"I see," I said. "Well, I sure am sorry, son." I hesitated. "It's a silly question, I suppose, but why didn't you tell me what was going on? As an American citizen, I'd have been happy to co-operate."

Grankvist hesitated, and glanced at Wellington without friendliness. "The suggestion was made," he said coldly. "Mr. Wellington didn't approve it, for some reason." He cleared his throat. "I am sorry for having disturbed you, Herr Helm, and I am truly sorry for the violence that occurred, for which I must take responsibility, since I am in charge. Under the circumstances, I can hardly be legalistic about your little gun, can I? However, your possession of ~t is contrary to law, so I will have to confiscate the weapon temporarily. It will be returned to you when you leave this country. Is that satisfactory to you?"

We looked at each other for a moment. We understood each other. If I made no trouble about getting pushed around, he'd make no trouble about my illegal weapon… On second thought, I wasn't quite sure I'd better assume that I understood him completely. He'd gone for my act just a little too quickly, and it hadn't even been one of my best performances.

"Quite satisfactory, Herr Grankvist," I said. "I'm sorry to have spoiled your plans."

He gave a shrug that was more Latin than Nordic. "Det hdnder," he said. "It happens. Are you coming, Herr Wellington?"

"I'll be along," Wellington said, watching me.

Grankvist frowned, and looked at me quickly. I said, "It's all right. As a fellow-citizen, whose taxes presumably pay his salary, I've got a few questions to ask Mr. Wellington. I'll scream for help if he tries to bully me again."

Grankvist looked from one to the other of us, gave his shrug again, and walked out. Americans have the reputation of being crazy the world over, I guess.

Chapter Twenty-four

AFTER THE DOOR had closed behind the Swede, I got up and went to the so-called bathroom and took a couple more aspirins. When I came back, Wellington had got out a long cigar and lighted up. Back in the days when I was smoking myself, I didn't notice it so much, but now I get kind of annoyed with people who stink up the premises without so much as asking if I mind. Well, there wasn't much chance of my loving him like a brother anyway.

I pulled on a dressing gown and stuck my feet into slippers. I had a couple of very sore ribs; and chewing was going to be no pleasure for a couple of days, after that poke in the jaw. He smoked and watched me. I jerked my head toward the door through which Grankvist had gone.

"You didn't tell him everything, apparently," I said. "For one thing, he still seems to think Lou Taylor was Caselius' loyal accomplice, but she was actually working for you, wasn't she?"

He said, "I told Grankvist just what he needed to know." "Yeah," I said. "Like you told me. What outfit do you report to, anyway?"

He named the organization readily enough. It was the same as Sara Lundgren's. I hadn't known they had two full-fledged operatives in this little country. Obviously I hadn't been supposed to know. Vance had apparently discovered it, however. It was what he'd been trying to tell me when he died.

I said, "I don't suppose I have to identify myself."

"No," he said. "We know you, you sonofabitch."

He was a real lovable specimen. I said, "You made a bobble, brother. You goofed. You ~got security-happy, or something, and couldn't bring yourself to confide in one of the people necessary to your scheme. You thought you could pull it off, working around me, using me, without coming right out and asking for my co-operation. It's a mistake you guys often make, not trusting people. But if you don't tell them, you can't very well blame them for screwing up your plans, can you?"

He got up from the chair in which he'd been sprawled. He didn't have any height on me, but that width and weight made it seem as if he were towering over me. I estimated the position of the nerve center I intended to go for if he started to get funny again. They say you can kill a man by hitting him there hard enough. He was big enough to make it an interesting experiment.

He said, "Still acting innocent, aren't you? Well, it doesn't go, Helm. I know you. I've known about you and your hush-hush outfit for a long time. I got curious about you and your mission, that time during the war-oh, I recognized you in Stockholm, just like you recognized me-and I did a little digging around afterward and found out some interesting things. I know what you people do. I know that you generally work pretty much alone. I know you've got the reputation of being a bunch of prima donnas, although what the hell you've got to be proud of, I couldn't say!"

He was really a hell of a big guy, and somehow his conservative Harvard-Yale-Princeton clothes made him look ~ even bigger. When the time came, I'd have to cut him down at once. He was too big to play with, although it would have been fun.

He said, "I've met some miserable, jealous, bureaucratic bastards in my time. But I've never before met one who'd deliberately spoil a job other people had worked months on, risked their lives on, just to keep it for himself!"

I stared at him. Well, these organization men judge everybody by themselves. He was just giving me credit for his own brand of thinking. He'd tried to hog the job for himself without cutting me in, and he assumed I'd acted from the same motive.

"Look," I said, "I'll tell you once more in plain Ianguage: I didn't know I was dumping anybody's apples, except perhaps Caselius'. You didn't tell me. What I want to know is, why didn't you tell me?"

We kicked it back and forth for a while. I won't bore you with the exact dialogue. Just figure out what the employees of two different government departments would be likely to say to each other after discovering that they'd been working at cross purposes, and you'll be close enough. At the end, he was still firmly convinced that I'd fogged my negatives to spite him; and I still wanted to know why he hadn't taken me into his confidence about what he was trying to do.

At last he burst out: "Tell you? You damn butcher, after what you did in Stockholm, do you think I'd ask any help from you?"

"What did I do in Stockholm?" I asked. "Oh, you mean Sara Lundgren?"

"Damn right, I mean Sara!" he said. "Okay, so she was crazy about the guy-what the hell do they see in these slick little Continental types anyway?-but as long as she was in contact with him she was a potential gold mine to us. We just kept an eye on her and made sure she didn't slip him anything important-"

"Nothing important," I said, "except about me. She blew my cover the minute I stepped ashore."

He said, "Hell, it wouldn't have hurt you. Caselius needed an American photographer badly, too badly to quibble about whether the guy packed a gun in his camera case. Anyway, he'd have seen through your corny disguise soon enough.

This way Sara got the credit for unmasking you."

"Swell," I said. "It did her a lot of good. And I don't recall anybody's consulting me."

He said impatiently, "I was pretty sure Caselius would go ahead and use you anyway. Well, he did, didn't he? He's the kind who'd actually be tickled at the thought of having an American agent do his photographing for him. He'd just take the precaution of running a few simple tests to see what kind of a guy he had to deal with, first having his boys knock you around a bit and then checking you out himself with cold steel. You assayed fairly high on stupidity, I understand. You even let him know you were pretty good with a knife, so he knew what to watch out for. He's a conceited little guy. It would give him a big kick to use and outsmart a man who'd been sent to kill him. I counted on that."