"She wasn't a bad chick, you know, jUst a little stuck-up, too good for us crude American boys. It was good for a laugh, if yo~ir sense of humor ran that way, when a real smoothie came along and played her for a sucker. It would have been punishment enough for her to be tossed out on her ear and have to spend the rest of her life remembering what a sap the little man had made of her. But you couldn't leave it at that, could you? You had to be judge, jury, and executioner. You spotted the double-cross and lowered the boom, just like that."
I said, startled, "Hell, I didn't kill her!"
He shrugged, unimpressed. "She went into the park to meet you. You came out, she didn't. You're the big dangerous man, aren't'you? Whether you killed her or just stood back and let them kill her doesn't much signify, does it? She was with you. You're the smart, tough bastard, sent out to fix things after all the rest of us poor fumbling dopes have failed. Are you going to tell me you couldn't have saved her if you'd wanted to, Superman?"
I started to speak and stopped. He was convinced. Nothing I could say was going to unconvince him. Maybe there had been a little more between him and Sara Lundgren than he'd indicated, to make him feel so strongly-or maybe he'd just have liked there to be. And after all, what he said was quite true. I'd gone to meet a woman in the park and left her there dead. It wasn't anything I could be proud of. It wasn't worth an argument. Anyway, we'd talked enough about Sara. There was another woman I was more interested in.
"Taylor?" he said when I asked. "Yes, sure she was working for me. Hell, you saw us together one night, didn't you?" I didn't say anything. I was still trying to rearrange my thinking around all this new information. He went on after a moment, "You made quite an impression on her. I guess you must be hell with women. She kept pleading with me to let her tell you what we were doing. That's why she insisted on meeting me outside here, to make her pitch again, although it was risky as hell. I told her to keep her mouth shut, but obviously she decided she knew best and went against my orders."
"What do you mean?"
He said scornfully, "Oh, come off it! She must have told you what was going on. Otherwise, how could you have known enough to cut the ground right out from under us with this lousy film trick?"
I said, "She didn't tell me anything."
He shook his head, dismissing this as not even worth comment. "Let me tell you, something, Helm," he said. "You may think you're going to hog Caselius and the credit for yourself, now that you've run us off the track, but you're forgetting one thing, aren't you, a little matter of orders? Sara tied a muzzle on you with that letter she wrote to Washington, didn't she? Caselius put her up to it, of course, but I didn't mind a bit. I'd asked for more time to trap him legally, co-operating with the local authorities, who didn't much like the idea of having a well-known foreign spy taking cover under a Swedish identity and Swedish citizenship. Washington wouldn't listen, until Sara wrote, as the resident agent on the spot, protesting the barbaric notion of sending a trained assassin into a friendly country, etc., etc. Then they got scared and decided to call you off and give me my chance. I was instructed-get this, Helm
– I was instructed to make use of your specialized talents only if, in my considered judgment, it was absolutely necessary for the success of our mission." He grinned wolfishly. "Guess what my considered judgment is, fella. You'll grow roots like a tree, waiting for action orders from me. We'll get Caselius some way, in spite of you and without you."
"We?" I said. "You and Lou Taylor?"
His expression changed slightly. "No, I was speaking editorially, I guess. As far as Taylor's concerned, I don't figure her chances are very good. But I couldn't very well stop her, under the circumstances."
"What do you mean?" I asked sharply.
"You heard Grankvist. She went off with Caselius, when they were released. I tried to talk her out of it, but she felt she had to do it, and you can see why."
"You can, maybe," I said. "Brief me."
He hesitated. Then he said, "Well, the whole scheme was pretty much her idea. She contacted our people in Berlin secretly, and they passed her on to me in Stockholm; I'd been assigned there to check up on Lundgren and take over her duties. My cover was good-Lundgren was still carrying the ball for us, as far as the other side knew- so Taylor and I just played it straight: the American businessman paying court to the pretty American widow. As far as Caselius knew, I was just another old friend of Hal's whose connections might come in handy. Of course, he knows better now. That's another strike against her, wherever she is. Anyway, whether or not he believes she double-crossed him, he knows she can't be of any more use to him, and he's not a little man to burden himself with excess baggage."
I said, "You're just a ray of sunshine, aren't you? If you can figure that out, so could she. And still she went with him?"
He shrugged. "Like I say, she felt she had to… She told us the whole thing, of course, starting with that damn gaudy article her husband wrote. It was pretty much a gag, you know. There was hardly a word of truth in it. Mister Taylor had just stumbled across the name somewhere. He'd picked up a lot of stray dope about intelligence and counter-inteffigence in his work. When a magazine offered him a nice fat check for a sensational article on the subject, he stuck his tongue in his cheek and started beating on his typewriter. Title: CASELIUS, THE Mi~ NoBODY KNOWS. Text: full of terrific facts that just didn't happen to be so. He didn't really consider it cheating, according to his wife. He just thought it was a hell of a good joke on everybody. He was that kind; he liked fooling people."
I said, "If all that's true, why was he killed?"
Wellington laughed, and walked' back to the big chair and sat down. He waved his stinking cigar at me. "Look at it from Caselius' standpoint, fella. That little man's no dope. Dozens of bright operatives on our side have been trying to trap him for years. They haven't succeeded, true, but gradually they've drawn a ring around him, if you know what I mean. They've driven him from one cover to the next; now he's compromised this Swedish disguise that I figure he was more or less keeping as a last resort. And then he reads this crap about himself: Caselius, the great hulking espionage genius with a Cossack beard and a laugh that shakes the Kremlin walls. His organization's described in detail, all wrong-"
"Lundgren seemed to think he had that fairly correct."
"Sara said what Caselius wanted her to say. When these proud, independent females fall for a guy, they really fall. The article was way off the beam in practically every respect, take it from me. Caselius couldn't have asked for a more perfect red herring. All he had to do was call attention to the piece somehow, make it seem genuine.
"He's a great boy for direct action: he simply lured the author into an ambush and had him shot to pieces. That made it look as if Mister Taylor had really got hold of something, some genuine information, important enough that Caselius had to have him killed because he knew too much to live. So Hal Taylor became a martyr, and his crazy magazine piece became-in some circles, at least-the authoritative reference work on Caselius, the bearded giant, while Caselius himself went happily on his way, laughing up his sleeve, planning his next operation while he sold silly dresses to silly women in silly dress shops all over Europe-a cute little Swedish citizen not much more than five feet tall."
Wellington grimaced. "He's really a cocky little bastard. He even gave us a clue. Did you know that Caselius is simply a latinized version of Carisson? When a Carlsson comes into money and wants to get fancy, he calls himself Caselius in this country, just like at home a Smith might get notions to call himself Smythe."
It was getting pretty thick in the room from that cigar. I glanced toward the window, and changed my mind. I didn't figure there was much danger any more, if there ever had been. By now Lou would have let Caselius know he couldn't spare me quite yet. However, timing and communications are tricky in such matters, and there was no sense in taking unnecessary chances for a little fresh air.