I said, "It's been a long time, sir."

He glanced at the guns I was holding. "Expecting trouble, Eric?"

"It seems indicated," I said. "For a moment, there, I thought you were it. Tina didn't tell me you were anywhere around."

Mac hesitated. "Well, she wasn't supposed to," he said dryly.

"I appreciate the confidence, sir," I said sourly. "There's nothing that cheers up the hired help like not knowing what the hell they're doing… Maybe, now that she's finally broken down and pried you out of hiding for me, you'll condescend to let me know what's going on." -

He smiled very faintly. "Hasn't she told you?"

"Tina?" I said. "Oh, you don't have to worry your head about Tina, sir. She never lets slip unauthorized information, not even in bed. I can recommend her, without reservations, for the Noble and Exalted Order of the Clam. All I know from her is that somebody's trying to murder Amos Darrel in Santa Fe, and that we're supposed to be misleading the forces of international Communism in some vague and beautiful way by acting as sitting ducks here in San Antonio-"

I broke off. Mary Frances Chatham had raised her head, and Mac was looking at me sharply.

"Amos Darrel?" he said. "Dr. Amos Darrel? You were told he's the target in Santa Fe?"

"Why, yes," I said. "Isn't that right?"

Mac didn't answer my question. Instead, he said curtly, after a moment's pause: "I wasn't aware you'd been given that information." He glanced at the girl. "And having been given it, you should know better than to discuss it before witnesses."

I winced. "Slap my wrist, sir. I guess I've forgotten my security training."

"We'll just have to see that she has no opportunity to tell her friends how much we know."

He looked hard at the girl. Her glance dropped, and she pushed the hair out of her face and began to straighten her clothes.

I said, "Well, there are a lot of questions I want to ask, but they'd better wait. We might have visitors any minute. Where's Tina?"

"She's around," Mac said. "Never mind Tina. She's following instructions."

I said, "I'll bet. Well, I'd love to have some instructions to follow, too. I'm getting just a little tired of playing this game of yours blindfolded."

He said, "Tina wasn't explicit, there wasn't time. Just what kind of trouble are you expecting here?"

"I don't know, exactly," I said. "I don't know just what they could want with Tina and me except revenge. But they've got something fancy in mind. Somebody real tricky is running their show."

"How many agents do you figure they have available?"

"I've seen three men and one woman."

"Descriptions?"

"A young fellow, drug-store-cowboy type or a reasonable facsimile, sideburns, black hat, driving a Plymouth hardtop. An older man with a moustache, in a four-wheel-drive jeep station wagon, white and green. A Harvard-Yale-Princeton type in a golf cap, driving a blue Morris two-door, with Shorty here acting as his blushing bride. There could be more, but those are the ones who've showed."

Mac frowned thoughtfully. "It sounds as if we might be slightly outnumbered, for the moment. Arrangements are being made, but in the meantime perhaps I~ should have a gun, if you can spare one." He smiled that thin smile of his. "It's a long time since I've taken active-part in one of these affairs, Eric. Let's see if I still remember how."

I gave him the little.38. "You hold the wooden part, sir," I said respectfully, "and pull that little metal dingus sticking out from the bottom."

He chuckled, and regarded the weapon in his hand for a moment. "This is a heavier caliber than you used to favor," he said.

"It's not mine," I said. "Spoils of war, sir. Tina got it from one of their agents-the one she had to kill."

"Ah, yes," Mac said. "The one using the alias of Herrera."

"That's right."

He glanced at me from beneath the dark eyebrows.

"So it was Tina who killed the girl? That, I think, is all we needed to know."

He lifted the snubnosed revolver, and aimed it at my chest.

CHAPTER 22

STARING at him incredulously, I heard him say, "Please drop your pistol on the bed, Eric. You won't need it any more tonight… Sarah, attend to his weapon, if you please."

I didn't have to ask who Sarah was. That would be their code name for the tall girl standing nearby-the girl I'd known as Mary Frances. Well I'd guessed somebody clever was behind all the fancy maneuvering, but

Mac, for God's sake!

Yet, I must have suspected something, because the surprise wasn't quite paralyzing. And I suppose he could take some credit for that; he'd seen to having me well indoctrinated, at one time. I don't think any of us who went through the brutal wartime training program he set up can ever really be taken by surprise.

I was functioning again, and I looked at the little revolver with the big hole in the muzzle. And then I looked at Mac, and I grinned.

"Very neat, sir," I murmured. "But you don't really think I'd hand you a loaded gun, do you?"

I mean, it was the automatic reaction. I still was very far from comprehending what was happening and what it all meant. The simple fact was that a man was aiming a gun at me, and this, we'd had drilled into us, was a hostile act demanding instant and violent retaliation whenever possible. A man who aims a gun at you is a man who can kill you, and you don't want to leave people like that standing around. To be sure, this was a man who, two seconds earlier, I'd have said I trusted implicitly; but a gun is a gun and a threat is a threat, and I'd been trained to react first and do my heavy thinking later. And it worked.

It worked well enough that his glance dropped to the weapon for the briefest instant. It was the wrong response. There's only one answer to the old empty-gun gambit. It's the same as for the look-out-there's-somebody-behind-you routine. You just pull the damn trigger. You may wind up with a dead man on the floor, but there's a better chance of its not being you. As he'd said, it had been a long time since he'd attended to these matters personally, and I guess he was rusty. He did look down. I still had the Colt Woodsman in my hand, muzzle down. I could have shot him, of course. That I didn't was a matter of ballistics, not sentiment-I was quite through with sentiment for the night. But a.22 doesn't pack enough punch to stop a man cold. He was holding a powerful weapon; he might still have managed to kill me, even if I'd put my little bullet squarely through his heart. I struck with the barrel instead, knocking the.38 from his hand.

His reaction was quick enough; he got my gun-wrist in some kind of a hasty lock, not a good one, but good enough that the girl had time to dart forward, grab my pistol by the barrel, and twist it backwards hard. Only the safety, still on, kept it from discharging. I had to let her take it from me; in another instant she'd have jammed and broken my finger in the trigger-guard. But Mac wasn't big enough or young enough to hold me with the incomplete grip he had. I tore myself free and reached far outand clipped the girl as she tried to back away with the gun, sending her sprawling. The.22 jumped out of her hand and slid under the bed.

I was aware that the door had burst open, but Mac was closer and had to be attended to first. He was trying to say something. I didn't know what, or why he'd waste breath on speech at such a time. I was disappointed in him. He should have kept up on his own training system. I feinted, brushed his parry aside, and chopped him down like a tree. The girl was shouting something at me. I'd never heard such a garrulous bunch of conspirators. You'd have thought we were running a conference for radio and TV announcers instead of a fight.