Alistair MacLean - Fear is the Key

There came a dull muffled snapping noise and the Colt fell from his hands and struck the grille at my feet. For two or three seconds Larry seemed to stand there poised, then, with the unbelievably slow, irrevocable finality of a toppling factory chimney, he fell out into space.

There was no terror-stricken screaming, no wild flailing of arms and legs as he fell to the steel deck a hundred feet below: Larry had been dead, his neck broken, even before he had started to fall.

Eight minutes after Larry had died and exactly twenty minutes after I had left Kennedy and Royale in the cabin I was back there, giving the hurriedly pre-arranged knock. The door was unlocked, and I passed quickly inside. Kennedy immediately turned the key again while I looked down at Royale, spread-eagled and unconscious on the deck.

"How's the patient been?" I inquired. My breath was coming in heaving gasps, the exertions of the past twenty minutes and the fact that I'd run all the way back there hadn't helped my respiration any.

"Restive." Kennedy grinned. "I had to give him another sedative." Then his eyes took me in and the smile slowly faded as he looked first at the blood trickling from my mouth then at the hole in the shoulder of the oilskin. "You look bad. You're hurt. Trouble?"

I nodded. "But it's all over now, all taken care of." I was wriggling out of my oilskins as fast as I could and I wasn't liking it at all. "I got through on the radio. Everything is going fine. So far, that is."

"Fine, that's wonderful." The words were automatic; Kennedy was pleased enough to hear my news but he was far from pleased with the looks of me. Carefully, gently, he was helping me out of the oilskins and I heard the quick indrawing of breath as he saw where I'd torn my shirt-sleeve off at the shoulder, the red-stained wads of gauze with which Mary had plugged both sides of the wound — the bullet had passed straight through, missing the bone but tearing half the deltoid muscle away — in the brief minute we'd stopped in the radio shack after we'd come down that ladder again. "My God, that must hurt."

"Not much." Not much it didn't, there were a couple of little men, working on piece-time rates, perched on either side of my shoulder and sawing away with a crosscut as if their lives depended on it, and my mouth didn't fed very much better: the broken tooth had left an exposed nerve that sent violent jolts of pain stabbing up through my face and head every other second. Normally the combination would have had me climbing the walls: but today wasn't a normal day.

"You can't carry on like this," Kennedy persisted. "You're losing blood and—"

"Can anyone see that I've been hit in the teeth?" I asked abruptly.

He crossed to a wash-basin, wet a handkerchief and wiped my face clear of blood.

"I don't think so," he said consideringly. "To-morrow your upper lip will be double its size but it hasn't started coming up yet." He smiled without humour. "And as long as the wound in your shoulder doesn't make you laugh out loud no one can see that one of your teeth is broken."

"Fine. That's all I need. You know I've got to do this." I was slipping oft the oilskin leggings and had to re-position the gun in my waistband. Kennedy, beginning to dress up in the oilskins himself, saw it.

"Larry's?"

I nodded.

"He did the damage?"

Another nod.

"And Larry?"

"He won't need any more heroin where he's gone." I struggled painfully into my coat, more than ever grateful that I'd left it oft before going. "I broke his neck."

Kennedy regarded me long and thoughtfully. "You play kind of rough, don't you, Talbot?"

"Not half as rough as you'd have been," I said grimly. "He'd Mary on her hands and knees on the monkey-board of the derrick, a hundred feet above the deck, and he was proposing that she go down again without benefit of the ladder."

He stopped in the middle of tying the last button on his oilskin, crossed in two quick strides, grabbed me by the shoulders then released them again at my quick exclamation of pain.

"Sorry, Talbot. Damn' foolish of me." His face wasn't as brown as usual, eyes and mouth were creased with worry. "How — is she all right?"

"She's all right," I said wearily. "She'll be across here in ten minutes' time and you'll see for yourself. You'd better get going, Kennedy. They'll be back any minute."

"That's right," he murmured. "Half an hour, the general said — it's nearly up. You — you're sure she's all right?"

"Sure I'm sure," I said irritably, then at once regretted the irritation. This man I could get to like very much. I grinned at him. "Never yet saw a chauffeur so worried about his employer."

"I'm off," he said. He didn't feel like smiling. He reached for a leather note-case lying beside my papers on the desk and thrust it into an inside pocket. "Mustn't forget this. Unlock the door, will you, and see if the coast is clear?"

I opened the door, saw that it was clear and gave him the nod. He got his hands under Royale's armpits, dragged him through the doorway and dumped him unceremoniously in the passage-way outside, beside the overturned chair. Royale was stirring and moaning: he would be coming to any moment now. Kennedy looked at me for a few moments, as if searching for something to say, then he reached out and tapped me lightly on the good shoulder.

"Good luck, Talbot," he murmured. "I wish to God I was coming with you."

"I wish you were," I said feelingly. "Don't worry, it's just about over now." I wasn't even kidding myself, and Kennedy knew it. I nodded to him, went inside and closed the door. I heard Kennedy turn the key in the lock and leave it there. I listened, but I didn't even hear his footsteps as he left: for so big a man he was as silent as he was fast.

Now that I was alone, with nothing to do, the pain struck with redoubled force. The pain and the nausea came at me in alternate waves, I could feel the shores of consciousness advancing and receding, it would have been so easy just to let go. But I couldn't let go, not now. It was too late now. I would have given anything for some injection to kill the pain, something to see me through the next hour or so. I was almost glad when, less than two minutes after Kennedy had left, I heard the sound of approaching footsteps. We had cut things pretty fine. I heard an exclamation, the footsteps broke into a run and I went and sat behind my desk and picked up a pencil. The overhead light I had switched off and now I adjusted the angle extension lamp on the wall so that it shone directly overhead, throwing my face in deep shadow. Maybe, as Kennedy had said, my mouth didn't show that it had been hit but it certainly felt as if it showed and I didn't want to take any chances.

The key scraped harshly in the lock, the door crashed open and bounced off the bulkhead and a thug I'd never seen before, built along the same lines as Cibatti, jumped into the room. Hollywood had taught him all about opening doors in situations like this. If you damaged the panels or hinges or plaster on the wall it didn't matter, it was the unfortunate proprietor who had to pay up. In this case, as the door was made of steel, all he had damaged was his toe and it didn't require a very close student of human nature to see that there was nothing he would have liked better than to fire off that automatic he was waving in his hand. But all he saw was me, with a pencil in my hand and a mildly inquiring expression on my face. He scowled at me anyway, then turned and nodded to someone in the passageway.

Vyland and the general came in half-carrying a now conscious Royale. It did my heart good just to look at him as he sat heavily in a chair. Between myself a couple of nights ago and Kennedy to-night we had done a splendid job on him; it promised to be the biggest facial bruise I had ever seen. Already it was certainly the most colourful. I sat there and wondered with a kind of detached interest — for I could no longer afford to think of Royale with anything except detachment — whether the bruise would still be there when he went to the electric chair. I rather thought it would.