It was just normal, healthy, light-brown, young-girl hair, done up in a big puffball arrangement that made her face look very small, with tiny childish features. She was really a pretty kid, I realized, despite the glasses and braces- and kid wasn't quite the word, either.
I mean, she was wearing honest-to-God nylons and grownup white pumps with moderately high heels and little white gloves. Her dress was that kind of beltless, shapeless model that was known as a sack a few years ago and is now back in favor, I understand, under the title of shift. Whatever the name, it's a style that mostly looks like hell on older women, but being nice and simple, it can often look very cute on the young ones.
This was a jumper job, blue, with a ruffly, semi-transparent white blouse taking over the coverage duty at neck and arms. The straight dress made contact with her body only infrequently, but often enough to make it plain that while she might still technically be considered a child, the condition wasn't going to last very much longer. I'd closed the door with the two of us inside. Now, after looking her over, I gave an admiring whistle. I guess I was teasing her, but after all, it was a real improvement over the grubby jeans, shorts, and bastard pant-skirt outfits in which she'd been traveling. It deserved a little applause.
She turned pink and looked uncomfortable, and glanced nervously around the room, saw the two big beds, and looked away. She'd heard about beds. I gathered that, visiting a strange man's hotel room alone, she wasn't at all certain she wasn't going to get raped-and I had a hunch, despite her wary attitude, that she wasn't entirely certain it wouldn't be an interesting and worthwhile experience. She was young enough to be scared, but she was also old enough to be curious.
I said, "I gather you haven't come to see me because you want me to take you back to your dad. That's hardly a long.. distance traveling costume you've got on."
"No-no. I…" There was a little pause while she looked down at her pretty white pumps, with her pretty white gloves-or the small hands therein-gripping each other nervously. "I don't believe it!" she said abruptly, looking at me. "I told Mummy from the start I didn't believe it and I still don't!"
"What don't you believe?"
"That fight," she said. "I don't believe you faked it. And those men. I'm sure they were real convicts. I was with them longer than Mummy, going through the woods; I heard them talking. They weren't putting on an act for me, I know they weren't!"
I said, "Honey, you don't have to convince me. Have you told your mother this?"
"Of course I have!" Penny flushed. "Mummy says I'm just being silly. She says I'm just a big gullible baby. She says you're a very clever government agent, not a private detective at all, and that you're not to be trusted for one little minute."
I laughed. "That sounds like your ma, all right. And what do you think, Penny?"
She studied her toes again. "I… I think that if there's even a chance that you did save us from those men, all alone with nothing but a little stick, then you're a… pretty brave person, aren't you, Mr. Clevenger? And we owe you a great deal, don't we? And we should at least give you a chance to prove your good faith, shouldn't we? That's the least we can do. Maybe I am just being silly and naive. Maybe you are just a cold, calculating…" She stopped, embarrassed.
"A cold, calculating what?" I asked, grinning. "Sneak, snooper, fink? What was your mother's descriptive term for me?"
Penny looked shocked. "Oh, Mummy'd never say fink! She won't let me say it, even though all the other kids back home…" She stopped, realizing that she was drifting from the subject. She looked up at me with sudden, disconcerting steadiness. "Mummy says you don't really care what happens to me, and neither does Daddy. She says it's just an excuse so you can keep an eye on us for your government agency, whatever it is."
It was my turn to be embarrassed, watched by the steady blue eyes behind the hornrimmed glasses. I wished again, as I had before, that Mrs. Drilling had had the good sense to leave her offspring out of this. It was not a business for little girls, even little girls in grownup nylons and high heels. I made a show of shrugging my shoulders helplessly.
"It's impossible to convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced, Penny," I said, sounding pompous and fatherly.
"And it's very easy to convince somebody who does want to be convinced, isn't it? Particularly if they're… well, kind of young."
She was still watching me closely. She was a bright little girl. She was also, I thought, a lonely little girl, needing reassurance badly.
I said, "If you want to call your father long distance, there's the phone. Of course, if I'm lying, then he'll have been briefed to lie, too, won't he?"
She made a face. "That's not much help."
I said, "Hell, honey, there's never any help of the kind you're looking for. It's up to you. Either I'm a liar and a phony or I'm not. Don't ask me to make up your damn little mind for you."
After a moment she grinned. "It's hardly a question of my damn little mind, Mr. Clevenger. It's a question of my mother's damn little mind, isn't it? She's the one you want to convince." Penny drew a long breath. "Well, come to dinner with us and convince her."
I guess I looked surprised, which was all right. I was supposed to look surprised. I said, "What?"
"That's what I came to tell you. Maybe you're a phony and maybe you aren't, but if you did help us, back there in the woods, then you deserve a hearing. Well, you've got one. I pestered Mummy until she agreed to sit down and talk it over with you in a civilized way. We're all having dinner downstairs in the Voyageur Club at seven-thirty." She glanced at the little gold watch on her wrist. "That gives you just about half an hour to dig up some good evidence, Mr. Clevenger. Don't be late."
XIII
THE v0YAGEUR CLUB is to Montreal, I guess, what Stallmдstaregгrden is to Stockholm or Antoine's is to New Orleans- to drop the names of a couple of classy restaurants I've been forced to visit in the line of duty. I found it a large, rambling, dimly-lighted room on the ground floor of the hotel. The waiters were dressed like old-time French-Canadians about to embark on a fur-trading expedition into the primitive American wilderness. There were old utensils and weapons hanging on the walls.
It was the kind of atmosphere that could seem either contrived and fakey, or just pleasantly and comfortably old-fashioned, depending on the skill with which it was handled and whether or not it was used to cover up deficiencies in the culinary department. My first impression was favorable, but I reserved judgment until I could see the service and taste the food.
Mrs. Drilling and Miss Drilling were already established at a table when I entered from the lobby. Before my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I had a little trouble telling them apart from across the room. They were dressed identically: Genevieve was wearing a jumper and blouse just like Penny's, and her hair was also combed up big. In theory, I suppose these mother-and-daughter outfits are a cute idea. In practice they never seem to work out well except on magazine covers; I suppose because a thirty-five-year-old woman isn't likely to look her best in something that makes a fifteen-year-old kid look like a living doll.
Genevieve looked up when I stopped by the table. Her eyes didn't exactly display the warm light of eager hospitality. She waited for me to speak.
I said, "This is real kind of you, ma'am."
She said in a neutral voice, "It wasn't my idea. My gullible daughter seems to be suffering from an acute attack of hero-worship. She's at the impressionable age."
"Oh, Mummy!" said Penny, pained.
"Sit down, Mr. Clevenger," Genevieve said. "The counsel for the defense has made me promise you a fair hearing, but maybe we should have a drink before you present your evidence and your arguments to the court."