The Touch of Death (3 page)

 

Banister lay sweating on the pillow.

The flat was silent; since the turning of the key in the lock, he hadn't heard a sound. He had been here for nearly two hours. For the past sixty minutes he had been watching the door, expecting it to open; and expecting to hear footsteps.

Nothing had happened.

In his mind's eye he could see the faces of the two men, and of the girl. Her plea and their voices seemed to ring in his ears; so did the crack of the breaking chair-legs. The casual, careless strength of a man who could do that was a fearful thing. He could crush the life out of anyone.

There was no sound anywhere.

Banister got up, and went unsteadily to the door. He turned the handle and pushed – and the door opened.

He looked at it stupidly. He was sure that he had heard the key turn; yes, he had tried to open it before. They had unlocked it, and he hadn't heard a sound.

The passage was empty. He stepped into it.

There was the front door – two yards away. He could reach it in three easy strides, get outside and be free of danger.

The room doors were open.

He crept forward, until he reached the front door, and glanced into the living-room. The typewriter was gone from the desk. The room was empty. The whole flat seemed empty. He felt dazed, bewildered, foolish. He could get out without any difficulty, but – need he? What were they trying to do to him? Just break his nerve? Or make him think that he was going crazy?

Slowly, forcing himself, he went into each room; and the flat was empty. There was no trace, that he could see, of anyone else – except a faint smell of cigar smoke; he didn't smoke cigars.

He felt weak, and still foolish. His shoulder ached rather than hurt. So did his arm where he had first been wounded. He dropped into the large armchair in the living-room – and then he got up hurriedly, went into the bedroom and looked for the broken chair.

It wasn't there.

Banister came back and stared stupidly at the telephone for several minutes, then lifted it and dialled O.

“Can I help you?” the operator asked.

“I—” He paused again. “I'm sorry. Can you—can you tell me what date it is?”

“February 20th,” said the operator briskly. “Are you having any difficulty with your telephone, sir?”

“What? Er—no. No, I—”

“What number are you trying to get?”

“Number?” Banister caught his breath, realised that he sounded as if he were out of his wits. “Sorry again. But get me Scotland Yard, will you—in a hurry.”

 

He knew the name of Superintendent Gillick of New Scotland Yard. Gillick was one of the Big Five, perhaps better known to the general public than any other member of the Criminal Investigation Department. At first it didn't appear odd to Banister that such a celebrity should come to see him. Even the big shots had to handle small affairs, or those which looked unpromising at the beginning.

Gillick was big and portly and gave the impression of being unimaginative. But his comments and questions were shrewd; Banister didn't run away with the idea that he was a fool. Gillick listened to Banister's statement with hardly any outward sign of surprise, had him describe the men and the blonde girl – whose name he had never heard – and wanted a particularly careful description of the grey-haired man.

Banister did his best.

Gillick had brought a police-surgeon with him, and the wounds were examined. The cut in the arm wasn't serious, but the stab in the shoulder needed much more dressing and attention.

“You'd better go to hospital with that,” said the police-surgeon. “As an out-patient, of course. Only satisfactory way of dealing with it.”

“We'll give you a chit,” Gillick said in his rumbling voice. “Save you hanging about too much. Draughty places, hospitals. Now, let's go back to the night you ran into this queer business . . .”

That was the moment when Banister first realised that Gillick didn't believe him; or pretended not to. It was nothing that Gillick actually said – except by implication. It was in his manner, his eyes, his hands. “Yes, yes, I see,” he would say, with a kind of controlled impatience. Yet he wanted to know every detail, even asked the colour of the eyes of the people and what their teeth were like. It was almost as if he were trying to catch Banister out, for he asked the same questions time and time again, sometimes with two days in between.

“Let me see, now, this blonde girl—platinum blonde hair, didn't you say?”

“Yellow.”

“Oh, yes, sorry. What colour were her eyes?”

“Big, blue eyes.”

“And the big fellow—” Gillick had a funny little smile, a

“I know it's not really amusing but let's pretend it is then we'll get along” kind of smile. He gave it then. “And the big fellow, the larger-than-life chap?”

“Brown eyes.”

“Sure?”

“I am quite sure,” Banister said stiffly.

The sergeant who was with them all the time, whenever they met – and for the next three days they met seven or eight times – made his shorthand notes industriously. Each day, a typewritten sheet was brought to Banister, for him to read and sign. Everything was accurate. The feeling that he wasn't believed not only remained but became stronger. It gave him a curiously guilty kind of feeling.

There appeared to be a kind of conspiracy to disbelieve him.

On the evening of the third day Gillick telephoned.

“We'll do everything we can, Mr. Banister, and if we get any news at all, we'll let you know. Meanwhile I hope that shoulder goes along all right.” The rumbling voice paused. “Good-night.”

When he put the receiver down, Banister thought: “I shan't hear from him again.”

He didn't.

This conspiracy of disbelief was real – and made everything else unreal. The world had become a place of fantasy. Nothing that had happened was credible or real but – it
had
happened. That crack, as the chair leg broke; that anguish in the blue eyes of the blonde girl; the swift pattering of the keys of the typewriter; the “Why, Neil,” of the old man, as if he were speaking with hurt protest.

The trouble was that Banister had no one to talk to about it.

He didn't go to the sales rooms for ten days, and when he did arrive, the manager was very friendly and amiable but regretful. Business wasn't so good, Banister would understand, wouldn't he, if he were suspended – only until business was better, of course.

That wasn't a disaster; but it wasn't pleasing.

The following day, Banister went to the hospital – the Westminster – for the last time. A capable nurse assured him that his shoulder would now be perfectly all right.

He left the hospital, walked towards the nearest paper boy, bought a newspaper – and stood stock still.

A man banged into him, and glared.

Banister hardly noticed him.

On the front page of the
Evening News
was a photograph of the Prime Minister with another man. A familiar man – a man with grey hair which had once been fouled with blood, and a face which Banister was sure he would remember until his dying day.

The caption beneath the photograph read:

 

“The Prime Minister outside Number 10 Downing Street with Professor Monk-Gilbert, Britain's foremost nuclear scientist.”

 

Banister had seen a man with Monk-Gilbert's face – dead. He had also seen a man with his face alive, calling him Neil, pretending to be an old friend.

He folded the paper up and walked towards Piccadilly. He couldn't think clearly. Something was gravely wrong, but he couldn't put a name to it, and couldn't see that he could do a thing.

Then he thought of Paul Harris.

Harris, a war-years acquaintance, was a private inquiry agent with offices in Fleet Street. Once the thought came, Banister was astonished that he hadn't thought of going to him before.

Harris was tall, hatchet-thin, keen-eyed.

He listened intently.

“The way you put it, Neil, it's really something,” he said. “I'll do everything I can – and don't start arguing already. I know you'll want a fist in it yourself! But let me look round, first. This colossus, now—”

Banister went home, excited at the prospect of getting somewhere at last. He probably wouldn't have troubled again but for the photograph of Monk-Gilbert. He waited up until midnight, but heard nothing and turned in. From eight o'clock next morning, he was on edge for the telephone bell to ring and Harris to promise news.

Harris rang up at half-past ten.

“Neil, old chap, I'm sorry, but I find I can't handle that little problem of yours. Awful lot of work in. If I were you, I'd drop it.”

“Listen, Paul, you can't—”

“I'm having a dreadful morning,” Harris said apologetically. It was the same attitude as Gillick's, but more obvious: he didn't
believe
this story. “We must have a drink soon. So long.”

He rang off.

After a few minutes, Banister said aloud: “Gillick's warned him off. But
why?
”

 

That was the day when Banister first realised that he was being followed. He probably wouldn't have known it, if he hadn't been in such a foul temper. He could not understand why anyone should refuse to believe him. He was walking towards St. James's Park along a narrow street leading from Wickham Mews, when he remembered he needed his chequebook; his mood had made him forget it. He had turned round sharply. A man in a navy blue suit suddenly stopped, and pretended to be lighting a cigarette.

The man followed him.

Wherever Banister went, the fellow in navy blue went also. He was thin-faced, lantern-jawed, well-dressed, rather sleek-looking. In a way, a vague kind of way, he reminded Banister of the men of the photographs which the American had expected him to identify.

Banister returned to his flat, and looked out of the window.

The man in blue was there, lighting a cigarette.

 

By nightfall, the man had gone, but another was in his place. Banister went out, deliberately, to make sure. He also took a gun, an old Colt which he had had for years. He had no ammunition for it, but didn't think that would be necessary. He was quite fit again now. He walked briskly. At last he went up to the man and spoke.

“What the hell do you think you're playing at?”

“Eh?” asked the man. He was a plumpish, round-faced fellow, not at all like the one in navy blue. “Free world.”

“Why are you following me about?”

“Following
you
?”

“You ruddy well know you are!”

“Dear chap,” said the plumpish man, “your error.”

His blandness was infuriating.

Everywhere he went, Banister was followed.

On buses, in taxis, in restaurants, at Twickenham for an International, on the way to several interviews for a new job – he didn't get it – everywhere. It began to wear at his nerves. He had to talk to someone; had to confide.

If only Rita . . .

He began to think about Rita again, but not very deeply. He simply wanted a confidante. He couldn't keep this story to himself much longer. But there was another thing he had to remember; he probably wouldn't be believed. Now that he looked back at it, the whole business seemed crazy, fantastic; the kind of thing that he might have dreamed up.

He almost began to wonder whether it
had
happened.

He hadn't even the broken pieces of the chair as evidence.

For a long time he had felt solitary and lonely. Sixty-five days “After Rita”, thirty-nine days after Gillick, he began to feel morose and worried about himself;
was
there something wrong with his mind? Whenever he felt like that, he took out the newspaper cutting of the Prime Minister and Professor Monk-Gilbert.

Monk-Gilbert, he knew, had flown to Australia.

But a man
like
Monk-Gilbert . . .

A day or two later a story in the
Evening News
jolted him. A man's body had been found in an alley in the East End of London. No one had seen him go there, no one had seen him die, the doctors could not explain the cause of death, but one witness at the inquest, who lived close to the spot where the body had been found, said simply: “I didn't hear anything, but I did see a flash.”

Banister remembered the flash he had seen before losing consciousness.

Other things worked on his mind during this same period. Probably because he knew about Monk-Gilbert, he became sensitive to any news about scientists. It was startling to find how many were in the news. Small paragraphs in the newspapers seemed to be repeated time and time again, such as:

 

Well-known Scientist Dead
or

Scientist Disappears
or

Atom-Man to Emigrate

 

Because this puzzled him and he became so obsessed, he looked through the files of two London newspapers for the past year. At least fifty scientists had died; or disappeared; or left England. There were also seven references to men dying after mysterious flashes had been seen.

The possible significance of this wore on his nerves still more.

And everywhere he was followed.

He flung himself out of the flat on an evening at the end of March. The plumpish man followed him. He reached the Bini Club, where Rita and he had spent a lot of time. It was a night-club, but opened for luncheons and dinners; a genuine club with the usual stolid members and few hangers-on. A little betting was done illegally, there was known to be a room for
chemin de fer
but no one played for high stakes. It was “all right”; the police had never raided it.

He ordered a whisky-and-soda, and tossed it down.

He ordered another, and it went the same way.

He saw two or three other people at the bar, and a girl by herself. He knew her slightly. Her name was Pam something-or-other, not very exceptional – Brown, Jones, Robinson, that kind of name. She was a pleasant and pretty little thing, usually one of a crowd.