The Betrayers Read Online Free PDF

cocktail party and make it look quite natural.
    In any event, the initiative was obviously in the hands of the opposition for the time being. There was nothing for me to do but play tourist, so I looked up the phone number of a car-rental place. They sent a small bus to transport me to their office where, for very little money, I was provided with a crippled French Simca that could barely fight its way out into the street. I let its dying struggles carry it back onto the lot and traded it for aBritish Sprite at twice the rental—but at least the two-seater gave a healthy roar when I tickled it with my foot.
    Also it provided me with an excuse to do some moderately progressive driving: you don’t rent a sports car to stand still in traffic. Our boy Francis, alias Bill Menander, was back on the job, and I took sadistic pleasure in running him around Honolulu for most of the day, at speeds that had his little Datsun crying for help.
    We saw the aquarium where a porpoise jumped through a hoop and got everybody wet and the botanical gardens where orchids grew like weeds. We spent a good deal of time in various historical museums, making a study of Hawaiian royalty. The first five kings were easy, they were all named Kamehameha. After that they started showing individuality, and I lost track of them, but I was careful not to let Francis lose track of me. He escorted me back to the hotel in time for me to change for cocktails: the invitation had specified jacket and tie.
    Fully dressed according to specifications, I wandered into the party, given on a terrace covered by a trellis of giant vines in lieu of a roof or awning. I was passed from hand to hand through the receiving line and introduced to some people from New York who were no more interested in me than I was in them, but I saw Jill across the room with orchids in the long blonde hair that hung loose down her back, very striking and, in spite of her morning’s swim, not stringy at all.
    I was aware when she broke away from her companions, and I turned my back so she could have the satisfaction ofsneaking up on me from behind. The stout woman in front of me, in a gaudy new Hawaiian garment quite similar to that worn by the pineapple-juice lady at the airport, was telling me all about crossing the Pacific on the liner
Lurline.
It sounded great if you liked organized fun on shipboard.
    Then there were footsteps behind me and the voice of a woman on the hotel staff saying to somebody, “I’m sure you’ll have a lot in common. Mr. Helm is from Washington, too.”
    I turned with my face ready to recognize Jill and my voice ready to make some reference to our early-morning encounter—why make it hard for the girl?—but it wasn’t Jill. Jill was standing some distance away with a frustrated look on her pretty face. In front of me, smiling in a bored and world-weary way, stood a very handsome dark-haired woman wearing dark glasses that made her look like a movie star incognito. I’d never seen her before, even in photographs.
    I was sure of this. She wasn’t anybody you’d forget if you’d seen her once. The New Yorkers were being led away to meet some other fascinating people, leaving me alone with her. I didn’t figure I’d lost anything by the trade, and Jill could wait.
    I flagged down a boy with a pitcher of the rum punch that was going around, but, as I should have guessed from her aloof—not to say snooty—appearance, my new companion couldn’t drink from the common pot. She had to have Scotch, and a particular brand of Scotch at that. We retired to the bar that had been set up in acorner of the terrace for the hard-to-please.
    When her glass had been properly replenished, she made a small gesture of raising it to me, drank, and nodded approvingly. We stood there for a while in silence: two strangers forced into each other’s company with nothing much to say. The lady’s attitude made it clear that she didn’t really give a damn whether she talked with me