Shattered (26 page)

I hesitated over the last answer but replied in order: “Wychwood Dragon lobby, soon as possible, on account of fear.”

“Whose fear?”

“Mine.”

“Oh yeah?” His laugh traveled with bass reverberation. “You'll be alone in that workshop of yours, is that it? In that case, I'll be with you soon.”

“I won't exactly be alone. Catherine and her partner officer will probably be in the town, and in the workshop there will be Pamela Jane, who's going to assist.”

“The girl? Why not that bright young man, what's his name ... Hickory?”

“Pamela Jane doesn't argue.”

Worthington's deep voice arrived as a chuckle. “I'm on my way.”

I made one more phone call, this time to the home of George Lawson-Young, apologizing for the eight-thirty wake-up.

“The hour doesn't matter”—he yawned—“if you bring good news.”

“It depends,” I said, and told him what he might expect.

He said, “Well done.”

“More to do.”

“I wouldn't miss it.” His smile came across the air. “I'll see you later.”

Catherine and her motorcycle took me to Logan Glass, where local inhabitants could have seen a display of affection to wag tongues for a week. I unlocked the doors, being there intentionally before Pamela Jane, and again read the notes I'd made (and filed in the locked bookcase) last time I'd tried my hand at a rearing horse.

This one would take me about an hour to complete, if I made the whole trophy, including plinth and ball. At a little less than half a meter high, it would weigh roughly twenty kilos, heavy because solid glass itself weighed a good deal, let alone the added gold. Marigold had with wide-sweeping arms insisted on magnificence. It was to be Martin's memorial, she proclaimed, and she had been exceedingly fond of her son-in-law. Both Bon-Bon and Worthington thought this much-to-be-publicized admiration a little retrospective, but “Darling Trubby” might think the trophy handsome in the sun.

I had filled the tank with clear crystal and put ready at hand the punty irons I'd need, also the small tools for shaping muscles, legs and head. Tweezers too, essential always. I set the furnace temperature to the necessary 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.

By then I “saw” the sculpture complete. A pity they hadn't wanted Martin himself on the rearing horse's back. I saw him there clearly now, at last. Perhaps I would repeat the horse with Martin riding. Perhaps one night ... for Bon-Bon, and for the friend I'd lost and still trusted.

While I waited for Pamela Jane to arrive, I thought about the wandering videotape that had raised so many savage feelings, and like curtains parting, the deductive faculty Professor Lawson-Young had put his faith in continued to open vistas in my mind. I had at last added in his factor X, and the mask had dropped from Blackmask Four.

Out of doors it started raining.

I stood looking at the furnace and listening to its heart of flame. Looking at the raisable trapdoor that kept 1800 degrees Fahrenheit at bay. Irish, Hickory, Pamela Jane and myself were so accustomed to the danger of the extreme heat roaring within the firebricks that taking care was automatic, was second nature.

I knew at last the sequence of the roads in the cul-de-sacs. I listened in my mind to Catherine's list of punishable crimes and their penalties, and reckoned that Rose and Adam Force should, if they had any sense at all, just leave the videotapes where they rested and save themselves the grief of prosecution.

Thieves never had any sense.

I'd surrounded myself with as many bodyguards as I could muster that Sunday simply because neither Rose nor Adam Force had shown any sense or restraint so far, and because the making of the trophy horse left me wide open to any mayhem they might invent. I could have filled the workroom with a crowd of onlookers and been safe ... safe for how long?

I knew now where the danger lay. I couldn't forever look over my shoulder fearfully, and, however rash it might seem, I saw a confrontation as the quickest path to resolution.

If I were disastrously wrong, Professor Lawson-Young could say good-bye to his millions. The breakthrough that would save the world in the cure for cancer would be published under someone else's name.

 

When my enemies came, it wasn't just time, I found, that I had given them, as much as an opportunity to outthink me.

I was still listening to the furnace when sounds behind me announced the arrival of Pamela Jane. She had entered through the side door, though usually she came in through the front.

“Mr. Logan...” Her voice quavered high with fright, and besides, she normally called me Gerard.

I turned at once to see how bad things were, and found that in many unforeseen ways they were extremely bad indeed.

Pamela Jane, dressed for work in her usual white overalls cinched around the waist, was coming to a standstill in the center of the workshop, trembling from a situation far beyond her capabilities. Her raincoat lay dropped in a bundle on the floor and her wrists were fastened together in front of her by sticky brown packing tape. Simpler and cheaper than handcuffs, the tape was equally immobilizing, and more effective still in Pamela Jane's case as the charming Adam Force held a full syringe in one hand and, with the other, had dragged down a clutch of female overalls to reveal a patch of bare skin below the needle. Thin and frightened, she began to cry.

A step or two behind Pamela Jane came Rose, every muscle triumphant, her whole face a sneer. She too came quietly, in soft shoes, and fast

Rose, strong, determined and full of spite aimed powerfully my way, held in a pincer grip the upper arm of Hickory. My bright assistant stood helplessly swaying, his eyes and his mouth stuck out of action by strips of brown packing tape. The same tape had been used to bind his hands behind his back and also to form a makeshift hobble between his ankles.

Roughly steadying Hickory's balance loomed the bookmaker Norman Osprey, more bully beef than beauty, but arithmetically as fast as a computer chip. Just inside the side door, keeping guard and shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, was, of all people, Eddie Payne. He wouldn't meet my eyes. He took instructions steadfastly from Rose.

The actions of all four intruders had been whirlwind fast, and I had arranged little in any way of retaliation. All the bodyguards were simply to roam the street outside. Catherine and her hobo were to patrol their normal disjointed beat. Rose and her cohorts had somehow slid past them in the rain.

I was wearing, as usual, a white singlet which left my arms, neck and much of my shoulder area bare. The heat from the furnace roared almost unbearably beyond the trapdoor, if one weren't used to it. I put my foot and my weight sideways on the treadle, which duly opened the trap and let a huge gust of Sahara heat blow out over Norman Osprey's wool suit and reddening face. Furious, he made a snatch towards hurling me onto the trapdoor itself, but I sidestepped and tripped him, and unbalanced him onto his knees.

Rose yelled to Norman, “Stop it, you stupid asshole, we don't want him damaged this time; you know bloody well we'll get nowhere if he can't talk.”

I watched as Rose tugged my blindfolded assistant across a good length of floor, with Norman Osprey holding him upright in a fierce grip. Hickory stumbled and felt tentatively forwards step by step until he reached the chair I'd bought for Catherine. At that point Rose revolved Hickory roughly until he fell into the chair on his side and had to struggle to turn and sit upright.

Behind me now I could hear the distressed breathing of Pamela Jane, and also the unmistakable heavy wheeze of Adam Force's asthma. He said nothing at all about his near miss with insulin at Bristol. He definitely needed an inhaler but had no free hands.

Rose said to Hickory with malignant satisfaction, “Now you sit there, buddy boy, and it will teach you not to put your nose in where it isn't wanted.” She redirected the pleased venom back my way while Hickory tried hard to talk but produced only a throttled tenor protest.

“Now you,” she told me, “will hand over everything I want. Or your friend here will get holes burned in him.”

Pamela Jane cried out, “Oh no, you
can‘t
!”

“You shut up, you silly little bitch,” Rose acidly told her, “or I'll spoil your soppy looks instead.”

Whether or not he was aware of Rose's speed in standing on the treadle part of the floor that raised the flap of the furnace, Hickory was unable to protest more vigorously than to shrink ever deeper into the chair. He did understand, though, the diabolical choice she was thrusting under my nose.

As if she could read his mind, she said in the same sharp tone, “You, what's your name, Hickory? You'd better pray that this boss of yours won't let you burn. Because I'm not fooling, this time he's going to give me what I want.”

She picked up one of the long punty irons and pushed it into the tank of molten glass. Her movement was un-graceful rather than smooth with constant practice, but somewhere, sometime, she had watched a glassblower collect a gather from a tank. She withdrew the iron with a small blob of red-hot glass on the end of it, and revolved the rod so that the glass stayed adhered to it and didn't fall off.

Pamela Jane moaned at the sight and all but fell onto the doctor's needle.

“Gerard Logan,” Rose said to me with emphasis. “This time you will do what I tell you, now, at once.”

Extraordinarily she sounded less sure of herself than screaming “Break his wrists” into the Broadway night, and I remembered Worthington's judgment that as I would beat her at the tennis match of life, so she would never again face me on the actual court. Yet here she was, visibly pulling together the sinews and nerves of resolution.

I'd seen Martin summon his mental vigor when going out to race on a difficult horse, and I'd seen actors breathe deeply in the wings when the play ahead dug deep into the psyche. I understood a good deal about courage in others and about the deficiencies in myself, but on that Sunday in January it was Rose's own mushrooming determination that pumped up in me the inner resources I needed.

I watched her as she in turn watched me, and it wasn't what she said that mattered at all, it was which of us would win the desperate battle for pride.

She plunged the cooling small ball of glass into the tank again and drew it out again, larger. She swung the iron around until the molten red-hot lump advanced to a too close spot under Hickory's chin. He could feel the heat. He shrank frantically away and tried to scream behind the adhering tape.

“Look out, for God's sake,” I shouted automatically, and as if surprised, Rose swung the iron away from Hickory's face until he wasn't for the minute threatened.

“You see!” Rose sounded all of a sudden victorious. “If you don't like him burned you'll tell me where you've hidden the videotape I want.”

I said urgently, “You'll disfigure Hickory if you're not careful. Glass burns are terrible. You can get a hand burned so badly that it needs amputating. An arm; a foot ... You can smell flesh burning ... you can lose your mouth, your nose.”

“Shut up,” Rose yelled, and again, at the top of her voice, “Shut up!”

“You can burn out an eye,” I said. “You can sear and cauterize your guts.”

Pamela Jane, who lived with the danger, was affected least of all in spite of her fluttery manner, and it was big Norman Osprey of the great muscular shoulders who sweated and looked ready to vomit.

Rose looked at her red-hot iron. She looked at Hickory and she glanced at me. I could more or less read her rapid mind. She had come to threaten me through my regard for Hickory and now here I was, a target again myself.

Beside Rose's powerful identity her companions' egos were pale. Even Adam Force's good looks and persuasive smile faded to second rate in her presence, and I began to realize fully that her reputation in inspiring real abject terror, in men particularly, was in no way a myth. I felt the fringes myself, try though I might to counteract it. Her effect on her father sent him to the confessional at the best of times, and this being Sunday again I could barely imagine the turmoil churning in his good Catholic conscience.

To Norman Osprey no doubt one day was as good or bad as the next. His days were judged by the amount of muscle needed to achieve his own way, coupled with the fizzing ability to add, divide or multiply as if by instinct.

Adam Force's finger seemed to itch on the plunger set to activate the syringe's undisclosed contents. I wished to heaven that poor Pamela Jane would sniff back the tears and swallow the sobs, both of which seemed increasingly to irritate Doctor White-Beard; and as for Hickory, stuck with wide brown bands into silence and sightlessness, and deep in the soft armchair, I thought he would be staying exactly where Rose had put him until someone pulled him out.

Impressions flashed and passed. Rose stared at me with calculation, enjoying her certainty that she would defeat me pretty soon. I couldn't swear she wouldn't. This time there were no black masks or baseball bats. But to be faced bare-armed with molten glass was worse.

Suddenly and unexpectedly Rose said, “You came here this morning to make a trophy horse of glass and gold. I want the gold.”

Wow! I thought. No one had brought gold into the equation before. Gold for the trophy hadn't been mentioned in Rose's hearing as far as I knew. I had ordered enough for the trophy, and a little over for stock, but a quantity worth holding up the stagecoach for, it was not.

Someone had misled Rose, or she had misunderstood, and her acquisitive imagination had done the rest.

Rose was still sure that, one way or another, I could make her rich.