Eric Ambler: Journey Into Fear

There was silence. He was half leaning, half crouching against the wall by the bed, his ears singing from the din of the explosions. He was dimly aware that the window was open and that someone was moving by it. His hand seemed to be numb, but he could feel blood beginning to trickle between his fingers.

He remained motionless, his heart hammering at his head. The air reeked of cordite fumes. Then, as his eyes became used to the darkness, he saw that whoever had been at the window had left by it.

There would, he knew, be another light switch beside the bed. With his left hand he fumbled along the wall towards it. Then his hand touched the telephone. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he picked it up.

He heard a click as the night porter plugged in at the switchboard.

“Room thirty-six,” he said and was surprised to find that he was shouting. “Something has happened. I need help.”

He put the telephone down, blundered towards the bathroom and switched on the light there. The blood was pouring from a great gash across the back of his hand. Through the waves of nausea flowing from his stomach to his head, he could hear doors being flung open and excited voices in the corridor. Someone started hammering at the door.

The stevedores had finished loading and were battening down. One winch was still working but it was hoisting the steel bearers into place. The bulkhead against which Graham was leaning vibrated as they thudded into their sockets. Another passenger had come aboard and the steward had shown him to a cabin farther along the alleyway. The newcomer had a low, grumbling voice and had addressed the steward in hesitant Italian.

Graham stood up and with his unbandaged hand fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. He was beginning to find the cabin oppressive. He looked at his watch. The ship would not be sailing for another hour. He wished he had asked Kopeikin to come aboard with him. He tried to think of his wife in England, to picture her sitting with her friends having tea; but it was as if someone behind him were holding a stereoscope to his mind’s eyes; someone who was steadily sliding picture after picture between him and the rest of his life to cut him off from it; pictures of Kopeikin and Le Jockey Cabaret, of Maria and the man in the crumpled suit, of Josette and her partner, of stabbing flames in a sea of darkness and of pale, frightened faces in the hotel corridor. He had not known then what he knew now, what he learnt in the cold, beastly dawn that had followed. The whole thing had seemed different then: unpleasant, decidedly unpleasant, but reasonable, accountable. Now he felt as if a doctor had told him that he was suffering from some horrible and deadly disease; as if he had become part of a different world, a world of which he knew nothing but that it was detestable.

The hand holding the match to his cigarette was trembling. “What I need,” he thought, “is sleep.”

As the waves of nausea subsided and he stood there in the bathroom, shivering, sounds began once more to penetrate the blanket of cotton wool that seemed to have enveloped his brain. There was a sort of irregular thudding coming from a long distance. He realised that someone was still knocking at the bedroom door.

He wrapped a face towel round his hand, went back into the bedroom and switched on the light. As he did so, the knocking ceased and there was a clinking of metal. Someone had got a pass key. The door burst open.

It was the night porter who came in first, blinking round uncertainly. Behind him in the corridor were the people from the neighbouring rooms, drawing back now for fear of seeing what they hoped to see. A small, dark man in a red dressing gown over blue striped pyjamas pushed past the night porter. Graham recognised the man who had shown him to his room.

“There were shots,” he began in French. Then he saw Graham’s hand and went white. “I … You are wounded. You are …”

Graham sat down on the bed. “Not seriously. If you will send for a doctor to bandage my hand properly, I will tell you what has happened. But first: the man who fired the shots left through the window. You might try and catch him. What is below the window?”

“But …” began the man shrilly. He stopped, visibly pulling himself together. Then he turned to the night porter and said something in Turkish. The porter went out, shutting the door behind him. There was a burst of excited chatter from outside.

“The next thing,” said Graham, “is to send for the manager.”

“Pardon, Monsieur, he has been sent for. I am the Assistant Manager.” He wrung his hands. “What has happened? Your hand, Monsieur.… But the doctor will be here immediately.”

“Good. You’d better know what happened. I have been out this evening with a friend. I returned a few minutes ago. As I opened the door here, someone standing there just inside the window fired three shots at me. The second one hit my hand. The other two hit the wall. I heard him moving but I did not see his face. I imagine that he was a thief and that my unexpected return disturbed him.”

“It is an outrage!” said the Assistant Manager hotly. His face changed. “A thief! Has anything been stolen, Monsieur?”

“I haven’t looked. My suitcase is over there. It was locked.”

The Assistant Manager hurried across the room and went down on his knees beside the suitcase. “It is still locked,” he reported with a sigh of relief.

Graham fumbled in his pocket. “Here are the keys. You’d better open it.”

The man obeyed. Graham glanced at the contents of the case. “It has not been touched.”

“A blessing!” He hesitated. He was obviously thinking fast. “You say that your hand is not seriously hurt, Monsieur?”

“I don’t think it is.”

“It is a great relief. When the shots were heard, Monsieur, we feared an unbelievable horror. You may imagine.… But this is bad enough.” He went to the window and looked out. “The pig! He must have escaped through the gardens immediately. Useless to search for him.” He shrugged despairingly. “He is gone now, and there is nothing to be done. I need not tell you, Monsieur, how profoundly we regret that this thing should happen to you in the Adler-Palace. Never before has such a thing happened here.” He hesitated again and then went on quickly: “Naturally, Monsieur, we shall do everything in our power to alleviate the distress which has been caused to you. I have told the porter to bring some whisky for you when he has telephoned for the doctor. English whisky! We have a special supply. Happily, nothing has been stolen. We could not, of course, have foreseen that an accident of such a kind should happen; but we shall ourselves see that the best medical attention is given. And there will, of course, be no question of any charge for your stay here. But …”

“But you don’t want to call in the police and involve the hotel. Is that it?”

The Assistant Manager smiled nervously. “No good can be done, Monsieur. The police would merely ask questions and make inconveniences for all.” Inspiration came to him. “For all , Monsieur,” he repeated emphatically. “You are a business man. You wish to leave Istanbul this morning. But if the police are brought in, it might be difficult. There would be, inevitably, delays. And for what purpose?”

“They might catch the man who shot me.”

“But how, Monsieur? You did not see his face. You cannot identify him. There is nothing stolen by which he could be traced.”

Graham hesitated. “But what about this doctor you are getting? Supposing he reports to the police the fact that there is someone here with a bullet wound.”

“The doctor’s services, Monsieur, will be paid for liberally by the management.”