"Open it," I said.
Unlike most hail doors, it opened outward. It had to, since there was another door right behind it, opening the other way. I saw Vadya take stock of this soundproof arrangement. She glanced at me, shrugged, pushed the second door open, and went into the room beyond. I followed her, closing both doors behind us, locking the inner one, and pocketing the key.
Aside from the double door, it seemed like a room that matched the run-down neighborhood. It had a threadbare rug, a battered dresser, a tired old bed, and a single heavy armchair that seemed in better repair than the rest of the furnishings. There was an enameled tin basin, and a water pitcher, on the dresser. The cracked handle of a china thunder mug peeked out from under the bed. The illumination came from an ancient fixture suspended from the ceiling that had once burned gas. It gave surprisingly good light considering its apparent age.
Vadya had turned to face me. Her glamorous hairdo and glossy furs looked completely out of place in the dismal room. I felt a momentary qualm, but what the hell, she wasn't really the pretty, plump, fashionable Madame Dumaire. She was just a cheap hired actress masquerading in a fancy-dress outfit paid for, no doubt, with state funds.
She said, "Matthew, really, I-"
The nice white kid gloves were a handicap, from her point of view. They not only made her fingers a little less nimble than they might have been, they made it very easy for me to see what her hands were doing. When one disappeared inside the furs, I socked her hard, right in the middle of her expensive suit. She doubled up, gasping. I clipped her judiciously across the neck and she fell to the floor. I mean, you can ask questions all night and get nowhere and prove nothing. If you're going the interrogation route anyway, you might as well save everybody a lot of time by showing right at the start that you don't mind bruising your knuckles.
I picked up the purse she had dropped, and yanked her furs free. She was already beginning to stir. Waiting for her to recover, I looked the stuff over. There was nothing in the purse beyond the usual feminine accessories and some official items confirming her identity as the widowed, wealthy Madame Evelyn Dumaire, citizeness of France. I tossed it on the bed.
The furs, as I'd expected, proved more rewarding. A cunningly hidden pocket at one end yielded up a tiny automatic pistol. Another secret fold in the satin lining produced a slim little plastic case. Inside was an interesting assortment of pills and powders and the means with which to administer them. It was the other side's counterpart of our special drug kit, a sample of which reposed in my suitcase at the hotel.
I remembered that, down in Mexico, Vadya had been a fast girl with a Mickey. At that time she'd happened to be working to our mutual advantage, but it was something to keep in mind. I tossed the things on the bed, and went over and nudged her with my toe.
"Wake up," I said. "But do it slowly." She didn't move. I said, "Cut it out, Vadya. Don't play possum with me. This is your old friend Matt speaking. Remember Matt, the guy you once carved your initials on with a hot iron? Get up and get into that chair, and be very, very careful doing it."
After a moment she moved, and pushed herself to a crouching position, and looked up at me through the hair that had fallen into her eyes. She started to speak, changed her mind, rose, and walked unsteadily to the big chair and sat down. I went to stand over her.
"I've got your gun," I said. "I've got your cute little portable pharmacy. There's one more thing I'm going to have from you before we commence the singing lesson. Will you give it to me now, or do I have to strip you to find it?"
"I… I don't understand."
I said, "Cut it out, Vadya. Save it for the peasants. We're both pros here. You've got one somewhere. Hand it over. The kill-me capsule."
Her eyes narrowed slightly, perhaps with a hint of apprehension. My taking the trouble, before questioning her, to separate her from the death-pill most agents carry made it seem as if I really meant business. Well, it was supposed to.
After a moment she drew a long breath and pulled off her left-hand glove and tossed it to me. I caught it. "The button," she said.
I examined the glove and found she'd told the truth. The small wrist button wasn't a button at all. While I was looking at it, she stripped off the second glove and tossed it toward the bed, and at last made the customary feminine motions of patting her hair into place, pulling down her skirt, and making a rueful face at a nylon torn at the knee. "You play very rough, darling," she said. "Look at my poor stocking."
I said, "To hell with your poor stocking. It's your working costume, isn't it? Like a blacksmith's apron or a mechanic's coverall. You expect it to take a beating; don't give me that poor-stocking bit. You'll put three pairs on the expense account when you turn in your report, if you live so long. Get your mind off your nylons and start worrying about your neck, doll. They can't buy you a new one of those."
She laughed in my face. "Are you really trying to frighten me, Matthew? Do you know me so little then?" I didn't say anything. I just waited for the question she had to ask, unless she was going to admit she knew why we were here, and it came: "Why have you brought me here? What do you want?"
I looked at her sitting there, a little mussed and rumpled now, no longer quite in character, with her phony accent, her phony identity, and her voluptuous, phony figure. I thought of a smaller, browner, blonder girl whose life could very well depend on what happened here in the next few minutes. I reached into my pocket and took out the black leather belt.
"I want," I said, "the answer to just one question. I want to know where Winnie is."
She looked quickly at the belt. Again there was a hint of apprehension in her eyes. "Winnie? Who is Winnie?"
It was the first real break. I knew a great sense of relief; I wasn't making a mistake after all. I wasn't bullying an innocent woman-well, innocent in one respect, at least Because even if Vadya wasn't remotely involved in the kidnapping, she'd know who Winnie was. Hell, she'd given me a description while we were talking at Claridge's. She'd said: and now you have a pretty little blonde wife, I'm told. She was bound to have been told the name, also, as part of her briefing.
Her instinctive pretense of ignorance was the kind of nervous reflex that betrays you when you've been waiting hours to put on a dumb act and had a few drinks, and taken a few blows in the process. If the name had had no guilty associations for her, she wouldn't have been so quick to deny knowing it.
She realized it, and said, "Oh, I remember now. That is your new little wife? She is missing?"
I said, "Not very good, Vadya. Not good at all."
"You think I know something about it? But I assure you-"
"Cut it out," I said. "Never mind the denials, sweetheart. We'll just take them as said. You don't know anything, you never did know anything, you never will know anything. Okay? That's what you were going to tell me, isn't it?"
"Matthew, I-"
I said, "We both know how these question-and-answer sessions go, so let's see if we can't dispense with some of the usual corn. Here is a belt." I held it up. "It will be around your neck-I wasn't kidding when I said you should be worrying about your neck. The tongue will be through the buckle here, so. I'll be behind your chair. I'll ask my question, for the record this time. I'll give you a reasonable time to answer. If you refuse, or start telling me a lot of junk about what you don't know and didn't do, I'll pull on this end here and cut you off. Then I'll loosen it again and give you another chance. Maybe I'll even give you a third chance. It depends on my patience and on whether I sense, shall we say, a growing spirit of cooperation. But make no mistake, before we leave this room, I'll know where my wife is, or you'll be dead."