Алистер Маклин - Fear Is the Key

The door was held on a heavy steel latch, unlocked. I opened the latch, pushed back the door and passed inside. It was pitch dark, but my torch found the light switch right away. I pressed it and looked around.

The bay was perhaps a hundred feet long. Stacked in nearly empty racks on both sides were three or four dozen screwed pipes almost as long as the bay itself. Round each pipe, near the end, were deep gouge marks as if some heavy metal claws had bitten into it. Sections of the drill pipe. And nothing else. I switched off the light, went out, pulled shut the door and felt a heavy hand on my shoulder.

‘Would you be looking for something, my friend?’ It was a deep rough no-nonsense voice, as Irish as a sprig of shamrock.

I turned slowly, but not too slowly, pulling the lapels of my coat together with both hands as if to ward off the wind and the thin cold rain that was beginning to sift across the deck, glittering palely through the beams of the arc-lamps then vanishing into the darkness again. He was a short stocky man, middle-aged, with a battered face that could be kindly or truculent as the needs of the moment demanded. At that moment, the balance of expression was tipped on the side of truculence. But not much. I decided to risk it.

‘As a matter of fact, I am.’ Far from trying to conceal my British accent, I exaggerated it. A marked high-class English accent in the States excites no suspicion other than the charitable one that you may be slightly wrong in the head. ‘The field foreman told me to inquire for the – ah – roustabout foreman. Are you he?’

‘Golly!’ he said. I felt that it should have been ‘begorrah’ but the grammatical masterpiece had floored him. You could see his mind clambering on to its feet again. ‘Mr Jerrold sent you to look for me, he?’

‘Yes, indeed. Miserable night, isn’t it?’ I pulled my hat-brim lower. ‘I certainly don’t envy you fellows–’

‘If you was looking for me,’ he interrupted, ‘why were you poking about in there?’

‘Ah, yes. Well, I could see you were busy and as he thought he had lost it in there, I thought perhaps I–’

‘Who had lost what where?’ He breathed deeply, patience on a monument.

‘The general. General Ruthven. His brief-case, with very important private papers – and very urgent. He’d been making a tour of inspection yesterday – let me see, now, it would have been early afternoon – when he received the dastardly news–’

‘He what?’

‘When he heard his daughter had been kidnapped. He went straight for his helicopter, forgetting all about the brief-case and–’

‘I get you. Important, huh?’

‘Very. General Ruthven says he’d put it down just inside some doorway. It’s big, morocco, marked C. C. F. in gold letters.’

‘C. C. F.? I thought you said it was the general’s?’

‘The general’s papers. He’d borrowed my case. I’m Farnborough, his private confidential secretary.’ It was very long odds indeed against one of the scores of roustabouts foremen employed by the general knowing the real name of his secretary, C. C. Farnborough.

‘C. C., eh?’ All suspicions and truculence now vanished. He grinned hugely. ‘Not Claude Cecil by any chance?’

‘One of my names does happen to be Claude,’ I said quietly. ‘I don’t think it’s funny.’

I had read the Irishman rightly. He was instantly contrite.

‘Sorry, Mr Farnborough. Talkin’ outa turn. No offence. Want that me and my boys help you look?’

‘I’d be awfully obliged.’

‘If it’s there we’ll have it in five minutes.’

He walked away, issued orders to his gang of men. But I had no interest in the result of the search, my sole remaining interest lay in getting off that platform with all speed. There would be no brief-case there and there would be nothing else there. The foreman’s gang were sliding doors open with the abandon of men who have nothing to conceal. I didn’t even bother glancing inside any of the bays, the fact that doors could be opened without unlocking and were being opened indiscriminately in the presence of a total stranger was proof for me that there was nothing to be concealed. And apart from the fact that there were far too many men there to swear to secrecy, it stood out a mile that that genial Irishman was not the type to get mixed up in any criminal activities. Some people are like that, you know it the moment you see and speak to them. The roustabout foreman was one of those.

I could have slipped away and down the gangway while the search was still going on but that would have been stupid. The search for the missing brief-case would be nothing compared to the all-out search that would then start for C. C. Farnborough. They might assume I had fallen over the side. Powerful searchlights could pick up the Matapan in a matter of minutes. And even were I aboard the Matapan I didn’t want to leave the vicinity of the rig. Not yet. And above all I didn’t want the news to get back ashore that an intruder disguised as, or at least claiming to be, the general’s secretary had been prowling around the X 13.

What to do when the search was over? The foreman would expect me to go back to the derrick side, where the accommodation and offices were, presumably to report failure of a mission to Mr Jerrold. Once I left for there my retreat to the gangway would be cut off. And so far it hadn’t occurred to the foreman to ask how I had arrived aboard the rig. He was bound to know that there had been no helicopter or boat out to the rig in hours. Which argued the fact that I must have been aboard for hours. And if I had been aboard for hours why had I delayed so long in starting this so very urgent search for the missing brief-case?

The search, as far as I could see, was over. Doors were being banged shut and the foreman was starting back towards me when a bulkhead phone rang. He moved towards it. I moved into the darkest patch of shadow I could see and buttoned my coat right up to the neck. That, at least, wouldn’t excite suspicion: the wind was strong now, the cold rain driving across the well-deck at an angle of almost forty-five degrees.

The foreman hung up and crossed over to where I was standing. ‘Sorry, Mr Farnborough, no luck. You sure he left it here?’

‘Certain, Mr – ah–’

‘Curran. Joe Curran. Well, it’s not here now. And we can’t look any more.’ He hunched deeper into his black glistening oilskin. ‘Gotta go and start yo-yo-ing that damn pipe.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said politely.

He grinned and explained: ‘The drill. Gotta haul it up and change it.’

‘On a night like this and in a wind like this? And it must take some time.’

‘It takes some time. Six hours if we’re lucky. That damned drill’s two and half miles straight down, Mr Farnborough.’

I made the proper noises of astonishment instead of the noises of relief I felt like making. Mr Curran working on the derrick for the next six hours in this weather would have more to worry about than stray secretaries.

He made to go. Already his men had filed past and climbed up a companionway to the north platform. ‘Coming, Mr Farnborough?’

‘Not yet.’ I smiled wanly. ‘I think I’ll go and sit in the shelter of the gangway for a few minutes and work out what I’m going to tell the general.’ I had an inspiration. ‘You see, he only phoned up about five minutes ago. You know what he’s like. Lord knows what I’m going to tell him.’

‘Yeah. It’s tough.’ The words meant nothing, already his mind was on the recovery of the drill. ‘Be seein’ you.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’ I watched him out of sight and two minutes later I was back aboard the rubber dinghy: another two minutes and we had been hauled back to the Matapan .