Both my hands were on her back then, and she didn’t seem to mind the coldness of the gun any more. I too forgot about it as I was caught up in the frenetic rhythm she’d established. I’d made sure that the gun was propped with the stock against her back and the muzzle pointing away from her, and then I didn’t give it another thought. I didn’t think of anything. I just went soaring up with Leslie on the rising wave of passion.
“Now! Now! Now!” she cried, slamming down hard and crushing her breasts to my face.
I thrust back with all my might.
She went off, I went off, and the pistol went off—all at the same moment. It was a very loud shot. And that’s the way it ended—with a bang!
The circumstances being what they were, the noise startled me so much that I dropped the gun. Before I could retrieve it, Dr. Palaro had entered the room. A moment later, Hanson and Mavis came through the bathroom and joined us.
“Leslie! What are you doing?” Hanson exclaimed.
“Getting revenge,” she said calmly. She didn’t budge from her intimate perch.
“I’m ashamed of you,” Mavis told her. “My own sister! Right in front of everybody!”
“I didn’t invite you in here,” Leslie pointed out. “But even if I had, at least I’m not sneaky the way you two are. Who are you to moralize with your under-the-table fun and games?”
“You’re getting a little heavy, dear,” I said mildly.
“Would you mind shifting position?”
“I think perhaps you’d better relinquish it altogether,” Dr. Palaro told Leslie. “While I admire Mr. Victor’s performance in the midst of such a dangerous situation, I’m afraid that I must ask you all to leave us alone now. He and I have things to settle.”
“I don’t want to move.” Leslie pouted.
“Hanson!” Dr. Palaro’s voice was still high-pitched, but very firm now. “Remove your wife!”
“Yes, Doctor.”_Hanson grabbed Leslie under the arms and pulled her off me.
“Now take both ladies out of here,” Palaro ordered.
Hanson pulled Leslie from the room, and Mavis followed. Palaro and I were alone now. The doctor picked up the gun from where I’d dropped it and stuck it in the pocket of the lab coat. Palaro’s gun remained trained on me.
“You are an amazing man, Mr. Victor,” he said conversationally. “Not only do you elect to invade S.M.U.T’s headquarters, but then you seduce the wife of my right hand man under his very nose. And to compound the insult, you choose my room for the seduction.”
“I didn’t know it was your room. I was just looking for a pair of pants.”
“Indeed?” Dr. Palaro backed over to the wardrobe closet running the length of one of the walls and threw open the sliding doors. “Then surely there should be something to your taste here.”
It was quite a selection. There were trousers and knickers and pantaloons and even kilts from just about every period of European history from Louis XIV up through the present. There were uniforms in different colors and styles, togas and loincloths. There were bikini trunks and jeweled jockstraps and leather harnesses.
“What the well-dressed man will wear,” I commented.
“Or the well-dressed woman.”
The doctor was right. There were also period gowns and black-stocking outfits right out of the Marquis de Sade. There were lingerie and transparent nighties and bejeweled G-strings. Yes, and cocktail dresses and tennis outfits and even the short skirts and white caps worn by French maids. There was something to suit every whim — male or female.
“Cronin was wrong before,” I said. “You’re the one with the identity problem.”
“It is not a problem. I have adapted to it very well.”
“But as a man, or as a woman?” I asked, honestly curious.
“As the head of S.M.U.T., what difference does it make? Very soon now I shall have the power to live up to whatever casual desire possesses me at any given moment. And I shall have the subject people to cater to such desires.”
“Then you are the one behind S.M.U.T.?”
“I am. I don’t mind your knowing now, Mr. Victor. In a very little while you will be dead, anyway.”
“You lied to me before,” I chided him.
“I’m so sorry. It was necessary. Then you had the gun.”
“And now I have it!”
Dr. Palaro spun around quickly at the voice from the doorway. He fired as he turned. The figure framed there ducked to one side and returned the fire. One of his shots caught Palaro, and the doctor went sprawling to the floor and lay motionless. The intruder approached the body. It was a mistake. Palaro was faking. He fired from the floor, and his adversary had to duck quickly behind a chair to avoid being hit. By the time he dared to poke his head out from behind the chair again, the doctor was gone. He’d fled into the bathroom and scampered out through the other room. The man behind the chair stood up and pointed his gun at me.
“So we meet at last, Mr. Victor,” he said.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Throughout the gunfight I’d been lying on the bed and staring at the intruder’s face, too stunned to even take cover. You see, the face was my face. It was like looking in a mirror. The fellow was a dead ringer for me. The only difference between us at the moment was that he was wearing pants. And he had the gun. Aside from those factors, we were identical twins.
Talk about identity problems!
chapter twelve
“OH, brother. I exclaimed finally.
“If you mean in the sense that all men are brothers, you may have a point,” my double told me. “But if you’re implying some actual relationship, I can only caution you not to be carried away by the resemblance.” He held the gun steadily, still pointed at my chest.
“I only meant that it’s a helluva coincidence.”
“But it’s not a coincidence at all.”
“It’s not?”
“No. I wasn’t born. I was created.”
“You mean -?”
“Yes. Plastic surgery.” He shot me one of my most typical grins. “A good job, wouldn’t you say?”
“Perfect. I’m flattered. But I can’t help wondering why you took the trouble.”
“Orders.”
“Orders? Orders from who?”
He thought about that one for a moment. Finally he shrugged and answered. “You might as well know now,” he said. “We’ve reached the point where we have to cooperate for a little while, anyway. I’m a Russian agent.”
It was too much. When S.M.U.T. had been torturing me for information back in Malta, I’d passed myself off as a Russian double impersonating myself. And now here I was with a Russian ringer really impersonating me. “Plagiarist! ” I accused him resentfully.
“I beg your pardon?” He looked genuinely puzzled.
“Never mind. Would you mind telling me just why the Soviets should go to all this bother to create another me? I’m hardly that important in the scheme of things.”
“But you are. You are an American agent who has tangled with S.M.U.T. even before the incidents in Malta. You are known to S.M.U.T. as an American agent. By impersonating you, I threw up a smokescreen which directed S.M.U.T.’s attention to the Americans and the British. Thus they were distracted from anti-S.M.U.T. espionage activity on the part of my government. We Russians have as much at stake in stamping out S.M.U.T. as you do. But you could hardly expect us to depend on your inept methods to do the job.”
“You could have cooperated with us,” I pointed out.
“If we could trust you, perhaps. And if you would only realize that you can trust us.”
That seemed to sum up the state of the world, all right. And the fact that he continued to keep the gun trained on me wrapped up the nutshell nicely. But I’m no Geneva arbitrator, and so I let it go. I had other things on my mind.
“They were very curious back in Malta about the man I killed in Manila,” I told him. “The man you killed in my name, that is.”