Алистер Маклин - The Way to Dusty Death

Five minutes later, Harlow sauntered up to the reception desk. Behind it was the very pretty young girl he’d ignored on the way in. He smiled widely at her – his colleagues wouldn’t have believed it – and she, recovering quickly from the shock of seeing the other side of Harlow’s nature, smiled in return, almost blushing in embarrassed pleasure. For those outside immediate racing circles, Harlow was still the world’s number one.

Harlow said: ‘Good evening.’

‘Good evening, Mr Harlow, sir.’ The smile faded. ‘I’m afraid you’ve just missed your bus.’

‘I have my own private transport.’

The smile came back on again. ‘Of course, Mr Harlow. How silly of me. Your red Ferrari. Is there something–’

‘Yes, please. I have four names here – MacAlpine, Neubauer, Tracchia and Jacobson. I wonder if you could give me their room numbers?’

‘Certainly, Mr Harlow. But I’m afraid those gentlemen have all just left.’

‘I know. I waited until they had left.’

‘I don’t understand, sir.’

‘I just want to slip something under their doors. An old pre-race custom.’

‘You race drivers and your practical jokes.’ She’d almost certainly never seen a race driver until that evening but that didn’t prevent her from giving him a look of roguish understanding. ‘The numbers you want are 202, 208, 204 and 206.’

‘That’s in the order of the names I gave you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Thank you.’ Harlow touched a finger to his lips. ‘Now, not a word.’

‘Of course not, Mr Harlow.’ She smiled conspiratorially at him as he turned away. Harlow had a sufficiently realistic assessment of his own fame to appreciate that she would talk for months about this brief encounter: just as long as she didn’t talk until that weekend was over.

He returned to his own room, took a movie camera from a suitcase, unscrewed its back, carefully scratching the dull metallic black as he did so, removed the plate and pulled out a small miniaturized camera not much larger than a packet of cigarettes. He pocketed this, rescrewed in place the back plate of the movie camera, replaced it in his suitcase and looked thoughtfully at the small canvas bag of tools that lay there. Tonight, he would not require those: where he was going he knew where to find all the tools and flashlights he wanted. He took the bag with him and left the room.

He moved along the corridor to room 202 – MacAlpine’s room. Unlike MacAlpine, Harlow did not have to resort to devious means to obtain hotel room keys – he had some excellent sets of keys himself. He selected one of these and with the fourth key the door opened. He entered and locked the door behind him.

Having disposed of the canvas bag in the highest and virtually unreachable shelf in a wall wardrobe, Harlow proceeded to search the room thoroughly. Nothing escaped his scrutiny – MacAlpine’s clothing, wardrobes, cupboards, suitcases. Finally he came across a locked suitcase, so small as to be almost a brief-case, fastened with locks that were very strong and peculiar indeed. But Harlow also had a set of very small and peculiar keys. Opening the small suitcase presented no difficulty whatsoever.

The interior held a kind of small travelling office, containing as it did a mass of papers, including invoices, receipts, cheque-books and contracts: the owner of the Coronado team obviously served as his own accountant. Harlow ignored everything except an elastic-bound bunch of expired cheque-books. He flipped through those quickly then stopped and stared at the front few pages of one of the cheque-books where all the payments were recorded together. He examined all four recording pages closely, shook his head in evident disbelief, pursed his lips in a soundless whistle, brought out his miniature camera and took eight pictures, two of each page. This done, he returned everything as he had found it and left.

The corridor was deserted. Harlow moved down to 204 – Tracchia’s room – and used the same key to enter as he had on MacAlpine’s door: hotel room keys have only marginal differences as they have to accommodate a master key: what Harlow had was, in fact, a master key.

As Tracchia had considerably fewer possessions than MacAlpine, the search was correspondingly easier. Again Harlow encountered another, but smaller, brief-case, the opening of which again provided him with the minimum of difficulty. There were but few papers inside and Harlow found little of interest among them except a thin book, bound in black and red, of what appeared to be a list of extremely cryptic addresses. Each address, if address it were, was headed by a single letter, followed by two or three wholly indecipherable lines of letters. It could have meant something: it could have meant nothing. Harlow hesitated, obviously in a state of indecision, shrugged, brought out his camera and photographed the pages. He left Tracchia’s room in as immaculate a condition as he had left MacAlpine’s.

Two minutes later in 208, Harlow, sitting on Neubauer’s bed with a brief-case on his lap, was no longer hesitating. The miniature camera clicked busily away: the thin black and red notebook he held in his hand was identical to the one he had found in Tracchia’s possession.

From there, Harlow moved on to the last of his four objectives – Jacobson’s room. Jacobson, it appeared, was either less discreet or less sophisticated than either Tracchia or Neubauer. He had two bankbooks and when Harlow opened them he sat quite still. Jacobson’s income, it appeared from them, amounted to at least twenty times as much as he could reasonably expect to earn as a chief mechanic. Inside one of the books was a list of addresses, in plain English, scattered all over Europe. All those details Harlow faithfully recorded on his little camera. He replaced the papers in the case and the case in its original position and was on the point of leaving when he heard footsteps in the corridor. He stood, irresolute, until the footsteps came to a halt outside his door. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and was about to use it as a mask when a key turned in the lock. Harlow had time only to move swiftly and silently into a wardrobe, pulling the door quietly to behind him, when the corridor door opened and someone entered the room.

From where Harlow was, all was total darkness. He could hear someone moving around the room but had no idea from the sound as to what the source of the activity might be: for all he could tell someone might have been engaged in exactly the same pursuit as he himself had been a minute ago. Working purely by feel, he folded his handkerchief cornerwise, adjusted the straight edge to a point just below his eyes and knotted the handkerchief behind the back of his head.

The wardrobe door opened and Harlow was confronted with the spectacle of a portly, middle-aged chambermaid carrying a bolster in her hands – she’d obviously just been changing it for the nighttime pillows. She, in turn, was confronted with the shadowy menacing figure of a man in a white mask. The chambermaid’s eyes turned up in her head. Soundlessly, without even as much as a sigh, she swayed and crumpled slowly towards the floor. Harlow stepped out, caught her before she hit the marble tiles and lowered her gently, using the bolster as a pillow. He moved quickly towards the opened corridor door, closed it, removed his handkerchief and proceeded to wipe all the surfaces he had touched, including the top and handle of the brief-case. Finally, he took the telephone off the hook and left it lying on the table. He left, pulling the door to behind him but not quite closing it.

He passed swiftly along the corridor, descended the stairs at a leisurely pace, went to the bar and ordered himself a drink. The barman looked at him in what came to being open astonishment.