by M. M. Kaye
‘A dime’ll get you a dollar that Teeny Weeny Claire has sent him out to run errands,’ commented Persis with a grin. ‘What that guy needs is a nice bellhop’s outfit with a dandy set of buttons down the front. Then he’d be right in character.’
They found a car parked in a patch of shadow near the edge of the vacant lot. But it was not Glenn’s car.
‘Sure this is it?’ inquired Persis, speaking entirely unintentionally in a whisper.
‘It must be. It’s empty and the key’s in it. He wouldn’t have left his own, because his wife would have recognized it.’
‘You’re dead right. Okay, get in. I’d better sit in the back and put up a silent prayer that this contraption does not belong to some honest but absent-minded citizen who has chosen an unfortunate spot to park his jalopy. I do not fancy the prospect of spending the rest of my stay in Aphrodite’s Island in the can!’
Amanda settled herself behind the wheel and turned on the dashboard lights. The ignition key was already in place, and she switched on the engine and pressed the self-starter. A moment later the car moved softly off down the road.
Anita Barton was waiting in the shadow of a jacaranda tree. She wore a dark linen coat and a scarf over her head, and was carrying a small suitcase.
Amanda threw open the car door and the next moment Mrs Barton was beside her, breathing quickly and shivering with fear or tension. She slammed the door behind her, and as the car drew away from the kerb, caught sight of Persis Halliday’s reflection in the windscreen and whipped round with a choking cry that was almost a scream.
‘Who’s that!’
‘It’s all right,’ said Amanda quickly. ‘It’s only Mrs Halliday. She’s a friend of mine. She came along to–keep me company on the way back.’
‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ said Persis sociably. ‘I’m pleased to know you. I hope you won’t think I’m butting in, but I thought maybe Amanda could do with a bit of support. It’s going to be a long ride home.’
‘You’re an American, aren’t you?’ said Anita Barton in a hard voice.
‘Dyed in the wool,’ said Persis.
Mrs Barton fell silent, but it was not a relaxed silence. She sat tense and quivering, and every now and again she threw a quick, hunted look over her shoulder as if she feared to see the headlights of a pursuing car. Twice a car overtook them and passed in a cloud of dust, and she cowered down in her seat; bending her head so that her features were hidden by the dashboard.
The winding road and the olive groves, and the steep stony sides of the Kyrenia range, were milky with moonlight. The sea was a placid sheet of polished silver, and the night was warm and white and wonderful. The road dipped and turned and climbed through the streets of little white-walled villages and fell away into miniature valleys where small stone culverts spanned the stony beds of streams; and the miles unwound behind them …
‘We’re nearly there,’ said Anita Barton, speaking for the first time in almost twenty minutes. ‘Stop here. By those trees. We can see from here if the road is clear and if it’s safe to go on.’
Amanda pulled the car to a stop where a ragged clump of scrub and casurina trees made a pool of freckled shadow.
‘Turn off the lights,’ commanded Anita Barton in a harsh whisper.
Amanda switched them off obediently, but left the engine running softly as Mrs Barton opened the car door and stepped out into the moonlit road and Persis and Amanda followed her.
The shore lay some fifty yards or so to the left of the road and was separated from them by a stretch of rock-strewn ground covered with coarse grasses, stunted shrubs and mulberry trees.
Anita Barton spoke in a whisper: ‘I’m going to walk to the turn of the road to see if all’s clear. Sometimes there are picnic parties here on moonlight nights. Miss Derington had better stay by the car. You’—she turned to Persis—‘will you go to the cliff edge and see if you can see a boat out there? It should be off the rocks about half a mile ahead. You can see straight across from this point. We won’t go on if it isn’t there.’
‘Okay,’ said Persis with a sigh. ‘I guess it will ruin my nylons to say nothing of my nerves, but it’s all in a good cause.’
She turned away and vanished into the shadows of the casurina scrub, her high-heeled slippers making no sound in the soft, sandy soil beyond the road’s edge.
Anita Barton waited for a moment or two and then walked round to the front of the car. She stopped suddenly and bent down, and Amanda heard her catch her breath.
‘What is it?’ asked Amanda sharply.
‘Look!’ said Anita Barton in a frightened whisper.
Amanda ran round to her and bent down, staring at the white, dusty road where Anita Barton’s trembling finger pointed.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘I don’t see____’
And then she saw the shadow on the moonlit road.
Anita Barton’s shadow. A shadow that held something in its hand and swung its arm silently upward and swiftly down again.
Amanda tried to turn, but it was too late. Something crashed with a cruel force on to the back of her bent head and she fell forward into blackness and lay sprawling on the moonlit road.
Anita Barton laughed. A soft, unsteady, hysterical sound in that silver silence.
She looked behind her with wide, panic-stricken eyes, but there was no sound or sign of Persis Halliday, and she turned back to Amanda and stooping down, gripped her by the shoulders and half dragged, half lifted her into the car. She closed the door on her, ran round and climbed into the driver’s seat and released the brake.
The car slid away with barely a sound down the moonlit road, its lights still switched off—a grey shadow in the black and white and silver of the night. At the bottom of a long slope the road swung round a curve and began to climb again, and the car, having gathered speed, took the gradient at fifty and roared on down the coast road with the needle of the speedometer touching seventy-five.
The rush of the night air revived Amanda and she stirred and moaned with pain and opened her eyes.
For a minute or two she could not remember where she was, or think of anything but the agonizing pain of her head. It seemed to her that she was looking into a red haze shot with stabbing scarlet lights. Then the haze lifted slowly and the night air was cool and pleasant against her throbbing forehead, and she remembered Anita Barton’s shadow on the moonlit road …
Anita had hit her with something; something hard and heavy and made of metal. But the thick coils of her hair had cushioned her from the full force of the savage blow.
Anita____
Amanda lifted her head slowly and painfully and saw Anita Barton’s face in the faint glow of the dashboard light. A white mask of a face, the red lips drawn back over the teeth in a purely animal grimace. There was a touch of froth at the corners of that mouth and the wide eyes were fixed and glaring and bright with fear.
She felt Amanda stir, and turned her head. The next moment she had taken her foot from the accelerator and jammed on the brakes.
The car screeched to a standstill and the shock of its sudden stop flung Amanda’s numbed body forward against the dashboard.
Anita Barton drew something out of her pocket, and the moonlight glinted along the barrel of a heavy service revolver.
‘Don’t do anything silly,’ she warned, her voice harsh and high and uncontrolled.
She put up her left hand and tore at the silk scarf that was tied about her head, jerked it free and said: ‘Turn round with your back to me and put your hands behind you. Quickly!’
Amanda, with that cold ring of metal thrust against her, obeyed numbly. She felt Anita Barton’s hot unsteady fingers winding the silk about her wrists and wrenching the knots painfully tight, and realized that she must temporarily have laid aside the gun.
‘That’s right,’ Mrs Barton’s voice was panting and breathless. ‘Now your ankles.’ She dragged Amanda over roughly and tied her ankles with a length of cord that she must have bro
ught with her and then savagely and unexpectedly thrust a handkerchief into Amanda’s gasping mouth and wound another length of material across it, pulling down her hair with a ruthless hand so that it would not impede the tightness of the gag. It was quite obvious that she had made her preparations with some care.
‘There!’ said Anita Barton with breathless satisfaction.
She stared down into Amanda’s wide, terror-filled eyes and laughed long and loudly; a high, hysterical laugh.
‘So you’re another of Glenn’s girls, are you. You planned this with him, didn’t you? Darling Glenn! What a fool you must have thought me! So he’s going to wait for me with a boat, is he? He’s going to get a surprise. The very last surprise of his life. He arranged it all so beautifully, didn’t he? But he’s the one who is going to disappear. Not me. I’ve kept this gun for him. I thought of using it on myself once, but I shall use it on him instead. It was Glenn who put you up to this, wasn’t it?—wasn’t it! Of course it was. Well it’s the last thing he’ll do. You thought you’d fooled me, didn’t you? All that stuff about doing this for my sake; for my safety; when all the time you were doing it for the sake of dear Glenn. Why you little____!’
She used an unprintable word. Her eyes were not sane and her face was ash-white in the moonlight and contorted with rage and fear—the rage and fear of a hunted animal turning at bay. She glared at Amanda, her breast heaving with her panting breath, and suddenly and unexpectedly she laughed again and turned to release the brake.
She drove more slowly now; and presently, at the top of a rise, switched off the engine and let the car coast down a long, gentle sloping stretch of road, and braked it softly near the edge of a patch of shadow thrown by some tall, windworn rocks.
She sat quite still, listening intently, and after a moment or two opened the car door and slipped out.
She turned and looked back at Amanda and said in a whisper that was barely a breath of sound: ‘When you hear a shot you’ll know that you’ve helped dear Glenn to a death that will probably be painful. I’ve never used a gun before, so I shall make quite sure I don’t miss him. You can stay here and listen for it. I’ll deal with you later.’
She turned away and moved silently out into the moonlight to vanish down a narrow, sandy track between tumbled rocks that led to a low headland, some fifty yards distant, below which the unseen sea purred softly against a shelving beach.
Amanda turned and twisted frantically, wrenching helplessly at her bound wrists. Glenn would not be there, but since his wife did not believe that, it would be some harmless, friendly fisherman who would die. He would be waiting for her, and she would shoot him down without mercy and without warning—killing him as she must have killed poor, helpless Monica Ford. And because she had never used a gun before she would play for safety and fire at the man’s chest or stomach, and he would die horribly, coughing blood.
Anita Barton was not sane. Fear for her own safety had driven her over the narrow line that lies between sanity and madness. Had Glenn really suspected all the time that she might be a murderess? Was that why he had tried to get her away—and used any and every excuse to that end?
Amanda writhed and wrenched and tugged at her bonds in helpless, frantic fear. She must not let Anita kill again. She could not lie there and wait for the sound of a shot, and know that she herself would be the next to die. She tried to get her chin on to the car horn, thinking that if she could sound it, it might cause Anita Barton to take fright; but she slipped and fell to the floor, and hit her head on the steering wheel trying to get upright again.
Then all at once hands were gripping her and dragging her up, and there was an urgent, hissing whisper in her ear:
‘For Pete’s sake stay still! How in heck can I get you outa this while you’re hopping like a jumping bean?’
Persis! Amanda’s slim body was suddenly limp with relief. Fingers fumbled at the knot behind her head and Persis’ voice whispered: ‘Damn and blast this hair of yours! Why the heck you want to____’
And then the bandage was whipped away and Amanda spat out the sodden handkerchief and was breathing in deep gulps of air.
‘Persis!—how did you get here?’
‘Ssh! Keep quiet! Do you want that dame back on us?’ Persis started on the knotted scarf that bound Amanda’s wrists and explained in a whisper:
‘I didn’t like the look of the set-up. There was a gleam in that gal’s eye that I’ve seen in the eye of a horse in my day. And I don’t buy nor ride those horses! I walked round the back of those trees and counted ten and came right back again, and found you out like a light and the girlfriend making a getaway. So I jumped a ride on the luggage grid, and here I am. A very dusty and unpleasant journey, and I nearly broke my neck when she slammed on the brakes a mile or so back. There you are____’
Amanda’s wrists were free. She bent and tugged at the knots about her ankles, and a minute later she was out of the car and standing in the bright moonlight.
‘Hey, come back!’ hissed Persis. ‘This is where we beat it!’
‘I can’t,’ said Amanda desperately. ‘She thinks it’s Glenn down there on the beach, and she’ll take a shot at him. Can’t you see, I’ve got to stop her!’
‘Okay,’ said Persis, resigned. ‘I guess I’ll come with you. Let’s go.’
She jumped out into the road and gave a brief and muffled yelp of pain.
‘Holy cat!’ gasped Persis, hopping on one foot.
‘What is it?’
‘Lost a shoe back there, and I’ve trodden on a rock.’
‘Well you can’t come on one foot,’ said Amanda in a feverish whisper. ‘Stay here and find a spanner or something, and if she comes back, see if you can lay her out!’
She turned and ran in the direction that Anita Barton had taken a few minutes before.
The path came out on the top of a low cliff below which lay a tangle of sea grass and huge tumbled rocks. Amanda could see no sign of Anita Barton and imagined that she must be lying in wait in the shadows of one of the big boulders. She crept forward, grateful that the wash of the sea on the shelving beach blurred the sound of her movements, and reached the level of the shore.
The sand was warm and dry and deep and she edged her way between the high, wind-worn rocks and found herself looking out on a small curving beach bounded on one side by the low headland that she had just descended, and on the other by a long natural breakwater of tumbled rocks.
A boat was drifting in from the shining sea; a boat that had evidently been waiting off the point of the rocks. She could hear the soft splash of oars above the hush of a slow tide that broke gently on the beach with a sound like the rustle of dry leaves in a light autumn breeze. Then a keel grated on wet sand.
There was only one man in the small boat, and Amanda saw him ship the oars and jump out into the creaming surf to draw the prow a little farther up the beach.
He turned and walked towards her, and the moonlight fell full on his face.
It was Glenn Barton.
For a moment the shock of that knowledge deprived Amanda of the power to call out. Then she opened her mouth to scream a warning and stopped—checked by the terrified knowledge that Anita must be somewhere ahead of her, and that if she cried out Glenn would stop and Anita, realizing that she was discovered, would fire.
She edged her way forward, keeping to the shadow of the rocks and nearing the point where Anita must be standing.
Someone moved out of the shadows barely half a dozen yards ahead of her and Glenn stopped and said quietly: ‘Anita.’
The single, softly spoken word sounded astonishingly loud in that white silence where the only other sound was the lazy, murmurous whisper of the tide.
Anita Barton moved out into the moonlight, one hand in the pocket of her loose linen coat. She drew the hand out slowly, and Amanda raced forward and flung herself on Mrs Barton’s arm, dragging it down so that the shot went harmlessly into the sand.
The small bay seemed full of the
echoes of that sound, and Amanda’s hands were on cold metal, wrenching it, twisting it free and flinging it away.
Glenn stooped slowly and picked it up, and Anita Barton turned on Amanda screaming; clawing at her like a frenzied cat:
‘You fool! Oh you fool! Can’t you see he’ll kill us. No Glenn!–no–no! I don’t want to die!’
She crumpled at Amanda’s feet in a sobbing, shuddering heap.
Glenn Barton looked down at the weapon in his hand and then at his frantic wife. He raised the revolver quite steadily and said in a pleasant, soft voice:
‘Yes. I shall kill you. You were really becoming too dangerous altogether. Both of you. No, don’t move, Amanda! I am an excellent shot and I happen to have my own gun as well as the one my dear wife—my very dear wife—has so thoughtfully provided me with. I am sorry that you will have to disappear too. You will, of course, have accompanied Anita to the Lebanon and a telegram to that effect will be handed in there in a day or two. Anita, naturally, has left a letter which will explain everything to Miss Moon and to anyone who may be interested: I can really copy her handwriting very well. When, eventually, you fail to reappear, it will of course be obvious that my wife has committed another murder.’
Amanda said breathlessly: ‘Glenn!—Glenn, what are you talking about? I don’t understand____’ Her voice did not seem to belong to her, but to some stranger.
‘I think you do,’ said Glenn softly. ‘You came here to spy on me, didn’t you Amanda? To report on me to your uncle. I’m sorry that I shall have to shoot you. It’s noisy and bloody, and I dislike noise and blood. But there appears to be no alternative. You seem to be immune to poison. Some friend of yours drank the stuff that was meant for you on the ship, and you wouldn’t even touch the drink I offered you at the Inn. I’d got either contingency worked out to look like suicide, and it would have saved a great deal of trouble. Then I had what looked like the chance of a lifetime at Hilarion, but a fluke saved you, and when I tried to get back I found Howard was on his way up behind me. As there was no other way down and no one else up there, the only possible way out of a very sticky situation was to risk my neck and save you. The irony of that should appeal to you.’