Nick Carter glared at his boss. "I'm glad to hear that. After going to sexual day school it should be a pleasure. Good-bye, sir."
"Good-bye, Nicholas," Hawk said sweetly.
As Nick passed through the outer office Delia Stokes glanced up from her desk. "Good-bye, Nick. Have a nice time at school."
He waved a hand at her. "I will… I will! And I'm putting in a voucher for my milk money, too."
As he closed the door behind him he heard her explode in smothered laughter.
David Hawk, in the quiet and dingy little office, doodled on a one-time pad and glanced at the old Western Union clock. It was nearly eleven. The Limeys were due at half past. Hawk tossed his chewed cigar into the wastebasket and stripped the cellophane from a new one. He thought of the scene he had just had with Nick. It had been mild fun — he enjoyed needling his best man now and then — and it also ensured that Carter would be around when needed. Nick, especially when he was on vacation, had a way of vanishing into thin air unless he was under specific orders not to do so. Now he was under orders. He would be there Friday morning, ready for business. And the business was grim indeed…
"Mr. Carter!"
Someone was paging him? Nick stirred. Where in hell was he, anyway?
"Mr. Carter! Please wake up!"
Nick snapped awake, restraining the involuntary urge to reach for his Luger or stiletto. He saw the-dirty floor, his own shoes, the pair of slim ankles beneath the midi-skirt Someone was touching him, shaking his shoulder. He had fallen asleep, damn it!
She was standing very close to him and gave off an effluvium of soap and water and healthy female flesh. She probably wore crisp linen underthings and ironed them herself. And yet those ankles! Even in the bargain basement nylons.
Nick stood up and gave her his very best grin, the one calculated to charm, the one that had charmed thousands of willing females the world over.
"I'm sorry," he said. He meant it. He had been rude and thoughtless and something less than a gentleman. And now, to compound the damage, he had to struggle mightily to repress a yawn. He did manage to restrain it, but he did not fool Dr. Murial Milholland. She stepped back and contemplated him through thick, horn-rimmed glasses.
"Was my lecture really so dull, Mr. Carter?"
He glanced around and his real embarrassment grew. And Nick Carter was a hard man to embarrass. He had made a fool of himself and, inadvertently, of her. A poor, harmless, spinster who probably had to earn her own living and whose only fault was her ability to make a vital subject dull as ditchwater.
They were alone. The room was deserted. My God! Had he snored in class? Somehow, anyhow, he had to make it up to her. Prove to her that he wasn't all boor.
"I'm sorry," he told her again. "Really and truly sorry, Dr. Milholland. I don't know what the h… what happened. But it wasn't your lecture. I found that most interesting and…"
"As much of it as you heard?" She was regarding him with speculation through the heavy glasses. She tapped a folded paper — a class list on which she must have checked off his name — against teeth that were surprisingly white and even. Her mouth was a trifle wide but well formed, and she was not wearing lipstick.
Nick tried the grin again. He felt like the horse's ass to end all equine rears. He nodded. "As much as I heard," he admitted sheepishly. "I can't understand it, Dr. Milholland. I really can't. I did have a late night, and it is spring, and this is my first time back to school for a long while, but none of that is any excuse. It was rude and boorish of me in the extreme. I can only ask you to be forgiving, Doctor." He stopped grinning then and smiled, really feeling like smiling, and said: "I'm not always such a dope, and I wish you'd let me prove it to you."
Sheer inspiration, impulse, that leaped into his mind from nowhere.
Her white forehead knitted in the smallest of frowns. Her skin was clear and milky white, her hair black as tar and worn in a chignon, pulled back tight and bunned at the nape of a slender neck.
"Prove it to me, Mr. Carter? How?"
"By coming out with me for a drink. Right now? And dinner later? And then, well, anything you want to do."
She did not hesitate as long as he thought she might. With the slightest hint of smile she agreed, showing the fine teeth again, but she added: "I don't quite see how having drinks and dinner with you will prove that my lectures aren't dull."
Nick laughed. "That's not the point, Doctor. I'm trying to prove that I'm not really a dope."
For the first time she laughed. A small effort, but a laugh.
Nick Carter took her arm. "Shall we go, Dr. Milholland? I know a little outdoor place near the Mall where the martinis are out of this world."
By the second martini they had built a rapport of sorts and both were feeling more comfortable. Nick had thought the martinis might do it. They most always did. The odd fact was. he was becoming most sincerely interested in this dowdy Dr. Murial Milholland. She had taken off her glasses once, to clean them, and her eyes were a wide-set gray specked with green and amber. Her nose was ordinary, laced with little freckles, but her cheekbones were high enough to flatten her facial planes and give her face a triangular cast. It was a plain face, he thought, but certainly an interesting one. Nick Carter was an expert, a connoisseur of beautiful women, and this one, with a little grooming and some fashion advice could be…
"No. Nick. No. Not at all what you're thinking."
He gazed at her in puzzlement. "What was I thinking, Murial?" After the first martini had come the first names.
The gray eyes, swimming behind the thick lenses, studied him over the rim of the martini glass.
"That I'm really not as dowdy as I seem. As I look. But I am. I assure you that I am. Every bit as. I'm a real Plain Jane, Nick, so just make up your mind to it."
He shook his head. "I still don't believe it. I'll bet it's all a disguise. You probably do it to keep men from making passes at you."
She fussed with the olive in her martini. He wondered if she was used to drinking, if the alcohol might not be getting to her. Vet she appeared sober enough.
"You know," she said, "that's pretty corny, Nick. Like the movies and the plays and the TV shows where the frumpy spinster always takes off her glasses and turns into the golden girl. Metamorphosis. The caterpillar into the gilded butterfly. No, Nick. I'm sorry. More sorry than you know. I think I'd like it that way. But it isn't. I'm just a dowdy Ph.D. who specializes in sexology. I work for the government and I give dull lectures. Important lectures, maybe, but dull. Right, Nick?"
He knew then that the gin was beginning to get to her. He wasn't sure he liked that, because he was genuinely enjoying himself. With Nick Carter, top killer for AXE, lovely ladies were a dime a dozen. There had been one yesterday; there would probably be another one tomorrow. This girl, woman, this Murial, was different. A small tremor, a little shock of recognition, moved in his brain. Was he beginning to get old?
"Don't I, Nick?"
"Don't you what, Murial?" He had been wandering.
"Give dull lectures."
Nick Carter lit one of his gold-tipped cigarettes — Murial did not smoke — and glanced about him. The little sidewalk cafe was thronged. The late April afternoon, as softly impressionistic as a Monet, was fading into gauzy twilight. The cherry trees along the Mall were glowing panaches of color.
Nick indicated the cherry trees with his cigarette. "You've got me, honey. Cherry trees and Washington — how can I tell a lie? Hell yes, your lectures are dull! But you aren't. Not in the least. And remember — I cannot, in these circumstances, tell a lie."