• Complain

Donald Hamilton - The Removers

Here you can read online Donald Hamilton - The Removers full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Donald Hamilton The Removers

The Removers: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Removers" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

The third Matt Helm novel, an American agent colder, tougher and more cynical than Bond. IN this story he gets sucked into the violent world of crime and espionage trying to protect his ex-wife and fend off the neurotic urges of a gangsters daughter.

Donald Hamilton: author's other books


Who wrote The Removers? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The Removers — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Removers" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Donald Hamilton

The Removers

Chapter One

To GET TO Reno, Nevada, from the southeast, in summer, if you don't have an air-conditioned car, you first sleep all day in Las Vegas. Then you eat a leisurely dinner, waiting for the sun to go down. You pack your gear and head off into the desert, which is cooling off now and bearable, if not exactly frigid. You drive all night through great areas of black nothing. The monotony is broken only by occasional neat signs informing you that the mysterious government installations along the way are none of your business, even if your taxes did help build them.

Then the sun comes up again, and a little while later you're in Reno, ready to get your divorce. I already had mine. I was just looking up my ex-wife, remarried now and living on a ranch somewhere nearby, because for some reason she wanted me to.

After a shower, a shave, and a belated breakfast, I reread Beth's letter while resting comfortably on one of the twin beds of an air-conditioned motel unit near the Truckee River. They do have a river in Reno, which is more than you can say for Las Vegas; and in other respects it's a little more of a town and a little less of a gold-plated gambling joint. Not that Reno qualifies as a staid and churchly community, by a long shot. No Nevada town does. I couldn't hear the clank of the slot machines from where I lay, but that could have been just be-cause it was still quite early in the day, or because the wind was wrong.

The letter was addressed to Mr. Matthew Helm, since Beth still clung to the notion that a nickname has no place on an envelope. It was written in blue-black ink on good rag paper bearing a cattle brand and the heading:

Double-L Ranch, Middle Fork, Nevada. It was quite short.

Dear Matt:

When we parted, you said that if I or the children should ever need you, you would come.

I have no right to ask, of course, but we need you now.

Sincerely,

Beth

(Mrs. Lawrence Logan)

She'd gone to one of those strict eastern schools, almost vanished from the educational scene, where they still taught such cruel, old-fashioned disciplines as penmanship, regardless of the frustrations and inhibitions that might thereby be produced in the sensitive minds of their helpless charges. Maybe this educational trauma was at the root of her troubles, if you want to call them that. She wouldn't want to. In her view, as was only natural, there was nothing wrong with her. I was the one with troubles-troubles too terrible for a woman to share. Well, we could both be half right.

Anyway, she had a lovely, neat, precise and well-disciplined handwriting that reminded me of the lovely, neat, precise and well-disciplined person from whom it had come. We'd never quarreled; she wasn't someone you could quarrel with. There's not much satisfaction in yelling at someone who won't yell back. We'd even parted company in a quite civilized manner.

"Beth," I'd said, "can't you simply forget about it?"

"No," she'd whispered, "no, I can't forget! How can

I said, "Well, we might as well call it quits, then. I'll take my old pickup truck and the stuff in the studio. You can have the station wagon and the house and all the rest of it. I won't be needing much furniture where I'm going."

She winced and said, "I'm sorry, Matt. I just can't help I'm sorry."

She probably was, but the fact remained that she could no longer bear to have me around. We'd had almost fifteen years, perhaps more than I'd had a right to expect. Then, one day, as I should have known would happen, the war, which I'd fought in a kind of specialized way with some kind of specialized characters, had caught up with me.

I'd had to call into play certain skills and attitudes I'd learned under the tutelage of a gentleman known as Mac, with fairly messy results, which Beth had witnessed. She'd seen the good, gentle Dr. Jekyll turn, briefly, into the nasty, violent Mr. Hyde, and the shock had remained with her. Well, there wasn't much point in forcing a woman to live with a man who turned her stomach; besides, it wasn't much fun for the man.

"I guess Reno's your best bet," I said. "Get a good lawyer and tell him I'll sign anything he wants." I'd hesitated then, not wanting to sound too corny and magnanimous, but it had been a pretty good marriage while it lasted, and I had to admit that the cause of the breakup, strictly speaking, lay in my past, not hers. I said, "It seems unlikely, but if the occasion should ever arise that you or the kids need a man of my peculiar talents, don't hesitate to call on me. After all, I'm still their daddy, no matter what a judge says."

I'd meant it all right, but it was essentially just one of those impressive lines you speak as you go out the door. I hadn't really expected her ever to take me up on it. I'd walked out and headed for the nearest phone and called Mac long distance to let him know I was coming back to work-he'd been after me to do it-after fifteen years of making my living peacefully with typewriter and camera. I'd been in Europe on official government business, never mind what, when notice reached me I was no longer a married man. Now, only some six months later, Beth was asking for help.

She must have found it difficult, I reflected. She must have swallowed a lot of pride to write those few lines.

She hadn't swallowed quite all of it, however. There was that little parenthesis under the signature-Mrs. Lawrence Logan-that specified the terms on which I was to come, if I did choose to come, quite clearly. Apparently she wasn't quite desperate enough to summon me as just a woman calling to a man. She wanted to make sure I wouldn't get any wrong ideas. If I helped her, she was saying, I was helping her as another man's wife, take it or leave it.

"Will you go, Eric?" Mac had asked after I'd read the letter the first time, standing by his desk in Washington on my return from Europe. I was always Eric in that office, no matter what names I might use elsewhere.

"Have I a choice?" I asked.

Then I glanced at him sharply. He was a lean, middle-aged man with close-clipped gray hair. He wore a gray flannel suit, and he looked about as much like Madison Avenue as an old gray timber wolf looks like your clipped pet poodle. They have some cold, hard, bright and ruthless men along that street, to be sure, but in one sense they're all thoroughly domesticated. They may talk big about cutting the throats of the opposition, or sticking knives in competitors' backs, but they are speaking quite figuratively, of course. The sight of real blood would send them all screaming for the police.

Blood has never bothered Mac a bit, as far as I know, and he's been responsible for the shedding of a lot of it.

He interpreted my questioning glance correctly. "Yes," he said, "I read the note. As a matter of fact, not knowing where to reach you, Mrs. Logan sent it to me with a covering letter, asking me to look it over and pass it on only if you were not on assignment. There was, she wrote, no point in worrying you if you were not free to come, and she did not wish to interfere with your efficiency, if you were on a dangerous mission. She seems quite a sensible and considerate person in many respects- and quite attractive, too."

"I didn't know you knew my wife-my ex-wife."

He said, "I paid her a visit last fall, while your divorce was still pending. It wasn't good security, of course, but she already knew more about us than she should, after that trouble you had in Santa Fe. Primarily, I wanted to see if she could be trusted to keep quiet, but I did think that perhaps, if I explained the patriotic necessity of your work with us, past and present, she might understand" He shrugged his shoulders ruefully.

I hadn't known that he'd tried to intercede for me. "It was kind of you to take the trouble, sir."

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Removers»

Look at similar books to The Removers. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «The Removers»

Discussion, reviews of the book The Removers and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.