The Wrong Venus Read Free Page B

He caught her under the arms and pushed up and outward until she was lying in a more or less horizontal plane across the top of the compartment above them.
    “Almost there—” she gasped.
    “J’ai l’mpression qu’il y a encore une autre femme, au plafond,” the Frenchwoman remarked in a tone that denoted only mild wonder. The English were losing their ability to surprise her.
    “On the ceiling?” the stewardess asked, somewhere under the beard. “Really, she must return to her seat.”
    “I’ve got the knob,” Martine said. At the same moment, the door swung open and she was face to face with the First Officer, at a distance of some four inches. She smiled. “Oh, hello. . . .”
    The latter paled, apparently having never opened a door on anything quite like it. Then, during that brief rupture of the thought process when the rational mind refuses to ingest the manifestly impossible, automatic good manners rushed in to fill the breach. “I am sorry.”
    “It’s all right,” Martine said. “I was just coming out.”
    This time the plane yawed to starboard. They all came out.
    * * *
    There was another rap on the door. "Really, you must hurry."
    The plane banked. They were already commencing their approach. Colby fastened the collar and one other button of his shirt, knotted the tie, and yanked the sweater on over his head. He put on the tweed jacket, and reached down behind the chemical toilet for the vest. He could hear the ticking itself now; all the remaining two hundred and forty were brimming with poisonous vitality and chewing their way into oncoming generations of time like an army of steel-mandibled termites. Great! Just great. Send for our Little Gem Watch-Smuggler’s Kit, and get into this big-paying field at once. Be the first in your neighborhood with prison pallor.
    The plane turned again, and continued to lose altitude in their inexorable approach to the runways at London Airport and Her Majesty’s Customs officers. He had an impression of being poured down through some great funnel into a jug labeled Wormwood Scrubs, with no way to turn aside, or go back, or even to stop or slow down. He shoved the vest up inside the jacket, clamped it with an arm, and buttoned the jacket. As far as he could tell, it didn’t show.
    He hurried out. Just as he started up the aisle, the plane went into another steep bank, and he had to cling to the back of a seat, conscious of all the furious activity against his ribs. With only ten minutes more, they’d have had it made.
    The man in the seat glanced up. “I say, you don’t happen to have the time?” He gave an apologetic little smile. “My watch appears to have stopped.”
    Colby stared down at him wordlessly, held out his watch so the man could see it, and lunged forward to his seat. His topcoat was lying in it. He grabbed it up, sat down, and fastened his belt. The plane was already dropping toward the end of the runway.
    He leaned toward Martine, and whispered, “I’d better leave ‘em. Ditch ‘em under a seat—”
    “Don’t be silly. I said I’d get you through Customs, didn’t I?” She was smiling, her eyes bright with excitement. “We’ll muffle them, to start with. Roll the vest in your topcoat, and then in this.” He noticed then that she had a fur coat across her lap. Apparently the stewardess had just returned it to her.
    The plane touched down, bounced once, and began to decelerate. There was nobody in the aisle yet, and across from them the Sikh was looking out the window. Colby pulled the vest out, rolled it in the gabardine topcoat, and then in the fur, which he noted was natural mink. He wondered why she was doing it.
    “Good,” she said. “Now, here’s the drill. Do you have a bag aboard the plane?”
    “Yes.”
    “No contraband in it?” Mirth welled up in the eyes again like bubbles in champagne. “No atom-bomb assemblies, dirty pictures, hashish . . . ?”
    “No,” he replied.
    “All right. Give me the check.