The Devastators Read Online Free PDF Page A

try out that oversized bathtub before we have lunch.” She slipped off her tiny wristwatch and looked at it before putting it on the dresser. “The date’s for four? It’s only noon now. That gives us plenty of time.”
    “Us?” I said. She glanced at me quickly. I said, “I don’t really think you ought to be contaminated by any contact with Simpson and Walling, sweetheart. You’re little Kid Innocence, remember? Let’s keep you that way.”
    She hesitated, and said reluctantly, “I guess you’re right. Okay, I stay. Matt?”
    “Yes?”
    “You didn’t tell me what Buchanan died of.”
    “Bubonic plague,” I said. “Also known as the Black Death. A fine upstanding adult disease for a change.”
    She whistled softly and said, “This McRow character. He sounds kind of crazy all around. Delusions of grandeur and stuff.”
    She looked cute standing there without anything on, but it was my chance to turn the tough-and-humorless treatment on her, and I wasn’t about to pass it up.
    I said, “It’s not our business to psychoanalyze him, doll. All we’re required to do is kill him.”

4
    After lunch, which we had served in the room, I called a car dealer on Berkeley Square; then I left Winnie to take a nap while I went over to pick up our transportation: a gaudy, bright red Triumph Spitfire sports job, the last car in the world an agent on a secret mission would choose to drive. Well, that was the idea.
    It had sixty-seven horsepower, an eighty-three-inch wheelbase, a top speed of ninety-something, and a turning circle of twenty-four feet, which meant that if you got just a little gay with the wheel, you’d find yourself going back the way you came. This was why I’d picked it. In a land of fast drivers and unlimited highway speeds I wasn’t likely to be able to equip myself to outrun the opposition—considering the departmental budget—but in this little bomb, if need be, I might out-dodge it.
    They sent me out to a garage at the edge of town for the actual delivery, and by the time I’d picked my way back to the hotel, creeping timidly down the left side of the street while the crazy traffic swirled around me, it was well after three. I turned my miniature hotrod over to the doorman and went up to the room. Winnie was sitting on the bed with a bunch of pillows behind her, reading the London papers provided by the management.
    “Mission accomplished?” she asked.
    “I got it here,” I said. “But this is no place to learn a new way of driving. I’ll be glad when we’re safely out in the country. God, what a rat-race!”
    She laughed. She was wearing a sleeveless, beltless white linen dress, I noticed, that looked as if you could have made it with one hand out of an old bedsheet. I must say I prefer my women with waistlines, but the absurdly simple little tube of a garment made her look very young and innocent indeed. It was hard to keep in mind that she was well over twenty, nearer twenty-five, and that she’d killed seven men and would, we hoped, soon raise her score to eight.
    She’d left her shoes off for comfort. Her knees-up reading position didn’t leave many secrets under the brief dress, but then, we were supposed to be married. I reached over the end of the bed and pinched her big toe through her stocking.
    “Well, I’ll see you in an hour or so,” I said.
    “You’re off again?”
    “I just wanted to get rid of that damn car before I cracked it up. I’ll take a cab from here.”
    She said, just a little too casually perhaps, “Well, toss me my cigarettes while you’re up.”
    I grinned. “Don’t give me that while-you’re-up routine, small fry. This is a high-class joint. Around here we got manners. We say please.”
    “Please.”
    I dropped the cigarettes and matches in her lap and moved to the door. “Don’t be lonely while I’m gone.” She hesitated. “Matt, do you think it’s tactically okay if I go out and do a little rubbernecking and window-shopping? I’ve