Free The Annihilators by Donald Hamilton

flesh—of course, that had been before I’d learned about the handicapped child that presumably had not resulted from immaculate conception.
    On the other hand, if she hoped to influence my photographic activities by these tawdry bedroom tactics, well, it seemed like a hell of a thing for a proud and well-educated lady to be doing merely to promote a favorable picture story about her and her husband’s scientific endeavors in Costa Verde. I’d already developed considerable respect for her. I couldn’t believe this of her.
    The silence ran on tautly for several seconds. Abruptly she gave a kind of a shudder and rose and walked quickly back to the window and parted the draperies and looked out for a second or two. She let them fall together again and took a deep swallow from the glass she still held. I had risen and moved to stand behind her, but I didn’t touch her.
    “I’m ashamed.” Her voice was an almost inaudible whisper. “I’m so ashamed, Sam.”
    I didn’t help her out by saying anything. After another sip from her glass, she turned to face me.
    “‘Come in for a drink, Sam. Close the door unless you’re afraid of being compromised, Sam.’ My God, how cheap can you get?” Her voice was ragged with self-contempt. When I still didn’t speak, she went on: “Would you be a real gentleman? Would you just withdraw very quietly and leave the lady, who’s no real lady, to her humiliation? And in the morning please try not to look at her and make her blush at remembering the shabby tramp she was, or tried to be!”
    I said, “That’s all very touching, sweetheart.”
    She stiffened and stared up at me, her face pale. She started to speak angrily and stopped herself, licking her lips.
    I said, “You do it very well. But I don’t know whom you’re trying to kid, me or yourself, Dillman.”
    She drew a sharp breath and let it out. A pale smile stirred her carefully made-up mouth. “I can’t be doing it too well, or you wouldn’t be seeing right through it, Felton.” She sighed in a resigned way. “No, you’re perfectly right. I don’t really want you to go.”
    I studied her, perplexed. “Why me?” I asked. “I mean, I know I’ve got the face of Adonis and the body of Hercules and the brain of Einstein and the balls of a rampant bull. There’s no doubt whatever that I’m totally irresistible on every level from the intellectual to the horizontal, but you still look to me like a lady who’d put up a good fight against infidelity, even under the most tempting circumstances. So why me, and on our first night out of Chicago, yet?”
    Her smile grew; and now there was a little malice in it. “Who else was there, my dear? One of those elderly gentlemen with their battle-axe wives? That legless boy who may very well be missing something more than his legs? Anyway… anyway, I wouldn’t want him, even if he were intact. He’s too young. He wouldn’t know how to do it. He wouldn’t be… careful of me. He’d get all passionate and excited and, God help us, he might even fall in love with me, enchanting older woman that I am. I might have a hard time getting rid of him afterward.”
    “Whereas I look like I shed easily?” I said dryly.
    “You’re adult and I suspect you’re fairly experienced, Sam. I don’t think you feel obliged to make a grand passion out of every one-night stand.” She drew a long breath. “I’m glad you think I look… looked like an ever-faithful wife, a very reserved and respectable and sexless sort of person. I’ve worked very hard to preserve that image. And if I hadn’t done it tonight, my dear, well, I was afraid we were going to be friends in another day or two. And it’s very hard to seduce a man who’s become a good friend. I mean, he gets so terribly shocked when he discovers what the lady
really
wants from him. I have plenty of friends; I don’t need you for another. I need you for…” She stopped, and gave a tiny shrug. “I need you,” she