Free The Revengers by Donald Hamilton

any other kind of publicity. And I certainly don’t want to get her interested enough in me to start checking up on my past, do I? And when a conscientious reporter gets important information from a certain source, he starts checking that source for reliability, doesn’t he? Or she?”
    “So you were careful not to give her any important information,” I said. “What important information?”
    She hesitated and looked oddly embarrassed. She spoke too quickly, “I didn’t mean . . . I was just speaking generally. What I meant was that I simply brushed her off as fast as I could; the last thing I wanted was her calling attention to me by quoting me as her tame nautical advisor.”
    “Sure,” I said. “What about me?”
    “What do you mean?” Her voice was guarded.
    “How about being my tame nautical advisor, Hattie? I’d like to have some idea of what this gal is getting herself, and me, involved in. You must have done a bit of thinking about this recent rash of ship sinkings, and even if big ships are out of your line, you know a hell of a lot more about them than I do.”
    She started to speak quickly, and stopped. There was a brief silence; then she said, “I’m afraid I can’t be much help to you, Matt.” She wasn’t looking at me; and her voice sounded strangely uncertain, for her. Then she drew a deep breath and turned to face me a bit defiantly. She said, “No, that’s not true. I won’t lie to you. I simply don’t want to be much help to you, any more than I wanted to be much help to Eleanor Brand. For just about the same reasons.”
    It shocked me a little. It was not what I’d expected from Captain Harriet Robinson, as she now was; even though it was a perfectly sensible attitude.
    I said, “You still feel pretty vulnerable, even after all these years, is that what you mean?”
    She nodded. “I . . . there could be something rather peculiar going on, Matt; but if there is, I don’t want to be mixed up in it in any way. Please try to understand. I mind my own business, ashore and on the water, and I let others mind theirs. Cap’n Hattie is deaf and blind and very, very, dumb, in a bright sort of way; and everybody knows it. I don’t ever see anybody smuggling drugs although it takes a lot of concentrated not-seeing. I do my fishing legally and if somebody else does it some other way you can never prove it by me. Everybody loves me and nobody hates me and I want to keep it that way. I don’t want to make anybody mad. I don’t want to give anybody reason to start asking questions about me even if you did fix up my records so nicely, for which you have my thanks. But I earned that, in a way, didn’t I? I don’t really owe you for that.”
    “You don’t owe me a thing, quite the contrary,” I said.
    She was looking out the cabin window, again refusing to meet my eyes. “ Please understand. I’m still an easy mark for anybody who wants to make a real project of digging into my past. Even if you want to, you can’t protect me beyond a certain point, can you? Not if they learn the truth and take it to the proper authorities. There are still some old charges that could be revived if it’s learned that I’m alive; charges I doubt even your big man in Washington has pull enough to do anything about, if the information gets into the hands of an eager official—prosecutor?— who feels compelled to act on it. Accessory to murder is only one; they could call what I did up there conspiracy, or even treason, couldn’t they? I. . . I was so goddamn proud and cocky in those days, Matt, and so goddamn stupid! And I don’t intend to go to prison, my dear; I couldn’t endure that. It’s bad enough being . . . being exiled like this. . . Her voice stopped. We sat silent for a moment; she seemed to be listening to a replay of her own words. I felt her shudder beside me. She whispered, aghast, “God, listen to me, Matt! What’s happened to me? I sound like a sniveling coward hiding in a dark