The Annihilators by Donald Hamilton

going to have to watch that psyche.
    I rose in gentlemanly fashion and held the chair for her. “Good morning, Dr. Dillman.”
    “We’re going to have to stop this, darling,” she said softly after I’d seated myself again. Then she laughed at my expression. “No, silly, not
that.
I think we can figure out safe ways of doing
that
, two clever people, like us. I just meant tête-à-têtes like this. We’ve got to remember that I hauled you off on that wheelchair mission yesterday, perfectly innocent but just the two of us, and now I’m having breakfast with you; and that’s all we can possibly get away with. You must stay completely away from me now, my dear, until… It can’t be this evening; we’re all having dinner together, and afterward you can visit anybody’s room you like, except mine. I’ll ask some others in for drinks, but you’ll stay away. I’ll tell you when. I may be a… a nymphomaniac, but I don’t have to be a stupid nymphomaniac.”
    “Crap,” I said.
    “Don’t be crude, Sam.”
    “It’s time for a little crudity,” I said. “For God’s sake, this is a guy who just made love to you, remember? You’re a sweet, sexy lady, sure; but don’t try to convince me you’re a female weirdo compulsively grabbing at anything in pants to help her scratch an itch her intellectual husband isn’t man enough to satisfy.”
    She said stiffly, “That’s a very ugly way to put it, a very cruel way, darling; but it happens to be the unfortunate truth.”
    I shook my head. “Last, night, you were far from pathologically eager to haul me into bed. Oh, you talked a good fight, but you were tense, apprehensive, in fact scared shitless to keep up the crudity—until I kissed you. You’d heard things about me. Not nice things. You didn’t know what I was going to do, a dreadful, dangerous character like me. You had a vision of being forced to perform ghastly perversions, or of simply winding up horribly battered and disfigured, hurt and bleeding, after I’d worked my violent will on you. And then I kissed you just like an ordinary human being, male variety, and you sensed it wasn’t going to be such a tough chore after all, making love to me; and in relief and gratitude you… well, you made it very nice and I thank you. But let’s just forget that sickie-sexy bit. You’re a very nice, perfectly normal lady who’s in some kind of a bind; and of course you don’t dare to tell me about it because you’ve been ordered not to, so let me tell you.”
    “Sam, your imagination is running away with you. And I’m disturbed by what you’re saying about yourself. You sound as if… as if you aren’t really a magazine photographer…”
    I said, “Cut it out, Frances. You’ve been told who I am, what I am, by the people who aimed you my way and told you to get me into your bed earliest. Maybe the picture they gave you of me isn’t flattering, it may not even be true in some respects, but as you say, we’d better not spend too much time talking like this, so let it stand. The question is, What do we do now? Well, the people who are running you—”
    She drew a sharp breath of annoyance. “My dear man, nobody’s
running
me! What a disgusting idea, as if I were a horse or a greyhound being galloped around a track! How could you think anybody could possibly coerce me into doing what… what I did last night?”
    “You’re a very conscientious, very dedicated person, Frances; and you take this dig of yours very seriously,” I said. “The fate of the whole world is at stake, you implied. If your right to keep on digging were threatened, you might just possibly decide even to let yourself be soiled by intimate contact with an awful character like me, if it would allow you to continue your scientific researches and, eventually, learn enough to save the human race from destruction. That’s one scenario. I can think of others.”
    She shook her head. “You’re a very stubborn man. And a very wrong