Fear is the Key (9 page)

‘We require him,' Vyland said smoothly. ‘And
from what we've learnt from Miss Ruthven – and
from what Royale knows of you – you can hold
him. And your money's safe.'

‘Uh-huh. And tell me, am I a prisoner looking
after a prisoner, or am I free to come and
go?'

‘You heard what the general said,' Vyland
answered. ‘You're a free agent. But if you do
go out make sure he's locked up or tied so that
he can't break for it.'

‘Seventy thousand bucks' worth of guarding, eh?'
Jablonsky said grimly. ‘He's safe as the gold in Fort
Knox.' I caught Royale and Vyland exchanging a
brief flicker of a glance as Jablonsky went on: ‘But
I'm kind of worried about that seventy thousand.
I mean, if someone finds out Talbot is here, I
won't get the seventy thousand. All I'll get, with
my record, is ten years for obstructing the course
of justice and giving aid and comfort to a wanted
murderer.' He looked speculatively at Vyland and
the general and went on softly: ‘What guarantee
have I that no one in this house will talk?'

‘No one will talk,' Vyland said flatly.

‘The chauffeur lives in the lodge, doesn't he?'
Jablonsky said obliquely.

‘Yes, he does.' Vyland spoke softly, thoughtfully.
‘It might be a good idea to get rid of –'

‘No!' the girl interrupted violently. She'd jumped
to her feet, fists clenched by her sides.

‘Under no circumstances,' General Ruthven said
quietly. ‘Kennedy remains. We are too much in
his debt.'

Vyland's dark eyes narrowed for a moment and
he looked at the general. But it was the girl who
answered the unspoken query.

‘Simon won't talk,' she said tonelessly. She
moved towards the door: ‘I'll go to see him.'

‘Simon, eh?' Vyland scraped a thumb-nail against
the corner of his moustache, and looked at her
appraisingly. ‘Simon Kennedy, chauffeur and
general handyman.'

She retraced a few steps, stopped in front of
Vyland and looked at him steadily, tiredly. You
could just see the fifteen generations stretching
back to the
Mayflower
and every one of the 285
million bucks was showing. She said distinctly: ‘I
think you are the most utterly hateful man I have
ever known,' and walked out, closing the door
behind her.

‘My daughter is overwrought,' the general said
hastily. ‘She –'

‘Forget it, General.' Vyland's voice was as urbane
as ever, but he looked a bit overwrought himself.
‘Royale, you might show Jablonsky and Talbot
their quarters for tonight. East end of the new
wing – the rooms are being fixed now.'

Royale nodded, but Jablonsky held up his hand.
‘This job Talbot is going to do for you – is it in this
house?'

General Ruthven glanced at Vyland, then shook
his head.

‘Then where?' Jablonsky demanded. ‘If this guy
is taken out of here and anybody within a hundred
miles spots him, we've had it. Particularly, it would
be goodbye to my money. I think I'm entitled to a
little reassurance on this point, General.'

Again the swift interchange of looks between
the general and Vyland, again the latter's all but
imperceptible nod.

‘I think we can tell you that,' the general said.

‘The job's on the X 13, my oil rig out in the gulf.'
He smiled faintly. ‘Fifteen miles from here and well
out in the gulf. No passers-by to see him there, Mr
Jablonsky.'

Jablonsky nodded, as though for the moment
satisfied, and said no more. I stared at the ground.
I didn't dare to look up. Royale said softly: ‘Let's
be on our way.'

I finished my drink and got up. The heavy
library door opened outwards into the passage
and Royale, gun in hand, stood to one side to
let me pass through first. He should have known
better. Or maybe my limp deceived him. People
thought my limp slowed me up, but people were
wrong.

Valentino had disappeared. I went through the
doorway, slowed up and moved to one side round
the edge of the door as if I were waiting for
Royale to catch up and show me where to go,
then whirled round and smashed the sole of my
right foot against the door with all the speed and
power I could muster.

Royale got nailed neatly between door and jamb.
Had it been his head that was caught it would have
been curtains. As it was, it caught his shoulders but
even so it was enough to make him grunt in agony
and send the gun spinning out of his hand to fall
a couple of yards down the passage. I dived for it,
I scooped it up by the barrel, swung round, still
crouched, as I heard the quick step behind me.
The butt of the automatic caught the diving Royale
somewhere on the face, I couldn't be sure where,
but it sounded like a four-pound axe sinking into
the bole of a pine. He was unconscious before he
hit me – but he did hit me. An axe won't stop a
falling pine. It took only a couple of seconds to
push him off and change my grip to the butt of the
pistol, but two seconds would always be enough
and more than enough for a man like Jablonsky.

His foot caught my gun-hand and the gun landed
twenty feet away. I launched myself for his legs
but he moved to one side with the speed of a
fly-weight, lifted his knee and sent me crashing
against the open door. And then it was too late, for
he had the Mauser in his hand and it was pointing
between my eyes.

I climbed slowly to my feet, not trying anything.
The general and Vyland, the latter with a gun in his
hand, came crowding through the open door, then
relaxed when they saw Jablonsky with the gun on
me. Vyland bent down and helped a now-moaning
Royale to a sitting position. Royale had a long,
heavily bleeding cut above his left eye and and
tomorrow he'd have a duck's egg bruise there.
After maybe half a minute he shook his head
to clear it, wiped blood away with the back of
his hand and looked slowly round till his eyes
found mine. I'd been mistaken. I'd thought his
the emptiest, the most expressionless eyes I'd ever
seen, but I'd been mistaken. I looked in them and
I could almost smell the moist freshly-turned earth
of an open grave.

‘I can see that you gents really do need me
around,' Jablonsky said jovially. ‘I never thought
anyone would try that stuff with Royale and live
to talk about it. But we learn.' He dug into a side
pocket and brought out a set of very slender blued-
steel cuffs and slipped them expertly on my wrists.
‘A souvenir of the bad old days,' he explained
apologetically. ‘Would there happen to be another
pair and some wire or chain round the house?'

‘It might be arranged,' Vyland said almost
mechanically. He still couldn't credit what had
happened to his infallible hatchet-man.

‘Fine.' Jablonsky grinned down at Royale. ‘You
don't need to lock your door tonight. I'll keep
Talbot out of your hair.' Royale transferred his
sombre, evil stare from my face to Jablonsky's
and his expression didn't alter any that I could
see. I fancied perhaps Royale was beginning to
have ideas about a double grave.

The butler took us upstairs and along a narrow
passage to the back of the big house, took a key
from his pocket, unlocked the door and ushered
us in. It was just another bedroom, sparsely but
expensively furnished, with a wash-basin in one
corner and a modern mahogany bed in the middle
of the right wall. To the left was a communicating
door to another bedroom. The butler took a second
key from his pocket and unlocked this door also.
It gave on to another room, the mirror image
of the first, except for the bed, which was an
old-fashioned iron-railed effort. It looked as if it
had been made with girders left over from the
Key West bridge. It looked solid. It looked as if
it were going to be my bed.

We went back into the other room. Jablonsky
stretched out his hand. ‘The keys, please.'

The butler hesitated, peered uncertainly at him,
then shrugged, handed over the keys and turned to
leave. Jablonsky said pleasantly: ‘This Mauser I'm
holding here, friend – want that I should bounce
it off your head two three times?'

‘I'm afraid I don't understand, sir.'

‘“Sir”, hey? That's good. I wouldn't have expected
them to have books on buttling in Alcatraz. The
other key, my friend. The one leading to the
passage from Talbot's room.'

The butler scowled, handed over a third key,
and left. Whatever buttling book he'd read he'd
skipped the section on closing doors, but it was a
stout door and it stood up to it. Jablonsky grinned,
locked the door with an ostentatious click, pulled
the curtains, checked rapidly that there were no
peep-holes in the walls and crossed back to where
I stood. Five or six times he smacked a massive fist
into a massive palm, kicked the wall and knocked
over an armchair with a thud that shook the room.
Then he said, not too softly, not too loudly: ‘Get
up when you're ready, friend. That's just a little
warning, shall we say, not to try any further tricks
like you tried on Royale. Just move one finger
and you'll think the Chrysler building fell on top
of you.'

I didn't move a finger. Neither did Jablonsky.
There was a complete silence inside the room.
We listened hard. The silence in the passageway
outside was not complete. With his flat feet and
adenoidal, broken-nosed breathing, the butler was
completely miscast as the Last of the Mohicans
and he was a good twenty feet away by the time
the thick carpet absorbed the last of his creaking
footfalls.

Jablonsky took out a key, softly opened the
handcuffs, pocketed them and shook my hand
as if he meant to break every finger I had. I felt
like it, too, but for all that my grin was as big, as
delighted as his own. We lit cigarettes and started
on the two rooms with toothpicks, looking for bugs
and listening devices.

The place was loaded with them.

Exactly twenty-four hours later I climbed into the
sports car that had been left empty, but with the
ignition key in the lock, four hundred yards away
from the entrance lodge to the general's house.
It was a Chevrolet Corvette – the same car that
I'd stolen the previous afternoon when I'd been
holding Mary Ruthven hostage.

The rain yesterday had vanished, completely.
The sky had been blue and cloudless all day long
– and for me it had been a very long day indeed.
Lying fully dressed and handcuffed to the rails of
an iron bed for twelve hours while the temperature
in a closed-window south-facing room rises to a
hundred in the shade – well, the heat and the
somnolent inactivity would have been just right
for a Galapagos tortoise. It left me as limp as a shot
rabbit. They'd kept me there all day, Jablonsky
bringing me food and parading me shortly after
dinner before the general, Vyland and Royale to let
them see how good a watch-dog he was and that I
was still relatively intact. Relatively was the word:
to increase the effect I'd redoubled my limp and
had sticking plaster crossed over cheek and chin.

Royale needed no such adventitious aids to
advertise the fact that he had been in the wars.
I doubt if they made sticking plaster wide enough to
cover the enormous bruise he had on his forehead.
His right eye was the same bluish-purple as the
bruise, and completely shut. I'd done a good job
on Royale: and I knew, for all the empty remote
expression that was back in his face and one good
eye, that he'd never rest until he'd done a better
job on me. A permanent job.

The night air was cool and sweet and full of
the smell of the salt air. I had the hood down
and as I travelled south I leaned far back and to
one side to let the freshness drive away the last
of the cobwebs from my dopy mind. It wasn't
just the heat that had made my mind sluggish,
I had slept so long during that sticky afternoon
that I was overslept and paying for it: but then, I
wasn't going to get much sleep that coming night.
Once or twice I thought of Jablonsky, that big
black smiling man with the engaging grin, sitting
back in his upstairs room diligently and solemnly
guarding my empty bedroom with all three keys
in his pocket. I felt in my own pocket and they
were still there, the duplicates that Jablonsky had
had cut that morning when he had taken the air
in the direction of Marble Springs. Jablonsky had
been busy that morning.

I forgot about Jablonsky. He could take better
care of himself than any man I'd ever known.
I had enough troubles of my own coming up
that night.

The last traces of the brilliant red sunset had
just vanished over the wine-dark gulf to the west
and the stars were standing clear in the high and
windless sky when I saw a green-shaded lantern
on the right of the road. I passed it, then a second,
then at the third I turned sharp right and ran the
Corvette down on to a little stone jetty, switching
off my headlights even before I coasted to a standstill
beside a tall, bulky man with a tiny pencil flash
in his hand.

He took my arm – he had to, I was blind from
staring into the glaring white pool of light cast
by the Corvette's headlamps – and led me wordlessly
down a flight of wooden steps to a floating
landing jetty and across this to a long dark shape
that lay rocking gently by the side of the jetty.
I was seeing better already, and I managed to
grab a stay and jump down into the boat without
a helping hand. A squat, short man rose to
greet me.

‘Mr Talbot?'

‘Yes. Captain Zaimis, isn't it?'

‘John.' The little man chuckled and explained
in his lilting accent: ‘My boys would laugh at me.
“Captain Zaimis”, they would say. “And how is the
Queen Mary
or the
United States
today?” they would
say. And so on. The children of today.' The little
man sighed in mock sorrow. ‘Ah, well, I suppose
“John” is good enough for the captain of the little
Matapan
.'