"It's plausible," she said thoughtfully, "it's plausible, but it's wrong. The man who's watching me is supposed to be a trained professional killer, isn't he? Well, Harold couldn't commit that kind of crime if his life depended on it. He hasn't got the nerve, Mr. Corcoran. Swinging a fist at a man who isn't looking is just about his limit. He's a… a handsome phony. I know." She grimaced. "Now I know."
I said, "Still, he apparently made a point of getting acquainted with you in Pensacola. He followed you here. We can't ignore him just because you think he's a lightweight. It's standard procedure, Doc, for an agent to act dumber and more scared than he is."
"Well, I'm sure you're mistaken." She sighed, giving up the argument, and surveyed the room lazily. "Only one bed? Do we toss for it? I suppose I have to spend the night here, what's left of it, and slip back to my room about dawn looking suitably mussed and made-love-to. Oh, dear, and when I think of the way I sneaked around trying to keep people from knowing about Harold and me!" She laughed. "Well, it's going to be a refreshing change, being brazen about it. What happens afterward?"
I said, "In the morning, true love having blossomed during the wee hours, we head for Alabama on our way to Pensacola and home. Your home."
"Why Alabama?"
"There's no waiting period in Alabama. You just take a blood test and see the judge."
She looked quickly but didn't speak at once. Then she said, "I suppose that's still necessary."
"More than ever, I'd say. Now we have to see which one of them comes after you; and we've got to keep up the act for Mooney's sake, if not for Kroch's."
"Harold lives in Pensacola, don't forget. It will prove nothing if he follows us there."
"The roundabout way we'll drive, it'll prove something," I said. "Here are two things for you to keep in mind, Doc. One, like Orpheus and Eurydice, you don't look back." I grinned at her expression. "Don't act so surprised. It isn't polite. Us undercover types often read the classics to improve our minds when we're not dealing with murder and mayhem. Some of us do, anyway. Don't be an intellectual snob."
She flushed slightly. "I didn't mean… Well, maybe I did. Sorry."
"You don't look back," I went on. "I'll do the looking. You have no doubts, no suspicions. You're just a lady in love, bringing home a brand-new husband-one you married on the rebound, true, but that just makes you more determined to show people it's all perfectly lovely."
"Well, I'll try to look blissfully ignorant and… and appropriately amorous." She hesitated. "You said two things. What's the other."
I reached down deliberately and gave a jerk to the hem of her skirt. "Number two," I said, "is, you keep your damn skirt down where it belongs."
It brought a gasp from her. It brought her upright in the chair. "Really…!"
I said, "I'm not an impressionable kid, but I'm not so damn ancient I don't react to normal stimuli, Doc. Now we both know you have attractive legs, nice nylons, and a pretty slip. We both know, too, that you're no longer quite the prim spinster lady you've been pretending to be. Well, whatever you learned from Mooney, please don't try it on me, doll. In public, we'll carry the lovey-dovey routine as far as necessary, but in private, like this, nix. You keep a reasonable amount of clothes on the body, and you keep them where they count." I stared at her in a hard way. "That is, of course, assuming that you want to keep it strictly business between us."
She was on her feet now, tugging her suit straight and buttoning her blouse with hands that weren't quite steady. "I'm sorry…!" Anger choked her briefly. "I'm very sorry if I've… disturbed you, Mr. Corcoran! It's late and I'm tired and just a bit tight; I didn't realize I was straining your self-control. It wasn't deliberate, I assure you!"
"Maybe it wasn't," I said. "And then again, maybe it was. You don't look to me like a dame who shows a guy the view past the tops of her stockings without knowing it, drunk or sober. I don't quite follow the reasoning behind the tempting display, but it doesn't look like any gambit I read in the copy of Capablanca you so kindly lent me." I drew a long breath. "What I'm saying, Doc, is that if you want me to keep this love-and-marriage stuff on a business basis, you keep it that way, too. If you want to play, we'll play, and you'll find yourself flat on your back with your dress up and your girdle down so fast it'll make your head swim. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"
It was pretty crude; but the whole unbuttoned, inviting, leggy bit had been too far out of character for me to let it pass unchallenged. A woman who, alone, would read about infinity fully dressed without a hair out of place wasn't going to lounge untidily and suggestively about a man's room without some purpose. The notion that came to mind was so crazy I had to check it out, even at the cost of being rude.
She stared at me for a moment, her eyes furious, her pale lips tightly compressed; then she laughed. It was a surprising laugh, for her, a real laugh, a woman's laugh, soft and throaty and triumphant.
"Corcoran," she murmured, "you're bluffing like hell!"
I looked at her sharply, and everything changed, as it does. It had been a long, complicated night, but everything was suddenly very plain and simple and I realized at last who-behind all the doubletalk and drinking and fancy acting-had actually been seducing whom.
"You're bluffing!" she breathed.
"Don't count on it," I said stiffly.
"You're bluffing!" she whispered. "You talk big but you won't… won't touch me. You don't dare!"
It had been a long time since I'd done anything because somebody dared me, but I'd already been strong-minded once that night, and I could see no good reason for it here. To be sure, Mac had warned me to be diplomatic, but under the circumstances it was a little hard to say where true diplomacy lay.
I reached out and took her glasses off for the second time that night. This time I really looked at her. The face was all right, once you started looking at it as the face of a woman instead of a genius and made allowance for the lack of lipstick. The eyes were fine without the glasses, a little bold but also, I was glad to see, a little scared, as if she didn't quite know what she was getting herself into besides a bed. Well, that made two of us.
I said, "The reception was poor at first, Doc, but now I read you loud and clear. Brief me. Do we lead up to the subject with a little breathless talk about love, or do we simply adjourn to the bed, approximately five feet away."
She licked her lips. "Let's not be hypocritical. You've probably gathered I've heard quite enough talk about love. I vote… I vote the meeting be adjourned as specified, before…" There was a shaky little pause. "… before the lady loses her nerve!"
X
I WOKE UP to hear her crying in the darkness beside me. I didn't ask why. Presumably she was crying in a general way for lost innocence and shattered illusions. It's a common complaint. Presently she whispered, "Are you awake, Corcoran?"
"Yes."
"Did I wake you?"
"It doesn't matter."
"I'm sorry," she breathed. "I… it's just so cheap and dirty, that's all."
"Thanks," I said. "All testimonials gratefully accepted."
"I didn't mean you. I just meant, well, life in general."
"What you really meant was that for years you've been saving yourself for a great, sweet, tender passion like in the movies, and now you find yourself lying in a hotel bed in your underwear beside a strange man you don't particularly like."
She said, "Don't be sarcastic, damn you."
"Don't swear," I said. "I'll do the swearing around here. You're the intellectual type, remember?"
She laughed bitterly. "I don't feel very intellectual. I don't suppose I'd look very intellectual, either, if you could see me. The funny thing is, I don't think I even really know why I did it, why I badgered you into…well, into bed, damn it. And I'll swear all I want. To hell with you, Corcoran."