Dick Francis - Shattered

If I were disastrously wrong, Professor Lawson-Young could say good-bye to his millions. The breakthrough that would save the world in the cure for cancer would be published under someone else’s name.

When my enemies came, it wasn’t just time, I found, that I had given them, as much as an opportunity to out-think me.

I was still listening to the furnace when sounds behind me announced the arrival of Pamela Jane. She had entered through the side door, though usually she came in through the front.

“Mr. Logan...” Her voice quavered high with fright, and besides, she normally called me Gerard.

I turned at once to see how bad things were, and found that in many unforeseen ways they were extremely bad indeed.

Pamela Jane, dressed for work in her usual white overalls cinched around the waist, was coming to a standstill in the center of the workshop, trembling from a situation far beyond her capabilities. Her raincoat lay dropped in a bundle on the floor and her wrists were fastened together in front of her by sticky brown packing tape. Simpler and cheaper than handcuffs, the tape was equally immobilizing, and more effective still in Pamela Jane’s case as the charming Adam Force held a full syringe in one hand and, with the other, had dragged down a clutch of female overalls to reveal a patch of bare skin below the needle. Thin and frightened, she began to cry.

A step or two behind Pamela Jane came Rose, every muscle triumphant, her whole face a sneer. She too came quietly, in soft shoes, and fast

Rose, strong, determined and full of spite aimed powerfully my way, held in a pincer grip the upper arm of Hickory. My bright assistant stood helplessly swaying, his eyes and his mouth stuck out of action by strips of brown packing tape. The same tape had been used to bind his hands behind his back and also to form a makeshift hobble between his ankles.

Roughly steadying Hickory’s balance loomed the bookmaker Norman Osprey, more bully beef than beauty, but arithmetically as fast as a computer chip. Just inside the side door, keeping guard and shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, was, of all people, Eddie Payne. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. He took instructions steadfastly from Rose.

The actions of all four intruders had been whirlwind fast, and I had arranged little in any way of retaliation. All the bodyguards were simply to roam the street outside. Catherine and her hobo were to patrol their normal disjointed beat. Rose and her cohorts had somehow slid past them in the rain.

I was wearing, as usual, a white singlet which left my arms, neck and much of my shoulder area bare. The heat from the furnace roared almost unbearably beyond the trapdoor, if one weren’t used to it. I put my foot and my weight sideways on the treadle, which duly opened the trap and let a huge gust of Sahara heat blow out over Norman Osprey’s wool suit and reddening face. Furious, he made a snatch towards hurling me onto the trapdoor itself, but I sidestepped and tripped him, and unbalanced him onto his knees.

Rose yelled to Norman, “Stop it, you stupid asshole, we don’t want him damaged this time; you know bloody well we’ll get nowhere if he can’t talk.”

I watched as Rose tugged my blindfolded assistant across a good length of floor, with Norman Osprey holding him upright in a fierce grip. Hickory stumbled and felt tentatively forwards step by step until he reached the chair I’d bought for Catherine. At that point Rose revolved Hickory roughly until he fell into the chair on his side and had to struggle to turn and sit upright.

Behind me now I could hear the distressed breathing of Pamela Jane, and also the unmistakable heavy wheeze of Adam Force’s asthma. He said nothing at all about his near miss with insulin at Bristol. He definitely needed an inhaler but had no free hands.

Rose said to Hickory with malignant satisfaction, “Now you sit there, buddy boy, and it will teach you not to put your nose in where it isn’t wanted.” She redirected the pleased venom back my way while Hickory tried hard to talk but produced only a throttled tenor protest.

“Now you,” she told me, “will hand over everything I want. Or your friend here will get holes burned in him.”

Pamela Jane cried out, “Oh no, you can’t !”

“You shut up, you silly little bitch,” Rose acidly told her, “or I’ll spoil your soppy looks instead.”

Whether or not he was aware of Rose’s speed in standing on the treadle part of the floor that raised the flap of the furnace, Hickory was unable to protest more vigorously than to shrink ever deeper into the chair. He did understand, though, the diabolical choice she was thrusting under my nose.

As if she could read his mind, she said in the same sharp tone, “You, what’s your name, Hickory? You’d better pray that this boss of yours won’t let you burn. Because I’m not fooling, this time he’s going to give me what I want.”

She picked up one of the long punty irons and pushed it into the tank of molten glass. Her movement was ungraceful rather than smooth with constant practice, but somewhere, sometime, she had watched a glassblower collect a gather from a tank. She withdrew the iron with a small blob of red-hot glass on the end of it, and revolved the rod so that the glass stayed adhered to it and didn’t fall off.

Pamela Jane moaned at the sight and all but fell onto the doctor’s needle.

“Gerard Logan,” Rose said to me with emphasis. “This time you will do what I tell you, now, at once.”

Extraordinarily she sounded less sure of herself than screaming “Break his wrists” into the Broadway night, and I remembered Worthington’s judgment that as I would beat her at the tennis match of life, so she would never again face me on the actual court. Yet here she was, visibly pulling together the sinews and nerves of resolution.

I’d seen Martin summon his mental vigor when going out to race on a difficult horse, and I’d seen actors breathe deeply in the wings when the play ahead dug deep into the psyche. I understood a good deal about courage in others and about the deficiencies in myself, but on that Sunday in January it was Rose’s own mushrooming determination that pumped up in me the inner resources I needed.

I watched her as she in turn watched me, and it wasn’t what she said that mattered at all, it was which of us would win the desperate battle for pride.

She plunged the cooling small ball of glass into the tank again and drew it out again, larger. She swung the iron around until the molten red-hot lump advanced to a too close spot under Hickory’s chin. He could feel the heat. He shrank frantically away and tried to scream behind the adhering tape.

“Look out, for God’s sake,” I shouted automatically, and as if surprised, Rose swung the iron away from Hickory’s face until he wasn’t for the minute threatened.

“You see!” Rose sounded all of a sudden victorious. “If you don’t like him burned you’ll tell me where you’ve hidden the videotape I want.”

I said urgently, “You’ll disfigure Hickory if you’re not careful. Glass burns are terrible. You can get a hand burned so badly that it needs amputating. An arm; a foot... You can smell flesh burning... you can lose your mouth, your nose.”

“Shut up,” Rose yelled, and again, at the top of her voice, “Shut up!”

“You can burn out an eye,” I said. “You can sear and cauterize your guts.”

Pamela Jane, who lived with the danger, was affected least of all in spite of her fluttery manner, and it was big Norman Osprey of the great muscular shoulders who sweated and looked ready to vomit.

Rose looked at her red-hot iron. She looked at Hickory and she glanced at me. I could more or less read her rapid mind. She had come to threaten me through my regard for Hickory and now here I was, a target again myself.