“Yes?”
“Stand back. Stand well back. Don’t try anything.”
“Sure.”
The bolt slid back and the door opened. Louis checked himself when he saw me sitting on the bunk, facing him across the narrow cabin.
“If you jump me, it won’t really help you,” he said weakly.
“It’ll get us out of here,” I said.
“And what then? I haven’t got a gun for you to use. There’s only one on the ship, and you know who’s got that. And you can’t handle Nick without a gun, nobody can. Not to mention my dear wife herself and her smoothbore artillery, which I can assure you is loaded with buckshot in both barrels.”
“All right. Come in and make your pitch, whatever it is.”
He slipped inside and pressed the door closed beside him. He looked kind of shrunken inside his yachting costume. Beneath the bill of his natty cap, his handsome face was drawn and haggard. I thought I could detect hangover and fear in approximately equal concentrations.
“You’ve got to tell me!” he said. “I’ve got to know; I can’t stand it any more. The way she looks at me! Is she just playing cat and mouse with me? Does she know, Helm? Have you told her?”
I glanced around the cabin. “Is it safe to talk?”
“Safe? What do you mean?”
“This cabin isn’t wired for sound? I’ve known rooms not too far from here that were.”
He shook his head quickly. “Oh, no. No, there’s no microphone in here, I’m sure. There’s nothing like that aboard. I’d have seen it. Well, Helm, or whatever your real name is? Have you told her? Does she know?”
Teddy, crouching on the bunk by my side, looked at him curiously. “Does who know what?” she asked.
“Mr. Rosten would like to know if his wife has been informed that, believing me to be a Chicago hoodlum, he hired me to kill her.”
Teddy gasped. “You mean-you mean, he, too!” She giggled half-hysterically, and clapped her hand to her mouth.
I said, “Oh, yes, the homicide business was booming there for a while. I thought I was even going to get to collect a little from the lady for killing her husband, but that deal fell through. She was just stringing me along.” I turned to Rosten. “She hasn’t been enlightened by me, and to the best of my knowledge, she doesn’t know. She had strong suspicions last night that it was you who hired me, but Miss Michaelis’ confession this morning apparently got you off the hook. It still hasn’t occurred to your wife that two people might have had the same idea simultaneously. Of course, the thought might come to her at any moment-independently or otherwise.”
He stiffened. “That’s a threat!”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s a threat, little man. I’m in a very tough spot and I love company. I can make things just as tough for you, simply by opening my mouth.”
He was used to having me bully him as Lash Petroni: he was already broken in. He wilted instantly.
“I know,” he said. “I know, I’ve been a fool. It was a crazy idea. But I had to do something, and it seemed like the only way. It was hopeless to try to reason with her. I couldn’t make her stop. We were getting in deeper and deeper. She’d forced me to help her and a man had been killed-Nick killed him, but we were all there. I didn’t dare go to the authorities. I was too deeply involved; I’d lose everything if it all came out. I thought if-if she’d Just die, quietly. maybe things would settle down and nobody would ever find out.”
“Let’s clear this up,” I said. “Your wife is just about the last person I’d pick for an enemy agent. Just what the hell is she after, helping subversives to escape from the country and kidnapping people? What’s she getting out of all this?”
He hesitated. We listened to the water rushing past the ship’s side. There was a steady vibration from the big diesel.
“It’s a little hard to explain,” Louis said. “She’s mad, of course, quite insane. She should be in an institution.”
“Skip the diagnosis. Just give us the symptoms. What form does this madness take?”
“Well,” he said, “she has declared war on the United States of America.” There was a brief silence, broken by a startled giggle from Teddy. Rosten glanced at the kid, and looked back to me, challengingly. “I told you. She’s crazy. First it was the bridge, you see-”
“The bridge?”
“Yes, she had a model dairy farm north of town. I don’t know why she bothered with it, it didn’t make much money, but it meant a great deal to her. Didn’t I tell you?”
“You didn’t, but she did,” I said. “Go on.”
“They condemned a right of way through it for the approaches to the bridge. She fought them through the courts, every step of the way, but lost. Of course, she got adequate compensation, but she couldn’t see it that way. That was years ago, right after the war, but she never forgot it. And then they took Mendenhall. I told you about that. I told you she went down with a gun to hold them off. Well, she changed her mind before there was any actual shooting. She came back home. I’ve never seen her like that, absolutely livid, furious. That was when she-” He paused.
“Declared war?” I murmured.
“Yes. She said, if that was the way they wanted it, that was damn well the way they could have it. She could get just as rough as any lace-pants bureaucrat in Washington. They’d damn well wish they’d thought twice before they tangled with Robin Orcutt Rosten. That was how it started. She found some men with unsavory connections, I don’t know how; communist agents-”
Teddy stirred. “But hasn’t it occurred ~o Mrs. Rosten what will happen to her and her property if those people ever get into power?”
Rosten laughed shortly. “I tried to make that point. My dear wife says she’ll worry about the dreadful reds if and when the time comes. She says she knows from bitter experience what happened to her under the people who are actually in power now. They took her land, she says, and she has to hire batteries of high-priced lawyers and tax experts to keep them from taking her money, too, and giving it away to people who are too lazy to work and nations that are too stupid to- Well, you can complete the argument for yourselves. She says it came to her when she was down at Mendenhall preparing to stand them off with her shotgun: instead of peppering a few stupid yokels in soldier suits, she was going to do some damage where it really counted. She might not win, but those bureaucrats in Washington would know they’d been in a fight, by God!” He grimaced. “I told you. She’s insane.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Insane.”
He was right of course. The lady was cracked; she had to be. And still, there was a kind of romantic appeal in the idea of a lone woman in a sailboat setting out to wreak vengeance on the forces of progress: the taxes, the bridges, the military installations. Even if you didn’t agree with her point of view, you could have admired her-or at least her courage-if she’d only been a little more careful, or patriotic, about picking her associates; if she’d refrained from kidnapping and killing people. I stopped that line of thought, as something changed around us. Aft, the diesel went silent; the engine vibrations stopped. I glanced out the porthole. The schooner was rushing along with apparently undiminished speed. I looked at Rosten.
“What does that mean?”
“My wife seems to have shut down the auxiliary,” he said. “The wind has been rising steadily; she must figure we’ll do well enough from now on under sail alone.”
I said, “There’s a storm to the south of us, I understand.”
“A little more than just a storm, Mr. Helm,” he said, rather pompously. “There’s a hurricane off the Carolinas; but it’s veering out to sea, according to the latest weather reports. However, we’ll get the fringes of it before the night is over. I hope you have a strong stomach. The Freya is seaworthy enough to take anything we’re apt to run into, but she can get quite active in a blow.” He laughed, with a hint of malice. “She looks like a pretty big boat, doesn’t she? I think you’ll find her looking somewhat smaller shortly.”