Fear is the Key (20 page)

‘Well, what
was
the matter with it?'

‘Your late engineer friend Bryson was the matter
with it, that's what.' I looked at him speculatively.
‘Had you intended taking Bryson with you when
you were going to recover this stuff? Or were you
going to go it alone?'

‘Just Royale and myself. We thought –'

‘Yes, I know. Not much point in taking him
along with you. A dead man can't accomplish
much. Either you dropped a hint that he wouldn't
be coming along and he knew
why
he wouldn't be
coming along so he'd fixed it so that he'd get a
nice little posthumous revenge, or he hated you so
much that if he had to go along he was determined
that he was going to take you with him. Out of
this world, I mean. Your friend had made a very
clever little fix indeed, only he hadn't quite time to
finish it before the bends knocked him off – which
is why the engines are still out of commission.
He'd fixed it so that the bathyscaphe would have
operated perfectly; would have gone backwards
and forwards, up and down, anything you liked –
until you had taken it down to a depth of just over
three hundred feet. Then he had fixed that certain
hydro-static cut-outs would come into operation.
A beautiful job.' I wasn't gambling much, I knew
their ignorance of those matters was profound.

‘And then what?' Vyland asked tightly.

‘Then nothing. The bathyscaphe would never
have been able to get above three hundred feet
again. When either the batteries had been exhausted
or the oxygen regenerating unit had failed, as it
would have to in a few hours – well, you'd have
died of suffocation.' I looked at him consideringly.
‘After, that is, you had screamed your way into
madness.'

On a previous occasion I had thought I had
seen Vyland losing some colour from his rather
ruddy cheeks, but on this occasion there was no
doubt: he turned white and to conceal his agitation
fumbled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket
and lit a cigarette with hands whose tremor he
could not conceal. Royale, sitting on the table,
just smiled his little secret smile and went on
unconcernedly swinging his foot. That didn't make
Royale any braver than Vyland, maybe it only
meant he was less imaginative. The last thing a
professional killer could ever afford was imagination;
he had to live with himself and the ghosts of
all his victims. I looked at Royale again. I swore
to myself that one day I would see that face
the mask and mirror of fear, as Royale himself
had seen so many other faces the masks and
mirrors of fear in that last second of awareness
and knowingness before he pulled the trigger of
his deadly little gun.

‘Neat, eh?' Vyland said harshly. He had regained
a measure of composure.

‘It wasn't bad,' I admitted. ‘At least I sympathize
with his outlook, the object he had in mind.'

‘Funny. Very funny indeed.' There were times
when Vyland forgot that the well-bred business
tycoon never snarls. He looked at me with sudden
speculation in his eyes. ‘You wouldn't be thinking
along the same lines yourself, Talbot? Of pulling a
fast one like Bryson tried to pull?'

‘It's an attractive idea,' I grinned at him, ‘but
you insult my intelligence. In the first place, had
I had any ideas along those lines do you think I
would have given you any hint of them? Besides,
I intend to go along with you on this little trip. At
least, hope to.'

‘You do, eh?' Vyland was back on balance, his
shrewd quick self again. ‘Getting suspiciously cooperative
all of a sudden, aren't you, Talbot?'

‘You can't win,' I sighed. ‘If I said I
didn't
want
to go, you'd think that a damn sight more suspicious.
Be your age, Vyland. Things aren't as they
were a few hours ago. Remember the general's
speech about ensuring my continued well-being?
He meant it all right, he meant every word of it.
Try seeing me off and he'll see you off. And you're
too much of a business man to make a bad deal
like that. Royale here is going to be deprived of
the pleasure of killing me.'

‘Killing gives me no pleasure,' Royale put in
softly. It was a simple statement of fact and I
stared at him, temporarily off-balance by the preposterousness
of it.

‘Did I hear what I thought I heard?' I asked
slowly.

‘Ever hear of a ditch-digger digging ditches for
pleasure, Talbot?'

‘I think I see your point.' I stared at him for a
long moment, he was even more inhuman than I
had ever imagined. ‘Anyway, Vyland, now that I'm
going to live I have a different outlook on things.
The sooner this business is over, the sooner I'll
be away from you and your cosy little pals. And
then, I think, I could put the touch on the general
for a few thousand. I hardly think he would like
it known that he had been aiding and abetting
criminal activities on a grand scale.'

‘You mean – you mean, you'd put the black on
the man who saved your life?' Apparently some
things were still capable of astonishing Vyland.
‘God, you're as bad as any of us. Worse.'

‘I never said I wasn't,' I said indifferently. ‘These
are hard times, Vyland. A man must live. And I'm
in a hurry. That's why I suggest I come along. Oh,
I admit a child could steer and lower and raise
the bathyscaphe once he'd read the instructions,
but salvage is no job for amateurs. Believe me,
Vyland, I know, and it's not. You're amateurs. I'm
an expert. It's the one thing I'm really good at. So
I come, eh?'

Vyland looked at me long and consideringly,
then he said softly: ‘I just wouldn't dream of going
along without you, Talbot.'

He turned, opened the door and gestured to
me to precede him. He and Royale came out
behind me and as we walked along the passage
we could hear Cibatti slamming home a heavy
bolt and turning a key in the lock. Which made
it as safe as the Bank of England, except for one
thing: in the Bank of England a code knock does
not automatically open the door to the vaults. But
it opened doors here, and I had remembered it: and
even had I forgotten it, it would have come back
there and then for Vyland was using it again on a
door about fifteen yards along the passage.

The door was opened by Cibatti's opposite
number. The compartment beyond wasn't as bleakly
furnished as the one we had just left, but it was
a near thing. It had no wall coverings, no floor
coverings, it didn't even have a table: but it did
have a padded bench along one wall, and on this
the general and Mary were sitting. Kennedy was
sitting very straight on a wooden chair in a corner
and Larry, his big pistol out, his eyes twitching
away feverishly as ever, was pacing up and down,
doing his big watch-dog act. I scowled at them all
impartially.

The general was his usual erect, impassive self,
all his thoughts and emotions under the usual
impeccable control; but there were dark half-
moons under his eyes that hadn't been there
a couple of days ago. His daughter's eyes, too,
were smudged with blue, her face was pale and
though it was composed enough she didn't have
the iron in her that her father had: the droop of the
slender shoulders, slight though it was, was there
for all to see. Myself, I didn't go much for iron
women at any time; there was nothing I would
have liked better than to put an arm round those
self-same shoulders, but the time and the place
were wrong, the reactions anyway unpredictable.
Kennedy was just Kennedy, his good-looking hard
face a smooth brown mask, and he wasn't worried
about anything: I noticed that his maroon uniform
fitted him better than ever; it wasn't that he had
been to see his tailor, someone had taken his gun
from him and now there wasn't even the suspicion
of a bulge to mar the smooth perfection of the
uniform.

As the door closed behind us, Mary Ruthven
rose to her feet. There was an angry glint in her
eye, maybe there was more iron to her than I
had supposed. She gestured towards Larry without
looking at him.

‘Is all this really necessary, Mr Vyland?' she
asked coldly. ‘Am I to assume that we have now
arrived at the stage of being treated like criminals
– like criminals under an armed guard?'

‘You don't want to pay any attention to our little
pal here,' I put in soothingly. ‘The heater in his
hand doesn't mean a thing. He's just whistling in
the dark. All those snow-birds are as jittery and
nervous as this, just looking at the gun gives him
confidence: his next shot's overdue, but when he
gets it he'll be ten feet tall.'

Larry took a couple of quick steps forward and
jammed the gun into my stomach. He wasn't
any too gentle about it. His eyes were glazed,
there were a couple of burning spots high up
in the dead-white cheeks and his breath was a
harsh and hissing half-whistle through bared and
clenched teeth.

‘I told you, Talbot,' he whispered. ‘I told you not
to ride me any more. That's the last time –'

I glanced over his shoulder then smiled at him.

‘Look behind you, sucker,' I said softly. As I
spoke I again shifted my gaze over his shoulder
and nodded slightly.

He was too hopped up and unbalanced not to fall
for it. So sure was I that he would fall for it that my
right hand was reaching for his gun as he started
to turn and by the time his head was twisted all
the way round I had my hand locked over his and
the gun pointing sideways and downwards where
it would do no harm to anybody if it went off.
No direct harm, that was: I couldn't speak for the
power and direction of the ricochet off steel decks
and bulkheads.

Larry swung round, his face an ugly and contorted
mask of fury and hate, swearing softly,
vilely, continuously. He reached down with his
free hand to try to wrench the pistol clear, but
the hardest work Larry had ever done was pushing
down the plunger of a hypodermic syringe and
he was just wasting his time. I wrenched the
gun away, stepped back, stiff-armed him joltingly
with the heel of my palm as he tried to come
after me, broke open the automatic, ejected the
magazine and sent it clattering into one corner
while the gun went into another. Larry half-stood,
half-crouched against the far wall where my push
had sent him, blood trickling from his nose and
tears of rage and frustration and pain running
down both cheeks. Just to look at him made me
sick and cold.

‘All right, Royale,' I said without turning my
head. ‘You can put your gun away. The show's
over.'

But the show wasn't over. A hard voice said: ‘Go
pick up that gun, Talbot. And the clip. Put the clip
in the gun and give it back to Larry.'

I turned round slowly. Vyland had a gun in his
hand and I didn't care very much for the whiteness
of the knuckle of the trigger finger. He looked
his usual polished urbane self, but the rigidity
of his gun hand and the ever so slightly too fast
rate of breathing gave him away. It didn't make
sense. Men like Vyland never allowed themselves
to become emotionally involved, far less so concerned
over what happened to a punk like Larry.

‘How would you like to go up top and take a
walk over the side?' I asked.

‘I'll give you till I count five.'

‘And then what?'

‘Then I'll shoot.'

‘You wouldn't dare,' I said contemptuously.
‘You're not the type to pull triggers, Vyland. That's
why you employ this big bad hatchetman here.
Besides, who would fix up the bathyscaphe then?'

‘I'm counting, Talbot.' As far as I was concerned
he'd gone nuts. ‘One … two –'

‘OK, OK,' I interrupted, ‘so you can count.
You're a swell counter. I bet you can count up
to ten. But I bet you can't count up to all those
millions you're going to lose just because I don't
feel like picking up a gun.'

‘I can get other people to fix up that bathyscaphe.'

‘Not this side of the Atlantic, you won't. And
you haven't got all that much time to play around
with, have you, Vyland? What's the betting a
planeload of the FBI aren't already on the way
to Marble Springs to investigate that curious telegram
Jablonsky sent? What's the betting they
aren't already there? What's the betting they aren't
knocking on the door of the general's villa right
now, saying, “Where's the general?” and the butler
saying, “Why the general's just gone out to the rig
gentlemen,” and then the FBI saying, “We must
call upon the general immediately. We have important
things to discuss with him.” And they will call,
Vyland, just as soon as this storm blows over.'

‘I'm afraid he's right, Mr Vyland.' The unexpected
help came from Royale. ‘We haven't all that much
time.'

For a long moment Vyland said nothing. Then
he lowered his gun, turned and walked out of
the room.

Royale, as always, showed no sign of strain or
emotion whatever. He smiled and said: ‘Mr Vyland
has gone to eat over on the other side. Lunch is
ready for all of us,' and stood to one side to let us
out through the door.

It had been a strange off-beat episode. It didn't
make sense, it didn't even begin to make any kind
of sense at all. I pondered it, I tried to find a shadow
of an explanation while Larry collected his gun and
ammunition clip, but it was no good, I couldn't find
an explanation to fit the facts. Besides, I'd suddenly
realized that I was very hungry indeed. I stood to
one side to let all the others except Royale precede
me, not so much out of courtesy as to ensure that
Larry didn't shoot me in the back, then hurried,
without seeming to, to catch up on Mary and
Kennedy.