Алистер Маклин - Fear Is the Key

‘And out in eighteen months,’ Royale finished. ‘Jumped the wall; Jablonsky?’

‘Good conduct remission,’ Jablonsky said calmly. ‘A respectable citizen again. Which is more than could be said for you, Royale. You employing this man, General?’

‘I fail to see–’

‘Because if you are, it’ll cost you a hundred bucks more than you think. A hundred bucks is the price Royale usually charges his employers for a wreath for his victims. A very fancy wreath. Or has the price gone up, Royale? And who are you putting the finger on this time?’

Nobody said anything. Jablonsky had the floor.

‘Royale here is listed in the police files of half the states in the Union, General. Nobody’s ever pinned anything on him yet, but they know all about him. No.1 remover in the United States, not furniture but people. He charges high, but he’s good and there’s never any comeback. A freelance, and his services are in terrific demand by all sorts of people you’d never dream of, not only because he never fails to give satisfaction but also because of the fact that it’s a point of Royale’s code that he’ll never touch a man who has employed him. An awful lot of people sleep an awful lot easier, General, just because they know they’re on Royale’s list of untouchables.’ Jablonsky rubbed a bristly chin with a hand the size of a shovel. ‘I wonder who he could be after this time, General? Could it even be yourself, do you think?’

For the first time the general registered emotion. Not even the beard and moustache could hide a narrowing of the eyes, a tightening of the lips and a slight but perceptible draining of colour from the cheeks. He wet his lips, slowly, and looked at Vyland.

‘Did you know anything of this? What truth is there–?’

‘Jablonsky’s just shooting off the top of his mouth,’ Vyland interjected smoothly. ‘Let’s get them into another room, General. We must talk.’

Ruthven nodded, his face still pale, and Vyland glanced at Royale. Royale smiled and said without inflection: ‘All right, you two, out. Leave that gun there, Jablonsky.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘You haven’t cashed that cheque yet,’ Royale said obliquely. They’d been listening, all right.

Jablonsky put his gun on the table. Royale himself didn’t have a gun in his hand. With the speed he could move at it would have been quite superfluous anyway. The hophead, Larry, came up behind me and dug his pistol barrel in my kidney with a force that made me grunt in pain. Nobody said anything, so I said: ‘Do that again, hophead, and it’ll take a dentist a whole day to repair your face.’ So he did it again, twice as painfully as before, and when I swung round he was too quick for me and caught me with the barrel of his gun high up on the face and raked the sight down my cheek. Then he stood off, four feet away, gun pointed at my lower stomach and those crazy eyes jumping all over the place, a wicked smile on his face inviting me to jump him. I mopped some of the blood off my face and turned and went out the door.

Valentino was waiting for me, gun in hand and heavy boots on his feet, and by the time Royale came leisurely out of the library, closed the door behind him and stopped Valentino with a single word, I couldn’t walk. There’s nothing wrong with my thigh, it’s carried me around for years, but it’s not made of oak and Valentino wore toe-plates on his boots. It just wasn’t my lucky night. Jablonsky helped me off the floor into an adjacent room. I stopped at the doorway, looked back at the grinning Valentino and then at Larry, and I wrote them both down in my little black book.

We spent perhaps ten minutes in that room, Jablonsky and I sitting, the hophead pacing up and down with the gun in his hand and hoping I would twitch an eyebrow, Royale leaning negligently against a table, nobody saying anything, until by and by the butler came in and said the general wanted to see us. We all trooped out again. Valentino was still there, but I made it safely to the library. Maybe he’d hurt his toe, but I knew it wasn’t that: Royale had told him once to lay off, and just once would be all that Royale would have to tell anybody anything.

A far from subtle change had taken place in the atmosphere since we’d left. The girl was sitting on a stool by the fire, head bent and the flickering light gleaming off her wheat-coloured braids, but Vyland and the general seemed easy and relaxed and confident and the latter was even smiling. A couple of newspapers were lying on the library table and I wondered sourly if those, with their big black banner headlines ‘Wanted Killer Slays Constable, Wounds Sheriff’ and the far from flattering pictures of myself had anything to do with their confidence. To emphasize the change in atmosphere, a footman came in with a tray of glasses, decanter and soda siphon. He was a young man, but moved with a peculiarly stiff leaden-footed gait and he laid the tray down on the table with so laborious a difficulty that you could almost hear his joints creak. His colour didn’t look too good either. I looked away, glanced at him again and then indifferently away once more, hoping that the knowledge of what I suddenly knew didn’t show in my face.

They’d read all the right books on etiquette, the footman and the butler knew exactly what to do. The footman brought in the drinks, the butler carried them around. He gave a sherry to the girl, whisky to each of the four men – Hophead was pointedly bypassed – and planted himself in front of me. My gaze travelled from his hairy wrists to his broken nose to the general in the background. The general nodded, so I looked back at the silver tray again. Pride said no, the magnificent aroma of the amber liquid that had been poured from the triangular dimpled bottle said yes, but pride carried the heavy handicap of my hunger, soaked clothes and the beating I’d just had and the aroma won looking round. I took the glass and eyed the general over the rim. ‘A last drink for the condemned man, eh, General?’

‘Not condemned yet.’ He lifted his glass. ‘Your health, Talbot.’

‘Very witty,’ I sneered. ‘What do they do in the state of Florida, General? Strap you over a cyanide bucket or just fry you in the hot seat?’

‘Your health,’ he repeated. ‘You’re not condemned, maybe you’ll never be condemned. I have a proposition to put before you, Talbot.’

I lowered myself carefully into a chair. Valentino’s boot must have mangled up one of the nerves in my leg, a thigh muscle was jumping uncontrollably. I waved at the papers lying on the library table.

‘I take it you’ve read those, General. I take it you know all about what happened today, all about my record. What kind of proposition can a man like you possibly have to put to a man like me?’

‘A very attractive one.’ I imagined I saw a touch of red touch the high cheekbones but he spoke steadily enough. ‘In exchange for a little service I wish you to perform for me I offer you your life.’

‘A fair offer. And the nature of this little service, General?’

‘I am not at liberty to tell you at present. In about, perhaps – thirty-six hours, would you say, Vyland?’

‘We should hear by then,’ Vyland agreed. He was less and less like an engineer every time I looked at him. He took a puff at his Corona and looked at me. ‘You agree to the general’s proposition, then?’

‘Don’t be silly. What else can I do? And after the job, whatever it is?’

‘You will be provided with papers and passport and sent to a certain South American country where you will have nothing to fear,’ the general answered. ‘I have the connections.’ Like hell I would be given papers and a trip to South America: I would be given a pair of concrete socks and a vertical trip to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.