"This way," he said.
Prather, not without inner misgivings, followed the big man through a barbed-wire fence, across a pasture, and deep into a green orchard of apple trees.
"Where are you taking me?" Prather asked in a small voice.
Carpenter turned to face him.
"No place," he said. "You're here."
He took an automatic from under his left arm and pointed it at Prather's chest. The first shot would have been enough; but Carpenter, a conscientious man, gave him a second bullet to make certain.
2
The man who went down the back stairs of the Algonquin Hotel and slipped quickly and inconspicuously through the lobby from the service door could never have been mistaken for the debonair and immaculate Mr, Templar who had lately become accepted as one of the brighter landmarks of that possessive caravanserai. He wore heavy black shoes that were cracked and stained and down at heel, heavy black wool socks drooping untidily over his ankles, dark blue trousers with baggy knees and a shiny seat, a soiled white shirt with a dark tie knotted and twisted like an old rope, a dark blue reefer jacket that was wrinkled across the shoulders, patched in one elbow, and threadbare at the cuffs, and a vaguely nautical peaked cap without insignia that looked as if it was used to combining the functions of head-gear and brass polisher. His shoulders sagged and his chest slouched, so that he didn't seem very tall. His complexion was ruddy and weather-beaten. What could be seen of his hair was a drab gray that matched his bushy eyebrows and straggly moustache and the close-cropped fringe of beard around his chin.
He was out of the hotel so quickly that nobody really noticed him, but he was not bothered about being seen. If any leg men of the Ungodly were watching for him in the lobby, he was quite sure that they would patiently continue to sit and watch. The man who had become Tom Simons right down to his grimy fingernails was prepared to submit his creation to any ocular inspection — including that of the doorkeeper at Cookie's Canteen.
The doorkeeper, who was a woman with dyed red hair and a face like a dyspeptic camel, examined his identification papers and gave him a stock smile which displayed many large teeth tastefully mounted in gold.