The Way to Dusty Death

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘I know.’

  MacAlpine paused before speaking. ‘How do you know. Only Alexis and I know.’

  ‘Mary told me.’ Harlow turned and walked away.

  ‘Well.’ Dunnet pressed his lips tightly together. ‘The arrogant young bastard. Walking in here to tell us he’s just equalled the lap record without even trying. Thing is, I believe him. That’s why he stopped by, isn’t it?’

  ‘To tell me that he’s still the best in the business? Partly. Also to tell me to stuff my bloody reception. Also to tell me that he’ll speak to Mary whether I like it or not. And the final twist, to let me know that Mary has no secrets from him. Where’s that damned daughter of mine?’

  ‘This should be interesting to see.’

  ‘What should be?’

  ‘To see if you can break a heart twice.’

  MacAlpine sighed and slumped even farther back in his armchair. ‘I suppose you’re right, Alexis, I suppose you’re right. Mind you, I’d still like to knock their two damned young heads together.’

  Harlow, clad in a white bath-robe and obviously recently showered, emerged from the bathroom and opened up his wardrobe. He brought out a fresh suit then reached up to a shelf above it. Clearly, he didn’t find what he expected to and his eyebrows lifted. He looked in a cupboard with similarly negative results. He stood in the middle of the room, pondering, then smiled widely.

  He said softly: ‘Well, well, well. Here we go again. Clever devils.’

  From the still-smiling expression on his face, it was clear that Harlow didn’t believe his own words. He lifted the mattress, reached under, removed a flat half-bottle of scotch, examined and replaced it. From there he went into the bathroom, removed the cistern lid, lifted out a bottle of Glenfiddich malt, checked the level – it was about three-parts full, replaced it in a certain position and then put the cistern lid back in place. This he left slightly askew. He returned to his bedroom, put on a light grey suit and was just adjusting his tie when he heard the sound of a heavy engine below. He switched out the light, pulled back the curtains, opened his window and peered out cautiously.

  A large coach was drawn up outside the hotel entrance and the various drivers, managers, senior mechanics and journalists who were headed for the official reception were filing aboard. Harlow checked to see that all those whose absence that evening he considered highly desirable were among those present, and they were – Dunnet, Tracchia, Neubauer, Jacobson and MacAlpine, the last with a very pale and downcast Mary clinging to his arm. The door closed and the bus moved off into the night.

  Five minutes later, Harlow sauntered up to the reception desk. Behind it was the very pretty young girl he’d ignored on the way in. He smiled widely at her – his colleagues wouldn’t have believed it – and she, recovering quickly from the shock of seeing the other side of Harlow’s nature, smiled in return, almost blushing in embarrassed pleasure. For those outside immediate racing circles, Harlow was still the world’s number one.

  Harlow said: ‘Good evening.’

  ‘Good evening, Mr Harlow, sir.’ The smile faded. ‘I’m afraid you’ve just missed your bus.’

  ‘I have my own private transport.’

  The smile came back on again. ‘Of course, Mr Harlow. How silly of me. Your red Ferrari. Is there something – ’

  ‘Yes, please. I have four names here – MacAlpine, Neubauer, Tracchia and Jacobson. I wonder if you could give me their room numbers?’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Harlow. But I’m afraid those gentlemen have all just left.’

  ‘I know. I waited until they had left.’

  ‘I don’t understand, sir.’

  ‘I just want to slip something under their doors. An old pre-race custom.’

  ‘You race drivers and your practical jokes.’ She’d almost certainly never seen a race driver until that evening but that didn’t prevent her from giving him a look of roguish understanding. ‘The numbers you want are 202, 208, 204 and 206.’

  ‘That’s in the order of the names I gave you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Harlow touched a finger to his lips. ‘Now, not a word.’

  ‘Of course not, Mr Harlow.’ She smiled conspiratorially at him as he turned away. Harlow had a sufficiently realistic assessment of his own fame to appreciate that she would talk for months about this brief encounter: just as long as she didn’t talk until that weekend was over.

  He returned to his own room, took a movie camera from a suitcase, unscrewed its back, carefully scratching the dull metallic black as he did so, removed the plate and pulled out a small miniaturized camera not much larger than a packet of cigarettes. He pocketed this, rescrewed in place the back plate of the movie camera, replaced it in his suitcase and looked thoughtfully at the small canvas bag of tools that lay there. Tonight, he would not require those: where he was going he knew where to find all the tools and flashlights he wanted. He took the bag with him and left the room.

  He moved along the corridor to room 202 – MacAlpine’s room. Unlike MacAlpine, Harlow did not have to resort to devious means to obtain hotel room keys – he had some excellent sets of keys himself. He selected one of these and with the fourth key the door opened. He entered and locked the door behind him.

  Having disposed of the canvas bag in the highest and virtually unreachable shelf in a wall wardrobe, Harlow proceeded to search the room thoroughly. Nothing escaped his scrutiny – MacAlpine’s clothing, wardrobes, cupboards, suitcases. Finally he came across a locked suitcase, so small as to be almost a brief-case, fastened with locks that were very strong and peculiar indeed. But Harlow also had a set of very small and peculiar keys. Opening the small suitcase presented no difficulty whatsoever.

  The interior held a kind of small travelling office, containing as it did a mass of papers, including invoices, receipts, cheque-books and contracts: the owner of the Coronado team obviously served as his own accountant. Harlow ignored everything except an elastic-bound bunch of expired cheque-books. He flipped through those quickly then stopped and stared at the front few pages of one of the cheque-books where all the payments were recorded together. He examined all four recording pages closely, shook his head in evident disbelief, pursed his lips in a soundless whistle, brought out his miniature camera and took eight pictures, two of each page. This done, he returned everything as he had found it and left.

  The corridor was deserted. Harlow moved down to 204 – Tracchia’s room – and used the same key to enter as he had on MacAlpine’s door: hotel room keys have only marginal differences as they have to accommodate a master key: what Harlow had was, in fact, a master key.

  As Tracchia had considerably fewer possessions than MacAlpine, the search was correspondingly easier. Again Harlow encountered another, but smaller, brief-case, the opening of which again provided him with the minimum of difficulty. There were but few papers inside and Harlow found little of interest among them except a thin book, bound in black and red, of what appeared to be a list of extremely cryptic addresses. Each address, if address it were, was headed by a single letter, followed by two or three wholly indecipherable lines of letters. It could have meant something: it could have meant nothing. Harlow hesitated, obviously in a state of indecision, shrugged, brought out his camera and photographed the pages. He left Tracchia’s room in as immaculate a condition as he had left MacAlpine’s.

  Two minutes later in 208, Harlow, sitting on Neubauer’s bed with a brief-case on his lap, was no longer hesitating. The miniature camera clicked busily away: the thin black and red notebook he held in his hand was identical to the one he had found in Tracchia’s possession.

  From there, Harlow moved on to the last of his four objectives – Jacobson’s room. Jacobson, it appeared, was either less discreet or less sophisticated than either Tracchia or Neubauer. He had two bankbooks and when Harlow opened them he sat quite still. Jacobson’s income, it appeared from them, amounted to at least twenty times as much as he could reasonably expect to earn as a chie
f mechanic. Inside one of the books was a list of addresses, in plain English, scattered all over Europe. All those details Harlow faithfully recorded on his little camera. He replaced the papers in the case and the case in its original position and was on the point of leaving when he heard footsteps in the corridor. He stood, irresolute, until the footsteps came to a halt outside his door. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and was about to use it as a mask when a key turned in the lock. Harlow had time only to move swiftly and silently into a wardrobe, pulling the door quietly to behind him, when the corridor door opened and someone entered the room.

  From where Harlow was, all was total darkness. He could hear someone moving around the room but had no idea from the sound as to what the source of the activity might be: for all he could tell someone might have been engaged in exactly the same pursuit as he himself had been a minute ago. Working purely by feel, he folded his handkerchief cornerwise, adjusted the straight edge to a point just below his eyes and knotted the handkerchief behind the back of his head.

  The wardrobe door opened and Harlow was confronted with the spectacle of a portly, middle-aged chambermaid carrying a bolster in her hands – she’d obviously just been changing it for the nighttime pillows. She, in turn, was confronted with the shadowy menacing figure of a man in a white mask. The chambermaid’s eyes turned up in her head. Soundlessly, without even as much as a sigh, she swayed and crumpled slowly towards the floor. Harlow stepped out, caught her before she hit the marble tiles and lowered her gently, using the bolster as a pillow. He moved quickly towards the opened corridor door, closed it, removed his handkerchief and proceeded to wipe all the surfaces he had touched, including the top and handle of the brief-case. Finally, he took the telephone off the hook and left it lying on the table. He left, pulling the door to behind him but not quite closing it.

  He passed swiftly along the corridor, descended the stairs at a leisurely pace, went to the bar and ordered himself a drink. The barman looked at him in what came to being open astonishment.

  ‘You said what, sir?’

  ‘Double gin and tonic is what I said.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Harlow. Very good, Mr Harlow.’

  As impassively as he could, the barman prepared the drink which Harlow took to a wall seat situated between two potted plants. He looked across the lobby with interest. There were some signs of unusual activity at the telephone switchboard, where the girl operator was showing increasing signs of irritation. A light on her board kept flashing on and off but she was obviously having no success in contacting the room number in question. Finally, clearly exasperated, she beckoned a page boy and said something in a low voice. The page boy nodded and crossed the lobby at the properly sedate pace in keeping with the advertised ambience of the Hotel-Villa Cessni.

  When he returned, it was at anything but a sedate pace. He ran across the lobby and whispered something urgently to the operator. She left her seat and only seconds later no less a personage than the manager himself appeared and hurried across the lobby. Harlow waited patiently, pretending to sip his drink from time to time. He knew that most people in the lobby were covertly studying him but was unconcerned. From where they sat he was drinking a harmless lemonade or tonic water. The barman, of course, knew better and it was as certain as that night’s sundown that one of the first things that MacAlpine would do on his return would be to ask for Johnny Harlow’s drink bill, on the convincing enough pretext that it was inconceivable for the champion to put his hand in his pocket for anything.

  The manager reappeared, moving with most unmanagerial haste, in a sort of disciplined trot, reached the desk and busied himself with the telephone. The entire lobby was now agog with interest and expectation. Their undivided attention had now been transferred from Harlow to the front desk and Harlow took advantage of this to tip the contents of his glass into a potted plant. He rose and sauntered across the lobby as if heading for the front revolving doors. His route brought him past the side of the manager. Harlow broke step.

  He said sympathetically: ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Grave trouble, Mr Harlow. Very grave.’ The manager had the phone to his ear, obviously waiting for a call to come through, but it was still apparent that he was flattered that Johnny Harlow should take time off to speak to him. ‘Burglars! Assassins! One of our chambermaids has been most brutally and savagely assaulted.’

  ‘Good God! Where?’

  ‘Mr Jacobson’s room.’

  ‘Jacobson’s – but he’s only our chief mechanic. He’s got nothing worth stealing.’

  ‘Ah! Like enough, Mr Harlow. But the burglar wasn’t to know that, was he?’

  Harlow said anxiously: ‘I hope she was able to identify her attacker.’

  ‘Impossible. All she remembers is a masked giant jumping out of a wardrobe and attacking her. He was carrying a club, she said.’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Excuse me. The police.’

  Harlow turned, exhaled a long slow sigh of relief, walked away, passed out through the revolving doors, turned right and then right again, re-entered the hotel through one of the side doors and made his way unobserved back up to his own room. Here he withdrew the sealed film cassette from his miniature camera, replaced it with a fresh one – or one that appeared to be fresh – unscrewed the back of his cine-camera, inserted the miniature and screwed home the back plate of the cine-camera. For good measure, he added a few more scratches to the dulled black metal finish. The original cassette he put in an envelope, wrote on it his name and room number, took it down to the desk, where the more immediate signs of panic appeared to be over, asked that it be put in the safe and returned to his room.

  An hour later, Harlow, his more conventional wear now replaced by a navy roll-neck pullover and leather jacket, sat waiting patiently on the edge of his bed. For the second time that night, he heard the sound of a heavy diesel motor outside, for the second time that night he switched off the light, pulled the curtains, opened the window and looked out. The reception party bus had returned. He pulled the curtains to again, switched on the light, removed the flat bottle of scotch from under the mattress, rinsed his mouth with some of it and left.

  He was descending the foot of the stairs as the reception party entered the lobby. Mary, reduced to only one stick now, was on her father’s arm but when MacAlpine saw Harlow he handed her to Dunnet. Mary looked at Harlow quietly and steadily but her face didn’t say anything.

  Harlow made to brush by but MacAlpine barred his way.

  MacAlpine said: ‘The mayor was very vexed and displeased by your absence.’

  Harlow seemed totally unconcerned by the mayor’s reactions. He said: ‘I’ll bet he was the only one.’

  ‘You remember you have some practice laps first thing in the morning?’

  ‘I’m the person who has to do them. Is it likely that I would forget?’

  Harlow made to move by MacAlpine but the latter blocked his way again.

  MacAlpine said: ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘I forbid you – ’

  ‘You’ll forbid me nothing that isn’t in my contract.’

  Harlow left. Dunnet looked at MacAlpine and sniffed.

  ‘Air is a bit thick, isn’t it?’

  ‘We missed something,’ MacAlpine said. ‘We’d better go and see what it was we missed.’

  Mary looked at them in turn.

  ‘So you’ve already searched his room when he was out on the track. And now that his back is turned again you’re going to search it again. Despicable. Utterly despicable. You’re nothing better than a couple of – a couple of sneak-thieves.’ She pulled her arm away from Dunnet. ‘Leave me alone. I can find my own room.’

  Both men watched her limp across the foyer. Dunnet said complainingly: ‘Considering the issues involved, life or death issues, if you like, I do consider that a rather unreasonable attitude.’

  ‘So is love,’ MacAlpine sighed. ‘So is love.’

  Harlow, descending the hotel s
teps, brushed by Neubauer and Tracchia. Not only did he not speak to them, for they still remained on courtesy terms, he didn’t even appear to see them. Both men turned and looked after Harlow. He was walking with that over-erect, over-stiff posture of the slightly inebriated who are making too good a job of trying to pretend that all is well. Even as they watched, Harlow made one barely perceptible and clearly unpremeditated stagger to one side, but quickly recovered and was back on an over-straight course again. Neubauer and Tracchia exchanged glances, nodded to each other briefly, just once. Neubauer went into the hotel while Tracchia moved off after Harlow.

  The earlier warm night air had suddenly begun to chill, the coolness being accompanied by a slight drizzle. This was to Tracchia’s advantage. City-dwellers are notoriously averse to anything more than a slight humidity in the atmosphere, and although the Hotel-Villa Cessni was situated in what was really nothing more than a small village, the same urban principle applied: with the first signs of rain the streets began to clear rapidly: the danger of losing Harlow among crowds of people decreased almost to nothingness. The rain increased steadily until finally Tracchia was following Harlow through almost deserted streets. This, of course, increased the chances of detection should Harlow choose to cast a backward glance but it became quickly evident that Harlow had no intention of casting any backward glances: he had about him the fixed and determined air of a man who was heading for a certain objective and backward glances were no part of his forward-looking plans. Tracchia, sensing this, began to move up closer until he was no more than ten yards behind Harlow.

  Harlow’s behaviour was becoming steadily more erratic. He had lost his ability to pursue a straight line and was beginning to weave noticeably. On one occasion he staggered in against a recessed doorway shop window and Tracchia caught a glimpse of Harlow’s reflected face, head shaking and eyes apparently closed. But he pushed himself off and went resolutely if unsteadily on his way. Tracchia closed up even more, his face registering an expression of mingled amusement, contempt and disgust. The expression deepened as Harlow, his condition still deteriorating, lurched round a street corner to his left.