Joey said, "The spare tire? That's a hell of a corny place to hide it."

"Maybe, but he made it, didn't he? The Man says he should be here in four-five hours, the way he's pushing.

Keep your eyes on the road, Duchess."

Beth asked breathlessly, "What are you going to do to him?"

"Just drive, Gorgeous," Martell said. "You know what they say; ask a silly question, get a silly answer. That was a hell of a silly question, now, wasn't it?"

The old Buckman cabin was off the road a little ways, and the low Chrysler had a hard time making it over the ruts. Pretty soon they'll start building cars that you can't even get over the hump where your driveway meets the street. Beth stalled twice, braking hard for rocks and bumps.

Martell said, "Just goose it, Duchess. It's not your car, what the hell do you care what happens to The Man's muffler?"

We crashed and thrashed up to the place and went out and went inside. It wasn't much of a house, even for back in the mountains. Whoever the Buckmans had been, they'd moved out long ago. There was a cot, a table, and some wooden chairs in various stages of decay, in the largest room, the one we entered. There was a bedroom of sorts with a built-in double bunk visible through one door, and a kitchen with an old, wood-burning range visible through the other. There's nothing deader-looking than one of those old Iron stoves rusting away from disuse.

"Over here, Duchess," Martell said, dusting off a chair with a flourish and taking her arm to seat her. His hand stayed a little longer and covered a little more territory than absolutely necessary. "Sit here and stay put."

Beth sat down, trying to ignore his touch. She had the prissy, head-high, eyes-forward look a certain kind of nice girl gets when she hears a wolf-whistle on the street. I hoped she didn't mean it. I hoped to God she didn't mean it. I was going to need her badly, soon.

Martell turned to me. "You," he said, "way over here. Now let's hear you talk. Where's Miss Fredericks? Where are you keeping her?" He looked down at me and sighed, and drew a pair of pigskin gloves from his pocket and started pulling them on. "Keep them covered, Joey," he said without turning his head. "This one wants it the hard way…"

Chapter Twenty-two

IT WAS A long, rough morning, but I've known rougher. Martell's heart wasn't in it. He didn't really give a damn where I was hiding Moira Fredericks, and he wasn't in any hurry to find out-not yet, at least. He was just enjoying himself and incidentally, I noticed with hope, trying to impress Beth with what a big, tough, mean, irresistible man he was. I hadn't forgotten his record with the three black marks for falling down on the job on account of women.

I tried to signal her. It shouldn't have been necessary. A good female agent would have got to work on him as a matter of course. Even the Fredericks girl would have seen where her duty lay and done it without prompting, I was sure. But Beth continued to ignore Martell, deliberately and kind of desperately. I couldn't even catch her attention at first. She was doing her best not to watch the proceedings at all, which seemed fairly stupid. How did she expect us to get out of this if we didn't cooperate, and how were we going to cooperate if she wouldn't look my way for possible messages?

Finally I managed to establish communications and get the idea across. I saw her eyes widen incredulously. She glanced at Martell, and back at me, to be sure I really meant to ask this of her. Then, after a long pause, I saw her pull back her shoulders bravely, and, after another pause, raise her hands to her hair, which had become more than slightly disheveled during the course of the night and morning.

The next time he looked her way, she answered with a brief slanting glance, quickly withdrawn. There's nothing that beats, for pure coquettishness, that sidelong glance they give you while busy with their hair. I drew a sigh of relief. It looked as if I might make a soldier of her yet. I even took courage from the fact that Martell was returning to the fray with renewed energy. Apparently, like many other men, he believed wholeheartedly in the theory that nothing made him bigger, in the eyes of a woman, than beating up another man in front of her.

Some time after eight o'clock I got a short respite when he sent Joey outside to keep watch.

"Logan will probably be coming from below," Martell said. "This road joins the main highway out on the desert somewhere. It would be his shortest route. But don't count on it. He might get tricky and swing up into the mountains and come down the way we came. Or he could park out of sight and sneak up on foot. So keep a sharp lookout." He watched Joey go out the door. Then he took out his gun and came back to me and kicked me in the shin. "Where were we? Oh, yes, you were going to tell me where you're keeping Miss Fredericks…

But the worst was over, for the time being. With Joey out of the room, he had to be careful about coming within reach; and he wasn't getting any real charge out of it now, anyway. His mind was busy elsewhere. He was listening.

When we heard the Jag coming at last, it sounded like a cross between a tractor-trailer rig puffing a steep grade and a buzz-saw slicing through soft pine. As it came closer, I could hear that the big six-cylinder mill was running rough. He needed new plugs all around after that long, hard drive, and a couple of valves needed attention badly. Joey appeared in the doorway.

"He's coming up the canyon!"

"All right," Martell said. "Now leave that door open and come over here and put your gun on this joker. The hell with what he knows. Don't monkey with him. If he moves, just shoot a nice big hole in him."

Joey pulled out his gun, a large revolver with an orifice in the barrel that was either.44 or.45 but looked considerably larger from where I was sitting. He showed it to me, so that if he had to use it I'd know what I'd been killed with, and walked around behind my chair where I couldn't see him without craning my neck, which didn't seem advisable. Besides, I wasn't going to strain any muscles I didn't have to. They were all pretty sore by this time.

Martell went over and pulled Beth to her feet. He was very business-like now, with action impending.

"All right, Duchess. Here's where you come in."

We could hear the Jaguar turning in from the canyon road, hitting bottom here and there on the primitive track leading to the cabin, as the Chrysler had done. Martell gave a sudden twist to Beth's wrist, levering it around and up between her shoulder blades.

"Joey," he said.

"Yeah."

"Watch him. I don't even want to have to think about him."

"I've got this monkey," Joey said. "You just handle the Duke. Be careful, he's supposed to know his way around."

Beth moaned slightly with the pain of her arm. "What are you going to-"

Martell said, "Play another record, Duchess. Or just shut up." He listened. The Jag had come to a stop outside. He shoved Beth roughly into the open doorway. "Duke," he called. "Duke Logan."

There was a little pause. I heard Joey cock – his revolver, behind me. Then Logan's voice reached us, a little attenuated by distance. "I read you, old chap," the Duke said. "Loud and clear."

"You see what I've got here?"

"I see."

"Take out your gun and drop it on the ground. One careless move and I blow her spine in two."

There was another pause. Logan didn't say anything. There was nothing to say, although his kid would undoubtedly have made it the subject of six pages of corny dialogue. But the Duke had been raised in a harder school. The cards were dealt, the stakes were clear. He could either play out his hand, win or lose, or he could throw it in and hope for a better deal later-if he was an optimist.