Free Assignment - Budapest by Edward S. Aarons Page A

liquors. Like water. Can’t stand the stuff.”
    “You haven’t answered my question,” Durell said.
    “All I know is some feller come rowing out to my boat late in the day an’ when I invite him aboard, he rewards me with a crack on the head. I wake up tied up and alone, until the girl shows up, maybe an hour ago. She looks at me and then she goes back ashore and then she comes back with you. That’s all. She untied me when she needed help hoistin’ you in. You’re a pretty fair load, even for her.”
    “Where is she now?” Durell asked.
    “At the wheel.”
    Durell swung his legs off the bunk and stood up. The tiny cabin had a low overhead, and he had to duck, clinging to the bunks on either side. Tom Yordie didn’t offer to help him. He had to sit down again after the first try, aware of a cool moisture breaking out all over his body. He took a deep breath and stood up again. This time he remained on his feet.
    “You a cop?” Yordie asked suddenly.
    “No.”
    “Rob a bank?”
    “No. Stay here.” Durell made his way to the small hatch and ladder leading up to the stern deck. For a few moments he did not think he would get up the steps. He was weaker than he thought. Then he drew a deep breath and pushed the hatch open and stepped out into the night wind.
    They were two or three miles offshore. A deep swell was running with the incoming tide, and the pungy pitched in the uneasy current as it quartered against the thrust of the seas. The wind was cold and sharp, but it had scoured the skies until the stars and the moon were out, and he could see the distant mass of the Maryland shore, the cluster of town lights a little to the south, the regular flash of a beacon not far away. Durell braced himself against the pitch of the deck and looked at the girl. She stood easily at the wheel, watching him', her figure only a slight, dark outline against the stars. Then he saw the gun in her hand.
    “Do not come too close to me, please,” she said.
    He saw that she had tied the skiff astern and was towing it. He did not go near her. In the moonlight she looked young and defenseless, but he knew that this was an illusion; her shoulders were straight, her stance alert, and the face she turned toward him was a mask that was neither friendly nor inimical.
    “How do you feel now?”
    “Tom Yordie’s corn helped. You helped, too. Korvuth might have killed me back there on the beach. You yelled and startled him and he took off. Why did you do it?”
    “Perhaps I’ve had enough of killing,” she said quietly. “Sit down over there. I don’t trust you.”
    “You don’t trust me, but you saved my life and then hauled me out here. Kidnaping, practically.” Durell’s laugh was dry. “You patched me up, got me into a bunk, and sailed out into the middle of the Chesapeake. All this, after following me from New York. Can you tell me why?”
    “I want to talk to you. I know who you are, you see.”
    “All right, go ahead and talk.”
    “It is rather confusing. I am not sure what course of action I should take. But I do not like that old man to hear anything of what I have to say to you. Our talk must be strictly confidential. So I think we should get rid of him.”
    Durell said flatly: “He hasn’t done anything to hurt you. He’s just a harmless old fisherman.”
    She looked at him with bleak eyes. “I am not a monster. I do not intend to kill him, as you seem to think. But he is strong for an old man, and he can easily row ashore from here in the skiff.”
    “So we get rid of him. And then?”
    “We talk. I can help you, although it is dangerous for me. And you can help me.”
    Durell looked at the skiff and then at the distant shore. It was not too far. There was a bite of decision and command in the girl’s voice, and a way she held her gun, that made him shrug and raise no objections. Curiosity moved in him, more powerful than the sense of defeat and frustration he had felt a few moments before. There were