Алистер Маклин - Fear Is the Key

They were waiting for us in the library, the general, Vyland and Larry the junky. The general’s expression, as usual, was hidden behind moustache and beard but there was a tinge of blood to his eyes and he seemed greyer than thirty-six hours ago: maybe it was just my imagination, everything looked bad to me that morning. Vyland was urbane and polished and smiling and tough as ever, freshly shaven, eyes clear, dressed in a beautifully cut charcoal-grey suit, white soft shirt and red tie. He was a dream. Larry was just Larry, white-faced, with the junky’s staring eyes, pacing up and down behind the desk. But he didn’t look quite so jerky as usual; he too, was smiling, so I concluded that he’d had a good breakfast, chiefly of heroin.

‘Morning, Talbot.’ It was Vyland speaking; the big-time crooks today find it just as easy to be civil to you as to snarl and beat you over the head and it pays off better. ‘What was the noise, Royale?’

‘Gunther.’ Royale nodded indifferently at Valentino, who had just come in, left hand tucked tightly under his disabled right arm and moaning in pain. ‘He rode Talbot too hard and Talbot didn’t like it.’

‘Go off and make a noise somewhere else,’ Vyland said coldly. The Good Samaritan touch. ‘Feeling tough and tetchy this morning, hey, Talbot?’ There was no longer even an attempt at keeping up the pretence that the general was the boss, or even had an equal say in what went on in his own house: he just stood quietly in the background, remote and dignified and in some way tragic. But maybe the tragedy was only in my own mind; I could be guessing wrongly about the general. I could be terribly wrong about him. Fatally wrong.

‘Where’s Jablonsky?’ I demanded.

‘Jablonsky?’ Vyland raised a lazy eyebrow: George Raft couldn’t have done it any better. ‘What’s Jablonsky to you, Talbot?’

‘My gaoler,’ I said briefly. ‘Where is he?’

‘You appear very anxious to know, Talbot?’ He looked at me long and consideringly and I didn’t like it at all. ‘I’ve seen you before, Talbot. So has the general. I wish I could remember who it is you remind me of.’

‘Donald Duck.’ This was perilous ground indeed. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s left. Lammed out. With his seventy thousand bucks.’

‘Lammed out’ was a slip, but I let it pass. ‘Where is he?’

‘You are becoming boringly repetitious, my friend.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Larry, the cables.’

Larry picked up some papers from the desk, handed them to Vyland, grinned at me wolfishly and resumed his pacing.

‘The general and I are very careful people, Talbot,’ Vyland went on. ‘Some people might say highly suspicious. Same thing. We checked up on you. We checked in England, Holland and Venezuela.’ He waved the papers. ‘These came in this morning. They say you’re all you claim to be, one of Europe’s top salvage experts. So now we can go ahead and use you. So now we don’t need Jablonsky any more. So we let him go this morning. With his cheque. He said he fancied a trip to Europe.’

Vyland was quiet, convincing, utterly sincere and could have talked his way past St Peter. I looked as I thought St Peter might have looked as he was in the process of being convinced, then I said a lot of things St Peter would never have said and finished up by snarling: ‘The dirty lying double-crosser!’

‘Jablonsky?’ Again the George Raft touch with the eyebrows.

‘Yes, Jablonsky. To think that I listened to that lying two-timer. To think I even spent five seconds listening to him. He promised me–’

‘Well, what did he promise you?’ Vyland asked softly.

‘No harm now,’ I scowled. ‘He reckoned I was for the high jump here – and he reckoned that the charges that had had him dismissed from the New York police had been rigged. He thinks – or said he thought – he could prove it, if he was given the chance to investigate certain policemen and certain police files.’ I swore again. ‘And to think that I believed–’

‘You’re wandering, Talbot,’ Vyland interrupted sharply. He was watching me very closely indeed. ‘Get on.’

‘He thought he could buy this chance – and at the same time have me help him while he helped me. He spent a couple of hours in our room trying to remember an old federal code and then he wrote a telegram to some agency offering to supply some very interesting information about General Ruthven in exchange for a chance to examine certain files. And I was mug enough to think he meant it!’

‘You don’t by any chance happen to remember the name of the man to whom this telegram was addressed?’

‘No. I forget.’

‘You better remember, Talbot. You may be buying yourself something very important to you – your life.’

I looked at him without expression, then stared at the floor. Finally I said without looking up: ‘Catin, Cartin, Curtin – yes, that was it. Curtin. J. C. Curtin.’

‘And all he offered was to give information if his own conditions were met. Is that it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Talbot, you’ve just bought yourself your life.’

Sure, I’d bought myself my life. I noticed Vyland didn’t specify how long I would be allowed to hang on to my purchase. Twenty-four hours, if that. It all depended how the job went. But I didn’t care. The satisfaction it had given me to stamp on Valentino’s hand upstairs was nothing compared to the glow I felt now. They’d fallen for my story, they’d fallen for it hook, line and sinker. In the circumstances, with the cards dealt the right way, it had been inevitable that they should. And I’d dealt my cards just right. Judged from the standpoint of their limited awareness of the extent of my knowledge, it would have been impossible for me to have concocted such a story. They didn’t and couldn’t know that I knew Jablonsky to be dead, that they had him tailed yesterday and deciphered the telegram’s address: for they didn’t know that I had been in the kitchen garden during the previous night, that Mary had overheard their conversation in the library and that she had been to see me. Had they thought I had been an accomplice of Jablonsky’s throughout, they’d have shot me out of hand. As it was, they wouldn’t shoot me for some time yet. Not a long time. But perhaps long enough.

I saw Vyland and Royale exchange glances, a mere flicker, and the faint shrug of Vyland’s shoulders. They were tough all right, those two, tough and cool and ruthless and calculating and dangerous. For the past twelve hours they must have lived with the knowledge or the possibility that Federal agents would be around their necks any moment but they had shown no awareness of pressure, no signs of strain. I wondered what they would have thought, how they would have reacted, had they known that Federal agents could have been on to them all of three months ago. But the time had not then been ripe. Nor was it yet.

‘Well, gentlemen, is there any need for further delay?’ It was the first time the general had spoken, and for all his calmness there was a harsh burred edge of strain beneath. ‘Let’s get it over with. The weather is deteriorating rapidly and there’s a hurricane warning out. We should leave as soon as possible.’

He was right about the weather, except in the tense he used. It had deteriorated. Period. The wind was no longer a moan, it was a high sustained keening howl through the swaying oaks, accompanied by intermittent squally showers of brief duration but extraordinary intensity. There was much low cloud in the sky, steadily thickening. I’d glanced at the barometer in the hall, and it was creeping down towards 27, which promised something very unpleasant indeed. Whether the centre of the storm was going to hit or pass by us I didn’t know: but if we stood in its path we’d have it in less than twelve hours. Probably much less.