Алистер Маклин - Fear Is the Key

‘Then nothing. The bathyscaphe would never have been able to get above three hundred feet again. When either the batteries had been exhausted or the oxygen regenerating unit had failed, as it would have to in a few hours – well, you’d have died of suffocation.’ I looked at him consideringly. ‘After, that is, you had screamed your way into madness.’

On a previous occasion I had thought I had seen Vyland losing some colour from his rather ruddy cheeks, but on this occasion there was no doubt: he turned white and to conceal his agitation fumbled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit a cigarette with hands whose tremor he could not conceal. Royale, sitting on the table, just smiled his little secret smile and went on unconcernedly swinging his foot. That didn’t make Royale any braver than Vyland, maybe it only meant he was less imaginative. The last thing a professional killer could ever afford was imagination; he had to live with himself and the ghosts of all his victims. I looked at Royale again. I swore to myself that one day I would see that face the mask and mirror of fear, as Royale himself had seen so many other faces the masks and mirrors of fear in that last second of awareness and knowingness before he pulled the trigger of his deadly little gun.

‘Neat, eh?’ Vyland said harshly. He had regained a measure of composure.

‘It wasn’t bad,’ I admitted. ‘At least I sympathize with his outlook, the object he had in mind.’

‘Funny. Very funny indeed.’ There were times when Vyland forgot that the well-bred business tycoon never snarls. He looked at me with sudden speculation in his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t be thinking along the same lines yourself, Talbot? Of pulling a fast one like Bryson tried to pull?’

‘It’s an attractive idea,’ I grinned at him, ‘but you insult my intelligence. In the first place, had I had any ideas along those lines do you think I would have given you any hint of them? Besides, I intend to go along with you on this little trip. At least, hope to.’

‘You do, eh?’ Vyland was back on balance, his shrewd quick self again. ‘Getting suspiciously cooperative all of a sudden, aren’t you, Talbot?’

‘You can’t win,’ I sighed. ‘If I said I didn’t want to go, you’d think that a damn sight more suspicious. Be your age, Vyland. Things aren’t as they were a few hours ago. Remember the general’s speech about ensuring my continued well-being? He meant it all right, he meant every word of it. Try seeing me off and he’ll see you off. And you’re too much of a business man to make a bad deal like that. Royale here is going to be deprived of the pleasure of killing me.’

‘Killing gives me no pleasure,’ Royale put in softly. It was a simple statement of fact and I stared at him, temporarily off-balance by the preposterousness of it.

‘Did I hear what I thought I heard?’ I asked slowly.

‘Ever hear of a ditch-digger digging ditches for pleasure, Talbot?’

‘I think I see your point.’ I stared at him for a long moment, he was even more inhuman than I had ever imagined. ‘Anyway, Vyland, now that I’m going to live I have a different outlook on things. The sooner this business is over, the sooner I’ll be away from you and your cosy little pals. And then, I think, I could put the touch on the general for a few thousand. I hardly think he would like it known that he had been aiding and abetting criminal activities on a grand scale.’

‘You mean – you mean, you’d put the black on the man who saved your life?’ Apparently some things were still capable of astonishing Vyland. ‘God, you’re as bad as any of us. Worse.’

‘I never said I wasn’t,’ I said indifferently. ‘These are hard times, Vyland. A man must live. And I’m in a hurry. That’s why I suggest I come along. Oh, I admit a child could steer and lower and raise the bathyscaphe once he’d read the instructions, but salvage is no job for amateurs. Believe me, Vyland, I know, and it’s not. You’re amateurs. I’m an expert. It’s the one thing I’m really good at. So I come, eh?’

Vyland looked at me long and consideringly, then he said softly: ‘I just wouldn’t dream of going along without you, Talbot.’

He turned, opened the door and gestured to me to precede him. He and Royale came out behind me and as we walked along the passage we could hear Cibatti slamming home a heavy bolt and turning a key in the lock. Which made it as safe as the Bank of England, except for one thing: in the Bank of England a code knock does not automatically open the door to the vaults. But it opened doors here, and I had remembered it: and even had I forgotten it, it would have come back there and then for Vyland was using it again on a door about fifteen yards along the passage.

The door was opened by Cibatti’s opposite number. The compartment beyond wasn’t as bleakly furnished as the one we had just left, but it was a near thing. It had no wall coverings, no floor coverings, it didn’t even have a table: but it did have a padded bench along one wall, and on this the general and Mary were sitting. Kennedy was sitting very straight on a wooden chair in a corner and Larry, his big pistol out, his eyes twitching away feverishly as ever, was pacing up and down, doing his big watch-dog act. I scowled at them all impartially.

The general was his usual erect, impassive self, all his thoughts and emotions under the usual impeccable control; but there were dark half-moons under his eyes that hadn’t been there a couple of days ago. His daughter’s eyes, too, were smudged with blue, her face was pale and though it was composed enough she didn’t have the iron in her that her father had: the droop of the slender shoulders, slight though it was, was there for all to see. Myself, I didn’t go much for iron women at any time; there was nothing I would have liked better than to put an arm round those self-same shoulders, but the time and the place were wrong, the reactions anyway unpredictable. Kennedy was just Kennedy, his good-looking hard face a smooth brown mask, and he wasn’t worried about anything: I noticed that his maroon uniform fitted him better than ever; it wasn’t that he had been to see his tailor, someone had taken his gun from him and now there wasn’t even the suspicion of a bulge to mar the smooth perfection of the uniform.

As the door closed behind us, Mary Ruthven rose to her feet. There was an angry glint in her eye, maybe there was more iron to her than I had supposed. She gestured towards Larry without looking at him.

‘Is all this really necessary, Mr Vyland?’ she asked coldly. ‘Am I to assume that we have now arrived at the stage of being treated like criminals – like criminals under an armed guard?’

‘You don’t want to pay any attention to our little pal here,’ I put in soothingly. ‘The heater in his hand doesn’t mean a thing. He’s just whistling in the dark. All those snow-birds are as jittery and nervous as this, just looking at the gun gives him confidence: his next shot’s overdue, but when he gets it he’ll be ten feet tall.’

Larry took a couple of quick steps forward and jammed the gun into my stomach. He wasn’t any too gentle about it. His eyes were glazed, there were a couple of burning spots high up in the dead-white cheeks and his breath was a harsh and hissing half-whistle through bared and clenched teeth.

‘I told you, Talbot,’ he whispered. ‘I told you not to ride me any more. That’s the last time–’

I glanced over his shoulder then smiled at him.

‘Look behind you, sucker,’ I said softly. As I spoke I again shifted my gaze over his shoulder and nodded slightly.

He was too hopped up and unbalanced not to fall for it. So sure was I that he would fall for it that my right hand was reaching for his gun as he started to turn and by the time his head was twisted all the way round I had my hand locked over his and the gun pointing sideways and downwards where it would do no harm to anybody if it went off. No direct harm, that was: I couldn’t speak for the power and direction of the ricochet off steel decks and bulkheads.