Алистер Маклин - Fear Is the Key

‘Did you – did you have to use your boot?’ she asked shakily.

‘What did you expect me to use?’ I asked savagely. ‘The palm of my hand to smooth his fevered brow? Be your age, lady. That guy never heard of little Lord Fauntleroy, he’d have chopped me into bits and fed me to the barracuda if he’d had half the chance. Now, just you stand by with your shillelagh there and clout him if he bats an eyelid – but hard, this time. Not,’ I added hastily, lest she suspect me of being thought ungracious, ‘that I’m not grateful for what you’ve already done.’

I turned round, already a precious minute had been lost since I had come into the shack, and found what I was looking for right away. Several pegs on the walls were festooned with tightly-rolled coils of wire and flex, material for antenna leads and radio repairs. I picked a nice flexible roll of flex and within one minute I had the radio operator trussed like a chicken ready for the broiler, passed a slip knot round his neck and tied the end of it to a cupboard handle. There could only be some bells or pushes or phones he might try to reach but he’d soon give up when he found that all he was doing was strangling himself. I gave the matter of a gag only a passing thought: there may be those who know how to draw a happy median line between suffocating a man and making a gag loose enough to permit breathing without at the same time letting the victim be heard a hundred miles away, but I’m not one of them. Besides, with that great hurricane howling outside he could holler away till he got laryngitis and nobody below deck would ever hear him.

I reached for the only other chair in the shack and sat down before the radio. It was a standard aircraft-type transmitter, I knew it well and I knew how to operate it. I switched on, tuned it on the wavelength the sheriff had given me through Kennedy and clamped on a pair of headphones. I wouldn’t have long to wait, I knew that: the police were keeping a twenty-four hour watch on their short-wave receivers. Within three seconds of the end of my call-up sign the headphones crackled in my ears.

‘Police headquarters. Sheriff Prendergast here. Please go ahead.’

I threw the transmitter switch from manual to microphone.

‘Car Nineteen reporting.’ The agreed subterfuge wasn’t necessary for identification, every police car in the county had been warned to stay off the air and the sheriff knew it could only be me: but in these days of enthusiastic radio hams airwave eavesdroppers abound and I wouldn’t have put it past Vyland’s organization to maintain a permanent listening watch on the police wavelengths. I continued: ‘Suspect answering to description detained near Ventura crossroads. Shall we bring him in?’

‘Negative,’ the voice crackled. A pause. ‘We’ve found our man. Please release suspect.’

I felt as if someone had given me a million dollars. Almost without realizing it I relaxed heavily against the back-rest of the chair, the strain of the keyed-up tension of the past forty-eight hours had been far greater than I had realized. The sheer mental relief, the depth of satisfaction I experienced then surpassed anything I had ever known.

‘Car Nineteen,’ I said again. Even to myself my voice didn’t sound quite steady. ‘Would you repeat that, please?’

‘Release your suspect,’ Prendergast said slowly and distinctly. ‘We have found our man. Repeat, we have found–’

The transmitter leapt backwards about two inches, a great jagged hole appeared in the centre of the tuning band and the radio shack seemed to explode about my ears so deafening, so shattering was the effect of a heavy gun being fired in that confined space.

I didn’t jump more than a couple of feet and after I came down I got to my feet the normal way, but slowly, carefully. I didn’t want anyone getting too nervous, and whoever had pulled that stupid trick, unnecessarily smashing the set and tipping off the cops that something had gone wrong, was very nervous indeed. Almost as nervous as I felt as I turned slowly round and saw who my guest was.

It was Larry and the smoking Colt in his hand was lined up, as nearly as his shaking hand would permit, on a spot somewhere between my eyes. It looked as large as a howitzer. His lank black hair was plastered wetly over his forehead, and the coal-black eye behind that wavering barrel was jerking and burning and crazy as a loon’s. One eye. I couldn’t see the other, I couldn’t see any part of him except half his face, his gun-hand and a left forearm crooked round Mary Ruthven’s neck. The rest of him was completely hidden behind the girl. I looked at her reproachfully.

‘Fine watchdog you are,’ I said mildly.

‘Shut up!’ Larry snarled. ‘A cop, eh? A john. A dirty crawling double-crossing screw!’ He called me several names, all unprintable, his voice a venomous hiss of hate.

‘There’s a young lady here, friend,’ I murmured.

‘Lady? A – tramp.’ He tightened his grip around her neck as if it gave him pleasure and I guessed he had at some time mistakenly tried to make time with her and the roof had fallen in on him. ‘Thought you were clever, Talbot didn’t you? You thought you knew all the answers, you thought you had us all fooled, didn’t you, cop? But you didn’t have me fooled, Talbot. I’ve been watching you, I’ve been following you every second since we came out to the rig.’ He was jazzed up to the eyebrows, shaking and jumping as if he had the St Vitus’s Dance, and his voice held all the venomous and vindictive triumph of the consistently ignored and derided nonentity who has been proved right in the end while all those who despise him have been proved wrong. It was Larry’s night to sing, and he wasn’t going to miss out on a single note. But I had listened to pleasanter voices.

‘Didn’t know that I knew that you were in cahoots with Kennedy, did you, cop?’ he went ranting on. ‘And with this tramp. I was watching you when you came up from the bathyscaphe ten minutes ago, I saw that smooth-talking chauffeur give it to Royale on the head and–’

‘How did you know it was Kennedy?’ I interrupted. ‘He was dressed up–’

‘I listened outside the door, mug! I could have finished you off there and then, but I wanted to see what you were up to. Think I care if Royale gets sapped down?’ He broke off suddenly and swore as the girl went limp on him. He tried to hold her up but heroin is no substitute for protein when it comes to building muscle and even her slight weight was too much for him. He could have lowered her gently, but he didn’t: he stood back abruptly and let her collapse heavily on the floor.

I took half a step forward, fists clenched till they hurt, murder in my heart. Larry bared his teeth and grinned at me like a wolf.

‘Come and get it, copper. Come and get it,’ he whispered. I looked from him to the floor and back again and my hands slowly unclenched. ‘Scared, aren’t you, copper? Yellow, aren’t you, copper? Sweet on her, aren’t you, copper? Just like that pansy Kennedy is sweet on her.’ He laughed, a high falsetto giggle carrying the overtones of madness. ‘I’m afraid a little accident is going to happen to Kennedy when I get back over to the other side. Who’s going to blame me for gunning him down when I see him sapping Royale?’

‘All right,’ I said wearily. ‘You’re a hero and a great detective. Let’s go see Vyland and get it over with.’

‘We’re going to get it over with,’ he nodded. His voice was suddenly very quiet and I think I liked it even less that way. ‘But you’re not going to see Vyland, copper, you’re never going to see anyone again. I’m going to kill you, Talbot. I’m letting you have it now.’

My mouth felt as if someone had gone over it with a roll of high-absorbency blotting-paper. I could feel the slow heavy beat of my heart and the sweat coming on the palms of my hands. He meant every word he said. He was going to squeeze the trigger of that heavy Colt and if he lived to be a hundred nothing would ever give him half so much pleasure again. Finish. But I managed to keep my voice steady.