"Katerina."
It was the voice of the man behind me. Catherine glanced his way irritably.
"What is it, Max?"
So his name was Max, not Herman Smith. I'd learned something, after all. It hardly seemed worth the effort.
"It is no good," Max said. "In a week, maybe. In a month, yes. One can break any man in a month. But the construction crew will be here in the morning."
"I will burn his eyes out if he does not talk!" she said violently. "I will…"
She described the other ingenious things she would do to me. She was talking for effect, of course, to intimidate me, but there was no doubt in my mind now that her basic emotion was genuine. She wasn't bluffing, certainly. She really wanted to know where von Sachs could be found. She really thought I could tell her. She obviously didn't have the information we wanted, since she was searching for it herself.
It seemed that I'd come a long, painful way for a negative answer. I'd eliminated a possibility, that was all. As far as the job was concerned, I was back where I'd started. That wasn't strictly correct, either. I'd started from a comfortable motel room. I wasn't quite back there yet. I tried to think of the right card to play next. Now I had to convince these pleasant sadists, not only that I didn't have what they wanted, but that I'd do them no harm if they let me go. I wished that my head were clearer and that I didn't feel quite so much like being sick to my stomach.
Catherine had finished her catalog of horrors. She was back on her where-is-von-Sachs? kick. As she stepped forward, raising the soldering iron to continue the treatment, the small side door of the garage slammed open and Sheila stepped in, holding a little.38 revolver that, to my prejudiced eyes, looked prettier than any rose.
XIII
IN A TV SHOW, that would have been it. In real life, unfortunately, there's a little more to a daring rescue than just pointing a gun at the villain and telling him to behave – particularly when there are two villains and they know their villainy.
Sheila should have shot, of course. She should have dropped one of them instantly, and maybe the other would have stayed put; but it's the hardest thing in the world to teach the recruits. Even during the war, some of them never learned that you didn't wait to inspect the church and count the congregation, you just kicked in the door, tossed in a grenade, and went in behind the explosion with your machine pistol firing.
They didn't wait for her to make up her mind. I saw Catherine make a catlike leap for the shelter of the car; she might not be built lean, but she moved lean. I heard Max come for me, since I was the best protection within his reach. I heard shirt buttons go as he went for the armpit gun. I managed to dump the chair on its side and my timing was good; we connected and got tangled up on the floor. He rolled free. There was nothing I could do about that, tied as I was. I'd made my small contribution to the cause. Catherine reached the switch and the station wagon headlights went out.
I lay in the dark and listened to them jockeying for position around me and the car. They were trying to get each other located. Sheila still had the advantage. She knew where I was; she knew which way not to shoot. Max and Catherine had to identify a target before firing or risk killing each other. I didn't think, however, it would take them long to get a systematic campaign under way.
I thought about this, and I thought about a small, relatively inexperienced girl crouching somewhere in the dark with a revolver in her hand. I thought about various things that had happened tonight that I hadn't had time enough, or sense enough, to add together before.
"Skinny," I said, "don't answer, don't move, but listen. You see the open door you came in by. There's a patch of lighted floor. Got it? Throw your gun there."
I heard a shocked gasp somewhere to the right. I heard somebody move a little off to the left, presumably to get a clear shot at the source of the gasp, if it should reveal itself again.
I said, "Hold everything, everybody. Let's not make a massacre of this. Sheila, that's an order. Toss your gun over there where they can see it."
There was complete silence for some forty to sixty seconds. Then the short-barreled.38 bit the lighted patch of floor with a solid sound. A man's hand showed in the light for an instant, raked it up, and vanished.
I said, "Fine. Now, Sheila, walk over there slowly and stand with your hands in plain sight where they can see you."
There was another long pause. I heard her stir. She came into sight and stood there, silhouetted in the gray rectangle of the doorway.
I said, "Your move, Miss Smith."
Abruptly, the car lights came on. They showed Max flat on the floor not far from Sheila, covering her with a gun in each hand. He looked kind of silly in the light. Catherine came around the side of the car, brushing dust off her shorts. She had a small automatic pistol in her hand. I speculated on where she might have had it concealed. There was no room to spare inside the shorts, but of course the blouse offered some interesting hiding places.
I said to Sheila, "Now you can come over here and cut me loose. I think there's still a knife in my right pants pocket-"
"Don't move, girl!" That was two-gun Max, getting up.
I said, "Don't be silly. Come on, Sheila. Oh, and pick up your gun from the nice man on the way. He can unload it first if he's scared."
"Katerina!"
I looked at Catherine. She was watching me, frowning slightly. She was a little behind me in her thinking, but she was catching up fast. I saw her come to a decision.
"Give the little girl back her toy, Max," she said. "Leave the cartridges. It is' all right." She smiled at me. "You look very foolish lying there… It is all right, Max!" she snapped, seeing that her man still hadn't turned over the gun. "Would he have disarmed her in the first place if he were what we think? There has obviously been a mistake."
She tucked the little automatic away inside the flowered blouse somewhere, and knelt beside me to cut me free.
While I was getting to my feet stiffly, she went over to the fender of the car, where a white purse lay. She opened the purse and took out a tube of some kind of ointment and tossed it to me.
"Use that. It has an anesthetic that will reduce the pain."
I stuck the tube in my pocket and buttoned my shirt courageously. "Pain?" I said. "What pain? Hell, I juggle red-hot pokers for kicks. I drink flaming brandy; I walk on burning coals to keep my tootsies warm. Who the hell are you, Miss Smith? And don't give me any more of that Argentina jazz. If you really had a proposition from the swastika kids down there for Heinrich von Sachs, you wouldn't start out by cooking a guy you thought was one of his henchmen piecemeal. So let's hear who you really are. A little honesty, please, Miss Smith."
"First, who are you?' she asked.
"I am an agent of the government of the United States of America, God help it," I said, having decided the only way to play this now was straight. Well, reasonably straight.
"Apparently I'm trying to find the same man you are."
"You thought I would know?"
"You were playing a very interesting tune. I thought it worth investigating. We seem to've been working at cross purposes. Your turn. Identification, please."
"I am an agent of…" She hesitated. "I cannot give you the name of the organization, Mr. Evans, or the country from which it operates. I am sorry. You would be duty bound to tell your government. I can tell you this much, however: it is our mission to bring Heinrich von Sachs to justice for his crimes against humanity."
"Sure," I said. "That figures. But it makes things kind of awkward. I suppose you want him alive."