Alistair MacLean - Fear is the Key

He made to interrupt, but I held up my hand.

"I know, you've been taken off the job. Make some excuse to go up to the house to-morrow morning, early. See Mary. Tell her that Valentino is going to have a slight accident in the course of the morning and she—"

"What do you mean, he'll have an accident?"

"Don't worry," I said grimly. "He'll have his accident all right. He won't be able to look after himself, far less anybody else, for some time to come. Tell her that she is to insist on having you back. If she sticks out her neck and makes an issue of it she'll win. The general won't object, and I'm pretty sure Vyland won't either: it's only for a day, and after to-morrow the question of who looks after her won't worry him very much. Don't ask me how I know, because I don't. But I'm banking on it." I paused. "Anyway, Vyland will just think she's insisting on having you because he thinks she has, shall we say, a soft spot for you." He kept his wooden Indian expression in place, so I went on: "I don't know whether it's so and I don't care. I'm just telling you what I think Vyland thinks and why that should make him accept her suggestion — that, and the fact that he doesn't trust you and would rather have you out on the rig and under his eye anyway."

"Very well." I might have been suggesting that he come for a stroll. He was a cool customer, all right. "I'll tell her and I'll play it the way you want." He thought a moment, then continued: "You tell me I'm sticking my neck out. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm doing it of my own free will. At the same time, I think that the fact that I'm doing it at all entitles me to a little more honesty on your part."

"Have I been dishonest?" I wasn't annoyed, I was just beginning to feel very tired indeed.

"Only in what you don't say. You tell me you want me so that I'll look after the general's daughter. Compared to what you're after, Talbot, Mary's safety doesn't matter a tuppenny damn to you. If it did you could have hidden her away when you had her the day before yesterday. But you didn't. You brought her back. You say she's in great danger. It was you, Talbot, who brought her back to this danger. O.K., so you want me to keep an eye on her. But you want me for something else, too."

I nodded. "I do. I'm going into this with my hands tied. Literally. I'm going into this as a prisoner. I must have someone I can trust. I'm trusting you."

"You can trust Jablonsky," he said quietly.

"Jablonsky's dead."

He stared at me without speaking. After a few moments he reached out for the bottle and splashed whisky into both our glasses. His mouth was a thin white line in the brown face.

"See that?" I pointed to my sodden shoes. "That's the earth from Jablonsky's grave. I filled it in just before I came here, not fifteen minutes ago. They got him through the head with a small bore automatic. They got him between the eyes. He was smiling, Kennedy. You don't smile when you see death coming to you. Jablonsky never saw it coming. He was murdered in his sleep."

I gave him a brief account of what had happened since I'd left the house, including the trip in the Tarpon Springs sponge boat out to the X 13, up to the moment I had come here. When I was finished he said: "Royale?"

"Royale."

"You'll never be able to prove it."

"I won't have to." I said it almost without realising what I was saying. "Royale may never stand trial. Jablonsky was my best friend."

He knew what I was saying, all right. He said softly: "I'd just as soon you never came after me, Talbot."

I drained my whisky. It was having no effect now. I felt old and tired and empty and dead. Then Kennedy spoke again.

"What are you going to do now?"

"Do? I'm going to borrow some dry shoes and socks and underwear from you. Then I'm going to go back up to the house, go to my room, dry my clothes off, handcuff myself to the bed and throw the keys away. They'll come for me in the morning."

"You're crazy," he whispered. "Why do you think they killed Jablonsky?"

"I don't know," I said wearily.

"You must know," he said urgently. "Why else should they kill him if they hadn't found out who he really was, what he was really doing? They killed him because they found out the double-cross. And if they found that out about him, they must have found it out about you. They'll be waiting for you up there in your room, Talbot. They'll know you'll be coming back, for they won't know you found Jablonsky. You'll get it through the head as you step over the threshold. Can't you see that, Talbot? For God's sake, man, can't you see it?"

"I saw it a long time ago. Maybe they know all about me. Maybe they don't. There's so much I don't know, Kennedy. But maybe they won't kill me. Maybe not yet." I got to my feet. "I'm going back on up."

For a moment I thought he was going to use physical force to try to stop me tat there must have been something in my face that made him change his mind. He put his hand on my arm.

"How much are they paying you for this, Talbot?"

"Pennies."

"Reward?"

"None."

"Then what in the name of God is the compulsion that will drive a man like you to crazy lengths like those?" His good-looking brown face was twisted in anxiety and perplexity, he couldn't understand me.

I couldn't understand myself either. I said: "I don't know… Yes, I do. I'll tell you someday."

"You'll never live to tell anybody anything," he said sombrely.

I picked up dry shoes and clothes, told him good night and left.

There was nobody waiting for me in my room up in the general's house. I unlocked the corridor door with the duplicate key Jablonsky had given me, eased it open with only a whisper of sound and passed inside. Nobody blasted my head off. The room was empty.

The heavy curtains were still drawn shut as I had left them, but I let the light switch be. There was a chance that they didn't know that I'd left the room that night but if anyone saw a light come on in the room of a man handcuffed to his bed they'd be up to investigate in nothing flat. Only Jablonsky could have switched it on and Jablonsky was dead.

I went over every square foot of floor and walls with my pencil flash. Nothing missing, nothing changed. If anyone had been here he'd left no trace of his visit. But then if anyone had been here I would have expected him to leave no trace.

There was a big wall heater near the communicating door to Jablonsky's room. I switched this on to full, undressed by its ruddy glow, towelled myself dry and hung trousers and coat over the back of a chair to dry off. I pulled on the underwear and socks I'd borrowed from Kennedy, stuffed my own rain-soaked underwear and socks into my sodden shoes, opened the curtains and windows and hurled them as far as I could into the dense undergrowth behind the house, where I'd already concealed oilskin and overcoat before climbing the fire-escape. I strained my ears but I couldn't even hear the sound the shoes made on landing. I felt pretty sure no one else could have heard anything either. The high moan of the wind, the drumming of that torrential rain smothered all sound at its source.

I took keys from the pocket of my already steaming jacket and crossed to the communicating door to Jablonsky's room. Maybe the reception committee was waiting there. I didn't much care.

There was no committee. The room was as empty as my own. I crossed to the corridor door and tried the handle. The door was locked.

The bed, as I expected, had been slept in. Sheets and blankets had been pulled back so far that most of them were on the floor. There were no signs of a struggle. There were no signs, even, of violence: not until I turned the pillow upside down.

The pillow was a mess, but nothing to what it would have been if death hadn't been instantaneous. The bullet must have passed clean through the skull, not what you would have expected from a .22 but then Mr. Royale used very fancy ammunition. I found the shell in the down of the pillow. Cupro-nickel. It wasn't like Royale to be so careless. I was going to look after that little piece of metal. 1 was going to treasure it like the Cullinan diamond. I found some adhesive in a drawer, pulled off a sock, taped the spent bullet under the second and third toes where there would be no direct pressure on it and where it wouldn't interfere with my walking. It would be safe there. The most thorough and conscientious search — should there be one — would miss it.