Алистер Маклин - Fear Is the Key

The passage was only dimly lit by a single weak night-light at the other end of a long corridor, but it was enough. Enough to let me see that the figure in the passage had no gun in its hand. Enough to let me see that it wasn’t Royale. It was Mary Ruthven. I lowered the whisky bottle and stepped back softly into my room.

Five seconds later I was at the door of Jablonsky’s room. I said in my best imitation of Jablonsky’s deep husky voice: ‘Who’s there?’

‘Mary Ruthven. Let me in. Quickly. Please!’

I let her in. Quickly. I had no more desire than she had that she could be seen out in that passage. I kept behind the door as she came through, then closed it swiftly before the pale glimmer of light from outside gave her time to identify me.

‘Mr Jablonsky.’ Her voice was a quick, urgent, breathless, frightened whisper. ‘I had to come to see you, I simply had. I thought I could never get away but Gunther dropped off to sleep and he may wake up at any moment and find that I’m–’

‘Easy, easy,’ I said. I’d lowered my voice to a whisper, it was easier to imitate Jablonsky that way, but even so it was one of the worst imitations I had ever heard. ‘Why come to see me?’

‘Because there was no one else I could turn to. You’re not a killer, you’re not even a crook, I don’t care what they say you’ve done, you’re not bad.’ She was a sharp one, all right, her woman’s insight or intuition or whatever had taken her far beyond what either Vyland or the general could see. ‘You must help me – us – you simply must. We – we are in great trouble.’

‘We?’

‘Daddy and I.’ A pause. ‘I honestly don’t know about my father, I honestly don’t. Perhaps he’s not in trouble. Maybe he’s working with those – those evil men because he wants to. He comes and goes as he pleases. But – but it’s so unlike him. Maybe he has to work with them. Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know. Perhaps they have power over him, some terrible hold, perhaps–’ I caught the glint of fair hair as she shook her head. ‘He – well, he was always so good and honourable and straight and – and everything, but now–’

‘Easy.’ I interrupted again. I couldn’t keep this deception up much longer, if she hadn’t been so scared, so worried, she’d have caught on right away. ‘Facts, miss, if you please.’

I’d left the electric fire burning in my room, the communicating door was open and I was pretty sure it was only a matter of time till she could see enough of my features to see that I wasn’t Jablonsky – and that red thatch of mine was a dead giveaway. I turned my back to the glow of the fire.

‘How can I begin?’ she said. ‘We seem to have lost all our freedom, or daddy has. Not in moving around, he’s not a prisoner, but we never make decisions for ourselves, or, rather, Daddy makes mine for me and I think he has his made for him too. We’re never allowed to be apart for any time. Daddy says I’m to write no letters unless he sees them, make no phone calls, never go anywhere except when that horrible man Gunther is with me. Even when I go to a friend’s house, like Judge Mollison’s, that creature is there all the time. Daddy says he’s had kidnap threats about me recently. I don’t believe it and if it were true Simon Kennedy – the chauffeur – is far better than Gunther. I never have a private moment to myself. When I’m out on the rig – the X 13 – I’m no prisoner, I just can’t get off, but here my room windows are screwed into the wall and Gunther spends the night in the ante-room watching to see–’

The last three words took a long, long time to come out and trailed off into a shocked silence. In her excitement, her eagerness to unburden herself of all those things that had been worrying her for weeks, she had come close to me. And now her eyes were adjusted to the darkness. She started to shake. Her right hand began to move up slowly towards her mouth, the arm trembling all the time and jerking like the arm of a marionette, her mouth opened and her eyes widened and kept on widening until I could see white all the way round the pupils. And then she drew a long quavering breath. Prelude to a scream.

But the prelude was all that there was to it. In my business, you don’t telegraph your signals. I’d one hand over her mouth and an arm round her before she’d even made up her mind what key to sing in. For several seconds, with surprising strength – or in the circumstances perhaps not so surprising – she struggled furiously, then sagged against me, limp as a shot rabbit. It took me by surprise, I’d thought the day when young ladies had passed out in moments of stress had vanished with the Edwardians. But perhaps I was underestimating the fearsome reputation I appeared to have built up for myself, perhaps I was underestimating the cumulative effect of the shock after a long night of nerving herself to take this last desperate chance, after weeks of endless strain. Whatever the reasons, she wasn’t faking, she was out cold. I lifted her across to the bed, then for some obscure reason I had a revulsion of feeling, I couldn’t bear to have her lie on that bed where Jablonsky had so recently been murdered, so I carried her through to the bed in my own room.

I’ve had a fairly extensive practical first-aid education, but I didn’t know the first thing about bringing young ladies out of swoons. I had a vague feeling that to do anything might be dangerous, a feeling that accorded well enough with my ignorance of what to do, so I came to the conclusion that not only the best thing but the only thing to do was to let her come out of it by herself. But I didn’t want her to come out of it unknown to me and start bringing the house down so I sat on the edge of the bed and kept the flash on her face, the beam just below the eyes so as not to dazzle her.

She wore a blue quilted silk dressing-gown over blue silk pyjamas. Her high-heeled slippers were blue, even the night-ribbon for holding those thick shining braids in place was of exactly the same colour. Her face, just then, was as pale as old ivory. Nothing would ever make it a beautiful face, but then I suppose that if it had been beautiful my heart wouldn’t have chosen that moment to start doing handsprings, the first time it had shown any life at all, far less such extravagant activity, in three long and empty years. Her face seemed to fade and again I could see the fire and the slippers that I’d seen two nights ago and all that stood between us was 285 million dollars and the fact that I was the only man in the world the very sight of whom could make her collapse in terror. I put my dreams away.

She stirred and opened her eyes. I felt that the technique I’d used with Kennedy – telling him that there was a gun behind my torch – might have unfortunate results in this case. So I caught one of the hands that were lying limply on the coverlet, bent forward and said softly, reprovingly: ‘You silly young muggins, why did you go and do a daft thing like that?’

Luck or instinct or both had put me on the right track. Her eyes were wide, but not staring wide, and the fear that still showed there was touched with puzzlement. Murderers of a certain category don’t hold your hand and speak reassuringly. Poisoners, yes: knife-plungers in the back, possibly: but not murderers with my reputation for pure violence.

‘You’re not going to try to scream again, are you?’ I asked.

‘No.’ Her voice was husky. ‘I – I’m sorry I was so stupid–’

‘Right,’ I said briskly. ‘If you’re feeling fit for it, we’ll talk. We have to, and there’s little time.’

‘Can’t you put the light on?’ she begged.

‘No light. Shines through curtains. We don’t want any callers at this time–’