Алистер Маклин - Fear Is the Key

‘You jinxed it?’ Vyland’s voice was a weak incredulous whisper, his eyes near-crazed with fear. ‘We’re – we’re stuck here? Here, in this–’ His voice faded away as he turned his head and started looking around with all the terror-stricken desperation of a cornered rat about to die. Which was all he was.

‘There’s no way out, Vyland,’ I assured him grimly. ‘Only through that entrance hatch. Maybe you want to try opening it? – at this depth there can only be a pressure of fifty tons or so on the outside of it. And if you could open it – well, you’d be flattened half an inch thick against the opposite bulkhead. Don’t take it too badly, Vyland – the last few minutes will be agony such as you’ve never believed man could know, you’ll be able to see your hands and your face turning blue and purple in the last few seconds before all the major blood vessels in your lungs start to rupture, but soon after that you’ll–’

‘Stop it, stop it!’ Vyland screamed. ‘For God’s sake stop it! Get us out of here, Talbot, get us out of here! I’ll give you anything you like, one million, two millions, five millions. You can have it all, Talbot, you can have it all!’ His mouth and face worked like a maniac’s, his eyes were staring out of his head.

‘You make me sick,’ I said dispassionately. ‘I wouldn’t get you out if I could, Vyland. And it was just in case that I might be tempted that I left the control switch up in the rig. We’ve got fifteen, maybe twenty minutes to live, if you can call the screaming agony we’ll know living. Or, rather, the agony you’ll know.’ I put my hand to my coat, ripped off the central button and thrust it into my mouth. ‘I won’t know a thing, I’ve been prepared for this for months. That’s no button, Vyland, it’s a concentrated cyanide capsule. One bite on that and I’ll be dead before I know I’m dying.’

That got him. Dribbling from a corner of his mouth and babbling incoherently, he flung himself on me, with what purpose in mind I don’t know. He was too crazed to know. He was too crazed to know himself. But I had been expecting it, a heavy spanner lay to hand and I’d picked it up and swung it before he even touched me. It wasn’t much of a blow, but it was enough: he reeled backwards, struck his head against the casing and collapsed heavily on the floor.

That left Royale. He was half-sitting, half-crouched on his little canvas stool, his sphinx-like control had completely snapped, he knew he had only minutes to live and his face was working overtime making up for all those expressions it hadn’t used in those many years. He saw closing in on himself what he had meted out to so many victims over so long a time and the talons of fear were squeezing deep, reaching for the innermost corners of his mind. He wasn’t panic-stricken yet, not completely out of control as Vyland had gone, but his capacity for reason, for thought, was gone. All he could think to do was what he always thought to do in an emergency and that was of using his deadly little black gun. He had it out now and it was pointing at me, but I knew it meant nothing, it was purely a reflex action and he had no intention of using it. For the first time Royale had met a problem that couldn’t be solved by a squeeze of the trigger finger.

‘You’re scared, Royale, aren’t you?’ I said softly. It was an effort now even to speak, my normal breathing rate of about sixteen was now up to fifty, and it was difficult to get the time to force out a word.

He said nothing, just looked at me, and all the devils in hell were in the depth of those black eyes. For a second time in forty-eight hours, and this time in spite of the humidity, the foul and evil-smelling air in that cabin, I could have sworn I caught the smell of new-turned, moist, fresh earth. The smell you get from an open grave.

‘The big bad hatchet-man,’ I whispered huskily. ‘Royale. Royale the killer. Think of all the people who used to tremble, who still do tremble, whenever they hear the breath of your name? Don’t you wish they could see you now? Don’t you, Royale? Don’t you wish they could see you trembling? You are trembling, Royale, aren’t you? You’re terrified as you’ve never been terrified in your life. Aren’t you, Royale?’

Again he said nothing. The devils were still in his eyes, but they weren’t watching me any more, they were riding hard on Royale, they were digging deep into the dark recesses of that dark mind, the shift and play of expression on his contorted face was evidence enough that they were pulling him every which way but the overall pull was towards the dark precipice of complete breakdown, of that overmastering fear that wears the cloak of insanity.

‘Like it, Royale?’ I said hoarsely. ‘Can’t you feel your throat, your lungs starting to hurt? I can feel mine – and I can see your face starting to turn blue. Not much, yet, just starting under the eyes. The eyes and the nose, they always show up first.’ I thrust my hand into my display pocket, brought out a little rectangle of polished chrome. ‘A mirror, Royale. Don’t you want to look in it? Don’t you want to look in it? Don’t you want to see–?’

‘Damn you to hell, Talbot!’ He knocked the mirror flying out of my hand, his voice was halfway between a sob and a scream. ‘I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!’

‘But your victims did, didn’t they, Royale?’ I could no longer speak intelligibly, it took me four or five breaths to pant out that one sentence. ‘They all had their minds bent on suicide and you just helped them out of the depths of the kindness of your heart. Isn’t that it, Royale?’

‘You’re going to die, Talbot.’ His voice was a frenzied croak, the shaking gun was lined up on my heart. ‘It’s coming to you now.’

‘I’m laughing. I’m laughing out loud. I’ve got a Cyanide tablet between my teeth.’ My chest was hurting, the inside of the observation chamber was beginning to swim before my eyes. I knew I couldn’t last out much longer. ‘Go ahead,’ I gasped. ‘Go ahead and pull the trigger.’

He looked at me with crazy unfocused eyes that had hardly any contact left with reality and fumbled the little black gun into its holster. The beating he’d taken over his head was now beginning to take its toll, he was in an even worse state than I was. He began to sway in his seat, and suddenly fell forward on to his hands and knees, shaking his head from side to side as if to clear away a fog. I leaned across him, barely conscious myself, closed my fingers over the control knob of the carbon dioxide absorption unit and turned it from minimum all the way up to maximum. It would take two minutes, perhaps three, before there would be any noticeable improvement, maybe the best part of ten minutes before the atmosphere inside that chamber was anything like back to normal. Right then, it made no difference at all. I bent over Royale.

‘You’re dying, Royale,’ I gasped out. ‘How does it feel to die, Royale? Tell me, please, how does it feel? How does it feel to be buried in a tomb five hundred feet beneath the surface of the sea? How does it feel to know that you’ll never breathe that wonderful, clean, fresh air of the world above again? How does it feel to know that you’ll never see the sun again? How does it feel to die? Tell me, Royale, how does it feel?’ I bent still closer to him. ‘Tell me, Royale, how would you like to live?’

He didn’t get it, he was that far gone.

‘How would you like to live, Royale?’ I almost had to shout the words.

‘I want to live.’ His voice was a harsh moan of pain, his clenched right fist was beating weakly on the deck of the chamber. ‘Oh, God, I want to live.’

‘Maybe I can give you life yet. Maybe. You’re down on your hands and knees, aren’t you, Royale? You’re begging for your life, aren’t you, Royale? I’ve sworn I’d see the day when you were on your hands and knees begging for your life and now you’re doing just that, aren’t you, Royale?’