It was my kind of game. Still all het up from our necking session in the ski-lift, I was intrigued—just as Greta had doubtless intended I should be-—at the prospect of tracking down her bare bosom. I quickened my pace, stumbling a little in my eagerness.
“Where are you?” I called. Another giggle. And then the passage widened into still another chamber. A fourth match showed me Greta’s ski-pants lying at the far end of it. They pointed the way to yet another passageway. I ran down it and was just in time to see a naked figure sprinting around a turn and away from me. I chased it and came out in still another chamber.
It was dark, and I’d run out of matches. “I am waiting, Herr Victor.” Her voice was low and throaty and not more than a few feet away. My fingers fumbled at my ski-pants us I started toward it, thoroughly aroused by now. There was the soft pad of footsteps and I lunged toward the sound, determined not to let her get away again.
But the body I grabbed was still clothed. “What the—-" I started to say.
“Let go of me, Mr. Victor.” Unmistakably, it was a male voice. The man to whom it belonged struck a match. The flare of light made the pistol in his hand glint ominously. “Let go of me!” he repeated. “Relax. And zip up your fly, Mr. Victor!”
I zipped up my fly.
CHAPTER TWO
“THAT’S BETTER.” He lit a candle, dripped some wax on a rock and stuck it there. Then he squatted against the wall, still holding the gun casually in one hand.
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded. “And where’s Greta? What the devil’s going on here, anyway?”
“All in good time, Mr. Victor. Your questions will be answered. Believe me, there’s no cause for alarm.”
“It would be a lot easier to believe you if you’d stop wagging that gun,” I told him.
“My apologies, Mr. Victor. The gun isn't intended to threaten you. No indeed. It‘s merely a necessary precaution against any outside interruptions. The little talk you and I are going to have demands absolute privacy. Ahh, here’s Greta.”
My blonde Lorelei came bouncing back in boots and nothing else. “The coast is clear ahead,” she told the man.
“Then perhaps you will be good enough to keep a look-out back the way you came while I talk to Mr. Victor,” he instructed her.
“All right,” she agreed. “And may I get dressed now?”
“Of course. Your striptease has served its purpose. Mr. Victor is here. My congratulations.”
“And mine, too,” I said. “I don’t know what's behind all this, but I must admit that I fell for your lure—hook, line and sinker.”
“Don’t be afraid, darling.” Greta chucked me under the chin. “Herr Tarleton will explain everything.”
“And will I see you later?” I asked, unable to keep from ogling her lush nudity despite the peculiar circumstances.
“Alas, I’m afraid not,” she sighed. “I have delivered you to Herr Tarleton, and now my part in this little adventure is over.”
“And just what is this ‘little adventure’?” I asked.
“I don’t really know.” Greta shrugged. “I was paid only to arrange this meeting.”
“Nice arranging,” I told her. “But it would have been even nicer if you'd managed things so that we could have finished what we began.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Herr Victor!” she said indignantly. “What do you take me for?"
“But I thought—- That is you gave me every reason to believe-—-”
“I can't help it if your nasty mind made you jump to conclusions, Herr Victor! But believe me, I am not that kind of girl.”
“But that night in your room—"
“I knew I was safe. That's what the plaster cast was for!”
“Then you never really broke your pelvis at all?"
“Of course not! My pelvis is intact. In every sense.”
“I'll be damned!” I sighed. “Well, you better go put your clothes on. I wouldn't want you to catch cold. You’re already getting goose-bumps all over.”
“Yes. Well, good-bye, Herr Victor.”
“Good-bye.” I watched her goose-bumps wriggle out of sight. Then I turned to the man with the gun. “You certainly went to a lot of trouble to arrange this meeting, Mr. Tarleton—or whatever your name is,” I told him.
“Tarleton is correct, Mr. Victor. Albert Smythe Tarleton, to be precise.”
“You’re English?”
“Right again. I imagine it shows, eh?”
It showed. Albert Smythe Tarleton was the compact picture of upper-class John Bull. He was a small man, just over five feet, with a wiry build and the slightly bowlegged stance of a man who enjoys riding to the hounds. He had the receding hairline which announces the premature baldness of the British intellectual. His features were Anglicized and aristocratic with the sharp nose and flaring nostrils of the Saxon gentry. It was a supercilious nose, and its curve ignored the clipped moustache bristling beneath-it. All in all, Tarleton wouldn’t have been out of place as either the headmaster of one of those exclusive English boys’ schools, or sipping gin and bitters on the verandah of an officers’ club along the “Ind-ja" frontier. Yes, he was English and it showed.
“Now, suppose I get down to cases, Mr. Victor.”
“It’s about time.” I didn’t bother to hide my annoyance. It had been a rough day, and I was in no mood to mince words. “This is one hell of a nerve if you ask me!" I growled.
"Quite. Again let me apologize. But the deception involving Greta was necessary. You see, it was impossible for me to arrive here before today, and I had to be sure that your interest was sustained so that you wouldn’t leave betore this contact was arranged.”
“My interest was sustained,” I admitted. “Greta did her job admirably."
“Yes. Well, that’s what she was paid to do."
“Including luring me to this God-forsaken hole?”
“Oh, yes. You see, I have reason to fear that I may be followed. In view of the proposition I have to offer you, it is of the utmost importance that you and I should not be seen together. You see, if you accept, keeping your conpection with me a secret will be a decided advantage to you. Indeed, it wouldn’t be putting it too strongly to describe it as a life-and-death advantage.”
“Accept what? Will you please explain what this is all about!”
“Yes. Now, Mr. Victor, have you ever heard of Dombey of Dover?”
“No. What is it?”
“It is a firm of solicitors. Over three hundred years old. Very respectable. Very conservative. A pillar in its field.”
“And what is its field?"
“The handling of inheritances, Mr. Victor. They are retained by legal firms, or banks, or even sometimes the courts of England, to see to the correct disbursal of the estates of deceased persons. And they are the world’s leading experts in this type of endeavor.”
“You mean they track down missing heirs?”
“Precisely.” Tarleton beamed at me as if he was a Latin instructor and I was a bright student who had just correctly conjugated a difficult verb. “You have a way of getting right to the meat of things, Mr. Victor. And your phraseology is most succinct. Dombey of Dover does indeed track down missing heirs. And I am their chief investigator.”
“Congratulations. But I still don’t see What all this has to do with me.”
“I'm coming to that, Mr. Victor. Be patient. In order to explain, you shall have to bear with me while I tell you a little story. A true story.”
“Go ahead. But make it snappy, will you? This igloo doesn’t have any central heating.”
“Very well. The story begins in Nevada, in the United States of America, about eighteen years ago, just after the war. At that time a man of Swedish extraction named Gunnar Borgman came to Nevada from Minnesota to prospect for gold. Three years later he struck pit rich. A vein of nearly pure gold was discovered by him on a claim he had staked out in the mountains. Overnight, Gunnar Borgman became a very wealthy man. He named his mine ‘The Gopher Hole.’ Quaint, what?”