING on the floor of the car, in the narrow space between front and rear seats, with his arms locked tightly across his stomach. I'll admit I didn't recognize him instantly. Curled up like that, he wasn't showing much of his face, and it had been a long time since I'd known him well. He was dressed in rougher clothes than those he'd worn to visit my Stockholm hotel room, the night Sara Lundgren had been killed. But it was Vance, all right. I'd have thought him dead when I removed the blanket and saw him there, except that blood doesn't usually run with any enthusiasm out of a dead body-once the heart stops pumping, there's nothing to make it run except gravity.
I tried to reach a wrist to check the pulse, but he wouldn't let himself go. I guess he had the usual gut-shot man's conviction that those arms were all that was holding him together. Maybe be was right. Whoever had done the job had certainly got him there more than once.
"Vance," I said. "Vance, this is Eric."
I thought he didn't hear me; then his eyelids fluttered. "Excuse… the hemorrhage," he whispered. "Very embarrassing…"
"Yeah," I said. "Let's get you to a hospital. You can crack wise there."
He shook his head minutely. "No time… drive me where… talk…
I said, "The hell with talk. Just hang on while I find out where to take you in this town."
"Eric," he said in a stronger voice, "I want to report. I've been waiting several hours, hoping you'd come before before…"