Алистер Маклин - Fear Is the Key

But what pleased me more than all those evidences of comfort was the fact that there were concealed loudspeakers at intervals along the passage. Those were playing music, soft music, but perhaps loud enough for my purpose. When the last of us had passed through the doorway, Kennedy turned and looked at Royale.

‘Where are we going, sir?’ The perfect chauffeur to the end, anyone who called Royale ‘sir’ deserved a medal.

‘The general’s stateroom. Lead the way.’

‘I usually eat in the drillers’ mess, sir,’ Kennedy said stiffly.

‘Not today. Hurry up, now.’

Kennedy took him at his word. Soon he had left most of them ten feet behind – all except me. And I knew I had very little time. I kept my voice low, head bent and talked without looking at him.

‘Can we put a phone call through to land?’

‘No. Not without clearance. One of Vyland’s men is with the switchboard operator. Checks everything, in and out.’

‘See the sheriff?’

‘A deputy. He got the message.’

‘How are they going to let us know if they had any success?’

‘A message. To the general. Saying that you – or a man like you – had been arrested at Jacksonville, travelling north.’

I should have loved to curse out loud but I contented myself with cursing inwardly. Maybe it had been the best they could think up at short notice, but it was weak, with a big chance of failure. The regular switchboard operator might indeed have passed the message on to the general and there would be no chance that I might be in the vicinity at the time: but Vyland’s creature supervising the operator would know the message to be false and wouldn’t bother passing it on, except perhaps hours later, by way of a joke: nor was there any certainty that even then the news would reach my ears. Everything, just everything could fail and men might die because I couldn’t get the news I wanted. It was galling. The frustration I felt, and the chagrin, were as deep as the urgency was desperate.

The music suddenly stopped, but we were rounding a corner which cuts off momentarily from the others, and I took a long chance.

‘The short-wave radio operator. Is he on constant duty?’

Kennedy hesitated. ‘Don’t know. Call-up bell, I think.’

I knew what he meant. Where, for various reasons, a radio post can’t be continuously manned, there is a device that triggers a distant alarm bell when a call comes through on the post’s listening frequency.

‘Can you operate a short-wave transmitter?’ I murmured.

He shook his head.

‘You’ve got to help me. It’s essential that–’

‘Talbot!’

It was Royale’s voice. He’d heard me, I was sure he’d heard me, and this was it, if he’d the slightest suspicion, then I knew Kennedy and I had exchanged our last words and that I was through. But I passed up the guilty starts and breaking of steps in mid-stride, instead I slowed down gradually, looked round mildly and inquiringly. Royale was about eight feet behind and there were no signs of suspicion or hostility in his face. But then there never were. Royale had given up using expressions years ago.

‘Wait here,’ he said curtly. He moved ahead of us, opened a door, peered in, had a good look round, then beckoned. ‘All right. In.’

We went in. The room was big, over twenty feet long, and luxuriously furnished. Red carpet from wall to wall, red drapes framing square rain-blurred windows, green and red chintz-covered armchairs, a cocktail bar lined with red leather-covered stools in one corner, a Formica-topped table to seat eight near the door: in the corner opposite the bar, a curtained-off alcove. The dining-room of the suite – internal doors opened off right-and left-hand walls – where the general roughed it when he came out to the oil rig.

Vyland was there, waiting for us. He seemed to have recovered his equanimity, and I had to admit that that smooth urbane face with its neatly trimmed moustache and distinguished sprinkling of iron-grey at the temples belonged right there in that room.

‘Close the door,’ he said to Larry, then turned to me and nodded towards the curtained alcove. ‘You eat there, Talbot.’

‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘The hired help. I eat in the kitchen.’

‘You eat there for the same reason that you saw no one on your way through the corridors coming here. Think we want the drilling-rig crew running around shouting that they’ve just seen Talbot, the wanted murderer? Don’t forget they have radios here and the chopper delivers papers every day … I think we might have the steward in now, General, don’t you?’

I went quickly to my seat at the tiny table behind the curtain and sat down. I felt shaken. I should have felt relieved to know that Royale had not been suspicious, that he’d merely been checking to see that the coast was clear before we went into the general’s room, but I was more concerned about my own slip-up. My attention was so taken up with immediate problems that I had forgotten that I was playing the part of a murderer. Had I been a genuine and wanted killer, I’d have kept my face hidden, walked in the middle of the group and peered fearfully round every corner we’d come to. I had done none of those things. How long would it be before it occurred to Royale to wonder why I had done none of those things?

The outside door opened and someone, a steward, I assumed, entered. Once again it was the general who was the host, the man in charge, with Vyland his employee and guest: the general’s ability to switch roles, his unfailing command of himself in all circumstances, impressed me more every time I noticed it. I was beginning to hope that perhaps it might be a good thing to let the general in on something of what was happening, to seek his help in a certain matter, I was certain now he could carry off any deception, any duplicity where the situation demanded it. But he might as well have been a thousand miles away for any hope I had of contacting him.

The general finished giving his orders for lunch, the door closed behind the departing steward and for perhaps a minute there was complete silence. Then someone rose to his feet and crossed the room and the next I heard was the sound of bottles and glasses clinking. Trifles like murder and forcible coercion and underwater recovery of millions weren’t going to get in the way of the observance of the customs of the old Southern hospitality. I would have taken long odds that it was the general himself who was acting as barman, and I was right: I would have taken even longer odds that he would pass up Talbot the murderer, and I was wrong. The alcove curtain was pushed back and the general himself set down a glass before me: he remained bent over my tiny table for a couple of seconds, and the look he gave me wasn’t the look you give a known murderer who has at one time kidnapped your daughter and threatened her with death. It was a long, slow, considering, speculative look: and then incredibly, but unmistakably, the corner of his mouth twitched in a smile and his eye closed in a wink. Next moment he was gone, the curtain falling into place and shutting me off from the company.

I hadn’t imagined it, I knew I hadn’t imagined it. The general was on to me. How much he was on to me I couldn’t guess, any more than I could guess at the reasons that had led to the discovery of what he knew or suspected. One thing I was sure of, he hadn’t learned from his daughter, I’d impressed her enough with the necessity for complete secrecy.

There was a rumble of conversation in the room and I became aware that it was General Ruthven himself who held the floor.

‘It’s damnably insulting and utterly ridiculous,’ he was saying in a voice that I’d never heard before. A dry, icy voice that I could just see being brought to bear for maximum effect in quelling an unruly board of directors. ‘I don’t blame Talbot, murderer though he is. This gun-waving, this guarding has got to stop. I insist on it, Vyland. Good God, man, it’s so utterly unnecessary and I don’t think a man like you would go in for cheaply melodramatic stuff like this.’ The general was warming to his theme of making a stand against being shepherded around at pistol point, or at least against constant surveillance. ‘Look at the weather, man – no one can move from here in the next twelve hours at least. We’re not in the position to make any trouble – and you know I’m the last man in the world to want to. I can vouch personally for my daughter and Kennedy.’