Mark nodded grimly, and when I might have protested, he added, “I’ll make good cover material, Cherry.”

  “Get tourist tickets,” I told M. Bellocq. “That one will be going first class. She may be won’t notice us in the back of the plane.”

  The man from the Department of Defense left the table, walking slowly past the Swissair counter. He disappeared from view, finally, and Mark and I turned to face each other, to wait.

  In half an hour he was back, handing us two tickets. He said, “I went over the ticket clerk’s head to one of the big bosses here at the terminal. The clerk made out the tickets but a girl messenger brought them to me in an office where Madame Rimels could not see.

  “There. Look. She is rising.”

  A loudspeaker was blaring that the Dawn Special to Geneva was boarding at gate five. All passengers must present their tickets there, and board immediately. Mark and I hung back to thank Pierre Bellocq rather profusely.

  He chuckled, saying, “It is a relief to see you two leave France. Now maybe I can sleep of nights, more soundly. In any event, I wish you good luck. And if you get those plates again—keep them!”

  I echoed his sentiments as we beat feet after Yvette Rimels to gate 5. She was a good distance ahead of us, we did not hurry, we waited until she had gone through the gate and was walking toward the boarding ladder.

  Our tickets were for the rear of the big jetliner. I sat beside the window, the better to hide me from the blonde woman in case she might wander back into this section of the plane where the common folk were seated. There was the usual wait for clearance instructions.

  Then we were taxiing down the runway, faster and faster, and the big jet was in the air. Doubts began to flood me even as the speed and upward surge of the plane pressed me back into my seat. Maybe I had made a mistake.

  My teeth nibbled my lip. It could have been coincidence, that Yvette Rimels was going to Geneva, it may have had nothing to do with the fact that Charley Farley had taken those plates from me.

  Worriedly, I whispered a little of my troubled thoughts to Mark. He listened quietly, then shrugged.

  “It seems like our best bet, maybe our only bet, Cherry. After all, that Swissair clerk did say a man answering the description of Farley had bought a ticket to Switzerland. It could be coincidence, but I think you hit the nail on the head when you suggested that anything Yvette Rimels was Charley’s mistress.”

  The plane leveled off, we flew high and fast. We barely had time for a fast cup of coffee, really, and then the captain’s voice was ordering us to fasten our seat belts, that we would be landing in twenty minutes.

  Then Cointrin Airport was below us, we could see the city of Geneva spread out, pale color against the backdrop of green meadows and the Alps Mountains. I stared out the window like any tourist, I’d ever been in Switzerland before and felt my heart thumping in excitement.

  I like new scenes, unvisited corners of our world. Maybe this is what makes me such a good N.Y.M.P.H.O. agent, or part of it. It is fun to spend a few days in Bavaria, then in Paris, then go on to Geneva. Even with all the fighting I am asked to do, en route.

  Mark and I waited until we saw Yvette Rimels making her way across the field toward the terminal building. We grabbed up such hand luggage as we had—my poor, tired Gucci bag was it—and ran after her.

  Customs delayed us not at all. She had bags to be opened, examined. Then she was hailing a taxi and we were on her heels.

  Mark shoved a new French franc in the amount of five thousand at the driver of our cab. We hadn’t had time to exchange our French money for Swiss, as yet.

  “Follow that cab. Don’t lose it,” he said. “I’ll pay the fare and there’s another five thousand franc note for you when we get where she’s going.”

  The taxi driver merely grunted and off we went, skirting Lac Leman or the Lake of Geneva, as it’s also known, through a countryside rich with beautiful scenery. Neither Mark nor I had the faintest idea where we were headed, but we didn’t really care, as long as Yvette Rimels took us to Charley Farley.

  We went by the lake road for quite a while, then the car ahead of us swung inland. Under trees, past meadows where sheep grazed, we went at a reasonable speed. Yvette Rimels was confident she was not being followed, I reasoned, or she would have urged her driver to a faster pace. It was a point in our favor.

  It was well along in the morning, nearly noon, I should judge, that the taxi in front of us turned in at a driveway that wound between trees toward a house of that type called chalet.

  “Stop here,” Mark yelled, and the driver braked.

  “This may be a private road,” Mark told me. “We can’t just drive up and announce that we’re here. Let us out, driver.”

  Mark pressed money into his hands until the man’s eyes swelled with delight. “I will wait upon the lower road,” he murmured in bad French.

  We ran into the woods, toward the chalet. Yvette Rimels got out of her cab, the driver swung her bags to the ground and she paid him. He got back in the cab, it swung about and came roaring back toward the highway.

  Mark and I edged closer.

  Yvette was staring up at the chalet, so we looked, too. It was a beautiful building. At one time, it must have been a farmhouse, the lower half was of glittering white stucco dotted here and there by casement windows painted a brilliant red, giving it a gay appearance. Its top floor was done in brown wood painted over by pinks and yellows and whites, in many and varied decorations. A tiny balcony ran all around it. It was roomy, but it gave the appearance of smallness. And I thought it utterly charming.

  A man came out onto the balcony. It was Charley Farley!

  My hand stabbed out, grabbed Mark’s forearm and my nails dug in. My mouth was dry, my heart thudded like a trip-hammer.

  “Easy,” he breathed. “Easy, now.”

  “Don’t you have any emotion at all?” I scolded softly. “We were right, Mark. We took a long shot by the nose and it paid off.”

  “Not yet,” he muttered, reaching inside his jacket to his shoulder holster and loosing his revolver. “But it will.”

  We tiptoed forward.

  Charley Farley went away and reappeared in the ground floor door. He walked forward swiftly, threw his arms about Yvette Rimels, and gave her a long kiss. I thought about what a fool I must have appeared to these two people and flushed.

  Charley whistled. Two hulking types came from the house, caught up Yvette’s bags, and walked with them into the house. Charley and the blonde woman followed, arms about each other. As Mark and I stood there motionless, we could hear their voices.

  “We have it made, you and I,” Charley was exulting. “The plates are here, nobody knows where we are. We shall stay here a month, until the search for those plates slackens, and then we’re off to New York. We are billionaires, Yvette. We can do anything we want, with those plates.”

  They disappeared from view.

  “We have a long wait until dark,” Mark muttered.

  “Why wait? They don’t expect us. This place is lonely as the top of Mount Blanc. We could get around behind the house, get in by way of the back door, and start shooting.”

  He thought about it, leaning his shoulder against a tree-bole. We were hidden here by the trees, nobody from the house could see us. Finally, he nodded.

  “Maybe you’re right. But I’d like to avoid shooting as soon as we enter the place. I don’t want to alarm Charley any more than we have to until we have him in our sights.”

  “Right on. No guns unless we have to.” We went by a long, roundabout way through the trees and across a huge meadow behind the house, lying on our bellies and slithering through the tall grasses, and then by way of another stand of trees until we could see the painted back door. It was about fifty feet away, across an open yard.

  “We’ll have to run,” Mark grumbled.

  “They won’t be expecting us,” I pointed out. “We have surprise going for us. What the hell, Mark—we have to take the chance.”

  “By rights, we should go back and enlist the aid of the Swiss police.”

  I gave him a dirty look and took the proverbial bull by the horns. I started to run like crazy for that red door. Mark said something under his breath, but he came after me.

  Nobody yelled, there was no sound at all as we raced across that open backyard. At any moment, to be frank about it, I expected a gun to be poked out of one of those pretty casement windows and to be fired down at us.

  But my hand grabbed the doorknob and turned it, without incident. Mark was right at my elbow. The door opened into a kitchen where a middle-aged woman was standing at a stove. She was plump and motherly, and she evinced no special surprise. Maybe she thought we had come with Yvette Rimels and had decided to stretch our legs with a walk.

  I stepped up to her, whispering, “We are police. If you don’t want to go to jail, you will cooperate.”

  Her eyes got big, she turned the color of new snow, and she started to shake. She nodded her head, moved away from the stove toward Mark, at my hand-wave.

  “How many of these international crooks are here?” I asked.

  “Fah—five.”

  “Including the man who calls himself Herr Farley?” Mark wanted to know.

  She nodded. She lived here, she had a little room off the kitchen, she volunteered. She wanted no trouble with the police, she would do whatever we asked. I took her in her little room, made her swear to be silent if she didn’t want to be tied up, and left her sitting in a small rocker.

  Mark and I moved from the kitchen into a hallway. There were voices to our left. We stood listening, trying to pick out voice timbres.

  I held up a hand, showed two fingers, indicating to Mark that only two men were in the room to our left. The other two, with Charley Farley and Yvette Rimmels, were upstairs.

  “Go on three,” Mark whispered. He held up his fingers, one, two three.

  We stepped into the doorway and leaped. Mark had his gun up, was driving it viciously at the head of a man who turned in his chair to stare at him with disbelieving eyes. That gun barrel thudded home with a dull sound.

  The man slid down in his chair, uninterested in what went on about him.

  I saw all this out of the corner of my eyes, actually, because the man I marked for my own was some distance away, so that I had to jump for him. His hand flew toward a revolver he carried in a shoulder holster.

  My right hand drew back, then went forward. He drew back his head in an instinctive gesture, which was exactly what I wanted him to do. Because the edge of my hand took him across the throat.

  He choked, he gagged, he gasped for air.

  While he was doing that, I flattened out both hands and slapped my palms against his ears. You can kill a man by doing this, the Commandos used this technique during World War II.

  The guy sagged. I caught him before he could hit the floor and then dropped him gently to lie on his back. Meanwhile, Mark was snatching at drape cords, unraveling them, using them as cords to bind our victims. He stuffed their handkerchiefs into their mouths and tied them to a sofa and a heavy chair, so they couldn’t roll together and help each other get free.

  When we’d finished our task, we stared at each other across their bodies and Mark jerked his upright thumb toward the floor above us.

  We had made very little noise, down here. We hoped that such noise as we’d had to make would not have been heard by those above us. Well, it was a risk we had to take.

  Mark and I went out into the hall, looked up the staircase. We heard voices from the second floor. I put my feet on the stair treads, mounted them with Mark at my heels.

  I had my Gold Cup automatic in my right hand, which was buried deep in the Gucci bag. I would shoot through the bag if I had to, I’d already done it on this case; I promised myself a new one when this case was over, but I hoped we could do this quietly.

  I reached the top step when a man came out of a bedroom doorway. He was one of those who had responded to Charley Farley’s whistle and had carried Yvette Rimels’ bags to her room. His eyes got big at sight of me.

  He opened his mouth to say something.

  I never gave him the chance. I did not wait to learn whether he was going to yell an alarm or merely ask if I’d come with blonde Yvette.

  My right hand slammed the Gucci and the automatic forward into his midsection. It was a blow to his solar plexus and I got force behind it by pivoting on my left foot.

  He gagged, mouth open.

  That was when Mark hit him with the barrel of his own gun. The man fell against the door jamb. Mark reached out to catch him.

  We peeped into the room from which he had come. It was empty, so we dragged him into it, draping him on the floor and using some extra drape cords from downstairs that Mark had stuffed into his pockets against just such an emergency.

  We had been extraordinarily lucky, so far. Our good fortune could hardly continue. The way I figured it, there was one Mafia button left, besides Charley Farley himself. I didn’t figure Yvette Rimels as being very dangerous.

  Our luck ended with a voice. “Hey, Petey! Where the hell are you?”

  I stepped into the hall, dropping the Gucci bag, the Colt automatic naked in my hand. It was a good thing I did because a head peeped from a doorway and was withdrawn, only to have a hand come out with a gun and fire a shot at me.

  I ducked back into the room as the bullet all but singed my red hair. Then I dropped to the floor and wriggled into the hall, gun up and ready.

  There was no room for both of us in the hall. I made as small a target as possible as I waited for the man to show himself or his gun-hand.

  Voices were clamoring in that room down the hall. I could hear them quite clearly.

  “Joey, what the hell! You gone crazy?”

  “There’s a dame in the house, boss! Some stranger I never seen before.”

  “You’re crazy! How could there be?”

  “I don’t know—but she’s there.”

  “Pete! Pete! Answer me!”

  This was Charley Farley, trying to find out what was going on. Petey was tied up and gagged, he couldn’t answer.

  Then I heard Charley Farley again. He spoke in a choked, disbelieving voice, in which incredulity and shock were equally mixed.

  “A dame, you say? What sort of dame?”

  “Real pretty. She has red hair.” Charley gasped. Yvette squealed.

  Charley said, “It can’t be! Not Cherry Delight! She’s back in Paris!” He must have rounded on Yvette, because he rasped, “You know her. Did she follow you?”

  “Of course not. How could she have? She doesn’t connect me with you. And I took the five o’clock plane at dawn to make certain not many people would see me.”

  There was a silence. Charley broke it by yelling, “Cherry? Is that you, out there?”

  I buttoned my lip. I wanted one of them to poke his head out into the hall. My left hand held my right wrist, I had that Gold Cup aimed right about where it should appear.

  “Maybe I got her with that shot, boss,” suggested Joey.

  “Take a look.” I held my breath.

  Ahead came around the edge of that jamb. My finger was already squeezing the trigger. I saw a forehead and then a pair of eyes.

  My gun bucked.

  A hole showed in the middle of Joey’s forehead. He toppled forward, out into the hall. I was on my feet and running before he landed.

  I skidded into the room that held Yvette Rimels and Charley Farley. I flung myself into it and toward the floor as I came. If Charley had his gun out, I wanted his bullet to go over me, not into me. And the hell with appearances.

  Naturally, I landed flat on my front, almost at his feet. His face was white, his mouth was twisting in utter dismay at sight of his dead button.

  Yvette was standing a little to one side of and behind him. She was white-faced, her arms were flung about a big stuffed frog. At my undignified entrance, her eyes came away from the dead man and stared down at me.

  Charley had no gun in his hand. This whole thing had taken him by such surprise, I don’t believe he was even armed.

  For a long moment, we stared at each other.

  “I don’t believe it,” he managed to gasp. “I just don’t believe this. How did you manage to get here?”

  I decided it was safe enough to get to my feet. “On the same plane that brought her. I saw her buying a ticket to Geneva, the Swissair clerk said you’d also bought one—or a man answering your description, at any rate—so I decided to come on along and see where she’d lead me.

  “It was the only clue we had.”

  Charley said, “Look, can’t we make a deal? Those plates can make enough money for all of us. We’ll never be poor, never again.”

  “Come off it, Charley. I’m with N.Y.M.P.H.O. You can’t bribe me. Now let’s have the plates.”

  Charley chuckled. “They’re back in Paris, Cherry. You don’t think I brought them with me, do you?”

  “Yeah, I do.” He shrugged, turned away. I watched him as a hungry hawk watches a chicken it has marked as its prey. He took a few steps, then came back

  “I will make a deal with you. I will tell you where the plates are and you will let Yvette and me go free.”

  “No deal.”

  He gave me his charming smile. He asked, “May I smoke while I try to persuade you?”

  “So smoke.”

  His hand went in under his jacket. Almost too late I remembered that Charley Farley kept a revolver he had showed me during our drive through Bavaria and which he had used in my fight against the Mafia buttons at that roadblock, in a shoulder holster.

  His gun flashed. My trigger finger tightened.

  I shot him high in the chest, right through his heart. Charley Farley went back on his heels, face contorted. His gun-holding hand fell to his side. He teetered a moment, then went down with a thud.

  Yvette Rimels stared at him in horror. She swung about to me, her face contorted with grief and horrified disbelief.

  “You killed him,” she whimpered. “You killed Charley.”

  “It was him or me,” I said ungrammatically.

 

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