I tossed aside the dressing gown I had taken down and got my gun from among my socks in the open suitcase at the foot of the bed.  The knocking came again, a triple knock this time.  It added up to a simple signal we sometimes use - two and three - to, make sure the guy inside doesn't greet the guy outside with a bullet or a knife.  That made it LeBaron, I figured, and I tucked my little snub-nosed .38 under my belt and went over to open the door.  Mac came in.

I closed the door behind him in a mechanical way.  I was kind of startled, I guess.  I mean, he doesn't get out in the field much.  When you see him, normally, you see him behind his office desk - not that there's anything spectacular to see, just a lean, middle-aged gray-haired man with black eyebrows, wearing a gray suit as a rule, as he was today.  Or you hear his voice over the phone or receive a message in code.  You don't, on a job, expect to take time off to entertain him personally.

He didn't even glance at me.  His face showed that he was looking for someone else, that he was very much concerned about that person's welfare.  Then he spotted the slender woman standing there without a dress on - she wasn't exactly inconspicuous - and his lips compressed themselves tightly.  He walked quickly to the bed, picked up the dressing gown I'd thrown aside and carried it over to her, holding it for her to put on.  She slipped her arms through the sleeves and tied the belt at her waist.

"Mrs. Hendricks?" Mac said when she was decently covered.

She glanced at him quickly, surprised that he knew her name since she did not know his.  "Yes.  I'm Gail Hendricks."

"My name is Macdonald," he said.  It wasn't.  I'd learned his real name once, by accident, and it didn't even begin with Mac, but never mind that.  He was still speaking with concern in his voice and manner.  "When I learned that you'd been brought here against your will, I came at once, but it seems I've arrived too late to prevent...."  He cleared his throat and glanced at the tattered blue dress I'd tossed over the back of a nearby chair - clear evidence that she hadn't disrobed voluntarily.  Mac threw me a reproachful glance and said stiffly: "Sometimes my men exceed their orders, Mrs. Hendricks, I'm sorry to say..."

As he talked, I remained standing by the door, more or less at attention, like a private summoned from the ranks for disciplinary action.  I didn't pay much attention to his words.  I'd already heard enough to know which routine he was going to use.  Instead, I amused myself by guessing where the mike might be hidden.

He'd been listening, of course.  His approach and timing were just a little too good to be true.  He'd waited until I'd got everything out of her he wanted, and then he'd hurried in here to apologize and smooth things over, at my expense.  Well, I could hardly blame him for not wanting to have a rich Texas female raising hell with her senators and congressmen.

Of course, I reflected, he could have saved himself the trouble by interrupting us at the very start of the proceedings.  He could have broken it up and reprimanded me sternly for even considering such methods.  He could have established his identity and asked for her patriotic cooperation - but he wouldn't have been Mac if he'd done that.  This way he got a double check, first having me bully the information out of her, and then appearing himself, all consideration and apology, to gain her confidence and confirm that what she'd told me was the truth.

It was a beautiful example of the two-man interrogation technique, even though I hadn't known anybody was backing me up, but I couldn't help wondering exactly what he was doing here, two thousand miles from Washington, and how he'd come to have my hotel room bugged in the first place.  After all, he hadn't been expecting me to bring this particular sister out of Juarez....

"You speak of your men," Gail was saying.  "Just precisely who and what are you, Mr. Macdonald?"

Mac reached into his pocket.  "Here, I think, is sufficient identification.  You're entitled to see it, under the circumstances, but I must ask you to keep the information in strict confidence."