My arms accepted her. “I know. Better than with any girl I’ve known.”
“It’s these terrible things that happened that changed things. You’ve changed, darling.” Her face was against me and her voice was muffled. “We mustn’t let things like that break us up.”
“Breaking up is a long way from what I had in mind. I didn’t know you were planning to go back into radio after the war. I thought maybe you were starting to have other plans. I was starting.”
“Plans with you?” she said.
“Did you think I was playing?”
“I didn’t know. Sam, do you really mean what you just said?”
“What did I just say? You make me dizzy standing so close.”
“That we could have a postwar plan together?”
“I didn’t know whether I could ask you. It’s hard to look ahead very far. My survivor leave will be over in a few days. And maybe next time I won’t be a survivor.”
“Don’t say it. You couldn’t die.”
“Everybody can die. A good many have. You’d have to take a chance on waiting.”
She smiled very sweetly. “Maybe it’s worth a chance. You look pretty durable. You look pretty, period.”
“Pretty is a lousy word for a man. Get this straight, though. If we start waiting for each other, no playing around with anybody else. That goes for both of us. My last girl tried it, and she couldn’t hold out.”
“That hurt you, didn’t it?”
“It’s where the war hit me hardest.”
“I wouldn’t be catching you on the rebound, would I?”
“Maybe you would. Emotions are as strange as anything. Especially mine. If emotions weren’t so strange I think I’d want to marry you tomorrow.”
“I couldn’t.” She looked at me quickly.
“Why not?”
“Tomorrow’s my first day on my new job. I couldn’t take off my first day to get married, could I?”
“There isn’t anybody else, is there? Not Halford or anybody?”
“Can’t you see I’m mad about you, Sam?” Her body said the rest, and its language was irresistible.
After a time I told her about my night in Santa Barbara, and Hatcher’s letter.
“Sam, I told you you were playing with fire. Promise me you won’t risk it any more. I didn’t sleep at all last night.”
“I’m extremely crazy about you,” I said. “But I’m even crazier about the idea of seeing Anderson again. Anyway, I never did like the idea of sitting and waiting for somebody else’s axe to fall.”
She looked at me with a drooping mouth. I kissed her mouth. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed to phone Eric Swann on his destroyer. She sat behind me and put her arms around me.
In the time between my dialling and the operator’s answer from the Naval Repair Base, I said: “The girl loves me.”
“Yes, I do. More than you love me.”
“That’s impossible. You’re much more loveable than I am.”
The operator answered and I asked for the appropriate extension.
Mary’s teeth closed lightly on the back of my neck. “Don’t argue or I’ll really bite. You know you don’t love me as much as I love you.”
The Officer of the Deck on the destroyer answered, and I asked for Lieutenant Swann.
“I’m not sure whether he’s aboard. Wait a minute, please.”
I turned to kiss Mary and her lips clung, parting over mine. The world narrowed to a small burning circle.
The receiver, which had dropped on the bed, said in a cracked remote voice: “Lieutenant Swann speaking.”
I swam up out of warm forgetful depths and talked back to him. “This is Sam. How about asking me out for dinner.”
“Sure. How are you? I thought you were still in Detroit.”
“Just got in today. Can I bring Mary aboard?”
“I’m sorry, Sam. No civilians allowed on the Repair Base. Do you still want to come?”
“Yes. We’ve got things to talk about. Hector Land hasn’t been picked up yet, has he?”
“No, he’s dropped clean out of sight. We eat at seven in port. Call the ship from the main gate and I’ll send a jeep for you.”
“Right.” I set the receiver down.
I stood up and said to Mary: “Well, here I go again.”
“Damn it. You were going to have dinner with me.” Her voice was quietly furious.
“I’m awfully sorry. I’ll get back as soon as I can. I should be able to make it between nine and ten o’clock.”
“I’ll be waiting for you, I suppose. Though you deserve to be stood up.”
I took a taxi out to the Repair Base. When it dropped me at the gate I saw Chester Gordon standing in the roadway by the guards’ kiosk talking to the Marine guard.
When I approached the guard looked at my I.D. card, saluted with characteristic Marine elegance and fervor, and moved away.
“What’s the word?” I said to Gordon.
He smiled less grimly than he had smiled before. “The pieces are falling into place. Your hunch was good, Drake. A number of the records in the radio station’s record library were marked as you thought they might be. It’s evident that those records were deliberately prepared for the purpose of sending out coded intelligence. I didn’t get the details, but they’ll send an amplifying report when they’ve made a more complete investigation. What do you know about this Sue Sholto?”
“Not very much. She was reticent. Even her best friend didn’t know much about her. Lieutenant Swann can tell you more than I can. He’d known her for a long time.”
“I was just talking to Swann on the phone. He promised to send over a jeep for me, but there seems to be a holdup.”
“I’ll ride with you if I may. I’m going aboard for dinner.”
“I don’t think I’ve eaten for twenty-four hours or more. Things have been popping so fast. We got a teletype from Chicago – I sent them Anderson’s description because that’s where he got on the train. A man approximating his description, Lorenz Jensen by name, was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in Chicago in 1934. He served two years and four months of a five year sentence in Joliet.”
“Did he escape?”
“No, he was released on parole. But he violated his parole and disappeared. Presumably he left the country.”
“Anderson was in China in 1936. That tallies.”
“It’s pretty uncertain. You can never go by description alone, especially after a lapse of ten years. But fingerprints are another matter, and I’ve requested Chicago to send me photostats of Jensen’s prints by airmail. Jensen’s and Anderson’s prints are in the same classification, we know that much.”
“Did Anderson leave his prints in Laura Eaton’s house?”
“No, he must have worn gloves. We got them out of his luggage in the baggage room of the Los Angeles station. He left a beautiful set of the thumb and first three fingers of the right hand on a bottle of shaving lotion. That’s the only revealing thing he did leave in his luggage.”
“When you boys move,” I said, “you move fast and in all directions.”
“We’ve got the organization, and that’s something amateurs don’t have. I don’t mean that your help hasn’t been extremely useful. We’ve depended more on lay assistance in this war than we’ve ever admitted in the papers.”
“The word amateur carries no sting for me,” I said. “This looks like our transportation now.”
We rode in a jeep to the dock where the destroyer was berthed. Eric met us at the gangway, and I introduced him to Gordon:
“I think Mr. Gordon would appreciate an invitation to dinner. Though he seldom eats or sleeps.”
“I should warn you about pot-luck,” Eric said. “It’s always pot-luck on this can.”
“I’ve never been aboard a warship before,” Gordon said. “It’ll be very romantic to eat salt pork and hardtack, and drink a noggin of brackish water.”