Cudahy thumped his palm with a chubby fist. “That should do it! I had to have progress files made to keep him happy. That work bore no relation to our other avenues of approach, Mr. Osborne.”
“And if Mrs. Aintrell gives them Sherra’s work, a bit at a time, as though it were brand-new stuff, it won’t help them, eh? On the other hand, will it make them suspicious?”
“Only,” said Cudahy, “if they know as much about what is going on here as I do.”
“Reese, you turn that file over to Mrs. Aintrell. Mrs. Aintrell, copy enough each day to turn over to Jackson so he won’t get suspicious. Better make six copies or so, and give him the last one. Fold it up as though you smuggled it out of here. Can do?”
“Yes,” Francie said quickly.
“That should keep your husband alive, if he is alive. We have channels of communication into the likely areas where he’d be. It will take nearly two months to get any kind of a check on him, even if we started yesterday. The better way to check is through the Jack-sons.”
“What do you mean by that?” Francie demanded. “You can’t go to him and—”
Osborne held up his hand and gave a rare smile. “Settle down, Mrs. Aintrell. Even if your husband weren’t involved, we’d hardly go plunging through the shrubbery waving our credentials. They use their expendables on this sort of contact work, just the same as we do. We want the jokers who are buried three or four layers of communication back. I want Jackson to be given the dope, because I am anxious to see what he does with it, and who gets it.”
“But—”
“Just trust us, Mrs. Aintrell.”
Francie forced a smile. There was something about Osborne that inspired trust. Yet she had no real confidence that he could match his cleverness with the Jacksons. Both Stewart and Betty seemed so supremely confident.
“I’ll need your letters from your husband, Mrs. Aintrell. Every one of them.”
Francie flushed. The overseas letters, since they had been subject to censorship, were written in a double-talk understandable only to the two of them. But the letters he had sent her that had been mailed inside the country had been full of bold passages that had been meant for her eyes alone.
“Do you have to have them?”
“Please, Mrs. Aintrell. We will have them for a very short time. Just long enough to make photostats for study. When this case is over, our photostats will be burned.”
“But I can’t imagine why—”
He smiled again. “Just call it a hunch. You have them at your cabin, I judge.”
“Yes, I do.”...
Clint followed her home in his car at five-thirty that evening. They walked down the trail together. A fine, misty rain was falling and the rustic guardrail felt sodden under her hand.
Francie unlocked the door and went in. She looked on the porch and turned to Clint. “Nobody here,” she said, relief in her voice.
She took the candy box full of letters out of the bureau drawer and handed it to him. “You’ll be back at nine?”
“Thereabouts,” he said. He slipped the box into his jacket pocket. Then he put both hands on her shoulders. “Take care,” he whispered.
“I will,” she said. She knew he wanted to kiss her, and also knew that he would not, that his sense of rightness would not permit him. He touched his lips lightly to her forehead, turned, and left.
She turned on the gas under the hot-water heater, and when the water was ready she took a shower. While she was under the water she heard someone call her.
“In a minute,” she called back. She dressed in tailored wool slacks, a plaid shirt cut like a man’s. She walked out, unsmiling. Betty sat on the bunk, one heel up, hands laced around her knee.
Francie said, “I brought something this time.”
Betty smiled. “We knew you would. Stew is on his way over now.”
Francie sat down across the room from her. “Did you get Stewart into this sort of thing, or did he get you in?”
“Clinical curiosity? We met while I was in college. We found out that we thought about things the same way. He had contacts and introduced me. After they started to trust me I kept needling Stew until he demanded a chance to do something active. They told us to stay under cover. No meetings. No cells. We did a little during the war, and a little bit last year in Canada. Satisfied?”
Stewart came in the door, shivering. “Going to be a long, long winter.”
“Here’s what you want,” Francie said, taking the folded sheets from the pocket of her slacks.
“Thank you, my dear,” Stew said blandly. He sat down on the bunk beside Betty and they both read through the sheets, skimming them.
“Dr. Sherra’s work, eh?” Stewart said. “Good man, Sherra. I think he was contacted once upon a time. Got stuffy about it, though, and refused to play. He could have lived in Russia like a little tin king.”
Jackson refolded the sheets, put them carefully in his wallet. “Did you have any trouble, Francie, getting these out?”
“Not a bit.”
“Good!” Stewart said. He still held the billfold in his hand. He dipped into it, took out some money, walked over, and dropped it into her lap.
Francie looked uncomprehendingly down at the three twenty-dollar bills. “I’m not doing this for money.”
He shrugged. “Keep it. It isn’t important. Buy something pretty with it.”
Francie fingered the bills. She folded them once, put them in the top left pocket of her plaid shirt.
“That’s better,” Stewart said. “Everybody gets paid for services rendered. Canada and London, Tennessee and Texas.”
Francie remembered her instructions from Osborne. She leaned forward. “Please let them know right away that I’m co-operating. Bob’s letter said he was sick. I want to know that he’s being cared for.” Osborne had said to cry if she could. She found that it was no effort.
Stewart patted her shoulder. “Now, don’t fret, Francie. I was so certain of your co-operation that I already sent word that you’re playing ball with us in every way that you can. I’d say that by the end of this week, no later, Bob ought to be getting all the attention he can use.”
“Thank you,” she said, meaning it completely. “Thank you so much.” Betty stood up, stretched like a plump kitten. “Come on, Stew.... We’ll see you tomorrow night, huh?”
“I’ll have more for you.”
Francie stood up, too. She made herself stand quite still as Jackson patted her shoulder again. There was something about being touched by him that made her stomach turn over.
She stood at the side window and watched their flashlights bob down the trail through the trees. She made herself a light meal. Clint arrived a little after nine. She took the box from him and put it back in the bureau drawer. It was good to have the letters back, even knowing that Osborne’s people had the photostats.
Clint gave an exaggerated sigh. “Osborne’s orders. We got to go to the movies together. That gives me an excuse for coming down here if they happen to be watching you. Ready to follow orders?”
She shivered. “I... I know they’re watching me. I can feel it,” she whispered. “I do want to be out of here for a little while.”
As they went out the door she stumbled on the wet boards. He caught her arm, held it tightly. They stood quite still for a few moments. It was a strange moment of tension between them, and she knew that he was as conscious of it as she. The strain of the past few days, strain they had shared, had heightened an awareness of each other.
“Francie!” he said, his voice deeper than usual.
Shame was a rising red tide. Certainly her loyalty to Bob was sinking to a new low. To take the step that must inevitably lead to his death, and then take a silly pleasure in a strong male hand clasping her arm.
She pulled away, almost too violently, and said, with false gaiety, “But I buy my own ticket, Mister.”